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my human guides, that had obscured the truth from my view. With what little acquaintance I have been able to make with the philosophers and their reasonings, I have found them often mistaken just as common men; or if, at first, their opinions were accepted, they would not stand the test of a maturer judgment. But this Book I have never found mistaken; and, as again and again I review it in these lectures-now for the fourth time-I find the Book grows upon me with my growth-nay, outgrows me; and the mistakes of my earlier expositions are simply my failures to reach the spiritual depths of the writers. And the characteristic impression of my study of the Bible in the present course is the consciousness of still leaving the vast mines of thought unexplored that lie under all these utterances of Moses.

So I have found the philanthropists often terribly mistaken. However garish and attractive to the youthful eye their "glittering generalities of argument," and to the youthful heart their gospel of universal brotherhood and their prophecies of an Arcadian dignity of human nature, rising above all selfishness, pride, and passion, to inaugurate a general reign of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" over the whole race, I have found at last that the fitful glare of their light was but leading me a fruitless chase through bog and swamp and jungle. But I have never found these "holy men of old" mistaken; nor the plain, homely benevolence taught in this Book fail, as a true guide both of the mind and heart in laboring for the amelioration of the sorrows of our fallen humanity. Thus every lesson of sober experience combines with every dictate of my understanding and my heart to constrain me to stand by this Book, as my guide in ethics and philanthropy; going wherever it goes; stopping just where it stops. And having by earnest search found "what saith the Scrip

tures" touching this question of slavery-though that utterance is directly in face of the current popular opinion, and the general judgment of the popular leaders-I must be content to let the populace clamor-the philanthropists shudder and denounce—and the humanitarian scoffers sneer and mock-and calmly take an appeal onward to a soberer age. Meanwhile I stand fast by the old guide the guide of our fathers, as it was understood by the fathers of every age; the guide that never failed me either in the waywardness of youth or in the trials of manhood—the eternal word of God.

CONCLUDING NOTE.

Application of the foregoing argument to the great secular issues now pending between the slaveholding States and British and New England philanthropism. The trilemma. Neither of its horns consistent with Scriptural ethics nor with facts. The slavery tolerated in the New Testament demonstrated to be the same in principle with that in the American States. Why these views have not been pressed upon the attention of the world before by Southern writers.

THE author's view of the nature and functions of his office, as a preacher of the gospel, did not permit him, while speaking in the name of Christ from the pulpit, to make an application of the foregoing argument to the great secular issues now pending between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States; nor even to the issues of the last thirty years between slave-holders and the organized or unorganized private movements for depriving them of their property. Nor indeed was it properly within the scope of an argument, not so much in defence of slavery, as offensive against the tampering with the Divine word, in justification of hostility to slavery, to discuss the general movements of the current secular philanthropism. Yet as a writer communicating his thoughts to the public, he has felt at liberty to suggest the ap

plications of the argument, as in the foregoing notes; so also here in a concluding note, by way of appendix to his published discourse. The earnest attention of conscientious men and logical thinkers is requested to the brief suggestions which follow.

Leaving out of view here the popular illogical argument from abuses, which commonly, in this case, is merely a rhetorical farrago of false reasoning from still "falser facts," as unworthy of any further notice than has been already taken of it in the discourse and notes, there are but three conceivable grounds upon which an honest Christian man can, logically, give a reason for his faith and practice in joining the popular crusade for the extermination of slavery, either by means of the pious thieveries of private philanthropism, or the open violence of public robbery, under the ethical theory that "might makes right." Either

First. That the holding of slaves-i. e., of persons who are also the owner's" possession "- -" inheritance "66 money property" -“ chattel ”—is, intrinsically, contrary to ethical right, and so clearly a sin per se against God and man as to be without the pale of protection by law: or,

Secondly. That though it may be, abstractly, not contrary to ethical right, it is yet practically a bad social and political economy, so hostile to the interests of society at large as to be incapable of protection by law as other rights of property: or,

Thirdly. That, though the Scriptures recognize and tolerate a system of slavery, as ethically proper, yet this particular American system of slavery is, in principle, different from, and ethically contrary to, the system tolerated in the Bible.

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As to the first of these three propositions:-That the holding of slaves, i. e., persons who are also at the same time the owner's possession," "inheritance," money,' property," or "chattels," -is a thing recognized and tolerated in the Scriptures, has been shown beyond dispute in the foregoing exposition of Scripture language and history. For, if human language and forms of thought can be relied upon at all for expressing the mind of God (and if not, where is the use of a Bible), then it is certain that the utterances of the Scripture, expounded in accordance with the Church's interpreters, and with the steadfast faith of God's people in all ages, do convey to us the notion that such a slavery did exist, and was tolerated in the Church, as ethically proper, during all the eras of inspiration. To pretend to hold, therefore, both the theory of the ethical wrong of slavery, and at the same time the inspiration and divine authority of the Scriptures, in the proper and natural sense of their language, is just as inconsistent and impossible to a logical mind, as to hold at the same time both the Ptolemaic theory and the Copernican theory of our physical universe. And to deny the plain sense of the words of Scripture, and devise interpretations of them consistent with the denunciation

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of slavery as a sin, is simply to furnish a critical machinery to any and every trifler with the divine word whereby to make it support any heresy. Nay, by the same critical process whereby it is proved that ebed and doulos do not mean slave, in the sense a person" who is yet another's property, it may be proved, with equal certainty, that "Abraham" does not mean a person, but a myth, symbolizing a "high estate with a large family; "that "Israel" means no actual personage at all, but only a mythical, abstract, gymnastic superiority," and that Moses is merely an allegorical condensation "drawn out" of the nebulous myths of the Nile. Practically, therefore, the theory of the sinfulness of slavery is a denial of the perfection and purity of the Scripture ethics, as the consistent abolitionists admit in demanding "an antislavery Bible and an anti-slavery God." How can Christian men reconcile it to their conscience to ally themselves thus with men whose open and direct declarations or indirect insinuations all alike go to undermine the foundations of the popular faith in the Scriptures?

As to the second of these three propositions:-That, though recognized in Scripture, and, abstractly, not contrary to ethical right, slavery is yet, practically, a bad social and political economy, so hostile to the interests of society at large as to be out of the pale of the legal protection given to other rights of property; however that might be a valid reason for the faith and practice hostile to slavery by the citizens of slaveholding States, indisputably it cannot save citizens of other States and countries, who labor to extirpate slavery and deprive masters of their property, from the Scriptural denunciation against the "truce-breakers," "covenant-breakers," and "busy-bodies in other men's matters." By what principle of gospel ethics are British and Northern antislavery men responsible for the bad social and political economy of other States and countries, and constituted judges and guardians, not only of their own, but of other people's social and political system? By what ethical principle will they justify against the charge of organized theft and robbery the movements for depriving other men of that property which has been originally purchased from their own British and Northern fathers, recognized as their lawful property by written and unwritten British covenants for three hundred years, and by the express stipulation of the National covenant between the States? Even granting that this property has not been justly acquired, does that authorize stealing it from those that hold it? Unnumbered millions of property in London, Boston, and New York, have been acquired by unfair and unjust means. Is it any the less stealing or robbery to take it from the present holders, by fraud or violence? No thoughtful man need wonder at the proofs of the alarming increase of crimes against property, and the diminution of reverence for the sacred

ness of property rights, which every day's account brings to his ears from Britain and America, who is familiar with the teaching and practice of anti-slavery philanthropy, "falsely so called," for thirty years past; and who reflects for a moment on its inevitable tendencies to subvert, in the popular mind, that reverence for the rights of property, which God has made of importance enough to be inculcated by the solemn sanctions of His law. The contempt for rights of property by known knaves and sharpers, has comparatively little evil influence on the popular mind. But contempt for property rights under the guise of religion and philanthropy— pious thievery and robbery-who shall estimate its power of evil?

It is, manifestly, too late now, in the 19th century, after three hundred years of solemn covenant guarantees, in every form, to property rights in slaves, to raise the issue of right of possession on the score of bad social economy, or on any other plea of want of just title. It is barred by a statute of limitation, even in a court of conscience. If not, it would be well for those who have found the flaw in the title to the slave property, that they look well into their own land titles. For it may well be doubted whether any land title in Britain, or, more especially, in America, can afford to trace its pedigree, under the law of entail, by which the new ethics tries the slave titles. It would surely be a curious outworking of a system of ethical heraldry that would doom men to be virtually denounced as "man-stealers," by the children of "slave pirates” and “land pirates." If the title to slaves, derived by purchase from lawful slave-traders of Boston and Liverpool, one hundred years ago, or from "the Royal Sovereign Queen Anne," and her lawfully organized co-partners in the slave trade, one hundred and sixty years ago, is not as good a title to slaves, as most people have to their lands; then, certainly, the grandchildren of neither the British nor New England vendors are the parties to raise the question of title, or, indeed, to have much to say of the bad social economy that the purchase of the slaves brought with it.. But the whole argument, when sifted, will be found to be a mere 66 refuge of lies," behind which those would give their conscience shelter who shudder to stand out boldly with such as directly impeach the ethical perfection of the Scriptures.

It is probably the difficulty of maintaining either of these two propositions-the first, because of too much conscience; the second, for want of logical solidity-that has driven Christian men, whose reverence for the Scriptures is yet unimpaired, to adopt the third proposition, and assert that the slavery recognized in the Bible was in principle different, and, ethically, contrary to the present system in the Southern States-that, therefore, they may consistently enough admit the ethical propriety of the former, while denouncing the latter as wicked.

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