rved for slavery. These are two remarkable facts in the providence
of God. But, reader, I will give you a Bible key, by which to decide for
yourself, without foreign aid, whether _servant_, when it denotes a
relation in society, where the other side of that relation is _master_,
means _hired servant_. "Every man's servant that is bought for money
shall eat thereof; but a hired servant shall not eat thereof."--Exod.
xii; 44, 45. Here are two classes of servants alluded to--one was
allowed to eat the Passover the night Israel left Egypt; the other not.
What was the difference in these two classes? Were they both hired
servants? If so, it should read, "Every hired servant that is bought for
money shall eat thereof; but a hired servant that is bought for money,
shall not eat thereof." My reader, why has the Holy Ghost, in presiding
over the inspired pen, been thus particular? Is it too much to say, it
was to provide against the delusion of the nineteenth century, which
learned men would be practicing upon unlearned men, as well as
themselves, on the subject of slavery? Who, with the Bible and their
learning, would not be able to discover, that a servant bought with
money was a slave; and that a hired servant was a free man? Again,
Levit. xxv: 44, 45, and 46; "Thy bond-servants shall be of the heathen
that are round about you, and of the children of the strangers that do
sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy. And they shall be your
possession, and ye shall take them as an inheritance, for your children
after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-men
forever."

Reader, were these hired servants? If so, they hired themselves for a
long time. And what is very singular, they hired their posterity for all
time to come. And what is still more singular, the wages were paid, not
to the servant, but to a former owner or master. And what is still
stranger, they hired themselves and their posterity to be an inheritance
to their master and his posterity forever! Yet, reader, I am told by my
distinguished correspondent, that servant in the Scriptures, when used
to designate a relation, means only hired servant. Again, I ask, were
the enslaved captives in Deut. xx: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, hired
servants?

One of the greatest and best of men ever raised at the North, (I mean
Luther Rice,) once told me when I quoted the law of God for the purchase
of slaves from the heathen, (in order to silence his argument abou