him than those of respect and admiration. Jesus Christ denounced the Pharisees of old as "vipers," and "children of hell," and our friend "J. P. B." feels that he has yet to learn that one who, after the lapse of eighteen centuries from the birth of Christ, dares, in his name, to traffic in human flesh does not deserve epithets equally strong. The slaveholder is not more the "victim of circumstances" than was the hypocritical pharisee-and doubtless those "circumstances" should be considered. But I appeal to your own sober judgment, as a man, whether if " J. P. B." held your sister in slavery, any circumstances would prevent your calling him a thief—and especially do I ask of you whether if the enslaver of your sister was also a professed disciple of Jesus Christ, you would not make him wither beneath the scorching power of your indignation? I believe you would. Lay, then, all prejudice and self-interest aside, and tell me if, with a clean conscience, you can complain of a man because he denounces chattel slavery as the worst of robberies, and him who engages in it as the worst of thieves? I would not rant. I would not be pharisaical. I would on no account forget that you are my brother, and that, nurtured under the same baneful influences, I might myself have been a slaveholder. But these considerations do not affect the great question of right. Slaveholding is a sin, and, like all sin, should be immediately abolished. Now is the accepted time. Nowhere in the scriptures which you profess to teach, do I find anything said of "gradual" repentance, or "gradual" reform. I do not feel, however, like reasoning this point. If you need to have it proved that it is wrong to hold my sister in slavery for a single second, then pardon me for saying that you must be reason-proof.

You may say that you treat your slaves well,-in the dignified language of Henry Clay, that you keep them "sleek and fat." But need I say a word to strip such sophistry of its disguise, and show it up in all its naked infamy? I trust not. I trust you will admit that if the enslaver of your beloved mother, in reply to your indignant demand for her instant liberation, should retort, with a

jeer, that she was "sleek and fat," you would put the brand of shame upon his brow" until it went hissing to the bone."

Do you say that slavery is one of the legal institutions of our country, sheltered beneath the wings of her constitution, and part and parcel of her domestic policy? Alas, my friend, this is too true. The laws which protect slavery are, in the expressive phrase of John Quincy Adams, "welded" into our constitution! Yes, welded in, and it is to be feared no human power can extract them without breaking that instrument to fragments. Be it so then. Better tear all your written constitutions to shreds and let them be blown by the willing wind to oblivion, rather than enslave a single human being for one instant. Fiat justitia ruat cœlum. Let there be justice though the heaven falls. Is not this the language of every true heart, and has it not, therefore, passed into a proverb? Why then stop to banter about human constitutions and laws, lest peradventure they "fall" with the progress of "justice?" As for the "policy" of this nation, God knows it is infamous enough, and should be repudiated by every human being on the face of the earth, as unequalled, this side of hell, in refined atrocity. And I suspect, my friend, if Jonathan Walker, recently captured on the high seas by one of our American vessels, for assisting the "oppressed to go free," and now imprisoned in a national dungeon in Pensacola waiting his trial for that horrible crime, were your father, you would hate the "policy" of this slave-cursed nation as heartily as I do.

Again you may say,—for some of the greatest statesmen, and "divines" in the country so reason,-that the "Union" is endangered by meddling with the peculiar institutions of the South. Grant it. But is the security of the Union to be the primary and principal, and the security of man, the secondary and collateral thing? Was man made for the Union? I trow not. For one, I say if the Union cannot stand except upon the necks of three millions of men and women, or upon the neck of one man or woman, let it fall. Such a Union is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." I go for the right as the only

safety. No argument shall delude me out of this. I shall suspect and repudiate your logic if it leads me to sanction the wrong, for one instant, in you, or anybody. I will not be cajoled into elevating the constitution of any country above the constitution of man. I go for the overthrow of everything which overthrows man, and for its immediate overthrow. I may not be able, in my weakness, to ring the complicated chain of your logic, and tell which of its links are broken. You may dazzle my intellect by a gorgeous defence of slavery and its protecting laws and constitutions. I may not have the skill to untie the Gordion knot with which you may join right and wrong together, nor to thread the labarynthian mazes of the theology and metaphysics which are used to confine my brother in the house of bondage. All this may bother and confound me. But when you come forth with all this heavy armor about your limbs (flourishing your two edged sword of law and logic) and challenge the armies of Israel to furnish a man who shall dare meet so formidable an assailant, it seems to me that even I might prove to you that a single pebble gathered upon the boundless shores of truth, is an overmatch for any weapons to be found in the armory of error. The truth is,

I have unlimited faith in the right. Wrong, under whatever circumstances, must fall before it. And, therefore, weak though I am, though

"I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action nor utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men's blood,"

I am willing, despite your superior advantages of learning and experience, to meet you in open discussion of the great question -say rather the great topic, for there is no question-of American Slavery.

But why detain you longer? It cannot be that with all the light of the nineteenth century streaming upon your path, that you can, for one moment, doubt that chattel slavery is one of the darkest crimes upon the page of human history. And if you do not doubt it, if you see "eye to eye" with me on this point, then

answer me, (I do not ask it dogmatically, but in the most friendly of spirits,) answer me how can you venture, for another moment, to continue a slaveholder?

I have scarcely alluded, in this hurried epistle, to the startling fact that you are not only a slaveholder, but also a professed minister of the Gospel of Christ. I have preferred to appeal to you as a man; for I am free to say if the Gospel of Jesus Christ sanctions slavery, as many contend, I have no part nor lot with it. Therefore I rest this great subject on its own bottom, preferring to disconnect it from all scriptural disputations. I know it is wrong to buy and sell human beings, scripture or no scripture. Henry Clay and Professor Stewart to the contrary notwithstanding, I know that the law can't make you nor me a chattel, any more than it can make the infinite God a chattel. And I know, moreover, that whoever attempts the high-handed act is a traitor to humanity. Thus much I know. It is part of my very nature, a part of human nature itself,-" welded in!"

So I warn you, as you love your Bible, not to attempt to prove that it sanctions or even "winks at " chattel slavery; for if you succeed, I'll trample your Bible beneath my foot, as I would a reptile, and so will every man in the land who is not a dastard.

Again I caution you, as you would secure the glory of your God, not to prove him to this people to be a pro-slavery God-for if you do they'll denounce him, ere long, as out-heroding Herod, out-juggernauting Juggernaut, and out-sataning Satan in all that is inhuman and atrocious.

But it is too bad, even by way of hypothesis, to speak of slavery as sanctioned by Christianity or Deity. I tell you that God Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with the oppressor. And when you enslave your brother man you enslave Jesus Christ; for inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of his brethren you do it unto him. You know this as well as I. The whole Southern Church knows it, and he who attempts to bolster himself up in the crime of slaveholding under the pretence that it is agreeable to the laws of God, adds infamy to infamy, and gives

us another and most alarming proof of the damning iniquity of a system which can work such an utter perversion of head and heart.

I know not that I have anything to add. What I have written, though it may seem harsh, has been conceived in a kindly spirit, and brought forth in all charity and love. Receive it as the word of a brother. It may be that the time spent in writing it has been wasted, but I do not believe it. I feel that your heart will respond to nearly every word, and that your conscience will bear witness to its truth. And that it may hasten the time when you shall be able to raise an unstained hand against the institution of American Slavery, or rather when that institution shall be among the things that were, is the earnest wish of

To WM. T. HAMILTON.

Your friend and brother,

HENRY CLAPP, JR.

SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

How beautiful is the income of spiritual light into the darkened soul! How slowly it struggles up through the mists of sensuality and sin, and how brilliant each ray which it sheds across the mind! There is probably no happiness which we can conceive of, certainly none which we can experience, more exquisite than that which attends upon the mind whose darkness and gloom are gradually giving away before the silent influence of truth. The delightful consciousness that the clouds which for years have spanned the intellect and shrouded the spirit are one by one breaking away, and passing into the world of shadows, is almost too great to bear. And yet this richest of earthly experiences is that of every earnest seeker for truth. No one, it is safe to say, ever bowed humbly and with a childlike trust at the shrine of infinite truth, resolved to lay all that he had, and all that he hoped, upon her altar, without being instantly conscious of the presence of the indwelling God:-and as, one by one, he laid aside his prejudices