RADICALISM AND THE NATIONAL CRISIS. 17 secure his favor, is to put away this evil from the land, to do right, to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. If with the opportunity we now have, and the discipline through which we have passed, and are still passing, we come short of this point,—if we undertake to cheat eternal justice,—then my belief is, that a night of deeper shades than this dark hour awaits us in the future. You may depend upon it, that it is safe to do right; and the American people can commit no mistake so great as in this hour to fail in executing that sentence of death against slavery, for which Providence calls, and which God’s justice must approve. The ways and the methods I leave with those whose is the official task, pledging to them my support and my prayers, and beseeching Almighty God to give them alike the nerve and the wisdom to compass the end. “ I frankly confess to you, gentlemen, (said a distinguished politician, addressing an assembly not long since,) I frankly confess to you, that, for myself, I take no interest in the negro; but, gentlemen, I am at a loss to conceive how any man can review the history of this rebellion without a clear conviction that Almighty Providence does! ” Just so, my hearers. God does take an interest in some four millions of slaves; he is showing that interest at this hour ; and the time has fully come for us, the creatures of his power and the ministers of his providence, to inquire for the path of duty on this subject, and then walk in it. My greatest concern about the nation lies at this very point. The third question growing out of the times, is one of enlarged and generous Christian philanthropy—. It is sometimes called the nc^ro-question in distinction from that of slavery. If we put away slavery, as I pray God that we may, then we must not butcher the black man to get rid of him, but treat him in the sequel of his history according to the law of love. As the superior race, we have injured him quite long enough. Let us now try to do him good. As an inferior, ignorant, degraded, comparatively helpless race, subject to enormous disadvantages, he appeals to our philanthropy. We owe to him the duties of philanthropy. If he can constitute, either in part or in whole, the laboring population of the Southern States, being rewarded
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