millennial reign is ushered in, contraband will be
inscribed on slavery, as it already has been on some other evils that
were once tolerated, not only in society, but in the church of God.

But I shall be reminded here, that, when the apostles were disseminating
Christianity in the Roman empire, there prevailed throughout that empire
a system of slavery more odious and oppressive than ours; and yet that
both slaveholders and slaves were converted and admitted to the church,
without its affecting the relation of master and slave; that the New
Testament instructs the parties how to demean themselves in that
relation, but nowhere enjoins emancipation on the master, or encourages
absconding or non-submission in the slave; in short, that it nowhere
expressly condemns slavery, or intimates that its extermination was to
be expected or desired. In reply to this, I would say,--

(1.) To infer, because the New Testament enjoins obedience on slaves,
and makes no direct attack on the institution of slavery, that it
therefore sanctions the institution, and would have it perpetuated, is
as much a _non sequitur_ as to infer, because God enjoins on men
subjection to existing civil authorities, whatever may be their
character, that he as much approves of a despotic as of a constitutional
government,--of the government of Ferdinand of Naples as of that of
Victoria of England. Nor is it more difficult to comprehend why God has,
in the Scriptures, made no direct assault on slavery, than it is to see
why He has not directly assailed governmental despotisms, or expressed
any preference for one form of government over another. An obvious and
far-seeing wisdom is discernible in this, which it behooves us to
admire, and not unfrequently to imitate. Had the apostles or the
Scriptures openly denounced all absolutism, whether civil or domestic,
it would have aroused unnecessary prejudice and opposition, and diverted
the attention of men from the grand object aimed at in giving the world
a written and preached gospel. God deemed it wiser to reach these evils
through the slow but sure progress of certain great principles laid down
in his Word, than through the medium of specific prohibitions.

(2.) The fact that the apostles received into the church converts who
not only held slaves, but held them under a slave-system that was
awfully despotic, was no indorsement on their part of that odious
system, nor even of the slightest inhumanity on the part