The first recorded language which was ever uttered in relation to slavery, is the inspired language of Noah. In God's stead he says, “Cursed be Canaan;” “a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.” “Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” Gen. ix: 25, 26, 27. Here, language is used, showing the favor which God would exercise to the posterity of Shem and Japheth, while they were holding the posterity of Ham in a state of abject bondage. May it not be said in truth, that God decreed this institution before it existed; and has he not connected its existence with prophetic tokens of special favor, to those who should be slave owners or masters? He is the same God now, that he was when he gave these views of his moral character to the world; and unless the posterity of Shem and Japheth, from whom have sprung the Jews, and all the nations of Europe and America, and a great part of Asia, (the African race that is in them excepted,)—I say, unless they are all dead, as well as the Canaanites or Africans who descended from Ham, then it is quite possible that his favor may now be found with one class of men who are holding another class in bondage. Be this as it may, God decreed slavery—and shows in that decree, tokens of good-will to the master. The sacred records occupy but a short space from this inspired ray on this subject, until they bring to our notice, a man that is held up as a model, in all that adorns human nature, and as one that God delighted to honor. This man is Abraham, honored in the sacred records, with the appellation, “Father” of the “faithful.” Abraham was a native of Ur, of the Chaldees. From thence the Lord called him to go to a country which he would show him and he obeyed, not knowing whither he went. He stopped for a time at Haran, where his father died. From thence he “took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.”—Gen. xii: 5.

All the ancient Jewish writers of note, and Christian commentators agree, that by the “souls they had gotten in Haran,” as our translators render it, are meant their slaves, or those persons they had bought with their money in Haran. In a few years after their arrival in Canaan, Lot with all he had was taken captive. So soon as Abraham heard it, he armed three hundred and eighteen slaves that were born in his house, and retook him. How great must have been the entire slave family, to produce at this period of Abraham's life, such a number of young slaves able to bear arms.—Gen. xiv: 14.

Abraham is constantly held up in the sacred story, as the subject of great distinction among the princes and sovereigns of the countries in which he sojourned. This distinction was on account of his great wealth. When he proposed to buy a burying-ground at Sarah's death, of the children of Heth, he stood up and spoke with great humility of himself as “a stranger and sojourner among them,” (Gen. xxiii: 4,) desirous to obtain a burying-ground. But in what light do they look upon him? “Hear us, my Lord, thou art a mighty prince among us.”—Gen. xxiii: 6. Such is the light in which they viewed him. What gave a man such distinction among such a people? Not moral qualities, but great wealth, and its inseparable concomitant, power. When the famine drove Abraham to Egypt, he received the highest honors of the reigning sovereign. This honor at Pharaoh's court, was called forth by the visible tokens of immense wealth. In Genesis xii: 15, 16, we have the honor that was shown to him, mentioned, with a list of his property, which is given in these words, in the 16th verse: “He had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and man-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels.” The amount of his flocks may be inferred from the number of slaves employed in tending them. They were those he brought from Ur of the Chaldees, of whom the three hundred and eighteen were born; those gotten in Haran, where he dwelt for a short time, and those which he inherited from his father, who died in Haran. When Abraham went up from Egypt, it is stated in Genesis xiii: 2, that he was “very rich,” not only in flocks and slaves, but in “silver and gold” also.

After the destruction of Sodom, we see him sojourning in the kingdom of Gerar. Here he received from the sovereign of the country, the honors of equality; and Abimelech, the king, (as Pharoah had done before him,) seeks Sarah for a wife, under the idea that she was Abraham's sister. When his mistake was discovered, he made Abraham a large present. Reason will tell us, that in selecting the items of this present, Abimelech was governed by the visible indications of Abraham's preference in the articles of wealth—and that above all, he would present him with nothing which Abraham's sense of moral obligation would not allow him to own. Abimelech's present is thus described in Gen. xx: 14, 16, “And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and men-servants, and women-servants, and a thousand pieces of silver, and gave them unto Abraham.” This present discloses to us what constituted the most highly prized items of wealth, among these eastern sovereigns in Abraham's day.

God had promised Abraham's seed the land of Canaan, and that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. He reached the age of 85, and his wife the age of 75, while as yet, they had no child. At this period, Sarah's anxiety for the promised seed, in connection with her age, induced her to propose a female slave of the Egyptian stock, as a secondary wife, from which to obtain the promised seed. This alliance soon puffed the slave with pride, and she became insolent to her mistress—the mistress complained to Abraham, the master. Abraham ordered Sarah to exercise her authority. Sarah did so, and pushed it to severity, and the slave absconded. The divine oracles inform us, that the angel of God found this runaway bond-woman in the wilderness; and if God had commissioned this angel to improve this opportunity of teaching the world how much he abhorred slavery, he took a bad plan to accomplish it. For, instead of repeating a homily upon doing to others as we “would they should do unto us,” and heaping reproach upon Sarah, as a hypocrite, and Abraham as a tyrant, and giving Hagar direction how she might get into Egypt, from whence (according to Abolitionism) she had been unrighteously sold into bondage, the angel addressed her as “Hagar, Sarah's maid,” Gen, xvi: 1, 9; (thereby recognizing the relation of master and slave,) “and asks her, “whither wilt thou go?” and she said “I flee from the face of my mistress,” Quite a wonder she honored Sarah so much as to call her mistress; but she knew nothing of abolition, and God by his angel did not become her teacher.

We have now arrived at what may be called an abuse of the institution, in which one person is the property of another, and under their control, and subject to their authority without their consent; and if the Bible be the book, which proposes to furnish the ease which leaves it without doubt that God abhors the institution, here we are to look for it. What, therefore, is the doctrine in relation to slavery, in a case in which a rigid exercise of its arbitrary authority is called forth upon a helpless female; who might use a strong plea for protection, upon the ground of being the master's wife. In the face of this case, which is hedged around with aggravations as if God designed by it to awaken all the sympathy and all the abhorrence of that portion of mankind, who claim to have more mercy than God himself— but I say, in view of this strong case, what is the doctrine taught? Is it that God abhors the institution of slavery; that it is a reproach to good men; that the evils of the institution can no longer be winked at among saints; that Abraham's character must not be transmitted to posterity, with this stain upon it; that Sarah must no longer be allowed to live a stranger to the abhorrence God has for such conduct as she has been guilty of to this poor helpless female? I say, what is the doctrine taught? Is it so plain that it can be easily understood? and does God teach that she is a bond-woman or slave, and that she is to recognize Sarah as her mistress, and not her equal—that she must return and submit herself unreservedly to Sarah's authority? Judge for yourself, reader, by the angel's answer: “And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return unto thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.”—Gen. xvi: 9.

But, says the spirit of abolition, with which the Bible has to contend, you are building your house upon the sand, for these were nothing but hired servants; and their servitude designates no such state, condition, or relation, as that, in which one person is made the property of another, to be bought, sold, or transferred forever. To this, we have two answers in reference to the subject, before giving the law. In the first place, the term servant, in the schedules of property among the patriarchs, does designate the state, condition, or relation in which one person is the legal property of another, as in Gen. xxiv: 35, 36. Here Abraham's servant, who had been sent by his master to get a wife for his Son Isaac, in order to prevail with the woman and her family, states, that the man for whom he sought a bride, was the son of a man whom God had greatly blessed with riches; which he goes on to enumerate thus, in the 35th verse: “He hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels, and asses;” then in verse 36th, he states the disposition his master had made of his estate: “My master's wife bare a son to my master when she was old, and unto him he hath given all that he hath.” Here, servants are enumerated with silver and gold as part of the patrimony. And, reader, bear it in mind; as if to rebuke the doctrine of abolition, servants are not only inventoried as property, but as property which God had given to Abraham. After the death of Abraham, we have a view of Isaac at Gerar, when he had come into the possession of this estate; and this is the description given of him: “And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great; for he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds and great store of servants.”—Gen. xxvi: 13, 14. This state in which servants are made chattels, he received as an inheritance from his father, and passed to his son Jacob.

Again, in Genesis xvii, we are informed of a covenant God entered into with Abraham; in which he stipulates to be a God to him and his seed, (not his servants.) and to give to his seed the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. He expressly stipulates, that Abraham shall put the token of this covenant upon every servant born in his house, and upon every servant bought with his money of any stranger.—Gen. xvii: 12, 13. Here again servants are property. Again, more than four hundred years afterwards, we find the seed of Abraham, on leaving Egypt, directed to celebrate the rite, that was ordained as a memorial of their deliverance, viz: the Passover at which time the same institution which makes property of men and women, is recognized, and the servant bought with money is given the privilege of partaking, upon the ground of his being circumcised by his master, while the hired servant, over whom the master had no such control, is excluded until he voluntarily submits to circumcision showing clearly that the institution of involuntary slavery then carried with it a right, on the part of a master to choose a religion for the servant who was his money, as Abraham did, by God's direction, when he imposed circumcision on those he had bought with his money,—when he was circumcised himself, with Ishmael his son, who was the only individual beside himself, on whom he had a right to impose it, except the bond-servants bought of the stranger with his money, and their children born in his house. The next notice we have of servants as property, is from God himself, when clothed with all the visible tokens of his presence and glory, on the top of Sinai, when he proclaimed his law to the millions that surrounded its base: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.”—Ex. xx: 17. Here is a patriarchal catalogue of property, having God for its author, the wife among the rest, who was then purchased, as Jacob purchased his two, by fourteen years' service. Here the term servant, as used by the Almighty, under the circumstances of the case could not be understood by these millions, as meaning anything but property, because the night they left Egypt, a few weeks before, Moses, by divine authority, recognized their servants as property, which they had bought with their money.

2d. In addition to the evidence from the context of these, and various other places, to prove the term servant to be identical in the import of its essential particulars with the term slave among us, there is unquestionable evidence, that in the patriarchal age, there are two distinct states of servitude alluded to, and which are indicated by two distinct terms, or by the same term, and an adjective to explain.

These two terms are first, servant or bond-servant; second, hireling or hired servant; the first indicating involuntary servitude; the second, voluntary servitude for stipulated wages, and a specified time. Although this admits of the clearest proof under the law, yet it admits of proof before the law was given. On the night the Israelites left Egypt, which was before the law was given, Moses, in designating the qualifications necessary for the Passover, uses this language,—Exod xii: 44, 45: “Every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.” This language carries to the human mind, with irresistible force, the idea of two distinct states—one a state of freedom, the other a state of bondage: in one of which, a person is serving with his consent for wages; in the other of which a person is serving without his consent, according to his master's pleasure.

Again, in Job iii, Job expresses the strong desire he had been made by his afflictions to feel, that he had died in his infancy. “For now,” says he, “should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest. There (meaning the grave) the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master.”—Job iii: 11, 13, 17, 18, 19. Now, I ask any common-sense man to account for the expression in this connection, “there the servant is free from his master.” Afflictions are referred to, arising out of states or conditions, from which ordinarily nothing but death brings relief. Death puts an end to afflictions of body that are incurable, as he took his own to be, and therefore he desired it.

The troubles brought on good men by a wicked persecuting world, last for life; but in death the wicked cease from troubling,—death ends that relation or state out of which such troubles grow. The prisoners of the oppressors, in that age, stood in a relation to their oppressor, which led the oppressed to expect they would hear the voice of the oppressor until death. But death broke the relation, and was desired, because in the grave they would hear his voice no more.

All the distresses growing out of inequalities in human condition; as wealth and power on one side, and poverty and weakness on the other, were terminated by death; the grave brought both to a level: the small and the great are there, and there, (that is, in the grave,) he adds, the servant is free from his master; made so, evidently, by death. The relation, or state out of which his oppression had arisen, being destroyed by death, he would be freed from them, because he would, by death, be freed from his master who inflicted them. This view of the case, and this only, will account for the use of such language. But upon a supposition that a state or relation among men is referred to, that is voluntary, such as that between a hired servant and his employer that can be dissolved at the pleasure of the servant, the language is without meaning, and perfectly unwarranted; while such a relation as that of involuntary and hereditary servitude, where the master had unlimited power over his servant, and in an age when cruelty was common, there is the greatest propriety in making the servant or slave, a companion with himself, in affliction, as well as the oppressed and afflicted, in every class where death alone dissolved the state or condition, out of which their afflictions grew. Beyond all doubt, this language refers to a state of hereditary bondage, from the afflictions of which, ordinarily, nothing in that day brought relief but death.

Again, in chapter 7th, he goes on to defend himself in his eager desire for death, in an address to God. He says, it is natural for a servant to desire the shadow, and a hireling his wages: “As the servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as the hireling looketh for the reward of his work,” so it is with me, should be supplied.—Job vii: 2. Now, with the previous light shed upon the use and meaning of these terms in the patriarchal Scriptures, can any man of candor bring himself to believe that two states or conditions are not here referred to, in one of which, the highest reward after toil is mere rest; in the other of which, the reward was wages how appropriate is the language in reference to these two states.

The slave is represented as earnestly desiring the shadow, because his condition allowed him no prospect of anything more desirable; but the hireling as looking for the reward of his work, because that will be an equivalent for his fatigue.

So Job looked at death as being to his body as the servant's shade, therefore he desired it; and like the hireling's wages, because beyond the grave, he hoped to reap the fruit of his doings. Again, Job (xxxi:) finding himself the subject of suspicion (see from verse 1 to 30) as to the rectitude of his past life, clears himself of various sins, in the most solemn manner, as unchastity, injustice in his dealings, adultery, contempt of his servants, unkindness to the poor, covetousness, the pride of wealth, &c. And in the 13th, 14th, and 15th verses, he thus expresses himself: “If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or my maid-servant, when they contended with me, what then shall I do when God rises up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?” Taking this language in connection with the language employed by Moses in reference to the institution of involuntary servitude in that age, and especially in connection with the language which Moses employs after the law was given, and what else can be understood, than a reference to a class of duties that slave owners felt themselves above stooping to notice or perform, but which, nevertheless, it was the duty of the righteous man to discharge: for whatever proud and wicked men might think of a poor servant that stood in his estate, on an equality with brutes, yet, says Job, he that made me, made them, and if I despise their reasonable causes of complaint, for injuries which they are made to suffer, and for the redress of which I only can be appealed to, then what shall I do, and how shall I fare, when I carry my causes of complaint to him who is my master, and to whom only I can go for relief? When he visiteth me for despising their cause, what shall I answer him for despising mine? He means that he would feel self-condemned and would be forced to admit the justice of the retaliation. But on the supposition that allusion is bad to hired servants, who were voluntarily working for wages agreed upon, and who were the subjects of rights for the protection of which, their appeal would be to “the judges in the gate, as much as any other class of men, then there is no point in the statement. For doing that which can be demanded as a legal right, gives us no claim to the character of merciful benefactors. Job himself was a great slave-holder, and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his duty to his slaves. Once more: the conduct of Joseph in Egypt, as Pharaoh's counsellor, under all the circumstances, proves him a friend to absolute slavery, as a form of government better adapted to the state of the world at that time, than the one which existed in Egypt; for certain it is, that he peaceably effected a change in the fundamental law, by which a state, condition, or relation between Pharaoh and the Egyptians was established, which answers to the one now denounced as sinful in the sight of God. Being warned of God, he gathered up all the surplus grain in the years of plenty, and sold it out in the years of famine, until he gathered up all the money; and when money failed, the Egyptians came and said, “Give us bread;” and Joseph said, “Give your cattle, and I will give for your cattle, if money fail.” When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said, “There is not aught left in sight of my Lord, but our bodies and our lands. Buy us and our lands for bread.” And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharoah.

So the land became Pharoah's, and as for the people, he removed them to cities, from one end of the borders of Egypt, even to the other end thereof. Then Joseph said unto the people, “Behold! I have bought you this day, and your land for Pharoah;” and they said, “we will be Pharoah's servants.”—See Gen. xlvii: 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25. Having thus changed the fundamental law, and created a state of entire dependence and hereditary bondage, he enacted in his sovereign pleasure, that they should give Pharoah one part, and take other four parts of the productions to themselves. How far the hand of God was in this overthrow of liberty, I will not decide; but from the fact that he has singled out the greatest slaveholders of that age, as the objects of his special favor, it would seem that the institution was one furnishing great opportunities to exercise grace and glorify God, as it still does, where its duties are faithfully discharged.

3d. His third Scripture reference to prove the unlawfulness of slavery in the sight of God, is this: “God commands children to obey their parents, and wives to obey their husbands.” This, I believe to be the will of Christ to Christian children and Christian wives— whether they are bond or free. But it is equally true that Christ ordains that Christianity shall not abolish slavery. —1 Cor. vii: 17, 21, and that he commands servants to obey their masters and to count them worthy of all honor.—1 Tim. vi: 1, 2. It is also true, that God allowed Jewish masters to use the rod to make them do it—and to use it with the severity requisite to accomplish the object.—Ex. xxi: 20, 21. It is equally true, that Jesus Christ ordains that a Christian servant shall receive for the wrong he hath done.—Col. iii: 25. My correspondent admits, without qualification, that if they are property, it is right. But the Bible says, they were property.—Levit. xxv: 44, 45, 46.

The above reference, reader enjoins the duty of two relations, which God ordained, but does not abolish a third relation which God has ordained; as the Scripture will prove, to which I have referred you, under the first reference made by my correspondent.

4th. His fourth Scripture reference is, to the intention of Abraham to give his estate to a servant, in order to prove that servant was not a slave. “What’ ” he says, “property inherit property?” I answer, yes. Two years ago, in my county, Willian Hansbrough gave to his slaves his estate, worth forty or fifty thousand dollars. In the last five or six years, over two hundred slaves, within a few miles of me, belonging to various masters, have inherited portions of their masters' estates.

To render slaves valuable, the Romans qualified them for the learned professions, and all the various arts. They were teachers, doctors, authors, mechanics, &c. So with us, tradesmen of every kind are to be found among our slaves. Some of them are undertakers—some farmers— some overseers, or stewards—some housekeepers—some merchants—some teamsters, and some money-lenders, who give their masters a portion of their income, and keep the balance. Nearly all of them have an income of their own—and was it not for the seditious spirit of the North, we would educate our slaves generally, and so fit them earlier for a more improved condition, and higher moral elevation.

But will all this, when duly certified, prove they are not slaves? No. Neither will Abraham's intention to give one of his servants his estate, prove that he was not a slave. Who had higher claims upon Abraham, before he had a child, than this faithful slave, born in his house, reared by his hand, devoted to his interest, and faithful, in every trust?

5th. His fifth reference, my correspondent says, “forever sets the question at rest.” It is this: “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee—he shall dwell with thee, even in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.”

This my distinguished correspondent says, “forever puts the question at rest.” My reader, I hope, will ask himself what question it puts to rest. He will please to remember, that it is brought to put this question to rest, “Is slavery sinful in the sight of God?” the Bible being judge—or “did God ever allow one man to hold property in another?”

My correspondent admits this to be the question at issue. He asks, “What is slavery?” And thus answers: “It is the principle involved in holding man as property.” “This,” he says: “is the point at issue.” He says, “if it be right to hold man as property, it is right to treat him as property,” &c. Now, conceding all in the argument, that can be demanded for this law about runaway slaves, yet it does not prove that slavery or holding property in man is sinful— because it is a part and parcel of the Mosaic law, given to Israel in the wilderness, by the same God, who in the same wilderness enacted “that of the heathen that were round about them, they should buy bond-men and bond-women—also of the strangers that dwelt among them should they buy, and they should pass as an inheritance to their children after them, to possess them as bond-men forever.”—Levit. xxv: 44.