to have been forced to
grant what you will gratefully bestow. His temporary absence from you
may have opened the way for his permanent continuance with you. Not now
as a slave. Heaven forbid! But superior to a slave. Superior, did I say?
Take him to your bosom, as a beloved brother; for I own him as a son,
and regard him as such, in all the relations of life, both as a man and
a Christian.--'Receive him as myself.' And that nothing may hinder you
from complying with my request at once, I hereby promise, without
adverting to your many and great obligations to me, to pay you every
cent which he took from your drawer. Any preparation which my comfort
with you may require, you will make without much delay, when you learn,
that I intend, as soon as I shall be able 'to perform the journey,' to
make you a visit."

And what if Dr. Baxter, in giving an account of this letter should
publicly declare that Prof. Stuart of Andover regarded slaveholding as
lawful; for that "he had sent Archy back to his son Isaac, with an
apology for his running away" to be held in perpetual slavery? With what
propriety might not the professor exclaim: False, every syllable false.
I sent him back, NOT TO BE HELD AS A SLAVE, _but recognized as a dear
brother, in all respects, under every relation, civil and
ecclesiastical_. I bade my son receive _Archy as myself_. If this was
not equivalent to a requisition to set him fully and most honorably
free, and that, too, on the ground of natural obligation and Christian
principle, then I know not how to frame such a requisition.

I am well aware that my supposition is by no means strong enough fully
to illustrate the case to which it is applied. Prof. Stuart lacks
apostolical authority. Isaac Stuart is not a leading member of a church
consisting, as the early churches chiefly consisted, of what the world
regard as the dregs of society--"the offscouring of all things." Nor was
slavery at Colosse, it seems, supported by such barbarous usages, such
horrid laws as disgrace the South.

But it is time to turn to another passage which, in its bearing on the
subject in hand, is, in our view, as well as in the view of Dr. Fisk and
Prof. Stuart, in the highest degree authoritative and instructive. "Let
as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of
all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not blasphemed. And
they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they