copied from each other without apparent examination or care. Abundance of this kind of concurrent human testimony can be found in favor of the moral righteousness of negro and other heathen slavery, and which many American Christians are fond of quoting for that purpose. But as this is after all nothing but human testimony made up of human opinions, so I trust the whole of it has now been shown to be erroneous and false. So well settled, and so popular indeed had the pro-slavery doctrines derived from them become, that Mr. Crothers seems to have been the first Christian writer in the world who dared, in 1833, to call the whole of these absurd perversions in question. He was soon succeeded by Mr. Dickey. And the latter by Mr. Wield, and other anti-slavery writers, so that the theological credit of these wicked perversions is now extensively shaken.

CHAPTER XIV.

TWELVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL FACTS.

HAVING thus directly proven from the texts of the Old Testament, usually perverted for the justification of human slavery, that none of them did in the least degree sanction such slavery, but on the contrary regulated free and voluntary service only, I proceed next to produce twelve special facts, or doctrines contained in the Scriptures and the Law of Nature, as circumstantial evidence to prove the utter impossibility of the ancient Patriarchal and Hebrew servitudes being slavish, or in any other way oppressive. My readers will please to remember the fact, that the advocates of the pretended slavery sanctioned by the Old Testament, always refuse to quote any other part of the Scriptures in relation to the subject, except the few isolated passages which they contend justify slavery, thus entirely neglecting to examine the spirit of the Scriptures in relation to it-contrary to the universal rule of ethical construction, so to construe each part of every code of laws, that will admit of it, as to correspond with the general spirit and intent of the other parts, and thus promote the harmony of the whole code, by fulfilling the whole intent of the legislators who enacted it. The facts here alluded to are as follows:

I. The first and strongest of all these facts is, that THIS pretence of Old Testament slavery has no true natural analogy to support it— a fact of immense interest to those who believe that the Laws of Nature and Revelation exactly harmonize. The ancient "bought" and "sold" Hebrew servants certainly "sold themselves," and there is no tradition or other history in the world, of the voluntary sales of people to be property or slaves. It is impossible there should have been, for human slavery is just as hostile and abhorrent to the Law of Nature as any other crime of which man can be guilty, the same practice requiring the aid of other crimes for its support. For this reason human slavery is a state or condition of war, as much so as piracy or common robbery on the largest scale are so that its victims, like those of murder, &c., have always been compelled by criminal force and violence alone to submit to it, the same as are employed to perpetrate murder, robbery, &c., against the persons of men. It is therefore just as unreasonable and absurd to suppose, that the ancient Hebrew servants customarily and voluntarily placed themselves and their families in this unhappy and helpless condition, even in pursuance of statute law, as it is to suppose that they, or anybody else, ever customarily and voluntarily submitted to be murdered or robbed, or otherwise victimized by crime. Only think of God regulating a common custom by statute law, to the very existence of which torture and murder are necessary incidents!! Besides, human slavery never could have commenced in ancient Israel or anywhere else, or even been supported afterwards, without a direct and flagrant violation of the Levitical Law against manstealing, as well as against the oppression of the poor and helpless. So much for the probability of the pretended ancient customary Hebrew slavery.

II. The next most important of these facts is, the extreme moral violence of the Scriptures against the great sin of human oppression, including of course the most oppressive practice in the world. There is not another book extant half so condemnatory and denunciatory of this terrible sin, as the Scriptures, as a thousand extracts from all parts of them will testify. See Gen. vi. 11; Ex. iii. 9, xii. 29, xiv. 28; Job xx. 19, xxvii. 13, 23; Prov. i. 11; Isa. i. 15-24, x. 1-4, xiv. 2, xvi. 4, xix. 20, Iviii. 6, 7; Eze. vii. 23, 27, ix. 9, xviii. 10-13, xxii. 29, 31;

Amos iv. 1, viii. 4-8; Zeph. iii. 1—8; Zech. vii. 9, 14; Matt. xxiii. 14; James v. 4.

From the prophetic and historical portions of the Scriptures we learn that more ancient nations were threatened and destroyed, for the commission of this sin, than for that of any other,-a most ominous warning to our own nation. Now, as such is the spirit or general and collective meaning of the whole Scriptures, and as God never does anything in vain, he certainly never intended any part of the letter of his Word to contradict its spirit, by establishing and sanctioning the most oppressive practice in the world, in the very Scriptures in which he had utterly condemned and forbidden every form and degree of oppression. I will merely add, in confirmation of the doctrine, that the Scriptures have been given entirely in vain for any purpose voluntarily good, if any part of them was intended to sanction human slavery, because the latter is the moral opposite and antagonist of everything that is naturally good. But besides this general spirit of the Scriptures, several special statutes were enacted in the Levitical code, to prohibit the oppression of foreigners and strangers, such as in Ex. xxii. 21 ; Lev. xix. 33, 34, xxv. 35; Deut. i. 16, x. 18, 19, xxiv. 14, 15, 17, &c., where the Israelites were forbidden under the heaviest penalties to "vex or oppress strangers," and are also commanded to love, respect, and protect them. As Mr. Rankin has well remarked, "nothing could be a more direct violation of these statutes, than the practice of such slavery as exists in our slaveholding states, for nothing could more 'vex' or 'oppress' a stranger than such bondage. By these statutes, to defraud a stranger of a single day's wages is set down as a grievous crime, but how much more grievous and intolerable is the sin of taking from him both his liberty and labor for life!" Certainly if the ancient Israelites had a right to the practice of human slavery, they had a right to "vex and oppress" strangers as much as they pleased; though as they had just been delivered from the most oppressive bondage themselves, their own experience of such oppression is alleged in the Levitical law as the strongest reason why they should refrain from oppressing others, especially strangers. It does certainly seem as if those who believed the Almighty enacted such conflicting and contradictory statutes in the same code, must be a portion of the characters represented in the Scriptures as having been "given up to believe a lie." We also learn from the Levi

tical law (Deut. vii. 26, xiii. 17, xxiii. 18; Josh. vi. 18, vii. 11, &c.) that no abomination or cursed thing was to be brought into the Lord's house, or to be otherwise tolerated in Israel, and we learn from the spirit of such passages as Isa. xxxiii. 15, and Jer. vii. 11, &c., that the gains of oppression were considered such. Christ drove the money changers out of the temple (Matt. xxi. 12, 13, &c.) for the violation of these statutes, expressly calling them "thieves" for that reason. A code containing such a provision as this, could never have been intended to authorize such wicked gains as are obtained from a practice more oppressive than any kind of robbery, or any other known form of human oppression. III. The next of these important facts is, the existence of the numerous important legal rights and privileges expressly vested in all classes of the ancient Hebrew servants equally, by the letter of the Levitical law and other parts of the Old Testament-it being always to be remembered that according to the laws and customs of slavery, slaves have no legal rights and privileges whatever, any more than beasts and other lawful subjects of property have. Thus, all classes of the ancient Hebrew servants were circumcised the same as children; Gen. xvii. 13, 23, 27; Ex. xii. 44, 48. Those servants had the right of covenant with God; Deut. xxix. 10, 11, 13. They had a right to the passover and other feasts; Ex. xii. 44, 48, 49, xxiii. 12; Lev. xxii. 11, xxv. 1, 6, 8, 35. They enjoyed the Sabbath and its privileges; Ex. xx. 10; Lev. xxv. 6. They had liberal wages and good treatment; Lev. xix. 13, xxv. 35-41; Deut. xv. 13, 14, xxiv. 14, 15; Jer. xxii. 13, xxxiv. 14, 17, &c. They were instructed or educated; Gen. xviii. 19; Josh. viii. 33, 35. They had a right to hold property and have servants of their own; Lev. xxv. 49; 2 Sam. xvi. 4; They were governed by equal laws; Ex. xii. 49; Deut. xvi. 18, 19; Josh viii. 33, 35; 2 Kings xxiii. 2; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 30. They might be heirs to their masters; Gen. xv. 3; Prov. xvii. 2. They exercised the highest offices; Gen. xv. 2, xxiv. 2; Prov. xvii. 2. They might be soldiers; Gen. xiv. 14. If their mas ters abused them to the extent of mayhem, they were set free; Ex. xxi. 26, 27. They might contend with their masters; Job xxxi. 13. They might leave their masters for ill-usage, of which they were to be the sole judges; Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. They enjoyed the great civil right of periodical freedom or discharge from service by contract, either at the year of release or at the Jubilee,

or at both; Ex. xxi. 2; Lev. xxv. 10; Deut. xv. 12; Neh. v. 11; Jer. xxxiv. 14. 17. They married into their masters" families; Ex. xxi. 8, 9; 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35. They were treated with respect; 1 Sam. ix. 22. The children and heirs of masters seem to have no more nor greater privileges than these servants had; see Gal. iv. 1. Now as the legal enjoyment of any one of these rights and privileges will destroy slavery, how could it have existed in a nation where they were all allowed and enjoyed? And what right have we to believe that the Almighty ever established an institution in a code of laws which he had provided the surest means of subverting and destroying in the same code? It is undoubtedly highly absurd to imagine God capable of such absurdity.

Mr. Weld in his Bible argument described several of these important rights and their effects at length, and has clearly proven, first, that they were common to every class of Hebrew servants, and secondly, that slavery could not have existed in the Jewish nation with their full exercise; see Ex. xii. 48, 49; Numb. ix. 14, xv. 15, 16, 29, &c.

IV. Another of these decisive facts is the entire absence of any slave code, or body of slave regulations, in the Levitical law, or in any other part of the Old Testament, but on the contrary, as we have seen, the direct reverse of them in all respects. This omission and antagonism are unaccountable on the hypothesis of ancient Hebrew slavery, because every nation, ancient or modern, which has ever practised human slavery, has necessarily adopted two distinct codes of laws, one for its free inhabitants, and the other for its slaves,-the latter being in all respects exceedingly barbarous and cruel, because slavery cannot be supported at all, without the assistance of the most barbarous cruelty. Each of our slave states has now such a code, in the fabrication and support of which our slaves had no more agency than SO many cattle and horses. According to Stroud and other writers on the subject of these laws, by virtue of these slave codes in this enlightened republican country, more than seventy acts punishable with death when committed by slaves, are either not punishable at all, or else in a very light or mild degree when committed by freemen, so that the torture and murder of slaves is legalized in the slave States. Yet the whole of this barbarous and criminal legislation is indispensable to the support of slavery, because crime can only be supported by crime.