I did not then, nor do I now, suppose that if you were employed by the A. C. M. S. to preach the gospel in Kansas, it would fall to your lot to furnish instructions to many masters and servants.  If in any churches you may raise up in Kansas—­evidently destined to be free—­you find masters and slaves, of course it will be your duty to instruct them both “according to the Bible.”  But to furnish such instruction, and to go through Kansas lecturing on anti-slavery, or mixing up any pro-slavery or any anti-slavery theories and dogmas with the gospel, or to plant churches with the express understanding that no “master” shall be allowed to have membership in it, are very different things.  And I had this very matter in view when I wrote to you, for I had some-how heard that the church of which you were a member was about to take just such a stand, and I wanted to have it distinctly understood that so far as action under the direction of the A. C. M. S. was concerned, all such ultraisms must be ignored. . . .  You felt anxious to have help to preach the gospel in Kansas.  I felt anxious to assist you.  I saw danger in the way, growing out of the fact that I represent a society whose membership is in the South as well as in the North, and that some factious ultraists are constantly on the watch to sow the seeds of discord.  I knew the state of things in Kansas as bearing on the slavery question.  I knew something, too, of your treatment there, and of your feelings.  I saw that if you were employed to preach there, an effort would be made to herald it, as in Bro.  Beardslee’s Case, as an anti-slavery triumph.  This would be unjust to us.  And as the practical question of master and slave does not exist there to any extent, I spoke of ignoring the question altogether.  If you still insist on the right to urge that question, and take part in the controversy raging in Kansas, under the patronage of the A. C. M. S., I have only to say it is outside the objects contemplated in our constitution.  But if you wish simply to preach the gospel and instruct converts in a knowledge of Christian duties, “according to the Scriptures,” there was certainly no occasion for your second letter to be written.

To the foregoing a rejoinder was written by Bro.  Butler, which closed the correspondence with the A. C. M. S., and from which the following extracts are taken, that the readers may understand his position correctly: 

I reply, 1.  In your former letter I find no reference to the forms the agitation of this question assumes in Kansas.  I presume you had not a copy of that letter before you when you wrote this one.  But you do allude to “forms” the agitation of this question had assumed in Cincinnati, and in reference to Bro.  Beardslee and the Jamaica mission.  I was also instructed that “our missionaries” must not be ensnared into such utterances as the Luminary can publish to the world, to add fuel to the flame.  The utterances against which I was guarded seemed