Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-05-31 00:00:00

to which the meeting itself appeared to respond with
religious fervour.

There is, then, in the United States, a strong
religious feeling against the sin of Slavery, as well
as in this country. But at the same time, strange
to say, there is also a strong feeling of another kind
among the various religious bodies—a feeling, if not
of sympathy with, yet of dread of acting against it.
Another Society that has its anniversary among the
May Meetings at New York, is the American Tract

Society. The object of this Society is to circulate
Tracts and Books in the whole scope of religious
teaching ; and yet not one word does it dare to

express of any Christian precept, or any Evangelical
doctrine, having the remotest bearing upon Slavery,
or even upon the Slave-trade,—notwithstanding that
we are most divinely assured, that among " the
lawless and disobedient " for whom the law of God
was made, are most certainly to be included " men-
stealers,"—and, of course, since the receiver is as
bad as the thief, even the retainers of such stolen
men in bondage cannot possibly themselves be
altogether exempt from that law. "We are bound
to say," observes a New York paper with reference
to this Society, "that on certain topics connected,
or supposed to be connected, with morals, and about
which Evangelical Christians, judging from their
practice, very widely differ, the Society has spoken
with extraordinary boldness and an unflinching
confidence in the correctness of its judgment. It has
circulated tracts by tens and hundreds of thousands
against no vel reading and' dancing, against the
circus, the horse race, and the theatre, against
travelling on Sunday, against selling wine and
drinking wine, against smoking cigars, taking snuff,
and chewing tobacco. Touching these latter sins—

for so the Society regards them—it has spoken in
very solemn and impressive tones, asking, What
Christian can indulge himself in using tobacco, a
habit which benumbs the moral sense P' So far from

regarding human laws as justifying crime, the
Society, rushing boldly into the arena of politics,
even to the ballot-box, in behalf of temperance, has
thus exhorted American voters : Let all who regard
the virtue, the honour, and the patriotism of the
country, withhold their suffrages from those can-
didates who offer ardent spirits as a bribe to , secure
their elevation to office.' Against Slavery, or the
evils growing out of Slavery, the Society has said
nothing, but has for years carefully expunged from
its reprints every syllable that condemned them."
Such is the gross inconsistency that prevails, even
among decidedly religious communities, in the United
States, on this subject of Slavery. Net but that
they have endeavoured, or professed to have en-
deavoured, to do away with such inconsistency. A
Committee of this very Society was, it seems, appointed
in the year 1857, to endeavour to do so, which re
ported a resolution that was unanimously adopted by
the Society, declaring that " the moral evils and vices
which slavery is known to promote, and which are
condemned in Scripture, and so much deplored by
Evangelical Christians, undoubtedly do fall within
the province of this Society, and can and ought to
be diseussed in a fraternal and Christian manner."
But the Society has never desired to act upon this
resolution. At the next anniversary, as the New
York Tribune has just pointed out, " the Publishing
Committee made a special report apologising for
their non-performance of the duty thus imposed
upon theth by the Society, on the ground that the
Southern members threatened a withdrawal if that
duty was performed, and suggesting that, in view of
the disapprobation of slaveholding Evangelical
Christians, it was under the Constitution a question
of good faith, of legality,' of the widest and gravest
practical consequences.' The action of the corn-
mittet

it is added, " was approved, and thus the
Society now stands—its unanimous resolution of
1857, unrevoked, distinctly declares its duty; and
the resolution of 1858, passed in spite of the
opposition of the minority of those present at the
meeting, virtually declaring that that duty shall be
shirked, and that ' the moral evils and vices which
slavery is known to promote ' shall continue to
flourish and spread in the very field of their labours,
and among the footsteps of their army of agents,
without a syllable of rebuke." Are we not right,
then, in stigmatizing this as at least gross incousis-

tency ? We might apply to it a stronger;

odious stigma

But we forbear. It 1

however, that the poi

lea is (

accommodating a character to have much
moral influence, when it can be reconciled with a
evangelical aspects to
act the part of the Priest and the Levite towards
the African slave—come and look at him, and pass
by on the other side ; rather than the part of the
good Samaritan who, " when he saw him, had
compassion on him,"—can so act, too, quite regard-
less of the divine assurance, that so to do is clearly
to violate the second of the two great Christian

profession of it in its most I

commandments, and to set at nought the injunction, I
that under those Christian obligations, they must I
" go and do likewise."

LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.

The Black Ball clini

r ship Commodore Perry, from
, was left by the steam-tap•

cc, at 8 a.m., yesterday, off Cape Clear, all well.
TEA MEETING.—The annual tea party of the Christian
Alliance and Central Band of Hope Society was held in
the Hope-hall, last night. Dr. Roche presided. The
-^incrian (or bell-ringing) performers enlivened, in fort.
the addresses, the entertainments of keel

m ter va

the evenir

projects which have been

forwaru

'enuouslY to

z/. 28th may,

ases were II
me Waddi

)n. was

)and, both
CIPr eaSed

attendan