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ORIGIN, CHARACTER, AND

are found in Levit. xxv, 44-46, allowed the Hebrews to enslave the Canaanites and other negro tribes, are we to suppose that Isaiah, under the same inspiration and law that Moses was, would contradict this? This trait of Hebrew national custom, namely, that of enslaving the blacks, had obtained from the days of Moses till the time of Isaiah, a lapse of full nine hundred years, and by the authority of the law, without reproof or restraint, as we have shown. Is it to be supposed that Isaiah would disregard all this, and deliberately write a new code on this subject, in exact competition with the very law to which he himself subscribed, and by which he, as well as every other Hebrew, was then governed? Had not Isaiah read, a thousand times, what Moses had said in Exod. xxiii, 32, respecting the Canaanites, namely, that the Hebrews, when they should come to possess the country of Canaan, were to make no covenants of amity or peace with the inhabitants, but were utterly to despise, ruin and destroy them? Had he not read the same thing in Deut. vii, 2, which directed the twelve tribes to smite and utterly destroy those nations, making no compacts with them at all? The passage in Deut. vii, 2, reads as follows: "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them [the Canaanites] before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them." Is it likely, therefore, that the Holy Ghost would contradict, by the pen of Isaiah, that which he had directed to be written in the law of Moses, and at a time, too, when that law was the ultimo of legislation to all the