the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Most assuredly he hath showed us what is good for us: he hath taught us alike by precept and by the example of his well-beloved Son, what will constitute our happiness, and to avoid that which will make us eternally miserable: "We must act justly, we must love mercy, we must walk humbly with our God." There is in every bosom an inward monitor which will always decide for us when we have done what is right; there is also a natural propensity to kindness, to mercy, which in every feeling heart will lead to acts of commiseration: but even in the best regulated bosoms there sometimes escapes a repining sigh, a doubt of the justice of many events, which appear contrary to our sense of what the virtuous might expect. An attentive observer of all which passes around him, of all which history presents to his imagination, is often struck by many circumstances which seem to wound every better feeling. When we

read of whole nations exterminated for the wickedness and impiety of their kings, we cannot believe that every individual of those nations had merited the displeasure of Heaven. The infant sleeping on the breast of its mother, the child just beginning to distinguish good from evil, the different characters which are found in society, and which were not all worthless; which divided more nicely form the good citizen, the affectionate parent, the dutiful child,-these swept away in one common destruction make humanity shudder. No force of reasoning could induce us to think such dispensations accordant with divine justice: in such a case, pitying, as we must do, the innocent sufferers, we must bow in silence, and instead of scrutinizing what far exceeds the limits of human comprehension, we must learn "to walk humbly with our God.” We know that even in the present advanced state of society, when knowledge boasts her acquisitions, and the human mind is considered as possessed of all which science can impart, even in the present day many abuses

exist, gross as those which marked the ages of ignorance.

If the enlightened policy of some European nations has endeavoured to abolish the horrible traffic of human beings, yet in a great measure the evil still exists. Should the poor African escape the wretch who seeks to rob him of more than existenceof his liberty, should he live and die ont his native soil, the grossest ignorance is his. inherited lot! The voice of instruction never formed his youth; no precepts of virtue ever softened his rugged manhood. Declining life, with all its sufferings and its deprivations, is not solaced by the hopes of a revealed religion; nor does one mental ray cheer the gloom which in every stage of existence appears to surround him. Should he, as is but too often the case, be torn from the home he loves, from the country endeared by every early association, what must he expect to meet? Not the hospitable voice which welcomes the stranger to the plenteous board; not the kindly smile which makes. almost unfelt the want of more ample means;

-but the harsh threats of a taskmaster, the galling anguish of undeserved stripes. Transplanted to a climate he cannot tolerate, to society only allied to him in anguish, he must learn other habits, acquire another language, bow to injustice, and be silent under oppression, before his existence is even supportable; he must toil for those he cannot love-ill-treatment has rendered him callous; he bears his chains, but he imprecates vengeance on his tyrant :-to return good for evil is a doctrine he has never learned, and what he most covets is the moment of coming vengeance.

We have only to read the history of our own colonies, to know that this is no exaggerated picture; on the contrary, it is far beneath the truth. Man there, that is the unhappy slave, even in the present ameliorated state of his bondage, shares none of our kindred feelings; prejudice has taught us to consider even the colour of his skin as disgusting, his ignorance is believed incorrigible; vices which are the natural consequence of his situation are considered the

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inherent defects of the heart, and cruelty seeks and finds its excuse in the alleged inferiority of the poor negro.

From this view of the almost universal humiliation of one species of our fellowcreatures, we may turn to his oppressor. He breathes the same air with his degraded slave, the same heat oppresses, the same, canopy of heaven covers him; the sun shines, the rain falls alike for each; each is subject to the casualties of life, and the pilgrimage of each must terminate in the grave. But whilst the one is obliged to toil under the intolerable heat of a tropical sun, the other is sheltered from its too powerful rays; artificial breezes are procured which never cease to fan him, and even the too brilliant light is softened to his listless sight; the raging storm which falls upon the unsheltered head of the one is never felt, and only indistinctly heard by the other. Sickness assails each, and is alike felt but in one case it is unpitied, unsolaced, and personal exertions must be made, which to the poor sufferer are worse than death;in the