more effectually to conceal our dark designs!  Yes, verily, while we stab an erring, or unerring brother in the dark!  We are all prostrate before the god of mammon, and there are but few of us, who would not sell our Saviour for less than thirty pieces of silver!  Professedly we are Christians, but practically we are infidels!  The Bible is no longer our guide.  The fact is, we know but little about it, and care less!  We profess to believe that it is the word of God; and yet it is laid aside for any impure negro novel, or other filthy tale, that may chance to fall in our way?  Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been read more within the past year, than the Bible had been for the last ten years, immediately preceding its appearance!  Thousands of Christians have gloated over its pages with rapture and delight, from the rising till the setting sun, for days and nights in succession, who had not during their lives read a dozen chapters in the Bible!  We will now remove the veil and look within.  Its high time that the motives which prompt us to action were exposed to public gaze.  Let us then take a peep at the “inward man.”

A portion of our fellow citizens in another part of this Union, had, by no fault or agency of their own, become involved in the evils and calamities of slavery.  We turned our eyes in that direction, and looked on the dark pictures.  We felt that we were great sinners.  Guilt pressed heavily upon us.  “The sorrows of death compassed us:  and the pains of hell got hold upon us;” and we “found trouble and sorrow.”  The anguish of our guilt was insupportable.  We were in deep distress, and we longed for some thing to soothe and ease our troubled minds:  but we did not, with the Psalmist, call upon the Lord to “deliver us.”  No!  By no means, for we thought if we could find worse sinners than ourselves, it would afford us some relief.

    Twas thus we sought, but sought in vain
    A panacea for all our pain! 
    Are there not those more vile than we—­
    If baser mortal man can be! 
    We looked around—­and looked again,
    And searched the world—­but searched in vain;
    For more depraved—­more vile than we
    Sure there were none—­none could there be! 
    Alas our souls are steeped in sin! 
    Though clean without—­impure within—­
    As sepulchers adorned with paint
    A devil within—­without a saint!

Our condition was pitiable indeed.  We said among ourselves, “What now shall we do?” “Where!  O!  Where shall we find worse sinners than ourselves?” Our woe-begone looks betrayed the secret workings and intentions of our hearts; We again went forth in search of those more wicked than ourselves; but we were destined to disappointment, for we sought in vain,—­they were hard to find.  They were neither here—­nor there—­nor any where to be found in all the land of the living!  Worse sinners than ourselves could not be found upon this terrestial globe—­among all the degenerate sons and daughters of Adam.