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things than which the upholders of slavery could wish nothing more propitious to the maintenance of their system. It was the brazen wall of religious conservatism erected around their institution, equally impervious to the inroad of truth and to

the escape of error. It was the stern protection of things

exactly as they are, for impinging upon which the Saviour was condemned to the cross, and the assault upon which has from that day down to this been attempted by the reformer always at the hazard of his peace, and often of every thing deemed valuable in this world. How long it might have lasted as a defence against the most bitter attacks, if it had been left to itself, it is difficult to decide. We believe it would have been strong enough to resist the moral pressure from Europe, including all the fulminations from the papal chair, had it not been for the aggressive and violent temper manifested by the owners of slaves in the defence of their own interests. This has led them to the assumption of extreme positions, which has roused many who might otherwise have remained indifferent. It has tempted them to the introduction of new measures in the civil policy of the country, and it has carried them to the position in the Church that slavery is right. Such a course leaves no room for a condition of neutrality. The clergy have at last opened their eyes to the truth, that, one way or the other, action is demanded of them. If indeed it be true, what the Church of the South says, that the Bible sanctions and Christ permits slavery, then are they bound to show it, that they may release themselves from all suspicion of upholding wrong. If, on the other hand, it be not true, then are they still more bound to disown any sympathy with a defence which involves a perversion of the principles of the faith.

The effort of Dr. Fuller, who may now be regarded as the great champion of the Southern Church, appears to be to confine the consideration of the question of slavery as exclusively as possible to the abuse of the social relation; in other words, to regard it as a mere political institution, by which it is obvious that the Church both North and South would be relieved from the necessity of taking cognizance of it. But in order to do this, the hard task has been laid upon him of proving that a system productive of countless evils to a large part of the human race, and violating many Christian

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ideas of moral obligation, is not offensive in the sight of God. His syllogism is as follows:

"1. Whatever the holy God has expressly sanctioned among any people cannot be in itself a sin.

"2. God did expressly sanction slavery among the Hebrews. "3. Therefore slavery cannot be in itself a sin."

Dr. Fuller seeks not to be wise above what is written. He rejects all appeals to the moral sense. He contemns, as the vanity of worldly and irreligious men, every standard of judgment excepting the written word of God. He seeks not to discuss any question of right and wrong, but, planting himself boldly upon authority, he at once pushes his opponents into the alternative of disputing the validity of the Scriptures, or of conceding to him the advantage of their support. He would force them either to deny that the Bible is the word of God, or, if conceding that point, to assume that God can sanction sin. For himself, he seeks to express no opinion of his own. It is enough for him to point to the letter of the law of the Hebrews, and then emphatically to declare that "what God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be sin."

But the first question which this strong way of stating the proposition presents to us is, why so marked a difference should be perceptible in the degree of approbation claimed for slavery in the two parts of the sacred volume. If slavery be not a sin, and therefore receive the express sanction of God in the Old Testament, why should it have become in the New only permissible, the express sanction being tacitly withdrawn by Jesus Christ? The unavoidable and imperative implication is that of progress and improvement in the moral law, between the period of the Hebrew dispensation and that of the Saviour. "For the law was given by Moses," says the Evangelist, "but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." But if it be once conceded,and we can imagine no one so hardy as to deny it, — that a more perfect rule of action was furnished to man in the latter than in the former case, by which sundry offences were counted sinful by the Christian which were not so counted by the Jewish law, then one of two consequences must result. If the act prohibited was sinful, then we are driven to the necessity of inferring that God has sometimes sanctioned sin; if, on the other hand, the act was made to be sin by his decree at one time, which was made not to be sin

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by his decree before that time, then we must infer that there is such a thing in the Divine system as progress for the world, and hence that the mere fact of its pleasing the Deity, for his wise purposes, to tolerate an evil for a time is by no means to be made to justify its perpetuation by the will of man for ever after. Dr. Fuller may take either horn of the dilemma at his pleasure. The first would destroy his emphatic statement; the second overthrows the major proposition of his formidable syllogism.

Let us now go one step farther in the examination of this same major proposition. "Whatever the holy God has expressly sanctioned among any people cannot be in itself a sin." We are told in the Old Testament that the Lord directed Moses to avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites. Moses thereupon armed twelve thousand of the men of the twelve tribes, and they warred against the Midianites, and "slew all the males," and took all the women captives and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods. Now are we to infer at this day, that, because the Lord directed Moses to avenge the children of Israel in this manner in the early days of the world, it would be no sin in the people of the United States to proceed in like manner, and slay all the three or four millions of males their enemies in Mexico, and take all the women captive and their little ones, and the spoil of all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods?

But not content with the severity of this vengeance, Moses became wroth with the officers of the host, because they ventured to save all the women alive. He therefore ordered them to make up for the omission by massacring every male among the little ones and every woman that had known man. But the "women children that had not known a man" he ordered to be spared as the spoils of victory. His commands were obeyed. The females thus saved from slaughter amounted in number to thirty-two thousand. One half of them, or sixteen thousand, less thirty-two reserved to pay the Lord's tribute, were given up to the warriors of the expedition; the other half were given to the people at large. They were slaves taken in war. And all this the Lord sanctioned by his order to Moses.

Now are we in this nineteenth century of the Christian era to be told, that, because God, doubtless for wise purposes and as a severe chastisement, once sanctioned among the

Jews a series of acts like these, therefore it is now and must ever be considered among the human race as no sin to make war against our neighbours by massacring all the male children and married females, and to set apart the unmarried remainder as the prey, one half of them of a licentious soldiery, and the other half of the community at large? Has the world grown thousands of years older without the introduction of a milder law among men than this, without the softening influence of a code of love?

It will be said at once in reply, that this better law is to be found in the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus. But this answer immediately concedes the fact, that a higher and better system than the Jewish one has been shown to man, by following the spirit of which he is enabled to advance in the career of improvement, instead of blindly adhering to a dead and obsolete letter. It concedes the fact, that, although the Deity may, for his own best designs, have established a system for the Jews which sanctioned what we now consider sin, he does nevertheless introduce a change by the later law making that sin which before was not sin, and to that extent points out movement in a better direction as the spirit of his government. But if this be true in any one instance, are we to suppose that he designed such movement to stop there, that he did not intend that any application whatever should be made of the new law beyond the precise limit of the literal injunctions of the Saviour? Was the social system for ever to remain in the same state of corruption in which it existed in the world at the period of his advent, saving and excepting in those particulars in which he specified a distinct prohibition of offences then committed? Such a construction may indeed be the true one, but if it be, then has the progress of the world far outrun the teachings of Christianity; and we are all, including the learned divine himself, daily guilty of being wise above what is written.

Take it as we may, the argument of Dr. Fuller is neither more nor less than an endeavour to shelter wrong-doing under the authority of God. The evidence to sustain him reduces itself to the acknowledged fact, that the Deity permits the existence of evil. In reading the ancient record of the Jews, we observe many acts there stated to have been done by his direction, which our later law, as well as our moral sense, teaches us to be irreconcilable with right. But are we for this reason to fly at once to the hypothesis of Dr. Ful

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ler, to drown our faculty of moral judgment, and deliberately to declare that no act can be sinful which God has ever at any time sanctioned; and hence are we to insist that such acts are justifiable now, because they were justified once? We think not. We prefer to retain the exercise of our own reason, and, without seeking to invalidate or even to explain the testimony upon which the argument has been based, to believe, that, although God may tolerate wrong-doing for a time, it is only for the purpose of ultimately making it more fully subserve the development of the right. We see that wrongs of all sorts now abound, and among them none is more flagrant than the tyranny which one human being is permitted to exercise over the body and mind of his equal, utterly against his will. To maintain that this wrong shall continue for ever to be called right, unless there be a direct revelation of God's will specifying it to be sin, and this solely because it is found to have been practised in the infancy of the world under a law confessedly imperfect, is equivalent to tying down the moral and religious nature of the race, and to visiting in a literal manner the sins of the fathers upon their children down very far beyond the third and fourth generation.

Let us now proceed to the great position of the Southern Church as taken by its champion. Slavery is not necessarily sinful. Its origin may have been in sin. The consequences to which it often leads may be sinful. Yet, taken by itself, the holding of slaves cannot be regarded as sinful, if there be no wrong done by the owner to the slave beyond the violation of his personal freedom. We believe we state the case fully and fairly. Dr. Fuller abandons the beginning and the end of slavery as untenable, but he thinks, with these sacrifices, that he can keep a firm hold upon the middle. Let us now see how much his concessions will avail him.

The question for consideration is, whether the holding of slaves be or be not an offence against right, in other words, sin. In order fully to judge of this, it becomes absolutely necessary to consider the earlier question, what it was that made men slaves. If the cause was in itself a just cause, then is the mere continuation of the tenure no sin. if, on the other hand, that cause was in itself a great wrong, then will it appear that the continuation of the tenure is nothing less than an aggravation of the wrong. Here it is that Dr. Fuller seems to have suffered his ideas of moral justice

But