and slave-holders.  Pity that he could not have let “works” alone, seeing it was so important for the other Apostles to establish the one idea of justification by faith.  He made great trouble for Luther and his companions in their contest with Popery.  Luther had to reject his epistle; “straminea epistola” he called it,—­an epistle of straw,—­weak, worthless; and he denied its inspiration, because it conflicted with his doctrine of “faith alone.”  So much for trying to be candid and just, and for presenting the other side of a subject, or of a man, when the spirit of the age is averse to it, and candor is in danger of being looked upon as a time-serving thing.  Neither Paul nor James, however, had felt the tonic, bracing effect of good anti-slavery principles, or they would not have written, the one such a letter to a slave-holder, and the other such a back-oar argument against “faith alone.”  However, I am disposed to think well of Paul and James, notwithstanding these the great errors of their lives.  Indeed I can almost forgive them, when I am reading other things which they said and did.  You will please acknowledge, therefore, my dear madam, that in giving you credit for kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother, we are disposed to be just; yet I beg of you not to think that I abate one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery is “the sum of all villanies,” “an enormous wrong,” “a stupendous injustice.”

I have just been reading your letter once more, and the foolish tears pester me so that I can scarce see out of my eyes.  I find, dear madam, that you have known a bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying with them to the grave.  Your words make me think so of little graves elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you are a slave-holder.  Nor can I hardly believe that your touching words are suggested by the death of a slave’s babe, when you speak of “the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast.”  O my dear lady! has a slave’s babe “a tender little breast”?  Then you really think so!  And you a slave-holder!  “Border Ruffianism,” perhaps, has not yet reached your heart; and yet I suppose—­forgive me if I do you wrong—­that slave-holders’ hearts generally need only to be removed to the “borders,” to manifest all their native “ruffianism.”  Can you tell me whether there are any mothers in Missouri (near Kansas) who feel toward their slaves who are mothers, as you do?  There are so many people from the North in Kansas (near Missouri) who have gone thither to prevent you and your brethren and sisters from owning a fellow-creature there, that I trust their influence will in time extend through all Missouri, and that white mothers in that State will everywhere have such humane feelings toward the blacks as we and you possess.