We now refer to such distinguished names, to show, that in attempting to prove that Jeans Christ is not in favor of American slavery, we contend with something else than a man of straw.  The ungrateful task, which a particular examination of Prof.  Stuart’s letter lays upon us, we hope fairly to dispose of in due season.—­Enough has now been said, to make it clear and certain, that American slavery has its apologists and advocates in the northern pulpit; advocates and apologists, who fall behind few if any of their brethren in the reputation they have acquired, the stations they occupy, and the general influence they are supposed to exert.

Is it so?  Did slavery exist in Judea, and among the Jews, in its worst form, during the Savior’s incarnation?  If the Jews held slaves, they must have done so in open and flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the Mosaic Dispensation.  Whoever has any doubts of this may well resolve his doubts in the light of the Argument entitled “The Bible against Slavery.”  If, after a careful and thorough examination of that article, he can believe that slaveholding prevailed during the ministry of Jesus Christ among the Jews and in accordance with the authority of Moses, he would do the reading public an important service to record the grounds of his belief—­especially in a fair and full refutation of that Argument.  Till that is done, we hold ourselves excused from attempting to prove what we now repeat, that if the Jews during our Savior’s incarnation held slaves, they must have done so in open and flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the Mosaic Dispensation.  Could Christ and the Apostles every where among their countrymen come in contact with slaveholding, being as it was a gross violation of that law which their office and their profession required them to honor and enforce, without exposing and condemning it.

In its worst forms, we are told, slavery prevailed over the whole world, not excepting Judea.  As, according to such ecclesiastics as Stuart, Hodge, and Fisk, slavery in itself is not bad at all, the term “worst” could be applied only to “abuses” of this innocent relation.  Slavery accordingly existed among the Jews, disfigured and disgraced by the “worst abuses” to which it is liable.  These abuses in the ancient world, Prof.  Stuart describes as “horrible cruelties.”  And in our own country, such abuses have grown so rank, as to lead a distinguished eye-witness—­no less a philosopher and statesman than Thomas Jefferson—­to say, that they had armed against us every attribute of the Almighty.  With these things the Savior every where came in contact, among the people to whose improvement and salvation he devoted his living powers, and yet not a word, not a syllable, in exposure and condemnation of such “horrible cruelties,” escaped his lips!  He saw—­among the “covenant people” of Jehovah he saw, the babe plucked from the bosom of its mother; the wife torn from the embrace of her