Mutual service and slavery--like light and darkness, life and death--are directly opposed to, and subversive of, each other.

The one the Golden Rule can not endure; the other it requires, honors, and blesses.
"LOVE WORKETH NO ILL TO HIS NEIGHBOR." Like unto the Golden Rule is the second great commandment--"_Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself_." "A certain lawyer," who seems to have been fond of applying the doctrine of limitation of human obligations, once demanded of the Savior, within what limits the meshing of the word "neighbor" ought to be confined.

"And who is my neighbor ?" The parable of the good Samaritan set that matter in the clearest light, and made it manifest and certain, that _every man_ whom we could reach with our sympathy and assistance, was our neighbor, entitled to the same regard which we cherished for ourselves.

Consistently with such obligations, can _slavery_, as a RELATION, be maintained?
Is it then a _labor of love_--such love as we cherish for ourselves--to strip a child of Adam of all the prerogatives and privileges which are his inalienable birth-right ?--To obscure his reason, crush his will, and trample on his immortality ?--To strike home to the inmost of his being, and break the heart of his heart ?--To thrust him out of the human family, and dispose of him as a chattel--as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under the lash of a driver?
All this, apart from every thing incidental and extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such, consists.

All this--well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or "tears be his meat night and day," fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;--_all this_ ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, _by which every slave_, AS A SLAVE, _is set apart from the rest of the human family_.