Bible View of Slavery

10 been willing to take the counsel of that angel for their guide, it would have preserved the peace and welfare of the Union.'” In a subsequent part of his pamphlet the writer finds a difficulty in maintaining the doctrine of the continuance of the Mosaic dispensation when he seeks to combat the objection, that his argument proves polygamy as well as slavery. He satisfies himself, however, if not his readers, by making slavery an ordinance of the Almighty, but polygamy and the law of divorce which Christ censured, a mere permitted enactment of Moses. In the case of Hagar, the angel, when sending back the slave, tells her at the same time that she is with child by her master, though that master’s lawful wife was living, while in Genesis (xxi, 13) God said to Abraham : “ And also of the son of the bond woman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.” (See this applied to the two covenants in Gal. iv. 24.) In like manner the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel were sons of Jacob by two different wives and their two handmaids,■ all which was allowed and sanctioned by the Almighty before Moses wrote his laws. In 2 Sam. xii. 8, God says to David (through Kathan): “ I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom,” &c. The next argument is taken from the Tenth Commandment : “ Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” The Bishop thinks there is some prejudice against the idea of property in a human being, and is “aware that the wives of our day may take umbrage at the law which places them in the same sentence with the slave, and even with the house and the cattle. But the truth is none the less certain.” The writer is certainly consistent in admitting the conclusion from his premises. But what think you, Christian wives, who are with your husbands one flesh, no longer twain, of that Christianity which puts you on a level with the house, and the ox, and the ass ? which calls you, our wives and mothers, property, merely to enable the Christian minister to aid the slave-driver and the slave-breeder in keeping his hold on the throat of the man-servant and the maid-servant, lest

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