able they might be mistaken for one another in the old letter. Ain, Josh. xxi. 16, is Ashan, 1 Chron. vi. 44 (Eng. ver., v. 59), &c. And it should be observed that 7 and are quite as much alike in the ancient as in the more modern form of the letter; so of some other letters. Also some names are altered by an interchange of letters which are not alike in either the ancient or modern form of the letters.

(4.) The objection proves too much, and consequently proves nothing. No one has ventured to assert that Chronicles is of later date than the time of the Maccabees. But the coins struck in the days of the Maccabees shew that the old letter was then in use; and it is probable that the existing form of the letter did not become current until near the time of Christ. If the objection proves anything, it proves that Chronicles was not written till near the time of Christ. But it is well known not only to have existed, but to have been translated into Greek in the LXX. long before that time.

6. The character of the language in the book is said to betray a very late date. This is urged both on the ground that it contains many Chaldæisms, whether in grammatical forms, or in the use of words of Chaldee origin, different from the Hebrew words employed ordinarily by older writers to express the same idea, and also on the ground of the larger use of the vowel letters, the scriptio plena being employed where older writers have the scriptio defectiva. What is alleged respecting the language of this book, is true to a certain extent; but this is satisfactorily accounted for by assuming that it was written shortly after the termination of the exile. The Hebrew was inclining to the Chaldee even before the exile.. During their captivity the Jews were placed among people speaking the Chaldee; and the Hebrew was either then, or shortly after, supplanted by the Chaldee as the language of the people. The language of Chronicles is on a par with other writings of the same period. It is even purer than some of them, e. g., Ezekiel : Ezra and Daniel, belonging to the same period, are partly written in Chaldee. As to the full and defective mode of writing the vowels, there was no fixed usage at any period of the language; it was in many cases optional to write or to omit the vowel letters, the same word being differently written in the same connection. The general fact is that, on the whole, there is a greater tendency to their employment in the later than in the earlier writers; but this is not the case in Chronicles to a greater extent than in other contemporaneous writings.

It has even been alleged that the writer of Chronicles shews that Hebrew was no longer well understood by his readers, by

substituting easier and simpler expressions for those more difficult and obscure; and that he sometimes reveals his own ignorance of the language by himself mistaking its meaning. It is, however, a pretty bold assumption in a modern critic, that he understands the Hebrew better than the author of this book. And the composition of a work in Hebrew has no parallel at a later date than the period immediately following the exile.

7. It is said that the spirit of hostility to the kingdom of Israel revealed in this book, is such as did not exist until the split between the Jews and Samaritans became irreconcilable, and the hatred between them reached its highest point, which it did not do until the Samaritans had built their own temple on Gerizim, in opposition to that at Jerusalem.

This objection is, however, built upon such baseless assumptions, that it is difficult to understand how it could ever have been seriously urged. (1.) There is no hostility to the kingdom of Israel in this book more than in other books of the Bible. It speaks of their schism and their apostasy from God with abhorrence, but these are spoken of elsewhere in similar terms, so that it is nothing peculiar to this book. And if there were evidence of an unusual degree of hostility, as the objection assumes, it would rather be an argument of earlier than of later date; for the longer we assume the book to have been written after the kingdom of the ten tribes had been overturned, and its members carried into exile, the more we might suppose that the bitterness and rivalry, felt so long as the kingdom existed, would have been allayed. (2.) At any rate, bitterness toward Israel has nothing to do with bitterness towards the Samaritans. This objection substitutes the Samaritans for the kingdom of the ten tribes, as though they were identical. But the Samaritans were not Israelites; they were the descendants of heathen colonists introduced into that territory, as appears from 2 Kings xvii. 24. (3.) Even if hostility to Israel was implied in this book, and this was identical with hostility to the Samaritans, this would be no proof of later date. The rise of the Jews' hostility to the Samaritans is, by the objection, referred to a period long subsequent to the exile, when there is the most abundant evidence of this hostility immediately upon the return of the Jews from their captivity. When the Samaritans found that the Jews would not recognise them as Israelites, nor allow them to take part in rebuilding the temple, they did everything they could to hinder them, and the most bitter feud sprang up between them. (Ezra iv. 1-5, &c.)

8. The last objection to referring these books to the time of Ezra, is drawn from what has been styled their mythological character and Levitical spirit. By a mythological spirit, these

objectors mean a disposition to record the supernatural. But there are actually fewer miracles recorded in these books than in the books of Kings. So that, even on the infidel hypothesis that miracles are mere legendary fictions, the record of them creates no reason why Chronicles should be referred to a later period than the other books of the Old Testament, many of which record far more, and those of a more stupendous character, than are to be found in these books.

By a Levitical spirit, is meant a high regard for, and earnest attachment to, the ceremonial institutions of Moses. And this does certainly characterise these books in a remarkable degree. There is no subject upon which the writer dwells at greater length, or with more evident interest, than in what he details respecting the public worship of God, the regulations made by pious princes concerning it, and the measures taken for its restoration, after periods of idolatrous neglect. But the revived interest in religious worship which marked the period immediately following the exile, makes us look to it as, above all others, the time in which we would imagine such a book as this to have been written. After the long interruption of the exile, the people, sifted and purified by suffering, turned with an eagerness almost surpassing that of any previous period, to the law of Moses and their ancestral worship. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah bear abundant testimony to the zeal and earnestness with which everything relating to the ritual service was sought out and attended to. The spirit of this book is, in this respect, precisely the spirit of the returning exiles.

There is no valid objection, consequently, to the conclusion which we have before reached, that the books of Chronicles were written in the time of Ezra. Is it possible to go beyond this, and identify the author? The current tradition among the Jews, and the opinion universally entertained by Christian writers down to comparatively modern times is, that Ezra was himself the author of these books, as well as the one that bears his name. Some able students of the Scriptures have been disposed to favour the hypothesis that the books of Chronicles and that of Ezra, originally and properly constituted one book, and that the existing division is unauthorised, and ought not to be regarded.

There is much more to favour the hypothesis, that they are distinct works by the same author. (1.) This, as has just been said, has the sanction of tradition. (2.) The identity of the closing verses of Chronicles and the opening verses of Ezra, though, of course, not in itself conclusive, yet agrees very well with this view of the case. (3.) Its probability is further increased by a striking similarity, which has been observed, in

style, in the use of words in peculiar senses, and in favourite forms of expression between the books of Chronicles and the book of Ezra. While, therefore, it cannot perhaps be rigorously proved that Ezra is the author of Chronicles, this may be regarded as at least an ancient and not improbable opinion.

ART. VII.-Slavery and the Bible.

The Guilt of Slavery and the Crime of Slaveholding demonstrated from the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. By the Rev. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D.,

Pastor of the Church of the Puritans. New York. 1860.

Hebrew Servitude and American Slavery: An attempt to prove that the Mosaic Law furnishes neither a basis nor an apology for American Slavery. By the Rev. JOHN KENNEDY, M.A., F.R.G.S. London: Jackson, Walford, & Hodder, 27 Paternoster Row. 1863.

Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race, the latter its normal Condition. By J. H. VAN EVRIE, M.D. "Let us reason

together." New York: Van Evrie, Horton, & Co., 162 Nassau Street. 1861. Trübner & Co., 60 Paternoster Row, London.

Address to Christians throughout the world. By the Clergy of the Confederate States of America. London: Printed by Edmund Evans, Raquet Court, Fleet Street. 1863.

IN treating the question of slavery, to which we are invited, not merely by the works before us, and by a multitude of others with which the press is teeming, but by the critical and bloody struggle in America, which has revived the whole controversy, it is impossible to do full justice to the subject without viewing the various relations in which slavery has stood at the different periods of its history. We require to go back to slavery as it existed in the early days of the patriarchs; to look at the position it held among the Jews, under the old dispensation; and, finally, to contemplate the system of negro slavery as it at present exists on the American continent. Into this wide field we cannot be expected to enter at any length; still even the hurried survey we purpose making will, we trust, enable us more intelligently to review the works prefixed to this article, most of which have been selected to exhibit the extreme antagonism of thought on the slavery question in the great transatlantic republic.

We turn then, first, to slavery under the patriarchs. In entering on this part of the inquiry, the passage naturally recalled to mind is the celebrated one regarding the curse on

Canaan; but it will be better treated of in connection with the bondage of Ham's race in America, and is therefore for the present passed by. The investigation is thus narrowed to the slavery with which Abraham and the other patriarchs had to do-that hinted at in the passage instituting the rite of circumcision, in which mention is made of those "born" in Abraham's "house," and those "bought with his money." It is unnecessary to inquire whether the first mentioned of these two classes were slaves; it is natural to suppose those last named were so, at least technically considered. It must, however, be remembered that the word slavery is one of exceeding vagueness, and employed to designate very different social states. It may mean the mildest conceivable interference with personal liberty; or, on the other hand, it may signify that very aggravated form of crime by which a freeman is reduced to bondage, compelled by threats of bodily torture to engage in toil beyond his strength to bear, has his wife and children torn from him and sold away into another part of the country, if not even subjected to the worst indignities. With which of these very different kinds of slavery was it that the holy patriarchs of old had to do? Evidently with that involving the very slightest interference with liberty. That this is not too dogmatically alleged will at once appear if we consider for a little the social state of that early period. There are certain natural steps by which barbarous tribes advance to civilisation. First, the mass of the clan or horde support themselves by the chase; the pastoral state after a time succeeds; another interval elapses, and the pastoral is exchanged for the agricultural condition; finally, there follows the commercial and manufacturing stage of progress, the highest of which the world has yet had experience. In laying down the foregoing generalisation, it is needful to guard it in two different ways. It in no respect involves the adoption of the unscriptural view that the first progenitors of our race were barbarians. It leaves us free to hold, as we do on divine authority, that man was created a sinless being, in a state very far indeed removed from the savage one, and that, consequently, such tribes as we now find grovelling in barbarism must have lapsed from a much higher position. Nor, again, are we hereby committed to the opinion, with which many facts seem to conflict, that a nation once fallen as a rule never rises again without foreign aid. With these two cautions no danger can arise from reasserting the statement, that tribes advancing from barbarism to civilisation exist first as hunters, then as shepherds, next as agriculturists, finally reaching the state in which commerce and manufactures are the leading sources of wealth. It is of importance to the