Randolph County journal. [volume] (Winchester, Randolph County, Ind.) 1855-1862, 1859-05-05

flesh. in every splinter Of the skeleton,
from skull to os coceygis or toe,joint,
there would be found the presence and
action Of the deadly element.
Such is the sin of slaveholding, and
the guilt of slavery, and the iniquity
of slave jurisprudence. in our nation,
government, and people, and such are
the omniprcsent and omnipotent infu-
ences and action of the sin and Its
sanction through our whole political
and moral system. The whole head
is sick, and the whole heart faint
from the sole OF the foot even unto the
head, there is no soundness in it. but
all wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores, which, though whole commit
tees of Tractarian surgeons and nurses,
and union saving medical conserva-
tives, have endeavored to stanch,
stitch up, plaster over, and make fra
grant, defy all treatment, and ever and
anon break out afresh, as old cuts cape
open, and gangrened issues corrode
and deepen, neither closed, neither
bound up. neither mollified with oint-
ment. Our manners, morals, senti-
ments, piety, Justice, law, are all cor
rupted with this plague; and the sin
being held and taught for filthy lucre's 5
sake, there is nothing pure to them
that are de6led with it, but even their
mind and conscience are defiled. They
profess that they know God, but in
works they deny him; being abomina-
bic and disobedient, and unto every
good work repiobate. Having held
the truth of God In the unrighteous-
ness of this sin, and this sin through
the medium of the truth of God, they
are given over of God to strong delu-
sion to believe lie. 1t becomes like
a drop of strychnine or prussic acid
quaffed in a cup of ether, and carried
almost instantaneously to every fiber
of the brain and tissue of the system
only In the case of the moral poison
they do not drop down dead, but rise
up, self-exalted and exhilarated. and
go about their business, as if they
were trcading the air, their very iniq-
uities being converted into wings that
buoy them up. Inflated with the gas
of this dclusion, they are as walking
balloons, and, walking or flying, are a
higher law unto themselves, breathing
over again the fumes Of their own
subtle sophistrics and lying statutes,
as the native, sacred atmosphere OF
delivered saints, and counting the
great things of Gods law as strange,
wild, impracticable. No wonder that
their watchword is, Clear the way:
cause the Holy One of Israel to cease
from before us, prophesy not unto us
right things, prophesy smooth things,
proPlIcsy dcccits! He looked for iudg-
ment. but behold oppression for
righteousness, but behold cry.
In the plantation, fostering, and
harvesting of this wickedness, and
grinding out the meal, and baking it
into our daily bread, we are precisely
as those sinners of old. Ye have
plowed wickedness, We have reaped in
iquity, We have eaten the fruit of lies,
trusting in oppression, and staying
yourselves thereon, swearing falsely in
your very covenants; thus judgment
springcth up as hemlock in the fur
rows of the field. Our slave legisla-
ton, and the principles of injustice
and cruelty there enshrined, taught,
/. and commanded as our social and civil
piety, are wickedncss so plowed in,
that the roots, interviewer and matted
run everywhere, and the whole soil is
so impregnated with prolific seeds,
that if the land is left, as Judea of old
even to a Sabbath of rest, the harvest
of evil is greater than ever, spontane
Gus, luxuriant, habitual, hereditary
You can not burn over an acre, but
out OF the ashes, as from a new fertil
; izing impulse, spring the same abom
nations. You can not strike youl
spade into neglected furrow, bu
these principles lie as thick as ground
nuts, as pregnant and poisonous a
cockatrice's eggs; he that eateth o
their eggs dieth. and that which i
crushed breaketh out into viper.
The very plowshare of divine prov
! idence, whichever way it turns, doe
but develop the intricacies of this sin
: tangled up with every other Issue
r Begin at almost any crime, and som
way or other it runs into this; strik
; at almost any reform, and you encoun
l ter this radical, primeval, grant
range of sin. ''When | would hav
: healed Israel. then the iniquity o
e Ephraim was discovered, and tn
: wickedness of Samaria. And the
G consider not IN their hearts that | re