OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

    “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be,” etc.  Gen.
    ix. 25

    “For he is his money,” Examination of, Ex. xxi. 20, 21

    “Bondmen and bondmaids” bought of the heathen.  Lev. xxv. 44-46

    “They shall be your bondmen forever.”  Lev. xxv. 46

    “Ye shall take them as an inheritance,” etc.  Lev. xxv. 46

    The Israelite to serve as a hired servant.  Lev. xxv. 39, 40

    Difference between bought and hired servants

    Bought servants the most privileged class

    Summary of the different classes of servants

    Disabilities of the servants from the heathen

    Examination of Exodus xxi. 2-6

    The Canaanites not sentenced to unconditional extermination

INQUIRY, &c.

* * * * *

The spirit of slavery never takes refuge in the Bible of its own accord. The horns of the altar are its last resort.  It seizes them, if at all, only in desperation—­rushing from the terror of the avenger’s arm.  Like other unclean spirits, it “hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved.”  Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it breaks at last into the sacred enclosure, and courses up and down the Bible, “seeking rest, and finding none.”  THE LAW OF LOVE, streaming from every page, flashes around it an omnipresent anguish and despair.  It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons recoiled from the Son of God, and shrieked, “Torment us not.”  At last, it slinks away among the shadows of the Mosaic system, and thinks to burrow out of sight among its types and shadows.  Vain hope!  Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction.  It rushes from light into the sun; from heat, into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders.

DEFINITION OF SLAVERY.

If we would know whether the Bible is the charter of slavery, we must first determine just what slavery is.  The thing itself must be separated from its appendages.  A constituent element is one thing; a relation another; an appendage another.  Relations and appendages presuppose other things, of which there are relations and appendages.  To regard them as the things to which they pertain, or as constituent parts of them, leads to endless fallacies.  A great variety of conditions, relations, and tenures, indispensable to the social state, are confounded with slavery; and thus slaveholding is deemed quite harmless, if not virtuous.  We will specify some of the things which are often confounded with slavery.

1. Privation of the right of suffrage.  Then minors are slaves.