of your rule.  Your rule speaks of a civil relation, and also of the existing relations of life.  But, the relation in question, being substantially that of slaveholder and slave, is, according to your own showing, a civil relation.  Perhaps you will say, it is not an “existing relation of life.”  But what do you mean by “an existing relation of life?” Do you mean, that it is a relation approved of God?  If you do, and insist that the relation of slaveholder and slave is “an existing relation of life,” then you are guilty of begging the great question between us.  Your rule, therefore, can mean nothing more than this—­that any relation is rightful, for which the Bible prescribes regulations.  But the relation referred to between the Chaldeans and Jews, proves the falsity of the rule.  Again, when a man compels me to go with him, is not the compelled relation between him and me a sinful one?  And the relation of robber and robbed, which a man institutes between himself and me, is not this also sinful?  But, the Bible has prescribed regulations for the relations in both these cases.  In the one, it requires me to “go with him twain;” and, in the other, to endure patiently even farther spoliation and, “let him have (my) cloak also.”  In these cases, also, do we see the falsity of your rule—­and none the less clearly, because the relations in question are of brief duration.

Before concluding my remarks on this topic, let me say, that your doctrine, that God has prescribed no rules for the behaviour of persons in any other than the just relations of life, reflects no honor on His compassion.  Why, even we “cut-throat” abolitionists are not so hard-hearted as to overlook the subjects of a relation, because it is wicked.  Pitying, as we do, our poor colored brethren, who are forced into a wicked relation, which, by its very nature and terms, and not by its abuses, as you would say, has robbed them of their all—­even we would, nevertheless, tell them to “resist not evil”—­to be obedient unto their own masters”—­not purloining, but showing all good fidelity.”  We would tell them, as God told the captive Jews, to “seek the peace of those, whither they are carried away captives, and to pray unto the Lord” for them:  and our hope of their emancipation is not, as it is most slanderously and wickedly reported to be, in their deluging the South with blood:  but, it is, to use again those sweet words of inspiration, that “in the peace thereof they shall have peace.”  We do not communicate with the slave; but, if we did, we would teach him, that our hope of his liberation is grounded largely in his patience, and that, if he would have us drop his cause from our hands, he has but to take it into his own, and attempt to accomplish by violence, that which we seek to effect through the power of truth and love on the understanding and heart of his master.

Having disposed of your reasons in favor of the rightfulness of the relation of slaveholder and slave, I will offer a few reasons for believing that it is not rightful.