transformed "the house of prayer into a den of thieves," cast them all out of the temple. Thus the northern and eastern Christians must unsparingly act: they must eject every man-stealer, without exception, from "the communion of saints," instantly and forever.

If we desire to eradicate a rotten tree from longer cumbering the ground, it is folly merely to lop off the withered branches. The axe must be laid to the trunk, that the whole useless mass may be cleared away together. Thus it will be of no use to exclude private individuals or lay officers of the church from membership, while preaching negro scourgers are honoured as messengers of the Gospel of peace. Every one of them must be silenced, and no more be permitted to enact that mournful theological farce before the world, which combines the preaching of the revelation of justice and mercy, with the ever enduring practice of all diversified unrighteousness and cruelty.

Every Christian society must commence this work of reformation for themselves. It is madness to pretend to stay for conventions, assemblies, conferences, synods, presbyteries, or associations to begin and consummate this glorious object. If we wait for any fundamental or extensive amendments of ecclesiastical abuses, and religious corruptions from them; the patience of Job, and the meekness of Moses would be exhausted, and not only Methuselah's long protracted term would revolve to its end, but "the sun himself will grow dim with age, and nature sink in years." No reformation in the church of God ever began with its ministers, in their collective capacity. The alarm was sounded probably by one or more separate and isolated individuals. The common people "heard the word gladly," seized the weapons of moral and spiritual war, and eventually forced that radical renovation, which otherwise would have been denied as unnecessary, or delayed as long as priestcraft could have cajoled its silly and enslaved

votaries.

Who can indulge any rational expectation that the ecclesiastical bodies in the southern states, will ever seriously undertake the extermination of slavery from the church of

Christ, as long as they remain organized according to their present system, and while they are composed of characters similar to those which at present constitute them?

Walk into an Episcopal convention south of the Potomac, and from the chairman to the doorkeeper, it is almost certain that they are all slave-drivers, or what is tantamount, the disproportion of the honest Christians to the kidnapping tribe may be assimilated to Gideon's three hundred chosen warriors of the Lord God of Israel, against the Midianite army, as grasshoppers for multitude." Now to expect that such a body as this, resolved to continue their peculating enormities, as long as the civil law permits them to escape the rightful abode of all men-stealers, will boldly denounce man-stealing, as the most heaven defying crime, and honestly promulge that divine truth, which declares that every perpetrator of it, who assumes to be a Christian, is a scandalous hypocrite, is equally wise as to anticipate the very highest self denying act of pure and undefiled religion from a conspiracy of resolute hardened robbers.

Enter a Baptist association about the Roanoke, where, although the assembly has no ecclesiastical authority, yet the members might discuss an abstract question, and having determined it according to their judgment, might recommend their decision to the consideration of their churches. Who are present? The chairman, the clerks, and messengers, except northern delegates, are all hardened menstealers. Most probably, not one is named on the roll, who does not drive, scourge, and starve those defenceless sons of anguish, his fellow citizens, whom he has kidnapped, until the fictions of romance lose their interest in the thrilling horrors, which those dens of human misery, their slave-quarters, like the dungeons of the Popish Inquisition, if permitted, could recount. That man who hopes for reformation from such a confederacy of land pirates, manifests no more common sense, than if he were to look for a fraternal embrace in a bear's gripe, or the kiss of love from a hyena's jaw.

Many of our northern Baptists, to their honour, refuse to admit any slaveholder to their communion; yet, they

lack one thing. They admit the preaching men-stealers into their pulpits. This great evil destroys all the lesser good, and proves that they are partial in themselves zespecting persons, contrary to the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. To eject an obscure layman from the Lord's table is of small influence; because the fact is not known probably, except to the minister and deacons: but to announce openly from the pulpit or the chair, before a large expecting assembly, that a president, or a professor in a college, a D.D. S.T.P. L.L.D. whose fame is blazoned through all the land, cannot and shall not be permitted to appear in the pulpit, or on the platform at our philanthropic anniversaries, because he is a notorious man-thief, would bring the controversy at once to an issue. That evangelical medicine would either kill or cure the mortified culprit. He would depart to his home, and sign the deed of emancipation, and then return to his friends, and be hailed as a penitent upright Christian, and exemplary ambassador of Jesus the Son of God, or he would continue in his slave torturing occupation, until he passed away from earthly disgrace and obscurity, into the tomb, whence no good man ever wishes to resuscitate the remembrance of a slave-driver.

Visit a Methodist conference in lower Virginia, or Carolina, or Georgia. As the ministers are always moving, it is possible, that some of them are not personally chargeable with the actual guilt of kidnapping. Therefore, "they have no cloak for their sin." They have even less excuse than the other, for their compromising with slavery. What is their creed of faith? They declare that no man ever had a "sincere desire to flee from the wrath to come," who is concerned in the traffic, or the enslaving of men, women and children. Consequently, at the very threshold, by their own discipline every slaveholder is denounced as unworthy of the Christian name, and his profession of religion, if he assumes it, is virtually declared to be stark naked hypocrisy, while he is debarred at once from admission into their societies. Notwithstanding, the southern methodist preachers, are as dumb respecting slavery, as if they were choked with a curly

headed quail stuck fast in their throats," or as if that direful curse, like "the world before the flood," was so distant and incomprehensible a subject, that it is scarcely necessary ever to bestow upon it a cursory remark.

During nearly fifty years, have the Methodists solemnly told the world in their book of discipline, that every slavedriver is" in the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity," that as long as he holds slaves, he can give no evidence of genuine repentance, faith, good works, and of a consistent Christian profession; and, nevertheless, almost all their local preachers, stewards, class leaders, and members, besides many of their travelling ministers, from Baltimore to the gulf of Mexico, are men-stealers, and in Georgia, they are not only slave-torturers, but they also blasphemously attempt to justify their nefarious hypocrisy by the holy scriptures. Well are they described by the apostle Paul, Titus 1; 16. “They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him; being abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate." As long therefore, as this unblushing hypocrisy is tolerated, justified, and decorated by Christian titles, it is a perversion of all rationality, to anticipate, that the Methodist conferences will denounce man-thieving, because such a decree would be tantamount to an order, to burn all their classpapers, and to lock up all their houses of worship.

Examine a Presbyterian ecclesiatical meeting at Richmond or Raleigh, a presbytery or a synod, and what will you behold? The moderator and clerks, ministers and elders, obdurate men-stealers, resisting the truth, and denying their own solemnly attested exposition of the eighth commandment, which declares of man-stealing, this crime among the Jews, exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment, Exodus 21; 16; and the apostle classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word, comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in detaining them in it. Stealers of men, are all those who bring off slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or buy them." This doctrine, had been published by the Presbyterian church during twenty years, as their authorized standard opinion of slavery, and yet the general

assembly of 1816, audaciously denied their own infallible doctrines, and wickedly expunged the above evangelical truisms from the constitution of their church, expressly, that they might propitiate the southern men-stealers.

But belonging to the southern presbytery or synod, probably there is scarcely a church member, who is not a barbarous slave-driver, from whom an old Egyptian task-master, if he were permitted again to enter the world, might take lessons in the art of cruelty and oppression. These are the men, who are described by the prophet Ezekiel, who "have set up their idol in their hearts, and the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face, who are all estranged from God, through their idols," their slaves. They will persecute, slander, lie, suborn perjury, swear falsely, rob and murder, if they dared, any man who exposes the crime of man-stealing, and faithfully applies God's holy word to their atrocious iniquities. In these abominations they have lived-exchanging horses for men-bartering women for sheep-scourging females in the last stage of pregnancy, until from fear of the consequences, they have transferred the lacerated creatures to their husbands, for a conditional · extra price, to depend upon the health and life of the expected child-putting their slaves to death by slow-paced torture, and exemplifying "the iniquity of their sin," by every species of knavery and barbarity, which this detestable traffic originates and prolongs. Can any man in a sound mind expect, that these confederacies of men-stealers will address a pastoral letter to their pseudo-churches, all of whom constitute but one vast confraternity of criminals, "sinners of the first rank," as they themselves declared in their own confession of faith, "guilty of the highest kind of theft," to prohibit the traffic and retention of their fellowcitizens in slavery?

A preacher in the slaveholding states, especially, if a few coloured persons should be present in the assembly, will introduce the subject of theft, and it is no less melancholy, than wonderful to a judicious and thoughtful hearer, to remark how earnestly he will warn the congregation against dishonesty; especially servants not to purloin from their masters, while during the whole harangue, he seems to be