Book III., ch. vi., § 98. It is objected that polygamy is recognized

as a permitted relation in Deuteronomy xxi. 15-17, where the husband of a polygamous marriage is forbidden to transfer the birthright from the eldest son to a younger, the child of a more favoured wife; and in Exodus xxi. 9, 10, where the husband is forbidden to deprive a less favoured wife of her marital rights and maintenance. Both these cases are explained by the admitted principle, that there may be relations which it was sin to form, and which yet it is sinful to break when formed. No one doubts whether the New Testament makes polygamy unlawful; yet it seems very clear that the apostles gave the same instructions to the husbands of a plurality of wives entering the Christian church. There appears, then, no evidence that polygamy was allowed in the laws of Moses.

We have thus shown that the objection of Dr. Channing to our Old Testament argument for the lawfulness of domestic slavery, is false in both its premises. First, it is not true that Moses sanctioned polygamy and causeless divorce in the sense in which he sanctioned slavery. And second, if he did, it would prove that those practices were lawful until they were prohibited by our Redeemer; but domestic slavery has met no such prohibition from him, and is therefore lawful still. If not, why did the divine Reformer strike down the two "sister sins," and leave the third, the giant evil, untouched? There is but one answer: He did not regard it as a sin.

If too much space has been devoted to this objection, the apology is, that it is a subject much misunderstood by Christian divines. The explanation is, that the study of Hebrew antiquities has, in our day, been left so much to German rationalists and secret Socinians; the late essays of British and Yankee scholars being to so great a degree servile imitations of theirs. But these skeptical _literati_ of Germany, while wearing the clergyman's frock for the sake of the emoluments of an established church, have usually been unsanctified men, harbouring the most contemptuous views of Old Testament inspiration. The reader will bear in mind that, whether he is convinced, with us, that Moses actually prohibited polygamy, or not, the refutation of the Abolitionist objection is still perfectly valid.

The seventh and last objection against our Old Testament argument consists of various passages from the Hebrew prophets, which denounce the oppression of the poor, and the withholding of the labouring man's wages. Every phrase which sounds at all like their purpose is violently seized by the Abolitionists, and pressed incontinently into the service of condemning slavery, without regard to the sacred writer's intention or meaning. Were all the texts thus wrested discussed here, this section would be swelled into a book. A few passages which our opponents regard as their strongest will be cited, therefore; and the reply to these will be an answer to all. One such is Isaiah, lviii. 6: "Is not this the fast which I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free; and that ye break every yoke?" Another is found in Jeremiah xx. 13: "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's services without wages, and giveth him not for his work." Another is in Jeremiah xxxiv. 17: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbour." And to find a scriptural stone to pelt the fugitive slave-law, they quote Isaiah xvi. 3: "Hide the outcasts; betray not him that wandereth."

Now, one would think that it should have given some pause to these perversions of Scripture, to remember that these same prophets were undoubtedly slaveholders. Witness, for instance, Elisha, who was so large a slaveholder as to have eleven ploughmen at once, and who, after he devoted himself exclusively to his prophetic ministry, still had his servants, Gehazi and others. (2 Kings, v. 20, and vi. 15.) How could they have aimed such denunciations at slave-owners, and escaped the sarcasm, "Physician, heal thyself?" It should have been remembered again, that Moses' laws, in which slaveholding was expressly sanctioned, were enacted by authority just as divine as that by which Isaiah and Jeremiah preached; that Moses was more a prophet than even they--"the greatest of the prophets;" that his laws were still in full force; that they bore to these prophets' instructions the relation of text to exposition; and that always the great burden of their accusations against their guilty countrymen was, that they had forsaken Moses' statutes. Were the guardians and expounders of the Constitution armed with power not only to repeal, but to vilify, the very law which they were appointed to expound? May the sermon contradict its own text?

Before these rebukes of oppression can be applied, then, as God's condemnation of domestic slavery, it must be proved that in His view slavery is oppression. To take this for granted is a begging of the whole question in debate. But not only is it not proved by any such texts; it is obvious from the above remarks, that it cannot be proved by them, unless God can be made to contradict himself. But when we examine a little the connected words of these prophets themselves, we learn from them what they do mean; and we see an instance, ludicrous if it were not too painful, of the heedless folly with which the Word of God is abused. Thus, in Isaiah, lviii. 6, 7, we proceed to the very next words, and learn that the duty in hand consists in "bringing to their homes the poor that are cast out," and being charitable to "their own flesh." Were the Gentile slaves of the Hebrews "their own flesh" in the sense of the Old Testament, i. e., their kindred by blood? Manifestly, the phrase intends their fellow-citizens of Hebrew blood in distress. Are slaveholders in danger of sinning by driving away from their houses their domestic slaves; and do they need objurgation to make them receive them back? Such is the "infinite nonsense" forced upon Isaiah's words by Abolitionists. There is, then, no reference here to the emancipation of Gentile slaves; but to the duties of charity, justice and hospitality towards the oppressed of their fellow-citizens. And if the passage has any reference to servants, it is only to the sin of detaining Hebrew servants beyond the Sabbatical year's release.

When we turn to Jeremiah xxii. 13, a glance at the connexion shows us that the woe against using a neighbour's services without wages, is denounced against Shallum, the wicked king of Judah, who built his palaces, not by his domestic servants, but by unlawfully impressing his political subjects. Such is the marvellous accuracy of Abolitionist exposition! So in Jeremiah xxxiv. 17, which rebukes the Jews for not "proclaiming every man liberty to his brother," one little question should have staggered our zealous accusers: Were Gentile slaves "brethren" to Jews, in the sense of the prophet? And we have only to carry the eye back to verse 14, to see him explaining himself, that they did not comply with the Mosaic law, "at the end of seven years to let go every man his brother a Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee." From the obligation of that law, the masters of Gentiles were expressly excepted.

But the illustration of crowning folly is Isaiah xvi. 3, which is so boldly wrested to countenance the harbouring of runaway slaves. The words are not the language of the prophet at all! The chapter is a dramatic picture of the distress of the pagan nations near Judea, and especially of Moab, one among them, in a time of invasion which Isaiah denounces upon them in punishment for their sin; and this verse represents the fugitive Moabites as entreating Jews for concealment and protection when pursued by their enemies. So that there is no slave nor slave-owner in the case at all; nor does the prophet's language contain any thing to imply whether it was righteous or not for the Jews to grant the request of these affrighted sinners in the hour of their retribution.

We have now reviewed, perhaps at too much length, the various impotent attempts made to escape from the meshes of our inexorable Old Testament argument. It is an argument short, plain, convincing. Although every thing enjoined on the Hebrews is not necessarily enjoined on us, (because it may have been of temporary obligation,) yet every such thing must be innocent in its nature, because a holy God would not sanction sin to his holy people, in the very act of separating them to holiness. But slaveholding was expressly sanctioned as a permanent institution; the duties of masters and slaves are defined; the rights of masters protected, not only in the civic but the eternal moral law of God; and He himself became a slave-owner, by claiming an oblation of slaves for his sanctuary and priests. Hence, while we do not say that modern Christian nations are bound to hold slaves, we do assert that no people sin by merely holding slaves, unless the place can be shown where God has uttered a subsequent prohibition. But there is no such place, as the next chapter will show. While we well know that to secret infidels and rationalists, as all Abolitionists are, this has no weight, to every mind which reverences the inspiration of the Old Testament it is conclusive. And let every Christian note, that with the inspiration of the Old Testament stands or falls that of Christ and the apostles, because they commit themselves irretrievably to the support of the former.