Greece, the disproportion between freemen and slaves was nearly in the ratio of ninety to four hundred. This large portion of the population, according to the account given by Mitford, were not only slaves, but nothing could exceed the insult, the injury, the cruelty, to which they were subjected. The Spartan youth hunted them as wild beasts, for the sake of making themselves expert in the use of arms. "A scanty and disgusting dress, and dog-skin cap, distinguished them from all the rest of the inhabitants. Those who

were too robust had to be enfeebled by various kinds of ill-treatment; and if the masters did not do this, they became themselves liable to a penalty. Every slave annually received a certain number of stripes to remind him that he was a slave! Hymns of a nobler kind they were not allowed to sing; but only gay and sensual songs. To complete their degradation, they were sometimes compelled to sing songs in disgrace and ridicule of themselves; and to the same purpose they were also compelled to perform indecent dances. In order to make the sons of the Spartans loathe the vice of drunkenness, the slaves were compelled to intoxicate themselves in public assemblies. When they became too numerous, they were murdered clandestinely; every year, at a certain period, the young Spartans, clad in armour, used to hunt them; and to prevent their increase, they were killed with

daggers."* The same author relates an affecting anecdote respecting the slaves of Sparta. When, during the Peloponesian war, the Spartans became apprehensive of the influence of their slaves, they made proclamation that the most meritorious and heroic among them should present themselves before the magistrate for the honour of freemen. In conformity with this invitation, two thousand presented themselves for this honour. The offer, however, was but a lure to detect the most aspiring and generous minded of those unhappy beings, and drew out their choicest spirits. Instead of the promised freedom, all were inhumanly slain, in accordance with the atrocious policy of that severe and sanguinary state. The slaves of Greece were generally branded like cattle. According to the laws of Lycurgus, they could neither be emancipated, nor sold. In Sicily and Italy, they were chained and confined to work in dungeons. Rome was a continual market for slaves, where they were commonly exposed naked. It is computed by the historian, Gibbon, that this class composed one half of the inhabitants of that extensive empire, and could not have been less than sixty millions. As a body of men, they were considered dangerous to the welfare of the state, and were therefore depressed in every way. They were left entirely at the disposal of their masters, who might treat

The Nature and Moral Influence of Heathenism, by Tho luck. See Biblical Rep. for 1832.

them in whatever manner they pleased, and who were invested with absolute power and authority over them. The aged, the sick, and the infirm, were carried to an island on the Tiber, where they were suffered to perish. Vedius Apollo, an intimate friend of Augustus, fed his fishes with the flesh of his slaves. Nor was this degradation of limited extent. A single individual in Rome had slaves to the amount of four thousand, one hundred and sixteen. When the master was murdered, and the murderer could not be detected, all his slaves, with their wives and children, were put to death. There was a class of slaves among the the Romans, called the Ostiarii, who were chained like watch-dogs before the houses. The laws of Rome regarded them all simply as property; not as persons, but as things; and as far as they could do so from the nature of the case itself, hardly distinguished them from brutes. Nor was it until the time of the emperor Adrian, more than a hundred years after the birth of Christ, that masters were divested of the arbitrary power over their slaves which they possessed in the days of the republic and the Cæsars.

Such was the condition of slavery in pagan lands. Such was essentially its condition when God called Abram from an idolatrous country, to make him the founder of the Hebrew State. Such was its condition when God gave the moral and civil law to Moses on Sinai and in the wilder ness. Such was its condition when Nehemiah

the Hebrew reformer, a man of no common integrity and boldness, roused the minds of that degenerate community to a conviction of their violated obligations. Such was its condition when the Saviour descended as the great Teacher of men, and when his Apostles so faithfully and fearlessly published and enforced the great truths and duties of the Christian dispensation. Such was its condition during all the progressive revelations which God gave to men down to the period when the sacred canon was completed. Slavery most certainly had existed, and still existed in its worst forms, and with all its most fearful and appalling attendants and consequences. It existed extensively among the Jews, even down to the days of the apostles. Tacitus mentions that there were 20,000 slaves in the army of Simon when Vespasian was marching against Jerusalem.

Here then, in view of these plain and affecting facts, we propose a grave question. How did the Scriptures treat this solemn subject? What is the course which Moses and the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles pursued in relation to this deeply interesting matter?

It is not difficult to conceive of a course which they might, and in the judgment of some persons, ought to have adopted. They might have reasoned thus. Slavery is wrong. No man, no set of men have a right to deprive another of his personal liberty. The obligation of service at the discretion of another is void. Without the con

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tract, or consent, or crime of the servant, such an obligation is in all cases, sinful. All men

born equally free and independent, and have the same right to their freedom which they have to property, or life. In all its features, the whole system of slavery is utterly at war with the law of nature and the law of God. Justice and humanity shrink from it. It is unjust in the same sense and for the same reason, as it is to steal, to rob, or to murder. It destroys the lives, depraves the morals, corrupts the purity, and ruins the souls of men. It discourages industry, makes a mock of the marriage vow, shuts out the light of religious truth from more than one half mankind, and reduces them to a degradation below the dignity and responsibility of intellectual and immortal beings. It is an evil therefore, that may not be endured. The owners of slaves must every where be denounced as wicked men. They must be held up as the objects of public censure and obloquy. They are giants in cruelty and crime. They are menstealers, robbers, pirates, and may no more have a place in the Church of God on the earth, than they can be admitted into the kingdom of heaven. The system of which they are the abettors must be put down. No matter by what revolutions in Church or State; no matter by what agitations, or insurrections: it must be put down. It is a sin, and cannot be abolished too soon. Duty is our's, events are God's. No matter how disas