Could Christ and the Apostles every where among their countrymen come in contact with slaveholding, being as it was a gross violation of that law which their office and their profession required them to honor and enforce, without exposing and condemning it.
In its worst forms, we are told, slavery prevailed over the whole world, not excepting Judea.

As, according to such ecclesiastics as Stuart, Hodge, and Fisk, slavery in itself is not bad at all, the term "_worst_" could be applied only to "_abuses_" of this innocent relation.

Slavery accordingly existed among the Jews, disfigured and disgraced by the "worst abuses" to which it is liable.

These abuses in the ancient world, Prof.Stuart describes as "horrible cruelties." And in our own country, such abuses have grown so rank, as to lead a distinguished eye-witness--no less a philosopher and statesman than Thomas Jefferson--to say, that they had armed against us every attribute of the Almighty.

With these things the Savior every where came in contact, among the people to whose improvement and salvation he devoted his living powers, and yet not a word, not a syllable, in exposure and condemnation of such "horrible cruelties," escaped his lips! He saw--among the "covenant people" of Jehovah he saw, the babe plucked from the bosom of its mother; the wife torn from the embrace of her husband; the daughter driven to the market by the scourge of her own father;--he saw the word of God sealed up from those who, of all men, were especially entitled to its enlightening, quickening influence;--nay, he saw men beaten for kneeling before the throne of heavenly mercy;--such things he saw without a word of admonition or reproof! No sympathy with them who suffered wrong--no indignation at them who inflicted wrong, moved his heart! From the alledged silence of the Savior, when in contact with slavery among the Jews, our divines infer, that it is quite consistent with Christianity.