But what are the facts about matters other than Slavery? Tracts have been
issued and circulated in which Dancing is condemned as sinful; are all
Evangelical Christians agreed about this? On the Temperance question;
against Catholicism;--have these topics never entered into our politics?
The simple truth is, that Slavery is the only subject about which the
Publishing Committee have felt Constitutional scruples. Till this question
arose, they were like me in perfect health, never suspecting that they had
any constitution at all; but now, like hypochondriacs, they feel it in
every pore, at the least breath from the eastward.
If a strict construction of the words "all Evangelical Christians" be
insisted on, we are at a loss to see where the Committee could draw the
dividing line between what might be offensive and what allowable. The
Society publish tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced
and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. But throughout the
South it is criminal to teach a slave to read; throughout the South, no
book could be distributed among the servile population more incendiary
than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our Southern brethren
take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either denying that
the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting to the terrible
mockery of assuring him that the way of life is to be found only by
searching a book which he is forbidden to open.
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