to be in Cincinnati rather than in Kansas.  I had already published a piece indicative of my views in the Northwestern Christian Magazine, and that appeared to be the obnoxious “utterance.” 2.  You are misinformed relative to the “forms” the agitation of this question assumes in Kansas.  The question, Shall slaveholders be received as church members? has hardly been debated at all. 3.  Neither myself nor any person associated with me has at time proposed to organize a church to exclude slaveholders. 4.  Slaveholders have been members of our churches from the first day until now.  How, then, could I understand you as referring to anything else than to my own published Cincinnati utterances?

* * *

As respects slavery, the whole power of the master and the obligation of the servant is found in the proper meaning of the words of such precepts as these “Masters, render unto your servants that which is just and equal;” “servants, obey your masters,” etc.  All within such limits is the doctrine which is according to godliness—­all beyond, whether on the part of the master or the slave, and which is attempted to be foisted into the church as a part of the apostolic doctrine, is schismatical, and essentially fills up the picture drawn by Paul:  “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing’—­from such withdraw thyself.”  In these precepts no right is given to the masters to buy and sell, to traffic in slaves; no right to enslave the children, and the children’s children of his servants; no right to hold them in a relentless bondage which knows no limit but the grave, and in which the heritage transmitted by the slave to his children, is a heritage of bondage to all generations.

On the 26th of August, 1858, the same season that the foregoing correspondence took place, Bro.  Butler wrote to the editor of the Christian Luminary the following letter, which is given entire, as showing the exact position which he occupied ministerially at that time: 

OCENA, ATCHISON CO., KAN., Aug. 26, 1858.

DEAR SIR:—­Three churches—­one meeting at Leavenworth City, another at Mount Pleasant, Atchison county, and a third at Pardee, same county—­have formed an organization for the purpose of propagating the gospel in Kansas.  For four months I have been in the employ of these churches.  My first business was to travel over the Territory and ascertain where we have brethren in sufficient numbers to make it expedient to organize churches.  To that end I have traveled over that portion of the Territory north of the Kansas River, and embraced in the counties of Leavenworth, Atchison, Doniphan, Jefferson, and Calhoun; also, to some extent south of the Kansas River.