in the case of the Moral and Constitutional Code given by Moses, to point out the relation of these principles to the preceding and succeeding teachings of the Scriptures.

We have, just at present, nothing to do with the ethical justice of slavery as a question of natural law, nor with the question whether it exists by law of nations according to the Justinian Code, or merely by "local law" according to certain American jurists; nor with the inhumanity of slavery, nor with the thousand abuses to which, in common with every other human institution, it is liable; but simply with the Bible teaching concerning slavery as a relation consistent or inconsistent with the holiness enjoined in God's word, and therefore, as affecting our faith in the Scriptures as "the inspiration of God."

apparently with special reference to the power which the latter had of disposing of him to his heirs, as he would any other article of personal property (Lev. 25: 45, 46); the slave is also described as his master's "money " (Ex. 21: 21), i. e., as representing a certain money value. Such expressions show that he was regarded very much in the light of a mancipium or CHATTEL, But on the other hand provision was made for the protection of his person."

So the German commentator, Otto Von Gerlach, on Ex. 21:

"The first division treats of laws which concern slaves and Israelites. Slavery was, in all ancient nations, a common acknowledged right, as we find the case with Abraham (Gen. 12: 5). The Mosaic law found this relation of master and slave existing among the Israelites," &c.

So the learned Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, on the epistle to Philemon (1859), says of the New Testament:

"Wherever the word servants' occurs in the New Testament, we must understand slaves-slaves purchased with money, or taken in war, or reared from slaves in the house of their master. Phrygia, in which Colosse was situated, was the land of slaves. A Phrygian was another word for slave."

Shall we take the authority of New England partisans against all these?

SECTION I.

Slavery in the Church anterior to Moses; recognized in the covenant which forms the fundamental charter of the Church visible; the deliverance from Egypt was the deliverance of a nation of slaveholders from political bondage.

IN the exposition of the prophecy of Noah, we have seen that it was a purpose of God, revealed at the very origin of the present race of men, that one portion of " the race should be doomed to servitude. I did not then argue, nor do I now, that this revelation through Noah of itself justifies a man in holding slaves; any more than that the prophecy declaring that Messiah should be betrayed by one of his own household, justified Judas in betraying him. Nor will I argue now, as I might with great force, that, on the same principle that a degraded race was, in the purpose of God, doomed to servitude under its superior then, as obviously the best condition, spiritually, in which it could continue on earth, so it is easy to conceive that the providence of God now ordains even servitude under a superior race as an amelioration of the state of a people, two thirds of which are already under the cruelest bondage to the other third, and all under the bondage of a ferocious Devil-worship. All that is claimed in this argument from Noah's prophecy is that this purpose of God, revealed at the very origin of the present human race, furnishes a clue to the interpretation of the subsequent revelations of His will both in His word and in the history of His providence to this day.

Accordingly, in the subsequent expositions of that great covenant with Abraham, which constitutes the

divine charter organizing, as a separate society, the Church visible, toward the close of Patriarchy, which had hitherto comprised both State and Church in the family, we have seen that the choice of Jehovah for a head of that new society, the Church, was a man, the inspired inventory of whose property (Gen. 12: 16) included slaves as well as money and cattle; who received slaves as well as money, by way of present, from Abimelech, king of Egypt (Gen. 20: 14); whose slaves were so numerous that he could raise an army of 318 home-born slave warriors (Gen. 14: 14); whose agent urged it as an argument to gain the consent of Rebeccah's family to her marriage with Isaac, that he was heir to immense wealth in "flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and man-servants and maid-servants and camels (Gen. 24: 35); and whose wife's bondwoman (Gen. 16: 9), by direct order of Jehovah, recognizing her as a slave, "returned to her mistress."

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And in the exposition of the book of Job, as belonging to the patriarchal era, we have seen that, among his losses of property, were slaves (Job 1: 16), which in the lan-' guage of that early era were distinguished from the hireling that looketh for the reward of his work (Job 3: 19 and 7: 2); that while Job recognized, as distinctly as the Justinian Code, or as Thomas Jefferson himself, that God "created all men equal," yet he made that the reason to himself for dealing justly and kindly with his slaves, not for setting them free (Job 31: 13, 17).

Now what is still more important than the existence of slavery, merely, in that era, is the remarkable fact that, in the actual organization of the Church, as a separate visible society, this slaveholder Abraham and his slaves were made the constituent members of it, by direct ordinance of Jehovah. "He that is born in thy house, or bought with thy money of any stranger, must need be

circumcised. (Gen. 17: 13.) And accordingly (Gen. 17 23), Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, and circumcised them in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him."* We have seen also in the course of these

* "Query, whether the servants bought with money could be compelled to circumcision? Many affirm it from this place. For, 1. The slave is the property of his master. 2. It is a command, 'let him be circumcised,' which you nullify if you understand that it depends on the will of the slave. 3. Otherwise there would be no distinction between the hired servant and the slave, for circumcision is permitted but not commanded to a hired servant, Ex. 12: 44. Others deny. They suppose that no adult slave was obliged," &c. Poli Synopsis, Gen. 17: 12.

"He that is born in thy house or bought with money, must needs be circumcised." Not whether they would or no, for men were not compelled to religion, which had been a profanation of this covenant. But Abraham was to persuade them to it; and, if they consented not, to keep them no longer in his house, but to sell them to some other people. So Maimonides expounds it, in his book of circumcision, chap. 1, which is true both of servants born in the house, and bought with money; but as for the children of these slaves, they were to be circumcised whether the parents would or no; because they were THE POSSESSION OF THEIR MASTERS, NOT OF THEIR PARENTS." Bp. Patrick on Gen. 17: 13.

It may be remarked in general, as a guide to inquiries into the teachings of commentators and critics concerning the meaning of the passages in the Bible relating to slavery, that they will find the following rule hold good, almost without exception.

That all the orthodox ancient commentators, up to the era of the British and American anti-slavery movement, almost without exception, expound these passages as this discourse expounds them, and as they are expounded generally in the Southern Church.

That the more orthodox and learned commentators and critics, since the anti-slavery movement, expound these texts in the same way, with two exceptions. First of the class of Dr. Scott and Dr. Adam Clarke, who, while they concur with the foregoing in their reading of most of the passages relating to slavery, yet in a few cases evidently strain the text, for the sake of introducing an outside homiletic remark against slavery and the slave-trade. Secondly of the class of Dr. Jamieson, who observes a most significant silence on the whole subject.

It may, therefore, be asserted with truth that, aside from the few

expositions, that when the fulness of time is come, and, by the divine legation of Moses, this family of Abraham is to be organized fully as a visible Church, and also as a nation to whom has been assigned in the Abrahamic covenant the land of Canaan, as an inheritance; another covenant of redemption, with its sacramental seal, as the former-even the passover ordinance-is entered into with a Church composed of masters and their slaves in the land of Egypt. (Ex. 12: 43, 45.) That such were the constituent elements of the Church at this time is manifest from the very terms of the law. "This is the ordinance of the passover. There shall no stranger eat thereof. A foreigner and a hired servant (notice the distinction) shall not eat thereof. But every man's servant, that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, shall eat thereof." Observe that this holy ordinance is given to the Church as Church, through its recognized leaders"the elders "—the same who examined into Moses' call as a prophet, and accepted him (Ex. 4: 29-31); and not through "the officers," who directed their temporal concerns, and who quarrelled with him (Ex. 5: 10, 14, 19, 20, 12), as a troubler of Israel.”

That the relation of master and slave was thus sanctioned in the Church of God, as such and not as a civil institution merely, even before the law given by Moses, is certainly a strong presumption to begin with, against all theories of the intrinsic sinfulness of slavery; or of its sanction only in darker and more impure ages, as a sin temporarily to be borne with, and afterward to be rejected

exceptions of orthodox men who have been tempted by partisan feeling to wrest scripture in support of a foregone conclusion, the whole orthodox biblical learning of the Church expounds the Scriptures on this subject in one way-and that in the way it is understood in the Southern Church.