His law, as expressed or manifested towards one class of objects, is also expressed and manifested towards all objects similarly situated. The law, brought into action by an act of Cain, would also have been brought into action by a similar act of Abel. The law condemnatory of the shedding of blood is still in fearful existence against all who shall have brought themselves within the category of Cain's acts, the most of which have probably not been recorded.

We anticipate from another portion of our studies, that "sin is any want of conformity unto the law of God." Sin is as necessarily followed by ill consequences to the sinner as cause is by effect. A man commits a private murder; think ye, he feels no horrors of mind-no regrets? Is the watchfulness he finds necessary to keep over himself for fear of exposure, through the whole of life, not the effect of the act? Is not his whole conduct, his friendships and associations with men, his very mental peculiarities, his estimate of others, often all influenced and directed in the path of his personal safety, the avoidance of suspicion? And is all this no punishment? Probably, to have been put to death would have been a much less suffering; and who can tell how far this long, fearful, and systematic working of his mind is to affect the mental peculiarities of his offspring? Shall he, who, by wanton thoughtlessness, regardless of propriety, the moral law, and the consequences of its breach, contracts some foul, loathsome, consuming disease, that burns into the bones, and becomes a part of his physical constitution, leave no trace of his sin on his descendants? Deteriorated, feeble, and diseased, they shall not live out half their days!

A long-continued course of sin, confined to an individual, or extended to a family or race of people, deteriorates, degenerates, and destroys. Such deterioration, continued perhaps from untold time, has brought some of the races of men to what we now find them; and the same causes, in similar operation, would leave the same effect on any other race; and Dr. Channing's "child of God" ceases to be so. "Ye are of your father, the devil.” John viii. 44. "And Dr. Channing's man, created to unfold godlike faculties, and to govern himself by a Divine law written on his heart,' ceases to act as he supposes: "And the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth; because there is no truth in him." John viii. 44. And what saith the Spirit of prophecy to these degenerate sons of

earth? "When thou criest, let thy companions deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them away; vanity shall take them; but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain." Isa. lvii. 13.

"And if thou shalt say in thy heart, wherefore came these things upon me? For the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. Therefore will I scatter them as stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness. This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me, saith the Lord: because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood. Therefore, will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy shame may appear." Jer. xiii. 22-26.

"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it." Joel iii. 8.

And what saith the same Spirit to those of opposite character? "The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet." Isa. lx. 14.

"And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and your vine-dressers." Ibid. lxi. 5.

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They (my people) shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth trouble; they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, before they shall call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." Ibid. lxv. 234.

What are the threatenings announced in prospect of their deterioration and wickedness?

"And thou (Judah) even thyself, shalt discontinue from thy heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve (777 be a slave to) thine enemies in a land which thou knowest not." Jer. xvii. 4.

"Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. * * * Behold the eyes of the Lord God are upon this sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord." Amos ix. 7, 8.

The consequences of sin are degradation, slavery, and death:

"A righteous man hateth lying; but a wicked man is loathsome and cometh to shame."

"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind; and the fool shall be servant (y ebed, slave) to the wise of heart."

"As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursueth it to his own death." Prov.

Dr. Channing has suffered his idea of property to bring him. great mental suffering: he evidently associates, under the term property, those qualities and relations only, which are properly associated in an inanimate object of possession, or at most in a brute beast. He has, no doubt, suffered great misery from the reflection that a human being has ever been reduced to such a condition. But his misery has all been produced by his adherence to his own peculiar definition of the word property. His definition is not its exact meaning, when applied to a slave. Had the doctor attempted an argument to show that the word property could not consistently be applied to a slave, he might, perhaps, have improved our language, by setting up a more definite boundary to the meaning of this term, and saved himself much useless labour.

Mankind apply the term property to slaves: they have always done so; and since Dr. Channing has not given us an essay upon the impropriety of this use of the word, perhaps the accustomed usage will be continued. But we imagine that no one but the doctor and his disciples will contend that it expresses the same complex idea when applied to slaves, which is expressed by it when applied to inanimate objects, or to brute beasts. It will be a new idea to the slaveholder to be told that the word property, as applied to his slaves, converts them at once into brute beasts, no longer human beings; that it deprives them of all legal protection; and that he, the master, in consequence of the use of this word, stands in the same relation to his slave that he does to his horse; and we apprehend he will find it quite as difficult to comprehend how this metamorphosis is brought about, as it is for the doctor and his disciples, how the slave is property.

We may say a man has property in his wife, his children, his hireling, his slave, his horse, and a piece of timber,-by which we mean that he has the right to use them, in conformity to the relations existing between himself and these several objects. Because his horse is his property, who ever dreamed that he had therefore the right to use him as a piece of timber?

No man has a right to use any item of property in a different manner than his relations with it indicate; or, in other words, as shall be in conformity with the laws of God. Our property is little else than the right of possession and control, under the guidance of the laws by which we are in possession for the time being.

The organization of society is the result of the conception of the general good. By it one man, under a certain chain of circumstances, inherits a throne; another, a farm; one, the protection of a bondman, or whatever may accrue to these conditions from other operating causes; and another, nothing. If Dr. Channing and his disciples can find out some new principles by which to organize society, producing different and better results, they will then do what has not been done.

LESSON IV.

THE doctrine that slavery, disease, and death are the necessary effects of sin, we humbly claim to perceive spread on every page of the holy books. This doctrine is forcibly illustrated in the warning voice of Jehovah to the Israelites. They were emphatically called his children-peculiar people-his chosen ones. He made covenants with them to bless them; yet all these were founded upon their adherence to the Divine law. These promises repealed no ordinance of Divine necessity in their behalf. He expressed, revealed the law, so far as it was important for them at the time, and then says, Deut. xxviii. 14-68:

"15. But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee:

"16. Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field.

"17. Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.

"18. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. "19. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

"20. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thy hand unto for to do, until thou be

destroyed, and until thou perish quickly: because of the wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me.

"21. The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it.

"22. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew : and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

"23. And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.

"24. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

"25. The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them; and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

"26. And thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.

“27. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.

"28. The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart:

"29. And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways; and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

66 '30. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.

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'31. Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thy ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them.

"32. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thy eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and there shall be no might in thy hand.