From the foregoing synopsis it will be seen at once that whatever may
have been the motives of the writer, the effect of his publication, so
far as it is at all felt, will be to strengthen the oppressor in his
guilt, and hold him back from the performance of his immediate duty in
respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of
that class who, according to "Evangelicus," have "no personal
acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political
connections of their Southern fellow-citizens." We look upon it only as
another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and
criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of
Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of
human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine
displeasure. There is a grave-stone coldness about it. The author
manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra.
No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb,
chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the
grave of Lazarus

"Wept, and forgot His power to save;"

no outburst of that indignant reproof with which the Divine Master
rebuked the devourers of widows' houses and the oppressors of the poor is
called forth by the writer's stoical contemplation of the tyranny of his
"Christian brethren" at the South.

"It is not necessary," says Evangelicus, "to inquire whether the New
Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution." And
this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its
abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery,
including within itself a violation of every command uttered amidst the