Yes, my friends, thousands who are helping
you to bind the fetters of slavery on the negro, despise you in their
hearts for doing it; they rejoice that such an institution has not been
entailed upon them. Why then, I would ask, do _they_ lend you their
help? I will tell you, "they love _the praise of men more_ than the
praise of God." The Abolition cause has not yet become so popular as to
induce them to believe, that by advocating it in congress, they shall
sit still more securely in their seats there, and like the _chief
rulers_ in the days of our Saviour, though _many_ believed on him, yet
they did _not_ confess him, lest they should _be put out of the
synagogue_; John xii, 42, 43. Or perhaps like Pilate, thinking they
could prevail nothing, and fearing a tumult, they determined to release
Barabbas and surrender the just man, the poor innocent slave to be
stripped of his rights and scourged. In vain will such men try to wash
their hands, and say, with the Roman governor, "I am innocent of the
blood of this just person." Northern American statesmen are no more
innocent of the crime of slavery, than Pilate was of the murder of
Jesus, or Saul of that of Stephen.
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