sonal faith and effort, is a most instructive and edifying statement, and quite congenial with our usual views of the sources and developments of religious experience. Only necessity compels us to stop our review, and to commend Rothe's work to our readers as the best practical treatise on the nature and conduct of the soul that has come to our knowledge. Its very title combines with the idea and contents of the book to confirm the principle we have laid down at the commencement of this article; and it is to us a cheering fact, that the most masterly work on Theological Ethics within our knowledge is also the fullest and most encouraging help to the practical study of the soul.

ART. II. — BISHOP HOPKINS ON SLAVERY.

The American Citizen: his Rights and Duties, according to the Spirit of the Constitution of the United States. By JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Vermont. New York: Rodney and Russell, 79 John Street. 1857. pp. 459.

THE book, the title of which we have given above, contains thirty-three chapters and a great variety of topics. In this it resembles the work of another Bishop, who wrote a book beginning with the virtues of tar-water, and ending with the Trinity, the omne scibile filling up the interspace. Bishop Hopkins has nothing to say about tar-water, but, with that exception, he discusses nearly as many subjects as Bishop Berkeley. He begins with the Federal Constitution, which he thinks excludes infidels from office, though it declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But he thinks this means that all Christian sects have a right to be tolerated in their worship under the Constitution; but not Hindoos, Chinese, Turks, Mormons, nor even Roman Catholics. "I am compelled to conclude," says

he, "that, under the Constitution, no Romanist can have a right to the free enjoyment of his religion, without a serious inconsistency." Having thus disposed of infidels, Mormons, and Roman Catholics, he turns aside to indulge in some classical reminiscences, and gives us in Chapter V. an abstract of Cicero de Officiis. Why this is introduced (unless in order to make use of some of his former labors during his sixteen years of educational occupation) does not distinctly appear. He says that Cicero agrees with the Bible, and therefore is good authority. But then why not take the Bible itself, since most of his readers would be more ready to admit the authority of the Bible than that of Cicero?

Having finished his classical prelections, the Bishop plunges into the question of slavery, and discusses it through six chapters. Slavery he thinks to be perfectly right and lawful, but not at all expedient; excellent for the slaves, but bad for the masters; an institution which ought to be defended against the wicked assaults of Abolitionism, but which also ought to be abolished by an ingenious process discovered by the Bishop himself.

Having thus arranged the question of slavery, he turns to "business"; talks about farmers, lawyers, merchants, physicians, editors, and ministers; praises homœopathy and defends hydropathy; tells us how to choose a wife; falls foul of strong-minded women, and the Woman's Rights Party; favors gymnastics and calisthenics; justly opposes saleratus in bread; approves of young ladies learning to read and write, and obtaining a fair knowledge of geography; thinks a schoolgirl might properly read a book like Goldsmith's Animated Nature, and study botany, and even draw and paint in water-colors. "But I should disapprove, decidedly, of her learning oil-painting," says he; and thinks she ought not to study Latin and Greek, algebra, geometry, physiology, chemistry, or metaphysics, since these do not "qualify the woman to be the companion and helpmate of the man," which he regards as her chief mission. The Bishop then gives rules for the wife of an American citizen in the matter of making calls; advises her to keep a visiting book, "arranged either alphabetically, or according to the places of their residence,"

not to stay too long, not to tell any conventional lies, and to get home in time for her husband's dinner, so as not "to run the risk of wasting his time and putting him out of humor, by finding his house out of sorts, and his meals delayed." The Bishop then proceeds to prattle about dinnerparties and evening-parties, which he seems to like; but he does not like tableaux vivans, balls, or dances. In this respect he is not singular; for it is a curious fact that those clergymen who defend slavery are always sure to condemn dancing,probably on the old theological principle of tithing mint and forgetting justice, of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

The very miscellaneous character of the book will appear from this hasty description. But our chief business with the Bishop regards his doctrine of slavery. The book, on the whole, we might recommend, as a good-humored and garrulous collection of commonplaces. But his views on slavery deserve a closer examination. They are indeed superficial enough, and belong to that class of heresies which refute themselves. But proceeding from a Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in one of the freest of the Free States, they carry a certain derived weight of authority with them,, which makes it proper to devote to them a few pages of criticism. It has recently been our hard duty to follow Dr. Nehemiah Adams on his South Side excursion, and to wonder at the style of his arguments in defence of slavery. We have also criticised Dr. Lord of Dartmouth in his more elaborate and logical argument on the same side. That even-handed justice which we have meted out to the man of sentimental piety and to the Orthodox dogmatist, we must not deny to the Episcopal Bishop. Since Sentimental Religion, Dogmatic Religion, and Ceremonial Religion have made haste to show themselves inhuman, to take side with the oppressor against the oppressed, to rivet every yoke, and to lay a new weight on the shoulders of Christ's poor, it becomes us constantly to expose their unchristian mind and heart, and to let in on their speculations a little of the light of the Gospel. A "Christian Examiner" which should not do this duty, what would it be good for in the world?

The Bishop's opinions and statements concerning slavery may conveniently be arranged under the three heads of Errors, Sophisms, and Inhumanities. His statements are erroneous, his arguments sophistical, and his plans and projects inhuman. Of course we do not mean to accuse him of deliberate inhumanity or sophistry. He is probably a wellmeaning gentleman personally; but his opinions are false, weak, and cruel, as we shall proceed to prove. We war not with him, but with his opinions.

I. ERRORS OF STATEMENT.

Error I. The Bishop gives an erroneous definition of slavery. He says (page 125): "What is this relation? Simply a perpetual obligation which binds the slave to serve the master for life, and binds the master to govern the slave with justice and with reason; to provide for him in sickness as in health; to instruct him in what is necessary to his moral and spiritual welfare, according to his condition and capacity; to maintain his family in comfort, and to bury him decently when life is ended."

If this were slavery, our opposition to it would be very much less than now. But this is not that American slavery which the Bishop is defending. That is a legal relation defined by the laws, and maintained by the whole power of the state. This may be slavery as it ought to be, according to a Christian view of it; but it is not the actual relation existing in every Southern State. The slave is not merely bound to serve the master for life, but is his property, to be bought and sold, who may therefore be sold at his master's pleasure from his home, from his wife and children, and sent into a lonely exile. He who merely owes perpetual labor for a fixed recompense is not a slave, but a serf. Nor is the master bound by law, as the Bishop asserts, to govern him with justice, to provide for him, or to instruct him. In many States he is forbidden by law to instruct him. In none is he compelled by law, under any penalty, to provide for him or to teach him. If the slave refuses to labor, the master may kill him; if the master refuses to provide proper food or clothing for the slave, there is no legal help or remedy. VOL. LXIII. 5TH S. VOL. I. NO. II.

15.

What mockery, then, is such a definition of slavery as this!

Error II. The Bishop asserts (page 131), and the assertion is common, that "the free negro, other things being equal, is in a worse condition than the slave, physically and morally,less happy, less healthy, less contented, less secure, less religious."

This is an easy assertion to make, but a hard one to prove. He says that "many who have escaped have returned to their masters, glad to escape from the wretchedness of their freedom." So, a few years since, a convict who had escaped from the penitentiary at Jeffersonville, Ia., returned and gave himself up, saying he was happier there than outside. Does this prove imprisonment, "other things being equal," better than freedom? How many of the fugitives have returned to slavery? Even Bishop Hopkins will not maintain that the majority have returned; and if not, the argument is the other way.

The physical wretchedness of the free negroes is constantly and systematically exaggerated. The writer of this article, having taken some pains to examine into their condition in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other places, is satisfied that they are considerably better off as a class than the poorest class of whites. Many of them, in these cities, have accumulated large amounts of property. The colored people in Cincinnati held in 1850, in real estate, property to the amount of $600,000. Out of 3,500 colored people, 200 paid taxes on real estate. In Philadelphia, the free blacks owned, some years since, property to the value of $800,000. The colored people in New York city and vicinity owned, some years since, about $2,000,000.

But suppose that they should have no property. The slave has none. Suppose their physical comforts inferior to those of the slave, which is not true. Is it nothing to be free? nothing to have a right to one's self? nothing to be under the protection of the law? nothing to be able to go or stay, to be able to keep your wife and children with you? nothing to be a man, and not a chattel?

Error III. The Bishop asserts (page 132) that in many re