declaring slavery to be sinful, "it must have been, because they did not
consider it as, in itself, a crime. No other solution of their conduct
is consistent with their truth or fidelity." But he believes that they
did abstain from so doing; and he believes this, on the same evidence,
on which he believes, that they abstained from declaring the races,
games, &c., above enumerated, to be sinful. His own mode of reasoning,
therefore, brings him unavoidably to the conclusion, that these races,
games, &c., were not sinful.]
It may be, that the Saviour and the Apostles, in the course of their
teachings, both oral and written, did specify sins to a far greater
extent, than they are supposed to have done. It may be, that their
followers had much instruction, in respect to the great sin of slavery.
We must bear in mind, that but a very small part of that Divine
instruction, which, on the testimony of an Apostle, "the world itself
could not contain if written," has come down to us. Of the writings of
our Saviour we have nothing. Of those of his Apostles a very small part.
It is probable, that, during his protracted ministry, the learned
apostle to the Gentiles wrote many letters on religious subjects to
individuals and to churches. So also of the immense amount of
instruction, which fell from the lips of the Apostles, but very little
is preserved. It was Infinite Wisdom, however, which determined the size
of the New, as well as of the Old Testament, and of what kinds and
portions of the Saviour's and the Apostles' instructions it should
consist. For obvious considerations, it is made up, in a great measure,
of general truths and propositions. Its limited size, if no other
reason, accounts for this. But, these general truths and propositions
are as comprehensive as the necessity of the case requires; and, carried
out into all their suitable applications they leave no sin unforbidden.
Small as is the New Testament, it is as large as we need. It instructs
us in relation to all our duties. It is as full on the subject of
slavery, as is necessary; and, if we will but obey its directions, that
bear on this subject, and "love one another," and love our neighbors as
ourselves, and, as we would that men should do to us, do "also to them
likewise," and "remember them, that are in bonds as bound with them,"
and "give unto servants, that which is just and equal"--not a vestige of
this abomination will remain.
For the sake of the argument, I will admit, that the Apostles made no
specific attack on slavery[A]; and that they left it to be reached and
overthrown, provided it be sinful, by the general principles and
instructions which they had inculcated. But you will say, that it was
their practice, in addition to inculcating such principles and
instructions, to point out sins and reprove them:--and you will ask,
with great pertinence and force, why they did not also point out and
reprove slavery, which, in the judgment of abolitionists, is to be
classed with the most heinous sins. I admit, that there is no question
addressed to abolitionists, which, after the admission I have made for
them, it is less easy to answer; and I admit further, that they are
bound to answer it. I will proceed to assign what to me appear to be
some of the probable reasons, why the Apostles specified the sins of
lying, covetousness, stealing, &c., and, agreeably to the admission,
which lays me under great disadvantage, did not specify slavery.
[Footnote A: This is no small admission in the face of the passage, in
the first chapter of Timothy, which particularizes manstealing, as a
violation of the law of God. I believe all scholars will admit, that one
of the crimes referred to by the Apostle, is kidnapping. But is not
kidnapping an integral and most vital part of the system of slavery? And
is not the slaveholder guilty of this crime? Does he not, indeed, belong
to a class of kidnappers stamped with peculiar meanness? The pirate, on
the coast of Africa, has to cope with the strength and adroitness of
mature years. To get his victim into his clutches is a deed of daring
and of peril demanding no little praise, upon the principles of the
world's "code of honor." But the proud chivalry of the South is securely
employed in kidnapping newborn infants. The pirate, in the one case,
soothes his conscience with the thought, that the bloody savages merit
no better treatment, than they are receiving at his hands:--but the
pirate, in the other, can have no such plea--for they, whom he kidnaps,
are untainted with crime.
And what better does it make the case for you, if we adopt the
translation of "men stealers?" Far better, you will say, for, on the
authority of Othello himself,
"He that is robb'd------
Let him not know it, and he's not robbed at all."
But, your authority is not conclusive. The crime of the depredation is
none the less, because the subject is ignorant or unconscious of it. It
is true, the slave, who never possessed liberty--who was kidnapped at
his birth--may not grieve, under the absence of it, as he does, from
whose actual and conscious possession it had been violently taken: but
the robbery is alike plain, and is coupled with a meanness, in the one
case, which does not disgrace it in the other. ]
1st. The book of Acts sets forth the fundamental doctrines and
requirements of Christianity. It is to the letters of the Apostles we
are to look for extended specifications of right and wrong affections,
and right and wrong practices. Why do these letters omit to specify the
sin of slaveholding? Because they were addressed to professing
Christians exclusively; who, far more emphatically then than now, were
"the base things of the world," and were in circumstances to be slaves,
rather than slaveholders. Doubtless, there were many slaves amongst
them--but I cannot admit, that there were slaveholders. There is not the
least probability, that slaveholding was a prevalent sin amongst
primitive Christians[B]. Instructions to them on that sin might have
been almost as superfluous, as would be lectures on the sin of luxury,
addressed to the poor Greenland disciples, whose poverty compels them to
subsist on filthy oil. No one, acquainted with the history of their
lives, believes that the Apostles were slave-holders. They labored,
"working with (their) own hands." The supposition, that they were
slaveholders, is inconsistent with their practice, and with the tenor of
their instructions to others on the duty of manual labor. But if the
Apostles were not slaveholders, why may we suppose, that their disciples
were? At the South, it is, "like people, like priest," in this matter.
There, the minister of the gospel thinks, that he has as good right to
hold slaves, as has his parishioner: and your Methodists go so far, as
to say, that even a bishop has as good right, as any other person, to
have slaves
[Footnote B: How strongly does the following extract from the writings
of the great and good Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, argue,
that slaveholding was not a prevalent sin amongst primitive Christians!
"Non opurtet Christianum possidere servum quomodo equum aut argentum.
Quis dicere audeat ut vestimentum cum debere contemni? Hominem namque
homo tamquam seipsum diligere debet cui ab omnium Domino, ut inimicos
diligat, imperatur." _A Christian ought not to hold his servant as he
does his horse or his money. Who dares say that he should be thought as
lightly of as a garment? For man, whom the Lord of all has commanded to
love his enemies, should love his fellow-man as himself._]
"------to fan him while he sleeps,
And tremble when he wakes."
Indeed, they already threaten to separate from their Northern brethren,
unless this right be conceded. But have we not other and conclusive
evidence, that primitive Christians were not slaveholders? We will cite
a few passages from the Bible to show, that it was not the will of the
Apostles to have their disciples hold manual labor in disrepute, as it
is held, in all slaveholding communities. "Do your own business, and
work with your own hands, as we commanded you." "For this we commanded
you, that, if any would not work, neither should he eat." "Let him that
stole, steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands
the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth."
In bringing the whole verse into this last quotation, I may have
displeased you. I am aware, that you slaveholders proudly and
indignantly reject the applicableness to yourselves of the first phrase
in this verse, and also of the maxim, that "the partaker of stolen goods
is as bad as the thief." I am aware, that you insist, that the
kidnapping of a man, or getting possession of him, after he has been
kidnapped, is not to be compared, if indeed it can be properly called
theft at all, with the crime of stealing a _thing_. It occurs to me,
that if a shrewd lawyer had you on trial for theft, he would say, that
you were _estopped_ from going into this distinction between a _man_ and
a _thing_, inasmuch as, by your own laws, the slave is expressly
declared to be a _chattel_--is expressly _elevated_ into a _thing_. He
would say, however competent it may be for others to justify themselves
on the ground, that it was but a _man_, and not a _thing_, they had
stolen; your own statutes, which, with magic celerity, convert stolen
men into things, make such a plea, on your part, utterly inadmissible.
He would have you as fast, as though the stolen goods, in your hands,
were a bushel of wheat, or some other important _thing_, instead of _a
mere man_.
But, if you are not yet convinced that primitive Christians were not
slaveholders, let me cite another passage to show you, how very
improbable it is, that they stood in this capacity:--"all, that
believed, had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods,
and parted them to all men, as every man had need." Now I do not say,
that all the primitive believers did so. But if a portion of them did,
and met with the Apostles' approbation in it, is it at all probable,
that a course, so diverse from it, as that of slaveholding in the
Church, met likewise with their approbation?
2d. I go on to account for the Apostles' omission to specify slavery.
Criminality is not always obvious, in proportion to its extent. The sin
of the traffic in intoxicating liquors, was, until the last few years,
almost universally unfelt and unperceived. But now, we meet with men,
who, though it was "in all good conscience," that they were once engaged
in it, would not resume it for worlds; and who see more criminality, in
taking money from a fellow man, in exchange for the liquor which
intoxicates him, than in simple theft. However it may be with others, in
this employment, they now see, that, for them to traffic in intoxicating
liquors, would be to stain themselves with the twofold crime of robbery
and murder. How is it, that good men ever get into this
employment?--and, under what influences and by what process of thought,
do they come to the determination to abandon it? The former is accounted
for, by the fact, that they grow up--have their education--their moral
and intellectual training--in the midst of a public opinion, and even of
laws also, which favor and sanction the employment. The latter is
accounted for, by the fact, that they are brought, in the merciful
providence of God, to observe and study and understand the consequences
of their employment--especially on those who drink their liquor--the
liquor which they sell or make, or, with no less criminality, furnish
the materials for making. These consequences they find to be "evil, only
evil, and that continually." They find, that this liquor imparts no
benefit to them who drink it, but tends to destroy, and, oftentimes,
does destroy, their healths and lives. To continue, therefore, in an
employment in which they receive their neighbor's money, without
returning him an equivalent, or any portion of an equivalent, and, in
which they expose both his body and soul to destruction, is to make
themselves, in their own judgments, virtually guilty of theft and
murder.
Thus it is in the case of a national war, waged for conquest. Christians
have taken part in it; and, because they were blinded by a wrong
education, and were acting in the name of their country and under the
impulses of patriotism, they never suspected that they were doing the
devil, instead of "God, service." But when, in the kind providence of
God, one of these butchers of their fellow beings is brought to pause
and consider his ways, and to resolve his enormous and compound sin into
its elements of wickedness,--into the lies, theft, covetousness,
adultery, murder, and what not of crime, which enter into it,--he is
amazed that he has been so "slow of heart to believe," and abandon the
iniquity of his deeds.
What I have said to show that Christians, even in enlightened and
gospelized lands, may be blind to the great wickedness of certain
customs and institutions, serves to introduce the remark; that there
were probably some customs and institutions, in the time of the
Apostles, on which it would have been even worse than lost labor for
them to make direct attacks. Take, for example, the kind of war of which
we have been speaking. If there are reasons why the modern Christian can
be insensible to the sin of it, there are far stronger reasons why the
primitive Christian could be. If the light and instruction which have
been accumulating for eighteen centuries, are scarcely sufficient to
convince Christians of its wickedness, is it reasonable to suppose that,
at the commencement of this long period, they could have been
successfully taught it? Consider, that at that time the literature and
sentiment of the world were wholly on the side of war; and especially,
consider how emphatically the authority of civil government and of human
law was in favor of its rightfulness. Now, to how great an extent such
authority covers over and sanctifies sin, may be inferred from the fact,
that there are many, who, notwithstanding they believe slavery to be a
most Heaven-daring sin, yet, because it is legalized and under the wing
of civil government, would not have it spoken against. Even Rev. Dr.
Miller, in certain resolutions which he submitted to the last General
Assembly, indicated his similar reverence for human laws; and the
lamented Dr. Rice distinctly recognises, in his letter to Mr. Maxwell,
the doctrine that the Church is bound to be quiet about every sin which
the civil government adopts and whitewashes. That the Christian
Spectator should indorse the Doctor's sentiments on this point is still
more worthy of remark than that he should utter them. Indeed, I judge
from what you say on the 68th and 69th pages of your book, that you are
yourself opposed to calling in question the morality of that which civil
government approves. But, to doubt the infallibility of civil
government,--to speak against Caesar,--was manifestly held to be quite
as presumptuous in the time of the Apostles as it is now.
Another reason why an Apostle would probably have deemed it hopeless to
attempt to persuade his disciples, immediately and directly, of the sin
of war, is to be found in the fact of their feeble and distorted
perception of truth and duty. We, whose advantage it is to have lived
all our days in the light of the gospel, and whose ancestors, from time
immemorial, had the like precious advantage, can hardly conceive how
very feeble and distorted was that perception. But, consider for a
moment who those disciples were. They had, most of them, but just been
taken out of the gross darkness and filth of heathenism. In reading
accounts which missionaries give of converted heathen--of such, even, as
have for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, been reputed to be pious--you
are, doubtless, often surprised to find how grossly erroneous are their
moral perceptions. Their false education still cleaves to them. They are
yet, to a great extent, in the mould of a corrupted public opinion; and,
as far from having a clear discernment of moral truth, as were the
partially unsealed eyes which saw "men, as trees, walking." The first
letter to the Church at Corinth, proves that the new principles
implanted in its members had not yet purged out the leaven of their old
wickedness; and that their conceptions of Christian purity and conduct
were sadly defective. As it was with the Corinthian Christians, so was
it to a great extent with the other Christians of that age. Now, if the
Apostles did not directly teach the primitive believers that wars, and
theatres, and games, and slavery, are sinful, it is because they thought
it more fit to exercise their ignorant pupils chiefly in the mere
alphabet and syllables of Christianity. (Acts xv, 28, 29.) The
construction of words and sentences would naturally follow. The
rudiments of the gospel, if once possessed by them, would be apt to lead
them on to greater attainments. Indeed, the love, peace, truth, and
other elements of holy living inculcated by the Apostles, would, if
turned to all proper account, be fatal to every, even the most gigantic,
system of wickedness. Having these elements in their minds and hearts,
they would not fail of condemning the great and compound sin of war
whenever they should be led to take it up, examine it, resolve it into
its constituent parts, and lay these parts for comparison, by the side
of those elements. But, such an advance was hardly to be expected from
many of these heathen converts during the brief period in which they
enjoyed Apostolic instruction; and it is but too probable, that most of
them died in great ignorance of the sin of national wars. Converts from
the heathen, in the present age, when conviction of the sinfulness of
war is spreading in different parts of Christendom, would be more likely
to imbibe correct views of it.
The Apostles "fed with milk" before they fed with meat, as did our
Saviour, who declared, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now." In every community, the foundation principles of
righteousness must be laid, before there can be fulcrums for the levers
to be employed in overthrowing the sins which prevail in it. You will
doubtless, then, agree with me, that it is not probable that the
Apostles taught their heathen converts, directly and specifically, the
sinfulness of war. But slaves, in that age, with the exception of the
comparative few who were reduced to slavery on account of the crimes of
which they had been judicially convicted, were the spoils of war. How
often in that age, as was most awfully the fact, on the final
destruction of Jerusalem, were the slave-markets of the world glutted by
the captives of war! Until, therefore, they should be brought to see the
sinfulness of war, how could they see the sinfulness of so direct and
legitimate a fruit of it as slavery?--and, if the Apostles thought their
heathen converts too weak to be instructed in the sinfulness of war, how
much more would they abstain from instructing them, directly and
specifically, in the sin of slavery!
3d. In proceeding with my reasons why the Apostles did not extend their
specification of sins to slavery, I remark, that it is apparent from the
views we have taken, and from others which might have been taken, that
nothing would have been gained by their making direct and specific
attacks on the institutions of the civil governments under which they
lived. Indeed, much might have been lost by their doing so. Weak
converts, with still many remains of heathenism about them, might in
this wise have been incurably prejudiced against truths, which, by other
modes of teaching,--by general and indirect instructions,--would
probably have been lodged in their minds. And there is another point of
view in which vastly more, even their lives, might have been lost, by
the Apostles making the direct and specific attacks referred to. I know
that you ridicule the idea of their consulting their personal safety.
But what right have you to do so? They did, on many occasions, consult
the security of their lives. They never perilled them needlessly, and
through a presumptuous reliance on God. It is the devil, who, in a
garbled quotation from the Scriptures, lays down, in unlimited terms,
the proposition, that God will keep his children. But, God promises them
protection only when they are in their own proper ways. The Saviour
himself consulted the safety of his life, until his "time" had "full
come;" and his command to his Apostles was, "when they persecute you in
this city, flee ye into another." If you suppose me to admit for a
moment, that regard for the safety of their lives ever kept them from
the way of their duty, you are entirely mistaken; and, if you continue
to assert, in the face of my reasoning to the contrary, that on the
supposition of the sinfulness of slavery, their omission to make direct
and specific attacks on it would have been a failure of their duty, then
I can only regret that this reasoning has had no more influence upon
you.
I observe that Professor Hodge agrees with you, that if slavery is sin,
it would have been specifically attacked by the Apostles at any hazard
to their lives. This is his conclusion, because they did not hesitate to
specify and rebuke idolatry. Here is another of the Professor's
sophisms. The fact, that the Apostles preached against idolatry, is no
reason at all why, if slavery is sin, they would have preached against
that also. On the one hand, it is not conceivable that the gospel can be
preached where there is idolatry, without attacking it: for, in setting
forth the true God to idolaters, the preacher must denounce their false
gods. On the other hand, gospel sermons can be preached without number,
and the true God presented, not only in a nation of idolaters, but
elsewhere, without one allusion being made to such crying sins as
slavery, lewdness, and intemperance.
In the same connexion, Professor Hodge makes the remark "We do not
expect them (our missionaries) to refrain from denouncing the
institutions of the heathen as sinful, because they are popular, or
intimately interwoven with society." If he means by this language, that
it is the duty of missionaries on going into a heathen nation, to array
themselves against the civil government, and to make direct and specific
attacks on its wicked nature and wicked administration, then is he at
issue, on this point, with the whole Christian public; and, if he does
not mean this, or what amounts to this, I do not see how his remark will
avail any thing, in his attempt to show that the Apostles made such
attacks on whatever sinful institutions came under their observation.