their falsehood, and at the same time substantially observe their oath, by leaving them unhurt, but reducing them to slavery as the serfs of the Tabernacle and its ministers. In verses 23d and 27th, Joshua told them: "Now, therefore, ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen," (Ebed, i. e., slaves,) "and hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God." "And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the _Lord_, even unto this day, in that place which he should choose." This compact the Gibeonites seem gladly to have accepted. In 2d Samuel, ch. xxi., we find this same race of serfs still living among the Israelites, under the same compact. King Saul, David's predecessor, having broken it by killing many of them, God himself interposed, and required a satisfaction for the breach. Here we have evidence that the slaves of heathen origin were not freed by the Jubilee, for centuries had now elapsed and they were still slaves. We also see evidence that the contract made by Joshua was not regarded by God as unlawful. In this case, also, we find God accepting a religious offering of slaves for the service of his sanctuary. And these, while real slaves, did not belong each to an individual master, but were slaves to an institution and a caste, a form of bondage always justly regarded as less benevolent than the former. Yet men say slavery is a wicked relation, which God only tolerated and curbed in the Old Testament. The _Lord's_ claiming his tythe of slaves (as of cattle and wheat) seems to the candid man a strange way of expressing bare tolerance! Was it not enough to leave the laity of the "holy people" polluted with the sin of slaveholding, without proceeding by his own express injunction to introduce the "taint" into the still more sacred caste of the priesthood? Did the God of all holiness direct a part of the wages of iniquity to be set apart for his holy uses? Perhaps it may be said that He regarded the holy use as sanctifying the unholy source of the offering. The surmise is blasphemous. But see Deuteronomy xxiii. 18: "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore or the price of a dog into the house of the _Lord_ thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination to the _Lord_ thy God." To set apart to God's use property wickedly acquired was an insult to his holiness: and to offer Him even what was acquired by the sale of an animal ceremonially unclean, was resented as a type of the same sin. The consecration of these slaves to sacred uses is therefore the strongest possible proof that slaves are lawful property. To sum up: The divine permission and sanction of slavery to the very people whom God was setting apart to a holy life, the consecration of slaves as property to a sacred purpose, the regulating by law of the duties flowing from the relation, all prove that it was then a lawful and innocent one. Otherwise, we should have the holy God