obligations of marriage, or shut him out from the society of his family. He could doubtless procure a service at no great distance from them, and might often be induced to do it by the offer of higher wages, or of a kind of employment better suited to his taste or skill, or because his master might not have sufficient work to occupy him. The fact of his living near his family, or even if at a considerable distance, the great number of days on which the law released servants from regular labor, would enable him to spend much more time with them than can be spent by most of the agents of our benevolent societies with their families, or by many merchants, editors, artists, &c., whose daily business is in New-York or Philadelphia, while their families reside from ten to one hundred miles in the country.

Perhaps it will be said that a point vital to the whole question has been overlooked in all the preceding arguments and answers to objections, namely,

OBJECTION V.-THE SLAVERY OF THE CANAANITES BY THE ISRAELITES, WAS APPOINTED BY GOD AS A COM

MUTATION OF THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH DENOUNCED

AGAINST THEM FOR THEIR SINS.-If the absurdity of a sentence consigning persons to death, and at the same time to perpetual slavery, did not sufficiently laugh in its own face, it would be small self-denial, in a case so tempting, to make up the deficiency by foreign contribution. For, be it remembered, the Mosaic law on this as on all other points, was given, while Israel was in the wilderness, and only one statute was ever given respecting the disposition to be made of the inhabitants of the land. If the sentence of death was first pronounced against them, and afterwards commuted, when? where? by whom? and in what terms was the commutation? And where is it recorded? We need light on these points, and are content patiently to wait for it. Grant, for argument's sake, that all the Canaanites were sentenced to unconditional extermination; as there was no reversal of the sentence, how can a right to enslave them, be drawn from such premises? The punishment of death is one of the highest recognitions of man's moral nature possible. It proclaims him man-intelligent, accountable, guilty man, deserving death for having done his utmost to cheapen human life, and make it worthless, when the proof of its price.

But

less value, lives in his own nature, and is a part of it. to make him a slave, cheapens to nothing universal human nature, and instead of healing a wound, gives a death stab. What! repair an injury done to rational being in the robbery of one of its rights, not merely by robbing it of all, but by annihilating the very foundation of them-that everlasting distinction between men and things? To make a man a chattel is not the punishment, but the annihilation of a human being, and so far as it goes of all human beings. This commutation of the punishment of death, denounced against the Canaanites, into perpetual slavery, what a fortunate discovery! What would have become of the honor of Deity, if by a well-timed movement, the commentators had not manned the forlorn hope, and, at the very crisis of its fate, rushed to the rescue of the Divine character, and covered its retreat from the perilous position in which inspiration had carelessly left it! Here a question arises of sufficient importance for a separate dissertation; but must for the present be disposed of in a few paragraphs. Perhaps on another occasion it may be discussed at length. WERE THE CANAANITES SENTENCED BY GOD TO INDIVIDUAL AND UNCONDITIONAL EXTERMINATION? That the views commonly prevalent on this subject, even among the enemies, as well as the advocates of slavery are radically wrong, we verily believe; but as the limits of this inquiry forbid our going fully into the merits of the question so as to give all the grounds of dissent from the commonly received opinions, the few remarks made, will be thrown out rather as QUERIES, than as a formal laying down of doctrines.

The leading commands for the destruction of the Canaanites are mainly in the following passages, Exod. xxiii. 23— 33, and 33-51, and 34, 11. Deut. vii. 16-25, and ix. 3, and xxxi. 3, 1, 2. In these verses the Israelites are commanded to "destroy the Canaanites"-to "drive out"—"consume""utterly overthrow"-" put out"-"dispossess them" &c. Quest. Did these commands enjoin the unconditional, and universal destruction of the individuals, or merely of the body politic? Ans. The Hebrew word Hauroum, to destroy, signifies national as well as individual destruction; political existence, equally with personal; the destruction of governmental organization, equally with the lives of the subjects. Besides if we interpret the words destroy, con

sume, overthrow, &c., to mean personal destruction, what meaning shall we give to the expressions, "drive out before thee." "cast out before thee;" expel," "put out," "dispossess," &c. which are used in the same passages?

For a clue to the sense in which the word "destroy" is used, see Exodus xxiii. 27. "I will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. Here"all their enemies" were to turn their backs, and "all the people" to be "destroyed." Does this mean that God would let all their enemies escape, but kill all their friends, or that he would first kill "all the people" and THEN make them turn their backs in flight, an army of runaway corpses?

The word rendered backs is in the original necks, and the passage may mean, I will make all your enemies turn their necks unto you; that is, be subject to you as tributaries, become denationalized, their civil polity, state organization, political existence, destroyed-their idolatrous temples, altars, images, groves, and all heathen rites destroyed; in a word their whole system, national, political, civil, and religious subverted, and the whole people put under tribute. 2. If these commands required the unconditional destruction of all the individuals of the Canaanites, the Mosaic law was at war with itself, for the directions relative to the treatment of native residents and sojourners, form a large part of it. "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself." "If thy brother be waxen poor thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with thee." "Thou shalt not oppress a stranger." "Thou shalt not vex a stranger." "Judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him," "Ye shall not respect persons in judgment." "Ye shall have one manner of law as well for the stranger, as for him of your own country." We find also, that provision was made for them in the cities of refuge, Num. xxxv. 15.-the gleanings of the harvest and vintage were assigned to them, Lev. xix. 9, 10, and xxiii. 22. and 25, 6;-the blessings of the Sabbath, theirs, Ex. xx. 10;-the privilege of offering sacrifices secured Lev. 22, 18; and stated religious instruction provided for them. Deut. xxxi. 9, 12. Now does this same law authorize and appoint the

individual extermination of those very persons, whose lives and general interests it so solicitously protects? These laws were promulgated to the Israelites, long before they entered Canaan; and they must of necessity have inferred from them that a multitude of the inhabitants of the land would remain in it subject to them.

3. We argue that these commands did not require the INDIVIDUAL destruction of the Canaanites unconditionally, from the fact that the most pious Israelites never seem to have so regarded them. Joshua was selected by God, as the leader of Israel to execute his threatnings upon Canaan, and take possession of the land. He was God's executioner elected and commissioned for this specific object. He was invested with no discretionary power. God's commands were his official instructions. Going beyond them, "would have been impious usurpation. A refusal to carry them out would have been rebellion and treason. For neglecting to obey in every particular, and in only a single instance, God's command respecting the Amelekites, Saul was rejected from being king.

Now if God commanded the individual destruction of all the Canaanitish nations, Joshua disobeyed him in every instance. For at the death of Joshua, not one of these nations had been extirpated. They are all enumerated, and the Israelites still "dwelt among them." See Judges i. 5. and yet we are told that "Joshua was full of the spirit of the Lord and of WISDOM, Deut. 34. 9. (Of course he could not have been ignorant of the import of those commands,)—that "the Lord was with him," Josh. vi. 27; and that he "left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses;" and further that "he took all that land." Joshua xi. 15-23. Also that "the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers, and they possessed it and dwelt therein, and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them." "The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand," &c.

How can this testimony be reconciled with itself, if we suppose that the command to destroy enjoined individual extermination, and the command to drive out, enjoined the unconditional expulsion of individuals from the country, rather than their expulsion from the possession or ownership of it, as the lords of the soil? It is true, multitudes of the Canaanites were slain, but in every case it was in conse.

quence of their refusing to surrender their territory to the possession of the Israelites. Not a solitary case can be found in which a Canaanite was killed or driven out of the country who acquiesced in the transfer of the territory of Canaan, and its sovereignty, from the inhabitants of the land to the Israelites. Witness the case of Rahab and all her kindred, and the inhabitants of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kerjathjearim.* The Canaanites knew full well the miracles wrought by God in Egypt, at the Red Sea, in the wilderness, and at the passage of Jordan. They knew that their land had been transferred to the Israelites, and that too as a judgment upon them for their sins.-See Joshua ii. 9-11, and ix. 9, 10, 24. Many of them were awed by these wonders, saw God in them, and offered no resistance to the confiscation of their territory. But the · great majority fiercely resisted, defied the God of the armies of Israel, and came out to battle. They occupied the fortified cities, were the most inveterate heathen-the aristocracy of idolatry, the kings, the nobility and gentry, the priests, with their crowds of satellites, and retainers that aided in the performance of idolatrous rites, the military forces, with the chief profligates and lust-panders of both sexes. Every attentive reader of the Old Testament will at once recall many facts corroborating this supposition. Such as the multitudes of tributaries residing unmolested in the various tribes of Israel, and that too

Perhaps it will be objected that the preservation of the Gibeonites, and of Rahab and her kindred, was a violation of the command of God. We answer, if it had been we might expect some such intimation. If God had straitly commanded them to exterminate all the Canaanites, their pledge to save them alive, was neither a repeal of the statute, nor absolution for the breach of it. If unconditional destruction was the import of the command, would Gcd have permitted such an act to pass without severe rebuke? Would he have established such a precedent when Israel had hardly passed the threshhold of Canaan, and was then striking the first blow of a half century war? What if they had passed their word to Rahab and the Gibeonites? Was that more binding upon them than God's command? So Saul seems to have passed his word to Agag; yet Samuel hewed him in pieces, because in saving his life Saul had violated God's command. This same Saul appears to have put the same construction on the command to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan, that is generally put upon it now. We are told that he sought to slay the Gibeonites "in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah." God sent upon Israel a three years' famine, as a punishment for this act. In assigning the reason for it, He says, "it is for Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." When David enquired of them what atonement he should make, they say "the man that consumed us, and that devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered," &c. 2 Samuel

xxii. 1-6.