_The sick and the aged_ should be suitably cared for. It is not enough that provision be made for these: the master owes them a duty in the _kind_ of provision which he makes for them. The regular nurse can serve them with a little medicine, a cup of water, and help them to the couch of straw, or support their heads in death; but they are social beings: their claims reach far beyond these things, and the duty of the master is imperative. It certainly should not come short of the service rendered by the good Samaritan. He who can free his conscience short of this, is low enough in the scale of civilization to change places with many slaves of our acquaintance. Humanity claims something for the sick and aged on the score of _comfort_ as well as necessity. Why may they not be frequently ministered unto by their friends? Do we think that the laws of friendship and consanguinity do not operate among them? If so, we are mistaken; for they are social beings, as we are. Why, then, deny them this boon, when it can be afforded them, as it often can, at so small a cost? I do not scruple to say that there are many circumstances in which any humane man would allow the husband and the child to quit even the harvest-field to minister as occasion might demand to the sick wife and mother, and to soothe her sorrows in a dying-hour. And the aged father! Shall no child or grandchild support his tottering limbs to his couch, and lay him down to die in peace? Shall all these delicate services, if performed at all, be left to stranger hands? Shall those who never knew mother, who never cared for grandfather, or who were never reckoned among their friends, be left to perform these last services? There may be masters whose business or whose want of thought may lead them to be inattentive to the social sorrows of the sick and the aged; but they should remember that “_they also have a Master in heaven_.” Would they have Him to be as inattentive to their sorrows in sickness and in age? Let them beware “_lest the same measure they mete be measured to them again_!” III. THE DUTIES OF MASTERS TO SLAVES AS RELIGIOUS BEINGS.