Treated with infamy for long years, they are apt to deem themselves worthy of infamy--to lose that self-respect which is the invariable concomitant of religious feeling, and which, apart from religious feeling, is the sole preventive of personal degradation.

Well may St.Paul say, "Art thou called, being a servant?
care not for it: _but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather_." [62] [Footnote 62: 1 Cor.vii.

21.] It is true that even in the heathen world there began at this time to be disseminated among the best and wisest thinkers a sense that slaves were made of the same clay as their masters, that they differed from freeborn men only in the externals and accidents of their position, and that kindness to them and consideration for their difficulties was a common and elementary duty of humanity.

"I am glad to learn," says Seneca, in one of his interesting letters to Lucilius, "that you live on terms of familiarity with your slaves; it becomes your prudence and your erudition.

Are they slaves?
Nay, they are men.