"And God said unto him, I am God Almighty; a nation, and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins. And the land which I gave to Abraham and to Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land." Gen. xxxv. 11, 12.

"But the sow that was washed has returned to her wallowing in the mire." 2 Pet. ii. 22.

* * *

And what is the next prominent state of moral standing in which we find this family? The young and unsuspecting Joseph brought unto his father their evil report, and hence their revenge. "And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver." Gen. xxxvii. 2, and xviii. 28. And against the deed of fratricide there was but one dissenting voice; and he, whose voice it was, dared not boldly to oppose them. He had not the moral courage to contend. Sometimes, in the conduct of men, there may be a single act that gives stronger proof of deep, condemning depravity, than a whole life otherwise spent in wanton, wilful wickedness and sensual sin. Their betrayal of the confidence of an innocent and confiding brother, who neither had the will nor the power to injure them, whose only wish was their welfare, bespeaks a degradation of guilt, a deep and abiding hypocrisy of soul before God and man, and a general readiness to the commission of crimes of so dark a dye, that, it would seem to moral view, no oblations of the good, nor even the prayers of the just, could wash and wipe away the stain. During the history of all time, has God ever chosen such wretches to become the founders of an empire-his own peculiar, chosen people? On the contrary, has not his will, as expressed by revelation, and by the acts of his providence, for ever been the reverse of such a supposition? The laws of God are unchangeable: at all times and among all people, the premises being the same, their operation has been and will ever be the same.

LESSON III.

"LET favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord." Isa. xxvi. 10.

"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden by the cords of his sins." Prov. v. 22.

"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:

"Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field; cursed shalt thou be in thy basket and thy store; cursed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land; the increase of thy loins, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in; and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation and rebuke in all 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. And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, the way whereof I spake unto thee. Thou shalt see it no more again; and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen ('7 la ebedim, for slaves) and bondwomen (in ve lisheppahoth, and for female slaves), and no man shall buy you." (That is, they should be worthless.) Deut. xxviii. 15–68.

Such, then, are the unchangeable laws of God touching man's disobedience and non-conformity; and, in this instance of their application, have been seen fulfilled, with wonder and astonishment, by the whole world.

Consistent with the laws of God and the providence of Jehovah, there was no other way to make any thing out of the wicked family of Jacob; no other means to fulfil his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, except to prepare them in the school of adversity; to reduce them under the severe hand of a master; to place them in slavery, until, by its compulsive operation tending to their mental, moral, and physical improvement, they would become

fitted to enjoy the blessing promised their fathers. "Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." Luke xiv.

"And when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him; and He (the Lord) said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a strange land that is not theirs, and shall serve (D) va ebadum, shall be slaves to) them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years." Gen. xv. 12, 13.

God foresaw what condition the wicked family of Jacob would force themselves into; nor is it a matter of surprise that it filled the mind of Abram with horror.

God never acts contrary to his own laws. The Israelites, in slavery four hundred years under hard and cruel masters, kept closely bound to severe labour, and all the attendants of slavery, had no time to run into deeper sins. The humility of their condition and distinction of race would be some preventive to amalgamation, and a preservative to their purity of blood; and would lead them also to contemplate and worship the God of Abraham. And let it ever be remembered that the worship of God is the very highway to intellectual, moral, and physical improvement, however slow, under the circumstances, was their progress.

Let us take the family of Jacob, at the time of the selling of Joseph, and, from what their conduct had been and then was, form some conjecture of what would have been the providence of God, touching their race, at the close of the then coming four hundred years, had not the Divine Mind seen fit to send them into slavery. Does it require much intellectual labour to set forth their ultimate condition? Would not the result have been their total annihilation by the action of the surrounding tribes; or their equally certain national extinction by their amalgamation with them? If, by the providence of God, as manifested among men through all time, one of these conditions must have attached to them, then will it follow that, to them, slavery was their salvation,-under the circumstances of the case, the only thing that could preserve them from death and extinction on earth.

Under such view of the facts, and the salvatory influence of the institution, slavery will be hailed by the good, pious, and godlyminded, as an emanation from the Divine Mind, portraying a fatherly care, and a watchful mercy to a fallen world, on a parallel with the general benevolence of that Deity who comprehended his own work, and the welfare of his creatures,

The slavery of the Israelites in Egypt for the term of four hundred years was a sentence pronounced against them by Jehovah himself, who had previously promised them great worldly blessings, preceded by the promise of his own spiritual forbearance, of his own holy mercy, as the ultimate design of his providence towards them. And we now ask him, who denies that the design of this term of slavery was to ameliorate and suitably prepare that wicked race for the reception and enjoyment of the promises made, to extricate himself from the difficulties in which such denial will involve the subject. We are aware that there are a class of men so holy in their own sight, that, from what they say, one might judge they felt capable of dictating to Jehovah rules for his conduct, and that they spurn in him all that which their view does not comprehend. Do such forget, when they stretch forth their hand, imagining God to be that which suits them, but which he is not, that they make an idol, and are as much idolaters as they would be had they substituted wood and stone? Such, God will judge. We have no hope our feeble voice will be heard where the mind is thus established upon the presumption of moral purity-we might say divine foresight. But, by a more humble class, we claim to be heard, that, as mortal men, reasoning by the light it hath pleased God to give, we may take counsel together in the review of his providences, as vouchsafed to man, and, by his blessing be enabled to see enough to justify the ways of the Almighty against the slanders of his and our enemy.

The theological student will notice the fact of the holy books. abounding with the doctrine that the chastenings of the Lord operate the moral, mental, and physical improvement of the chastised; and that such chastenings are ever administered for that purpose, and upon those whose sins call it down upon them. "My son, despise not the chastenings of the Lord; neither be weary of correction: for those whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." Prov. iii. 11, 12. "Thus saith the Lord, where is the bill of thy mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away." Isa. l. 1. The garden of the sluggard produces weeds and want. We know a man of whom it may be said, he is inoffensive; but he is thriftless, indolent, and therefore miserable. He has never learned those virtues that would make him respectable or happy.

LESSON IV.

“Barnes on Slavery. An Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery.” By ALBERT BARNES. Philadelphia, 1846.

In his fourth chapter, on the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt, Rev. Mr. Barnes says

"The will of God may often be learned from the events of his providence. From his dealings with an individual, a class of men or a nation, we may ascertain whether the course which has been pursued was agreeable to his will. It is not, indeed, always safe to argue that, because calamities come upon an individual, they are sent as a punishment on account of any peculiarly aggravated sin, or that these calamities prove that he is a greater sinner than others; but when a certain course of conduct always tends to certain results-when there are laws in operation in the moral world as fixed as in the natural world-and when there are, uniformly, either direct or indirect interpositions of Providence in regard to any existing institutions, it is not unsafe to infer from these what is the Divine will. It is not unsafe, for illustration, to argue, from the uniform effects of intemperance, in regard to the will of God. These effects occur in every age of the world, in reference to every class of men. There are no exceptions in favour of kings or philosophers; of the inhabitants of any particular climate or region of country; of either sex, or of any age. The poverty and babbling, and redness of eyes, and disease, engendered by intemperance, may be regarded without danger of error, as expressive of the will of God in reference to that habit. They show that there has been a violation of a great law of our nature, ordained for our good, and that such a violation must always incur the frown of the great Governor of the world. The revelation of the mind of God, in such a case, is not less clear than were the annunciations of his will on Sinai.

"The same is true in regard to cities and nations. We need be in as little danger, in general, in arguing from what occurs to them, as in the case of an individual. There is now no doubt among men why the old world was destroyed by a flood; why Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed; why Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon,