to the heathen, ("referring entirely to the race of Ham, who had been
judicially condemned to a condition of servitude more than eighteen hundred
years before the giving of the law, by the mouth of Noah, the medium of the
Holy Ghost.") No others, at least, were to be enslaved "forever." Every
book of the Old Testament records a history in which slaves and God's laws
concerning them are spoken of, while, as far as profane history goes back,
we cannot fail to see proofs of the existence of slavery. "No legislator of
history," says Voltaire, "attempted to abrogate slavery. Society was so
accustomed to this degradation of the species, that Epictetus, who was
assuredly worth more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his
being a slave." Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Carthage, and Rome had their
thousands of slaves. In the Bible, the best and chosen servants of God
owned slaves, while in profane history the purest and greatest men did the
same. In the very nation over whose devoted head hung the curse of God,
slavery, vindictive, lawless, and cruel slavery, has prevailed. It is said
no nation of the earth has equalled the Jewish in the enslaving of negroes,
except the negroes themselves; and examination will prove that the
descendants of Ham and Canaan have, as God foresaw, justified by their
conduct the doom which he pronounced against them.

But it has been contended that the people of God sinned in holding their
fellow-creatures in bondage! Open your Bible, Christian, and read the
commands of God as regards slavery--the laws that he made to govern the
conduct of the master and the slave!

But again--_we_ live under the glorious and new dispensation of Christ; and
He came to establish God's will, and to confirm such laws as were to
continue in existence, to destroy such rules as were not to govern our
lives!