CHAPTER XXIV.
MINT, CUMMIN AND ANNIS.
While the bench and bar were thus demanding the attention of the _Visiter_, the pulpit was examining its morals with a microscope, and defending the sum of all villainies as a Bible institution.

The American churches, with three exceptions, not only neglected "the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy," but were the main defense of the grossest injustice, the most revolting cruelty; and, to maintain an appearance of sanctity, were particularly devout and searching in the investigation of small sins.
A religions contemporary discovered that the _Visiter_ did actually advertise "Jayne's Expectorant," and such an expectoration of pious reprehension as this did call forth! The _Visiter_ denied that the advertisement was immoral, and carried the war into Africa--that old man-stealing Africa--and there took the ground that chattel slavery never did exist among the Jews; that what we now charge upon them as such was a system of bonded servitude; that the contract was originally between master and servant; the consideration of the labor paid to the servant; that in all cases of transfer, the master sold to another that portion of the time and labor of the servant, which were still due; that there was no hint of any man selling a free man into slavery for the benefit of the seller; that the servants bought from "the heathen around about," were bought from themselves, or in part at least, for their benefit, to bring them under general law and into the church; that nothing like American slavery was ever known in the days of Moses, or any other day than that of this great Republic, since our slavery was "the vilest that ever saw the sun," John Wesley being witness.
The _Visiter_ cited the purchase by Joseph of the people of Egypt, and Leviticus xxv, xxxix: "If thy brother be waxen poor and sell himself unto thee." The Bible had not then been changed to suit the exigencies of slavery.

In later editions, "sell himself" is converted into "be sold," but as the passage then stood it was a sledge-hammer with which one might beat the whole pro-slavery Bible argument into atoms, and while the _Visiter_ used it with all the force it could command, it took the ground that if the Bible did sanction slavery, the Bible must be wrong, since nothing could make slavery right..