If a fugitive slave of the Rev. Mr. Smylie, of Mississippi, should return to him with a letter from a doctor of divinity in New York, containing such an assurance, how would the reverend slaveholder dispose of it?  What, he exclaims, have we here?  “If Cato has not been upright in his pecuniary intercourse with you—­if he owes you any thing—­put that on my account.”  What ignorance of southern institutions!  What mockery, to talk of pecuniary intercourse between a slave and his master! The slave himself, with all he is and has, is an article of merchandise.  What can he owe his master?—­A rustic may lay a wager with his mule, and give the creature the peck of oats which he had permitted it to win.  But who in sober earnest would call this a pecuniary transaction?

“TO BE HIS SERVANT FOR LIFE!” From what part of the epistle could the expositor have evolved a thought so soothing to tyrants—­so revolting to every man who loves his own nature?  From this?  “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever.”  Receive him how? As a servant, exclaims our commentator.  But what wrote the apostle?  “NOT now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”  Who authorized the professor to bereave the word ‘not’ of its negative influence?  According to Paul, Philemon was to receive Onesimus ’not as a servant;’—­according to Stuart, he was to receive him “as a servant!” If the professor will apply the same rules of exposition to the writings of the abolitionists, all difference between him and them must in his view presently vanish away.  The harmonizing process would be equally simple and effectual.  He has only to understand them as affirming what they deny, and as denying what they affirm.

Suppose that Prof.  Stuart had a son residing at the South.  His slave, having stolen money of his master, effected his escape.  He fled to Andover, to find a refuge among the “sons of the prophets.”  There he finds his way to Prof.  Stuart’s house, and offers to render any service which the professor, dangerously ill “of a typhus fever,” might require.  He is soon found to be a most active, skillful, faithful nurse.  He spares no pains, night and day, to make himself useful to the venerable sufferer.  He anticipates every want.  In the most delicate and tender manner, he tries to sooth every pain.  He fastens himself strongly on the heart of the reverend object of his care.  Touched with the heavenly spirit, the meek demeanor, the submissive frame, which the sick bed exhibits, Archy becomes a Christian.  A new bond now ties him and his convalescent teacher together.  As soon as he is able to write, the professor sends by Archy the following letter to the South, to Isaac Stuart, Esq.:—­