age at the pleasure or interest of the master; which regards them equally as chattels with the horses and cows of the field; which tears him from his wife and children, and sends him into distant bondage; nay, which denies to him the right of marriage, and the right of the control and education of his own children; and, to cap the climax of moral wrong, denies to him the right, and forcibly withholds it from him, of learning to read God's Holy Word; and yet appeals to that Word in support of its unjust and unprincipled ordinances!

The Saviour and his apostles were careful to abstain from interfering in all matters of "Cæsar"-in all matters of civil and political institutions, however wrong, or even atrocious. These he proposed to correct by correcting the private characters of both subjects and rulers-the only way in which they could possibly be corrected. To have done otherwise, would have been to strangle the infant religion in its birth. But the law of universal love was applied to every evil institution, moral and political, and cut it up by the roots.

THE REMEDY.

What remedy do we propose for this great evil? We do not now propose emancipation, either immediate or gradual. We were not in favor of the President's proclamation of freedom, or the arming of negroes. Our only remedy is that which the Saviour Himself proposed for every human evil, moral and political the Gospel. It is the full and free communication of the truths of Christianity, and moral intelligence, and the Bible itself to the negro race among us. We would be perfectly content then to leave their fate, in every other respect, untouched, and their ultimate destiny to be worked by the gospel alone. We insist upon the full performance of this duty on the part of the white racea duty that can not be neglected without overwhelming guilt, and without most destructive consequences to both races-a duty which God has imposed, and which is not to be shunned with impunity. It is a duty as yet scarcely at all performed to any appreciable extent. It is the duty of the North and of the South. It is our duty, if Slavery continues to exist; it is our duty, if it is overthrown by the war. It is the object for which God, in His Providence, permitted this oppressed race to be brought among us.

The African race is one of the permanent races of the earththeir number is variously estimated from fifty to one hundred millions. They will be christianized. The gospel can be better taught to them by men of their own race than by the whites. Providence has brought and raised up among us over four millions, under most favorable circumstances for improvement. This has been slowly advancing for two centuries. But the time has come for more effective and rapid progress. Besides all the usual and obvious ways of proceeding in the execution of this great duty, there are two things which we desire to suggest as, in our view, indispensable to success. The low and exposed moral condition. of the female slaves has been very distinctly alluded to by Mr. Rice. Here is a point of vital importance. If the women of this unfortunate race can not be raised in character, nothing can be done of much effect in their behalf. In this matter we are peculiarly guilty. The virtue of our female servants has been little more to us than that of our cows. We have given no attention whatever to their training. Not a virtuous idea has ever been inculcated-not an admonition given. Not a spark of interest in their moral welfare manifested. Their lapse from virtue has never, in the slightest degree, disturbed master or mistress, or even young mistress, upon whom they have waited, only so far as its consequences may have interfered with their convenience or interest. The character of the unfortunate girl, to refer to a single instance, has not suffered in the least. She is neither more nor less esteemed than before. She and her child are well and kindly cared for as property, and perhaps even affectionately cared for as human beings. The babe is smiled on and even petted. But nothing more is said or done. No inquiry made; no questions asked; no regret expressed; none felt. The whole matter is passed by with as much nonchalance as the birth of a calf or colt, perhaps more. The poor girl is undegraded in the eyes of all around her, and, of course, in her own eyes. She has no character-she is conscious of possessing none. She feels no responsibility to God or man. She has grown up without religious ideas, and lives without them, and dies without them. If a different result follows, as often does, it is of spontaneous action. The female heart, at length, yearns after a mate of its own and finds one, and honorable to human nature, remains faithful to the husband of her affections till he is torn from her. His loss or that of some of her children

by sale, if it does not harden and brutalize her heart, or some other afflictive providence at length, brings her in tears of penitence before God, of whom she has learned something, and to seek for the sympathy of Christ, of whose love to sinners she has heard whisperings, which have sunk into her heart. She becomes, in her simple way, a faithful Christian; with a few plain principles of the gospel and her own good sense, and renewed heart alone to guide her.

Now, all this must be changed. Those servants must be cared for from their infancy-instruction in all virtuous principles and conduct must be given them-they should be watched over and admonished, encouraged and threatened. Lapse from good conduct should bring disgrace and punishment. Marriage should be promoted and held sacred. The separation of husband and wife, parent and child, should be considered infamous and inconsistent with the first principles of a Christian profession. In a single generation, under such a course of treatment, the whole character of the negro race would be greatly changed for the better. This course of treatment is our bounden duty, for which we shall be held to fearful responsibility, whether the present war shall result in their liberation, or not. If it does, every principle and motive of Christian duty, and private and national welfare and interest, will impel to the full and faithful communication of the gospel to this race, whom God has placed under our care for that express purpose, and none other. Woe, woe-tenfold and unutterable woe to us, if we are found delinquents toward them in this behalf. Better, as a nation, we had never been born-better a mill-stone were hanging about our necks, and we were cast into the midst of the sea.

PREPARATION OF A NATIVE MINISTRY.

In order to the effectual communication of the gospel to the negro race, an intelligent, native ministry must be raised up. Their present religious opportunities are wholly haphazard. They are in some churches allowed an obscure corner in the house; which a few of them creep into, as if ashamed to be seen there, and where they gather up a few of the crumbs which fall from the master's table. Many more of them have to rely for all their religious instruction upon native preachers wholly, or nearly wholly, ignorant of lettersblind leaders of the blind-sometimes men of notoriously bad character, who assume the position from sinister motives; while some of them are, no doubt, sincere men in their way. Their readiness

to attend upon a native ministry in crowds, and their unwillingness to attend upon the preaching of white men, are notorious. It is useless to say, they must or ought to attend upon the same ministry with their masters, or, if free, with the whites. The answer is, they won't do it, and there's an end on't. An intelligent native ministry they must have, and it is our duty to provide it for them. Pious colored youths should be raised up, and sought out, and brought into the ministry, both free and slave, with more or less education, adequate to the calls of the case. This must be done, or the negroes will remain semi-heathen, however, many of them may crowd the native meeting-houses, for long years to come. We are profoundly impressed with this fact, and only wish we could impress our readers as profoundly as it stirs our own bosom. Here is the great mission and duty of the Christian Church of America. Let us do our full duty to the heathen abroad; but we are unspeakably guilty if we neglect those at home for whom Christ died, and whom He has placed in our very families to be brought up in His kingdom for Him-instruments to be prepared for the further and greater work of evangelizing the many millions of their brethren in the father-land. It especially behooves the Presbyterian Church, as foremost in every good work of education, to take the lead in this matter, and establish a school in Kentucky for the education and training of native negro ministers of the gospel. This will, no doubt, be thought by some a startling proposition; but we live in an era of revolution and startling events. A new order of things has come. Let us remember it has come under God, and must be met by the Christian Church and its members at least, and dealt with as these terrible events demand. There will be no escaping and shirking duty. It has seized us unceremoniously by the throat and sternly demands payment and performance. Obedience will be life and health, prosperity and happiness-the favor and approval of God, of our own consciences, and the whole Christian world. Disobedience will be-but we turn our visions with fear and terror from the dark and fearful retributions which would follow. We will not anticipate them.

The duty is plain, and we content ourselves for the present with having done our duty in its simple proposal, leaving it to the Church for matter of thoughtful consideration. We pray God this may be done in a manner becoming the gravity and importance of the subject and duty.

ART. VI.-Experiment in Translation of the Talmud-Valuable Things in the Talmud.

ABODAH ZARAH is the Hebrew word for idolatry, or heathen worship. It is also the name of one of the thirty-six divisions of the Talmud-that division which is the treatise on the relations between Jews and Gentiles. The Rev. Ferdinand Christian Ewald, of London, in 1856, presented to the theological world a book, with the title Abodah Zarah-a translation of all the division or treatise in the Talmud bearing this name. He felt that, in this translation, he was cutting out a new path, in which there was no forerunner for him, on whom he could keep his eye. He says, in his Preface, that while the sacred literature of the most distant nations has been given to us in translations and treatises, the Talmud still remains a sealed book. No complete translation of even a single division of the Talmud had ever come to his knowledge. We rejoice at the sight of this translation. There are many facts locked up in the Talmud, sufficient to build up a new Fort Defiance for Christianity against modern Rationalists. Very few Christian Theologians know what weapons there are for them in the Talmud against infidels, and what help there is for the elucidation of Scripture. If any scholar wishes to make the Talmud, in its origi nal language, a particular study, there may be no better help for him in the world than this work of Ewald.

Many readers would pronounce the translator's introduction by far the most instructive and entertaining part of the whole book. The introduction explains that tradition of the Elders, or oral law, so often mentioned and censured in the New Testament, and which is embodied in the Talmud. The writer considers the Talmud as covering a period of about eight centuries-two centuries before Christ, and nearly six centuries after. Our previous impression was, that the Talmud was, in every sense, finished in the fifth century by the Rabbis Ashi and Abina, but we see that this writer considers Rabbi Jose as making a final slight addition to its contents in the sixth century. It was, accordingly, about two hundred years before Christ when the Rabbis began to talk in their schools about an oral law, a second law, a tradition, a Mishna, which should have traveled down to them from Sinai, in a line parallel with a line of the written law, and in the light of which