2. To see to it that not only your own, but all the bondmen among you,--your entire slave population,--are furnished with the Bible, and qualified to read and comprehend it; and also with stated preaching. They need a written and preached gospel, were it only to fit them to exchange, with advantage, a state of vassalage for the dignity of freemen; for all experience proves that the Bible and the pulpit are of all instruments the best to qualify men safely to exercise the right of self-government. But there is a servitude more dreadful by far than any domestic bondage that men have ever groaned under; and your slaves need the Bible, and the Bible preached, to prove God's instruments of breaking the chains imposed by Satan, and making them Christ's freemen. Before God and in prospect of eternity, the distinctions between the master and his slave dwindle into insignificance. Having souls that are alike impure and alike precious, alike remembered by a dying Saviour and alike in need of the regenerating change, they stand alike in need of God's Word, written and preached, as the Spirit's instrument in renewing and sanctifying the soul. Hence the Bible and preaching are as much the rightful inheritance of the slave as of the master. We rejoice that these truths and the obligations resulting therefrom are, to some extent, recognized by southern Christians; and that, in spite of certain adverse statutes, so much is being done there for the spiritual well-being of the slaves. Go on, brethren, in the good work of evangelizing your slave population; in teaching them the art of reading and the rudiments of knowledge; in putting the Bible into their hands, and affording them stated opportunities to read it, and to hear it expounded by you and by Christ's ministers. Go on, we say, till there be not one southern slave, who, in point of religious privileges, is not on a footing of equality with yourselves. Prosecuting this laudable work in the spirit of love, you will probably encounter no serious opposition. The adverse but dead statutes referred to will not, we hope, be galvanized into life, in order to oppose you.