without courting or allowing myself to be courted to a deceitful, hypocritical measure. I have already adverted to the notable exploit you performed at Paisley in ordaining a dumb elder and a daft deacon,-both of them forced upon the people by your * * * * * * conduct, contrary to the real minds and inclinations of the members, as was fully manifest by the former afterwards laying down the office as one forced upon the church against their consciences.

An elder acquires great credit with you as eminent for discipline when he cheerfully undertakes to execute even your mistakes! If he manages two or three of these with art and address, he is considered not only as fit for guiding the church to which he belongs, but he becomes a very fit person for managing dubious cases in distant churches: he is frequently employed about such matters; and by this he gains the character of a good ruler or disciplinarian. Again, a private member is said to understand and love the discipline when he supports the elders in all cases, bad as well as good; and as the fame and character of members depend so much on this course, is it any wonder that we sometimes see men prostituting their consciences to attain weight and influence in the church? Yea, some have climbed to the elder's office by this course.

I have sometimes thought that Robert Sandeman is not, nor does he want to be, this good disciplinarian; neither does he relish that pushing-forward-way of carrying all before him on conjecture, without sifting a case to the bottom and ascertaining whether his own suspicions or the suspicions of others be well or ill founded; or, when necessity calls for it, instructing before he proceeds to extremities. I am really of opinion that the usual manner of carrying such things, instead of being the discipline of the Lord's house, is more like biting and devouring one another, and that its tendency is to consume one another. I have observed that the most active in this kind of discipline are the least conscientious, and those that are most formal in their profession, and that it destroys the true discipline of the House of God. It arms the man who is ready to enlist in any cause with weapons of destruction often against the guiltless; and frivolous matters are magnified into things of great account. I am led to think Mr. Sandeman is not this good disciplinarian, nor does he like it, if I may judge from his conduct in the case of R. O., and from various things I have heard of him. Nevertheless, he deserves the name of loving the Lord's discipline. Touch the faith, and you touch the apple of his eye. Let a man discover ignorance of, or enmity towards, the truth, and his soul rises with righteous indignation. Manifest an unwillingness to bear the cross, and with great willingness he will quit with such a

one, sending him back again to the world as his God! Show ungodliness and worldly lusts, and, without repentance, he will have no connection with you. Deceit, hypocrisy, and similar evil works are subjects of hard and severe discipline with him. In short, give him a discipline which he can see through, and he will hold the grip till satisfaction be given.

While connected with Mr. Sandeman in church fellowship, I have often freely acknowledged that if I ever knew a man by whom I was in danger of saying with the Corinthians, "I am of such a one," Robert Sandeman was that man. Yet I can, with a good conscience, say, it was not because he was a fine writer or preacher; but my regard for him sprung from the fervent unaffected regard he daily witnessed to the Gospel, and his peculiar method of leading and guiding a church, displaying nothing of the master, but exemplifying the brother in Christ, destitute of all those little politics which are essentially necessary to form the character of what is falsely termed "a good disciplinarian."

His last discourse in Glasgow, when on his way to America, has been much upon my mind, and much in my thoughts, since he parted with the church. His text was Luke xvii. 20—25. Keeping his eye fixed on the metaphor of lightning, and speaking of the divine sovereignty in the appearances of the Gospel, he said, "Like lightning it visits one region, makes a short stay, and then visits another." I considered him as here having in his eye the Gospel taking root in America; and at the same time cautioning us in the most solemn manner, lest we should provoke the Lord to remove our candlestick from its place. He was led to speak pretty fully on the Gospel doctrine, the nature of Christ's kingdom, and of Gospel churches. Then addressing himself to the auditory, he spoke to this purpose: "Are any dozen or half-dozen of you convinced of the truth of these things, and yet dissatisfied with our conduct, as churches of Christ? Unite among yourselves. The smallness of your number need not discourage you. The Scripture leaves you at no loss how to proceed. You have full power to choose your own bishops and deacons-to observe what Christ has commanded; and you have all heaven on your side, and all the authority you can desire to go about every ordinance of the Gospel."

At the time this was spoken, I considered it a stretch beyond our ordinary notions of things; and since then my thoughts have been employed on what he delivered, in a way you can easily conceive. * * * * * * *

I am, &c. &c.,

JAMES DUNCAN.

SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

The following article is extracted from a weekly newspaper lately established at Birmingham, Warwickshire, under the title of the REFORMER;' the Editor of which, if we are not misinformed, is R. M. BEVERLEY, Esq., renowned for his 'Letter to the Archbishop of York,' and other spirited pamphlets. As the Millennial Harbinger' finds its way to the United States, we are desirous that the American Baptists should receive the benefit of his gentle remonstrance!—

SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

In our last publication we gave a continuation of Mr. George Thompson's Journal,' detailing the progress of his exertions for the cause of Abolition in America. There was one sentence in that journal deserving particular attention: Mr. Garrison made some remarks on the letter recently sent by the Baptists in and near London, as a reply to one addressed by the latter association to this country on the subject of slavery. The document put forth by the American Baptists is a weak and wicked production: it is everything the slaveholder could desire. It apologizes for his sin, pleads for the continuance of the abomination, and seeks to throw the guilt of the system upon those who lived a century ago." This commentary on the letter of the American Baptists, though expressed in strong language, is but a gentle criticism on the atrocity of the subject. A letter in the last 'Patriot' (the 4th of a very valuable series) signed "S. Blackwell, New York, March 31, 1835," enters into a minute examination of this letter of the American Baptists, and ably exposes all its lies, dissimulation, and tricks. To one point especially we must refer our readers. Thus speak these Transatlantic perverters of truth: "We have the best evidence that our slave-holding brethren are Christians, sincere followers of the Lord. In every other part of their conduct they adorn the doctrine of our God and Saviour. We cannot, therefore, feel it right to use language, or adopt measures, which might tend to break the ties which bind them to us in our general convention, and in numerous other benevolent societies." Having thus preached the Gospel, they very deliberately declare that "their southern brethren are generally, both Ministers and people, slaveholders." What an awful delusion, some people would say, is here exhibited! but we will not allow it such a gentle designation; it is deliberate malignity and studied wickedness, painted with a thick varnish of Jesuitical hypocrisy. Ministers and people, deacons and churchmen " generally slave-holders," and yet, nevertheless, "sincere followers of the Lord, and adorning the doctrine of their God and Saviour !!!" In this way we might say, "certain dear brethren in Cornwall, though smugglers and wreckers, in every other part of their conduct adorn the doctrine of their God and Saviour;" or, "certain holy men, who practise burking for the Anatomical-schools, are sincere followers of the Lord.”—And

in this way did a horrid fishwoman of Billingsgate exclaim triumphantly, with her arms a-kimbo, "bating I'm a thief, I defy any one to say, black's the white of my eye."

Truly the Baptist Churches of America must be a very pandæmonium, a collection of worshipping demons of the worst sort, who neither believe nor tremble, and who can be of no further use in this world of wickedness than to be set up as examples of the extreme depravity and hardness of heart to which man can be reduced, when, under the cloak of religion he justifies himself in sin, and attempts to serve both God and Belial. Can imagination conjure up anything more horrid from the dreadful deeps of Hell than a Minister of the Gospel preaching on the Lord's-day" Jesus Christ and him crucified," and the next day selling "a dear brother or sister in Christ" as a slave? It is a fact undisputed, that these American reprobates sell the members of their churches, and deliver into slavery for so many dollars the members of the body of Christ; and yet they dare to call themselves "followers of the Lord !" We have heard of a New-Zealand cannibal eating his enemies; we have heard of a Spanish Inquisitor thinking he did God a service by hunting out for destruction the followers of the Lamb; we have heard of a fanatical Mahometan converting conquered tribes by fire and sword; but this medley of cruelty and cant, of cupidity and piety, of love and treachery, of holiness and ferocity, of meekness and violence, of charity and pitiless selfishness, has been reserved for that epitome of all abominations, a slave-selling American Religionist, "a sincere follower of the Lord," "who adorns the doctrine of his God and Saviour," by filling his purse with devout dollars, the price of his fellow-creatures' bondage and woe. The great slave-master, Pharoah, received the reward of his "sincerity" in a baptism which ought to make these slave-holding Churches of America tremble

The letter of S. Blackwell points out that, though the Baptists are the most numerous sect in the Union, and most deep in the guilt of slavery, yet other sects also are the abetters of this monstrous crime, and especially the Episcopalians. One of their clergy at the great meeting of the Colonization (Elliot Cresson's) Society at New York, declared that the usual shocking descriptions of slavery were " the poetry of philanthropy;" for which splendid discovery the Reverend Gentleman has been elected Bishop on the first vacancy, and is now Diocesan of a slave-holding Diocese.

"The crying aggravation of slavery in the United States arises from the internal traffic. It is in the south, as you know, that cotton, rice, and sugar are raised, and it is in this service that slave-labour is found to be indispensible. Slaves are, therefore, accumulating in these parts, and a much higher price is given for them there than elsewhere. This, of course, is a great temptation to the cupidity of many; and the vilest means are eventually adopted to satisfy it. Slaves are as regularly bred, in some States, as cattle for the southern market. Besides this, the men who pursue this nefarious traffic have acquired wealth, and use it extensively to acquire more. They have

secret agents spread over the States where the slave is less gainful, to avail themselves of all opportunities of accomplishing their ends. They seek to trepan the free coloured man; and, by throwing the proof of his freedom upon him, find him off his guard, and often succeed against him. They especially seek to buy up, as for local and domestic use, all the slaves that are at different places to be disposed of; and, when the unhappy beings are once in their power, they disappear in the night, and are lost to their birth-place and connexions for ever. Most of the sales and the kidnapping that arise have reference to the southern market, and are too commonly conducted on false and foul pretences. It is supposed that not less than ten thousand slaves

are by these means procured for the demands of the south.

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From the mysteriousness of these disappearances, from the impossibility of hearing any more of the parties so abstracted from society, and from the known severity of the heat and labour in the south, this domestic slave-trade is the terror of the African, and it makes slavery, which would otherwise wear a milder aspect, twice cursed.

"A case in illustration occurred in a certain town of Virginia that I visited, which had created a sensation of pity and indignation through the whole western portion of that state. A gentleman sold a female slave. The party professing to buy not being prepared to make the necessary payment, the slave was to be re-sold. A concealed agent of the trade bought her and her two children, as for his own service, where her husband, also a slave in the town, might visit her and them. Both the husband and wife suspected that she would be privately sent away. The husband, in their common agony, offered to be sold, that he might go with her. This was declined. He resolved on the last effort, of assisting her to escape. That he might lay suspicion asleep, he went to take leave of her and his children, and appeared to resign himself to the event. This movement had its desired effect; suspicion was withdrawn both from him and his wife; and he succeeded in emancipating them. Still, what was to be done with his treasure now he had obtained it? Flight was impossible; and nothing remained but concealment. And concealment seemed hopeless; for no place would be left unsearched, and punishment would fall on the party who should give them shelter. However, they were missing; and they were sought for diligently, but not found. Some months afterwards it was casually observed, that the floor under a slave's bed (the sister of the man) looked dirty and greasy. A board was taken up; and there lay the mother and her children on the clay, and in an excavation of three feet by five! It is averred that they had been there in a cold and enclosed space, hardly large enough for their coffin (buried alive there), for SIX MONTHS!

"This is not all. The agent was only provoked by this circumstance ! He demanded the woman; and though every one was clamorous to redeem her, and to retain her to her husband, he would not sell! She was taken to his slave-pen, and has disappeared! The man-most miserable man!-still exists in the town."-. -Extracted from Drs. Reed and Matheson's Narrative of their Visit to the American Churches.