not abused, was suitable to the character of the depraved persons for whom it was designed, and wholesome and benign. Hence, they prohibit all inhuman abuses of it; and then they do not tolerate it merely as an unavoidable wrong; but they expressly legalize it, as right. An honest mind can make nothing less of their words. But in Numbers xxxi. 25 to 30, and Joshua ix. 20 to 27, we have instances which are, if possible, still stronger. In the former passage the people of Midian had been conquered by God's command, and the captives and spoils brought home; the captives to be slaves for life according to the law of Leviticus, ch. xxv. The book of Numbers then proceeds: "And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, Take the sum of prey that was taken both of man and of beast, thou and Eleazer the priest and the chief fathers of the congregation; and divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them who went out to battle, and between all the congregation. And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses and of the sheep: Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazer the priest, for an heave-offering of the _Lord_. And of the children of Israel's half thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the Lord." In verses 40th and 46th, we read farther that the "_Lord's_ tribute of the persons" of the first half, "was thirty and two persons," and of the second half, "three hundred and twenty." Here God commands a portion of these slaves to be set apart to a sacred use, and dedicated to himself, that they might become the property of the ministers of religion. The second instance is not contained in the books of Moses, but in the history of his successor Joshua: we group it with the former, for its similarity. In Joshua, ch. ix., we are told that while he was triumphantly engaged in the destruction of the condemned heathen tribes of Palestine, according to God's command, the people of Gibeon, a part of the doomed race, despairing of a successful defence, adopted this stratagem to save themselves. Under pretence that they were not of Palestine at all, but from a very distant place, their ambassadors obtained from the leaders of the Israelites a very stringent oath of amity. This pledge the elders incautiously gave, without seeking the divine direction. In a very few days they learned to their astonishment, that these Gibeonites lived in the very heart of Palestine, close to the spot where they were encamped, and that they were of the very race which they were appointed to destroy. But they had sworn in the name of Jehovah not to destroy them. In this state of things, the princes and Joshua determined to punish them for