content, the reception of this work is a sad commentary on the age in
which we live. We may boast of our religion; it is little else at
last, but self-righteous phariseism! We throw around ourselves
religion as a cloak; the 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