Admitting that the great, the primary end of the Gospel was spiritual; that it was the object of the Apostles to obtain for it a dispassionate hearing among all nations; and that, however they might hope indirectly to affect the temporal prosperity and political welfare of mankind, all good of this kind was in their view subordinate to that spiritual amelioration, which, if affected, would necessarily involve all inferior social and political improvements;—­I say, admitting this, it is really difficult to imagine any other course open to a wise choice than that which was actually adopted.  I contend, that in not passionately denouncing slavery, and in contenting themselves with quietly depositing those principles and sentiments which, while achieving objects infinitely more important, would infallibly abolish it, the Apostles took the wisest course, even with relation to this latter object,—­though it was doubtless not the course into which a blind fanaticism would have plunged.  To enter upon an open crusade against slavery in that age would have been to render the preaching of the Gospel a simple impossibility, and to convert a professedly moral and spiritual institute into an engine of political agitation; it would have afforded the indignant governments of the world—­quite prompt enough to charge it with seditious tendencies—­a plausible pretext for its suppression.  Both the primary and the secondary objects would have been sacrificed; and the chains of slavery riveted, not relaxed.  Slavery, in that age, we must recollect, was interwoven with the entire fabric of society in almost all nations.  To denounce it would have been a provocation, nay, a challenge, to a servile war in every country to which the zeal of the Christian emissaries might carry the Gospel.  Contenting themselves, therefore, with the enunciation of those principles which, where they are truly embraced, are inconsistent with the permanent existence of slavery, and, if triumphant, insure its downfall, the Apostles pursued that which was their great object; and for those of an inferior order, patiently waited for the time when the seed they had sown broadcast in the earth should yield its harvest.

And surely the event has justified their sagacity.  For to what, after all, have just notions on this most important subject been owing, except to this said Christianity?  Though it is true that, owing to the imperfect exemplification of its principles by men who profess it, it has not yet done its work, it is doing it; though some Christian nations—­more shame for them—­have slaves, none but Christian nations are without them.  Not only is the sincere admission of the maxims and principles of the New Testament inconsistent with the permanent existence of slavery, but the history of Christianity affords perpetual illustrations of its tendency to destroy it.  Even during the Dark Ages, even in its most corrupted form, Christianity wrought for the practical extinction of serfdom.  Mr. Newman says that it