ance, and degradation; the daily sundering
of kindred, the revelries of lust, the lacerations and baptisms of
blood, sanctioned by law, and patronized by public sentiment. What was
the bondage of Egypt when compared with this? And yet for her oppression
of the poor, God smote her with plagues, and trampled her as the mire,
till she passed away in his wrath, and the place that knew her in her
pride, knew her no more. Ah! "I have seen the afflictions of my people,
and I have heard their groanings, and am come down to deliver them." HE
DID COME, and Egypt sank a ruinous heap, and her blood closed over her.
If such was God's retribution for the oppression of heathen Egypt, of
how much sorer punishment shall a Christian people be thought worthy,
who cloak with religion a system, in comparison with which the bondage
of Egypt dwindles to nothing? Let those believe who can that God
commissioned his people to rob others of _all_ their rights, while he
denounced against them wrath to the uttermost, if they practised the
_far lighter_ oppression of Egypt--which robbed it's victims of only the
least and cheapest of their rights, and left the females unplundered
even of these. What! Is God divided against himself? When He had just
turned Egypt into a funeral pile; while his curse yet blazed upon her
unburied dead, and his bolts still hissed amidst her slaughter, and the
smoke of her torment went upwards because she had "ROBBED THE POOR," did
He license the victims of robbery to rob the poor of ALL? As _Lawgiver_
did he _create_ a system tenfold more grinding than that for which he
had just hurled Pharaoh headlong, and overwhelmed his princes, and his
hosts, till "hell was moved to meet them at their coming?"

[Footnote A: The Egyptians evidently had _domestic_ servants living in
their families; these may have been slaves; allusion is made to them in
Ex. ix. 14, 20, 21.]

[Footnote B: The land of Goshen was a large tract of country, east of
the Pelusian arm of the Nile, and between it and the head of the Red
Sea, and the lower border of Palestine. The probable centre of that
portion, occupied by the Israelites, could hardly have been less than
sixty miles from the city. The border of Goshen nearest to Egypt must
have been many miles distant. See "Exodus of the Israelites out of
Egypt," an able article by Professor Robinson, in the Biblical
Repository for October, 1832.]

[Footnote C: Law of N.C. Haywood's Manual 524-5.]

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