So far from this, there may doubtless be found slaveholders, who, in all that adorns and ennobles human character, will compare favorably with the very best men at the North. I think it will be conceded, however, that the legitimate tendency is to evil, and that the effects of slavery on the character of its sustainers are, in the main, disastrous; and that the depreciated state of morals prevailing where slavery exists is mainly attributable to this as its source. I need not here enter into detail. Facts are too well known to make this necessary. Thus have we contemplated several distinct reasons for believing that slavery is no good thing,--has not the sanction of Jehovah,--and cannot with propriety be perpetuated. Its contrariety to nature,--its antagonism to the moral sense of mankind,--its disgraceful parentage and manner of support,--its condemnation by the Bible,--and its disastrous influence on financial prosperity, on character, and on public morals,--all proclaim that slavery, so far from being a good thing, is a tremendous curse; yea, more, that it is a stupendous wrong; and hence, that it should be tolerated in the church of Christ no longer than the best interests of all concerned may render necessary for a safe termination. But it may be, after all, that I have failed to secure the assent of some of my southern brethren to the justness of the foregoing positions and inferences. It may be that they still regard the system of bondage prevailing in their midst as in the main beneficial, defensible from the Bible, and, with some modifications perhaps, worthy of perpetuity. Well, brethren, suppose you do thus regard it; and for argument's sake suppose, too, that you may possibly be right,--that slave-holding may be in itself the harmless thing which you deem it; ought you not cheerfully to abandon it, in obedience to a great Bible principle,--that of refraining from things which are in themselves lawful, or which your conscience may not condemn, out of regard to the conscience of aggrieved Christian brethren, or to the prejudices of those whose salvation you would not obstruct? You are aware, brethren, that this magnanimous principle Paul both inculcated and exemplified. You are also aware that a large majority of the Christians now living regard your cherished institution as unjustifiable, and at variance with the spirit of Christianity; and, so regarding it, they long for its extinction, and are grieved with you for cleaving to it so tenaciously, and refusing to concert measures for its ultimate overthrow. Indeed, they are more than grieved; they are profoundly agitated by the fresh developments of the iniquitous system which you are helping to uphold; and there seems no prospect, while that system endures, of their becoming tranquillized. A tempest has sprung up and is raging in the church of Christ,--to say nothing of the civilized world,--which seems not likely to cease till its cause be removed; and slavery is that cause.