I. The first and strongest of all these facts is, that THIS pretence of Old Testament slavery has no true natural analogy to support ita 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, lviii. 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 masters 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 humar 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.

Now, as there is no trace of any such code in the Levitical law, or any other part of the old Testament, but on the contrary, as all the Israelites were governed by one code only (Ex. xii. 49; Deut. xvi. 18, 19; Josh. viii. 33, 35, &c.), the omission can only be accounted for on the supposition that human slavery was in no respect sanctioned by the Levitical law, and did not exist in the ancient Hebrew nation at all. Had God authorized slavery by that law, he would certainly have enacted a slave code to support it, as indispensable means for that support, and the fact that he did not is sufficient evidence of itself alone, where there is no other, that he did not establish such an institution in ancient Israel. Nor is there any history of slavish or other oppression in that nation, either ancient or modern, except by the violation and not by the observance of the Levitical law, together with the consequent divine punishments of such violations. That great code was the most perfectly framed and adapted to prevent every species and degree of human oppression, of any that men were governed by, see Ex. xxii. 25, 27; Lev. xix. 9, 10, 15, xxiii. 22; Deut. i. 17, xv. 7-15, xvi. 19, xxiv. 6, 10, 13, 19-22, xxvii. 19, &c. The spirit of these and the numerous similar provisions found in the Scriptures, ought to be infused into all the human legislation in the world.

V. Another important and decisive fact is, that, as has been already remarked, there are no words in the Hebrew language corresponding in meaning with our English, and the ancient and modern words "slave," "slaveholder," "slavery," &c., a circumstance which never could have happened had the practice of human slavery existed among the ancient Israelites, either with or without the Levitical law. Never did an important public institution, custom, or practice, exist in any country in the world, without a distinct and specific name given to it in the language of the country. Accordingly the ancient Greeks and Romans, and other ancient nations, as well as the modern English, French, Spaniards, &c., who have adopted and pursued the practice of human slavery, have each specific words or names for the practice itself, and for those who pursue it, and for their victims in the practice, in their respective languages.

This fact alone is of itself sufficient also to prove that human slavery never could have existed among the ancient Hebrews. I do not know that God ever expressly created language in the