sighing of humanity in all countries, the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together—­the earnest expectation of the creature waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God—­show that the day is not distant when he will break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.  And whatever we are able to do for this sacred cause, let us cast it where the innumerable multitude of heaven cast their crowns, at the feet of the Lamb, saying, ’Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessings.’”

The Rev. Professor then continued.  “My Lord Provost, Ladies and Gentlemen:  This cause, to be successful, must be carried on in a religious spirit, with a deep sense of our dependence on God, and with that love for our fellow-men which the gospel requires.  It is because I think I have met this spirit since I reached the shores of Great Britain, in those who have taken an interest in the cause, that I feel encouraged to hope that the expression of your feeling will be effective on the hearts of Christians on the other side of the Atlantic.  There are Christians there as sincere, as hearty, and as earnest, as any on the face of the earth.  They have looked at this subject, and been troubled; they have hardly known what to do, and their hearts have been discouraged.  They have almost turned away their eyes from it, because they have scarcely dared encounter it, the difficulties appeared to them so great.  Wrong cannot always receive the support of Christians; wrong must be done away with; and what must be—­what God requires to be—­that certainly will be.  Now, in this age, man is every where beginning to regard the sufferings of his fellow-man as his own.  There is an interest felt in man, as man, which was not felt in preceding ages.  The facilities of communication are bringing all nations in contact, and whatever wrong exists in any part of the world, is every where felt.  There are wrongs and sufferings every where; but those to which we are accustomed, we look upon with most indifference, because being accustomed to them, we do not feel their enormity.  You feel the enormity of slavery more than we do, because you are not immediately interested, and regard it at a distance.  We regard some of the wrongs that exist in the old world with more sensibility than you can regard them, because we are not accustomed to them, and you are.  Therefore, in the spirit of Christian love, it belongs to Christian men to speak to each other with great fidelity.  It has been said that you know little or nothing about slavery.  O, happy men, that you are ignorant of its enormities. [Hear, hear!] But you do know something about it.  You know as much about it as you know of the widow-burning in India, or the cannibalism in the Fejee Islands, or any of those crimes and sorrows of paganism, that induced you to send forth your missionaries.  You know it is a great wrong, and a terrible obstacle