THE GOSPEL AND SLAVERY.
How did they set to work to preach this? I will answer this question by
two others: How did Bossuet set to work to write his _Politique tirée de
l'Ecriture,_ to proclaim in the name of the Bible obligatory monarchy,
divine right, the absolute authority of kings, the duty of destroying
false religion by force, the duty of officially sustaining the truth,
the duty of having a budget of modes of worship, the duty of uniting
Church and State, without speaking of his Biblical apology for war, for
the use of Louis XIV.? How did certain doctors among the Roundheads, in
their turn, set to work to proclaim the divine right of republics, and
to ordain the massacre of the new Amalekites? The method is very simple:
it consists only in confounding the law with the Gospel. This confusion
once wrought, the political and civil institutions of the Old Testament
lose their temporary and local character, and we go to the New
Testament in search of what is not there: namely, political and civil
institutions.
Though the Gospel is not the law, it is a truth which has been making
its way since the seventeenth century, and which seems to be no longer
contested to-day, except in the camp of the champions of slavery. The
Gospel, which addresses itself to all nations and all ages, does not
pretend to force them into the strait vestments of the ancient Jewish
nation; no more does it pretend to "sew a piece of new cloth on an old
garment, else the new cloth taketh away from the old, and the rent is
made worse." I speak here with a view to those who, in the law as in the
Gospel, in the New Testament as in the Old, venerate the infallible word
of God. A revelation, to be divine, does not cease to be progressive,
and nothing exacts that all truths should be promulgated in a single
day. If God deemed proper to give to his people, so long as they needed
it, a legislation adapted to their social condition, this legislation,
divinely given at that time, may be also divinely abrogated afterward.
And this is what has taken place. Those who quote to us texts from the
Old Testament concerning slavery, appear to have forgotten the saying of
Jesus Christ in reference to another institution, divorce: "It was on
account of the hardness of your hearts." Yes, on account of the hardness
of their hearts, God established among the Israelites, incapable, at
that time, of rising higher, provisory regulations,[B] perfect as
regards his condescension, but most imperfect, as he declares himself,
as regards the absolute truth. He who makes no account of this great
fact will find in the books of Moses, and in the Prophets, pretexts
either for practising to-day what was tolerated only for a time, or for
attacking the Scriptures, indignant at what they contain.
It was Jesus Christ himself, therefore, who drew the line of demarcation
between the law and the Gospel--who announced the end of local and
temporary institutions. Has he revealed other institutions, this time
definitive? To form such an idea of the Gospel, we must never have
opened it. The Gospel is not a Koran. In the Koran, we doubtless find
both civil and criminal laws, and the principles of government; the
Apostles did not once tread on this ground. Fancy what their work would
have been, had they substituted a social for a spiritual revolution--had
they touched, above all, the question of slavery, which formed part of
the fundamental law of the ancient world. And here I wish my thought to
be clearly comprehended: I do not pretend that the Apostles were
conscious of the unlawfulness of slavery, and that they avoided pointing
it out through policy, for fear of compromising their work. No, indeed,
this happened unconsciously. According to all appearances, they held the
opinions of their times, and God revealed nothing to them on the
subject, wishing that the abolition of slavery, like all the social
results of the Gospel, should be produced by moral agency, which works
from within outward, which changes the heart before changing the
actions.
At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery;
they never wrote a word in their condemnation. They make allusions to
war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it;
they speak of the sword placed in the king's hands to punish crime, yet
say nothing of those atrocious tortures, in the first rank of which must
be cited crucifixion; they make use of figures borrowed from the public
games, yet say nothing either of the combats of the gladiators, or of
the abominations which sullied other spectacles; they unceasingly call
to mind the reciprocal relations of husbands and wives, of parents and
children, yet say nothing of the despotic authority which the Roman law
conferred upon the father, or of the debasement to which it condemned
the wife. The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself
with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social
revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of
them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and
immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of
women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which
attacks the very roots of the evil.
Not only does the Gospel forbear to touch on social and religious
problems, but, even on questions of morals, it refuses to furnish
detailed solutions. Its system of morality is very short; and in this
lies its greatness, through this it becomes morality instead of
casuistry. Cases of conscience, special directions, a moral code,
promulgated article by article--you will find in it nothing of this
sort. What you will find there, and there alone, is a growing morality,
which passes my expression. Two or three sayings were written eighteen
centuries ago, and these sayings contain in the germ a series of
commandments, of transformation, of progression, which we have not
nearly exhausted. I spoke a moment since of the progress of revelations;
I must speak now of the progress which is being wrought in virtue of a
revelation constantly the same, but constantly becoming better
understood, which multiplies our duties in proportion as it enlightens
our conscience. With the one saying: "What ye would that men should do
unto you, do ye also to them," the Gospel has opened before us infinite
vistas of moral development.
Before this one saying, the cruelties and infamous customs of ancient
society, not mentioned by the Apostles, have successively succumbed;
before this one saying, the modern family has been formed; before this
one saying, American slavery will disappear as European slavery has
disappeared already. With this saying, we are all advancing, we are
learning, and we shall continue to learn. Yes, the time will come, I am
convinced, when we shall see new duties rise up before us, when we
cannot with a clear conscience maintain customs, what, I know not, which
we maintain conscientiously to-day.
This carries us somewhat further, it must be granted, than a list of
fixed duties _ne varietur_; it opposes slavery in a different manner
than a sentence pronounced once for all. The Gospel took the surest
means of overthrowing it when, letting alone the reform of institutions,
it contented itself with pursuing that of sentiments; when it thus
prepared the time when the slaveholder himself would be forced to ask
what is contained in the inexhaustible saying: "What ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye also unto them." Even in the heart of the
Southern States, despite the triple covering of habits, prejudices, and
interests, this saying is making its way, and is disturbing the
consciences of the people much more than is generally believed. And the
work that it has begun it will finish; it will force the planters to
_translate_ the word SLAVERY, to consider one by one the abominable
practices which constitute it. Is it to do to others as we would that
they should do to us, to sell a family at retail? To maintain laws which
give over every slave, whether wife or maiden, to her owner, whatever he
may be, and which take away from this maiden, from this wife, the
_right_ of remembering her modesty and her duties--what do Christians
call this? To produce marketable negroes, to dissolve marriages, to
ordain adulteries, to inflict ignoble punishment, to interdict
instruction--is this doing to others what we would that they should do
to us?
The Christian sense of right is relentless, thank God; it does not
suffer itself to be deceived by appearances; where we dispute about
words, it forces us to go to facts. Now, look at the facts which are
really in question in America, when the great subject of slavery is
discussed there theoretically. Against the great evangelical system of
morality, the Judaical interpretations of such or such a text have
little chance. The epistle of Paul, sending back to Philemon his
fugitive slave Onesimus, is quoted to us. Assuredly, the Apostle
pronounces in it no anathema against slavery, nor does he exact
enfranchisement; these ideas were unknown to him; but he says: "I
beseech thee for my son whom I have begotten in my bonds, whom I have
sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is my own bowels. Without
thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were
of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a
season, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant,
but above a servant, a brother beloved. Having confidence in thy
obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt do also more than I
say."
Does any one fancy Philemon treating Onesimus, after this epistle, as
fugitive slaves are treated in America, putting up his wife and children
directly after for sale, or delivering him, over to the first slave
merchant that was willing to take charge of him, and carry him a hundred
leagues away? It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told
him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and
well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned
about the spiritual interests of the church.
Do what one will, there is an implied abolition of slavery (implied but
positive) at the bottom of that close fraternity created by the faith in
the Saviour. Between _brethren_, the relation of master and slave, of
merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an
auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for
which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense
of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there
is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor
barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in
all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would
say to-day if the epistle to Philemon were addressed to them; and it is
addressed to them; the Onesimuses of the South--and such there are--are
thus thrown upon the conscience of their masters, their brothers.
I have said enough on the subject to dispense with examining very
numerous passages in which slavery is _supposed_ by the writers of the
New Testament. The duties of masters and of slaves are laid down by them
without doubt, and the existence of the institution is not contested for
a moment; only, it is brought face to face with that which will slay it:
the doctrine of salvation through Christ, of pardon, of humility, of
love, is, in itself, and without the necessity of expressing it, the
absolute negation of slavery.
It has fully proved so, and the early ages of Christianity leave no
doubt as to the interpretation given by Christians to the teachings of
the Apostles. Despite the rapid corruptions introduced into the
churches, we see one brilliant fact shining forth in them: emancipations
becoming more frequent, slaves, as well as free men, succeeding to
ecclesiastical offices, spiritual equality producing the fruit which it
cannot help producing, namely, legal equality. Observe, too, how the
edicts of the emperors multiplied as soon as the influence of
Christianity was exerted in the Roman world. And all these edicts had
but one aim: to sweeten servitude, to increase affranchisement by law,
to facilitate voluntary emancipation.
What the Gospel did then against European slavery, it is doing now
against American slavery. Its end is the same; its weapons are the same;
they have not rusted during eighteen centuries. Those planters of the
English islands were not mistaken, who, instinctively divining where lay
their great enemy, had recourse to every measure to expel missionaries
from among them. Neither were those Texan executioners mistaken, who
lately put to death the missionary Bewley, a touching martyr to the
cause of the slaves. I ask, in the face of the gallows of Bewley, what
we are to think of that prodigious paradox according to which the Gospel
is the patron of slavery. To those who mistake its meaning on this
point, the Gospel replies by its acts; it replies also by the unanimous
testimony of its servants. What is more striking, in fact, than to see
that, apart from the country in which the action of interests and habits
disturbs the judgment of Christians, there is but one way of
comprehending and interpreting the Scripture on this point? Consult
England, France, Germany; Christians everywhere will tell you that the
Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which
would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would
not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges?
To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which
continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery;
see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of
five hundred and seventy-one French churches, which has gone to carry to
the United States the undoubted testimony of a conviction which in truth
is that of all.
It seems to me that our demonstration is complete. What would it be if I
should add that American slavery, which its friends so strangely claim
to place under the protection of the Apostles, has nothing in common
with that of which the Apostles had cognizance. The thing, however, is
certain. Slavery, in the United States, is founded on color, it is
_negro_ slavery. Now, this is a fact wholly new in the history of
mankind, a monstrous fact, which profoundly modifies the nature of
slavery. Before Las Casas, that virtuous creator of the slave trade, the
name of which comprises to him alone a whole commentary on the maxim "Do
evil that good may come," before Las Casas, no one had thought of
connecting slavery with race. Now, the slavery connected with race is
that of all others most difficult to uproot, for it bears an indelible
sign of inequality, a sign which the law did not create, and which it
cannot destroy.
Such was not the slavery that offered itself to the eyes of the Prophets
and Apostles; a normal servitude, of right, based upon a native and
indestructible inferiority was not then in question, but an accidental
servitude among equals, to which the chances of war had given birth, and
which emancipation suppressed entire. Quite different is the slavery
which depends on race, and which, it may be said, supposes a
malediction; do what one will, this latter will subsist, it will, in a
manner, survive itself; it will find, besides, in the idea of a
providential dispensation, the natural excuse for its excesses. This
slavery the Bible condemns in the most explicit manner. If its champions
dare suppose two species, the book of Genesis shows them all mankind
springing from one man, and the Gospel recounts to them the redemption
wrought in behalf of all the descendants of Adam; if they argue from the
curse pronounced against Canaan, the Old Testament presents to them the
detailed enumeration of the Canaanites, a vast family, in which the
whites figure as well as the blacks.
In short, there is a deadly struggle between the Gospel and slavery
under all its forms, and particularly under the odious form which the
African slave trade has given it in modern times. The Gospel has been,
is, and will be, at the head of every earnest movement directed against
slavery. It is important that it should be so; it is the only means of
avoiding the acts of violence, the revolts, the extreme calamities from
which the whites and the blacks would equally suffer. The Gospel is
admirable, inasmuch as by the side of the duties of masters, it
proclaims those of slaves; as in the time of the Apostles, it does not
hesitate to recommend to them gentleness, submission, scrupulous
fidelity, love for those who maltreat them, the practice of difficult
virtues; it makes them free within, in order to render them capable of
becoming free without.
To judge of this method, we have only to compare the miserable
population of St. Domingo with the beautiful free villages which cover
the English islands. How true the saying: "The wrath of man never
accomplishes the justice of God." Wherever the wrath of man has had full
sway, even to chastise abominable abuses, it has remained a curse. I
tremble when I think of the revolts which may break out at any moment in
the Southern States. Bloodshed, let us not forget, would sully our
banner; to the right of the slaves, such a crisis would be forever
opposed, and who knows whether a terrible return might not burst upon
them?
The mind becomes troubled at the mere image of the horrors that would
ensue from civil war. May the Christians of America comprehend, at
length, in a more perfect manner, the greatness of the part that God
reserves for them, and the extent of the responsibilities that are
weighing upon them. To take a stand frankly against slavery; to remove
their last pretexts from sincere men who seek to reconcile it with the
Gospel; to organize in the North the action of a vast moral power; to
address to the South words breathing forth truth and charity; to appeal
without wearying to the hearts of masters and slaves; to prepare for
trying moments that guarantee which nothing can replace, the common
faith of the blacks and the whites; to keep courage even when all seems
lost; to practise the Christian vocation, which consists in pursuing and
realizing the impossible; to show once more to the world the power that
resides in justice--this is to accomplish a noble task.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote B: These provisory and imperfect regulations appear none the
less admirable when compared, not only with the systems of legislation
of other nations of antiquity, but with those which prevail to-day even
in the Southern States. According to the law of Moses, the Jewish slave
always becomes free in seven years; the foreign slave also becomes free
when his master wounds him in chastising him; he has the right to
testify in law; he has the right to acquire and to possess.]