her treaty with the United States, that they are abominable idolaters, and cannot be Christianised, that they will never become thorough American citizens, that their moral influence is corrupting, that they underbid and degrade American labour, and that, if permitted, they will come over in overwhelming numbers. But competent judges assure us that this argument is false, and has been abundantly disproved in every particular. Mr. Gibson, a well-known missionary in China, contends that most of the Chinese now in San Francisco are there voluntarily, and that they will not be allowed to return to their native country without first paying all their debts in America Senator Moreton, in papers published by Congress, speaks on this wise:-"The evidence established the fact that Chinese labour in California is as free as any other. They all come as free men, and are their own masters absolutely." That they are not beyond the reach of the Gospel is evident from the fact that in the mother-country there are at the present time about 800,000 Roman Catholics and 15,000 Protestants, the result of missionary labour extending over two hundred and fifty years on the part of Rome, and forty years on the part of Protestants. There are several Chinese students in American Colleges, and they get on quite as well as other students. A young Chinaman, by the name of Yung Wing, has received from Yale College the degree of LL.D., and is declared to be of great intellectual promise. One man testified of him as follows::- "There is not a grander man on the face of the earth than this same Yung Wing, He is a noble fellow. I want you to get acquainted with him. He has a grand head-a Daniel Webster head. He is an American citizen now." It might he also stated that he has married an American lady.

A few years ago Mr. Beecher visited the Chinese settlement in San Francisco, and his testimony went to prove that the Chinese are not more corrupt, on the average, than other nationalities. He declared that he did not see half as much vice and corruption among the Chinese in San Francisco as may be witnessed any day in the slums of New York. Joseph Cook, the celebrated Boston Monday Lecturer, says that the Chinese are corrupting "only to those

who are already spoiled; and if the statements of sand-lot oratory are true, only to those who are doubly and quadruply spoiled, and have rolled in iniquity till they have burned out their own eyes. The vices of the Chinese are dangerous only to the dissipated, and dissipation begins in San Francisco at the American gambling hells, and in the American whisky dens. It is the duty of American law to repress and eradicate the iniquities of both the white and yellow race on the Pacific Coast. Families with Chinese servants in them do not complain of this corruption."

We need no further proof of the fact that the Chinese are severely persecuted in America; and if they are so persecuted is it not the duty of the ministers of Jesus Christ to plead their cause? Mr. Beecher has done so from his own pulpit as well as from public platforms times without number. In withering terms has he denounced the "thick-ribbed hatred " that has existed against the Chinaman. He has accused the statesmen of having "abandoned the faith of their forefathers and the spirit of the true Democracy," and of having gone "a-whoring after votes to California and Oregon in order that they might become presidents of the United States." He refers to the "shameful defections of the ministers and bishops in the matter." "Here come these people," he says, "that are the most laborious, the most economical, and, when they have the opportunity, the neatest people on the globe, the people that are best able to redeem the wilderness, and to do the work without which California would become a desert, living on the crumbs, not even the crusts; and the spirit of race hatred exists to such a degree that they are shaking the Government at Washington-the spirit of bitter race hatred among those who are themselves immigrants, and have come from poverty to opportunity. That spirit has had such a power upon the Christian public sentiment of the land as that our Government has been in the most lordly manner commanded to change treaties, or to violate treaties. We are a Christian nation; we are sending missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, to Bengal, and to the islands of the sea. Oh, that you would send missionaries, and pick out the Kearneys, and send them away! We are sending too much Gospel

away. We have not enough left for home consumption. Shall we send to the heathen the Gospel as it is exemplified in California? What does a heathen man want of a Christ when he sees what the men are who profess to be Christians? What does he want of the Gospel as it is preached to him in San Francisco? What idea must men have of our own institutions who are better treated under the despotism of China than they are under the Republican rule of California? What do they want of a Bible that indicates its inspiration by the conduct of such men as are oppressing the Chinaman in this land?"

Is not this preaching the Gospel in the true spirit thereof? It is evangelical preaching as applied to the subject of politics, or, rather, as applied to the morality of politics. The times cry for more of such preaching. May the time soon come when all ministers shall have been thoroughly awakened to the great, comprehensive work that lies before them, and when the Church shall be a source of strength and purity to the whole community.

M

CHAPTER VIII.

ANTI-SLAVERY EFFORTS.

R. BEECHER entered the ministry at a time when the politics and morality of the country were in a state of deplorable corruption and degeneracy. Vices and crimes of every description, dishonesties and frauds the most disgraceful, moral delinquencies and hypocrisies the most culpable, abounded on every hand; and there were few with conviction and courage enough to speak against them. The giant sin, however, the one that towered like the oak above the underwood of the forest, was slavery; and woe was to him who uttered one solitary word in condemnation of it. It was one of the institutions of the land; and no discussion whatever was allowed upon it. Christian people even claimed that the Bible was in its favour and justified it; and it was generally proclaimed that the negroes had been created to occupy a position of absolute bondage, and were consequently unfit for the enjoyment of the high privileges of freedom. This was the sentiment entertained by the Christian Church throughout the land; and it was solemnly declared that no other sentiment could be tolerated. Slavery might be an evil, in itself considered, perhaps; but, then, it was a necessary evil, and I could not be removed: conditions and circumstances rendered it a stern necessity.

And it threatened to become once more a universal evil,

if not in practice, yet in policy. The Government was in danger of committing itself, unwittingly, to a slave policy that would eventually, no doubt, introduce slavery into all the States, North as well as South. We are all acquainted with the heroic and noble manner in which the North had early abandoned the iniquitous practice of holding slaves; but now secret, cunning efforts were being made to involve it once again in the terrible abomination. The South was sedulously working towards such a fearful consummation. Its first step was to introduce slavery into the Territories; that is, to secure the formation of a Slave State for every Free State. That was only the thin edge of the wedge, the ultimate design evidently being to deluge the whole country with its own slave system. While the Church of the North was fast asleep, the politicians of the South were wide-awake, scheming, devising, sowing their seeds. Subtile as the Old Serpent itself were these demons of the South; and had they been able to pursue their impious, devilish course a little longer, slavery would have been established in America on such a solid basis that centuries of anti-slavery agitation would not succeed in uprooting it. This is not a mere opinion, or guess-philosophy, or logical deduction, but a solemn, awful FACT, which cannot be denied by any who respect the truth. We have learned it from Southern lips, not from any party or clique in the North. Take the following from a speech delivered by Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, who was very pronounced in his opposition to secession:-"Gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our relation to the general Government? We have always had the control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the South, as well as the control and management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the Executive department. So of the judges of the Supreme Court; we have had eighteen from the South and but eleven from the North-although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet the majority of the Court has always been