selves manifested good conduct, and a habit, or desire, to live together in conformity to the rules of civilized life. Even a casual cohabitation is often caught at by the master, and sanctioned, as permanent, if he can do so in accordance with the conduct and feelings of the negroes themselves.

That the owners of slaves have sometimes abused the power they possessed, and outraged the feelings of humanity in this behalf, is doubtless a fact. Nor do we wish to excuse such conduct, by saying that proud and wealthy parents sometimes outrage the feelings of common sense and of their own children in a somewhat similar way. These are abuses that can be, and should be corrected; and we are happy to inform Dr. Wayland that we have lived to see many abuses corrected, and hope that many more corrections may follow in their train. But we assure him that the wholesale denunciations of men who, in fact, know but little about the subjects of their distress, may produce great injury to the objects of their sympathies, but no possible benefit. And let us now, with the best feeling, inform Dr. Wayland, and his co-agitators, of one result of his and their actions in this matter. We assert what we know.

Thirty years ago, we occasionally had schools for negro children; nor was it uncommon for masters to send their favourite young slaves to these schools; nor did such acts excite attention or alarm; and, at the same time, any missionary had free access to that class of our population. But when we found, with astonishment, that our country was flooded with abolition prints, deeply laden with the most abusive falsehoods, with the obvious design to excite rebellion among the slaves, and to spread assassination and bloodshed through the land;-when we found these transient missionaries, mentally too insignificant to foresee the result of their conduct, or wholly careless of the consequences, preaching the same doctrines; these little schools and the mouths of these missionaries were closed. And great was the cry. Dr. Wayland knows whereabout lies the wickedness of these our acts! Let him and his coadjutors well understand that these results, whether for the benefit or injury of the slave, have been brought about by the work of their hands.

If these transient missionaries were the only persons who had power to teach the gospel to the slave, who has deprived the slaves of the gospel?

If these suggestions are true, will not Dr. Wayland look back

upon his labours with dissatisfaction? Does he behold their effects with joy? Has he thrown one ray of light into the mental darkness of benighted Africa? Has he removed one pain from the moral disease of her benighted children? If so perfectly adverse have been his toils, will he expect us to countenance his school, sanction his morality, or venerate his theology? A very small portion of poison makes the feast fatal!

Does he complain because some freemen lower themselves down to this promiscuous intercourse with the negro? We are dumb; we deliver them up to his lash! Or does he complain because we do not marry them ourselves? We surely have yet to learn, because we decline such marriages, and a deteriorated posterity, that, therefore, we interfere with the institution of marriage, or make it something which God did not. We had thought that the laws of God all looked towards a state of physical, intellectual, and moral improvement; and that such an amalgamation as would necessarily leave a more deteriorated race in our stead, would be sin, and would be punished, if in no other way, yet still by the very fact of such degradation. Or does Dr. Wayland deny that the negro is an inferior race of man to the white? If the slave and master were of the same race, as they once were in all parts of Europe, intermarriage between them would blot out the institution, as it has done there. In such case, his argument might have some force.

Under the Spanish law, a master might marry his female slave, or he might suffer any freeman to marry her; but the marriage, in either case, was emancipation to her. The wife was no longer a slave; and so by the Levitical law. See Deut. xxi. 14.

The laws of the Slave States of our Union forbid amalgamation with the negro race; consequently such a marriage would be a nullity, and the offspring take the condition of the mother.

The object of this law is to prevent the deterioration of the white race.

Thus we have seen that all the practical facts relating to the influence of the slavery of the Africans among us, touching the subject of marriage, as to them, are in opposition to what Dr. Wayland seems to suppose. In short, the slavery of the negroes in these States has a constantly continued tendency to change-to enforce an improvement of the morals of the African-to an approximation of the habits of Christian life.

LESSON VIII.

Ir is conceded by Dr. Wayland, that the Scriptures do not directly forbid or condemn slavery. In search of a path over this morass of difficulty, he says that the Scripture goes upon the "fair ground of teaching moral principles" "directly subversive of the principles of slavery ;" and quotes the golden rule in proof; and thus comes to the conclusion that, "if the gospel be diametrically opposed to the principle of slavery, it must be opposed to the practice of slavery." In excuse for this mode being pursued by the Author of our religion, he says

P. 212. "In this manner alone could its object, a universal moral revolution, have been accomplished. For, if it had forbidden the evil, instead of subverting the principle,—if it had proclaimed the unlawfulness of slavery and taught slaves to resist the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility, through the civilized world; its announcement would have been the signal of servile war; and the very name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten. amidst the agitations of universal bloodshed."

We have heretofore attempted to show that this doctrine is extremely gross error;-its very assertion goes to the extinction, the denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ and his religion. And we deeply lament that this was not one of the errors of Paley which Dr. Wayland has seen fit to expunge from his book. (See his Preface.)

Paley says, third book, part ii. chap. 3-"Slavery was a part of the civil constitution of most countries, when Christianity first appeared; yet no passage is to be found in the Christian Scriptures by which it is condemned or prohibited. This is true, for Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstained, as behooved it, from intermeddling with the civil institutions of any. But does it follow, from the silence of Scripture concerning them, that all the civil institutions which then prevailed were right? Or that the bad should not be exchanged for better?"

"Besides this, the discharging the slaves from all obligation to obey their masters, which is the consequence of pronouncing

slavery to be unlawful, would have had no better effect than to let loose one half of mankind upon the other. Slaves would have been tempted to embrace a religion which asserted their right to freedom; masters would hardly have been persuaded to consent to claims founded on such authority; the most calamitous of all contests, a bellum servile, might probably have ensued, to the reproach, if not the extinction, of the Christian name."

In these thoughtless remarks of Paley, abolition writers seem to have found a mine of argument, from which they have dug until they deemed themselves wealthy.

Channing, vol. ii. p. 101, says

"Slavery, in the age of the apostle, had so penetrated society, was so intimately interwoven with it, and the materials of servile war were so abundant, that a religion preaching freedom to the slave would have shaken the social fabric to its foundation, and would have armed against itself the whole power of the state. Paul did not then assail the institution. He satisfied himself with spreading principles, which, however slowly, could not but work its dissolution."

This author, thus having satisfied himself with a display which the greater portion of his readers deem original, commences, p. 103, and quotes from "The Elements of Moral Science," p. 212:

"This very course, which the gospel takes on this subject, seems to have been the only one that could have been taken in order to effect the universal abolition of slavery. The gospel was designed, not for one race or for one time, but for all races and for all times. It looked, not at the abolition of this form of evil for that age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence, the important object of its author was to gain it a lodgment in every part of the known world:" and concludes with our quotation from the author.

Dr. Barnes "fights more shy;" he sees "the trap." The Biblical Repertory has unveiled to his view the awful abyss to which this doctrine necessarily leaps. Yet the abyss must be passed; the facts, the doctrine of Paley, and the gulf, must be got over, in some way, or abolition doctrines must be given up. For thirty pages, like a candle-fly, he coquets around the light of this doctrine, until he gathers courage, and finally falls into it under the plea of "expediency." He quotes Wayland's Letters to Fuller, p. 73, which says

"This form of expediency-the inculcating of a fundamental truth, rather than of the duty which springs immediately out of

it, seems to me innocent. I go further: in some cases, it may be really demanded," &c.

"And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life." Luke xviii. 18.

This man was rich-probably had slaves. Was it inexpedient for the Son of God to have plainly told him of its wickedness? Was not the occasion quite appropriate, if such had been the Saviour's view?

When the keeper of the prison said to Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what shall I do to be saved?" was it inexpedient in them to have mentioned this sin?

When the subject of slavery was mentioned in Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, in Timothy, Titus, and Peter, was it still inexpedient? And in the case of Philemon, "the dearly beloved and fellow-labourer," when Paul was pleading for the runaway slave, in what did the inexpediency consist? When the centurion applied to the Son of God, and boasted that he owned slaves, can we bring forward this paltry excuse?

This doctrine of Paley has been so commonly quoted, let us be excused for presenting a remark from the "Essays," reprinted from the Princeton Review, second series, p. 283:

"It is not by argument that the abolitionists have produced the present unhappy excitement. Argument has not been the character of their publications. Denunciations of slave-holding as man-stealing, robbery, piracy, and worse than murder; consequently vituperation of slaveholders as knowingly guilty of the worst of crimes; passionate appeals to the feelings of the inhabitants of the Northern States; gross exaggerations of the moral and physical condition of the slaves, have formed the staple of their addresses to the public."

P. 286. "Unmixed good or evil, however, in such a world as ours, is a rare thing. Though the course pursued by the abolitionists has produced a great preponderance of mischief, it may incidentally occasion no little good. It has rendered it incumbent on every man to endeavour to obtain, and, as far as he can, to communicate, definite opinions and correct principles on the whole subject. The subject of slavery is no longer one on which men are allowed to be of no mind at all. * ** The public mind is effectually aroused from a state of indifference; and it is the duty of all to seek the truth, and to speak in kindness, but with decision. * We recognise no authoritative rule

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