Now, this either means that the Bible requires that all institutions be adjusted and harmonized with the moral law-the law of love-or it means nothing. For, we maintain, that slavery is per se wrong, where the enslaver has no direct warrant from heaven, or the enslaved has not forfeited liberty by crime on principles of recognized and universal equity; and the whole Bible forbidding wrong must be held as forbidding slavery, or any arbitrary and inhuman tamperings with the inalienable rights of a fellow

creature.

If slavery is not a wrong in itself, irrespective of what are called its abuses, then all that is essential in it may be retained from age to age; and all the amelioration which the Christian law superinduces may be such as to consist with the violation of the natural prerogatives of humanity, and with the denial to man of the essential and dearest privileges of social and domestic life, with the denial of the rights of conscience too. For slavery, as distinguished from service by contract, is this thing and no other:-it is labor undefined, unrewarded, on the condition of being used as vendible property, and every independent right of the slave, as an intellectual

and moral being, is ignored. By practical indulgence such rights may be sometimes conceded. But the slave-law ceases as such when these are recognized.

Now, we hold it a libel on the Bible to affirm that it sanctions such slavery. We must warn you of the fallacy that lies in this distinction of the thing itself, and its abuse. What is called the abuse here is the essence and the characteristic of the subject. Service as well as slavery may be abused. Everything may be abused. But, the claim of the slaveholder is itself the abuse of the God-ordained relation of master and servant. Can men be regarded as a chattel?—that is the question-and so regarded without his consent, and his family treated as such permanently, without his consent, or even with it?

It comes of this bad interpretation of the Christian law, that in the nineteenth century slavery still remains,—is cherished. It is not that the principles of Christianity do not tend to extinguish it. But man, forcing their false interpretation on the Scriptures, plead their authority for a system or institution, to which their whole spirit is opposed,—and which confesses its unscriptural character by keeping out Christian light, and forbidding the Scriptures to the slave.

To talk of the spirit of Christianity, in distinction from its express or implied law against slavery, is as if one would trust for the extinction of sin against the sixth or seventh commands of the decalogue, by general inculcation of meekness or purity, without denouncing murder and defining it, or defining between allowed and disallowed affinity in the marriage law. We may if we do not proscribe theft, and bring the positive law of God to bear against it, and bring a law into harmony with the divine, be understood, while we talk only of the abuses of property, as warning rather against spending stolen goods in a bad way, than against theft itself? But the design of the moral law is to define rights, as well as to govern the use of them; and it requires that not only the tempers of men, but the institutions of society, be adjusted by the law of equity and charity. It forbids not only the abuse of just power, but all false usurpations of power, and classes man-stealers and extortioners as murderers.

Who, if he but examines the laws of social and rela tive duty, as laid down in the New Testament Epistles, may not discern that the relation of master and servant is recognized side by side as the permanent

relations of parent and child, husband and wife, which rest on the law of nature; just because it is not the temporary, unnatural, and violent relation of slaveholder and slave which is recognized, but that of master and servant by contract. The other, its very apologists allow, will pass away; but these duties are embraced in a law of permanent application, and rest on natural principles, common to all times and all

nations.

Mich! Willis

on."

The Work Goes Bravely on.

IKE all Reforms which have for their object the

LI

amelioration of man's condition; the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom; the cause of human freedom has encountered many oppositions calculated to impede its progress. It has temporarily suffered from cruel defection within, and the most virulent persecution without the camp.

John, the forerunner of Jesus, had for his portion "locusts and wild honey." But those who have stood forth in the sunlight, the advocates of the crushed and bleeding bondman; whose motto is, "Our country is the world, and our countrymen all mankind," have had no honey for their portion. Oh no! they have ever dwelt among the tempest and the storm, with thunder, lightning, and whirlwind, to feed upon.

Some have been called, for the advocacy of the