VI.

Man and his Masters.

HE subject that has been appointed for me to speak

THE

upon is one that is very, very suggestive. It seems as if a mine of thought was opened before us; and I hardly know where to begin, or what to say. I have not come before you to give you a literary entertainment or an intellectual feast. I have come before you, young men, to say something, if I may be able, God helping me, to inspire you with some higher idea of the dignity of your manhood than you had when you came into the house.

"Man and his masters!" What is man as God has made him-the Triune God-giving him a body fearfully and wonderfully made, and which he alone can purify, till it shall be the fit temple for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; a mind capable of appreciating the greatness of the infinite God in the atoms through the microscope, and in the rolling worlds through the telescope; and a soul capable of loving him, "and with the strong wings of faith and love building its nest under the very eaves of heaven!" Man, standing up in the godlike attitude of a man, lifting his forehead to the stars-to whom power and dominion have been given-who has been crowned nature's king; man, with the faculty of looking right up into the heavens; man, with a destiny set before

him vast as eternity, and large as infinity; man, glorious in the image of God, what is he, fallen and debased as he is by sin? As he stands upright in the freedom and the dignity of his manhood, he is a glorious being, but "little lower than the angels;" but, in the weakness of his humanity, he is exposed to influences which may debase him below the level of the brute creation. The very gifts and endowments which dignify his nature may be the sources of his degradation. Man, glorious man, may live only as a minister of evil. Man, born for immortality, may find his end in "the blackness of darkness forever."

Then we contemplate, if you please, man and his masters. And in the whole history of the world, how have we seen man, glorious man, debasing himself to servitude! What servitude! We pity the abject beings who are reduced to slavery by the power of a master; O, how we pity them! How the flood of our sympathy seems to pour forth in behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed! I remember how my heart ached, in going down the James river, and seeing a company of men-yes, men, but made chattels by man's agency-as they clustered together on the forward deck of the canal boat. They were singing in a low tone, and I came up near them. It was one of the negro refrains. One of them said, "Whar we going? Whar we going?" The other said, “Ah! we're sold, we're sold, and we're going away to Alabama;" and my eyes filled with tears as I looked upon them, debased and degraded by slavery, ay, the slavery of a master. And when you hear of the wild free spirit that will not be tamed-when you hear of the man bursting his shackles, and, through trial and misfortune, and pain, and anguish, hunted, bayed at, persecuted, peeled, standing up again free from

the fetters which have galled him, when he once reaches a free shore-how your heart exults with gladness, and how you are ready to clap your hands with the true and rare enjoyment you feel in seeing a man lifting himself up from the degradation of the foot that has pressed him in the earth, and standing up as God made him, a free man! Ah! yes, physical slavery is something to be dreaded. The children of Israel in the land of Egypt were slaves; in Babylon they were slaves; but there was a vast difference-in Egypt they were sold, in Babylon they had sold themselves, and there is a vast difference in the two. The man may be bought and sold in the market by his brother man, and reduced to abject bondage, even having no will of his own; but he who is bound by the cords of his sins, he who has sold himself for naught, is in a more pitiable condition far; and it is this slavery that I would speak upon to-night.

And how many, many masters has man made for himself! and to how many masters has he subjected himself, bowing down before them and worshiping them! O! the slavery of the man who has lifted up his hands that the wreath might be entwined round his wrists, and the band of flowers round his brow, and who has, by and by, found these flowers twined round rusty iron bands, that have eaten into the marrow and burnt out his brain, till his wreath of honor has become a band of everlasting infamy, and he lifts up his galled, shackled hands to heaven, and cries, "Who shall deliver me from this horrible slavery?"

O! the slavery of evil passion. What is it? Go, if you please, into a lunatic asylum, and see one man picking an imaginary thing from the sleeve of his coat, hour after hour; another gazing listlessly upon nothing; another, with lack-luster eye and retreating