“Suppose that a considerable proportion of the States in this Union were, or should become, idolatrous heathen. Suppose that they worshipped Moloch, or some other false deity who delighted in human sacrifices. And suppose that, to propitiate the people of those States, and to secure the pecuniary and political advantages of a continued Union with them, Congress should enact that the people of the Christian States should allow those idolaters to come here when they pleased and offer human sacrifices in our midst, or carry away our children to be burnt on their altars at the South; would Mr. Webster or Mr. Clay, or the editors of _The New York Observer_, or _The Journal of Commerce_, or the Doctors of Divinity who have endeavored to array the public on the side of wrong,--would even they call upon us to obey such a law? I am sure they would not. And yet I fain would know wherein such a law as I have supposed would be any worse than this law which they are laboring to enforce.... Why, then, if it would be reasonable and proper, in the view of Mr. Webster and his reverend abettors, to nullify a law requiring us to permit human beings to be offered as burnt sacrifices,--why is it not equally reasonable and proper for us to set at naught this law which commands us to do something worse,--that is, to assist in reducing human beings to the condition of domesticated brutes?... Nay, further, I insisted that the Fugitive Slave Law violates the religious liberty, interferes with the faith and worship of Christians, just as much as the law I have supposed would do.... A law of the land requiring you, as this Fugitive Slave Law does, to disobey the Golden Rule is, indeed, a far more grievous encroachment upon your liberty of conscience than a law prescribing to your faith any creed, or any rites and ceremonies by which you must worship God.... “Fellow-citizens! Christian brethren! the time has come that is to test our principles, to try our souls. I would not that any one in this emergency should trust to his own unaided strength. Let us fervently pray for wisdom to direct us, and for fortitude to do whatever may be demanded at our hands, by the Royal Law,--the Golden Rule.... “I would counsel prudence, although this evil day demands of us courage and self-sacrifice.... We should spare no pains through the press, by conversation, and by public addresses, particularly by faithful discourses from the pulpits, to cherish and quicken the sense of right and the love of liberty in the hearts of the people. A correct public sentiment is our surest safeguard....