Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/289

 himself up, without stint, to religious labors the greater part of the time, as rector of St Stephen's, a few miles distant.

One of the old parish churches of colonial times, when the church of England was the established religion of North Carolina, and indeed of all the southern states, St Stephen's, since the revolution, had gone into a state of great decay and dilapidation. But though the roof had fallen, and the doors and windows had disappeared, the solid brick walls of the old church had yet remained standing. Mr Telfair, having chosen this neighborhood as a sort of missionary ground, had caused the old church to be repaired, mainly at his own expense, and had with untiring zeal gathered together a congregation, and revived the almost forgotten worship according to the decent ceremonies of the church of England.

As was well befitting the disciple of one who had especially addressed himself to the poor and lowly, the despised and the rejected, the moral and religious condition of the slaves had been from the beginning a subject of very great interest with Mr Telfair. In Mr Mason he had found a zealous coöperator and active church-warden; and the example of the one, and the bland and persuasive exhortations of the other, had not been without a marked influence, in the neighborhood, on the conduct of the masters and the condition of the servants.

But whatever amelioration the system of slavery might be capable of, it was impossible for Mr Telfair, or any other man of observation and humanity, to regard it with any patience as a permanent condition of things. The intimate relations into which he was brought, both with the masters and the slaves, made him thoroughly aware of the false position in which both were placed by it; and for want of any other apparent method of getting rid of so great an evil, he had entered with very great eagerness into the scheme of colonization. He was himself the president of a county colonization society; his personal