In the former sense Christianity operates indirectly, through the spirit of its precepts, and the character of its professors. And its beneficial effects thus produced-the blessings it scatters in its path to immortality-how noble! The spirit of peace and justice infused into society, and by this the appeal to arms fast becoming, among nations as well as individuals, a barbarous and obsolete wickedness and absurdity. The spirit of love blending with every relation, civil and domestic; and by this, tyranny and cruelty mitigated, and governments converted into engines for human happiness, and women exalted to their true station, and purity and sanctity diffused through all the walks of private life; in a word, the spirit of religion everywhere expelling idolatry, and its obscenities and horrors. These are a few of the fruits of Christianity, regarded as a civil code for all nations. And in acting thus upon the world, and reaching and reforming political abuses, or public institutions, the gospel operates gradually and indirectly, by the announcement of a few grand truths, and chiefly through the influence of Christian character in individuals. In no other way could it operate for all times and places; and in no other way would we expect it to operate. The object of the gospel is to turn the heart from sin to holiness. its direct business is never with masses, but individuals; and its aim is the conversion, and sanctification, and salvation of the soul. The revolutions it achieves in social manners and establishments, are only secondary effects: and therefore the operation of the gospel as to these is indirect and secondary.

But as a perfect rule of duty for each Christian, making the man of God thoroughly furnished to every good work, the gospel does not act indirectly, but by express command and prohibition, and these given dogmatically. Conversion to God is the submission of the heart and life to all his holy will. The language of the renewed soul is, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" And, dealing with Christians, the apostles at once condemned all sin, and never, in any instance, permitted them to live and die in iniquity, keeping back from them the knowledge of its true character. Indeed, as the gospel acts upon any established and public evil chiefly through the influence and character of individuals, it is self-evident that upon individuals it must exert a direct, and thorough, and uncompromising, and immediate energy. Otherwise its entire object will be defeated. Its primary purpose is the holiness and salvation of the individual; but if the individual be allowed to live and die in sin, this purpose is defeated. The secondary design of the gospel is, the removal of social and political evil by the purifying influence of individual character; but if the individual character of the Christian be blackened by sin, and his participation in the evil confirm the world in it, then this design is defeated.

I will illustrate my meaning, and for this purpose let me suppose myself convinced that slavery is a heinous sin. Now, what would be my duty as to the members of the Beaufort church? In your seventh letter, while assigning reasons why the apostles did not directly condemn slavery by precept, you say, "Is not this the almost universal

method of the New Testament teaching? Do you not, my brother, so interpret it? When you attempt to teach men that they are sinners against God, do you enumerate the precepts which they have broken, or do you set before them the character of God and their universal relations to him ?" Suppose, then, I should imitate your apostles, and adopt your New Testament method of teaching, and never breathe a hint as to slavery being a sin, and receive slaveholders into the church, and call them "faithful and beloved," would I be the servant of Christ? And would it not be most absurd for me to expect, that, by moral essays on the Sabbath, I could counteract the force of my perfidious conduct to the church; or that, through the church, I could ever act upon the system established by law? In fact, in the very letter after your seventh you say, "I do believe that even now it is the duty of every Christian in the slaveholding states, to bear his testimony against this enormous wrong.' But how is this? Are not the New Testament method of teaching, and the apostolic example, the best guides I can follow ?

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(3.) "But," it is said, "the times are changed -our circumstances are not those in which the apostles lived." And it is in this argument I detect what, I confess, fills me with grief and alarm. "The times are changed.' 29 What then? but sees the inference? It is that the gospel must have an expansion or elasticity, so as to adjust itself to the times. But what if the gospel can by no torture be framed and bent to what anybody and everybody chooses to call "the times?" Why, then, the gospel is effete, and obsolete, and

must be discarded, as it has been by many of the abolitionists.

I need not say, my dear brother, that I know you detest and abjure such conclusions. But they are, and must be, the results of any doctrine which regards the instructions and examples of the Bible as of private or local interpretation. Moreover, while I enter my most solemn protest against this doctrine, I also deny the premises on which it rests. I deny that there is any such difference between our condition here, and that of Christians in the days of Paul, as is affirmed. It is not pretended that there is any want of correspondence between our circumstances and theirs, except in two particulars mentioned by you. The first of which is, that we make our own laws; and the second, that we possess superior moral light.

Now it is evident, that, in the present discussion, the first distinction is of no consequence; since it is not of the slave-laws, but of slavery, I am speaking; and the character of this, according to the eternal principles of morality, is not affected by any human enactments.

Is it true, then, that a Christian at the South possesses greater advantages than a Christian in apostolic times, for ascertaining his duty? If he does, whence does he derive them? Not from natural religion; for I venture to affirm that neither Paley, nor any writer on natural theology, has advanced a single idea which had not been advanced long before the Christian era. And as to revealed religion, I repeat, what I said before, that a converted master in Corinth, or Galatia, or Rome, had the very same scriptures. And he had,

too, the living, inspired apostles-enjoying, in their personal presence and instruction, an advantage, which no succeeding age has known, and which, we feel, would at this moment terminate, not only this dispute, but a great many others. I protest, then, against any permission given to men, to tamper with the word of God on the plea that the times are changed. And I deny, too, that my means of deciding on the moral character of slavery are superior to those which Timothy and Philemon enjoyed-the latter of whom was a slaveholder, and confirmed in slaveholding by Paul— and the former was enjoined, as an evangelist, to inculcate precepts, and pursue a line of conduct, utterly at variance with the doctrine that slaveholding is itself, and always, a heinous crime.

(4.) "But omniscient wisdom," you say, "has chosen, in imparting moral truth, to teach, not by express prohibition and precept, but by principle; and if slavery had been singled out from all other sins, and had alone been treated preceptively, the whole system would have been vitiated. We should have been authorized to inquire, why were not similar precepts in other cases delivered, and if they were not delivered, we should have been at liberty to conclude that they were intentionally omitted, and that the acts which they would have forbidden, were innocent." I ask, however, when and where 'has omniscient wisdom chosen this method of condemning sin? I do not stop to inquire why, if omniscient wisdom selects this mode of condemning slavery, my brother and others at the North are dissatisfied with it, and feel themselves bound to be more direct and explicit? But