the word slaves occurs as part of the traffic of the mother of harlots. This shows that when the Bible translators used the word “servant" they meant servant,—and where they used the word "slave," they meant slave. His assertion, therefore, that the word servant meant "slave" in England in the year 1607, is an entire mistake; as is perhaps two-thirds of all that he has asserted in a similar manner in your hearing, with an assurance to me perfectly unaccountable; using such expressions as, "There is no controversy about it; the abolitionists admit," &c. I said playfully, that I could not hope to compete with a Doctor of Divinity in ability' and talent; but I must candidly acknowledge that of the many whom I have met in conversation upon this subject within the past few years; Dr. Rice's defence of slavery (with the exception of some adroit and somewhat bitter replications which evince talent of a certain description) seems to me, decidedly the weakest I ever met. This much it is perhaps necessary to have said, as I have hitherto made no remark of the kind, while he has asserted so constantly that "I cannot meet his arguments;" that "I have not uttered one word on the question;" etc. etc. that I have feared he was in danger of scoffing.

There is one point more in his remarks that requires notice. He said he wished to know whether the Methodists excluded any body from their church for holding slaves. I am informed that the early Methodists did exclude slave-holders; (a voice: "they did.") A brother whose hairs are white, with years, and, though unknown to me, I trust venerable for righteousness, answers, "they did." I hold here the discipline of the "UNITED BRETHREN in Christ," whose origin and ways were the same with the early Methodists.

This denomination, eight years ago, had nine yearly Conferences, and the Pennsylvania conference with which I was most acquainted, had ninety preachers; many of them apparently (and I have attended their camp-meetings) very sincere, and pious Christians. OTTERBEIN, their founder, was ordained by Dr. Coke, the first Methodist Bishop sent out

by Mr. Wesley to this country. Here is their discipline, which declares: "All slavery shall be excluded from our church. If any of our preachers or members are found holding slaves, they shall be excluded from the church, unless they do personally manumit such slave or slaves within six months."-ART. SLAVERY.

Here is a large and respectable denomination of Christians, not, it is true, commonly, among the most educated classes, yet a laborious and God-serving people, who have acted from their origin upon the principle of John Wesley, respecting slavery. I saw a little short man, a bishop or presiding elder, among this sort of people in Pennsylvania, with whom I had much pleasant intercourse. He talked about half Dutch and half English, and rejoiced in the rise and progress of abolitionism, saying; "Ven I vas in Virginia, I did think to get my pones out of a schlave schtate to die."

I have now informed my brother of one large class of Christians who, upon abolition principles, reject slave-holders from communion.

I will now refer him to another, viz: the American Presbyterian churches, which are of Scotch origin, "Covenanters, Seceders," and "Associate Reformed." Two of their ministers are in this house and one, the President moderator, (Rev. Mr. Prestly) now fills the chair.

Their preachers number about 300; and their united membership some 40,000 to 50,000 persons. As a people, they are remarkable for two things, adherence to their Bibles and their Catechism, studying the scriptures, probably more than any other denomination.

This scripturally educated class of Christians, as my brother now in the chair will tell you, totally excludes slaveholders both from their pulpits and communion tables. Dr. Claybaugh, the amiable and efficient President of their Theological Seminary at Oxford, Ohio, was the man who offered the excluding resolutions in his Synod.

Seventy years ago, the "FRIENDS" made it an article of their society to exclude slave-holders. I have seen some

thing of the Quakers and have as good evidence of the personal piety of many of them, as I have of Christians in my own denomination, and have spent pleasant evenings with them in religious conversation.

Seventy years ago they decided that slave-holding was not a Christian practice, and when they freed their slaves in Maryland, I was informed by Mr. Russell, that they lost but one single member, who refused to obey the rule to free his slaves, and was read out of society. Many were offered as high as $700 each for their slaves, when they came to record their deeds of emancipation, BUT NONE SOLD: but paid, instead, from 5 to 7 dollars for making out the papers.

"THE HEBREW BONDMEN WERE NOT SLAVES." This is my position. I now proceed to prove it, by reference to the patriarchical character of Jewish Society. Their servants were clansmen, not slaves. Few comparatively, of all the ancient Jews were land-holders; they existed in tribes and sub-tribes, and the head man was a kind of sheik, like an Arabian satrap, uniting in his person the character of prince and priest. The bondmen were his clansmen, owing a sort of leige service to their chief.

Again; It is evident that those Hebrew bondmen were not slaves because there is no trace of a system of legislative appliances necessary for keeping up a slave system, like the American; where patrols are provided, informers and prosecutors paid, punishments by stripes ascertained; rewards provided for arresting fugitives; and sheriffs fined for not keeping slaves from all access to types and letters, as in South Carolina, and other States where the law whips the father upon the "bare back," for teaching his child to read the name of Christ. In the Mosaic code, there is no trace of all this. The whole spirit and letter of the laws were entirely different, by which Moses regulated the lowest classes of labor. When a land-holder gathered in his grain, a few handfuls were to be left for the poor to glean. And their servants were their poor, not excepted from the poor as our slaves are. They were not to deliver up to his master a ser

vant who had escaped. There was no "fugitive" clause to catch runaways in their constitution. He who should steal and sell a man, (kidnapping,) or, if the stolen man was FOUND IN HIS HAND," (slave-holding,) was put to death. There were, in Ex. xvi, 21. This was the law of Moses. the Jewish system, no Yankee overseers (the best drivers in the world,) to lash them to their work, nor any such provisions as belong to a slave system. Now in Greek, Roman, English, and American slavery, all these exist, and they must necessarily exist wherever men are made the property of men. Looking out of the Mosaic system into any one of these systems, is like looking out of the earth (where things are in a mixed and tolerable state,) into hell; which, like the slave code, is full of damnable appliances, and fell implements of torture, whose very nature and construction stamp every one with an evident design of some separate and peculiar mischief.

4. No: Hebrew bondmen were NOT slaves. Let every eye patiently behold me, and your "ear try my words, as the mouth tasteth meat," while I now show, that Hebrew bondmen were not slaves, because, the three leading human rights were secured to them by the law of God, viz: LIFE, PROPERTY, and (strange as it may appear to my brother,) LIBERTY! Mark now, and let your ear try my words, and see if 1 prove

what I affirm. I

say that they had secured to them the three great rights of life, property and liberty, that is, civil liberty, with personal liberty, after short indentures. First, they were secured in their life. For this, I quote the law against murder found in Exodus xxi, 12, "He that smiteth a MAN so that he die, he shall surely be put to death."

The brother says my arguments from scripture, are “half uttered.' I will, therefore, utter with my whole voice, that this divine law, in Exodus xxi, 12, was a law passed for the benefit of the bondsman, against the master, as well as the master against bondsman. There was "one manner of law," for those born in the land, and the stranger from other tribes. When we go farther down in the 21st chapter, we find, that

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that much perverted passage, "he is his money," is only a merciful provision in the law, to guard against punishing a master capitally, when he did not kill his servant with malice aforethought. When a master killed his servant, he was put to death, but if, on his trial, it was found that he walked abroad a day or two after the assault, the master was not punished capitally," because he is his money." My brother will not take this, I hope literally. It did not mean that he was silver or gold coin. What, then, did it mean? It meant this. In the 12th verse, it is laid down, "He that smiteth a man so that he die, he shall be surely put to death. Why? because "he that sheddeth MAN's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God, made he man."

A slave is as much a man made in the image of God as his master, and the reason given for this law by God himself, the same in both cases. Now then, after the law-giver had laid down this law, in tenderness for human life, he laid down the principle; that if the man died under circumstances which showed there was not an intention to kill, (such as whipping with a "rod" or stick, and the man's going abroad afterwards ;) the killer's life was saved. The reasoning was this: if he intended to kill, why did he take a "rod" or stick? and not a bludgeon? Moreover, why did he not kill him while he had the man down? And in the third place, the property mentioned, is the property of the master in the service of his bondman; and not a property in his person. If you had an apprentice bound to you for seven years; your property in him in the sixth and seventh years would be greater than in the first years, because his services are more valuable; now if the master struck the servant with a “ rod,” but the man afterwards went "abroad a day or two' "the inference from these two considerations, added to the consideration that the servant was valuable to him, and his death a loss, was that the master did not mean to kill him, and therefore, was not guilty of murder; hence, although he was punished by the law of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," yet the merciful law of God does not take away his life be

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