Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1847-05-27

ltuton,-a war, the END oil WHICH no man can /
foresee, and the cost of which no fnancier dares
venture to cast up. Looking at Slavery in its
own domain, it never was so potent as now,
never so able to protect itself, never so able to
crush ITS foes. And yet we are told that the
Gospel is to abolish Slavery! He would ask,
how came we to be free enlightned nation, i'll
we had not had the Gospel! If our ministers
are the ministers of Satan, how came we here,
So unlike our savage ancestors, who had no Bible!
If we have not got the Gospel where is it? 10
whom shall we call for help! simple clrcum-
stance would explain the whole affair: We have
foresworn the Protestant faith We have re-
fused the Slave the Bible.
The Almighty loves his Word too much to
allow us to succeed in evangelizlng the world so
long as we keep it from the common people
1t is admitted on all sides that the Scriptures are
withheld from the Slave, and yet we wonder
why Slavery has not been, ere this, done away
with. If we had given the Bible to the slaves
70 years ago, when our country first emerged
from political bondage, they now would have
been our equals, and the world would have car
ed for them as it now cares for the starving
Irish 1t is asked how are we to give them the
Bible! We are told it cannot be done. 1t had,
he averred, never been tried-the main spring
of all Christian effort is Faith, and the Almighty
will not open the door to u.s. if there be no ev-
idence among us of disposition to confde in
the triumph of Right. He asked an eminent
divine the other day if he thought the Gospel
per Sc, could abolish slavery. No, he was told.
Slavery in the South was too far gone, and the
remedial powers of the Bible would fail to restore
it. What then, he inquired, remains to be
done! Nothing but ST. Domingo, as the re-
'Iply. And (sdid Mr.. Leaviu,) no man can
gainsay that answer, looking merely at the rec
ord Of past history; but on the ground of Chris
tian faith, we are bound to come to a very DIFF
ferent conclusion. The Bible is able even to
renovate society in the slave states. The paint
ed Picts of the British Islands we're civilized
and reformed by the Bible, and so could be the
States of this Republic We want faith, first,
and action afterwards. The speaker then in
stanced the remarkable success in India, the
Sandwich Islands, and elsewhere Of Foreign
/, Missions. When the chosen people of God
were encamped upon Jordan's banks, the swo-
len streams overfowed its barriers But faith
trumphed! They might, like other fools, have
sat till the rivers ran dry but they took up their
) ark and marched on to Canaan, as if there had
been no river to impede their progress. And
the moment the priest touched the water, The
dry land was there Give the Bible to the slave
and the slave, how fallen soever, will rise up
Why should we not! He granted there was
much to discourage the laborers in the good
work. And he here took occasion to allude
despondingIy to the recent action Of the Evan
gelica Alliance on the Slavery question:; but
Evangelical Alliance was not all creation. Let
US do our duty, and leave them to meet their
own responsibility. Then, let US give the Bible
to the slave. When give it them! and how! it
might be asked But to such inquiries he
would say: You have never yet offered it to
them. Let it be proclaimed that all men have
right to the Bible. There are many slavehod-
ers in the South, he would undertake to say,
anxious that their slaves should read the Bible,
I bit the peculiar state of society there, at pres
ent, made them timid, 1t was the duty of the
North to encourage these. There is no law
against giving slaves the Bible; bat if there
were any SUCH he should regard il in the same
light as law forbidding him to feed the hungry
and cIothe the naked. Again, it was said that
the slaves could not read lie would ask, how
could they, when books had never been put into
their hands, Your child can't learn to swim,
if you keep him from the water. He believed
there was law in South Carolina prohibiting
the slave learning to read, but of what avail
was that. In the district represented by Mr.
Barnwell Rhett, clergyman, declared that he
violated the statute most ndustriousy every
day Such laws were impractcable; and there
was not prison in the South that would hold
hundred men or women, incarcerated for tearn-
ing slaves to read the Bible. Their doors would
be burst open as suddenly as those we're which
confined the Apostle Peter
A set Of resolutions were now offered, stating
that the discrimination sought to be made be-
tween those VINO hold slaves from benevolencc
and selhshness, was absurd; that the pretence
that the bible sanctions slavery, was blasphe-
nous and inhdeity; that it is the right of every
man, bond or free, to own and read the bible;
that conscience Wings" and "Independent
Democrats" are invited to join the 'I.iberty
party" and free the country from slavery and
subsection to southern "despots" recommending
the publication of the Slave Laws, or work on
the agriculture or mechanic arts of the south,
as compared with those of the north; rejoicing
that Antl-Slavery Missionary Societies have been
formed; that the war with Mexico is one in which
no attribute of the Almighty can take part with
us, thanking those editors and ministers of the
gospel who have spoken out against the war, and
saying it was the duty of every editor and min
lister to do the same; approving the Liberty par
ty, and declaring that it would, under no Cir
cumstances, vote for Shareholder; hailing the
efforts of abolitlonists in foreign lands; sympa-
thlsing with the people of color, bond and free;
lamenting the ignorance, prejudice, deusion and
wickednesss of shareholders; and quoting the