laid aside (p. 128). Ignorance and superstition render them easy dupes to their teachers, doctors, prophets, conjurers; to artful, designing men. When fairly committed to such leaders, they may be brought to the commission of almost any crime. Facts in their history prove this. On certain occasions, they have been made to believe, that, while they carried about their persons some charm with which they had been furnished, they were invulnerable.* They have, on certain other occasions, been made to believe that they were under a protection that rendered them invincible. . . . . They have been known to be so perfectly and fearfully under the influence of some leader or conjurer or minister, that they have not dared to disobey him in the least particular; nor to disclose their own intended or perpetrated crimes, in view of inevitable death itself; notwithstanding all other influences brought to bear upon them."

...

"The discipline of colored members is involved, tedious, vexatious, and disgusting" (p. 131). "Excommunications and suspensions are of perpetual occurrence, for crimes shocking in character, and of themselves sufficient to show the general state of morals; such, for example, as adultery, fornication, theft, lying, drunkenness, quarrelling, and fighting. The first three are their most common vices." Page 135: "They are, proverbially, thieves. They bear this character in Africa; they have borne it in all countries whither they have been carried; it has been the character of slaves in all ages, whatever their nation or color. They steal from each other, from their masters, from anybody. . . . . Their veracity is nominal." Page 136: "The number, the variety, and ingenuity of falsehoods that can be told by them in a few brief moments, is most astonishing. Servants, however, who will neither steal nor lie, may be found, and in no inconsiderable numbers."

...

* Sandy Jenkins tried to impress Douglass with the belief, that if he would always carry a root which he gave him, on his right side, it would render it impossible for any white man to whip him ("Narrative,” p. 70). And before Wm. W. Brown made his last successful effort to escape, he paid the old slave fortune-teller, Frank, twenty-five cents for his advice.

Other similar extracts, and touching other vices, might be given; but these seem amply sufficient to justify the general conclusion to which Mr. Jones arrives, p. 153, that "they are, intellectually and morally, a degraded people, the most so of any in the United States; and while, from their universal (?) profession of the Christian system, and their attendance upon its ordinances of worship, and the absence of all fixed forms of idolatry, they cannot strictly be termed heathen, yet may they with propriety be termed the heathen of our land." In a sermon preached by him in Georgia, and published at Savannah in 1831, he calls them "a nation of heathen in our very midst" ("Jay's Letter," p. 11). Abundant confirmation of this conclusion exists. The Hon. Chas. C. Pinckney, in his "Address before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina" (Charleston, 1829, second edit. pp. 10-12; Jones's "Relig. Inst." p. 141), says, "There needs no stronger illustration of the doctrine of human depravity than the state of morals on plantations in general." "Who would credit it," asks the Committee of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833, "that, in these years of revival and benevolent effort, in this Christian republic, there are over two millions of human beings in the condition of heathen, and in some respects in a worse condition? From long-continued and close observation, we believe that their moral and religious condition is such that they may justly be considered the heathen of this Christian country." The Executive Committee of the Kentucky Union for the Moral and Religious Improvement of the Colored Race, in their "Circular to the Ministers of the Gospel in Kentucky," 1834 (Jones's Relig. Inst." p. 143), say, "We desire not to represent that condition worse than it is. Doubtless, the light that shines around them, more or less illuminates their minds, and moralizes their characters. We hope and believe, that some of them, though poor in this world's goods, will be found rich in spiritual possessions in the day when the King of Zion shall make up his jewels. We know that many of them are included in the visible church, and frequently

exhibit great zeal; but it is to be feared, that it is often a

zeal without knowledge; and of the majority it must be confessed, that the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. After making all reasonable allowances, our colored population can be considered, at the most, but semi-heathen."

In view of these statements, we cannot but be forced to the conclusion, that the slaves, as a body, are in an extremely degraded moral and religious condition. That they are naturally thus, even Mr. Jones denies ("Relig. Instruction," p. 124). He says, "As to moral and religious character, the negroes are naturally what other men are." That they are so much more degraded than others must, then, be owing to their education or their social condition. The inference, therefore, is unavoidable that they have been thus degraded by others. The wrong rests upon those who have denied them the means of education, and who have kept them in slavery, -upon those who have thus degraded their minds and souls, in order that their bodies might remain in slavery! In violation of the slave's dearest rights, all the highest, noblest, and purest instincts of his nature have been destroyed, in order to advance the pecuniary interests of the man "who gains his fortune from the blood of souls"! Are those slaves who enjoy moral and religious instruction any better off?

CHAPTER IV.

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF THE SLAVES.

Q. When you hear the minister preach, are you not to listen to him as the minister of God; God's messenger to your soul? A. Yes." Jones's Catechism, p. 140.

"By the providence and word of God," says Mr. Jones ("Religious Instruction," pp. 165, 166), "are we under obligations to impart the gospel to our servants..... We cannot disregard this obligation... without forfeiting our humanity, our gratitude, our consistency, and our claim to the spirit of Christianity itself. Our humanity. . . . The Lord Jesus has furnished us with the most beautiful and striking illustrations of this virtue : 'What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep; and, if it fall into a pit, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?' 'Doth not each one of you loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond?'. . . . Apply the reasoning: 'How much, then, is a man better than a sheep or an ox?' When our servants are sick and diseased, we do not suffer them to want we physic and nurse them (?). But are not their souls more precious than their bodies? Much more, then, should we lift our servants from the pit of ignorance, moral pollution and death, into which they have fallen. Much more should we strive to loose them (bound for so many years!) from the bonds of sin and Satan, and lead away their famishing souls to the water of life."

"Our gratitude. They nurse us in infancy, contribute to our pleasures and pastimes in youth, and furnish us with the means of education. They constitute our wealth, and yield us all the comforts and conveniences of life. They may, in a degree, adopt towards us the language of Jacob to Laban, 'Thus I was in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes.' They watch around our languishing beds in sickness, share in our misfortunes, weep over us when we die, prepare us for the burial, and carry us to the house appointed for all the living. The obligations, the sacrifice, and service are not to be all on one side, in the relation of master and servant. If we have been made partakers of their carnal things, our duty is also to minister unto them in spiritual things,* Rom. xv. 27. 1 Cor. ix. 11. And shall we consider it a great thing to fulfil this duty? The kindest and the most grateful return which we can make them is to put them in possession of the richest gift of God to men, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

How far has the existence or utterance of such sentiments as these resulted in securing to the slaves a sound moral and religious instruction? What kind of teachers and what kind of instruction are thought to be consistent with proper feelings of gratitude and humanity on the part of masters? We have just seen the deep moral degradation of the very great majority of the slaves. Still" there are at the present time," says Mr. Jones (p. 100), "tens of thousands connected by a credible profession to the church of Christ, and the gospel is reaching them to a greater extent and in greater purity and power than ever before."

By whom is the gospel thus preached to them in purity and power? Who is it that "ministers unto them in spiritual things," and "leads away their famishing souls to the water of life"?

"Those who would keep the Bible from their fellow

"If they make you partakers of their temporal things (of their strength and spirits, and even of their offspring), you ought to make them partakers of your spiritual things." - Bishop of London in 1727 (Jones, p. 20).