accountable, guilty, deserving death for having done his utmost to cheapen human life, when the proof of its priceless worth lived in his own nature.  But to make him a slave, cheapens to nothing universal human nature, and instead of healing a wound, gives a death-stab.  What! repair an injury to rational being in the robbery of one of its rights, not only by robbing it of all, but by annihilating their foundation, the everlasting distinction between persons and things?  To make a man a chattel, is not the punishment, but the annihilation of a human being, and, so far as it goes, of all human beings.  This commutation of the punishment of death, into perpetual slavery, what a fortunate discovery!  Alas! for the honor of Deity, if commentators had not manned the forlorn hope, and by a timely movement rescued the Divine character, at the very crisis of its fate, from the perilous position in which inspiration had carelessly left it!  Here a question arises of sufficient importance for a separate dissertation; but must for the present be disposed of in a few paragraphs.  WERE THE CANAANITES SENTENCED BY GOD TO INDIVIDUAL AND UNCONDITIONAL EXTERMINATION?  As the limits of this inquiry forbid our giving all the grounds of dissent from commonly received opinions, the suggestions made, will be thrown out merely as QUERIES, rather than laid down as doctrines.  The directions as to the disposal of the Canaanites, are mainly in the following passages, Ex. xxiii. 23-33; xxxiv. 11; Deut. vii. 16-24; ix. 3; xxxi. 3-5.  In these verses, the Israelites are commanded to “destroy the Canaanites,” to “drive out,” “consume,” “utterly overthrow,” “put out,” “dispossess them,” &c.  Did these commands enjoin the unconditional and universal destruction of the individuals, or merely of the body politic?  The word haram, to destroy, signifies national, as well as individual destruction; the destruction of political existence, equally with personal; of governmental organization, equally with the lives of the subjects.  Besides, if we interpret the words destroy, consume, overthrow, &c., to mean personal destruction, what meaning shall we give to the expressions, “drive out before thee,” “cast out before thee,” “expel,” “put out,” “dispossess,” &c., which are used in the same and in parallel passages?  In addition to those quoted above, see Josh. iii. 10; xvii. 18; xxiii. 5; xxiv. 18; Judg. i. 20, 29-35; vi. 9.  “I will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.”  Ex. xxiii. 27.  Here “all their enemies” were to turn their backs, and “all the people” to be “destroyed.”  Does this mean that God would let all their enemies escape, but kill their friends, or that he would first kill “all the people” and THEN make them “turn their backs,” an army of runaway corpses?  In Josh. xxiv. 8,