should be continually present to the thoughts of the interpreter.  Principles assert what practice must be.  Whatever principle condemns, God condemns.  It belongs to those weeds of the dunghill which, planted by “an enemy,” his hand will assuredly “root up.”  It is most certain, then, that if slavery prevailed in the first ages of Christianity, it could nowhere have prevailed under its influence and with its sanction.

The condition in which, in its efforts to bless mankind, the primitive church was placed, must have greatly assisted the early Christians in understanding and applying the principles of the gospel.—­Their Master was born in great obscurity, lived in the deepest poverty, and died the most ignominious death.  The place of his residence, his familiarity with the outcasts of society, his welcoming assistance and support from female hands, his casting his beloved mother, when he hung upon the cross, upon the charity of a disciple—­such things evince the depth of his poverty, and show to what derision and contempt he must have been exposed.  Could such an one, “despised and rejected of men—­a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” play the oppressor, or smile on those who made merchandize of the poor!

And what was the history of the apostles, but an illustration of the doctrine, that “it is enough for the disciple, that he be as his Master?” Were they lordly ecclesiastics, abounding with wealth, shining with splendor, bloated with luxury!  Were they ambitious of distinction, fleecing, and trampling, and devouring “the flocks,” that they themselves might “have the pre-eminence!” Were they slaveholding bishops!  Or did they derive their support from the wages of iniquity and the price of blood!  Can such inferences be drawn from the account of their condition, which the most gifted and enterprising of their number has put upon record?  “Even unto this present hour, we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffetted, and have no certain dwelling place, and labor working with our own hands.  Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are THE OFFSCOURING OF ALL THINGS unto this day[A].”  Are these the men who practiced or countenanced slavery? With such a temper, they WOULD NOT; in such circumstances, they COULD NOT.  Exposed to “tribulation, distress, and persecution;” subject to famine and nakedness, to peril and the sword; “killed all the day long; accounted as sheep for the slaughter[B],” they would have made but a sorry figure at the great-house or slave-market!

[Footnote A:  1 Cor. iv. 11-13.]

[Footnote B:  1 Rom. viii. 35, 36.]