Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/26

24 heaven. I know that the Bible cannot hold out "the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the hope," and, therefore, the believer who yearns to have the noble mind of Christ every moment that he lives in this world, must be mistaken in asserting that death is our only deliverer from sin. I cannot describe to you, my brother, the enthusiasm, the absolute absorption of my mind on these subjects. As I had an abundant competence, I spent my whole time in visiting and instructing the poor; in nursing the sick ; in searching out what was real grief among the afflicted; and in watching the dying Christian, to see if his mind developed those high moral characteristics that would fit him to sit with Jesus Christ at the right hand of the holy God. Not only did I entertain these views of Christian perfection for myself, but I held the whole world responsible to have like aims, and dealt out my maledictions by the square yard to all delinquents. You may form then some idea of the tortures I must have endured from hourly self-examination; and I was, after ten years remaining in this crucible, fain to exclaim with Luther, "that old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon." Still, I believe that the only reason we have not the mind of Christ in all our daily life, is because we have too much love of carnal self in us to desire it.

But now, my brother, after a long and careful study of my own heart, and the heart of the world, is it developed at the metropolis with the faithfulness of a Daguerreotype to every moral observer? I have become exceedingly mellowed in my theories about the dignity of human nature, and I feel peculiarly sympathetic towards all the beforementioned delinquents. Still, I cannot, no, I cannot find any apology for the abolitionists, who seem to set at defiance, not only the letter, but the spirit of God's holy law, are traitors to their own noble country, and appear determined, as far as their influence goes, to blot out of existence this far-famed Republic, by schism in the body politic, that will rend it to pieces, after first deluging the States in blood. And this home of the oppressed of all nations will then become a hissing and a by-word to the whole world. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." But I promised to reveal to you the condition of the degraded class of fugitive slaves and colored people in the Northern cities; and, after your heart has been wrung by their awful destitution, I desire you to tell me if such misery was ever heard of, or ever could by any possibility be experienced by any of our slaves in South Carolina. The Southern planter would feel just as deeply humiliated, if he ascertained his slave had been forced to beg from door to door, as he would feel if