nk we should
loudly protest against a system which allowed the occurrence of it at
all.

You will please, my dear sir, apply the foregoing illustration to the
liabilities and actual workings of the slave system at the South, just
so far as it is applicable, and no further. If there are any points in
which the analogy fails, I will thank you to point them out to me in
your next.

With much love and esteem,

I remain yours, most truly.

LETTER VI.

SACREDNESS OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION.--GOD ALONE CAN DISSOLVE
IT.--THE "HIGHER LAW."--SLAVERY SANCTIONS POLYGAMY AND
ADULTERY.--RELATION OF PARENTS TO THEIR CHILDREN.--FEARFUL
RESPONSIBILITY ASSUMED.

MY DEAR CHRISTIAN BROTHER,--My objections to any system of government
that interferes at will with the family relation, and forcibly separates
husbands and wives, parents and children, do not arise chiefly from the
personal wrongs and bitter woes inflicted upon its victims. A
contemplation of these is calculated to affect our sensibilities, and
excite the tender sympathies of our nature; but there is a more enlarged
Christian view which forces itself upon us. If we could by some magic
process allay the anguish of the stricken heart, and heal its wounds
when the strongest ties of nature are rent asunder,--could we even
obliterate the susceptibilities of the soul, destroy natural affection,
and render man more callous than the brutes, so that he could be torn
from his home and kindred with less pain than they,--in a _moral_ point
of view the case would be altered but little. As I have remarked in a
previous letter, the _marriage relation_ was instituted by God, and he
made it indissoluble. "What God hath joined together let not man put
asunder," is the language of "holy writ;" and whoever, for any cause
which God himself has not specified, breaks up this relation, encroaches
upon God's prerogative, and goes directly in face of his positive
commands. Much has been said of late, seriously, sarcastically, and
contemptuously, about a "higher law;" but notwithstanding the improper
use often made of that term, there is an important sense in which you,
and I, and every Christian recognize what that term implies. If, on any
subject whatever, human enactments do obviously conflict with the
enactments of God, then God's law is the "_higher_," and must be obeyed.
To deny this is worse than infidelity.

Now, brother, does not the system of slavery in the United States
tolerate