is passage, Leviticus XXV. 44-46:--'Both thy bondmen, and thy
bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round
about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.' So, in the next
verses, 'The children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of
them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they
begat in your land; 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 bondmen forever; but over your
brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another
with rigor.'

"Here, and in all the divine legislation on this subject, a distinction
is made between Hebrews who became slaves, and slaves who were
foreigners, or of foreign extraction, though resident in Israel. Slaves
of Hebrew extraction might go free after six years, and upon the death
of the owner; and in every jubilee year they must all return to freedom,
and be free from every disability by reason of bondage, except where the
ear was bored.

"Not so with the slaves of foreign extraction; nor even with the Hebrew
whose ear was bored, provided his wife was given him in slavery, and he
had elected to live with her rather than be free. Not even upon the
death of the owner could such slaves be manumitted, as was the case
ordinarily with regard to Hebrew slaves; but property in these Gentile
slaves, and in Hebrew slaves reduced to the same condition, God ordained
should be an 'inheritance,' passing down forever from father to child.

"No jubilee trumpet was to cheer their hearts. Think what the jubilee
morning must have been to those slaves in hopeless bondage, if bondage
were necessarily such as many fancy. Our abolitionists represent the
bells and guns of our Fourth of July to be a hideous mockery in the ears
of the slaves; and multitudes of our good people ludicrously fancy them
as most miserable on that day, by the contrast of their enslaved
condition with our boasted Independence. Let us borrow this fancy, and
apply it to the Hebrew slave.

"The jubilee trumpets, and all the joyous scenes of the fiftieth year in
Israel, caused multitudes of slaves in Israel, we will suppose, to
reflect, This Jehovah, God of Israel, has doomed us to hopeless bondage.
We are guilty of having been born so many degrees south or north, east
or west, of these Hebrews. We, by God's providence, are Gentiles. Our
chiefs s