they are obliged to speak, if they speak at all; it is only the voice of Nature, Justice, Truth, and Love, that issues from them. The divine principle in man prompts him to speak and strike for Freedom; the diabolical principle within him prompts him to speak and strike for slavery.

From those churches which are now-as all churches ought to be, and will be, ere the world becomes Christianized thoroughly imbued with the principles of freedom, we dɔ not, as already intimated, deem it particularly necessary to bring forward new arguments in opposition to slavery. If, however, the reader would be pleased to hear from the churches to which we chiefly allude-and, by the bye, he might hear from them with much profit to himself

-we respectfully refer him to Henry Ward Beecher, George B. Cheever, Joseph P. Thompson, Theodore Parker, E. H. Chapin, and H. W. Bellows, of the North, and to M D. Conway, John G. Fee, James S. Davis, Daniel Wilson, and W. E. Lincoln, of the South. All these reverend gentlemen, ministers of different denominations, feel it their duty to preach against slavery, and, to their honor be it said, they do preach against it with unabated zeal and success. Our earnest prayer is, that Heaven may enable them, their cotemporaries and successors, to preach against it with such energy and effect, as will cause it to disappea forever from the soil of our Republic.

CHAPTER VII.

BIBLE TESTIMONY.

EVERY person who has read the Bible, and who has a proper understanding of its leading moral precepts, feels, in his own conscience, that it is the only original and complete anti-slavery text-book. In a crude state of societyin a barbarous age-when men were in a manner destitute of wholesome laws, either human or divine, it is possible that a mild form of slavery may have been tolerated, and even regulated, as an institution clothed with the importance of temporary recognition; but the Deity never approved it, and, for the very reason that it is impossible for him to do wrong, he never will, never can approve it. The worst system of servitude of which we have any account in the Bible-and, by the way, it furnishes no account of anything so bad as slavery (the evil-one and his hot home alone excepted)-was far less rigorous and atrocious than that now established in the Southern States of this Confederacy. Even that system, however, the worst, which seems to have been practiced to a considerable extent by those venerable old fogies, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was one of the monstrous inventions of Satan

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that God "winked" at; and, to the mind of the biblical scholar, nothing can be more evident than that He determined of old, that it should, in due time, be abolished. To say that the Bible sanctions slavery is to say that the sun loves darkness; to say that one man was created to domineer over another is to call in question the justice, mercy, and goodness of God.

We will now listen to a limited number of the

PRECEPTS AND SAYINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."

"Let the oppressed go free."

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

"Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor."

"The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning."

"Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways."

"Do justice to the afflicted and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked."

"Execute judgment and justice; take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord God."

"Therefore thus saith the Lord; ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth."

"He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."

"Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry, but shall not be heard."

"He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker."

"I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of Hosts."

"As the partridge setteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool."

And now we will listen to a few selected

PRECEPTS AND SAYINGS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

"Call no man master, neither be ye called masters."

"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them."

"Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another."

"Do good to all men, as ye have opportunity."

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

"If thou mayest be made free, use it rather."

"The laborer is worthy of his hire."

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

Some years ago a clerical lickspittle of the slave power

had the temerity to publish a book or pamphlet entitled "Bible Defence of Slavery," which the Baltimore Sun, in the course of a caustic criticism, handled in the following

manner :-

"Bible defence of slavery! There is no such thing as a Bible defence of slavery at the present day. Slavery in the United States is a social institution, originating in the convenience and cupidity of our ancestors, existing by State laws, and recognized to a certain extent-for the recovery of slave property-by the Constitution. And nobody would pretend that, if it were inexpedient and unprofitable for any man or any State to continue to hold slaves, they would be bound to do so on the ground of a "Bible defence" of it. Slavery is recorded in the Bible, and approved, with many degrading characteristics. War is recorded in the Bible, and approved, under what seems to us the extreme of cruelty. But are slavery and war to endure for ever because we find them in the Bible? or are they to cease at once and for ever because the Bible inculcates peace and brotherhood ?"

Thus, in the last five chapters inclusive, have we introduced a mass of anti-slavery arguments, human and divine, that will stand, irrefutable and convincing, as long as the earth itself shall continue to revolve in its orbit. Aside from unaffected truthfulness and candor, no merit is claimed for anything we have said on our own account. With the best of motives, and in the language of nature more than that of art, we have simply given utterance to the honest convictions of our heart-being impelled to it by a long-harbored and unmistakable sense of duty which grew stronger and deeper as the days passed away.

If half the time which has been spent in collecting and arranging these testimonies had been occupied in the composition of original matter, the weight of paper and