employ vituperation is at once a sin and a mistake. My chief hope for the Union is in the conservative power of religion, and the day is not far when that power will be required in all its stringency. Look at the distracted condition of this land; reflect on the appalling character of a civil war ; and if you love the country, or the slave, do not sever the bands which unite the Baptist churches. Compared with slavery, all other topics which now shake and inflame men's passions in these United States, are really trifling. They are only bonfires; but Ucalegon burns next, and in that quarter God forbid that Christians should throw the first torches.

If, however, slavery be a sin, surely it is the immediate duty of masters to abolish it, whatever be the result-this you urge, and this I grant; and this brings me to the single matter in hand, on which I submit to you the following observations.

1st. In affirming what you do, ought it not to give a pious mind pause, that you are brought into direct conflict with the Bible? The Old Testament did sanction slavery. God said, “Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be in your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever. And in the Gospels and Epistles, the insti

I do not now

tution is, to say the least, tolerated. inquire as to the character of this slavery, nor is it important, for you pronounce slaveholding itself a sin; a sin, therefore, semper et ubique, always, and everywhere, and in all shapes. I, for my part, have no difficulty, and am in no sort of dilemma here, for I find my Bible condemning the abuses of slavery, but permitting the system itself, in cases where its abrogation would be a greater calamity than its existence. But you-how do you escape the charge of impiety?

2d. In the remark just made, I supposed, of course, that you admit some sort of slavery to have been allowed in the Old Testament, and suffered by Jesus and his apostles. A man who denies this will deny any thing, and only proves how much stronger a passion is than the clearest truth. Both Dr. Channing and Dr. Wayland, with all respectable commentators, yield this point; but if this point be yielded, how can it be maintained that slaveholding is itself a crime? No one can regard the noble president of Brown University with more esteem and affection than I do; from his arguments, however, I am constrained to dissent. His position is this:* the moral precepts of the gospel condemn slavery; it is therefore criminal. Yet he admits that neither the Saviour nor his apostles commanded masters to emancipate their slaves; nay, they "go further," he adds, "and prescribe the duties suited to both parties in their present condition;" among which duties, be

* I need hardly say that the argument is the same as Paley, book 3, chapter 3.

it remembered, there is not an intimation of manumission, but the whole code contemplates the continuance of the relation. Here, then, we have the Author of the gospel, and the inspired propagators of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit inditing the gospel, all conniving at a practice which was a violation of the entire moral principle of the gospel! And the reason assigned by Dr. Wayland for this abstinency by God from censuring a wide-spread infraction of his law, is really nothing more nor less than expediency-the apprehension of consequences. The Lord Jesus and the apostles teaching expediency! They who proclaimed and prosecuted a war of extermination against all the most cherished passions of this guilty earth, and attacked with dauntless intrepidity all the multiform idolatry around them-they quailed, they shrank from breathing even a whisper against slavery, through fear of consequences!! And, through fear of consequences, the Holy Spirit has given us a canon of Scriptures, containing minute directions as to the duties of master and slave, without a word as to emancipation!!! Suppose our missionaries should be detected thus winking at idolatry, and tampering with crime in heathen lands.

Dr. Channing also says,-Paul satisfied himself with disseminating principles which would slowly subvert slavery. "Satisfied himself!" but was he so easily satisfied in reference to any act which he regarded as a dereliction from duty? Hear how he speaks: "If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one no not to eat.” "Be not deceived;

neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." "Whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge." "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Such was Paul's language; nothing but this unyielding, uncompromising condemnation of every sin could content him; yet, as to "the unutterable abomination of slavery," he is a temporizing palterer! As to slavery, which "violates every article in the decalogue," although the apostle saw it all around him, and members of the Church guilty of it, he declined uttering a word—he is cowed into a timeserver, a worker by concealed and tardy indirections! He "satisfies himself," while millions on all sides are sinking into hell through this crimehe "satisfies himself" with spreading principles which would slowly work a cure! Craven and faithless herald! and after this, with what face could he say, "I have kept back nothing"-“ I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God?" Arguments like these refute themselves; they are the signal failures of minds masterful for the truth, but impotent against it; and will convince every sincere inquirer that to denounce slaveholding as necessarily a sin, is to deal in loose assertion, and practically to range one's self with the infidel and scoffer.

3d. But will it not be laboring in the vocation of the infidel, to assert that the Bible does not condemn slavery, especially when we know that in the times of the Apostles, masters were allowed to torture their slaves, and starve them, and kill them as food for their fish? Is it not an insult to heaven, for one to defend such a system out of the Scriptures? This question is very plausible; but the answer is soon given, and it is the same which has been repeated over and over, viz., that the enormities often resulting from slavery, and which excite our abhorrence, are not inseparable from it-they are not elements in the system, but abuses of it. What, indeed, is slavery? "I define slavery," says Paley, "to be an obligation to labor for the benefit of the master, without the contract or consent of the slave." This is all that enters into the definition of slavery, and now what ingredient here is sinful? Suppose a master to "render unto his servant the things that are just and equal;" suppose the servant well clothed and religiously instructed, and to receive a fair reward for labor in modes of compensation best suited to his condition; might not the Bible permit the relation to continue, and might it not be best for the slave himself? Recollect that when you tell us of certain laws, and customs, and moral evils, and gross crimes, which are often incidents of slavery in this country, we agree with you, and are most anxious for their removal, and deprecate the incendiary movements of abolitionists as tending only to retard and even arrest our success. On these topics Christians throughout the land ought to communicate in the spirit of love, and combine their prayers and co-operations. The