In the mean time, while expectation waited, Paul, the professor adds, “gave precepts to Christians respecting their demeanor.” That he did.  Of what character were these precepts?  Must they not have been in harmony with the Golden Rule?  But this, according to Professor Stuart, “decides against the righteousness of slavery” even as a “theory.”  Accordingly, Christians were required, without respect of persons, to do each other justice—­to maintain equality as common ground for all to stand upon—­to cherish and express in all their intercourse that tender love and disinterested charity which one brother naturally feels for another.  These were the “ad interim precepts."[88] which cannot fail, if obeyed, to cut up slavery, “root and branch,” at once and forever.

[Footnote 88:  Letter to Dr. Fisk, p. 7.]

Professor Stuart comforts us with the assurance that “Christianity will ultimately certainly destroy slavery.”  Of this we have not the feeblest doubt.  But how could he admit a persuasion and utter a prediction so much at war with the doctrine he maintains, that “slavery may exist without VIOLATING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH OR THE CHURCH?"[89] What, Christianity bent on the destruction of an ancient and cherished institution which hurts neither her character nor condition?[90] Why not correct its abuses and purify its spirit; and shedding upon it her own beauty, preserve it, as a living trophy of her reformatory power?  Whence the discovery that, in her onward progress, she would trample down and destroy what was no way hurtful to her?  This is to be aggressive with a witness.  Far be it from the Judge of all the earth to whelm the innocent and guilty in the same destruction!  In aid of Professor Stuart, in the rude and scarcely covert attack which he makes upon himself, we maintain that Christianity will certainly destroy slavery on account of its inherent wickedness—­its malignant temper—­its deadly effects—­its constitutional, insolent, and unmitigable opposition to the authority of God and the welfare of man.

[Footnote 89:  Letter to Dr. Fisk, p. 7.]

[Footnote 90:  Professor Stuart applies here the words, salva fide et salva ecclesia.]

“Christianity will ultimately destroy slavery.”  “ULTIMATELY!” What meaneth that portentous word?  To what limit of remotest time, concealed in the darkness of futurity, may it look?  Tell us, O watchman, on the hill of Andover.  Almost nineteen centuries have rolled over this world of wrong and outrage—­and yet we tremble in the presence of a form of slavery whose breath is poison, whose fang is death!  If any one of the incidents of slavery should fall, but for a single day, upon the head of the prophet, who dipped his pen in such cold blood, to write that word “ultimately,” how, under the sufferings of the first tedious hour, would he break out in the lamentable cry, “How long, O Lord, HOW