have chuckled with delight at the certainty of success this time. But how must they have stared at him, and one another, when he said, “Shew me a penny.” And what a suppressed whisper must have run round this circle of serpents. “A penny? why, what is the fellow going to do with a penny?” And when the penny was presented to him, and the question asked, “Whose image and superscription are these; and being told, “Cæsar’s,”—how confounding and crushing the declaration—“Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
Look, then, at the facts and circumstances of the case before us. Here we see the Redeemer, the son of God, sovereign Lord of all, and to whom every knee most ultimately bow, submitting and requiring submission, to what?—to a government whose policy was founded in blood, cruelty and rapine—a government as opposite in spirit and principle to the kingdom of Christ, as good is to evil—and a government too, at that very time, by taxation and oppression, that was squeezing the life and soul out of the very nation, which the son of God came to redeem—and carrying the principle of his obedience so far too, to that heathen empire and emperor, as to work a miracle, to obtain the necessary sum to pay the required tax—yes, to that same Cæsar who is to receive his eternal doom and destiny from his lips.
The parable of the tares and the wheat is another example in proof of our position; and is, perhaps, more in point than any of the others that have been cited; as it is a full illustration of our position, and of the condition of slavery at this time in our country, which has become so incorporated and interlaced with the whole fabric of social life, domestic, civil, and political, identifying its very existence, that to abolish slavery by immediate emancipation, would be to tear up society by the roots—and would be the destruction of master and servant—or a practical exemplification of attempting to separate the tares from the wheat. And, therefore, if slavery is an evil, it is like those evils contained in the foregoing examples given from the word of God—and is under the eye and protection of Heaven for the present; and, therefore, abolitionists should pause and reflect, lest they be found fighting against God.
These examples, which we have drawn from the word of God, contain a vast fund of instruction to all, especially to statesmen who have the welfare of their country at heart; but to none would they prove so profitable as to abolitionists, if they would but study them.
Do nothing before the time; and wait for the “fullness of time,” by watching “the signs of the times,” is a safe and wise rule; but in this helter skelter and headlong age, it is lost sight of; and men who are too lazy to learn, too stupid to understand, and too impatient to wait, substitute zeal for knowledge, and action for wisdom, prudence and talent—and their fanaticism assures
