and brought the prices of the the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostle's feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need." What, are we to say, "that they gave up their lands and houses, but kept their slaves?" What did they want with slaves, when their houses and lands were sold. Tender stomachs indeed; must they have had to give up lands for religion, and keep persons as property! True, there were no slaves in Judea; but the Pentecost converts were from all parts of the world, and there may have been slave-holders among them. Now, remember, that this was the first founding of the Christian church, and, of course, a model for the rest. And the Holy Ghost which wrought these effects in the Pentecost converts, came afterwards on the gentiles, the same as on the Jews at the beginning of the Christian community."-Acts. xi, 15. Thus, the history of the first Christian organization perfectly and forever stultifies the idea, so gravely put forth by learned men, that chattelizing human beings found fellowship in the apostolic church!

IV. My last proposition is, that the enforcement of DISCIPLINE in the first Christian church, always and everywhere, must have annihilated slavery.

When Christianity was set up in free Judea, it was established in a non-slave-holding country, by anti-slavery Jews, converted to a freer system of religion than Judaism itself. Of course the world did not need to be told that theirs was not to be a slave-holding church. But when they went outside of Judea to found churches, they encountered slavery; and "doulos," as our word "servant," doubtless, in slave States, and in the lips of slave-holders meant, slave. Though in the New Testament, it is not as my brother said, but it takes "Doulos hupo zugon" to make a slave. Doulos alone no more means slave, than "bird," alone means "owl.”

But admitting, as I do, that the gospel was planted amid slaves. The question is, when it went to Ephesus, what did the Christian discipline do to slavery there? Take a living case. Suppose a young free man had married a slave girl converted to Christianity, with her master, and

the church. This case is not uncommon in our own country, where a free colored man has a slave wife, and they, with the master, profess religion. But such cases must have been still more frequent where there was no difference of complexion. Now suppose this pious master wishes to remove to Colosse, or somewhere else; as Aquila went with Paul, and he wishes his slave girl, now married, to go with him. Her husband cannot pay for her. The master does not wish to sell her if he could; and the husband refuses to let her go. The case comes before the church on complaint of the owner, the question being which shall have the young woman—the slave-holder, or the husband? The trial comes up before the brethren in the place of Christian worship in Ephesus. Now how would this work in Charleston, South Carolina? The house of course would be thronged to suffocation, windows, doors and all, with slave-holders, and other people, anxious to hear the decision. The slave-holder rises, opens Dr. Rice's lectures, if not familiar with the Bible, and he finds quoted, Ephesians vi, 5. 'Servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh." "Now brethren,' continues he, "I claim this girl as my servant— She is my slave: and our founder and apostle Paul, says, in his letter to this church, 'Servants be obedient to your masters.' I therefore command her obedience to me who am her master. I am called of God to remove hence, and she must go with me.”

After the slave-holder (who generally has the first hearing with our northern divines) has got through his argument; the young husband comes meekly forward with the Bible under his arm, which opens at Matth. xix, 5, 6, and reads the words of our Lord: "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall become one flesh. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. WHAT THEREFORE GOD HAS JOINED TOGETHER, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER.' Brethren, this young woman is my wife: and having thus spoken, sits down incapable of uttering more.

Which now, by the law of the church, would get that

young woman? If you say the husband, and surely he will, unless you emancipate the church from the law of Christ, every slave-holder in that audience would say::-"Let's clear out! This is an abolition concern: This is no place for us and our slaves: We can never keep them with such examples before them. Indeed the whole fraternity are a gang of incendaries." So, calling out their slaves, they would go home hatching schemes of persecution against the Christians.

Take another case, of parent and child. The slave-holder claims the child of a fellow Christian, as his property, and determines to take it away. The parent says that the law of God, "Parents, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," gives the parent control of the child: and the claims of parent and owner conflict. This case must follow the other, and the parent get his child. Take still another case, which shows how the discipline of the first churches applies to the mere business aspects and relations of slavery.

A man came to my house, who for years hired the mother of his children of her owner, he being a free man, and she a slave. The husband I think had paid fifty dollars per year, for the hire of his own wife, to the wife's master.

Now suppose these parties had joined the church at Colosse, and the husband had refused longer to pay his Christian brother fifty dollars per year, for the privilege of having his own wife suckle and tend her own babes: and the case comes before the church upon this issue. Would the church command the husband still to pay for the use of his wife, fifty dollars per year, to his equal Christian brother? Or would they take up the epistle written them by Paul, and under the precept, "masters give unto your servants that which is just and equal" Col. iv, 1; require the master to pay back all the hire which he had received of the husband, with reasonable dues for the woman's service before she was married? And would not one such decision so abolitionize the church in public estimation, that not a slave-holder would join it till he was willing to give up his slaves?

I put all these cases to Dr. Stowe, who I regret on his account to say, has uttered sentiments which brother Rice can quote in support of his doctrine, that the apostolic churches fellowshipped slave-holding: and Dr. Stowe unhesitatingly declared, that in every such case, the claims of slave-holders were extinguished by the law of the church (which, was the law of Christ) in favor of husband and parent.

How then do he and others reach the conclusion, totally inconsistent with this admission, that slave-holding was admitted to fellowship in the apostolic churches?

Why, in this way:-They say that the legal relation, as created by the civil law, still vested in slave-owners, after they became members of the Christian churches; and that they were not required to abjure this relation before they were received into the church. Supposing this true, it does not alter the case. For, as the cases cited above show, they could not retain their slaves by the law of Christianity; and saying that the rights of slave-owners still remained in them by the civil law; is subjecting the Christian church to the heathen State. But if the law of Christ was superior to that civil law which gave them their slave-holding rights, then they ceased to be slave-holders when they joined the church.

More than this: The first Christian who should have gone to a civil court to prosecute his claim to the body of his brother or sister as his slave, would have had an excommunication launched after him, under the injunction of the apostle, as a most aggravated case of "brother going to law with brother, and that before unbelievers." Those civil courts were among the things which Christians came out of, when they left the world to follow Christ. They could not prosecute claims there without practising idolatry. Justice was administered by these in the name of Jupiter, and the emperor, and attended with pagan rites. The witness took a flint, and, jerking it from his hand, said "So let Jupiter thrust me from among the good, if I deceive in this case." Thus a Christian could not have established his claim to a

slave, in the civil courts, without subjecting the church to the State-violating the apostle's injunction-and practising idolatry.

Thus, I have proved, that slave-holding was not allowed in the New Testament church:-1. By the constitution of Christianity; 2. The character of the members; 3. By the history of the foundation of the first Christian community; and, 4. By the discipline of the church.

And now-Gentlemen and fellow-citizens-with many and sincere thanks for your long and patient attention, during this debate, (having no time to recapitulate,) I bid you an affectionate farewell. And I pray God, that when you shall have well considered the arguments here presented, and when you shall read them in the book which is to be published, you may be led by His Spirit to "Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them"-so that when you shall appear before the final bar you may yourselves hear with joy the welcome of the judge: not (according to the shocking interpretation of my brother) of "well done, thou good and faithful slave,"—but that welcome, fit for Christ's lips to utter, and saved men to hear, "Well done, good and faithful SERVANT-enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

For me, I know that when a few days are come, a thousand miles shall stretch between your dwellings and mine— and when, hereafter, this toil-worn frame shall be sinking to its last earthly rest, it shall please my failing memory to remember, that my last effort among you was in vindication of the oppressed. Happy, if, when my toils are over, I can raise my dying head, like Wolf upon the Heights of Abraham, and hear the gathering shout of my countrymen, that the enemies of freedom and God's truth are routed, and the slave is free; and when my weary head shall at last lie low amid the wild flowers of yonder prairie, my future home, it shall content me well, if they shed their dewey honors above the grave of one who, having humbly striven in all things to follow his Lord, like Him, also, has been faithful to His poor. [Time expired.