of all the rights of men; and they will be told to thank GOD who has
brought them into the blessed light of the Gospel! Let not the man who
cannot reconcile his sympathies in the American struggle with his
convictions on the question of slavery pooh-pooh this as an extravagant
fancy picture of something that never can occur. It is exactly the
missionary scheme which the Confederate clergy call "the plan of Divine
Providence;" and supposing a powerful Southern Confederacy to be
established, what is to prevent its being accomplished? Not the religious
and philanthropic feelings of the Confederates; for the religious and
philanthropic feelings of the confederates are all for a revival of the
slave trade. Not treaties concluded with foreign nations; for a people
holding such sentiments could never make a treaty shutting themselves out
from the most promising field of missionary labour; or if forced by
circumstances to conclude it, their religious convictions would urge them
to break it at any moment. In fact, were a powerful nationality once
established, with interests and religious convictions all pointing in the
way of reviving the slave trade, it would be utterly impossible to prevent
a resumption of that abominable traffic.

We have dealt with the professed convictions of the Southern ministers as
sincere convictions. We should be sorry to accuse any body of men
professing to be teachers of the Christian religion of intentional
insincerity, and although we can hardly conceive the possibility of men
who base their religion upon the same Bible upon which we rest ours,
attempting sincerely to justify slavery upon religious grounds, we would
rather attribute the extraordinary moral obliquity which the attempt
exhibits to the demoralising influence of the slave system than to actual
hypocrisy. The spectacle of a crowd of learned and no doubt pious men
standing forth as the avowed apologists of a system which deprives their
fellow-men of all the rights of humanity is, perhaps, the most distressing