Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/10

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iv.

personally conversant with all the disgusting details of Plantation Slave-life, of the Slave-pen, and of the Auction-block. It has since been a source of grief to him to recollect the part he took in ordering and superintending the harrassing and flogging of men, women, and children; and in separating for life those dearest one to the other, whose ties of kinship man has no power to sever. The wife and the child are still the wife and the child, how far and how long soever they be parted from husband and parent.

After leaving the unholy business, Mr. Mitchell was brought under the power of God's converting grace. The study of Christianity resulted—as it ever must, when unbiassed—in his discarding with abhorence the iniquities inherent in Slavery, which in ignorance and depravity he had assisted to perpetrate. He devoted himself from that day to the cause of the enslaved; and unto this day his devotion has continued to burn with unceasing ardour and indomitable persistency. While engaged in the ministry of Christ's gospel, he has justly regarded it an essential part of his work to promote the letting-go of the oppressed, undoing of the heavy burden, and the breaking of every yoke. Believing the enactment of the Mosaic law to involve a moral principle, which is of perpetual and universal obligation, he has endeavoured to act as answering to the voice of God,