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times called doctrine. The proposition on which he builds his church, is the recognition and open confession of his true person. ality and divine mission. "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is already laid," said Paul, which is, that "Jesus is the Christ." The Messiah declared to Peter, that "on this rock he would build his church" and founded on this rock, "the gates of hell should not prevail against it." This proposition is as definite and perspicuous as it is comprehensive and sublime. To believe it, is to realize its evangelical import.

It is exceedingly broad. To realize that Jesus is the Messiah, in the full evangelical sense of the terms, imparts a new life and energy to the soul. It allures and charms, and quickens all the moral faculties of man. It is the great spiritual and divine magnet, which attaches to itself every element in man that can be assimilated to the divine image; that can beautify and beatify him forever. "Other foundation can no man lay" for church union and communion, than that which God himself has laid in Zion, viz: That Jesus is the Christ.

Now, my dear sir, whatever society baptizes into this faith, and builds the church upon it, is catholic; and whatever society does not, but substitutes for it any human opinion, speculation or experience, is, necessarily, sectarian. And he that defends these addenda and preaches them as necessary, either to salvation or church fellowship, is a full developed sectarian-a heretic, in its original importthat is, one that makes a sect or a party to his own opinion, whim, or caprice, or to the opinions, whims, or caprices of other men, living or dead. It is not my object to develop, nor do I presume that it is necessary for me to develop, the import of that vital confession. It is, for my purpose, enough to say of it what is affirmed by apostolic authority, viz: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." 1 John v. 1. "Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God." 1 John v. 6. He that believes this great capital truth, "has eternal life;" for "God sent his Son into the world, that whosoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life." This is the central truth of the Christian system. It is the foundation on which the church is built, and contains in it that which reconciles the heart of a sinner to God, and justifies God the Father in justifying man.

Now, in all that I have said, I am persuaded from your letter before me, that we fully agree. Also, what you say of Baptist churches, and of our churches, is but a reiteration of what we all admit. We are called "Baptists" by certain parties, and our

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churches are called "Baptist churches." But we do not so assume nor so designate ourselves. For this we have sundry reasons. will name two: In teaching moral science and Christian evidences, I repudiate the technical style of Paley, Butler, &c., as fallacious and unscientific. If I admit that there is natural religion, as well as revealed religion; or speak of revealed religion in contrast with natural religion, in the fair construction of my language, I admit two sources of religion, and two kinds of religion. As with me there is but one religion, and that founded on, and springing from, revelation, I must reprobate the style and the teachings of some of our standard works on this subject. Apply this form of reasoning and of language to our Baptist and Pedobaptist churches, and you will better understand a portion of my objections to being called Baptists, or Baptist churches. I know of but one church of Christ. If I say that we are "the Baptist church of Christ," do I not admit that there is a Pedobaptist church of Christ? Has Christ two churches? But hear from me another remark. The Baptist's church has long since died. I say the Baptist's church; not the Baptist church. The Baptist church cannot die, because it never lived. After John the Baptist was beheaded, his church died. He only gathered a people for the Lord, and they were only baptized themselves, not Baptists. I need not tell you, my dear sir, that not he who is immersed or baptized himself, but he who immerses or baptizes him, is the Baptist. If being immersed constitutes a Baptist, John himself, the harbinger, never was a Baptist, never having been baptized. Did you, or did any one else, living or dead, ever see a church whose membership was composed of baptizers, or Baptists! I never did. We have some churches that may have some six or seven Baptists in them, but I presume to say, that there is not now, in the scripture sense of John the Baptist, a Baptist church in the world.

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Must we, then, hallow and consecrate the errors of the dark ages, and perpetuate forever the reign of ignorance and superstition? I know some men, good men, too, that glory in the name Baptist," and the "Baptist church," as if there was, in the true sense and meaning of words, a Baptist church in the United States.

Some oppose a new translation of the Sacred Writings, because it would dissipate this illusion, and annihilate the name and honor of the Baptist church, and deprive certain Eastern D. D.'s of all their glory. Such men would rather have the old version of the Bible, and the name Baptist, than the best version that could be made, without it. Still, I am happy to learn that their influence is daily

waning, and, no doubt, will ere long vanish away. It is hard to fight against sunbeams.

It may startle some of our good Baptists, so called, to be informed that Jesus Christ was not a Baptist; yet it is clearly declared, that Jesus baptized not, he was only baptized. But this law of evidence and criticism bears somewhat heavily on the "Pedobaptist churches ;" and were it not that they have been more politic and shrewd than "the Baptists," they would have fallen under the same sentence; but, fortunately for them, they call themselves Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, &c., preferring to found their party on ecclesiastic politics, rather than on Christian ordinances.

There is another reason why some sensible men, yet living in the world, demur at the currency ecclesiastic, as now popular in Pennsylvania and some other States, when allusion is made to the Baptist Church of Christ," and the "Pedobaptist Church of Christ," as though we had both Baptist and Pedobaptist churches. If we have only one true religion, we can have only one true church of Christ. Still there may be, and doubtless there are, many good Christian people in the church of England, Scotland, and perhaps Rome, as there are good republicans in them all. But these facts neither make the natives Republicans, nor the churches Christian. We all live too much in the nineteenth century to know ourselves, and the truth as it was taught, believed, and practised 1800 years ago. I must, with your permission, reserve, my dear sir, a few farther remarks on the contents of your letter, till the moon changes. A. C.

QUERIES ON MASTERS' DUTIES.

WESTERN STAR, O., July 21, 1851. Brother Campbell: We have listened patiently to you for several months past, while you have been showing the existence of slavery in the days of Abraham, Moses, and Paul. I have read your essays in the Christian Baptist, and in the several volumes of the Harbinger. I know you are opposed to slavery, and consider its existence among us a curse-a curse to the master, his children, his land, and our country. But to get rid of it, and do justice to both master and slave, so that they shall not be in a worse condition than they are now, with you is a serious matter. While the sympathy of some is confined to the slave, your sympathy runs to both master

and slave. You think the condition of master and slave now, is hard, but that the condition of both would be much worse to have all freed at once, and the colored population left at the mercy of a cold and heartless world, to obtain a living and find employ. Hence, your effort to show that the relation of master and slave may exist, and has existed, without sin. This may be an essential point to establish in certain minds; but it is not touching the real difficulty in the minds of your readers among us. Slavery, with us, is understood to be just whatever the law makes it to be; not only the relation, but the legal rights growing out of that relation. Hundreds of your readers admit the existence of master and clave in the days of Adam, Moses, and Paul; and that among the Heathen, the master had an unlimited power over even the very life of his slave. But we seriously doubt whether Abraham, Moses, and Paul, ever did, or permitted their brethren to do, that which is done by professed Christians in our land, and who plead, in self defence, the fact that the relation has always existed in the days of Patriarchs, Jews and Christians. Can you give us light on the following questions? If so, then you will touch our real difficulty.

1. Though Abraham owned and bought slaves, yet did he, or the Jews, by a divine permit from Moses, their lawgiver, ever sell their slaves to ungodly men? Or were they ever permitted to sell them to any person?

2. Have we an example in the Inspired Volume, of either Patriarchs, Jews or Christians, selling their servants out of their families?

3. Has a Christian the divine right to sell the husband away from his wife and family, or the wife from her husband and children, and then plead in self-defence, that he has a right so to do, alleging that Abraham bought and sold slaves?

An answer to the above questions is very important. We do not want to know the master's legal right among us, nor what a Heathen master did; but we want to know if a Christian master can claim a right, by virtue of either Bible precept or example, to separate, by sale, husband and wife? Jesus says, Matthew xix. 6, "They are one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put assunder."

The above is a presentation of our real difficulties; and no plea made upon the right of the sale of property, can be satisfactory; but Holy Writ will be satisfactory.

With all confidence in your honesty and the purity of your motives, I am, my dear brother, yours in the Lord. A. B. GREEN.

Brother Green-My Dear Sir: Agreeing, as you and I do, that the relation of master and servant, for life, is of divine permission and enactment, in every age of the world-Patriarchal, Jewish and Christian-the difficulties of which you speak come under another category than that which we have already discussed.

The establishment of a divine authority for relations, civil or reli

gious, and the conduct of the parties in these relations, are distinct and independent subjects, and ought, therefore, to be held and treated as separate and distinct themes of consideration, as they are both in divine and human legislation. That husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, magistrates and subjects, are relations of divine authority, and have their appropriate duties, obligations and advantages, no Christian will presume to deny.

If, then, Abolitionists had confined themselves to the abolition, not of relations, but of the abuses of them, the community would have heard them with more candor and respect, and they would have had, in the proper field of their labor, a brighter hope and a more certain reward.

Still Christians, even in this sense, would not have had any right, as such, to take under their care, supervision, or reformation, Southern institutions, or any other of a political character or bearing. "What," says Paul, "have we [Christians] to do, to judge them that are without? Them that are without God judges," and not the Christian church. Christian men have no more Christian right to join American Abolition societies, than they have to join "Orange Men," "United Irishmen," "Free Masons," or "Odd Fellows," as such. Crusaders to rescue the Holy Land from Mussulmen, have as much divine authority to sanction them, so far as the Christian church, instituted in the New Testament, has to do with them, as any one of these institutions. Christians, as such, have as much divine authority to attack monarchies, aristocracies, despotisms, political and sectarian, as they have to attack Southern political institutions, or to form confederations, leagues, or covenants, with them that unite for such purposes. All that we, as Christians, have to do in instruction and correction, is with them that are within the church. We subscribe to that article of the true apostolic creed"Them that are without the church, God judgeth." In settling this preliminary point, more than half the confusion and strife on the present theme, is finally disposed of. I should not wonder if a portion of our own communities should demur at these statements. There are, indeed, but a minority of them at all educated on this subject.

With regard to the abuses you mention, I may have more to say than can be well said at present. But I will make a few statements of my views on the main topics of inquiry.

First, then, as to the right of selling a servant for life, or for a term of years. The right of selling is always implied in the right of buying. Whatever a man may lawfully buy, except the truth, he

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