The Bible against slavery;
* * < > -* .-. .- Cr O- '•• » 1 £ ... 5* ^> i*" • / %^V ^/™/ %-^V < W % <*» * &^ * A^ ^J> ^ i *°+ **6 *<*» A<fc *s,v A<^ V t* l9 »:v* v v% ^r^s S i \N ur *; «^g >-, / / A. /< / / a ? y / / ^ ^ ^ •f, A * / s / / s A~ / S << / '' '- , c A? x S. s? / 1 / 2?S THE BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY T. A VINDICATION OF THE SA.ORED SCEIPTUEES AGAINST THE CHARGE OF A REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS. By Rev. J. B. DOBBINS, Pastor of the Third Street Methodist Episcopal Church, CAMDEN, N. J. PHILADELPHIA: KING & BAIRD, PPJNTERS, GOT SANSOM ST. 18 64. HTt"3 Camden, December, 1863. Rev. J. B. Dobbins. Dear Sir : — The undersigned are a Committee appointed by "Council No. 3, of Camden Union League of America, to confer with you upon the subject of publishing in pamphlet form, tlie series of articles which lately appeared in print, under the head of " Bible Views of Slavery," " Bishop Hopkins Reviewed," written as we understand by you. It has been suggested to our Council, that if these articles (In a com- pact form,) were distributed, they would serve as an antidote to the so- called Scriptural, but mischievous tract above named, issued and circulated, so extensively by sympathizers with the accursed system of American Slavery. If, therefore, in accordance with your views, we shall be pleased to have you take the necessary steps for an early publication of the same. Very respectfully, Your obedient servants, P. C. Brixck, Ralph Lee, Charles A. Sparks, Cooper P. Knight, Jacob Sides, Saml. Hufty, Jas. H. Chappell. Camden, N, J., December, 1863. Gentlemen : The articles to which you so kindly refer, and pay me the compliment of requesting me to publish in a more permanent form, were written at the request of several prominent citizens, who believed with myself, that the effort to secure for Slavery among the masses of the people, the sanction of the Bible, ought not to be allowed to pass unnoticed. The Bishop has been met by several "indignant protests" and scathing rebukes, for his manifest sympathy with treason and zealous defence of its source, but there has been no serious effort, so far as I know, to show the fallacy of his argument, and thus rescue the Bible from the charge of sub- serving the Slave interest. This I deemed necessary, and have attempted in these articles : and since their publication in a more compact and acces- sible form has been asked for in an informal way by many intelligent persons, and requested by yourselves in behalf of your Association, I shall take pleasure in acceding to your request, and will have them so published as soon as practicable. Very respectfully, yours, J. B. DOBBINS. (.379 ( *0S" zyc> THE BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY. Mr. Editor : — Some of our pro-slavery townsmen, are indus- triously circulating- a Tract, bearing- the name of " John W. Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont," entitled "Bible View of Slavery," in which the Right Rev. gentlemen labors to prove that American Slavery is not only not a " sin" but perfectly coincident with the teachings and spirit of both the Old and New Testaments. The pamphlet is an octavo, of 16 pages, only about four of which are devoted to the Scripture argument, while the remaining pages are taken up with an elaborate denial of human equality, and that "self-evident" truth that " all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and with stern denunciations of those fanatical and ignorant persons, who "attach an inordinate value to their personal liberty," and especially of our anti-slavery preachers, upon whom he declares "the present perilous crisis of the nation, casts a fearful responsibility." Is that remark, about "inordinate" attachment to personal liberty, meant to apply to Mr. "Wall, Mr. Yallandigham, and their friends ? Alas I am afraid the good Bishop of Vermont has been betrayed into "political preaching;" for the pamphlet seems to be a political sermon, with the " Bible view of slavery" for the text. I think that Messrs. Wharton, Browning & Co., (the men who applied to the Bishop for the privilege to print and circulate his Bible View as a political document,) might have done better for their cause so far as the " Bible View" is concerned by re- publishing either Alexander Stephens' or John Mitchell's argu- ment on the same subject. To be sure these gentlemen are now both occupying official positions in the rebel capital, but their Bible arguments are in print, and easily accessible ; and as I conceive, they are altogether better and more forcible presenta- tions of that side of the question, than those of the Right Rev. Bishop of Vermont, who seems to possess on the subject, neither the information to be expected in the minister, nor the tact of the politician. THE MEANING OF THE WORD SERVANT. He sets out by affirming that " the term servant commonly em- ployed by our translators lias the meaning of slave in the Hebrew and Greek originals, as a general rule where it stands alone." Now the best authorities tell us that abed the Hebrew word translated servant is the only word used in the Hebrew to express all the relations of servitude of every sort, that the verb abed means to work, to labour, and the noun abed means a laborer; and that it is applied to a person who performs any kind of service. Dr. Elliott, who possesses not only an American, but also a European reputation for Biblical researches, in this line, says : " Indeed the Hebrew language had no single word to denote a slave ; and the context or peculiar phraseology must be aduced to show that slavery or slave is intended as no single word, will answer this purpose." This author says " the same remark will apply to the Greek word doulos — a servant and douleo to serve. These words are applied to any sort of service or servants. But there is a Greek word which properly means a slave ; this is the word andrapodon. The Greeks used the word doulos to express a servant in the most general sense while the word andrapodon properly means a a slave." And the latter word does not occur in the Greek New Testament. So much for his initial misrepresentations of the "Hebrew and Greek originals." If an intelligent man, in teaching a foreigner our language, should affirm that the word servant ; because sometimes used to express the relation of slave ; " has the meaning of slave in the English language as a general rules 'when it stands alone," a thoughtful person could scarcely avoid suspecting him with designing to misrepresent and thus to mislead those who might accept his definition. And the violation of truth is not less flagrant in the Bishop's declaration that the term servant commonly employed by our translators has the meaning of slave in the Hebrew and Greek originals where it stands alone — a slave in his sense of the word being one bound by the law to involuntary "servitude for life," and whose condition descends " to his offspring." THE CURSE OF CANAAN". He next comes to the curse pronounced bj Xoah upon Canaan, Gen. 9 : 25. We shall find hereafter from the history of this case, a very strong argument against the presumption that the Bible countenances personal slavery at all. At present I desire simply to state what has never been disproved, viz. : that the Africans (for whose enslavement this text is held as the authority) are not descended from Canaan; and I believe it is as clear a proof of the Divine authority for the murderous outrages of the rioters of New York, as for the enslavement of negroes. Canaan had ten sons who were fathers of as many tribes dwelling principally in Palestine and Syria. It is be- lieved that Canaan himself lived and died in Palestine, which from him was called the land of Canaan. The only descendants of Canaan (according to Granville Sharp,) who occupied any por- tion of Africa, were the Carthagcnians, a colony on the sea coast. Z77 They were a free people and rivalled at one period even the Roman commonwealth in power. The Africans are principally descended from the three other sons of Ham, viz. : Cush, Mezraim and Phut, This opinion is supported by all the very best authori- ties to which I have had access on this subject, such as Granville Sharp, Jacob Bryant, Richard Watson, &c. It will be seen that the text in question has no relevancy what- ever to the question of negro slavery, whatever else it may be supposed to prove. THEY SHALL BE YOUR BONDMEN FOREVER.-Lev. 25: 44-6. Passing some minor texts for the present, I shall now proceed to the consideration of the passage in Levit. 25 : 44-46, which the Right Rev'd. advocate for the oppression of the poor, (a thing which this very lawgiver positively condemns, Ex. 22 : 21, and 23 : 9,) thinks is " too plain for controversy." The material points in this passage are in the 44th and 4Gth verses — " Both thy bond men and bond maids which thou shall have shall be of the heathen that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bond men and bond maids. And ye shall take them as an inheritence for your children after you to inherit them for a possession ; they shall be your bond men forever." The first thing in this passage which seems to favor slavery, is the expression "buy:" but buying in these laws when used of servants was not of a third party but of the servant himself. The stranger bought the Hebrew, but it was of himself. Lev. 25 : 47. Joseph bought the Egyptians for Pharaoh, but he bought them of themselves. Gen. 47 : 19-23. Hence the selling was nothing more than a contract between the seller and the buyer; and the thing sold was not the man, but his service for a limited term — so much service for so much money. Thus one might "buy" a Hebrew servant, but not for a longer period than six years, (Ex. 12 : 2 and Deut. 15, 12;) and even the Bishop will not insist that buying in this case implied slavery. There are two cases where persons might be sold by third parties. The thief might be sold for a term long enough to make legal restitution, if he were not otherwise able to satisfy the law, (p]x. 2 : 23 ;) but this was in the way of penalty for his crime. The father might sell his daughter, but not as a slave, but for a wife to either the master or his son. But the selling in the case of servants was not done except by themselves, and then it was nothing more than a contract to render service for a consideration. "We have no instance of the sale of a slave by his master under the Jewish law. The second point which seems to countenance the slave theory is, " Ye shall take them for an inheritence for your children for- ever." Having proved that the service contemplated was volun- tary and paid, and that therefore the enslavement of the heathen was not the thing designed, we must look for another meaning; and the only one consistent with the tenor of these laws clearly is — " Forever or through all the future you and your children shall procure the services of the heathen round about for the menial work necessary to be done in your families." If God's law had not forbidden chattel slavery, it is incredible that a man accustomed to his liberty should voluntarily sell his children through all their generations into hopeless slavery. That the service here authorized is not slavery but a volun- tary and limited servitude, will be abundantly established by the following considerations : First. If slavery had been here established there must have been in after times a largo body of slaves in Judea, as was the case in Egypt, Rome, and Greece, and as there is now in the United States. Slavery has existed in this country only two hundred and forty years, and we have now some four millions of these unhappy beings, the increase in the last sixty }7cars being more than three millions. Now if from a single vessel-load of slaves there should have come, in two hundred and forty years, four million, and that too in spite of a continuous series of legal restrictions and prohibitions by both the Federal and State governments ; how is it that after slavery had been in existence nearly sixteen hundred years with no opposition and all the sup- port of the Divine sanction, (according to the Bishop's theory) there were really no slaves in Judea in the time of Christ ? The only servants, says a good authority, mentioned in the narratives of the Evangelists, except where the words occur in Christ's parables, are the Centurian's servant miraculously healed, and the servants of the high priest's palace, (Matt. 8:5; Mark 14: 65; Luke 22: 50,) and there is no evidence that these were slaves. " In the period elapsing from the close of the Old Testament canon till the birth of Christ," says Dr. Elliott, " there are no declarations to be found in the Apocryphal books, or in Josephus which declare or intimate that slavery existed among the Jews. Hence our Saviour, as his ministry was exercised among the Jews never came in contact with slavery among them." The Bishop affirms that Christ " lived in the midst of slavery," and that it was in full existence at the time (of Christ) in Judea" and seems to think he proves it by quoting from Gibbon a declaration that it existed in Rome ! — a fact never disputed, and which he might have saved himself the trouble of proving. In the next place slavery is rendered impossible by the divine prohibitions and restrictions found in the Mosaic code. In Ex. 21 : 16, we have this law, " He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand he shall surely be put to death." This law is substantially repeated in Dueteronomy and is not directed against stealing a Hebrew as such, but against stealing a man; that it was not for the benefit of the Jews alone, is made further evident by the fact that Paul, after Judaism had been superseded, placed this crime among the greatest possible offences against divine or human law. 1 Tim. 1 : 9, 1 0. The things specifi- cally forbidden are stealing, selling and holding man, and the penalty for the violation is the highest known to the law, — death. Now stealing, selling and holding men are so obviously the three grand essential elements of slavery, that where they are forbidden slavery is an impossibility. Liberty belongs to man by natural and divine law, and by all just human laws, and as to steal accor- ding to Blackstone is "to take that which belongs to another without his consent," slavery must necessarily originate in theft. I suppose that even those northern parasites of the slave system are hardly brazen enough to insist that men ever of their own free choice consented to be taken and sold into perpetual slavery, and that their enslavement is therefore not a violation of the law against man-stealing. Dr. R. C. Breckinridge, a Kentuckian and uncle to the Ex- Vice-President, and now traitor General Breckin- ridge, says, in answer to all these special pleadings in favor of 8 the system, " Out upon such folly ! The man who cannot see that involuntarydomestic slavery as it exists among us is founded on the principle of taking by force that which in another's has simply no moral sense." Purchase implies sale ; but if God has authorized the buying of a man, how can he in the name of justice and consistency brand the selling as a capital offence, since that is essential to the trans- action ! Will those modern Shylocks who insist upon " the law " please explain how they can get their pound of flesh from this living; body without " one drop of blood ?" How they can buy in accordance with God's laws when these laws under the heaviest penalties forbid the sale ? The fact is there were no sales and hence as Dr. Elliot well says, " In the whole history of the Jews there is no mention of slaves as an article of commerce. There is no mention of them in the goods received. There is no instance of public sales. We have no mention of either a market- place for slaves nor of slave merchants. There were, we allow, such compacts as were necessary in fixing the terms of service between different classes of servants and their masters, in refer- ence to the various times and conditions of service, but no sales of men as property." " Nor was there any foreign slave trade between the Jews and other nations. To facilitate trade Solomon built Tadmore or Palmyra and Geber on the Red Sea. Yet in every allusion to the trade carried on with these and other nations there is no allusion to the traffic in slaves. There is mention of gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks, but no allusion to a commerce in slaves. " By this law," says Dr. Clark in his commentary upon it, "every man-stealer and every receiver of the stolen person should lose his life no matter whether the latter stole the man himself or gave money to a slave captain or negro-dealer to steal for him." If all the holders of stolen men in our own country had been put to death, the few sympathizers with treason among us like this Bishop might have found something to do besides denouncing the purest patriots of the country as responsible for all the horrors of this desolating rebellion, and thus mislead the honest and well- meaning masses by means of ugly names ; but men with such low views of the value of personal liberty and of their selfish instincts, would not probably have been better employed. It is not surprising that the brethren of this Bishop in the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Philadelphia, to the number of 79, including the Bishop of the Diocese, should feel compelled to make their "public protest" against "this defence of Southern Slavery," and to declare that " as ministers *7? of Christ it becomes them to deny any complicity with such a defence," and further that " as an effort to sustain on Bible principles the States in rebellion against the Government in the wicked attempt to establish by force of arms a tyranny under the name of a Republic whose corner stone shall be the perpetual bond- age of the African, it challenges their indignant reprobation. " Thirdly. The institution of Jubilee as given in Leviticus 25 : 10, made slavery impossible among the Jews, " Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof ; it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possessions, and ye shall return every man unto his family.''7 The Bishop says this enactment did not affect the servant, that it only extended to the Israelites who had " a possession and a family," while the text as he himself quotes it is — " Ye shall proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.'11 He underscores "possession" and after- wards calls attention to it as if that were the only thing in the text relating to the subject of the proclamation. Most people would think " Liberty to all the inhabitants,17 which he entirely ignores, a greater boon and more likely to arrest the attention and awaken the admiration of a generous nature than the restoration of a few comparatively worthless acres; but they are the fanatics who, as the Bishop thinks, "attach an inordinate value to their personal property.7'1 As between the properly of the slave- master and personal liberty, he holds that Bible laws are altogether with the former. So far was this institution from conferring liberty exclusively upon the Hebrews that it was designed more especially to relieve the " bond men and bond maids — the children of the stranger" that dwelt among them. It will be found that Jehovah had made other provisions for the release of the Hebrew servants, and had limited the term of their service to six years. We have the original law in Exod. 21 : 2, 3, and in Duet. 15 : 12-15 The same law a little more fully expressed is as follows : " If thy brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty ; thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock and out of thy floor and out of thy wine-press ; of that wherewith the Lord thv God hath blessed thee thou shalt 10 give him." There were as it is well known, two distinct classes of servants — the Hebrew and the stranger or foreigner. The term for which the former should be allowed to sell himself, or service, was limited to six years, and the term for which the latter might sell himself, or service, was limited by the Jubilee, though if at the end of these six years the Hebrew servant insisted upon it he might remain until the jubilee, but beyond this none could be held to service in all the land of Judea. This fiftieth year terminated absolutely all obligations for service pre- viously existing. If the Bishop had been as well informed and as candid as we have a right to expect one in his position should be, he could not have overlooked this plain distinction, nor have failed to sec that this liberty clause was peculiarly the boon of the servants that were " of the heathen'' who were within the geographical limits over which this beneficent law extended. Finally, the law forbidding the return of the servant who should escape from his master, is another of those provisions which is utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine that slavery existed under the Jewish economy. It is found in Deut. 23 : 15-16, and reads thus — " Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you in the place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best ; thou shalt not oppress him.1' The Bishop says, " This evidently must refer to the case of a slave who escaped from a foreign master, else it would nullify the other enactments of the divine LawT-giver, and it would have been an absurdity." And thus even he acknowledges it to have been inconsistent with the institution of slavery. Suppose we admit the Bishop's explanation, does it relieve the difficulty ? Does he mean to say that the privilege of driv- ing and whipping slaves is peculiarly a religious privilege — a very means of grace, in which the poor heathen shall not be allowed to participate, and that, therefore, God by this law ex- cluded them from the luxury and conferred it exclusively upon his own people ? Such a law on the statute books of a slav2-holding community would be a monstrous solecism. Imagine South Carolina or Virginia enacting and placing upon her statute books such a law ! Why Mr, Jefferson Davis declares that he would rather associate with hyenas than with northern people, though their opposition to slavery — the cause of his antipathy — has never gone half the length of this law. The most they ever proposed in this line was a law requiring that a man should first be proved to be a slave, before he should he returned, and these laws, under the name of Personal Liberty bills, passed by a very small number of the states, have been alleged by such men as this Bishop, if not as a sufficient justification of the Rebellion, at ^ f-e 11 least as a consideration which greatly modifies the crime of treason. These foreign slaves were not only not to be returned, but to enjoy their freedom and to be a sort of guest in the land of Israel : for the law is — " He shall dwell with thee even among you in the place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best ; thou shalt not oppress him." As he was not only a heathen, but a heathen slave, why should not he have become subject to the laws of property as all his race were, (if the Bish- op's theory be correct)? A heathen slave according to this theory, enjoyed immunities among the Jews which a heathen prince did not, for this law forbids the enslavement of the former, while the latter might by this same law, be made a slave ! and thus the runaway slave was to be a person of no little consideration among these slaveholding Israelites No, Mr. Bishop, slave owners as a rule cannot be made thus to respect slaves, even by the divine requirement, and as Americans we have seen too much of the aggressive and ferocious spirit engendered by slaveiy, even in this age and country, not to see the sophistry and folly of your weak effort to reconcile this law with the existence of that institution among any people. I have thus shown that the Bishop's views of Lev. 25 : 40- 46 cannot be true, because : 1st. — There is no account of any slaves in Judea in the time of Christ, nor any vestige of the history of such an institution among the Jews, which could not have been the case had slavery existed. 2nd. — These very laws most positively forbid all those acts that are essential to the en- slavement of men, as stealing, selling and holding them. 3d. — The institution of Jubilee would have rendered slavery in that community an impossibility. And finally that the law in regard to fugitives is utterly inconsistent with such a theory, and as the Bishop expresses it, "would have been an absurdity." THE DECALOGUE. The Bishop thinks he finds authority for American Slavery in the Decalogue and quotes the tenth commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neigh- bor's wife, nor his man servant nor his maid servant, nor his ox nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." " Here," ac- cording to the Bishop, "it is evident that the principle of property — anything that is thy neighbor's — runs through the whole." K this proves anything for the system, it proves too much, for it makes slaves of the wife and sons and daughters of the owner ; (see fourth commandment) and reduces them to the level of prop- erty— of the ox and ass — before the law. But does not the Bishop understand how one can have a right to the service of an individual for a term of months or years, just as he has to the affection and obedience of his wife and children, without anything analogous to chattel ownership ? A. mechanic said in my pres- 12 enee the other day " Mr. has taken away my workman." This according to the Bishop's reasoning would be proof of the existence of slavery in New Jersey; for "here it is evident that the principle of property — my workman — runs through the whole,'1 and thus these mechanics were as certainly slaves as that the Bishop of Vermont is a logician ! According to this man it was no crime to " covet" and take away the liberty of a man — for these were necessary to his enslavement — but a very great Crime to covet your neighbor's ox or ass ! It was to such triflers with sacred things — such per- verters of divine truth the Saviour addressed himself when he said — " Wo unto you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites ! for ye pay tithes of mint, anice and cummin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment mercy and faith" — "ye blind guides ye strain out a gnat and swallow a camel," Matt. 23 : 23, 24. This Vermont ecclesiastic, it will he seen, is in the "true succession" and follows the instinct of his class of pompous formalities in his tenacity in regard to mint, anice and cummin, whilst he omits the weightier matters of the law, as judgment and mercy. A most excellent writer on this subject says — " This command says ' thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbors'- — that is, anything that justly belongs to him ; to every man belongs by the laws of God, and by all just human laws, personal liberty, personal security, and the pursuit of happiness. These must not be coveted by any person, because they are the property of another. But the contract for service by which one person vol- untarily binds himself to another becomes the just right of another and should not be coveted or seized by another. " lie further says these servants could not be slaves because the fifth, seventh and eighth commandments condemn slavery in con- demning the acts which originate or continue it. To enslave is to steal a man or to use him as stolen. And then the commandments on obedience to parents and on marriage clearly condemn the system. Those therefore mentioned as servants in the fourth and tenth could not be slaves seeing the fifth, seventh, eighth, and this same tenth commandment condemn slavery. The conclusion is that the Decalogue condemns, prohibits, and makes penal the entire system of slavery. CASE OF CANAAN" FURTHER CONSIDERED, I have shown that the Africans were not the descendants of Canaan, and that therefore any argument for the enslavement of negroes, based upon the supposed connection of these people with Canaan must be worthless because false. I desire now to show that they never became slaves, and that fact is strong pre- sumptive evidence that the Bible does not authorize or justify slavery at all. 1st. Thev never became slaves so far as can be seen from Bible .2*7 13 history. God did command that the descendants of this man should be put to the sword, and " utterly destroyed" — Deut, 7, 1-6 ; and that his people should "make no covenant with them nor show mercy unto them ;" but no where has he commanded that they should be enslaved. Those that escaped destruction were afterwards laid under national tribute to Israel, first by Joshua — Joshua 16 : 10, and then by Solomon : 1 Kings 9 : 21, but they still retained their own forms of government, in some measure, and became to Israel tributary provinces or communi- ties, and thus these Canaanitish races were brought into subjec- tion to God's people, and the prophecy — Gen. 9 : 25, "Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall be unto his brethren," was fulfilled. It is a purely groundless assumption that makes their punishment to consist in personal and perpetual bondage, rather than national subjugation and tribute. 2nd. The inference is therefore inevitable that if these people were not enslaved then no people were ever ordained to slavery by the Mosaic laws, as there is no people of whom we have Jehovah's estimate who so richly deserved the entailment of such a curse, but upon them even God did not allow it to fall. SEPARATION" OF FAMILIES. The law in Ex. 21 : 2-4 in which the master is authorized to retain the wife whom he gave to the Hebrew servant after the latter's term of service had expired, the Bishop cites in proof of his theoiy. The passage reads — " If thou buy the Hebrew ser- vant, six years shall lie serve ; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself." The plain and conclu- sive answer is that the master had claims upon the Hebrews for only six years, while the service of the wife — who was a Canaan- itish woman — was his till the Jubilee, and any engagement which she might make, whether matrimonial or other, simply did not annul such obligations as she had entered into with her master. The Hebrew servant might however leave his heathen wife if he chose, because his marriage to such a woman was in violation of the laws of his people — Ex 34: 16; Deut, 7: 3-4; Josh. 23: 12-13; Ezra 10 : 2-3-11, and Nek. 13 : 25-27. It will be seen by reference to the passages in Ezra and Nehemiak here referred to, that men who were even among the nobles were required to put away their heathen wives. Though this man had married such a wife contrary to the divine law, yet God was pleased to allow him the privilege, if he chose to accept it, of sharing the bondage of his wife and children (see verses 5 and 6) until the Jubilee when they might all go out free together. But what must we think of a christian (?) Bishop who pleads this law in 14 justification of the most iniquitous feature of our vile slave system ! The christian law, of which this man is a professed teacher, says, " Let every man have his own wife and every woman her own husband," and our blessed Saviour himself said, "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they twain shall be one flesh." And one of the most positive and solemn injunctions of this divine Teacher is " What therefore God has joined together let no man put asunder," Matt. 19 : 4-6. In the face of all this, here is a professed Christian teacher who says of the law in Exodus — " Here we see that the separation of husband and wife is positively directed by the divine command is order to secure the property of the master." "When this Bishop is obliged to meet a text — and lie cannot avoid them all — which he cannot by all his ingenuity torture into harmony with his theory, his reverence for God's word seems all at once to get the better of him and he talks seriously about " The well known maxim in the interpretation of all laws that each sentence shall be so construed as to give a consistent mean- ing to the whole, and assuredly if we are bound to follow this rule in the legislation of earth, we cannot be less bound to follow it in the legislation of the Almighty." But when he wants to make out a case for the slave master as against human rights, he suddenly forgets his maxim and does not hesitate to bring this law in Ex. 21: 24, into direct and positive conflict with the christian law of marriage in Matt. 19 : 4-5, that he may thereby justify the most indefensible feature of our cruel slave system, that which more than anything else "challenges the indignant reprobation" of mankind — the separation of husband and wife, parent and child, at the pleasure of the master. There were some of the Hebrew doctors according to Bishop Patrick who believed that a Hebrew servant might lawfully marry a heathen wife, but they held that the law in Ex. 21 : 2-4, applied only to that servant who had a lawful wife and children of his own, before his marriage to his master's servant, and that if he had no wife previously to this marriage, his master could not re- tain his wife and children, even though they were his servants and otherwise bound to him till the Jubilee. Not even those old Jewish teachers would allow such a construction of this law as would violate a lawful marriage contract. This outrage upon humanity and the pure precepts of our holy Christianity in behalf of the rights of property was lett for a christian Bishop — and he a man too, if one could believe him, whose "prejudice of educa- tion, habit, and social position stand entirely opposed to slavery !" So that, however contrary to his "personal sympathies, tastes or feelings," he has no choice left him, but must as a " christian" who tears God and " before whose tribunal he must render a strict ac- count in the last great da}'," insist that the rights of "property" are more sacred according to the divine law than loving, lawful marriage ! 2- It- is That such a combination of wickedness and folly should "chal- lenge the indignant reprobation " of pure and honest men like Bishop Potter and his colleagues in the ministry of our neighbor- ing city, is what might have been expected. EAE-BOEED SEEVANTS-FOEEVEE. In the 6th verse of the 21st chapter of Exodus it is said that the ear-bored servant "shall serve him — his master — forever." Bishop Patrick says on the clause " He shall serve him forever" that is, "Till the year of Jubilee or until the master died. (for his — the master's son was not to detain him when his father was dead) unless his master would release him or he was redeemed." The Rabbins, "says another author, "contend that such servants were set free at the master's death and did not descend to his heirs." But at farthest he conld only be held till the Jubilee, which proves that the term "forever" is not to be understood in this connection in its literal and common acceptation. If, however, this construction should be rejected as I suppose it will be by the Bishop — since he quotes this very text in support of American slavery, to whom, pray, did this Jubilee tiring liberty ? He in- sists that it did not give liberty to the servants of the heathen nor to the ear-bored, Hebrew servants, and there were no others to whom it could apply ; for the Sabbatical year brought release to the mass of Hebrew servants once in seven years and thus of it- self brought to them the release of Jubilee without that institu- tion. Thus this Jubilee release, as I have already proved, must have been designed more especially for the ear-bored and Heathen servants; for it could have added nothing to the immunities of any other important class. THE PROPHETS. Before leaving the Old Testament, we will enquire briefly into the workings of these old Mosaic laws, as to servants, during the maturer periods of the nation's life, as we may suppose the popular understanding and construction of these laws, would find some illustration in the recorded incidents of their history. The dis- position to take advantage of the necessities and weaknesses of others, was not wanting even in Jewish human nature, and the out-cropping of this propensity afforded the occasion for God's own commentary on these laws. It will be seen that the Divine interposition was always in behalf of the servant, to prevent his oppression, thus showing that the design of those laws was not as the Bishop insists to secure the property claims of the master, but the personal rights and liberty of the servant. Thus in the 34th chapter of Jeremiah, we are informed that God charged that the laws of release had been disregarded, and by direct revelation ordered the immediate liberation of the servants, and as the city was then under siege, by the king of Babylon, they obeyed, but they afterward, when the danger seemed to be removed, 16 "turned and caused the servants whom they had let go to return, and brought them into subjection " again, and thus held them to involuntary servitude ; that is, made slaves of them. Then God threatened them for this sin with the greatest possible national calamities. He says, among other things, " I will even give them into the hands of their enemies and into the hands of them that seek their life, and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven and unto the beast of the earth," and for this crime of enslaving the poor, Zedekiah and his princes (says Dr. Clark) were taken captive, and the city after an obstinate defence was taken and plundered and burned to the ground. Slave priests, I suppose, would endeavor to break the force of this impressive history by alleging that these poor servants whom God so fear- fully vindicated, were of the same race as the masters, while those whom we enslave are not our brethren, but heathen. But they must show in order to give any weight to this objection that the Gospel dispensation does not place all men on the same broad basis before God, and thus establish the relation of a common, uni- versal brotherhood, a thing which they will find most difficult of accomplishment, for we are taught that in this Kingdom of Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek," that is, heathen. " In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircum- cision." These old distinctions are all abrogated and done away under the Gospel. But suppose they were not, would the Bishop thence infer that the pious negro who is a genuine christian would have the right to enslave his profane and heathen master of another race, though he were a white man ? This setting ourselves up as God's anointed, and placing ourselves upon a higher plat- form of privileges than we suppose God allows to others; this assumption of peculiar prerogatives as belonging to the profession of Christianity in direct opposition to the whole spirit and letter of the Gospel, is one of the most pitiful pieces of pettifogging that even a pro-slavery priest could perpetrate, and nobody but the most ignorant or impudent could affect it. There is an instance in the fith chapter of the 2d book of Kings where if the heathen round about them were ever enslaved we might expect to see something of it. " A great host" of the Syrians came to fight against Israel, they were all taken captives, and though they were heathen, instead of killing them, or of reducing them to slavery, as many other nations in that age would have done, they gave them food and drink, and sent them back to their sovereign, the king of Assyria. On another occasion after a fierce and bloody battle, Israel carried away 200,000 captives with the intention of enslaving them, but the prophet Obed protested in the name of Jehovah against their wicked purpose and said, " Now hear me therefore, ami deliver the captives again ; for the fierce wrath of the Lord is upon you; and they took the captives and with the spoil clothed all that were naked among them, and arrayed them and 2X5 n shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them upon asses, and brought them to Jericho, to their brethren." See 28th chapter of 2d Chron. 