I use this mode of expression advisedly, for I am not speaking of a mere form of association. Many are in harmonious coöperation with it who have neither signed the constitution nor subscribed the annual half dollar. Hence it is neither a formality nor a ceremony, but a united, onward-flowing current of noble lives. If, then, you feel that devotedness of heart which I verily think your question indicates, I feel free to counsel you to go _immediately_ to the nearest office of the American Anti-Slavery Society,[1] by letter, if not in person, subscribe what money you can afford—the first fruits of a life-long liberality, and _study_ the cause like a science, while promoting it like a gospel, under the cheering and helpful sympathy of some of the best company on earth; _but not unless_; for _this_ company despises what politicians, ecclesiastical and other, call “getting people committed.” They have a horror of this selfish invasion of another’s freedom, as of the encumbrance of selfish help. They warn you not to touch the ark with unhallowed hands. One consideration more—the thought of what you owe to your forerunners in what you feel to be the truth. It is, to follow meekly after, and be baptized with the baptism that they are baptized with. “Thus it _becometh_ us to fulfil all righteousness;” and the more your talents, gifts, and graces may, in your own judgment, be superior to theirs, the more _becoming_ it will be to seek their fellowship; for in the whole land they, and _they alone_, _are right_. It is not eulogy, but fact, that theirs is the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day—denied only by the besotted with injustice, the committed to crime. Consider, then, not only what you owe to your slavery-cursed country, your enslaving as well as enslaved countrymen, your fathers’ memory, your remotest posterity, the Christian religion, which forbids the sacrifice of one man’s rights to another man’s interests, and which knows no distinction of caste, color, or condition,—but consider, also, what you owe to those individuals and to that brotherhood who have battled twenty years in the breach for _your_ freedom, involved with that of the meanest slave.