Page:Daniel Minort Baxter - Bishop Richard Allen and His Spirit (1923).pdf/24

16 the extortious sum of sixty pounds gold and silver continental money or ($2000.00) United States money.

The Allens undertook the task which took them seventeen years to pay for their freedom. Where in the annals of history can you find a greater lesson of perserverance than is here taught? Seventeen long years two Negro boys worked from “can to can’t” as Bishop Heard often says, meaning they worked from dawn in the morning until dusk in the evening. Allen’s soul was awakened in him, no hardship nor privation was too great for him to undergo to obtain the best gift God has given man, freedom sweet freedom. Frederick Douglass took his legs and walked to freedom we are told, but during his day half of the country was free and the other half slave. In Allen’s day the whole country was slave, so that there was no way for Allen to get his freedom but by the philanthropy of his master and thrift and honesty in himself.

It is very vain and altogether uncomely to imagine that a man’s body can be free and his soul kept in bondage, or his soul free, and his body enslaved. Freedom is only complete where the man is free indeed, soul and body,