But not alone for the down-trodden slave should we be engaged to labor, our country from Maine to Florida is more or less connected with, and involved in, the awful sin of slavery, "the blood of the poor innocents is found in our skirts," the free states are partakers with those who rob God of his creatures, for although most of them have nominally no slaves on their soil, they do deliver unto slaveholders the servant that is escaped from his master, in direct violation of the command of Jehovah "Hide the outcasts: bewray not him that wandereth.--Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler."--The unhappy fugitive goaded almost to madness by oppression finds no resting place for the sole of his foot until he reaches the icy shores of Canada. An exile from his native land, because his soul cannot bow down to the unbridled passions of his fellow-worm; because he nobly dares to take the freedom which Jehovah gave him with the first inspiration of his vital breath, because rather than be a slave he braves the storm and plunges through the flood and suffers hunger and thirst and nakedness and cold. For thus magnanimously recoiling from unjust usurpation he is branded as a fugitive, and hunted through our free states with all the fierceness of savage barbarity, while no measures are adopted to procure the repeal of these unrighteous decrees. Oh when in this proud republic God maketh inquisition for blood, when he remembereth the cry of the humble--where shall we appear? will not the language be uttered against us "the land is full of blood; the iniquity is exceeding great, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head."
Nor is the church less corrupt than the state, she exhibits now just such a departure from primitive purity as is described by the prophet Ezekiel in speaking of the Jewish Church.--"Thou didst trust in thine own beauty, because of thy renown. Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and my silver which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them. And tookest thy broidered garments and covered them, and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them." Is it not the fear and the _idolatry of man_ which makes so many of those who fill the sacred office of ministers of Jesus Christ stand dumb on the watch-tower; so many unclose their sacrilegious lips to stigmatize the God of Love as the founder of the system of American slavery--what but the deep corruption of the church could tempt her to cast over this bloody moloch her broidered garment, and try by snatching a few jewels to adorn her diadem from Ceylon and the Sandwich Islands, from Burmah, and from the Rocky Mountains, to turn away the public gaze from the leprosy which consumes her vitals.