“What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Mark 8:36 of The Bible. William King heard these words and the sermon that accompanied them from a minister who was freeing his slaves and returning to New England in the early days of King’s tenure at Matthews Academy. They were to have a profound impact on him. “I have now lived long enough in the country to see the evils of slavery,” he wrote in his autobiography.

“The evils, of the system that were necessarily connected with it bore as heavily on the white families as on the black. The moral evils connected with the system were such that it could not exist with Christianity. It would either destroy Christianity or Christianity would destroy it. They could not exist together. When I lived in the south slavery had reached the zenith of its power and was ripening for destruction.” (39) “I saw the danger to which I would be exposed from the world in the situation I was about to enter upon. There was the prospect of wealth and a gay and fashionable world with all its pleasures spread out before me, including the human heart to settle down in their midst and make this world my portion.” (37)

In 1841 he married Mary Phares, the oldest daughter of a wealthy planter.

When did you come to a point where you realized you were losing your soul? What did you do about it?

Or

What moral evils do you believe should not be tolerated today?