master is a fugitive from oppression? It is assumed at the South rather as a conceded point, that of runaways, a majority are of those that have been the best used, and who have had the most humane masters. I will not express an opinion on this subject, farther than to say, that I presume there are some of each sort. If so, ought all to be treated as of one class! Or is a servant running away an unequivocal proof that he has good cause for it? Now, a Christian man, in aiding and abetting a runaway slave, may be sinning against a good Christian master, in aid of a robber, a felon, who has outraged every law of justice and humanity. Many such instances have occurred. And can an enlightened Christian man, of tender conscience, take part with any runaway, merely because he is a runaway, and upon his own showing of his case, and pay a proper respect to the law of Christ? If he can, I envy not his perspicacity of mind, nor his attainments in Christian knowledge. It is right he should have a trial, and a trial before a lawful tribunal. And such are our tribunals, North and South. But having neither time nor inclination to argue out this view of the matter--upon which we have not only arguments, but documents of grave import-I proceed merely to note allusions to my remarks on the cases of Hagar and Onesimus. And first of Hagar. I observed that an angel had commanded Hagar to return to her mistress. Bro. Errett interprets this passage as a command to Hagar to return to her husband! She is, with him, a runaway "secondary wife." His words are: "Now, the simple facts are these. Hagar was Abram's wife-his secondary wife-for they practised polygamy in those days. Sarai, the principal wife, in a fit of jealousy, afflicted Hagar, the inferior wife, and drove her away. The angel of the Lord paid Hagar a visit of mercy, and advised her to return to her place in the family again, especially in view of the fact that her offspring was to become a great nation; and it was proper that Abram's child should be reared in Abram's house." This is a very convenient way of deciding the case! Give me this license, and I can make a pope out of Peter, and a priest out of Paul. I doubt not either the sincerity or the candor of our most estimable brother. It is the force of circumstances, which few men can either calculate or overcome. All our English abolition commentators agree with me in the construction I have given of this passage. Still, that is no proof that I am right. True, Bro. Errett prefers to construe the precept of the angel in the words following, to wit: "he advised her to return to her place in the family again." But he has first affirmed that she was a "secondary wife,"` and that relation he very courteously calls "her place in the family." Paul, however, not quite so complaisant, in commenting on her place in the family, calls her the "bondwoman.” "Cast out of her place in the family, the bondwoman and her son." However reluctantly, in this case, we must, then, prefer the title "bondwoman" to that of "secondary wife," merely out of respect to Paul. The Bible presents Hagar as a bondservant, before she became a mother, and calls her a bondservant when her son Ishmael was nineteen years old-Anno Mundi, 2108. But the angel gave her two precepts. He not only commanded her to return to her mistress, not to her husband, but told her how she must behave on her return. His command was, "Submit thyself to her hand." Such was her place in the family of Abraham. I am not afraid of the consequences that follow from the legitimate interpretation of Holy Scripture. Nor will I give up a single filing of divine truth, out of respect to the reason or folly of saint or infidel. I stand up for the Bible, against sectarians and infidels, and stake my fortunes forever on its sound interpretation. Our ingenious and generous brother makes a beautiful dialogue out of this case. Imagination could make two on the other side. But I forbear. The case of Onesimus is disposed of with equal ingenuity. He was a runaway slave, in Grecian and Roman law. But in Rome he fell in with Paul, and was converted. Paul gave him sound evangelical instruction, though very unfashionable at the meridian of Warren, Ohio. Of this case says our brother: "If Paul were here to do with Onesimus what he did in Rome, he would be liable to a fine of one thousand dollars and six months' imprisonment; and then, perhaps, he might know something of a romantic and imaginative philanthropy." Well, this is ingenious pleasantry in a grave case. The case, as reported by Paul, is: 'I, Paul, am now in jail in Rome. Onesimus, Bro. Philemon, a slave of yours, has kindly waited upon me. I have been the means of converting him to Christ. I have learned from him that he ran away from your service. I have advised him to return to you as a brother and a slave, valuable to you as both. Receive him as such with all kindness; and if he have taken from you any of your property, charge me with it—I give you my bond.' Did Paul harbor Philemon? Did Paul advise him to run away into another state or empire? Did he give him money, and advise him to seek refuge from his master in Canada! It seems that the lawyers and judges at Warren would, in such a case, Bro, Errett thinks, have fined Paul in one thousand dollars and imprisoned him for six months. From such counsellors and judges I desire to keep myself at a respectable distance. He knows them much better than I. There are sundry other items in this very beautiful sermon, on which I might animadvert with some advantage, but I only note those that bear on my principles of Biblical interpretation. I am aware how my remarks may be perverted. Neither slavery, as practised at the South, nor abolitionism, as understood and practised at the North, will ever find an advocate in me. I stand up for God, the Bible, and man; and when they call upon me to speak or write, palsied be my tongue, and let my right hand forget its cunning, if I keep silence, and do not obey the calls of Divinity and Humanity. A. C. THE DISCIPLE: A Monthly Publication, devoted to the advocacy of Primitive Christianity. SUCH is the title of a new monthly visitor, emanating from Somerset, Penn.'a, and edited by Bro. Loos, a graduate of Bethany College. We quote its preface, from which we may prognosticate its character. Bro. Loos preaches in German and English, and in French, as he has got a mother tongue, a father tongue, and a brother tongue, besides a knowledge of the dead tongues, and is, therefore, well qualified to speak; and that he has the faculty to write, will appear from the preface to this new work, which we quote entire. I have thought that our Bro. Baxter, the poet, who has written so many beautiful pieces, and Bro. Loos, ought to be associated in some one grand weekly paper, that would circulate over all the Union. It would require two such young men as they to devote their whole time and talents to such a paper, as would be useful and respectable to the whole brotherhood. Almost all our periodicals are sinecures. They are, in a literary point of view, and in their general appearance, with one or two exceptions, not creditable to the age nor to the cause of Reformation. When will our brethren learn this lesson! But first, we should ask, who dare teach it!! A C. THE Reformation we are pleading, is a reformation not of one idea, but one that shall be thorough and complete. We are calling for an entire restoration of Primitive Christianity, as well as an abandonment of every thing unscriptural and traditionary. The magnitude of the work of such a reform, and the self-sacrifices necessarily attending it, must be apparent to every one who understands the mind and heart of man, and who has well read and studied the history of the church. He that raises the voice of reform, especially if that reform is to be radical, at once arrays against him. self, in hosts, the advocates of that which is old and venerable, popular and profitable. These will bring to bear against him every influence at their command; and being in the preoccupancy of the ground, they will command more resources, and carry on the contest under much more favorable auspices, than he who pleads for change and reform. His work requires constant vigilance, increasing labor, and untiring perseverance, if he would rightly fulfil his mission and insure success to his cause. This is especially true of an effort at a religious reformation. This the consenting voice of history, and those who have been for years, in our own land, engaged, under God, in the restoration of Primitive Christianity, have fully realized it in their experience. While error is in the world and predominates, truth can only be evolved by men banishing from their hearts the blinding spirit of bigotry, and instituting a full and free inquiry in all matters of faith and conscience. This is what the real friends of truth have ever been pleading for, and ever shall plead for. They will ever demand it as the right and perogative of truth. But this is precisely opposed, at all points, to the spirit of sectarianism and of error. This spirit has always been intolerant, and an enemy to free inquiry and free thought. Sectarianism, throwing itself back upon the popularity or antiquity of its name, spurns indignantly every attempt to call inte question its claims, and to pass them through the ordeal of investigation. In by-gone days, he who dared the hazardous task of asailing the sacro-sanct notions and doctrines of established churches, Catholic and Protestant, was rewarded with the dungeon, the block, and the stake. Those palmy days of spiritual despotism, when no man was allowed to inquire for the reason of things, have, to the great grief of thousands, departed, and the physical arm of persecution has, to a great degree, been broken. Nevertheless, that same spirit of intolerance is still displayed by sectarian leaders against the reformer. Denunciation, misrepresentation, and all the common fallacies of covert and established error, are played off against him, to inspire the people with secret apprehension and a dread of his doctrines and motives. All the ad captandum arguments are brought into free use; and strong must be the faith and spiritual courage of the man, who, amid all this opposition, can with unfaltering firm. ness pursue the work to which God has called him. We bless God that, in his providence, he has raised up such men. They have, with a noble intrepedity and confidence in the truth and righteousness of their cause, met all the opposition which a blind sectarian zeal could bring to bear against them, and God has greatly blessed their labors. There are many thousands now in our land, who are pleading for a restoration of Primitive Christianity, and an emancipation of the church from all that is human. But yet the odds in numbers, influence and means, &c., are against us. Where there are a hundred in the field, building up their respective sects and parties, scarcely one is abroad advocating the pure, unadulterated gospel of salvation, unmixed with the doctrines and commandments of men. But not only is Christendom filled with myriads of public teachers, pleading and advocating the interests, doctrines, and opinSERIES IV.-VOL. I. 39* ions of parties, all building up their various Babels, with the tongue, but the press, too, is every where made subservient to the same interests, and is teeming with its legions of books and publications, quarterlies, monthlies and weeklies, all pledged to support the views of a party-all bound by the chains of sectarianism. Free discussion, so essential to the eliciting of truth, and so fatal to error, is banished from the religious party press. All must speak the shibboleths of the sect, all must banish the idea of independence of thought and of speech, and must act, as they profess to act, as mere passive organs, having no mind nor will of their own. who dares to break these ignominious chains! Woe to him Every one who thinks, is aware of the vast power exercised over the minds of the listening and reading millions, by this co-operative machinery. And is it not just, is it not our sacred duty, to make use of the same potent means to advocate with efficiency the cause of truth and righteousness, and to seek the triumph of a pure primitive Christianity over tradition-over the commandments of men-which have made of none effect the law of God? We believe that among all the means of human agency that God in his providence has called forth to advance the triumph of truth over error, of light over darkness, none is endued with, and has exercised so potent an influence over the destinies of humanity, as the printing press. Had Luther arisen two centuries earlier, or had movable types been invented two centuries later, the Reformation which marched with such unparalleled progress to conquest and victory, would not have advanced a furlong where it advanced a league. It might have been crushed, as were many similar efforts before. Truth, in itself, is mighty and will never die; though "crushed to earth, it will rise again." But where every thing is leagued against it-where abso lute power, political and ecclesiastical, like a two-edged sword, is ever hanging over its head, and spiritual darkness, dense as midnight, is all around it, and the passions and prejudices of the multitude are all aroused against it, its efforts will necessarily be feeble and at long intervals, and its progress slow. through the long night of mediæval darkness. the glimmerings of light here and there, serving only to make the darkness more visible, till God said, as erst at creation's dawn, "Let there be light, and light there was. A new agent was called into being, that, like light, was clothed with a kind of omnipresence and omnipotence, and was, with a subtle potency, to reanimate into a new and greater life the moral world. As this agent came forth at the voice of God, Truth rejoiced-Truth in science and religion-as she beheld this new champion armed with power invulnerable and invincible, that would fight her battles, and lead her armies to victory. The empire of darkness felt a throe through all its dominions, when the printing press cast off the first sheets of its impression. Strange that the first use of this wonderful invention should have been the printing of the Bible! Blessed omen! indicative of God's design in guiding the minds of Guttenberg and Faust to this great idea. "Men may act but God leads them," said Bossuet, and it was a great thought. The hand of God was in this work, and let us not mistake the true interpretation of this omen. It is to teach Such was the case |