soil, no longer exhausted by the curse of slavery, shall brighten into beauty like Eden, and shall give up its riches freely, to fill the hands of free and happy industry. Where Christianity is clearly and faithfully preached as the law of the spirit of life in Jesus Christ, and where it is administered in the form of a legitimate and fraternal church discipline, slavery must be a transient institution, for slavery belongs entirely to that order of things which the ascendency of Christianity annihilates. Christianity civilizes, all its tendencies are towards the highest possible forms of social order and improvement: slavery is essentially barbarous. Christianity humanizes, it develops the faculties and affections of true manhood in every individual whom it reaches: slavery brutalizes. The genius of Christianity is love and good will the genius of slavery is violence and fear. Christianity makes all men equal in God's regard, equal before the dread bar of justice, equal at the cross, equal at the throne of grace, equal in the church: slavery abhors the idea that every man is, in respect to rights, the equal of his fellow-man; it rejects the law of thought which makes justice and equity (or equalness) convertible terms in every human language. Christianity is light, it quickens every mind into intelligence, it pours upon all souls an illumination from the skies: slavery is of the darkness, it hates and dreads the light, it seals up the souls of men in ignorance, it gathers around itself night deep and murky, for darkness is its element. Christianity and slavery, wherever they co-exist, must needs be like the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persian mythology-the opposite principles of light

and darkness-forever contending each to subdue the other. If Christianity continues to hold forth its light, in that light slavery must decay and perish. If Christianity yields, obscures its light, and enters into a confederacy with darkness, it decays and dies in the chains of its captivity.

I dare not ask for another column in this week's paper; and therefore, though I am anxious to bring the discussion to a close on my part, I must postpone the application which I intend to make of these remarks, till I can have another hearing. Meanwhile it will not have escaped the reader's notice, that though I commenced with a review of the action taken by the Board of Foreign Missions, and though the general title with which I began has been retained for the sake of marking the continuity of the series, I have in view not merely the specific missionary question touching the Cherokee and Choctaw churches, but that more comprehensive and momentous ecclesiastical question, with reference to which the debates at Brooklyn were conducted. The time has come, when the ministers of the gospel and the professed followers of Christ, individually and in their various ecclesiastical assemblies, are called to inquire calmly yet earnestly, whether the churches in the slaveholding States, with which they are respectively in communion and correspondence, are really acting in conformity with Christian principle towards such of their members as are owners of slaves. The reports are such concerning the administration of discipline on this subject in the southern churches-the extent to which those reports have gained belief throughout the Christian

world is such-that, in the absence of any authentic denial of their truth on the part of those churches, the question, What ought we to do in this matter? must come up in all the ecclesiastical bodies with which those churches are in correspondence. It is well known what arrangements are in progress to urge this question effectually upon the notice of the Triennial Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, now soon to meet. It is equally well known that the same question will be introduced again-as it has been heretofore under one form and another-in those Congregational bodies of New England which are in correspondence with the two divisions of the Presbyterian Church. This question ought not to be evaded or postponed; nor can it be much longer.

Those who have favored me with letters, anonymously or otherwise, proposing particular points for my consideration, will probably find their inquiries answered, either formally or informally, before I close. Every communication which in any way helps me to know how far I am understood or misunderstood, is thankfully accepted, though it may not be in my power to make any other than this general acknowledgment.

NO. VII.

DUTY OF THE CHURCHES IN THE FREE STATES.

THE idea of communion among Christian churches, or between confederacies of churches, implies some degree of responsibility in regard to the maintenance of church discipline. Much more is this

implied, where communion takes the form of a settled correspondence and regulated intercourse. Such mutual responsibility, necessary as the basis of mutual recognition, is not inconsistent with mutual independence and mutual equality of powers. In the language of the Cambridge Platform, (ch. xv. §2,) illustrating this principle, "Paul had no authority over Peter, yet when he saw Peter not walking with a right foot, he publicly rebuked him before the church. Though churches have no more authority one over another than one Apostle had over another, yet as one Apostle might admonish another, so may one church admonish another, and yet without usurpation." I quote this not as "authority," but as good common sense well expressed.

I need not, then, spend any time in showing that the churches in the free States have a right to concern themselves with the manner in which discipline is administered, or not administered, in the Southern churches. The only questions are, whether there is in existing facts an occasion for the exercise of this right; and if so, in what form and by what procedure shall the right be exercised?

To the first of these questions, the existing facts are a sufficient answer. A 66 common fame" has spread through this land, and has been sounded out to the ends of the world, which charges upon the southern churches, indiscriminately, a scandalousneglect of Christian discipline. It is charged upon those churches that members in full communion, office-bearers, ministers, commit, uncensured, and habitually, crimes which cause the name of Christ to be blasphemed. It is charged upon them that

communicants, elders, pastors, preachers of what pretends to be Christianity, are tolerated in treating their servants, whom barbarous laws have put into their power, as mere property, to be bought and sold for gain, or at the convenience or caprice of the buyer and seller. It is charged that masters in the communion of those churches are tolerated in governing their servants and dealing with them, not as human beings having human rights, but as cattle driven to their labor with the whip, moved by no human impulse to industry, and having no more interest in their own labor than the muzzled ox "that treadeth out the corn." It is charged that the servants of such masters live and die without the knowledge of God's illuminating and quickening Word; with no advantages or means for the development of their nature as intelligent beings created in God's image; borne down under an oppression heavier, in this most vital respect, than that which degrades the subjects of Russian or Austrian despotism, more unchristian than even that which keeps down the slaves of Antichrist himself within the immediate civil jurisdiction of Rome. It is charged that servants of such masters, when their masters might protect them, are robbed of God's primeval institution of marriage; that instead of being permitted to live together, husband and wife, in a relation which can be dissolved only by death, or by crime on their part, they live, male and female, in a temporary pairing unsanctioned by religion, unprotected by power, and liable to be dissolved at the convenience of the master. It is charged that the chastity of female servants, under such masters, has no protection