ire_ them? They COVET them for
purposes of gain, convenience, lust of dominion, of sensual
gratification, of pride and ostentation. _They break the tenth
commandment_, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are
written in the book. _Ten_ commandments constitute the brief compend of
human duty. _Two_ of these brand slavery as sin.

The giving of the law at Sinai, immediately preceded the promulgation of
that body of laws and institutions, called the "Mosaic system." Over the
gateway of that system, fearful words were written by the finger of
God--"HE THAT STEALETH A MAN AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN HIS
HAND, HE SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH." See Exodus, xxi. 16.

The oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, and the wonders wrought for
their deliverance, proclaim the reason for _such_ a law at _such_ a
time--when the body politic became a theocracy, and reverently waited
for the will of God. They had just been emancipated. The tragedies of
their house of bondage were the realities of yesterday, and peopled
their memories with thronging horrors. They had just witnessed God's
testimony against oppression in the plagues of Egypt--the burning blains
on man and beast--the dust quickened into loathsome life, and cleaving
in swarms to every living thing--the streets, the palaces, the temples,
and every house heaped up with the carcasses of things abhorred--even
the kneading troughs and ovens, the secret chambers and the couches,
reeking and dissolving with the putrid death--the pestilence walking in
darkness at noonday, the devouring locusts and hail mingled with fire,
the first-born death-struck, and the waters blood, and, last of all,
that dread high hand and stretched out arm, that whelmed the monarch and
his hosts, and strewed their corpses in the sea. All this their eyes had
looked upon,--earth's proudest city, wasted and thunder-scarred, lying
in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the
hand writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood--a
blackened monument of wrath to the uttermost against the stealers of
men.

No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at such
a time, should light up on its threshold a blazing beacon to flash
terror on slaveholders. "_He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if
he be found in his hand, he shall be surely put to death_." Ex. xxii.
16. God's cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Mosai