belief--especially in a fair and full refutation of that Argument.
Till that is done, we hold ourselves excused from attempting to
prove what we now repeat, that if the Jews during our Savior's
incarnation held slaves, they must have done so in open and flagrant
violation of the letter and spirit of the Mosaic Dispensation. Could
Christ and the Apostles every where among their countrymen come in
contact with slaveholding, being as it was a gross violation of that
law which their office and their profession required them to honor
and enforce, without exposing and condemning it?

In its worst forms, we are told, slavery prevailed over the whole
world, not excepting Judea. As, according to such ecclesiastics as
Stuart, Hodge and Fisk, slavery in itself is not bad at all, the term
"_worst_" could be applied only to "_abuses_" of this innocent
relation. Slavery accordingly existed among the Jews, disfigured and
disgraced by the "worst abuses" to which it is liable. These abuses
in the ancient world, Professor Stuart describes as "horrible
cruelties." And in our own country, such abuses have grown so rank,
as to lead a distinguished eye-witness--no less a philosopher and
statesman than Thomas Jefferson--to say, that they had armed against
us every attribute of the Almighty. With these things the Savior
every where came in contact, among the people to whose improvement
and salvation he devoted his living powers, and yet not a word, not
a syllable, in exposure and condemnation of such "horrible cruelties"
escaped his lips! He saw--among the "covenant people" of Jehovah he
saw, the babe plucked from the bosom of its mother; the wife torn
from the embrace of her husband; the daughter driven to the market
by the scourge of her own father;--he saw the word of God sealed up
from those who, of all men, were especially entitled to its
enlightening, quickening influence;--nay, he saw men beaten for