We want our lives to count for something. We want them to be significant. The importance of prayer for the abolition of slavery, is shown from the inefficacy of other means to effect it.

"Slavery is the foe of Christianity, the enemy of souls, and it must be hateful to the God of love, who would have all men come to Christ. It is opposed to the gospel and to every evangelical work, to the tract, the Bible, the missionary enterprise. It disregards the spiritual interests of enslaved saints, and of souls perishing in their sins under its yoke. It rises above other forms of sin, as the chief pervertedness of the right ways of the Lord. It hinders the spread of vital godliness through this land, walling about the dominions of its chattels and excluding the preacher of the cross.