n all circumstances, a disciplinable offence in the
church; or that it should, without exception, constitute a barrier to
church-membership, or to the communion of saints at Christ's sacramental
board. While we believe that all the great principles of God's Word go
to subvert slavery, and while we are constrained to regard the holding
of slaves as diminishing the evidence of a man's piety, and thus far
alienating his claims to a good standing in the Christian church, we may
nevertheless make exceptions, and not keep a man out of the church, or
discipline him when in it, merely because he sustains temporarily the
relation of master, not for selfish ends, but, as in rare cases, for
benevolent reasons. But if a man defends the system, and takes away from
a fellow man inalienable human rights, then we may and should refuse him
admission, or subject him to discipline, as the case may be. But,
obvious and important as is this distinction, it is one which some
anti-slavery men may have failed to make; and that failure may have
prejudiced or retarded the cause of emancipation. A good cause suffers
by having a single uncandid statement or untenable argument advanced in
its support; and the friends of the enslaved must afford their opponents
no room for saying, that their reasonings are illogical or
anti-scriptural.

4. We must not, in seeking the extinction of American slavery, so
insist on its immediate abolition as to repudiate the responsibility
which a master owes to this dependent and depressed class of his fellow
beings; but that that end be kept steadily in view, to be accomplished
as speedily as is consistent with the best good of the parties
concerned. The immediate and total extinction of southern slavery, if
not obviously impossible, is of questionable expediency. The upas of
American slavery has struck its roots so deep, and shot its branches so
far, and so interlaced itself with all surrounding objects, that, to
have it instantaneously and unreservedly uprooted, might prove, in many
cases, disastrous; and, at all events, is not to be expected. To say
nothing of other obstacles to the immediate abolition of Southern
slavery, the highest good of many of the slaves makes it inexpedient.
Some, probably many of them, need to pass through an educating
process,--a kind of mental and moral apprenticeship,--in order to their
profiting largely by the boon of emancipation.[J]

II. We are now to inquire, lastly, what duties, p