freely given to us of God; which things we also speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." 1 Cor. ii. 12, 13. "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying; all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe ALL THINGS whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Matt. xxviii. 18-20. "And now, O Father, glorify thou me, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Now they have known ALL THINGS whatsoever thou hast given me of thee: for I have given unto them the WORDS which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee." John xvii. 5-8.

It is not possible that we could have had greater evidence that the whole counsel of God, illustrating the Christian duty, was delivered to the apostles, and through them, to the world. Besides, the very presumption of the incompleteness of the instruction undermines the divinity of the doctrine.

There is, perhaps, no one who does not feel pain, sometimes almost unspeakable, when we see a great man leaning upon the staff of error, especially when such error is palpable, gross, and calamitous in its tendency and effects.

But, cheering as the early ray of hope, and welcome as the rest-giving witness of a covenant, will be the proof that human weakness still had power to wade from out the miry labyrinth of error-to stand upon the rock from whence even human eyes might behold some few glimpses of the rising effulgence of truth.

We have some evidence that Dr. Paley did, at a later period of his life, adopt a more consistent view of the Christian Scriptures, touching the subject of this inquiry. In his "Horæ Paulinæ," a work of exceeding great merit, on the subject of Paul's letter to the Corinthian church, he enumerates and classifies the subjects of Paul's instruction, among which slavery is conspicuously mentioned, and then says "That though they" (the subjects) "be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of the circumstances" (subjects) "could have suggested them to the writer's thought."

In all Christian love and charity, we are constrained to believe that he had discovered his error; and that, had his life been spared longer, he, with diligence and anxiety, would have expunged from his works charges so reflecting on himself, and contrary to the character of the God of our hope.

LESSON XIII.

SLAVERY existed in Britain when history commenced the records of that island. It was there found in a state and condition predicated upon the same causes by which its existence is now continued and perpetuated in Africa. But as early as the year 692-3 A. D., the Witna-Gemot, convoked by Ina, began to manifest a more elevated condition of the Britons. Without abolishing slavery, they regulated its government, ameliorated the old practice of death or slavery being the universal award of conquest; by submission and baptism the captive was acknowledged to merit some consideration; life, and, in some cases, property were protected against the rapacity of the conqueror; the child was secured against the mere avarice of the savage parent, and heavy punishment was announced against him who should sell his countryman, whether malefactor, slave, or not, to any foreign master.

He who has the curiosity to notice the steps by which the Britons emerged from savage life, in connection with their condition of slavery, may do well to examine the works of William of Malmsbury, Simeon of Durham, Bede, Alcuin, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Hoveden, Lingard, and Wilton. But he will not find the statutes of the monarchies succeeding Ina free from these enactments until he shall come down near the fourteenth century. Thus, generations passed away before these statutes came to be regarded with general respect. National regeneration has ever been thus slow. Thus, savage life has ever put to death the captive; while we find that slavery, among such tribes, has ever been introduced as a merciful provision in its stead, and is surely a proof of one step towards a more elevated state of moral improvement. But in the case of Britain and the whole of Europe, the slave was of the same original stock with the master; he, therefore, presented no physical impediment to amalgamation, by which has been brought about whatever of equality now exists among their descendants.

But in the close of this study, we propose to take some notice of the arguments of another most distinguished writer in favour of the abolition of slavery, as it now affects the African race.

In 1777, the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote his argument in favour of the freedom of the negro slave who accompanied his master from Jamaica to Scotland, and who there brought suit in the Court of Sessions for his freedom. This argument has been deemed by so many to be unanswerable, and ever since that time so generally used as a seed argument in the propagation of abolition doctrines, that we feel it worthy of notice and examination.

Johnson was a bitter opponent of negro slavery; yet, strange, he ever advocated the justice of reducing the American colonies and the West India Islands to the most abject condition of political slavery to the British crown. This system is fully advocated, and garnished by his sarcasm and ridicule, in his famous work, entitled "Taxation no Tyranny." "How is it," says he, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes.'

Not long after he wrote this argument, on the occasion of a dinner-party at Dilly's, he said, "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American;" whereupon, adds his biographer, "he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers, pirates, and exclaiming, he'd burn and destroy them."

Some knowledge of a man's peculiar notions relevant to a subject will often aid the mind in a proper estimate of the value of his opinion and judgment concerning correlative matters. His biographer says—

*

"I record Dr. Johnson's argument fairly upon this particular case;" * * "but I beg leave to enter my most solemn protest against his general doctrine with respect to the slave-trade; for I will most resolutely say that his unfavourable notion of it was owing to prejudice, and imperfect or false information. The wild and dangerous attempt, which has for some time been persisted in, to obtain an act of the legislature to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took the lead in it, made the vast body of the planters, merchants, and others, whose immense properties are involved in the trade, reasonably enough suppose that there would be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has received excites my wonder and indignation; and though some men of superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary popu

larity when prosperous, or a love of general mischief when desperate, my opinion is unshaken. To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life." Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. ii. pp. 132, 133.

On the same page, the biographer adds

"His violent prejudices against our West-Indian and American settlers, appeared whenever there was an opportunity." *** "Upon an occasion, when in company with several very grave men at Oxford, his toast was: Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies!' I, with all due deference, thought that he discovered a zeal without knowledge."

This was surely bold in Boswell!

Since the culmination of the great British lexicographer, it has been unusual to hear a whisper in question of his high moral accuracy, of his singularly nice mental training, or the perspicuous and lofty display of these qualities in all his works. Even at this day, such a whisper may be proof of temerity. But truth is of higher import than the fear of individual rebuke, or of our literary faith that any one hero in the walks of erudition heretofore went down to the tomb without one mental or classical imperfection.

Argument in favour of a negro claiming his liberty, referred to in Boswell's Life of Johnson, p. 132.

"It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition. of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children. What is true of a criminal seems true likewise of a captive. A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his descendants; for no man can stipulate without commission for another. The condition which he himself accepts, his son or grandson would have rejected. If we should admit, what perhaps may with more

reason be denied, that there are certain relations between man and man which may make slavery necessary and just, yet it can never be proved that he who is now suing for his freedom ever stood in any of those relations. He is certainly subject by no law, but that of violence, to his present master, who pretends no claim to his obedience but that he bought him from a merchant of slaves, whose right to sell him never was examined. It is said that according to the constitutions of Jamaica he was legally enslaved; these constitutions are merely positive, and apparently injurious to the rights of mankind, because whoever is exposed to sale is condemned to slavery without appeal, by whatever fraud or violence he might have originally been brought into the merchant's power. In our own time, princes have been sold, by wretches to whose care they were intrusted, that they might have an European education; but when once they were brought to a market in the plantations, little would avail either their dignity or their wrongs. The laws of Jamaica afford a negro no redress. His colour is considered as a sufficient testimony against him. It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give way to political convenience. But if temptations of interest are sometimes too strong for human virtue, let us at least retain a virtue where there is no temptation to quit it. In the present case there is apparent right on one side, and no convenience on the other. Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species. The sum of the argument is this: No man is by nature the property of another. The defendant is, therefore, by nature, free. The rights of nature must be some way forfeited before they can be justly taken away. That the defendant has, by any act, forfeited the rights of nature, we require to be proved; and if no proof of such forfeiture can be given, we doubt not but the justice of the court will declare him free."

The author of this production has artfully surrounded his subject with such a plausibility of concessive proposals, doubtful sug. gestions, indefinite words and propositions, as will require a sifting of his ideas into a more distinct view. And we fear some will find his argument thus vague and indeterminate; the mind will pass it by, as one of those learned masterpieces of logic, so distant from the eye of our common judgment, that they will sooner yield their assent than endure the labour of examination.

The first suggestion we would offer on the subject of this production is its total inapplicability to the case. The negro was