IEW
OF THIS SUBJECT, WHAT OUGHT AMERICAN
CHRISTIANS TO DO, AND REFRAIN
FROM DOING?

Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.--TERENCE.
Bear ye one another's burdens.--PAUL.

ESSAY.

A great moral question is, in this nineteenth century, being tried
before the church of Christ, and at the bar of public sentiment. It is,
Whether the system of servitude known as American slavery be a system
whose perpetuity is compatible with pure Christianity? Whether, with the
Bible in her hand, the church may lawfully indorse, participate in, and
help perpetuate, this system? Or whether, on the other hand, the system
be, in its origin, nature, and workings, intrinsically evil; a thing
which, if, like concubinage and polygamy, God has indeed tolerated in
his church, he never approved of; and which, in the progress of a pure
Christianity, must inevitably become extinct? I feel assured that the
latter of these propositions will, without argument, command the assent
of the mass of living Christians. But there are those in the church who
array themselves on the other side. While they would not justify the
least inhumanity in the treatment of slaves, they profess to believe
that slavery itself has the approbation of Jehovah, and may with
propriety be perpetuated in the church and the world. At their hands I
would respectfully solicit a patient hearing, while I proceed to assign
several reasons for differing with them in opinion.

First. Slavery is a condition of society not founded in nature. When
God, in his Word, demands that children shall be in subordination to
their parents, and citizens to the constituted civil authorities, we
need no why and wherefore to enable us to see the reasonableness of
these requirements. We feel that they are no arbitrary enactments, but
indispensable to the best interests of families and of society, and
therefore founded in nature. We are prepared, too, from their obvious
necessity and utility, to rank them among the permanent statutes of the
Divine Legislator. But can as much be said of slavery? Is there such an
obvious fitness and utility in one man's being, against his will, owned
and controlled by another, as to prepare us to say that such an
ownership is founded in the very constitution of things? None will
pretend that there is. Not only is slavery not founded in nature, but,

Second. It is condemned by the very instincts of our moral constitut