Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/15

 

It may seem, to the casual observer, strange and unaccountable, that, if there be a great and overruling Providence, a wise and good Being, the Creator and Father of all, He should suffer any of His intelligent creatures — still more, such numbers of them — to be held in bondage, in absolute subjection to the will and caprice of their fellow-men. He wonders that the God above looks on and suffers such wrongs; he wonders that He does not send down His lightning-bolts, and break their chains in an instant. But one who thinks more deeply will take a wider and a wiser view of the subject. Reflecting on the present nature of man, he perceives that slavery is but one of the great black branches, springing from the poisonous root of evil in the human heart; — that it is one of the direct and natural consequences of man's fall.

The essential principle of evil is self-love — a preference of self to others; as the essential principle of B