Perhaps the Bible was inspired upon the subject of human slavery. Is
there, in the civilized world, to-day, a clergyman who believes in the
divinity of slavery? Does the Bible teach man to enslave his brother? If
it does, is it not blasphemous to say that it is inspired of God? If
you find the institution of slavery upheld in a book said to have been
written by God, what would you expect to find in a book inspired by the
devil? Would you expect to find that book in favor of liberty? Modern
Christians, ashamed of the God of the Old Testament, endeavor now to
show that slavery was neither commanded nor opposed by Jehovah. Nothing
can be plainer than the following passages from the twenty-fifth chapter
of Leviticus. "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with
you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to
inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bondmen forever. Both
thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the
heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen, and
bondmaids."
Can we believe in this, the Nineteenth Century, that these infamous
passages were inspired by God? that God approved not only of human
slavery, but instructed his chosen people to buy the women, children and
babes of the heathen round about them? If it was right for the Hebrews
to buy, it was also right for the heathen to sell. This God, by
commanding the Hebrews to buy, approved of the selling of sons and
daughters. The Canaanite who, tempted by gold, lured by avarice, sold
from the arms of his wife the dimpled babe, simply made it possible for
the Hebrews to obey the orders of their God. If God is the author of
the Bible, the reading of these passages ought to cover his cheeks with
shame. I ask the Christian world to-day, was it right for the heathen
to sell their children? Was it right for God not only to uphold, but to
command the infamous traffic in human flesh? Could the most revengeful
fiend, the most malicious vagrant in the gloom of hell, sink to a lower
moral depth than this?
According to this God, his chosen people were not only commanded to buy
of the heathen round about them, but were also permitted to buy each
other for a term of years. The law governing the purchase of Jews is
laid down in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus. "If thou buy a Hebrew
servant, six years shall he serve: and in the seventh he shall go out
free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself:
if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master
have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the
wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by
himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my
wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall
bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto
the door-post: and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl:
and he shall serve him forever."
Do you believe that God was the author of this infamous law? Do you
believe that the loving father of us all, turned the dimpled arms of
babes into manacles of iron? Do you believe that he baited the dungeon
of servitude with wife and child? Is it possible to love a God who would
make such laws? Is it possible not to hate and despise him?
The heathen are not spoken of as human beings. Their rights are never
mentioned. They were the rightful food of the sword, and their bodies
were made for stripes and chains.
In the same chapter of the same inspired book, we are told that, "if a
man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he dies under his
hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day
or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money."
Must we believe that God called some of his children the money of
others? Can we believe that God made lashes upon the naked back, a
legal tender for labor performed? Must we regard the auction block as an
altar? Were blood hounds apostles? Was the slave-pen a temple? Were the
stealers and whippers of babes and women the justified children of God?
It is now contended that while the Old Testament is touched with the
barbarism of its time, that the New Testament is morally perfect, and
that on its pages can be found no blot or stain. As a matter of fact,
the New Testament is more decidedly in favor of human slavery than the
old.
For my part, I never will, I never can, worship a God who upholds the
institution of slavery. Such a God I hate and defy. I neither want his
heaven, nor fear his hell.