Our friend, the late Joseph Sewell, of the Friends’ Mission, came to see us that year, and to spend a few days at our station previous to his retirement from the Madagascar Mission. He took my Saturday morning class for pastors and local preachers; and had a long talk with them on the subject of slavery, a subject on which ‘Friends’ have always been ‘sound.’ The following Saturday morning, as I also wished to have a talk with them on the same subject, I asked what Mr. Sewell had been talking to them about the previous Saturday morning, and they answered, ‘Slavery.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘and what is your opinion of what he had to say on that subject?’ ‘Well, sir,’ they said, ‘we cannot see slavery in the light that you white men see it.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t suppose you can, or you would have done with it at once.’ As I wished to present slavery to them in the strongest and most repulsive light I could, I asked them: ‘Supposing Jesus Christ were in the market on sale for thirty dollars--“thirty pieces of silver”--would you buy Him?’ ‘No, sir,’ they answered; ‘how can you ask such a question?’ I replied that I had a purpose in asking it, and said again: ‘Suppose He were in your possession as a slave, would you sell Him for thirty dollars?’ ‘No,’ they said, ‘most certainly not, that would be as bad as Judas Iscariot.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps it would, I just wanted to know your opinion on the point. Then you would neither buy Him nor sell Him, even if you could,’ I said. ‘Most certainly not,’ they all answered. ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘we have a good many church members here at Fìhàonana who are slaves; now if they are true members of the church, they are members of the mystical body of our Lord Jesus Christ, are they not, and sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty?’ ‘Yes,’ they answered, ‘that is quite correct.’ ‘Well,’ I added, ‘do you remember reading, or hearing read from the New Testament, that one day, while Jesus Christ was teaching, His mother and His brethren came and wished to speak with Him, and some one told Him, when He said: “Who is My mother, and who are My brethren? Those who do the will of My Father Who is in Heaven.”’ They said they remembered the incident. ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘while it is quite true, and never to be forgotten, that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God in a sense that no created being can ever be, still, if those slaves who are members of the church are true members, they are sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, and brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, by His own showing; so that while you keep on buying and selling them, you are really buying and selling the sons and daughters of God, and the brothers and sisters of the Son of God, and it seems to me to be going but one step further to sell Himself!’