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But such a result will not be attained, or at least will be indefinitely postponed, unless Christianity is dispensed and exhibited in the form of church discipline. A lax administration of church discipline, in respect to the conduct of masters towards their servants, will accomplish, more speedily and effectually than can be done in any other way, the complete degradation of Christianity, and will especially and primarily counteract its legitimate operation against slavery. Let us observe, then, how church discipline will be administered in a slave State like that presented in our hypothesis-a state in which the gospel has begun to be preached without any pro-slavery or anti-slavery commentary, and in which there have begun to be believers, both masters and servants, who have received the gospel, not as a tradition of dogmas and regulations, but as life in Christ and in the Spirit of God. The answer, I think, can.. not be difficult to any man who understands what effect the gospel produces on a mind regenerated by its power. All will agree with me in affirming that the administration of church discipline, in the circumstances represented by our hypothesis, will include the following particulars.

1. Members of the church, if they are masters of servants whom the law regards as property only, and whom the law therefore treats as having no personal rights, will not be allowed by the church to regard their servants as the law regards them, or to treat them as the law treats them. The master who buys or sells his fellow-men for gain, or out of regard to his own convenience merely, will be admonished, and if he does not repent will be excommunicated;

and the consideration that the law permits him to do so will no more be admitted as a justification, than the parallel fact that the law of New York refuses to recognize fornication or adultery as a crime, would be admitted as a reason why the church may not censure those who are guilty of such offences. The master who disposes of his servants just as he would dispose of any other property-giving them away, hiring them out, or otherwise using them simply for his own ends, without regard to their wishes and interests will be admonished like any other offender, and if admonition is ineffectual, will be excluded from the communion of the saints. The master who, because the law regards slaves as incapable of acquiring or possessing property, will not allow his servants to have anything which under his protection and government they can call their own, who permits them to have no time that is theirs, no earnings or savings that are theirs, and who treats them in no other way than as a humane man treats his cattle, will be dealt with by the church as one who gives no evidence of being actuated by the spirit of Christ.

2. The relation of master to servant, where servants are slaves, is one which involves constant temptation to acts of passion and of injustice in the administration of power. For all such acts a master who professes to be a believer is accountable to the church. The master of a ship at sea is intrusted, necessarily, with a despotic power over the sailors. All men know how liable that power is to be misemployed, how many acts of cruelty are perpetrated on shipboard, in passion or caprice, or by the

deliberate abuses of the power committed to the master. All men know, too, that if a shipmaster is a member of a church, and there comes to that church the report of any such offence on his part, the matter will surely be investigated, and the offence, if proved, will be visited with appropriate censure. Just so in a church which contains masters of slaves, and in which Christianity has not become a tradition corrupted by the expositions of such rabbis as Gov. Hammond, every instance of passion or injustice in the administration of the master's government, will be the subject-matter of church censure. The church will no more permit cruel or unjust punishments to be inflicted on slaves whose master is responsible to the church for whatever concerns his Christian character, than it would permit a passionate and cruel master to inflict the same punishments on hired servants or apprentices.

3. The church which goes to this extent in watching over such members as sustain the relation of which we were speaking-and to this extent it must go if it does not utterly dishonor the name of Christ -will necessarily go farther. There are some obvious positive duties, which a master in fellowship with the church cannot be permitted to neglect. It is not enough for him to abstain from direct personal acts of cruelty and oppression; the slaves have a right to look to him for the blessings of good government and protection, so far as it is in his power to dispense such blessings; they have a right to look to him, for they can look nowhere else. The first of all their rights as human beings living in society, a right which transcends even their right to personal liberty,

is their right to be governed, and well governed, and to have all that protection from their own evil propensities, and from the evil propensities of other men, which good government affords. He can hardly be guilty of a greater wrong against them, than that which he commits, if through any neglect of his, they are not protected as men and governed as men. If, then, he fails to place them under such a system of regulations as is suited to promote their individual and social well-being-if he does not care for and protect their persons, their little possessions and their morals-if he neglects to guard, as a magistrate, the chastity of females, or to uphold the sanctity and permanence of the marriage tie-if he neglects to restrain them from petty larcenies against each other, and from quarrels and fightings-if he allows or connives at drunkenness and rumselling among them-if he does not require them to keep the Sabbath by resting from unsuitable occupations -his brethren in the church will not fail to admonish him, and when admonition has been found ineffectual, they will disown him.

4. Nor will this be all. The relation which he sustains to his servants, as being to them in the place of the State, involves only a part of his positive duties towards them. As a Christian man looking upon the ignorance and debasement of these his dependent neighbors, he is bound to care for their entire welfare as spiritual and immortal beings. He is bound-and by all the movements of the Spirit of Christ within him he is impelled-to provide instruction for them, and especially to make them acquainted with God and with the way of salvation

through Christ. If he neglects this duty, if his servants are permitted to live and die in heathenish ignorance, if he does not labor in the spirit of self-denying love to win them to God, and to train them for God's service and for immortal blessedness, the church will strive to bring him to a sense of his duty, and finding him incorrigible, will declare that he has not the spirit of Christ and is none of his.

Such being the administration of church discipline in the community which we have supposed, it is evident that there the slaves of "believing masters" will be treated, and their masters will be required by the church to treat them, in effect, as if they were hired servants, or apprentices, under the protection of law. How obvious is it that such an administration of Christianity will tell, gradually perhaps, but infallibly, on the entire character of that community, quickening and guiding the moral sense of the whole people. How obvious that in that community the human sentiment which recognizes the slave as a man, and which acknowledges his human rightsthe sentiment which when it comes to assert itself through the forms of legislation, will speedily work out the abolition of slavery-cannot but be making progress. How obvious that in that community not only the slaves of "believing masters," but the whole of the enslaved population, will be continually and irresistibly rising in their intellectual and moral character, and commanding more and more of the respect of the ruling class. How obvious that Christianity, thus administered, will spread itself in that community, and will act with a power continually increasing, till every fetter is broken, and the

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