Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/172

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158
A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

because it is seen by Omniscience that the nations are not yet prepared for freedom — that they are not yet in a state to possess liberty without abusing it — thus that there would be danger of their turning the blessing into a curse. The great truth should be ever kept in mind — and the understanding and recollection of this will afford an explanation of a thousand permissions of evils in this life — that the great end, it may be mid the single end, which the good Creator has in view for all men, and for every individual man, is his salvation — that is, his happiness in eternity. His state and condition in time are made altogether subservient to this end. What matters it, — a little sickness, a little pain, or trouble of any kind for these few years, in comparison with our well-being through the thousands and millions of years, the long ages of eternity? Hence it is, that health or sickness, wealth or poverty, liberty or bondage, are respectively given or permitted to us, according as in the Divine wisdom they are seen to be conducive to this end. Poor "Uncle Tom," with his body gashed with lashes, and his soul tried to its depths, — yet turning his dying eyes to his blessed Savior, and crying, "Lord, I come," and then soaring aloft, up-borne by angels, to his eternal home, — is he not better off, infinitely, — I do not say, than his murderer, Legree — but even than one of those colored freemen, described by President Madison, sunk in sloth, profligacy, and vice? And thus it is, that the Divine looks at all our several states and conditions, in reference always to the eternal future.

Then, till it be seen by Infinite Wisdom, that the emancipation of the colored race can be brought