vidence in no
wise abates the sin of those who brought the slaves here, nor does it
warrant us in getting more of them. While this is true, I cannot resist
the thought that God has a controversy with this black race which is not
yet finished. I believe that God withholds from them a spirit and temper
suited for freedom till he shall have finished his marvellous designs.
His destiny with the Jew, as a nation, to the present day, is another
illustration of his mysterious providence with regard to a people.

"As to the enactment which made the Hebrew servant a slave for life,
thus dooming even one of the covenant people to perpetual bondage, if he
had married in slavery, I see in it several things most clearly.

"You will have noticed that in every case in which a Hebrew was made a
servant, poverty was the ground of it. 'If thy brother be waxen poor,'
he could sell himself, either to a Hebrew or to a resident alien. He and
his children could also be taken for debt. This seems to us oppressive.

"Let a family among us be reduced, from any cause, to a condition in
which they cannot maintain themselves, and what follows? The children
find employment, some of them in families, in various kinds of domestic
service. Indented apprenticeships in this commonwealth are within the
memory of all who are forty or fifty years of age. We remember the very
frequent advertisements: 'One cent reward. Ran away from the subscriber,
an indented apprentice,' etc. The descriptions of such fugitives, all
for the sake of absolving the master from liability for the absconding
boy, and sometimes the hunt that was made, with dogs to scent his
tracks, when his return was desired, are far within the memory of the
oldest inhabitant.

"In Israel, this descent of a family from a prosperous to a decayed
state, and the consequent servitude, were used by the Most High to
cultivate some of the best feelings of our nature. It touched the finest
sensibilities of the soul. Let me read from the fifteenth of
Deuteronomy:--

"'And if thy brother, an Hebrew man or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto
thee, and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt
let him go free from thee.

"'And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let
him go away empty.

"'Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy
floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the Lord thy God
hath blessed thee t