of resemblance between Egyptian and American slavery.  Egyptian slavery did not allow its subjects to serve God, neither does American.  The Egyptian master stood between his slave and their God:  and how strikingly and awfully true is it, that the American master occupies the like position!  Not only is the theory of slavery, the world over, in the face of God’s declaration; “all souls are mine:”  but American slaveholders have brought its practical character to respond so fully to its theory—­they have succeeded, so well, in excluding the light and knowledge of God from the minds of their slaves—­that they laugh at His claim to “all souls.”

3d.  Paul, in one of his letters to the Corinthian Church, tells servants—­say slaves, to suit your views—­if they may be free, to prefer freedom to bondage.  But if it be the duty of slaves to prefer freedom to bondage, how clearly is it the correlative duty of the master to grant it to him!  You interpret the Apostle’s language, in this case, as I do; and it is not a little surprising, that, with your interpretation of it, you can still advocate slavery.  You admit, that Paul says—­I use your own words—­“a state of freedom, on the whole, is the best.”  Now, it seems to me, that this admission leaves you without excuse, for defending slavery.  You have virtually yielded the ground.  And this admission is especially fatal to your strenuous endeavors to class the relation of master and slave with the confessedly proper relations of life, and to show that, like these, it is approved of God.  Would Paul say to the child, “a state of freedom” from parental government “on the whole is the best?” Would he say to the wife, “a state of freedom from your conjugal bonds” on the whole is the best?  Would he say to the child and wife, in respect to this freedom, “use it rather?” Would he be thus guilty of attempting to annihilate the family relation?

Does any one wonder, that the Apostle did not use stronger language, in advising to a choice and enjoyment of freedom?  It is similar to that which a pious, intelligent, and prudent abolitionist would now use under the like circumstances.  Paul was endeavoring to make the slave contented with his hard lot, and to show him how unimportant is personal liberty, compared with liberation from spiritual bondage:  and this explains why it is, that he spoke so briefly and moderately of the advantages of liberty.  His advice to the slave to accept the boon of freedom, was a purely incidental remark:  and we cannot infer from it, how great stress he would have laid on the evils of slavery, and on the blessings of liberty, in a discourse treating directly and mainly of those subjects.  What I have previously said, however, shows that it would, probably, have been in vain, and worse than in vain, for him to have come out, on any occasion whatever, with an exposition of the evils of slavery.