pulses of hope and gain. The obedience required of them was felt to be obedience to salutary laws rather than to despotic will. Punishment, of whatever kind or degree, was inflicted, not as the master's wrath because his interests were neglected, but as the execution of law against what the conscience recognized as crime. Nor were crimes punished without the formality of a trial. And to develop and strengthen the sentiment of justice among the slaves some rudiments of trial by jury had been introduced into the administration of government over them.

Enough has been said, perhaps, for my purpose, but I want the whole case fairly stated. It is to be acknowledged, then, that the people on my friend's plantation do not consider themselves free; they are not free, they are slaves. The discipline on his plantation is not lax, but strict; his people are in every respect orderly, and are obliged to be so. It is to be acknowledged, also, that he makes money out of the labor of his slaves-more than most masters make on the same soil, who treat their slaves like cattle-though much less, I doubt not, than the China merchants of New York make out of the labor of their seamen, and less than the manufacturers on the Naugatuc make out of the labor of their well-paid operatives, and less than he might make if he should sell them all, and invest the proceeds in stock of the proposed railway between New York and New Haven. If it be asked whether he communes with his servants at the Lord's table, I am compelled to confess that he does not, for the reason that he is a Presbyterian, and they being Baptists, will not admit him to communion.

Here, then, is a slaveholder-a voluntary slaveholder-one, who in the exercise of his free agency, accepts and sustains "the relation of master to those whom the law makes slaves;" and the question is, Shall he be cut off from the church simply because he stands in this relation?

It may be argued that this man's policy is altogether mistaken-that by the kindness and justice of his administration, as a master, he is doing nothing for the anti-slavery cause, but is enabling such men as I am to 'apologize for slavery'-that if he would embrace the doctrine of immediate emancipation, and make his slaves free by a formal act at all hazards, or if he would remove them to the north or west, and make them free in a land of strangers, he would do much more good than he is now doingthat if he were to treat his slaves with the utmost cruelty, starving them into skeletons, scourging them to laceration, washing their stripes with aqua-fortis, hunting them out of their refuges with bloodhounds, he would be actually doing more than he is now doing to hasten the downfall of the system. I will not go into that argument, for it is not at all to the purpose. Admitting that the man errs in judgment, you cannot prove that he errs guiltily. Whether he is wise or unwise, he is, beyond dispute a believer in Christ; he takes the Holy Scriptures for his rule of faith and practice; the law of love is written on his heart by the spirit of God: whatsoever he would that men should do to him, he is doing even so to them. He has found these black "neighbors" who long ago, on the highways of this wicked and plundering world, had fallen among thieves, and had suf

fered divers grievous wrongs, and had been left more than half dead; he is treating them with compassion, binding up their wounds, and pouring in oil and wine; he is putting them upon his own beast, and taking them to the inn. You may denounce him as a Samaritan because he rejects your formula; you may say that his treatment is not judicious, that his surgery is old-fashioned, and will never result in a cure; that he ought to use your patent nostrums, your hydropathic bandages, your homeopathic powders, your 'magical pain extractor,' and that if you had the patients in hand, you would cure them all in half an hour. All this may be as you say, I will not dispute it; but after all the man is a good Samaritan; he is neighbor to the poor negroes that had fallen among thieves; and there is neither principle nor rule, in the New Testament, which authorizes any church to exclude him from communion.

I need not deny that the cause of human liberty and of human happiness—the great cause of God in the world-would be more promoted, if the man of whom I am speaking should follow the example of a friend of his in the same county, who has removed his slaves to a free State, and has discharged himself of all further responsibility in respect to them. But is this so plain and certain, so infallibly revealed, that the man who does not see it may be censured by the church, and excommunicated for not seeing it? Who has not known many an instance in which a patient, who might have recovered with competent medical attendance, has died before his time, because his friends had more confidence in some advertising quack than in a scientific and skill

ful physician? Yet the church does not excommunicate such persons. Why not? Because, plain as the matter is to others, it is not plain to them; and it is not the province of the church to settle such questions. The friends who called in the quack were honest in so doing; they did it in pure love for the sufferer; they did it, praying for God's blessing; and though life was sacrificed, the church does not interpose with its censures. Questions of medical practice are not to be decided by the clergy, or by a church meeting. The Bible does not reveal God's will upon that subject. Clear as it may be to some of us that the policy which the man of whom I speak has adopted is erroneous, there is no infallible judge this side of Rome, to decide the question against his conscientious judgment.

I say, then, charge upon the slaveholder some specific crime, and prove it. Show that he treats his servants as mere property; show that he does not respect or guard their domestic relations; show that the chastity of their wives and daughters is not protected under his government; show that he keeps them in ignorance of God and of God's Word; show that he permits them to steal, to quarrel, to break the Sabbath, so that they do not injure him; show even that he runs in debt on the credit of what they would sell for if seized by the sheriff; and for any such thing he may be admonished by the church, and if he will not hear the church he may be excommunicated. But where has Christ given the church authority to decide upon forms of government, to proscribe political institutions, to adjust the relations between rulers and subjects?

NO. VI.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH COUNTERACTING SLAVERY. HOW?

Suppose the gospel to be preached for the first time in a civilized slave state-civilized in the same degree in which the slave States of this Union are civilized civilization being carried as far as is compatible with a structure of society so essentially barbarous. Suppose that the gospel, as a revelation of God's character and moral government, of the way in which sinners may be forgiven and saved, and of those divine truths by the spiritual perception of which the soul is renewed to holiness-is preached without any particular exposition of its bearings on the political institution of slavery, or even on the relative duties of masters and slaves. On the one hand, the consciences of the people have not been sophisticated with atrocious arguments in defence of slavery; on the other hand, the intrinsic injustice of the institution and the mischiefs which it works upon the morals, the intelligence and the industry of the community, have never been pointed out to them. To that people the gospel is preached in its principles-" repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." The all-comprehending law, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," is clearly announced as God's law for the universe. The character of God, who "hath made of one blood all nations of men," and who "now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the