“MY DEAR SON,—­With a hand enfeebled by a distressing and dangerous illness, from which I am slowly recovering, I address you, on a subject which lies very near my heart.  I have a request to urge, which my acquaintance with you, and your strong obligations to me, will, I can not doubt, make you eager fully to grant.  I say a request, though the thing I ask is, in its very nature and on the principles of the gospel, obligatory upon you.  I might, therefore, boldly demand, what I earnestly entreat.  But I know how generous, magnanimous, and Christ-like you are, and how readily you will “do even more than I say”—­I, your own father, an old man, almost exhausted with multiplied exertions for the benefit of my family and my country, and now just rising, emaciated and broken, from the brink of the grave.  I write in behalf of Archy, whom I regard with the affection of a father, and whom, indeed, ’I have begotten in my sickness.’  Gladly would I have retained him, to be an Isaac to me; for how often did not his soothing voice, and skillful hand, and unwearied attention to my wants, remind me of you!  But I chose to give you an opportunity of manifesting, voluntarily, the goodness of your heart; as, if I had retained him with me, you might seem to have been forced to grant what you will gratefully bestow.  His temporary absence from you may have opened the way for his permanent continuance with you.  Not now as a slave.  Heaven forbid!  But superior to a slave.  Superior, did I say?  Take him to your bosom, as a beloved brother; for I own him as a son, and regard him as such, in all the relations of life, both as a man and a Christian.—­’Receive him as myself.’  And that nothing may hinder you from complying with my request at once, I hereby promise, without adverting to your many and great obligations to me, to pay you every cent which he took from your drawer.  Any preparation which my comfort with you may require, you will make without much delay, when you learn, that I intend, as soon as I shall be able ‘to perform the journey,’ to make you a visit.”

And what if Dr. Baxter, in giving an account of this letter should publicly declare that Prof.  Stuart of Andover regarded slaveholding as lawful; for that “he had sent Archy back to his son Isaac, with an apology for his running away” to be held in perpetual slavery?  With what propriety might not the professor exclaim:  False, every syllable false.  I sent him back, NOT TO BE HELD AS A SLAVE, but recognized as a dear brother, in all respects, under every relation, civil and ecclesiastical.  I bade my son receive Archy as myself.  If this was not equivalent to a requisition to set him fully and most honorably free, and that, too, on the ground of natural obligation and Christian principle, then I know not how to frame such a requisition.

I am well aware that my supposition is by no means strong enough fully to illustrate the case to which it is applied.  Prof.  Stuart lacks apostolical authority.  Isaac Stuart is not a leading member of a church consisting, as the early churches chiefly consisted, of what the world regard as the dregs of society—­“the offscouring of all things.”  Nor was slavery at Colosse, it seems, supported by such barbarous usages, such horrid laws as disgrace the South.