to Egypt, as to a well known market---the traffic in slaves was evidently well established prior to this transaction. Homer mentions Egypt as still the great market for slaves, in his age.

Its probable origin. Notwithstanding the many assertions to the contrary, I would fain believe, that the relation of master and slave, originated in benevolence, rather than in cupidity, or in cruelty. The ancient law of nations, doomed to death all captives taken in war. Compassion may have suggested slavery as the milder alternative. Such unquestionably, was the motive in the Jewish Law. This positively prohibited making captives of the Canaanites, and, in Numbers xxxi. 17, forbade them to spare any of the Midianites, save female infants; and, in Deut. xx. 13, 14, in all cases, required them to slay all the men taken in war, and spare only the women and children. The law presumed that the Jewish nation would not prosecute an unjust war; and by consequence, that those of their enemies, who had provoked the war, must be put to death; whilst the women and children, as less guilty, should be spared, and made slaves. The Romans regarded it in the same light. Their writers say, that the word servusa slave, (and from which the word servant is formed,) means properly, a person whose life has been spared-clemency had been exercised towards him. Probably there are few even among ourselves, who, if placed in a condition similar to that of these captives, would not praise the clemency that spared our lives, though it made `us slaves. It is neither the part of justice nor of mercy, to exclaim against a price paid, regardless of the value received. Our laws have decided that death is a

greater evil, than the permanent privation of liberty, even connected with the solitary cell, and the hard labor of the Penitentiary.

But the design of the present essay confines us to the history of this relation, in its connection with the Church. And, if Job lived before Abraham, he is the first recorded example, not only in the church, but in the world, of a master owning slaves.

JOB, i. 3. In the schedule of his property, are enumerated, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred sheasses, and a very great household. The word here translated household, is more correctly translated, "servants," in Gen. xxvi. 14,--where, in the list of Isaac's property, we have "great store of servants." Its primary meaning is servitude, bondage; and its secondary meaning, as in both these texts, is bond servants or slaves. Chap. xxxi. 13, he not only represents himself as a master, but appeals to his conduct in that relation, as a proof of his uprightness.. "If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or of my maid-servant, when they contended with me." Almost the same sentence that represents Job as owning a great household, or store of servants, declared that "there was none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feared God, and eschewed evil. "1

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ABRAHAM. Although there is no valid objection to that interpretation of Gen. xii. 5, which makes “the souls gotten in Haran" to be slaves; yet, to avoid a protracted criticism, that text is omitted. When he was in Egypt, Pharaoh, in restoring Sarah, gave him slaves.