The Liberator

THE
LIBERATOR.

THE FIREBRAND. NUMBER VI.

BY AN INCENDIARY FANATIC.

A SERMON TO PREACHING MEN-
STEALERS.

The text is recorded by Zechariah, chapter
11; verses 4 and 5. 'Thus saith the Lord my
God; Feed the flock of the slaughter, whose
possessors slay them, and hold themselves not
guilty ; and they who slay them say, Blessed be
the Lord, for I am rich; and their own shep-
herds pity them not.'

As hardened sinners are not fond of long
sermons; especially when they are conscious
of their truth and application to themselves, I
shall proceed without any introduction into the
very marrow of the subject.

I. We have the character and condition
of the American colored citizens exactly de-
scribed; they are 'the flock of the slaughter.'

Because, 1. Colored people are not account-
ed as human beings. 2. They are treated in
all respects as if they were an inferior order
of cattle to horses and dogs, except as they
can augment wealth and luxury, and minister
to sensuality. 3. It is considered the greatest
insult in the world among the unfeeling and
hardened slave torturers to take any notice of
a gentleman's killing a slave. They are a
body of two legged animals, only kept to be
starved or worked to death, or to be killed by
toil, or torture, or outrage, or violation.

II. The conduct of American slaveholders
is plainly declared—' Whose persecutors slay
them and hold themselves not guilty ; and they
who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I
am rich.'

1. They are engaged in a most ungodly
traffic, like the people of old, who are con-
demned by the other prophets. Joel 3: 3.
'They have cast lots for my people; and have
given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for
wine that they may drink.' This is the con-
stant practice among slaveholders. Amos 2:
6-8 Thus saith the Lord; they sold the
righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of
shoes; that pant after the dust of the earth
upon the head of the poor, and turn aside the
way of the meek; and the man and his father
go in unto the same maid to profane my holy
name.' These are the constant practices of
almost all slaveholders.

2. They mix impiety with their wicked-
ness. They became rich by their man-steal-
ing and man-selling, and then pretend hypo-
critically to thank the Lord that He has bless-
ed them in their most nefarious mode to ob.
tain opulence. This is true of all slavehold-
ers; they accumulate wealth by continuous
robbery; and yet many of them profess to be
followers of Jesus Christ, who went about do-
ing good, the Prince of Philanthropists, and
the god-like Liberator. Our text, therefore,
teaches us, that all profession of the christian
religion by such slaveholders, is impious hy-
pocrisy.

3. The slaveholders are as cruel as they
are corrupt and deceitful, for they slay the
flock. The work of murderous death is always
going on in the slaveholding districts, either
more suddenly or with lingering tortures.
No earthly record is kept of the human blood-
sheds and of the human lives sacrificed to the
relentless demon of slavery. The Lord holds
the catalogue, and at the head and foot of the
direful scroll is the dreadful indictment writ-
ten with American and christian blood—'Their
possessors slay them and hold themselves not
guilty!' They are not only robbers, hypo-
crites and murderers, but practical Atheists,
who commit the most nefarious crimes, and
yet plead not guilty. Thus they despise the
law of God, and maintain, notwithstanding all
their superlative wickedness, that they are in-
nocent. They virtually deny all morality, and
discard the divine government of the world.
They abrogate all religion, and even adduce
the name of God and their hypocritical pro-
fession of divine truth as a sanction for their
inordinate depravity. This is the character,
in different degrees, of all the slaveholders
who curse the church and the world.

III. The conduct of the pretended shep-
herds in reference to slaves; that is, of Amer-
ican preachers in the Southern States is pun-
gently denounced—'Their own shepherds pity
them not.' It is one of the most extraordinary
principles of slavery, that ministers of the
gospel, so called, of nearly all denominations,
who reside in slaveholding regions, are slave-
holders, who will 'sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of shoes.' It is self-
evident, that the preachers have no pity for
slaves; they neither comfort them, nor plead
for them, nor instruct them; and all attempts
to teach them by oral doctrine only, is no bet-
ter than solemn mockery. Like the Papists,
they will not permit the colored citizens to
learn to read, or to possess the scriptures;
and all the knowledge which they acquire by
white preachers' discourses is both deceptive
and insulting. No man dare to preach the
whole Gospel south of the Potomac and the
Ohio.

Preachers publicly and as readily exchange
men for horses, and women for sheep, or sell
and buy and traffic boys and girls, as any oth-
er class of menstealers! In the Negro quar-
ter belonging to preachers, the slaves live with
no more religious instruction, equally desti-
tute of food and clothing, and laboring as in-
cessantly, and are scourged as often and as
barbarously, as on the neighboring farms and
plantations of which the domestic despots are
avowed sons of Belial. In the southern states
of this union, almost all the settled preachers
of every sect are what the Apostle Paul him-
self, terms them, menstealers;' without the
smallest particle of commiseration for the col-
ored citizens. They possess not one senti-
ment of compassion for them, more than that
which Pharoah and his task-masters had for
the Israelites.

In reference to the American colored peo-
ple, slaveholders exemplify all the doings of
those ancient sinners, of whom the Apostle
Paul declares; that they who commit such
things are worthy of death, and they not only
do the same, but have pleasure in them that
do them; traitors, heady, high-minded, incon-
tinent, fierce, unholy, without natural affec-
tion, covenant breakers, false accusers, impla-
cable and unmerciful.'-Romans 1: 28-32.

This is the general character of all slavehold-
ers ; and that preachers partake of it is proved
by their withholding almost entirely, all mor-
al and religious instruction from the victims
of their ungodly despotism. They have no
feeling for their tormented bodies, and no so-
licitude for their perishing souls. Hence,
about two millions and a half of our native
citizens in the United States are living in a
state of brutal degradation, with their under-
standings darkened, 'having no hope, and
without God in the world; passing on to eter-
nity as if they were animals without souls,
while the preachers of the Gospel, to them,
are only guides to the dungeon of eternal de-
spair!

Yet this marvellous conception is sustained
and defended, and they who cannot change
the skin of an Ethiopean, contrive to white-
wash the blackness of Satan. They dub the
preaching men-stealers, M. A. and D. D. and
rightly are they invested with those titles, for
they are as the Presbyterian Confession of
Faith declares, 'Hominum Fures,' Artis Ma-
gistri—Masters of the Art of Man-stealing;
and Diaboli Doctores, D. D., Doctor of the
DEVIL.

These titles, and the absurdly factitious in-
fluence which they arrogate are acquired and
maintained solely by the hypocritical dona-
tions which they bestow upon the various in-
stitutions of philanthropy, and which no strict-
ly conscientious men would solicit or accept
for christian purposes, as presented under a
christian name, and to purchase christian fel-
lowship. Men-stealers give to Bible societies,
Tract societies, &c. to procure renown from
the donation of money of which they have
frauded the laborer, and robbed the destitute;
but they forget and omit the weightier matters
of the law, judgment, mercy and faith. They
will give a cent which they have stolen
from the colored people to the treasury of the
Lord, as a commutation for retaining the oth-
er ninety-nine for luxury and splendor.—
Preachers, we recommend you seriously to ap-
ply to your consciences the Saviour's search-
ing question—Matthew 23: 33—'How can
ye escape the damnation of hell?'

IV. The preacher's duty is enjoined—
'thus saith the Lord my God, feed the flock of
the slaughter.' Comfort, instruct and nourish
the people doomed to wretchedness and tor-
ture. This is the injunction of God, to all you
preachers, it is paramount to all earthly legis-
lations. The principles of the gospel are aban-
doned; the discipline of the Christian church
is sacrificed; the very character of pure and
undefiled religion as a system of love and ho-
liness is destroyed; and the duty of the evan-
gelical ministry is perfidiously neglected by
all descriptions of preachers in the southern
States. In reference to slavery, you are Ach-
ans in the camp of the Israelites. You are
no better than Judas betraying the cause of
the Lord; or the chief rulers who loved the
praise of men more than the praise of God;
and Demas who for the love of the present
world forsook the apostle. You disobey your
Lord and Master: and if there be any truth
in the doctrine of retribution, when the Mas-
ter of the servants cometh and reckoneth with
them, you will be denounced as wicked and
slothful servants. You men-stealing preach-
ers, and you their dough faced coadjutors,
hear the word of the Lord, Zechariah 11: 8—
'Three shepherds I also cut off, and my soul
loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me.'

The Lord here emphatically declares
that you abhor the Lord. It does not signify what
your pretensions may be. You may boast
'the temple of the Lord are we. You may
make long prayers, and sound a trumpet before
you; and love to be called of men Rabbi:
but you bind heavy burdens on men's shoul-
ders, which you will not move with one of
your fingers.' Notwithstanding all this, your
souls in secret and in truth abhor the Lord;
or you would obey his commandments. Look
at this description all you ecclesiastical men-
stealers and your abettors! God declares that
your refusal to obey his divine injunction to
'feed the flock of the slaughter,' is because
your souls abhor him. Who can doubt the
truth of God's declaration when your disobedi-
ence verifies the infallible truth? Therefore
remember the Lord's declaration—'My soul
loathed them.' The Lord loathes you for
your hardness of heart, your cruelty, your rob-
beries, your impiety, your ungodly wealth,
your want of human sensibility, your destitu-
tion of all christian love, your rejection of all
pastoral commiseration and sympathy, your
hardened defiance of his authority, and your
resolute contempt of His sovereign mandate.
Therefore he reminds you of an example by
which you may take warning—'Three shep-
herds also I cut off in one month.' Whoever
they were who thus experienced the Judge's
displeasure, they were far less criminal than
you. Preachers in America live in the midst
of gospel sunshine, profess to be actuated by
those sacred principles which admit the rights
of conscience, civil freedom, and religious lib-
erty, are bound by their own vows to 'preach
the gospel to the poor, and deliverance to the
captive, to cry aloud and spare not; to lift up
their voice like a trumpet, and shew the peo-
ple their transgression and their sins, that they
may loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the
heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, and
break every yoke.' You see myriads of Amer-
ican citizens, your fellow immortals drawn un-
to death and ready to be slain, and yet forbear
to deliver them.'—Proverbs 24: 11, 12. The
commands you to blow the trumpet and warn
the people; and yet you will not comply;
people are taken away in their iniquity,
I the Judge of all the earth declares to you,
Ezekiel 33: 6 'their blood will I require at
the watchman's hand.' Deceive not your-
elves by any delusive subterfuges. In vain,
(Isaiah 28: 15, 17,) will you make lies your
refuge, and under falsehood hide yourselves.
The hail of the Lord will sweep away your
refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow
your hiding-place.' You are like Jonah, re-
fusing to deliver the message of the Lord,
and you already experience and know, that
they who observe lying vanities,' as you con-
stantly do, 'forsake their own mercy.' If God
spared not the ancient hard-hearted shepherds,
but cut them off; take heed, lest he spare not
you, in your insensibility and rebellion.
Remember also another word of the Lord,
Zechariah 11: 7—'I will feed the flock of
slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock.
And I took unto me two staves; the one I
called Beauty, and the other I called Bands:
and I fed the flock.' Thus the Lord de-
clares that the slaves shall be emancipated.
Jehovah is the great exemplar of Abolition-
ist. He exterminated it in Egypt to Pha-
raoh's cost; he abolished slavery in Babylon,
but Belshazzar and the soothsayers were re-
moved, and if you will not feed the flock of
the slaughter, he will feed them—but you shall
be cut off. God will make them Beauty, hon-
orable; and Bands, strong; and will feed, en-
lighten, support, supply, and strengthen them:
and then wo be to you: false prophets, who
come in sheeps clothing, but inwardly are
ravening wolves!

Watch over the flock of the slaughter, and
do the duty of Christian ministers. Sinners
as you are, one cannot but have pity on you.
The parable of the rich man requires your
consideration. He fared sumptuously, and
died, and lifted up his eyes in torment! May
God preserve all men-stealing preachers from
being his companions! You preachers are
the existing cause of the wickedness and curse
of slavery in America, and as long as we
have myriads of men-stealing ministers and
professors, so long will all our churches be
justly chargeable with being one half hypo-
crites, and the other half confederates. God
pardon all preaching slaveholders, and their
dough-faced brethren, for Christ's sake!—
AMEN.