he Savior with any want of wisdom, goodness, or
courage,[70] for refusing to "break down the wall of partition between
Jews and Gentiles" "before the time appointed." While this barrier
stood, he could not, consistently with the plan of redemption,
impart instruction freely to the Gentiles. To some extent, and on
extraordinary occasions, he might have done so. But his business
then was with "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." [71] The
propriety of this arrangement is not the matter of dispute between
the Princeton professor and ourselves.

[Footnote 70: Pittsburg pamphlet, p. 10.]

[Footnote 71: Matt. xv. 24.]

In disposing of the question whether the Jews held slaves during our
Savior's incarnation among them, the following points deserve earnest
attention:--

1. Slaveholding is inconsistent with the Mosaic economy. For the
proof of this, we would refer our readers, among other arguments more
or less appropriate and powerful, to the tract already alluded
to.[72] In all the external relations and visible arrangements of
life, the Jews, during our Savior's ministry among them, seem to
have been scrupulously observant of the institutions and usages of
the "Old Dispensation." They stood far aloof from whatever was
characteristic of Samaritans and Gentiles. From idolatry and
slaveholding--those twin-vices which had always so greatly prevailed
among the heathen--they seem at length, as the result of a most
painful discipline, to have been effectually divorced.

[Footnote 72: "The Bible against Slavery."]

2. While, therefore, John the Baptist; with marked fidelity and
great power, acted among the Jews the part of a _reprover_, he found
no occasion to repeat and apply the language of his
predecessors,[73] in exposing and rebuking idolatry and
slaveholding. Could he, the greatest of the prophets, have been
less effectually aroused by the presence of "the yoke," than was
Isaiah?--or less intrepid and decisive in exposing and denouncing
the sin of oppression under its most hateful and injurious forms?

[Footnote 73: Psalm lxxxii; Isa. lviii. 1-12 Jer. xxii. 13-16.]

3. The Savior was not backward in applying his own principles plainly
and pointedly to such forms of oppression as appeared among the Jews.
These principles, whenever they have been freely acted on, the
Princeton professor admits, have abolished domestic bondage. Had
this prevailed within the sp