to consider, the deception that we practise on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we pass off the knowledge of our duty for the performance of it.  These are two very distinct things.  If you know what is right, happy are ye if ye do it.

Observe, my friends, what it is to which I am now entreating your consideration.  It is not the wrongs nor the rights of the oppressed upon which I am now discoursing.  It is our own personal exposure to a most serious mistake.  It is a danger, which threatens our own souls, to which I would that our eyes should be open and on the watch.

And here, by the way, let me say that one great reason why I refer as often as I do, to that great topic of the day, which, in one shape or another, is continually shaking the land and marking the age in which we live, is not merely the righting of the wronged, but the instruction, the moral enlightenment, the religious edification of our own hearts, which this momentous topic affords.  To me this subject involves infinitely more than a mere question of humanity.  Its political bearing is the very least and most superficial part of it, scarcely worth noticing in comparison with its moral and religious relations.  Once, deterred by its outside, political aspect, I shunned it as many do still, but the more it has pressed itself on my attention, the more I have considered it—­the more and more manifest has it become to me, that it is a subject full of light and of guidance, of warning and inspiration for the individual soul.  It is the most powerful means of grace and salvation appointed in the providence of Heaven, for the present day and generation, more religious than churches and Sabbaths.  It is full of sermons.  It is a perfect gospel, a whole Bible of mind-enlightening, heart-cleansing, soul-saving truth.  How much light has it thrown for me on the page of the New Testament!  What a profound significance has it disclosed in the precepts and parables of Jesus Christ!  How do His words burst out with a new meaning!  How does it help us to appreciate His trials and the Godlike spirit with which He bore them!”

The dark winter of 1860 broke gloomily over all abolitionists; perhaps upon none did it press more heavily, than upon the small band in Philadelphia.  Situated as that city is, upon the very edge of Slavery, and socially bound as it was, by ties of blood or affinity with the slave-holders of the South, to all human foresight it would assuredly be the first theatre of bloodshed in the coming deadly struggle.  As Dr. Furness said in his sermon on old John Brown:  “Out of the grim cloud that hangs over the South, a bolt has darted, and blood has flowed, and the place where the lightning struck, is wild with fear.”  The return stroke we all felt must soon follow, and Philadelphia, we feared, would be selected as the spot where Slavery would make its first mortal onslaught, and the abolitionists there, the first victims.