The position which, in the article so often referred to in this paper, the Princeton professor takes, is sufficiently remarkable.  Northern abolitionists he saw in an earnest struggle with southern slaveholders.  The present welfare and future happiness of myriads of the human family were at stake in this contest.  In the heat of the battle, he throws himself between the belligerent powers.  He gives the abolitionists to understand, that they are quite mistaken in the character of the objections they have set themselves so openly and sternly against.  Slaveholding is not, as they suppose, contrary to the law of God.  It was witnessed by the Savior “in its worst forms"[82] without extorting from his laps a syllable of rebuke.  “The sacred writers did not condemn it.” [83] And why should they?  By a definition[84] sufficiently ambiguous and slippery, he undertakes to set forth a form of slavery which he looks upon as consistent with the law of Righteousness.  From this definition he infers that the abolitionists are greatly to blame for maintaining that American slavery is inherently and essentially sinful, and for insisting that it ought at once to be abolished.  For this labor of love the slaveholding South is warmly grateful and applauds its reverend ally, as if a very Daniel had come as their advocate to judgment.[85]

[Footnote 82:  Pittsburg pamphlet, p. 9.]

[Footnote 83:  The same, p. 13.]

[Footnote 84:  The same, p. 12.]

[Footnote 85:  Supra, p. 58.]

A few questions, briefly put, may not here be inappropriate.

1.  Was the form of slavery which our professor pronounces innocent the form witnessed by our Savior “in Judea?” That, he will by no means admit.  The slavery there was, he affirms, of the “worst” kind. How then does he account for the alleged silence of the Savior?—­a silence covering the essence and the form—­the institution and its “worst” abuses?

2.  Is the slaveholding, which, according to the Princeton professor,
Christianity justifies, the same as that which the abolitionists so
earnestly wish to see abolished?  Let us see.

Christianity in supporting Slavery,      The American system for
according to Professor Hodge_,           supporting Slavery_,

“Enjoins a fair compensation for Makes compensation
labor” impossible by reducing the
laborer to a chattel.

“It insists on the moral and It sternly forbids its
intellectual improvement of all victim to learn to read
classes of men” even the name of his

          
                                                                          Creator and Redeemer.