causes may have inclined us to abate our aversion to the whole system, and to give a more favourable hearing to what can be said in defence of it. English travellers have reported that the negro race are naturally so indolent that they require a taskmaster to teach them submission to the great law of labour; and they have asserted that the negroes in America enjoy more material prosperity, have attained a higher civilisation and a greater knowledge of Christianity, than if they had continued in their own land, and therefore that they are gainers by the change.

Notwithstanding all this, I quite disbelieve that the aversion of the English people to slavery has been mitigated, and when I go over in my mind the arguments which we formerly used against slavery in order to find whether what we then said had any weight in it, or whether we are to own that we talked idly and foolishly about what we did not understand, it seems to me that time has made no change in them, and that what we thought conclusive before is conclusive still. God certainly often causes the wicked actions of men to result in beneficial consequences; and yet this does not justify us in sinning against our light in the confidence that He will turn all to greater good. If we admit that the negroes who are carried away from Africa gain by the change, who can.

venture to say that their gain compensates for the injury done to Africa by the slave trade in the resulting insecurity, mutual hostility, and destruction of lawful commerce? Besides that, the alleged gain itself is questionable; for a calculation that another man is the gainer by being deprived of liberty is not trustworthy if you who make the calculation have a strong interest in taking away his freedom and in keeping him so degraded that he will not wish for freedom nor know how to use it. I have, therefore, not a word to say in defence of slavery; but if it be asserted on the other hand that no man has, under any circumstances, a right to interfere with the freedom of another, I cannot assent to a principle stated so broadly. For all law is an interference with the liberty of the individual, and it is hard to fix limits to the extent to which that interference may proceed. In States supposed to be the freest, when the good of the community is believed to require it, law will deprive the individual of freedom of speech, will take from him the money he has earned, and will apply it to purposes of which he disapproves; will deprive him of freedom and send him against his will to fight as a soldier in a cause which he condemns. Law may indeed become so oppressive as to justify the subject in refusing his obedience; but the Bible is no book of casuistry, and we need no more

expect it to lay down rules when subjects are justified in rebelling than when children ought to disobey their parents. It teaches in strong language the duty of reverence to law, seeing that human law is to be regarded as God's ordinance. In places where law sanctions slavery, as was the case where the Apostle wrote, it might conceivably be the duty of a Christian to keep slaves; for if those of whom he found himself possessed had, as often happens, been so debased by slavery as to be unable to use freedom, sudden restoration to freedom might be very injurious, and their master might do better by keeping them for a time in subjection, and training them for freedom. If the master were really a Christian in heart as well as in profession,-one who was determined to use his power for no selfish ends, and to do to his servants as he would they should do to him,-power intrusted to such a man could not be abused. I believe it will be found on consideration that the Bible is not to be censured but rather commended for abstaining from deciding what forms of government are the best, and what are the exact limits to the authority which one man is justified in exercising over another; for that some such authority must be exercised is undeniable. And I believe it did right also in shielding with the sanction of religion the authority of human law,

and in deciding that the abolition of slavery must take place not in opposition to law, but by means of law not by inciting individuals to disobedience, but by instilling principles which when received forced those in power to love and respect their poorer brethren, and so purified law by degrees from all that is oppressive and tyrannical.

The polemical discussion into which we have been led has carried us away from the region of practice; yet it will not have been without some practical fruit if it have fastened more firmly in your memories and hearts the great rule which I have chosen as my text; for the lessons of the Gospel come with equal force to men in every rank in life. There can be no better rule to regulate our discharge of the duties which fall to our lot than that which the Apostle gave for the conduct of slaves that we too should do our work, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but striving to commend ourselves to the approval of Christ whose purchased servants we are, whose benefits demand of us that we should show our gratitude by doing His will, and whose all-seeing eye cannot be deceived. "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men."

XIV

THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE

"The Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works."-MATTHEW xvi. 27.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." EPHESIANS ii. 8, 9.

At

IT has been often remarked that the advocates of opposite doctrinal systems find no difficulty in each supporting his views by Scripture texts; and, accordingly, at the time of the Reformation, a leading Roman Catholic divine irreverently compared the Bible to a nose of wax which any one can twist into what shape he chooses. the time when this comparison was made, there was far more justice in it than now. For there was then current a system of mystical and allegorical interpretation, which indeed had been handed down under the authority of some fathers of great antiquity and of the highest reputation, but by which it was possible for an ingenious man to find any doctrine in any text.