The Ecclesiastical Disruption of 1861 [pp. 321-351]

346 THE ECCLESIASTICAL DISRUPTION OF 186t. [Apn[
the institution of slavery as now existing " (in i86o); that it is
"the nature and solemnity of our present trust to preserve and
transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the
right, unchanged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and nature may carry it;" that, in so doing, "we defbndthe cause of God and religion;" and in the execution of this
trust, he says: "Not till the last man has fallen behind the last
ram part shall it drop from our hands, and then only in surrender to God who gave it.',
If Dr. Palmer interprets his commission properly-and if he
is right, then the same duty is for all-would it not be the most
pe~inent of all inquiries for church courts of every grade, fromthe Presbytery up to the General Assembly, to ascertain whether
the demands of this vital element in the commission of their
ministers had been faithfully pefformed? Is it not one of the
highest functions of church courts, as viewed from the Presbyterian standpoint, to see that the clergy faithfully proclaim the
truth, and to watch against the teaching of vital errors? We
venture the opinion, that, for the period immediately preced
ing and during the war, if at no other time, this duty relatingto the special~ point in hand, was discharged with jealous care
by the vigilant courts of the Southern Church.
What a spectacle is thus presented in a church which claims
to be pree~minently the depositary "of all religion and of alt
truth;" which clings with deathlike grasp to the notion, that
sound orthodoxy, as nowhere else, dwells within Lts pale; and
holds that the Northern Church, with which it was once unitedhas become "virtually apostate," by allowing politics to defile
its pulpits and sway its church courts.
If the Address of i86i, in saying, that "in our ecclesiastica[
capacity" we have nothing to do with slavery, merely means
that the State and not the church can pass laws to "propagate
or abolish" it, and that in this sense "the policy of its exist —
ence or non-existence is a question which belongs exclusively
to the State "-if it mean this and nothing more, no onewould dispute these propositions. They are the merest truisms
and are scarcely worthy of~the place they occupy. But this is
not all that is here meant. The teaching of this phase of the
Address is that the Church of Christ not the Southern Church,
but the church universal-occupies a position of moral indiffer —