Difficult and almost impossible is the task before the Missionary. The
Austrian Mission has failed, and the stations have been forsaken; their
pious labour was hopeless, and the devoted priests died upon their
barren field. What curse lies so heavily upon Africa and bows her down
beneath all other nations? It is the infernal traffic in slaves--a trade
so hideous, that the heart of every slave and owner becomes deformed,
and shrinks like a withered limb incapable of action. The natural love
of offspring, shared with the human race by the most savage beast,
ceases to warm the heart of the wretched slave. Why should the mother
love her child, if it is born to become the PROPERTY of her owner?--to
be SOLD as soon as it can exist without the mother's care. Why should
the girl be modest, when she knows that she is the actual PROPERTY, the
slave, of every purchaser? Slavery murders the sacred feeling of love,
that blessing that cheers the lot of the poorest man, that spell that
binds him to his wife, and child, and home. Love cannot exist with
slavery--the mind becomes brutalized to an extent that freezes all those
tender feelings that Nature has implanted in the human heart to separate
it from the beast; and the mind, despoiled of all noble instincts,
descends to hopeless brutality.
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