whether I may rightfully give shelter, and food, and clothing to a fugitive from Virginia, and money to help him on his way to Jamaica or to Canada.* The only question is, What has Christianity to do with the reformation of this whole order of things, which is known by the name of slavery? And, in particular, what has Christianity, in the form of church government, to do in the business of setting right the wrongs of so wicked a system of social order?

One of the embarrassments incident to this mode of communicating with the public, is the necessity of breaking up a discussion of an important and complicated subject into weekly chapters, and thus separating parts that ought to be presented in close

* An anonymous friend, who writes to me from New York, says, "At this moment, I am called upon to aid a poor fugitive with his wife and five children, who have escaped the mere relation, having arrived from Virginia last evening. As this is a case of frequent occurrence, will Dr. Bacon please to indicate my duty in the next Evangelist ?"

The proposer of this case of conscience is probably capable of seeing that his question has no bearing whatever on the subject of the present discussion. Yet, that I may not seem to treat even the writer of an anonymous letter with neglect, I will answer his question frankly. If a "fugitive with his wife and five children" were to come to me with the confession that he had run away from the mere relation of servitude, and not from any unkind, oppressive or unchristian treatment on the part of his master, and should ask me to help him with money, I should probably esteem that fugitive a shiftless vagabond; I should tell him that by his own showing he had no occasion to run away, and that if he had expressed a reasonable desire to emigrate to some other country, his master would doubtless have put him in the way of helping himself instead of depending on charity: and I should probably reserve my sympathy and my aid for those fugitives who run away from actual and specific oppression. And if I should find that the case of this fugitive from the mere relation of servitude is "a case of frequent occurrence," I should think much better of the masters, and much worse of the slaves, than I now do.

connection with each other. But to this disadvantage I submit, for the sake of speaking to thousands at once. The further discussion of the question, this week, would make too long an article. I can only indicate, as with a word, the intended course of the discussion, asking the reader to wait patiently till he is sure he understands me.

What has Christianity-what has the church to do with slavery? Nothing-and yet everything. In one sense-in one mode of action-nothing. In another sense, and by another kind of influence, everything.

NO. IV.

WHAT HAS CHURCH GOVERNMENT TO DO WITH SLAVERY

The question respecting what Christianity, and particularly the Christian church, has to do with forms of civil government, and with those relations of man to man which exist in the structure of society-is, at the present day, at least as important as the question respecting what the state has to do with Christianity. What the state has to do with the church, is pretty well understood in this country, and is in the way to be understood throughout the world. What the church has to do with the state is not, in all quarters, so well understood. And yet, is it not self-evident that if, as we hold, the state is to let the church alone, the church on the other hand must let the state alone? The views which I have been led to entertain on this subject, are

submitted to the public with diffidence, as my contribution to the discussion of a great and comprehensive question.

Moses, as God's messenger to a chosen race, established, in the name of God, a system not of morals merely, nor of religion, but of political order and government. There is no religious institution in the Old Testament which is not also political. Lessons of morality, and of faith and devotion, not only in the Pentateuch, but generally in the Scriptures of that dispensation, are given in the closest combination with national history and municipal regulations. The idea of a church distinct from the civil state is not in the Old Testament. Consequently, the system of the Old Testament was a system incapable of extension in the world. It was constructed for one nation only, and could not be imparted to another. It was designed not for man as man, but only for man as an Israelite in the land of Israel; and he, of any other race, who would embrace the system and enjoy all its privileges, must renounce his country and nation and become an Israelite by adoption. The reasons of this divine arrangement would be an interesting subject of inquiry; but the fact is all that concerns us at present.

The Old Testament, then, is a political book; as really so, though not as exclusively, as the Federalist, or Hallam's Constitutional History. Is the New Testament, in this respect, like the Old? Does the New Testament contain anything of the nature of civil regulation? Does it lay down any principle or rule with reference to political subjects, such as

the structure of the state, the liberty of the individual members of society, the distribution of political powers, the responsibility of rulers to the people; or does it take all these things as it finds them, and leave them, as it leaves the physical sciences and arts, to take their chance with the general progress of human improvement? Did Christ set himself up-was he announced by his apostles-as a legislator for society, and a reformer of political institutions? On the contrary, is it not one of the most wonderful of the divine wonders in the character and history of our Saviour, that, pressed as he was on every side by the politicians of that day, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees; by all the national feelings and impulses of the Jewish people, and by the universally understood identity of politics and religion—he so carefully and skillfully avoided committing himself on any political question whatever. Is not the same thing in the conduct of the apostles, and the primitive churches under their direction, almost equally wonderful? Christ's kingdom, as announced by himself and his apostles, was not of this world. The church had nothing to do with the social or political relations of its members. It had no concern with any movement towards the re-organization of society.

I do not suppose that I am propounding a novelty, or that what I am now saying is likely to be contradicted by any for whom I write. And yet I would have the reader dwell upon this peculiarity of Christianity and of the Christian church, till he shall see it with the same sense of its importance which has been impressed upon my mind. The

New Testament shows us no Moses, standing before Pharaoh to demand the emancipation of an oppressed people-no Joshua, conquering a land of promise and dividing it among the conquerors-no Samuel, framing new constitutions, and anointing kings in God's name. But it shows us Paul in chains, now reasoning with Felix, now answering before Nero ; and Jesus of Nazareth, at the bar of Pilate, testifying to the truth, and declaring, "My kingdom is not of this world.". Had Pilate been converted, would Christ have required him to throw up his commission of procurator of Judea? Had Nero been converted, would Paul, before admitting him to baptism, have required him to abdicate his imperial power, and to leave the nations of the Roman empire to constitute themselves, if they could, into a great federal union of free republics?

The system of the New Testament is, therefore, capable of universal extension. It addresses itself not to sovereigns or states as such, prescribing to them new laws and political institutions, and summoning them to launch upon the sea of revolution, but to individuals, calling them to repentance. All that it demands of states and governments, as such, is toleration for itself freedom to worship God." Thus it goes out into all the world, preaching to every creature that will hear, commanding all men everywhere to repent, and leaving all political relations and institutions to adjust themselves as they may-and as under God's providence they must -to that altered state of things which exists wherever the gospel prevails.

This is not only a distinction between Christiani