6. Duty to the slave demands non-fellowship with slaveholding. The oppressed have a claim upon the church, because Christ died for them, and they are, while enslaved, in such a situation that they can neither love him with all their powers, nor do much to establish his church and publish his name in the earth. Hence it is the duty of christians and christian societies to break off the fetters which bind not only their limbs but their minds. THE AMERICAN CHURCH IS ABLE TO EMANCIPATE EVERY SLAVE IN THE LAND. Who doubts that it is its duty? But in order to do this glorious work, the principle of strict non-fellowship with slaveholders must be adopted. Let every church in America declare slavery to be a sin and exclude slaveholders from its communion, and the doom of slavery will be sealed. All the laws and compromises and compacts which the ingenuity of the prince of darkness could invent would not preserve it. It is the church which is the bulwark of slavery. Not one day could it stand up in this country without the strength imparted to it by a powerful but awfully corrupted church. "Let all the evangelical denominations," says _Albert Barnes_, "but follow the simple example of the Quakers in this country, and slavery would soon come to an end. There is not vital energy enough; there is not power of numbers and influence enough, out of the church, to sustain it. Let every religious denomination in the land _detach itself_ from all connection with slavery, without saying a word against others; let the time come when, in all the mighty denominations of Christians, it can be announced that the evil has ceased _with them_ FOREVER, and let the voice from each denomination be lifted up in kind, but firm and solemn testimony against the system--with no 'mealy' words; with no attempt at apology; with no wish to blink it, with no effort to throw the sacred shield of religion over so great an evil--and the work is done. There is no power _out_ of the church that could sustain slavery an hour if it were not sustained _in_ it." Hence the reasons for non-fellowship with slaveholding are as vast as the interests temporal and eternal of millions and millions of our fellow-creatures, and as vast as the treachery which leaves them in chains! Depend upon it the curse of God will come down upon the American church in a storm of fiery vengeance if it arise not and do justice to the slave!