"'_Though thy sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow?_'
"And shall he who can so wash the spirit, have regard to the hue of the flesh?"
Again, after awhile, he said, "But perhaps they have persuaded thee, as they have tried to persuade me, that thou art no man--that thou hast no soul to be saved--that thou art as the beasts that perish. But yet we find by their own law, that in the third, or the fourth, or the fifth degree of white blood, thou becomest as the white man. Will they tell me at what particular hue or shade of colour the soul--the responsible, the immortal soul--enters into the breast that was before void and tenantless? Nay, nay! Feel, understand, that thou too, whatever be thy colour, art an heir of eternal life, a child of God, an object of the Saviour's love; that they may shackle thy hands and bruise thy feet in the stocks, and the iron may enter into thy soul; still, the God of Israel is thy God, of whom it is written, '_Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord._'"
He subsequently took even a bolder strain; and, thrusting all religious topics aside, talked openly of slavery in its moral and political aspect. He did not at all conceal his opinions, nor temper his terms; but denounced the peculiar institution of the South, as alike degrading to master and man, as evil in itself and all its consequences. One of the most powerful parts of his discourse, as it struck me, was that in which he justified not only slaves themselves in attempting to escape from bondage, but all those who aided them in their efforts for that purpose. Breaking off in the midst of an argument, he suddenly began a sort of tale or apologue; he told how a white man, an American, a freeman, had been wrecked on the coast of Morocco; how he had been seized and exposed in the slave market; sold to the highest bidder; carried up into the country; sold again and again; till, at length, he found himself working in a garden in the neighbourhood of Tangiers. Then he painted in glowing terms the misery of the poor man's situation; how he had thirsted and panted and pined for liberty; how he had cast his eyes over the blue sea, and longed for his native land, and his friends, and his family; how the very luxuries of the climate and the kindness of his master were disgusting and abhorrent to him in his state of slavery. He then told us that a friendly Moor, in whom he had created an interest, determined to assist him in escaping. The two Europeans who were in the port had entered into the scheme, and that a thousand difficulties and dangers, on which I need not dwell, were encountered and overcome, till, at length, the fugitive was placed safely on board an American ship. "Were these men wrong?" he exclaimed. "Were these men criminal? Had he not a right to seek his liberty however he could find it? Did not the whole of these States ring with applause and admiration of those who enabled him to recover freedom, the best boon of life? Oh, perverted moral sense, which can in one instance laud to the skies the same conduct which in another, precisely similar, it dooms to the prison or the gallows?"