A heathen is seen menacing Israel. Jephtha is selected by his
countrymen to conduct the controversy. He sends a message to his
menacing neighbor, to know why he had come out against him. He returned
for answer, that it was because Israel held property to which they had
no right. Jephtha answered, they had had it in possession for three
hundred years. Ammon replied, they had no right to it, because it was
obtained in the first instance by violence. Jephtha replied, that it was
held by the same sort of a title as that by which Ammon held his
possessions--that is to say, whatever Ammon's god Chemosh enabled him to
take in war, he considered to be his of right; and that Israel's God
had assisted them to take this property, and they considered the title
to be such an one as Ammon was bound to acknowledge.

Ammon stickled for the _eternal_ principle of righteousness, and
contended that it had been violated in the first instance. But, reader,
in the appeal made to the sword, God vindicated Israel's title.--Judges
xi: 12-32.

And if at the present time, we take ground with Ammon about the rights
of property, I will not say how much work we may have to do, nor who
will prove the rightful owner of my correspondent's domicil; but certain
I am, that by his Ammonitish principle of settling the rights of
property, he will be ousted.

Reader, in looking over the printed reply of my correspondent to his
Southern friend, which occupies ten columns of a large newspaper, to see
if I had overlooked any Scripture, I find I have omitted to notice one
reference to the sacred volume, which was made by him, for the general
purpose of showing that the Scriptures abound with moral principles, and
call into exercise moral feelings inconsistent with slavery. It is this:
"Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, you have done it unto me." The design of the Saviour, in the
parable from which these words are taken, in Matt. xxv, is, to impress
strongly upon the human mind, that _character_, deficient in _correct
moral feeling_, will prove fatal to human hopes in a coming day.

But, reader, will you stop and ask yourself, "What is correct moral
feeling?" Is it abhorrence and hatred to the will and pleasure of God?
Certainly not. Then it is not abhorrence and hatred of slavery, which
seems to be a cardinal virtue at the North. It has been the will and
pleasure of God to institute slavery by a law of his own, in that