and children were held in bondage by patriarchs, prophets, kings, and others.  Moses delivered various laws to the children of Israel, for the guidance and regulation of both masters and servants.  The holding of slaves is nowhere denounced as sinful in the Old Testament; on the contrary, the Hebrews were permitted to buy slaves from the surrounding heathen nations.  Masters were commanded in the Old as well as in the New Testament, to treat servants with kindness and humanity.  Inhumanity, cruelty, and oppression being every where forbidden in the Bible.

Having briefly alluded to the revealed will of God tinder the old dispensation, we will now hastily glance at the position occupied by Christ and his apostles in relation to this institution, and at their instructions and admonitions to masters and servants.

It is clearly and indisputably true that their course with reference to masters and servants, and the doctrine which they taught, give no countenance to the wild and visionary views of the faction, known in the United States by the name of abolitionists.  I cannot, however, stop here to draw fully the contrast, but it will be found in other parts of this work.

Christ came to preach the gospel, and not abolitionism.  Christ came to preach peace, and not to foment strife.  He and his apostles taught servants to love and obey their masters, to serve them freely and cheerfully, and not to run away from them.  No!  No!  They never incited servants to murder their masters, nor to murmur at their service; nor yet to steal all they could get, and then leave then.  But there are those among us who have been guilty of all these things; and yet, notwithstanding, they have the audacity to tell us, at least those who have not embraced the views of Tom Paine, that they are Christians.  The more consistent ones, I believe, are open infidels.

Our Saviour said nothing that could be construed into a condemnation of the institution of slavery; nor yet did he invest his apostles with any authority to interfere with it.  It was no part of their commission.  Our Saviour preached the gospel of peace and glad tidings to the bond and the free, to masters and servants, to the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind.  He intermeddled not with the civil institutions of the day.  On the contrary, he inculcated, both by precept and example, submission to the ruling authorities.  His apostles followed in his footsteps, for they likewise enjoined on their followers, to be subject to the higher powers—­to those in authority.  They too, preached the gospel to the bond and the free, masters and servants; and gathered them together in the same fold, as brethren beloved—­the sheep of one common shepherd, the servants of one common master—­members of the same church—­partakers of the same joys.  But they did not in a solitary instance denounce the holding of slaves as sinful; nor yet enjoin it on masters to release their slaves.