The land of Canaan was allotted to the Jews for an inheritance. The former inhabitants, for their sins, were to be extirpated, or expelled. The Gibeonites preferred slavery to this. Their services were allotted first to the tabernacle, then to the temple. It appears from David’s application to them, on account of the famine brought on the land for Saul’s massacre of them, that they were kept distinct as a people. We may suppose that they continued to occupy part of their ancient possessions (for we find in David’s time that even Araunah a Jebusite was a proprietor of land) and that they were in their turn draughted off for the service of religion; those who occupied the lands maintaining those who served. There is not one common circumstance between the manner of their becoming servants, and the present Leverpool slave trade, and hardly any more in their treatment. Page 50. On the supposition of the iniquity of the (Leverpool) “slave trade,” he speaks of the Almighty disturbing the course of nature, when the sun stood still at Joshua’s command, to make it subservient to injustice and oppression, in vindication of ill-gotten property. Here he may be assured the horror of the expression will secure him from contradiction. Page 54. “The slave trade,” (still Leverpool slave trade) “is in perfect harmony with the principles of the word of God respecting justice.” P. 58. “The inspired writers of the New Testament did not consider it as an infraction of the principles of the gospel.” Nor did these declare their own persecution for righteousness sake, to be an infraction of the principles of the gospel. The keeping of slaves, which the author constantly calls “the slave trade,” was a custom then generally prevalent over the world. Neither were masters or slaves prepared for a general manumission. The spirit of Christianity was suffered gradually to undermine this mass of oppression, and wherever the gospel has prevailed, it has in fact abolished it. We have a similar instance of this management, in the abolition of the ceremonial law of Moses. The first disciples, and even the apostles, conformed to it, though they had declared it to be an unnecessary yoke, and they suffered it to wear out gradually. That slavery was an evil, and therefore a sin in all those who inflicted it on others, in such a degree as to become an evil, is plainly declared in the gospel. Our Saviour tells the believing Jews, If ye continue in my word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free; or shall confer new privileges on you. If freedom be a privilege or an advantage, slavery is a degradation and a disadvantage. But if a man be degraded or injured for the caprice or profit of another, that other, under whom he suffers such injury, is guilty of a sin.