The guilt of slavery and the crime of slaveholding, demonstrated from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures

Front matter

ANNEX p)(f

r)

Sw ci c

Contents

CHAP. PAGB

INTRODUCTION. STATEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT 1

I. — IMPORTANCE OF THE INVESTIGATION 21

Introduction

NATURE AND GENERAL SCOPE OP THE ARGUMENT. — PHILOLOGICAL, LEGAL, HISTORICAL, MORAL.— BAPTISM OK GUEEK WORDS INTO FREEDOM FROM THE HEBREW. — PROOF or

THEIR USAGE EXCLUDING SLAVERY. — TlIE EKLATION AND EEAHTY OF SLAVERY CON- DEMNKU BY THK LAW AND GCSPEL. — CONSEQUENT DUTY OF THE CllUBCH.

THE argument which we propose to develope, demonstrating the iniquity of slavery, is fourfold ; philological, statutory or legal, historical, and moral. The argument from consequences is both historical and moral.

In pursuing the philological argument we begin with the Hebrew, from which, through the Septuagint translation, it passes into the New Testament, where it is merged in the moral and retributive, and closes with the great decisive judgment, He that is unjust, let him be unjust still.

I. The philological argument is baptized throughout with the idea of the virtue, manliness, honorableness and Christian integrity of voluntary paid or rewarded labor, as the characteristic of a truly free and benevolent social state. An admirable German writer has thrown a great light, even in a few suggestions, upon the darkness in which this subject has been involved in the Biblical literature of his own country. lie notes and corrects some of the errors of Michaelis. He notes the fact that the Hebrew language has no word that stigmatizes a part of the laboring community by a degrading brand mark, or separates them from the others as slaves, but only an honorable generic expression for all who stand in the serving relation. He affirms that among a people so occupied with agriculture, whose Lawgiver, Moses, and whose Kings, Saul and David, passed immediately to their high ii INTRODUCTION.

vocation from the care of their flocks and the labors of the plow, there could no degrading significance ever be attached to any appellation of labor ; for the name of the Servant of God is the honorable title of Moses and the pious.*

THERE is NO WORD IN THE HEBREW LANGUAGE FOR SLAVE, and this grand fact speaks volumes. The glorious necessity and penury of that divine language in this respect, (a penury the consequence of wealth), dragged in triumph the Greek words which human depravity had applied to slavery, and made a show of them openly, having bound them to the service of a universal and Christian freedom. In the work of translation, for want of another pure language that had not been created out of despotism and servility, the Greek words for service, though stamped with the superscription of slavery, had to be taken as the exponents of the nobler Hebrew. But the grand old Hebrew significance held on and triumphed, being indeed additionally elevated and transfigured by the Gospel.

The Greek was not laid aside, nor unclothed, but clothed upon with the divineness of the Hebrew ; and the words that are thus transfigured must be viewed as reflecting the glory of that Redeemer, whose incarnation, death, and work of redemption gathered all mankind into one free family.f To look at them otherwise, in their usage in the New Testament, would be as if one of the disciples could have stripped Moses and Elias of their glory, and compelled them to appear in their earthly and mortal habiliments. There is no exaggeration in this. If any man will examine carefully the works of those scholars who have written on the principles of interpretation as applied to the Greek of the New Testament, he will find that though this particular view might not have been in

* SAALSCIIUTZ. Das Mosaicho Recht. of the New Testament is based on the

Mosaic System of Laws. VoL 2, ch. writings of Moses and the prophets.

ci, p. G97. The first and principal helps for inves-

f SEILER. Biblical ITennonuetics. tigating the usage of words in the

Part 2, Sec. ccxlii, " The language writings of the Evangelists and Apos

of the New Testament had its origin ties are the text and the Greek trans-

from the Greek Jews, and the religion lation of the Old Testament."

INTRODUCTION". Ill

the mind of those writers, yet the demonstration is inevitable from their principles.*

(1.) The leading word ennobled by this process is dovhog, with its cognates, as used for the varieties of service. And here what is needed is simply to rescue the text from the insane thraldom which the defenders of slavery put upon these words, of being compelled into the service of that social and civil abomination and crime, as if no other meaning than that of slavery could possibly be connected with them. The question is triumphantly asked, Does not dovhog mean slave ? The pro-slavery interpreters have melted down the king's coin, and brought it to their mint, for this base image and superscription. They have taken the basest and most degraded meaning of the Greek, and have set that as the standard of usage in Divine Inspiration. All that is necessary in regard to dovXog is to prove that the New Testament writers used it as the synonyme of the free old Hebrew word nry, the proof of which is' incontrovertible through the Septuagint translation.! " As this version became the Bible of all the Jews, who were dispersed throughout the countries where Greek was spoken, it became the standard of their Greek language.''^ It became their grand classic library, and in it the word that among the Greeks designated slaves was redeemed from that degradation, and applied to freemen, to the free servants of freemen, and to the children of God. But, in addition to this, it can be proved that even in classic usage, so called, this word and its cognates were not exclusively applied to slaves ; so that in no case can their occurrence prove that slaves or the system of slavery were recognized or meant. These words necessarily all received a baptism of freedom from

* WINER, Grammar of Idioms of Greeks generally did not understand

the Greek Language of the N. T., pp. and therefore despis«d." 34, 31. " The religious dialect of the f Lightfoot's Works, Vol. 4, p. 31.

Jews, even in the Greek, naturally PLANCK, Greek Diction of N. T.

approached tho Hebrew, and had its ROBINSON, Philology N. T. — TITTMAN

typo in the Septuagint." "TheirGreek on Forced Interpretations. THOLUCK,

style took the general complexion of Lexicography N. T. their mother tongue. Hence origin- \ Marsh's Lectures, p. 3, sec. xiv. ated a Jewish Greek, which native iv INTRODUCTION".

the Hebrew, by being employed in its translation in so many cases where no meaning of slavery could attach to them ; and then afterwards by being applied ordinarily to signify the domestics in Judean families, the servants who were Jews themselves, and could not possibly be slaves.

In the great and glorious fugitive law, in Deut. xxiii., 16, the words used are irN for the Hebrew, a servant, and (5o€'Aof for the Greek, a servant. No\y if, in this case, it could even be proved that both these words, both the Hebrew and the translation, meant slave and slave only, then the argument would be destructive of the whole claim of slavery as having any sanction in God's Word. For the person here described as a slave is evidently one who in God's sight has a perfect right to his freedom, and the same right as to men also, no matter what may be their claims or their laws in regard to him. Those claims and laws are so un-

O

righteous, when they treat him as a slave, that he has a perfect right to break away from them, and God himself forbids any man from interfering with that right, but commands every man to defend it, and to protect the fugitive in its enjoyment, without any regard to wicked human enactments.

But the stranger and the native were placed upon the same footing, for certainly God would not have inserted in his laws for his own people a privilege in behalf of the heathen which could have been denied in behalf of the Hebrew citizen. So that, if the •word describing the fugitive means slave, it is as clear as the day that slavery is unjust and wrong in God's sight, that the claim of property in man is sinful and good for nothing, not to be respected, but rejected, and reprobated, and defied.

And if it does not mean slave, then it means a freeman unjustly treated as a slpive; so that we have here a case, in the very instance and principle, in the very text and law, on which the Epistle of Paul to Philemon is grounded, of the utter repudiation of slavery, the denial of the possibility of its being sanctioned by divine permission, the assertion of the duty of protecting the oppressed servant, of the claim of the fugitive slave to freedom, and

INTRODUCTION. V

of the duty, on the part of Christians, to give freedom to the oppressed fugitive, whether slave or servant, to give freedom to the oVDAof, and on no account return him into the power of the oppressor.

The Septuagint usage of the word dovAo^, for free service, may be known by comparing the following instances : Ex. xxi,, 2 ; Josh., i., 1, xiv., 7, xxii., 4 ; Judges vi., 27, xix., 19:1 Sam. xvii., 9, xviii. 5, xxv., 10 ; 2 Sam. ix., 10, xii., 18, xix., 17 ; 1 Kings xii., 7 ; 2 Kings iv., 1 ; 1 Chron. vi., 49; Neh. ix., 14; Dan. ix., 11 ; Eccl. v., 11, where it is for nry, the sleep of a laboring man is sweet. These cases, in comparison with others, prove incontrovertibly a very general use of dovAof, where the meaning of slave can not be admitted or intimated^ ; and no Jew, in any of the instances in which it was applied to any of his own nation, would endure the signification of slavery. It thus passed into the New Testament as a synonyme of the old, free, honorable Hebrew word t^y, and •was employed by the writers of the New Testament, as of the Old, indifferently, to signify servants in families, servants of God, servants of Christ, servants among the Pagans, servants among Christians ; and if at any time it refers to slaves, it is with no intimation of any sanction of slavery, but rather (as in 1 Tim. vi., 1, 2) in the supposition that only out of the church of Christ, only among Pagans and unbelievers, can there be found persons who will hold slaves ;* and that when Christians are so unfortunate as to be held under such a yoke, they must endure it to the honor of God, in the hope of the conversion of their heathen masters, al-

* SAALSCHUTZ. DAS MOSAISCHE from which every element of slavery

RECHT. Laws of Moses, vol. 2., 715. was excluded. He points out what

He remarks on the impossibility of he designates as a most pernicious

the system of slavery having pre- mistake brought in by Machaelis}

vailed among the Hebrews, in the that of giving the title of bondage or

sense of that word in modern times, slavery to the system of Jewish ser-

and among the nations out of Judea ; vice, when it was not slavery at all,

and states the impropriety of the and did not allow of slavery. The

term slavery being applied to the work of Saalschutz was published in

Hebrew system of domestic service, Berlin, in 1846.

ri INTKODUCTIOX.

though, if they can be made free, they must not be slaves, but ehould gain and keep their freedom.*

(2). The same is true in regard to the word dovkeia, service, often rendered bondage in English, but which in the original is so often used of the work or ministry of a free person that there can be no argument of slavery drawn from its usage any where, unless the context plainly proves that slavery is the subject of discourse.f The usage in the Septuagint may be seen from the following instances : Gen. xxx., 26, of Jacob's service to Laban ; 1 Kings v., 6, of Hiram's and Solomon's servants ; 1 Kings xii., 4, Solomon's service upon the people of his kingdom ; 1 Chron. vi., 48, service of the Levites for the Tabernacle ; xxv., 6, service of the singers in the house of God ; Psalm civ., 4, herb for the service of man; Ez. xxix., 18, Nebuchadnezzar's service and hire unto God.

* CAMPBELL on the Gospels, voL 2.

Note on Matt, xx., 27, declares that by the word dofhos is meant a servant in general, whatever kind of work he be employed in, as well as a slave.

"It is solely from the scope and connection that we must judge when it should be rendered in the one way, and when in the other." The mention of the subject, or the occurrence of the word, does not justify the relation or the sin. Neither does the silence of the sacred writer imply a sanction ; no more than the silence of Christ, when John was beheaded by Herod, implied the sanction of that murder. See also DR. F. A. Cox, (England) Scriptural Duty to Slaveholders, etc. He describes 6ov%o( as " a generic term, applied to all the relations of servitude and acts of service, even when no inferiority of rank or condition is predicable."

f JOSEPHUS. Antiq. B. xvi., eh. 1.

Ho is speaking of the impossibility, under the law of Moses, of there being such a thing as the slavery of the Jews to foreigners. He says that in case of crime, a thief, if he have not enough property to make restitution for his theft, may be sold for the amount of his theft, that is, his services may be sold to such an amount, and he may be compelled to work, till his labor shall have amounted to such a sum. But he can not be sold to foreigners at any rate, neither to one of his own nation in such manner as to be under perpetual slavery, for he must have been released after six years. This is a very positive and striking proof of the meaning of the Jewish system of service as limited and voluntary; and inasmuch as dovZetav is the word used by Josephus (translated, however, in English slavery), it is clear that such phraseology does not of necessity mean slavery, but is used for the service of hired laborers and freemen.

INTRODUCTION.

(3). The usage of (JovAeuw is under the same conditions. It is employed in the Septuagint for the Hebrew verb naa>, to labor, and receives and retains a signification of freedom, in being used as the exponent of that word.* It is employed where slavery could not be meant,f as for example, in Gen. xiv., 4, of tributary confederates serving Chedorlaomer, and Gen. xxv., 23, the elder shall serve the younger; xxix., 15, of Jacob serving Laban; xxxi., 6, of the same; Ex. xxi., 2, 6, of the service of the Hebrew servant; Deut. xv., 18, worth a double hired servant in serving six years ; Hosea xii., 12, Israel served for a wife.

(4). The word ot/cerT/f is another term employed in the New Testament for servants, which might mean slave, if the context rendered it necessary, if the subject matter was that of slaves or slavery ; but also it is used for freemen and free servants, and might be applied, and was applied, in that sense.

Now otKerqs is rendered by Calvin in the Latin word famulus, and he notes that inasmuch as it is not doi/hoi, but oiKerai, that is used in 1 Pet. ii., 18, the passage may be understood to refer to free servants as well as slaves.^ And Bretschneider says that oiKETrjg is used not merely of slaves, but also of freemen, of the wife and the children.§ Josephus employs this word for servants of the Hebrews, who could not possibly be slaves. || It is em-

* JoSEFnus, Antiq., B. 3, ch. xii., Trypho, where be employs the word

sec. 3. He describes the fiftieth year edovfavatv to signify the labor of

as " a jubilee, in which debtors were Jacob in the service of Laban. This

freed from their debts, and the ser- was not slavery, but a free, voluntary

*vant.-? were set at liberty, which ser- contract. See Gen. xxix., 15, 20.

vants (translated slaves in the Eng- \ STEPHANUS, Thesaurus. He gives

lish) became such, though of the same an instance from Diogenes Laertius

stock, by transgressing." The Greek of tiovhevu applied to working for

is not slaves, but being employed of wages.

Hebrews certainly signifies a free ser- \ CALVIN, Com. in 1 Peter ch. ii.

vice on. a voluntary contract ; ol § BKETSCUNEIDER, Lex. " Non so-

engaged at service were set free. This || JOSEPHUS against Apion, B. 2,

phraseology is that used also by Jus- Sec. 19, and elsewhere. TIN MARTYB ua his Dialogue with

Viii INTRODUCTION.

ployed in the SEPTUAGINT for those who were not and could not be slaves.* In the same way it is employed in the New Testament. Stephanus, Liddell and Scott, Schleusner, refer to a similar usage in classical writers, so that it is sometimes opposed to dovkov (Herodotus, example, also Xenophon), and in the N. T. there could be no indication or intimation from it of the existence of slavery.

Now Facciolatus renders famulus by the Greek word vnripe~7j^ and the Latin words minister, servus.\ At the same time he says that famulus is employed concerning a free man serving another, and ministering. Hence Ulpian is quoted showing that all, even free men, are comprehended under the name of families, who are in service ; famulus is also used concerning ministers of the gods.

Again, servus is rendered by Facciolatus as famulus, and dovkog and depatruv are presented as synonyms in the Greek. But he quotes Cicero pro Cluentio as saying, Legum id circo omnes servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus, we are all for this very purpose servants to the law, that we might be free. A wise and beautiful apothegm, not a little like the language of Paul in regard to our being servants of Christ, that we might have perfect freedom. And even concerning the word verna,\ a home-born slave, Facciolatus says that it was used sometimes in application to a freeman born at Rome. But as to depa-rruv, which Facciolatus has set with dovhog, as the translation of servus, the lexicographers affirm that in Homer and the old authors it always differs from doi)Aof, as implying free and honorable service. But in Chios Oepanovreg was the name for their slaves.

Now 0epa7ro>v is the word used by the Septuagint, instead of dovhog, in several instances, concerning Moses, as a translation of the Hebrew 1^9, the word for servant, though, as is well known, the word tSovAof is most commonly employed for all forms and qualities of service. But depa-rruv is also the word employed by

0 SEPT. Trans. Gen. xxvii., 37; f FACCIOLATUS, Lex. Lat. FAMULUS.

Lex. xxv. 42, 55; Num. xxxii., 5; j BECKER, Gallus, 213. " Vernce,

Prov. xxii, 7 ; Deut xxxii., 5, (of children resulting from the contuber-

Moses). nium among the slaves."

INTRODUCTION. IX

Paul in the epistle to the Hebrews (ch. iii., 5), in regard to Moses, and it is the only instance in all the New Testament in which this word is used, while 6ovko$ is used in cases without number, of free men in free, voluntary and honorable service. All this shows (1) how closely the usage in the New Testament follows that of the Septuagint, and (2) how impossible it is to draw any conclusion from the use of any word, which, in the classical Greek writers, may have ordinarily meant slave, that such is the meaning of the word in the New Testament. The Septuagint translators of the Hebrew Scriptures were the classics of the New Testament writers, although Paul was familiar, perhaps, Avith all the Greek literature of his time.

The proof from the use of the word depa-iruv is conclusive as to the freedom of the domestic service and of servants among the Hebrews. It is used not only of Moses, in Numbers and Joshua, but of Job, in the book of Job, (i., 8 ; ii., 3 ; xlii., 7 ;) and by Job himself concerning his own servants, (xix., 16,) I called my servant, and he gave me no answer, and (xxxi., 13,) If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant, etc., and of servants generally, (iii., 19,) the servant is free from his master, and (vii., 2,) as a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, etc. It is used also in Numbers xxxii., 31, of the children of Gad and Reuben. The use of this word by Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in speaking of Moses, was adopted, there cannot be a doubt, because the Septuagint translation used it in places which referred to Moses as God's faithful servant over God's house.

Moses is also called in the Septuagint oiKerrjg (as in Deut. xxxiv., 5). In the New Testament oineTrjS no more indicates a slave than OIKETTJ^ or depa-rrw in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. Trommius renders the word, doraesticus, famulus, servus.* And domesticus is the word employed by Lardner for otKeioi, in rendering the text Eph. ii., 19, "no more strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." You

X INTEODUCTION.

have equal rights of citizenship with the people and natives of the country, and are God's domestics.* Whether domesticus, or famulus, or servus, in the translation into Latin be employed, or oiKerr^g, or dianovos, or 6ovXog, or departs, in the Greek, there is no more indication of slavery than when the Hebrew word for servant tzy. is employed in the Old Testament,! and rendered by the Greek translators oiKerr)g,l or (JovAof, or Oepa-rrav, or by the Latin vulgate servus, or famulus, or domesticus, or verna.

(5.) An examination of the Septuagint usage of the words dovkr], maid-servant, and -naidioiCT], maiden, damsel, servant, as employed for the Hebrew words rms« and nhEB, reveals the same conditions. These Greek words received the same free significance from the Hebrew, and carried it into the dialect of the New Testament. In Ruth iii., 9, dov^T], handmaid, is applied to Ruth herself; so in ii., 13. So, 1 Sam. i., 11, 16, 18, of Hannah ; and chapter xxv., several times of Abigail; 2 Sam. xx., 17. Saalschutz and others have noted the free signification of these Hebrew words ; improperly, at any time, translated by words that convey the meaning of slavery. Bondwoman is not the proper translation of the word designating Hagar in Hebrew as Sarah's maid.

(6.) The usage of naidioKi] is subject to the same law. Gen. xxi., 10, 12, 13 ; xxx., 3 ; xxxi., 33 ; Ex. xx., 10, 17 ; xxi., 20, 32 ; xxiii., 12 ; Deut. xii., 12, 18; xv., 17 ; xvi., 11, 14 ; Ruth ii, 13 ; iv., 12 ; 1 Sam. xxv., 41 ; Jer. xxxiv., 9, 11, 16. The examination demonstrates its usage of free persons. To translate it by the word bondwoman or slave would be to convey a falsehood under the claim of revelation.

All these words are used in the New Testament of free persons.

*LARDNER on Peter. Works, VoL could not bo called slaves. They were

6, p. 218. in no sense such. He exposes the

f SAALSCHUTZ. Laws of Moses, falsehood of any such appellative to

Vol. 2, 714. "With what justice (this the system.

writer well demands) can any one ap- J BRETSCHNEEDER. Lex. N". T.

ply the term of servDe thraldom or oiKerris, applied to free persons, non

slavery to a free system like that solum d& servis sed eliam de liberis,

among the Hebrews ? Persons that uxore, filiis. were free by law every seventh year

INTRODUCTION. XI

And though some of them generally, and others often, were applied in classic Greek, out of Judea, to the state and custom of slavery, they were prepared for Christianity and for the state of freedom, first as Hebrew proselytes in the Septuagint, second, as adopted into the family of Christ, where there is neither bond nor free.* Such is the course of the argument in all its branches, from Genesis to Revelation, under the guidance and presence of the free system and words of the Hebrew dispensation.

II. The second great form of the argument, the legal or statutory, runs on in the same manner, under the same influences. The whole system is a system for freemen, and there is no legislation for slaves. Something of the power of the argument from the system of laws comes out in the way of contrast. Ye shall not commit the crimes which ye have seen committed by the Egyptians, but ye shall set yourselves against them. Ye were oppressed in Egypt, ye shall not oppress one another ; ye were strangers in Egypt, ye shall love the stran-ger as yourselves.f

This general principle prevailed, and excluded the possibility of caste, or prejudice against color or labor, from ever getting a foothold. It was a law of Egypt that the murder, whether of a

* CAMPBELL. Preliminary Diss. now the saints but tho infidels that

to tho Interp. N. T. Dis. 2. part ii. call in question tho justice of slavery-

The words Greek, but the spirit He- HUMBOLDT, Kingdom of New Spain,

brew. Campbell's acute and interest- Vol. 1, chap. vii. ing instances of the naturalization laws f MARSIIAJ:. Lex Mosaic. Ex

in regard to words, and the causes malis Egyptiorum moribus, bonce Is-

and methods of their operation, might raelitarum leges, remarks Marsham,

be carried, with great weight, into tho with as much truth as antithesis. Out

illustration of the subject of slavery, of tho wicked manners and morals of

With the antique pagans slavery was the Egyptians sprang the admirable

a virtue of society, with the Christians laws of the Israelites. God never

it was a vice. With modern pagans permitted his people to be personal

it is a vice, with modem Christians (but slaves till the crucifixion of the Sa-

only in the United States) it is a vir- viour and destruction of Jerusalem,

tue, established by law. Not without But out of tho hard bondage laid upon

just ground did the celebrated Hum- them by Pharaoh grew the legal

boldt record his sarcasm against pro- provisions against personal slavery

fessedly Christian slaveholders and through all generations. Lev. xix.»

churches in America, that it is not 34; Deut. x., 19.

Xii INTRODUCTION.

freeman or a slave, was to be punished with death ;* and Heeren regarded this equality of the penalty, together with the law forbidding imprisonment for debt, as among some proofs of an. advancement in moral culture among the Egyptians, such as few of the nations of antiquity have made.f It was a law, Diodorus has noted, that if any man slew another, or seeing him suffer violence, did not rescue him, though he were able, he should be put to death. Compare with this, Prov. xxiv., 11, 12, "If thou forbear to deliver them that are ready to be slain," etc. There was no difference, among the Hebrews, as to the claims of benevolence, between the native and the stranger. Michaelis notices particularly the fact of " the inequality between citizens and strangers being counteracted by a law which ordained crimes, at least of various kinds, to be punished precisely in the same manner on both." There shall be one and the same law for the native and the stranger.J

These principles, laid down in the law book of the nation, are such, that not only among themselves, but in regard to strangers, all manner of oppression was forbidden and excluded. No form of slavery could exist with such constitutional safeguards against it, any more than a monarchical form of government could exist under the Constitution of the United States. Not till tlie spirit of the people had departed could the forms of constitutional law be violated ; and when they were violated, then the wrath of God descended. The law of freedom was not only national, but particular, extending even to the treatment of the fugitive by each individual, the duty of each and every person being to maintain and defend freedom for each and every other person. The law was of liberty every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbor. The attempted violation of this law in the time of

thought there ought to be different etc., der alten welt, 347.

laws for freemen and slaves ; a word J MICHAELIS. Laws of Moses,

for a freeman, a blow for a slave, and Vol. 2, art. cxxxviii. so in proportion. See BECKER'S Charicles. Excursus, Slaves.

INTRODUCTION. Xlll

Jeremiah sent the whole nation into captivity ; so that here both the reality and significance of the law are demonstrated, and the abhorrence of God against slavery, in such manner as cannot be mistaken. The law laid upon every man a responsibility of freedom for his neighbor.

Entering upon the New Testament, it is not to be imagined that the glorious elevation and scope of this commandment would be ignored and contradicted. Accordingly, in the Epistle to Philemon, we find the rule of giving liberty every man to his brother and every man to his neighbor reestablished, and slavery abolished. The law of freedom, by the love of Christ, accomplishes in the New Testament what the law of God had appointed in the Old.

III. The historical argument is intimately connected with the legal, running along with it, illustrating it, and illustrated by it. In exactly the same manner it is baptized with the spirit of freedom, being not the history of slavery, but of God's providence, word and grace, against slavery, and of the destruction and misery of the nation through the very attempt to establish slavery. The attempt comes out, as the climax of Jewish wickedness, in the thirty-fourth chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy, the punishment of which cured the madness and the crime. The later history discloses a nation and a social system, the legitimate growth of laws excluding slavery, and rendering individual labor, and especially the labors of agriculture, free, honorable and ennobling. Every man received a just recompense of wages for his work, whether the contracted time were longer or shorter.* No idea is clearer