Will you reject the doctrine, saying the biblical proofs are too scattered, too deeply buried under the dust of time? or, because a prophet has not appeared, or one arisen from the dead? The geologist, from a few fragments of bone, now dug from the deep bowels of the earth, is able to set up the osseous frame, to clothe with muscle and sinew, and give character to the animals of ancient time. And shall it not be recollected by you, who are striving to make your descendants the very princes of intellect and talent, that similar researches may be made in the moral history of man? We submit the foregoing, confident, although there may be obscurity and darkness yet surrounding the subject, which we have not the ability to dispel, that the time will come, when it will be made plain to the understanding of all. We therefore resign the subject, touching the colour of the descendants of Ham, of their relationship with the family of Cain, and the ordinances of God influencing their condition in the world, to those more learned, more critical, and of more mental power, and into the hands of those whose lips have been touched by a more living coal from the altar of the prophet.

Study VH.

LESSON I.

In the inquiry into the scriptural views of slavery, by ALBERT BARNES, Philadelphia, 1846, page 322, we find the following assertion: "No man has a right to assume that when the word dovλos, doulos, occurs in the New Testament, it means a slave, or that he to whom it was applied was a slave.

Our object in our present study is to prove that this assertion is not true; and our object further is to prove that when the word Sovλoç, doulos, occurs in the New Testament, it means a slave, and that he to whom it was applied, as an appropriate distinctive quality, was a slave.

Suppose some infidel, a monomaniac in the study of infidelity, should put forth the proposition that when the words Jesus Christ occur in the New Testament, no one had the right to assume that they meant the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. We should feel it a needless labour to refute it; a foolish, false assertion often does not merit or require refutation, but the falsity of propositions may not be equally obvious to all, as in the present

case.

The premises include the observance of the constitution, idioms, and use of the Greek language.

To him whose mind can flash upon the volume of Greek literature, like the well-read schoolboy upon the pages of Dilworth,our present study and argument will be unnecessary and useless; but, as unsavoury as it may seem, from the evidence that reaches us, we doubt whether the great mass of those called learned, do not remember and practise their Greek only as the old veterans in sin do the evening and morning prayers of their childhood.

But, however that may be, a great proportion of us know no

language but our own, and take on trust what any Magnus Apollo may choose to assume concerning others. The assertions of one man, unaccompanied by evidence, may excite little or no attention; but we have seen the substance of this assertion put forth by the abolition clergy in various small publications, no doubt having great weight in their immediate vicinage.

We fear those who sit under such teaching may grope in deep darkness; and may we humbly pray, that, like the stroke of Jove, the light of the Almighty may reach them from afar.

LESSON II.

WHEN the untruthfulness of the lesson taught involves a misconception of the character and laws of God, its direct tendency is to create in the mind an idea of, we may say, an image of God and his laws, as decidedly different from him and his law as is the lesson taught from the truth; and here, perhaps, through all time, has been the commencement of idolatry.

Is it not as much idolatry to worship a false image of the mind, as it would be an image of wood or stone?

You teach that dovλoç, doulos, does not mean slave in the word of God; you consequently teach that God disapproves of it, and that his laws forbid it. We say the exact contrary. It is therefore evident that the idea, the image we form in the mind of our God, is quite different from the idea you form in your mind of your God. But God cannot possess a contradiction in quality; therefore the God we worship must be a different God from the God you worship. But there can be but one God; therefore your God is a false God, or our God is a false God. You are an idolater, or we are one.

And shall it be said that our language is too strong?-unnecessarily extreme in its denunciation ?-unwarranted by the views, by the language held by the advocates of abolition and the friends of the anti-slavery movements now in action in the Northern sections of our country? Hear the proclamation of Mr. Wright, an eloquent speaker, before the Anti-Slavery Society, as reported in the Boston papers, May 30th, 1850:

"Down with your Bible !-down with your political parties !—

down with your God that sanctions slavery! The God of Moses Stuart, the Andover God, the God of William H. Rogers, which is worshipped in the Winter-street Church, is a monster, composed of oppression, fraud, injustice, pollution, and every crime, in the shape of slavery. To such a God I am an atheist."

Thus the enemies of Jehovah give rapid proof of their idolatry. It may be well here to remark, that the doctrine thus strange and astray from truth, may be expected to engraft itself upon such intellects as are led to the conclusion that man possesses within. himself an unerring guide between right and wrong,-a doctrine which to us appears deeply fraught with ruin to the individual, and degradation to public morals.

We therefore condemn, most decidedly, the doctrine that man possesses a mental power called "moral sense," "conscience," or the “light within us," which enables him unerringly to decide on right and wrong. You may as well say it will always enable him. to discern the truth. Nor do we comprehend how the mind can entertain such a notion, unless the intellect is thus impressible that the mind can believe in the existence of what would be a sister faculty, clairvoyance, or a thousand other such fantasies.

Man possesses no power by which he can know God, only as he has revealed himself by inspiration and by the daily manifestations of his law. We prefer to worship the God of Abraham and Moses, who gave them directions how slaves should be governed, and of whom they should be purchased:-the God of the Bible, in which he has plainly revealed the reason why they are slaves. The history of the human intellect gives proof that among its strong characteristics is a desire, a fondness to search into mystery. While this quality stimulates to inquiry after truth, in well organized minds, it is an important means of man's improvement and progression. But in the absence of all guides which can direct the path to successful inquiry, or by the substitution of false lights, man has ever gone astray. Here idolatry commences her reign.

The condition of man, from the most exalted instance of mental power, down to the most abject degradation of the African savage, is for ever marked and located by the fact, whether the guides to truth in their influence on him and his race have been universal, or only occasional; whether their influence has been obeyed only at distant periods, or at all times rejected. It is the law of God. man shall not progress to greatness only under the guidance of

truth; under the guidance of falsehood, man degenerates to insignificance, crime, slavery, or to inglorious death.

We do not propose that any man or any race has, without exception, been under the constant influence of those axioms that guide the mind along the thread of truth; but that some men and some races have deviated far more than others, and that the effect of such difference is quite perceptible. Some races have become highly improved, while others only give evidence that they belong to the animal race of men.

Distinctions from this source arose between Cain and Abel; between the sons of Noah, Abraham, and the fire-worshippers of his day; between Jacob and Esau; and between the Israelites and the idolaters of the surrounding Hamitic tribes. This love of searching into mystery without using the aids to find truth, has at all times of the world, when supreme power was the object of contemplation, led men to idolatry, sometimes of the grossest kind; to the belief in mysterious influences, supernatural agencies, of spirits and demons, magic, witchcraft, &c.

To the same order of causes we are to attribute the sentiment entertained by some, that certain portions of Scripture and certain - words sometimes contain unknown, hidden, secret, or mysterious meanings or instructions. Such views involve the proposition that such words, when used in the Scripture, have a different meaning than when otherwise used by men, and are to be translated into another language by substituting different ideas than those expressed by such words when used by man in his own oral or written language.

Do they forget that the language of man is the language of God? That revelation is always adapted to the understanding of men? They forget to know this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. It happens that men take their own circumscribed view of the providence of God, as God's ordinance touching a matter, and if Scripture is in contradiction, then they search for mysterious or unusual meaning, and give it such interpretation as they imagine suits the case.

Hence theologians who deny that slavery is of Divine authority, are led to the necessity of also denying that the Greek word dovλoç, doulos, means slave; or that, in its verbal formation, it expresses a cognate action.

The frequency of the use of this word in the copies of the ancient Greek Testament, as left us in the evangelical writings of