24.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p.

25.] [Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p.

26.] Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its reactionary policy was Rev.John G.Fee, an abolition minister of the gospel of Kentucky.

Seeing the inevitable result in States where public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes impossible, Fee asserted that in preventing them from reading God's Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as nominal Christians, the South had weakened the institution.

Without the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for such an ignorant class to become efficient and useful members.[1] Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who hath made us stewards of His grace?
This is sinful.