precipice, he deserves to be punished for his rashness and impiety. Hence it is written, "The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent."

It is worthy of remark that, in the country where God first established his church, slavery has always existed in a much milder form than in many other countries. Among the Greeks and Romans, the condition of a slave was dreadful beyond description. He was not known in law, but was, if possible, degraded beneath the brute. He was entirely at the disposal of his master, and so perfectly subject to his caprice, that he might nail him to a cross, or put him to death in any other way.

But in the East the condition of slaves was generally much more tolerable. They were frequently treated as companions. They were suffered to sit at the same table with their master, to marry his daughters, and not unfrequently become heirs to his estate. Horne says, " When the Eastern people have no male issue, they frequently marry their daughters to their slaves; and the same practice appears to have obtained among the Hebrews, as we read in 1 Chron. 2: 34, 35: Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. And Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha, and Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife.' In Barbary, the rich people, when childless, have been known to purchase young slaves, to educate them in their own faith, and sometimes to adopt them for their own children. The greatest men of the Ottoman empire are well known to have been originally slaves, brought up in the seraglio; and the Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt were originally slaves. Thus the advancement of the Hebrew captive Joseph to be viceroy of Egypt, and of Daniel, another Hebrew captive, to be chief minister of state in Babylon, corresponds with the modern usage of the East."

Mr. Stephens, who has recently published an account of his travels in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy-land, says: "In the East slavery exists now precisely as it did in the days of the patriarchs. The slave is received into the family of a Turk in a relation more confidential and respectable than that of an ordinary domestic-and when liberated, which very often happens, stands upon the same footing with a free man. The curse does not rest upon him forever-he may sit at the same board, dip his hand in the same dish, and, if there are no other impediments, may marry his master's daughters." But mild as 7

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slavery was originally in the East, God under the Old Testament dispensation did much to render it still milder, and finally to give the slave his liberty. He commanded that he should be brought within the pale of the covenant, be circumcised, and religiously educated. His rights were guarded by the laws of the land. He was to be treated with humanity, admitted to the Jewish festivals, and suffered to rest upon their holy days: and, if a slave was maltreated and maimed by his master, he had his redress at law. To steal a man was punished with death—and the Hebrews were forbidden to buy slaves of their own people, and were ordered to confine their purchases to those heathen nations which surrounded them. This we suppose to be the whole import of Levit. 25: 44-46. It is as if God had said, Although, on account of the darkness of the age, I cannot consistently entirely abolish slavery, still I can and will regulate it, so as to prevent the Hebrews from buying their brethren as slaves; and I therefore order that, from this time forth as long as slavery shall exist among them, they confine their purchase of slaves to the heathen who surround them, and that they take from them alone bondmen for themselves and their children." If the reader should be dissatisfied with this exposition of the passage, he will please to recollect, that we have previously shown that, with the most unfavorable rendering which can possibly be given, it affords no argument for slavery at the present day. Finally, all the slaves among the Jews were to be liberated every fiftieth year-the year of Jubilee. One cannot help remarking the great difference between slavery as it then existed among the Hebrews, and as it now exists in this "land of the free"-a difference consisting not in the tenure by which the slaves are held, but in the treatment they often receive, and the legal enactments concerning them,

There are two passages of Scripture in the Old Testament, which in effect deny the right of man to hold property in his fellow-man. One is that which prohibits a Hebrew to return a runaway slave to his master, Deut. 23: 15 and 16: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which has escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you in the place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him." God commanded his people to restore to the lawful owner all lost and strayed property, which they might find, such as oxen, asses, sheep, raiment, etc. Why then did he prohibit the re

turning of a runaway slave? Because Jehovah saw that, if by his authority the escaped servant was to be returned to his master, it would be admitting that the master had a right to hold property in man; and he knew that he had no such right, for he had never granted it to him.

The other is that table of the law, or ten commandments, which was given amid thunderings and lightnings, and fire and smoke, and the sound of a trumpet from Mount Sinai. Without stopping to dwell upon these commands separately as they stand in the decalogue, let us take their summary as given by our Saviour. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." Suppose that this law were written upon every heart, so as to become the actuating principle of the life, who doubts but that it would demolish to its foundation the practice of reducing men to a state of slavery and holding them as property? Thus we perceive that the Old Testament is so far from sustaining, that it actually denies the right of man to hold property in his fellow-man. Is it still said that the fact that slavery existed in the church in Old Testament times proves that it is right? Then the fact that polygamy, idolatry, and adultery, existed in the church in Old Testament times proves that they are right. The truth is, there is not a single line, word, nor syllable, in the whole Old Testament, when properly understood, that goes to sustain any system of slavery.

ARTICLE IV.

THE TRAINING OF THE WILL.

By Rev. Pharcellus Church, Rochester, N. Y.

OUR materials of knowledge resolve themselves into two classes those which relate to the mind itself, and those which relate to subjects extraneous to the mind. The interior life of the mind opens to a universe of thought and investigation. It is a universe which no eye but our own and that of Him with whom we have to do can fully explore. Each mind, like each orb of

immensity, has an isolated existence, being endowed with the power of seclusion from its associate minds, except as it brings out and exposes its accumulations of thought and sentiment, through the channel of language and other means of mental intercommunication. Nor can one lose his interest in these component elements of his own conscious individuality. His language is framed to give them expression; they beam through his eyes, his gestures, and all his points of physical contact with other beings; and his set discourses are but the elaborated products of his intellectual and spiritual life.

And yet, strange as it may seem, there exists a general prejudice against making what passes under the eye of our consciousness a subject of investigation and philosophy. How of ten is it said of one who attempts it, O, he is quite metaphysical; he deals in what nobody can understand; he is a dry and pointless reasoner, who would do well to emerge from this murky region into the open daylight of things clear and tangible. Whereas the exercises of our minds are as substantial materials of thought, as the properties of a rock or a tree; and, provided our modes of reasoning are careful, accurate, and inductive, may be made as clear and as available to the ends of knowledge.

The more refined and exalted a nature, the more valuable are its phenomena as elements of science. The knowledge of vegetable life is more to be prized than that of unorganized matter: the animal economy affords richer contributions still; but those of mind, as including its moral and immortal tendencies, transcend all others, because they afford the nearest approaches to the Infinite Mind, the source of all being and all truth.

What, therefore, has brought metaphysical science into such disrepute? Is it not something constrained and unnatural in our modes of investigation? The facts of consciousness have been abandoned, in order to follow up untenable theories of mental and moral causality, or to settle à priori conclusions as to what ought to be the working of the spiritual machine; the consequence of which has been, the adoption of principles at variance with our experience. These things have produced the impression, to some extent, that, in this department, what is true in theory is false in practice, and what is unanswerable in the abstract is untenable in the concrete. Too much labor has been expended in settling the question of the will's determination, or in ascertaining why a moral cause causes as it does cause, rather

than otherwise, an inquiry which will probably forever elude the present encumbered powers of human scrutiny and investigation. The psychological phenomena, as they actually exist or as we experience them in ourselves, are as fair a subject for analysis as the soils which are favorable to the growth of wheat or other grains. But the question why those phenomena should be as they are rather than otherwise, or why the will should give being to one class of volitions rather than another, is quite as difficult as to determine the ultimate reasons why a given combination of earthy substances should be more favorable to the growth of wheat than any other combination. The actual phenomena in mind as well as matter are the sole material of human science. Till we act on this principle, our attempts in the metaphysics will be like those of certain mechanical geniuses to find out a perpetual motion, spending our noblest efforts to do what cannot be done.

We shall

A few particulars in reference to the will itself and its development will occupy our attention in this article. notice,

I. The relation of the will to the other faculties.
II. The object of its training; and

III. The manner of its training.

Though I speak of the will as doing this or that, yet I mean the agent exercising his power of will. It is common to speak of what intellect can achieve and the heart can feel, when we mean simply the capacity of the agent as manifested through those faculties. The training of the will refers to the education of those powers of our nature which manifest themselves through this faculty.

I. We are to speak of the relation of the will to the other faculties.

When we speak of the will, we mean that power of putting forth voluntary actions of which we are conscious. It is the basis of the mind's active causality. There is a broad foundation of distinction between willing and simple sensation or motion. In the one we are conscious of being active and responsible, while in the other we are passive and irresponsible. In the one we produce such and such effects, while in the other we are the subject of effects which spring up spontaneously. Those effects which flow from us in consequence of our willing or choosing them, therefore, we class together and refer them to a distinct faculty which we call the will.