or prejudice, but in that solemn calmness which is the result of
conviction and duty. It is true, I am going to tell you unwelcome
truths, but I mean to speak those _truths in love_, and remember
Solomon says, "faithful are the _wounds_ of a friend." I do not
believe the time has yet come when _Christian women_ "will not endure
sound doctrine," even on the subject of Slavery, if it is spoken to
them in tenderness and love, therefore I now address _you_.

To all of you then, known or unknown, relatives or strangers, (for you
are all _one_ in Christ,) I would speak. I have felt for you at this
time, when unwelcome light is pouring in upon the world on the subject
of slavery; light which even Christians would exclude, if they could,
from our country, or at any rate from the southern portion of it,
saying, as its rays strike the rock bound coasts of New England and
scatter their warmth and radiance over her hills and valleys, and from
thence travel onward over the Palisades of the Hudson, and down the
soft flowing waters of the Delaware and gild the waves of the Potomac,
"hitherto shalt thou come and no further;" I know that even professors
of His name who has been emphatically called the "Light of the world"
would, if they could, build a wall of adamant around the Southern
States whose top might reach unto heaven, in order to shut out the
light which is bounding from mountain to mountain and from the hills
to the plains and valleys beneath, through the vast extent of our
Northern States. But believe me, when I tell you, their attempts will
be as utterly fruitless as were the efforts of the builders of Babel;
and why? Because moral, like natural light, is so extremely subtle in
its nature as to overleap all human barriers, and laugh at the puny
efforts of man to control it. All the excuses and palliations of this
system must inevitably be swept away, just as other "refuges of lies"
have been, by the irresistible torrent of a rectified public opinion.