can read the signs of the times, and discern what the spirit meaneth, two most important things in regard to the subject:

1. It proves the righteousness of the cause of the abolitionists; inasmuch as it succeeds by appealing to the conscience and the higher sentiments, while those who oppose it appeal to something much lower, as conservatism, avarice, or a selfish fear of consequences. Those who oppose

2. It proves also that it must and will succeed. it succeed only so long as they can belittle people, chill them and keep them in the dark. But the abolitionists ennoble and warm men, by calling out the magnanimous sentiments of love and justice. They spread abroad a light that reveals the dark recesses of cruelty, crime and pollution. They make men feel that there is something more important than money, personal gratification, or safety even, when bought at the cost of innocence and righteousness.

With these prefatory remarks upon the nature and prospects of the abolition enterprize, I enter upon the great subject.

I. When we consider what man is, and his relation to the universe in which he lives, it does not seem wonderful that slavery should have originated early, and have extended to all countries. There is, however, one exception, according to Bancroft, to the universal prevalence of human slavery. Slavery and the slave trade have not been known in Australasia. Slavery grew out of man's indisposition to work.

Here is man, a being that must be clothed and fed. But the earth will not bring forth its products spontaneously. Man must toil and cultivate it before it will satisfy all of his demands. But man is indisposed to labor, especially in southern latitudes, where the human race began its career. Those who had cunning enough to persuade their neighbors to work for them, and let them be idle, would do so. When men congregated into tribes it was found necessary to have some one for a leader and lawgiver, or judge, as he was usually called. He and a few of his friends, whom he would naturally associate with him in his authority and privileges, would naturally and almost necessarily be exempted from all the drudgery of manual labor. His successors would feel disposed to enjoy and increase, if they could, the privileges and immunities of their ancestors. Feelings of equality have given place to those of aristocracy. Gradually the laborers or servants come to feel almost as a part of the master's property. Foreign danger helped to tighten the bonds that bound the servant to his master. The servant would feel that he owed his protection to his master, and therefore he must be obedient and faithful. Here is the patriarchal institution.

But the servants did not like to work any better than the masters. Enmity would naturally arise between the different tribes, as they came in contact with one another. The tribes would go to war with one another. They would naturally feel that they had as good right to kill their fellow men who injured them as they had to kill wild beasts of which they knew and cared about as much as they did of the men of another tribe. If, then, it was right to kill them, they would naturally suppose that if they saved them alive they were the rightful property of their captors. The captor might put him to do his work and let

him enjoy his ease, or he might sell him or do what he pleased. The captive was his property.

It cannot be doubted that powerful tribes would encourage war, and perhaps enter into it expressly for the sake of making slaves, either for their own use or as an article of merchandize, after they had begun to have commercial relations with one another. Here is the origin of slavery, properly so called.

By slavery I mean involuntary servitude. Slavery does not consist in laboring without pay, or in being confined and subjected to another's will merely. Neither does it consist in the cruelties of the situation. But it consists in servitude to which one is subjected without consent or crime; which is consent when the known penalty is imprisonment and servitude. Hence there may be many whose condition is as bad as slavery who are yet no slaves. It will be well to keep this definition of slavery in view.

Let us now take a short historical survey of slavery, as it existed in the principal nations of antiquity. We must never lose sight of the fact that the slaves of ancient times were the captives taken in war. A nation made slaves of its equals and sometimes superiors. Slavery was the event of what was considered honorable and lawful war. There was no man-stealing, no kidnapping one race under the pretence that they were made inferiors for the purpose of being slaves to their superior. This doctrine is of comparatively modern invention. Among the Hebrews, Moses was obliged to permit many things that were not so from the beginning, in consequence of the hardness of their hearts, and which he no doubt disapproved of. The Jews were a stiffnecked people, and by no means plastic and submissive in the hands of their legislator. He found it more than he could do to secure obedience to a system of religion and a form of government so much better than that of any people around them, without aiming at perfection. He must suffer them in many things, in consequence of the hardness of their hearts.

There were two kinds of servants among the Hebrews.

1. The first class of servants, or slaves, (for the same word is used in the Hebrew language for both, as they stand in our Bible,) were Hebrews who had by some means or other reduced themselves to bondage. A Hebrew might fall into slavery in various ways: (a) If reduced to extreme poverty he might sell himself: (b) A father might sell his children for slaves: (c) Insolvent debtors might be delivered to their creditors as slaves: (d) Thieves who were not able to make the required restitution for their thefts, were sold into slavery.

It is extremely difficult to ascertain in many cases whether a law was intended for Hebrew servants, or for those who were captives. There was, however, this one distinction. At the end of seven years the Hebrew servants might go free. If, however, one chose to remain with his master, he might declare this choice in the presence of the judges, and the master would bore a hole through his ears, and he must remain with him forever. But this forever was probably only until the year of jubilee, which might not be more than one year, and could not be more than forty-three.

2. The second class of servants, or slaves, were those who had been taken in war. Their condition was probably worse than that of the former class. These, and their children after them, were slaves until death. The master was obliged to circumcise them and teach them his religion. If the master injured the slave in eye or tooth, or any member whatsoever, the servant, in consequence of such injury, was entitled to his freedom. Any slave who had run away from another nation and sought refuge among them, was not to be given up, but must be treated kindly.

Says Stevens, (Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petrea and the Holy Land, vol. 1, p. 77:) "In the east slavery exists now precisely as it did in the days of the patriarchs. The slave is received into the family of a Turk in a relation more confidential and respectable than that of an ordinary domestic, and when liberated, which very often happens, stands upon the same footing with a freeman. The curse does not

rest upon him forever; he may sit at the same board, dip his hand in the same dish, and if there are no other impediments, may marry his master's daughter."

Such was the slavery that Moses was obliged to permit to the Hebrews. How different from the slavery on our southern plantations! The slave there has no protection that the horse and ox have not, except when a murder can be proved by white men's testimony. No black man can be heard, and the blacks are usually the only witnesses of the cruelty. If the slave escape from bondage in one state, the citizens among whom he has sought refuge have bound themselves to return him if he be claimed by his master. But among the Jews the law was, "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell among thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best thou shalt not oppress him." (Deut. xxiii. 15, 16.) The Jewish servant whose master had maimed him could receive his freedom for his wrong. But here he must drag out a miserable life, unless the master, more from considerations of profit than of mercy, end his life at once. The slave can get no redress, no comfort. The slave of the Turk, the follower of Mahomet 'the Impostor,' (?) can sit at the same board, dip his hand in the same dish with his master'-' he can marry his master's daughter,' and become as son instead of a servant, but the slaves of the Americans, the citizens of this christian democratic republic, "shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged, in law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever." (S. Carolina Laws.) "He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master." (Louisiana Laws.) The Jewish slave must be taught the Jewish religion; but the slaves in this christian country are, in the language of the slaveholders themselves, 'a nation of heathen in our very midst, without God and without hope in the world,' and this too in consequence of the laws of the land.

Among the Greeks the character of slavery became still worse. Their

slaves were prisoners of war. They were seldom allowed to marry, so that very few were born into slavery. They carried on the whole business of the Athenians. They were their merchants and mechanics as well as cultivators of the soil. Many were skilful in the fine arts of sculpture and painting, and even well versed in letters. Some of the greatest names that have come down to us are the names of slaves, or freedmen, such as Epictetus and Esop. Slaves often obtained their freedom. The courts were open to them. They could bring actions against their masters, and were allowed to testify against them in their courts. When they were oppressed, they could always flee to the Temple of Theseus, where they were free from the master's cruelty and tyranny. Have the slaves on our American plantations such privileges as these? Can they sue their masters at law? and testify in court against them? Are they ever allowed to be skilled in letters and the arts? Is there any refuge from the master's fury? No; none of these things in christian America. Yet the slave of the heathen Athens had them all.

In Rome, the condition of the slaves was similar to that at Athens. Wherever the army went, there they made slaves. Slave merchants were always found attached to the army.

"Slaves in Rome occupied every conceivable station, from the delegate superintending the rich man's villa, to the meanest office of menial labor or obsequious vice; from the foster-mother to the rich man's child, to the lowest degradation to which woman can be reduced. The public slaves handled the oar in the galleys, or labored on the public works. Some were lictors, some were jailors. Executioners were slaves. Slaves were watchmen, watermen, scavengers. Slaves regulated the rich palace in the city; they performed all the drudgery of the farm. They were frequently taught to read and write, and the arts. Virgil made one of his a poet. Horace was the son of a slave. The physician and the surgeon were often slaves-so too the preceptor and the pedagogue: the reader and the stage player: the clerk and the amanuensis: the architect and the smith. The armigeri, or esquires, were slaves. You cannot name an occupation connected with agriculture, manufactures, or public amusement, that was not the patrimony of slaves. Slaves engaged in commerce; slaves were wholesale merchants; the slaves were retailers. Slaves shaved notes, and the managers of banks were slaves.”

All of this was a natural consequence of their system. They took their equals, and often superiors, in war. They did not go and steal a helpless race and degrade them even below what they were by nature, and then consider that very degradation which they themselves had made as a proof that they were intended for slaves. It was the common understanding among nations, that if they went to war they exposed all of their men to slavery who might happen to be taken prisoners. The whole army of Valerian were taken prisoners by Sapor, king of Persia. They did not complain of this as unjust, for it was according to the laws of war. It was doing to them what they would have done to their enemies, had fortune been in their favor.

B

While slavery thus spread over all of the east, we find nothing like modern negro slavery. We find no case where the slave laws and treatment were so hard as in our southern states. The slaves were the result of conquest rather than avarice; and when they had fallen into the master's hands, they received milder treatment, and had more means of enjoyment, and had far greater hopes of liberty, than in our own country. This kind of slavery, which is certainly less unrighteous, less shocking to humanity, than African slavery, did not receive the approval of conscientious heathen, even. Aristotle opposed it as unjust. Justinian, while he acknowledged it agreeable to the laws and the practices of nations, still condemned it as unjust and inhuman. The whole sect of the Essenes, as they were called, in Asia, and Therapeutæ, as they were called in Greece and Egypt, a very numerous sect, regarded slavery as a great injustice and sin.

II. The appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, the authorized teacher of the world, was the greatest event in the world's history. He introduced a religion destined to become universal. We profess to be believers in that religion. We profess to look to Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith, and to receive his doctrines as our guide and rule of conduct. This all christians do. It is, therefore, important to examine the position that Jesus and the christian religion assumed towards slavery. I admit that there is no passage condemning slavery, in express terms. I admit that Paul exhorted servants, or slaves, to be obedient to their masters. But then it is a historical fact, that slaves were equal to their masters so far as the blessings and privileges of christian institutions were concerned, in the early ages of christianity.

1. In the first place, Christ never claimed to give a system of positive laws. He did not condemn such a law, or institution, as bad in itself. He condemned the principle upon which it is founded. He did not seek to make men better, by outward constraint, but by changing the inner man. He did not seek to bind and compel men's hands, but to give them willing hearts. He dealt with principles, and not directly with positive institutions, which are the outward manifestation of principles. We should not, therefore, expect any express prohibition of slavery. Christ did not wish to forbid it, until he had brought men to see the wickedness and injustice of it. This he sought to do, by giving them such principles and views of their fellow men as to make them regard slavery as the most daring outrage against the laws of God that man could commit.

2. Christianity makes no distinction between the races of men. 'God hath made of one blood,' that is to say, equal, 'all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth.' Here the fundamental principle of negro slavery is directly contradicted by christianity. The Africans are not, as the slaveholder says, a race, inferior to ours, and made so to be slaves.

"Thou

3. The fundamental principle of Christianity is declared to be, shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." Now, in the eye of the gospel, every one is your neighbor who is within the reach of your benevolence. Is slavery a manifestation of this brotherly love?