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could make them free. There is no liberty in the service of Satan. Now, if you really don't believe it I will tell you how you can try it and test it yourself. Just see if you can break off from your sin and see if it has not got the mastery over you. "You are a servant of sin." have not the power to break away from sin and deliver yourself. How many have tried and tried and failed? I never knew any one to come to Christ in my life until they had tried every other way to deliver themselves, and at last they woke up to the fact that it was utterly impossible for them to deliver themselves, and then they were willing to let Christ deliver them.

Now, I just want to call your attention to slavery. I don't know as there is any better illustration than that which we had in our own country a few years ago. Not that I want to bring that up to disturb any one's feelings. I think if I know my own heart I love the South as well as I do the North, but then I am going all around the world for illustrations. I can very often make people see things by illustrating them when I cannot in any other way; and it is no feeling that I have about the South that causes me to bring up these illustrations. We must all know something about slavery. Perhaps our children won't know as much as we do about it, but if you have not been South or were not South during slavery, you have read about it, and you know that when a man was a slave all his children were born in slavery. They were born slaves, and so when Adam fell in sin, when he sold himself out he sold out all his posterity with him, and we were therefore all born slaves. We have all been taken captive; not only that, we read we are lawful captives. That is what the Scripture calls it, and now the question is asked, Shall the lawful captive be delivered? "I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and the lawful captive shall be delivered." And that is just what Christ came into the

world to do-to deliver the captive. Now, that is one part Gospel-that Christ came to deliver the captive. In that beautiful verse I have quoted so often since I have been here, and I will never get tired of it-the 4th chapter of Luke, 18th verse-it says: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive."

It was my privilege to go into Richmond with Gen. Grant's army. Now just let us picture a scene. There are a thousand poor captives, and they are lawful captives, prisoners in Libby Prison. Talk to some of them that have been there for months and hear them tell their story. I have wept for hours to hear them tell how they suffered, how they could not hear from their homes and their loved ones for long intervals, and how sometimes they would get messages that their loved ones were dying and they could not get home to be with them in their dying hours. Let us, for illustration, picture a scene. One beautiful day in the Spring they are there in the prison. All news has been kept from them. They have not heard what has been going on around Richmond, and Ì can imagine one says one day," Ah, boys, listen! I hear a band of music, and it sounds as if they were playing the old battle cry of the Republic. It sounds as if they were playing "The star spangled banner! long may it wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" And the hearts of the poor fellows begin to leap for joy. "I believe Richmond is taken. I believe they are coming to deliver us,” and every man in that prison is full of joy, and by and by the sound comes nearer and they see it is so. It is the Union army! Next the doors of the prison are unlocked; they fly wide open, and those thousand men are set free. Wasn't that good news to them? Could there have been any better news? They are out of prison, out of bondage,

delivered! They can go to their wives, their children, and their homes now. Ah, my friends, you could not find happier men than those that were liberated at that time, and that is just the Gospel. Christ came to proclaim liberty to the captive. Every man has been taken captive by Satan, and Christ has come to snap his bonds.

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Another thing that occurred at Richmond. We had been there but a few hours before I heard that the colored people were going to have a jubilee-meeting down in the great African church that night, and I thought to myself, although I am a white man, I will get in there somehow. I had a hard fight to get in, but I did succeed at last. It was probably the largest church in the South. There were supposed to be three or four thousand black people there, and they had some chaplains of our Northern regiments for their orators on the occasion. Talk about eloquence. I never heard better. It seemed as if they were raised for the occasion. I remember one of them, as he stood there on the platform, pointed down to the mothers and said: Mothers, you rejoice to-day that you are forever free, all your posterity is free, that little child has been taken from your bosom and sold off to some distant State for the last time." And some of those women shouted right out in meeting, "Glory to God! They could not keep the good news to themselves. They believed they were delivered. They believed the good news. Then this man turned to the young men and said: "Young men, rejoice to-day. It is a day of jubilee, a day of glad tidings. We come to proclaim to you that you are free. You have heard the crack of the slave-trader's whip for the last time." And they shouted and clapped their hands and said, "Glory to God!" Then he turned to the young ladies and said : Rejoice to-day! you have been on the auction block and sold to captivity for the last time. And then the young maidens clapped their hands and shouted for joy. It was

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a jubilee. What made them so glad? They believed they were liberated, and that is what made them so joyful. People want to know why Christians are so joyful. It is because they have been delivered from Satan. Some of those slaves had good masters, and slavery was not hard for them, but some of them had unkind and cruel masters; but I will tell you no slave in all the Southern States ever had so mean a master as you have, and you have more reason to rejoice that Christ has come to set you free than any prisoner in our Southern States, and every one of you ought to rejoice here to-day that you hear the good news that Christ has come to proclaim liberty to the captive, to recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are bound. Jesus has come to open the prison doors and let out the captive, and what you want is just to believe it.

But there are some here that are still stumbling over that doctrine of election. Within the last twenty-four hours I have met two more. They don't know what liberty to them means. Well, there was a story told me while I was in Philadelphia by Capt. Trumbull. He said when he was in Libby Prison the news came that his wife was in Washington, and his little child was dying; and the next news that came was that his child was dead, and the mother remained in Washington in hopes that her husband could come with her and take that child off to New England and bury it; but that was the last he heard. One day the news came into the prison that there was a boat up from City Point, and there were over nine hundred men in the prison rejoicing at once. They expected to get good news. Then came the news that there was only one man in that whole number that was to be let go, and they all began to say, "Who is it?" It was some one who had some influential friend at Washington that had persuaded the Government to take an interest in him and The whole prison was excited.

get him out.

At last an

officer came and shouted at the top of his voice, "Henry Clay Trumble!" The chaplain told me his name never sounded so sweet to him as it did that day. That was election, but you can't find any Henry Clay Trumbull in the Bible. There is no special case in the Bible. God's proclamations are to all sinners. Everybody can get out of prison that wants to. The trouble is they don't want to go. They had rather be captives to some darling sin like lust, appetite, coveteousness, than to be liberated. You need not be stumbling over election. The proclamation is, "Whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely."

Miss Smiley said that after the war, when she went down South, she was in a hotel, and the room she was to occupy was so dirty that she said to the old colored woman that had charge of the room, "Auntie, you know I cannot live in such dirt as this, and you know, now, that we Northern people set you colored people free. I am from the North, and I want you to show your love for the North by cleaning up this room." She then went away for a short time, and when she came back in about half an hour the room looked as if a half day's work had been spent on it. And the old colored woman came up to her and said: "There! now be's I free or beant I?" "Why, what makes you ask that question?" said the lady. “Oh," says she, my old massa says I beant free at all, no one has a right to make me free at all, and he hasn't given me my freedom; and when I go out and see the colored people, they tell me I am free, and now bes I free or beant I?" And there the poor colored woman had been free for months, and didn't know it. That is what the devil is doing with a great many. They are free, and don't know it. Now perhaps the colored woman could not read the proclamation, and find out. If you cannot read it, you can get some of your friends to read it. The truth shall make you free.

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