With his eye upon the passage just quoted and explained, the Princeton professor asserts that “Paul represents this relation”—­the relation of slavery—­“as of comparatively little account."[66] And this he applies—­otherwise it is nothing to his purpose—­to American slavery.  Does he then regard it as a small matter, a mere trifle, to be thrown under the slave-laws of this republic, grimly and fiercely excluding their victim from almost every means of improvement, and field of usefulness, and source of comfort; and making him, body and substance, with his wife and babes, “the servant of men?” Could such a relation be acquiesced in consistently with the instructions of the apostle?

[Footnote 66:  Pittsburg pamphlet, p.10.]

To the Princeton professor we commend a practical trial of the bearing of the passage in hand upon American slavery.  His regard for the unity and prosperity of the ecclesiastical organizations, which in various forms and under different names, unite the southern with the northern churches, will make the experiment grateful to his feelings.  Let him, then, as soon as his convenience will permit, proceed to Georgia.  No religious teacher [67] from any free State, can be likely to receive so general and so warm a welcome there.  To allay the heat, which the doctrines and movements of the abolitionists have occasioned in the southern mind, let him with as much despatch as possible, collect, as he goes from place to place, masters and their slaves.  Now let all men, whom it may concern, see and own that slavery is a Christian institution!  With his Bible in his hand and his eye upon the passage in question, he addresses himself to the task of instructing the slaves around him.  Let not your hearts, my brethren, be overcharged with sorrow, or eaten up with anxiety.  Your servile condition cannot deprive you of the fatherly regards of Him “who is no respecter of persons.”  Freedom you ought, indeed, to prefer.  If you can escape from “the yoke,” throw it off.  In the mean time rejoice that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;” that the gospel places slaves “on a perfect religious equality” with their master; so that every Christian is “the Lord’s freeman.”  And, for your encouragement, remember that “Christianity has abolished both political and domestic servitude wherever it has had free scope.  It enjoins a fair compensation for labor; it insists on the moral and intellectual improvement of all classes of men; it condemns all infractions of marital or parental rights; in short it requires not only that free scope be allowed to human improvement, but that all suitable means should be employed for the attainment of that end.” [68] Let your lives, then, be honorable to your relations to your Savior.  He bought you with his own blood; and is entitled to your warmest love and most effective service.  “Be not ye the servants of men.”  Let no human arrangements prevent you, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, from making the most of your powers and opportunities.  Would such an effort, generally and heartily made, allay excitement at the South, and quench the flames of discord, every day rising higher and waxing hotter, in almost every part of the republic, and cement “the Union?”