on a subject so important as this is; and whatever may be the inference as to the strength of his argument, there are none who will charge him with a departure from the proper sphere of his duty.

I have been led to the discussion of the Scripture question in this manner, by the following considerations :— (a) Because the institution of slavery is defended by many individuals of respectable names, and by entire bodies of men, by an appeal to the Bible. (See ch. 1.) (b) Because, although there have been some professed investigations of the Scriptures on this subject, evincing considerable research, submitted to the public, yet they did not any of them furnish so full and thorough an examination as seemed to me to be desirable. Believing that the spirit of the Bible is against slavery, and that all the arguments alleged in favour of it from the Bible are the result of a misunderstanding of its true spirit, and that the honour of religion demands that that argument should be placed fairly before the world, I was desirous of doing what I could to make the teachings of the Bible seen and appreciated by my fellow-men. (c) Because it did not appear to me to be proper to preach on it so fully as would be necessary if I had gone into a thorough examination of the subject in my pulpit instructions; and besides this, the critical nature of many of the investigations is little fitted to the pulpit. Nor if I had deemed it proper to make this a more prominent subject of my preaching, could I have reached one of the main objects which seemed to me to be desirable. The people to whom I minister will bear me witness that I have not concealed my views from them on the subject of slavery. I have endeavoured to give it the place which it appeared to me it ought to occupy in my ministrations in the circumstances in which I am placed. But my lot is not cast in a slaveholding community. I do not know that I have an advocate of slavery in my church, or that there is one who statedly attends on my ministry who would willingly be the owner of a slave. I

confess also that it seems to me that any one topic, except the cross of Christ, however important in itself, may be introduced too frequently into the pulpit, and that undue prominence in preaching is given to this in many churches where slavery does not exist. I do not suppose that this occurs too frequently in those places where slavery does exist; but where the pen is free, and a man may make his voice heard beyond the bounds of his own congregation, however important it may be that he should make his views decidedly understood in reference to every form of national sin, and should exhibit the fair teachings of the Bible on every subject in the proper proportions, it is better to endeavour to influence the public mind in some other method than by making any one topic a very constant subject of discourse in the pulpit. Slavery, though a great evil, is not the only evil in the land. Its influence is indeed vast, and there is no part of the republic that is wholly free from it, but there are other bad influences in our country also. I will not undertake to say how prominent a minister should make this topic in communities where slavery exists, and where he is called constantly to address those who sustain the relation of master and slave; nor will I venture to say that I should be in any way likely to be more faithful in this respect if my lot were cast there, than I fear is the case with most of those who reside there, but I may be allowed to suggest that the prominent evils which we should assail in preaching are those which are near, and not those which are remote; those which directly pertain to our own people, rather than those which pertain primarily to a distant community; and those in reference to which we may expect immediate action on the part of those who hear us, in forsaking their own sins, rather than such topics as will lead them to judge of others who are living in wickedness. (d) I have been led to adopt this course because it was in this way only that I could hope in any manner to influence those whom I desired to reach. I

have already said that I am not accustomed to preach to many such. But I would hope that there are not a few who may be willing to examine an argument on slavery, if proposed with candour, and if pursued with a manifest desire to know what is the teaching of the Bible. There are, I am persuaded, not a few such men in the slaveholding portions of our country. I have never indeed been at the South, but my situation has given me an opportunity of becoming acquainted with not a few Southern gentlemen, and that acquaintance has been such as to induce me to believe that there are large numbers there who would examine with candour an argument proposed on this subject. Indeed, I have been led to apprehend that there are many there who, in this respect, are much in advance of many at the North, and that among these are many who exhibit a degree of candour which we do not always find in those portions of our country in which slavery does not exist. There is a hesitancy at the North in speaking of it as an evil; a desire to apologize for it, and even to defend it as a scripture institution, which by no means meets the convictions of the great body of men at the South, and for which they do not thank us. They regard slavery as an unmixed evilas the direst calamity of their portion of the republic. They consider it to be contrary to the spirit of the Bible. They look upon it as a curse in the midst of which they were born; as an evil entailed upon them without their consent, and which they desire above all things to get rid of. They remember with little gratitude the laws and cupidity of the mother country by which it was imposed on them, and the Northern ships by which the inhabitants of Africa were conveyed to their shores; and they little thank the professors in Theological Seminaries, and the pastors of the churches, and the editors of papers, and the ecclesiastical bodies at the North, who labour to convince the world that it is not an evil, and that it is one of the designs and tendencies of Christianity to rivet the curse on them for ever. Such

men ask for no defence of slavery from the North. They look for a more manly voice-for more decided tones in behalf of freedom, from those whom God has favoured with the entire blessings of liberty, and they ask of us that we will aid them to free themselves from a burden imposed on them by the joint wickedness and cupidity of our fatherland and the North; not that we will engage in the miserable business of attempting to convince the world that the South must always groan under this malediction, and that even the influence of Christianity will be only to make the evil there eternal. There have been more published defences of slavery from the Bible at the North, than there have been at the South. A Christian man can look with some respect on a defence of slavery at the South-for they who are there live in the midst of it, and it is natural for us to love and defend the institutions in the midst of which we were born; but what respect can we have for such a defence emanating from the North?

It is a subject of not unfrequent complaint, that, in the examination of this subject, the adversaries of the system endeavour to show that slavery as it exists in our own country is contrary to the Bible, instead of confining themselves to the naked question whether slavery in the abstract is right or wrong. They are willing to admit that there are many 'abuses' in the system as it now exists; that there is much that is oppressive and unjust in the laws; and while they regard slavery in itself as not inconsistent with the Bible, they admit that there is much in the system in our own country which they will not undertake to defend. They maintain that the controversy should be confined to the naked question whether slavery in any form is inconsistent with the Bible, and that it is unfair in this argument to make an appeal to slavery as it now exists, in determining the morality of the institution. Thus Dr. Fuller, in accordance with language often used by good men at the South, says :"What I am writing about is slavery, but let no one suppose

that I am defending all the slave laws." "In reference to the laws of South Carolina I am not called to express myself in this discussion. Suffice it to say, that most of them are virtually repealed by universal practice. The law, for example, forbidding slaves to assemble without the presence of so many white persons, is a dead letter, whenever the meeting is for religious purposes." "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.' Thus also the conductors of the Princeton Biblical Repertory say:-"We have little apprehension that any one can so far mistake our object, or the purport of our remarks, as to suppose either that we regard slavery as a desirable institution, or that we approve of the slave laws of the Southern states. So far from this being the case, the extinction of slavery, and the amelioration of those laws, are as sincerely desired by us as by any of the abolitionists." "It follows necessarily, from what has been said, that all those laws which are designed to restrict the master in the discharge of the duties which flow from his relation to his slaves; which forbid his teaching them to read, or which prohibit marriage among them, or which allow of the separation of those who are married, or which render insecure the possession of their earnings, or are otherwise in conflict with the word of God, are wicked laws; laws which do not find their justification in the admission of the right of ownership in the master, but are in direct contravention of the obligations which necessarily flow from that right. If the laws of the land forbade parents to instruct their children, or permitted them to sell them to the Turks, there would be a general outcry against the atrocity of such laws; but no man would be so absurd as to infer that having children was a great sin. Parents who complied with such laws would be great sinners, but not parents who did their duty to

* Letters to Dr. Wayland, pp. 158, 159, 211.