would conduct
us? How could he take advantage of an ambiguous expression to conduct
his confiding readers on to a position which, if his own eyes were open,
he must have known they could not hold in the light of open day?

[Footnote A: Pittsburgh pamphlet p. 9.]

We do not charge the Savior with any want of wisdom, goodness, or
courage,[B] for refusing to "break down the wall of partition between
Jews and Gentiles" "before the time appointed." While this barrier
stood, he could not, consistently with the plan of redemption, impart
instruction freely to the Gentiles. To some extent, and on extraordinary
occasions, he might have done so. But his business then was with "the
lost sheep of the house of Israel."[C] The propriety of this arrangement
is not the matter of dispute between the Princeton professor and
ourselves.

[Footnote B: The same, p. 10.]

[Footnote C: Matt. xv. 24.]

In disposing of the question whether the Jews held slaves during our
Savior's incarnation among them, the following points deserve earnest
attention:--

1. Slaveholding is inconsistent with the Mosaic economy. For the proof
of this, we would refer our readers, among other arguments more or less
appropriate and powerful, to the tract already alluded to.[A] In all the
external relations and visible arrangements of life, the Jews, during
our Savior's ministry among them, seem to have been scrupulously
observant of the institutions and usages of the "Old Dispensation." They
stood far aloof from whatever was characteristic of Samaritans and
Gentiles. From idolatry and slaveholding--those twin-vices which had
always so greatly prevailed among the heathen--they seem at length, as
the result of a most painful discipline, to have been effectually
divorced.

[Footnote A: "The Bible against Slavery."]

2. While, therefore, John the Baptist, with marked fidelity and great
power, acted among the Jews the part of a _reprover_, he found no
occasion to repeat and apply the language of his predecessors,[B] in
exposing and rebuking idolatry and slaveholding. Could he, the greatest
of the prophets, have been less effectually aroused by the presence of
"the yoke," than was Isaiah?--or less intrepid and decisive in exposing
and denouncing the sin of oppression under its most hateful and
injurious forms?

[Footnote B: Psalm lxxxii; Isa. lviii. 1-12; Jer. xxii. 13-16.]

3. The Savior was not backward in applying his own principles plainly
and pointedly t