Such was the legal origin of domestic slavery among the Jews. During all the calamities that have befallen that people, this constitution and these laws have known neither repeal nor modification. At no period of their history were they without domestic slaves; and when the Saviour dwelt among them, the whole land was filled with such slaves. No State in this Union can with more propriety be regarded a slaveholding community, than was that of the Jewish people in the days of the Saviour. In every congregation which he addressed, bond slaves may have mingled. The hospitalities of every family of which he partook, were probably ministered to him, more or less, by domestic slaves. And in all this time, and under all these circumstances, not a word is known to have escaped him, either in public or in private, declaring the relation of master and slave to be sinful! But, on the contrary, Paul’s denunciation--1 Tim. vi. 3--of the teachers of abolition doctrines, that they “_consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ_,” is sufficient reason to believe that he was always understood to approve of the relation, and to condemn in express terms all attempts to abolish it as a duty of the religion which he taught. And certain it is, that this relation is made the subject of some of his most eloquent allusions, and the basis of some of his most instructive parables: “One is your Master, even Christ,” Matt. xxiii. 10: “Good Master, what shall I do?” Mark x. 17: “No man can serve two masters,” Matt. vi. 24--are specimens of the former; whilst the parable, Matt. xiii. 24-28, “And the servants said, Wilt thou that we go and gather them up?”--of the vineyard, Matt. xxi.; of the talents, Matt. xxv.; and others of a similar nature, are striking examples of the latter. And yet, young gentlemen, the author of your text says, the doctrines of the Bible, and especially the teachings of the Saviour, are “diametrically opposed to both the principle and the practice of domestic slavery.” If this be true, it is really passing strange that Jehovah himself should provide, in the organic law of the Jewish commonwealth, for the working of a system of domestic slavery, and, by a series of laws drawn up under this constitution, set such a system in actual operation; and that the Saviour of mankind should also give, according to every legitimate interpretation that can be put, either upon his language or his conduct, his unqualified approbation to that which was so flatly opposed to all his doctrines! It is saying but little of all this to affirm that it is grossly absurd! It can appeal to no doctrine that we are aware of for its defence, unless it be the kindred absurdity that the _will of God_ is not the rule of right, in this sense, that it always conforms to that which, _in itself, is right_, i. e., good; but that it is the rule of right in this other sense, that it is absolutely, in itself, the only rule of right; and that, in the case