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in possession of more intelligence, and more of the comforts and elegancies of life, than the nobility five hundred years ago knew or enjoyed; and yet the difference between them is as great now as it was then; or, according to our figure, the tail of European society, is now where the head once was; but the two extremities are as far apart as ever. The poor now, in many countries, are better fed, clothed and lodged, than were the rich a few centuries ago; but still the gulf is as wide between these two classes as ever. And so it is with the learned and the ignorant.
Christianity has no hostility to, or quarrel with, this constitution of society, and this distinction of classes, as many of her ignorant professors and teachers imagine and affirm; nor is it her purpose to destroy or level these distinctions; nor could she do it, if she would, for the causes producing these things, are beyond her reach, lying in the constitution of mind which God has given to man. The object of Christianity is to improve all, and make all happy by making them contented with whatever station or lot Providence has assigned them. And as she found slavery on earth, with the other institutions of society, and interwoven with them all—and, as she did not forbid it then, she may permit it even to the end of the world, and amid all the splendors of the millenial noon: and under her benign and improving influence, the condition of the slave may and will be such that even liberty could present no charms to him; for we have known instances in which emancipated slaves have returned to voluntary slavery.
But many make slavery and cruelty synonymous and convertible terms. That they are sometimes found in connection is no more proof that they are one and inseparable, than is the fact that tyranny is sometimes found in connection with government, and infidelity sometimes in the coujugal state; and treachery sometimes with friendship; and cruelty sometimes with parents; a proof that all these are one and inseparable. These are incidental evils, and not necessarily connected with, or growing out of, these institutions. And the object of Christianity is not to abolish these institutions, but only the evils that may be found in connection with them; and to place the institutions themselves on loftier and better grounds than they ever knew. The governmental upon stronger and safer, the conjugal upon holier and tenderer, the friendly upon truer and firmer, and the parental upon loftier and nobler: and as she connected slavery with all these, from the beginning, under the all-
