pointed, but spiritual Commentary on the Scriptures is very much needed among them, and that the great leaders of the German movement among us are looking out for such a work. We venture to suggest Von Gerlach's Commentary to their attention. It could easily be weeded of any views inconsistent with those of our Church, and such additions as are necessary to fit it for the precise purpose for which it is needed could readily be made. The accomplished editor of the Apologist is amply competent to the task: may we ask him to address himself to it?

ART. VIII.-THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH.

History of the Organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; comprehending all the Official Proceedings of the General Conference, and the General Convention, with such other matters as are necessary to a right understanding of the case. Nashville: compiled and published by the Editors and Publishers of the South Western Christian Advocate, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; by order of the Louisville Convention. WILLIAM CAMERON, Printer: 1845.

WE find, in the volume before us, much to commend and little to blame. Taking into consideration the exciting circumstances in which it originated, and the strictly party relations of the writers, the work is characterized by a commendable spirit and temper, and is written with, perhaps, as much fairness and impartiality as could have been reasonably expected. To complain that authors, personally implicated in the transactions they record, and feeling an individual interest in justifying the proceedings they narrate, do not always present the stronger and more unmanageable positions and arguments of their opponents, would be captious, if not querulous. It must be allowed to writers under such circumstances to assume the attitude of advocates, not of historians. Yet there is much of real history in this book. Besides the proceedings of the Louisville Convention itself, it contains papers of no ordinary importance in regard to the previous proceedings of the Annual Conferences represented in the Convention, and of the General Conference of 1844; all which will be necessary to the historian, who shall be favoured to write after the actors in the present excitements, and those excitements themselves, shall have passed away.

With the above palliating remarks, we hope it may not be offensive to say, that the reader must look over the first hundred pages of this History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as a jury is expected to listen to the pleadings of an advocate. His citations of

legal authorities are not suspected to be absolutely spurious, but, on the other hand, they are not to be taken as containing all that the legal decision or authority he cites may import, much less all that may be cited on the other side. These hundred pages of abstracts from the Journal and Debates of the General Conference in the cases of Mr. Harding and Bishop Andrew,-extracts chosen for the purpose of justifying the proceedings of the Louisville Convention in severing the Annual Conferences in the slave-holding States from the Methodist Episcopal Church,-are given in direct view of the end to be answered. The same may be said, too, of the hasty sketch of the history of General Conference action on the subject of slavery from 1780 down to 1844. An opponent would find it easy to show, by simply enlarging the passages cited, that the arguments made to rest upon them stand on a very sandy foundation. We do not purpose, however, to review these abstracts or arguments, in detail. The first may be readily corrected by the reader himself, by reference to the Journal and Debates of the General Conference of 1844, published at the Methodist Episcopal Book-Concern, New-York; and for the rest, the value of the assumptions and arguments based upon and intermingled with these partial citations, will be determined by the reader when he shall have made himself acquainted with the veritable records, published by the order, and under the supervision, of both parties, before the occasion arose for writing the History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

The remainder of the volume under review is chiefly made up of the preliminary proceedings of the Annual Conferences in the slaveholding States preparatory to the Louisville Convention, the doings of the Convention itself, and a chapter "embracing events subsequent to the adjournment of the Louisville Convention." To the last there are prefixed some general remarks on the state of things in the Church in general, and some severe animadversions on opposing editors, conferences, &c., which we can afford to pass over without reply or rejoinder.

Passing over, then, whatever is merely incidental to the narrative, we propose to review the historical statements only, which the diligent committee of the Louisville Convention have laid before the public; and these will be found of no ordinary interest to the Christian reader. A Church, containing more than a million of souls, and affording the ministry of the word of life, statedly, to five times that number of persons, efficient beyond all parallel in modern times in its organization, and successful beyond all example in carrying out the benign purposes of the gospel, especially to the poor, has been violently rent and divided by geographical lines; yet movable lines, according to

the interpretation of the seceders-a line upon wheels, to be pushed north or south as strength or address may prevail. All this has been done, too, under a manifestation of ill feeling, and angry temper, which proclaims a deep sense of injury and wrong done to the seceders. Indeed, the manifesto of the Louisville Convention, a paper drawn up with great ability by a committee, and adopted by the Convention with great unanimity, speaks of violated rights and highhanded injustice, and that too in a tone of indignation and rebuke, as if something had been suffered which outraged all the obligations of religion and even the duties of social life. Yet whoever inquires impartially for the causes which produced these complaints and the secession to which they led, will find, when he has stripped them of all adventitious covering, that the separatists do not themselves allege that any new articles of religious belief had been added to the creed of the Church, or anything expunged therefrom; nor do they intimate that anything whatever had been done which On the contrary, they pressed hardly upon their consciences.

adopted, for the new church, both the doctrines and discipline of the old one, without alteration or abridgment, except such verbal changes as were necessary to adapt the whole to a new ecclesiastical organization.

What, then, it may be asked, has produced this sudden and violent dismemberment? What has so excited the feelings, and heated the passions, of Christian men, that they can no longer dwell together in unity with brethren, so long beloved, endeared to them not only by a common faith, but also by the fellowship of common sufferings and common success in the effort "to spread Scriptural holiness over these lands?" The answer, and the only answer which can be inferred from the proceedings of the Louisville Convention, is, that the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had taken action which gave strong indications that a bishop holding slaves would not be tolerated in the church. For sixty years—that is, from the time of its organization-the Conference had, of set purpose, avoided the election of a slave-holder to the episcopacy; and now that one of those who had been elevated to the office of bishop, or general superintendent, had voluntarily become the owner of slaves, the Conference had voted it as the "sense" of the body, that he should cease to exercise his episcopal functions until the impediment was removed. This was the wound for which there was found no remedy, even in the fulness of Christian charity. It was not to be borne that the slaveholding ministers of the South should be cut off from all hope of reaching the episcopal dignity without parting with their property in their fellow-men. It was denounced as fanaticism, madness, reck

lessness of law, justice, and good faith, and, to sum up all possible abuse in a word, it was-abolitionism.

It is true, and we have no disposition to conceal it, that other grounds of complaint are alleged; but they would not of themselves have occasioned any serious agitation, much less have produced a division of the church. The southern delegates, in their "Declaration" presented to the General Conference of 1844, enumerate among the grievances complained of, "the continued agitation of the subject of slavery and abolition in a portion of the church," and "the frequent action on that subject in the General Conference." But the church could not control the discussion on this subject, in any part of her connexion, without violating the liberty of speech and of the press guaranteed to every citizen; and it is not alleged that the General Conference had taken any action before that time offensive or injurious to the South. On the contrary, the work before us quotes the General Conferences of 1836 and of 1840 as eminently and worthily conservative. There remains, therefore, nothing to account for the separation but the proceedings of the General Conference in the case of Bishop Andrew; and in this case the unpardonable offence was, that it precluded slave-holding ministers from all hope of the episcopal office. Nevertheless, the case of Bishop Andrew was not the cause, but only the immediate occasion of separation. The causes must be looked for farther back, in the history of American slavery and of its effects upon the different branches of the Christian Church in the Southern States.

Christianity, on its first promulgation, found slavery an established practice recognized and sanctioned by public law throughout the Roman empire, which included nearly, if not entirely, the whole civilized world. The celebrated Justinian code not only sanctions the system, but justifies it, on the ground that prisoners taken in war might be rightfully put to death by the captor, and, therefore, if he spared their lives, they became absolutely his property, and might be disposed of in any way which their owner's interest, caprice, or passions might suggest. He had the absolute power of life and death over his slaves, and they were often put to death with the most cruel tortures.

Under the Roman law, the slave was not a person, but simply property. He had no legal rights, civil, social, or political. He could hold no property; and if, by the favour of his master, he was permitted to acquire any, it might be forcibly wrested from him by violence. The law afforded no redress. He himself, and his children, were only protected from violence as the property of his master; and if this protection was withheld or withdrawn, he was FOURTH SERIES, VOL. I.—19

subject to be robbed or murdered, with entire impunity to the aggressor. Meantime, emancipation was greatly restricted by law. The number of freed-men was strictly limited; and beyond this number, the master conferred no civil, political, or social rights upon those whom he discharged from his service. On the contrary, he greatly aggravated their condition, as he withdrew from them the only protection to life itself. So long as they remained his property, he could legally claim compensation for any personal damage which disabled them for service, as he might for a like injury done to a horse or an ox; but when the ownership was renounced, all protection was withdrawn.

With these historical statements before us, it is easy to account for the fact, that our Lord and his apostles neither gave any positive commandment to the Church enjoining the emancipation of slaves, nor made emancipation a condition of church fellowship. Christianity was designed and calculated to better the civil and social, as well as the religious and moral, condition of man. But its effects upon the slave population of the world would have been directly the reverse had it enjoined as a duty upon masters the discharge of their slaves from service, unless they could at the same time have invested them with the essential rights of freemen; or at least have secured to them the protection of life and property, which under existing circumstances was impracticable. It is easy to imagine the deplorable state to which such a command would have reduced both master and slave. The slave would have been put into the condition of a wild beast, to be hunted and slain in the mere wantonness of cruelty; and the master would have been compelled, on pain of eternal damnation, to inflict upon his fellow-man this cruel injury. Infinite wisdom and mercy ordered it otherwise. The Author of our holy religion ordained and established the universal law of love as the rule of life; and having enjoined it by precept, and illustrated it by comment and example, he caused it to be proclaimed to all the world, by men chosen and qualified to preach his gospel to every creature. It was this law which, under the gracious influences accompanying the ministration of his messengers, was so to enlighten the understandings, and change the hearts of men, as to supplant and abrogate all human laws and institutions, which authorized outrages upon the rights of humanity, or which restrained the overflowings of brotherly kindness and charity, among all classes and conditions of men. The reader will have occasion to remember these remarks on the subject of slavery in the primitive church, when we come to examine the history of our own church action on the same subject, in a subsequent part of this article.