Inspiration always represents the New Testament as its final teaching.

Revelation is there completed; and all the instruction concerning

right and wrong which man is ever to ask from God, must be sought in

this book. We have done, then, with all sophistical pleas concerning

the twilight of revelation: for we have come now to the meridian

splendour. If slaveholding was allowed to the Old World for the

hardness of its heart, here we may expect to see it repealed. Wherever

the New Testament leaves the moral character of slavery, there it must

stand. What, then, is its position here?

§ 1. _Definition of_ Δουλος.

The word commonly translated servant in the authorized version of the

New Testament is Δουλος, (_doulos_,) which is most probably derived

from the verb δεω, (_deo_,) 'I bind.' Hence the most direct meaning of

the noun is 'bondsman.' Many Abolitionists, with a reckless violence

of criticism which cannot be too sternly reprobated, have endeavoured

to evade the crushing testimony of the New Testament against their

dogma, by denying that this word there means slave. Some of them

would make it mean son, some _hired servant_, and some _subject_, or

dependent citizen. Even Mr. Albert Barnes, in his Commentaries on the

Epistles, denies that the Word carries any evidence that a servile

relation, proper, is intended by the sacred Writers. Every honest and

well-informed biblical scholar feels that it would be an insult to his

intelligence to suppose that a discussion of this preposterous

assertion was needed for him: but as our aim is the general reader, we

will briefly state the evidence that δουλος, when not metaphorical,

means in the mouth of Christ and his apostles a literal, domestic

slave.

Judea and the Roman Empire in their day were full of domestic slaves,

so that in many places they were more numerous than the free citizens.

Δουλος is confessedly the Word used for slave by secular writers of

antiquity, in histories, statutes, works on political science, such as

Aristotle's, in the allusions of Greeks to the Roman civil law, where

they make it uniformly their translation for _Servus_, so clearly and

harshly defined in that law as a literal slave. Did apostles and

evangelists use the Greek language of their day correctly and

honestly? And if δουλος in them does not mean slave, there is no

stronger word within the lids of the New Testament that does; (nor in

the Greek language;) so that there is in all the apostolic histories

and epistles, no allusion to this world-wide institution which

surrounded them! Who believes this? Again: The current Greek

translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, whose idioms are

more imitated in the New Testament than any other book, uses δουλος,

as in Leviticus xxv. 44, for translation of the _Ebed_, bought with

money from the Gentiles. The places where the New Testament writers

use δουλος metaphorically imply the meaning of _slave_ as the literal

one, because the aptness of the trope depends on that sense. Thus,

Acts iv. 29, xvi. 17, Romans i. 1, apostles are called God's δουλοι,

servants, to express God's purchase, ownership and authority over

them, and their strict obedience. Make the literal sense any thing

less than slave proper, and the strength and beauty of the trope are

gone. Again, the word is often used in contrast with _son_, and

_political subject_, so as to prove a different meaning. Thus, John

viii. 34, 35: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant (δουλος) of

sin. And the δουλος abideth not in the house forever: but the son

abideth ever." Luke xix. 13, 14: "He called his ten δουλοι, and

delivered them ten pounds, etc.; but his citizens (πολιται =

political subjects) hated him," etc. Galatians iv. 1: "Now the heir, as

long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a δουλος, though he be

lord of all, but is under tutors and governors," etc. In conclusion: all

well-informed and candid expositors tell us, that by δουλος, the New

Testament means slave. We may mention Drs. Bloomfield, Hodge, and

Trench. The classical authorities of the Greek language give this as

the most proper meaning; and the biblical lexicons of the New

Testament Greek testify the same. Of the latter, we may cite Dr.

Edward Robinson, of New York, no friend to slavery. He says:

"Δουλος ου.δ = (subst. fr. δεω,) a bondsman, a slave, servant,

properly by birth, diff. from ανδροποδον, 'one enslaved in war.'

Compare Xen. Anab. iv. 1, 12, αιχμαλωτα αυδραποδα. Hell. i. 6,

15; Thuc. viii. 28, τα ανδραποδα παντα, και δουλα και ελευθερα.

But such a captive is sometimes called δουλος, Xen. Cyr. 3, 1, 11,

19, ib., 4, 4, 12. Different also from ὁ διακονος, see that art. No.

1. In a family, the δουλος was one _bound to serve_, a slave, the

property of his master, a 'living possession,' as Aristotle calls him,

Pol. 1, 4. ὁ δουλος κτημα τι εμψυχον. Compare Gen. xvii. 12, 27;

Exod. xii. 44. According to the same writer, a complete household

consisted of slaves and freemen, Polit. 1, 3. οικια δε τελειος εκ

δουλων και ελευθερον. The δουλος, therefore, was never a _hired_

servant, the latter being called μισθιος, μισθωτος, q. v. Dr.

Robinson then proceeds to define δουλος in detail as meaning, "1,

Properly of involuntary service, a _slave_, servant, as opposed to

ελευθερος. 2, Tropically, of voluntary service, a _servant_, implying

obligation, obedience, devotedness. 3, Tropically, a _minister_,

attendant, spoken of the officers and attendants of an Oriental court,

who are often strictly slaves."

§ 2. _Slavery often mentioned; yet not condemned._

The mere absence of a condemnation of slaveholding in the New

Testament is proof that it is not unlawful. In showing that there is

no such condemnation, we are doing more than we could be held bound to

do by any logical obligation: we might very properly throw the burden

of proof here upon our accusers, and claim to be held innocent until

we can be proved to be guilty by some positive testimony of holy writ.

But our cause is so strong, that we can afford to argue ex

_abundantia_; to assert more than we are bound to show. We claim then

the significant fact, that there is nowhere any rebuke of

slaveholding, in express terms, in the New Testament. Of the truth of

this assertion it is sufficient proof, that Abolitionists, with all

their malignant zeal, have been unable to find a single instance, and

are compelled to assail us only with inferences. The express

permission to hold slaves given by Moses to God's people, is nowhere

repealed by the 'greater than Moses,' the Divine Prophet of the new

dispensation. Let the reader consider how this fact is strengthened by

the attendant circumstances. Christ and his apostles preached in the

midst of slaves and slaveholders. The institution was exceedingly

prevalent in many parts of the world. Potter tells us that in Athens,

(a place where Paul preached,) the freemen citizens, possessed of

franchises, were twenty-one thousand, and the slaves four hundred

thousand. The congregations to which Christ and his apostles preached,

were composed of masters and their slaves. The slavery of that day, as

defined by the Roman civil law, was harsh and oppressive, treating the

slave as a legal nonentity, without property, rights, or legal remedy;

without marriage, subject, even as to his life, to the caprice of his

master, and in every respect a human beast of burden. Again: to this

institution Christ and his apostles make many allusions, for

illustration of other subjects; and upon the institution itself they

often speak didactically. Yet, while often condemning the abuses and

oppressions incident to it, they never condemn the relation. Several

times the apostles give formal enumerations of the prevalent sins of

their times; as in Romans i. 29, 31; Galatians v. 19 to 21; Matthew

xv. 19; Colossians iii. 8, 9; 2 Timothy iii. 2 to 4. These catalogues

of sins are often full and minute; but the owning of slaves never

appears among them.

Now, we are entitled to claim, that this silence of the later and

final revelation leaves the lawfulness of slaveholding in full force,

as expressly established in the earlier. On that allowance we plant

ourselves, and defy our accusers to bring the evidence of its repeal.

On them lies the burden of proof. And we have indicated by the

circumstances detailed above, how crushing that burden will be to

them.

This is the most appropriate place to notice the evasion attempted

from the above demonstration. They plead that slavery is not specially

forbidden in the New Testament, because the plan of the Bible is to

give us a rule of morals, not by special enactments for every case,

but by general principles of right, which we must apply to special

cases as they arise. "Inspiration has not," say they, "specially

condemned every possible sin which may occur in the boundless

varieties of human affairs, because then the whole world would not

contain the books that should be written; and the voluminous character

of the rule of duty would disappoint its whole utility; and if any sin

were omitted in order to abridge it, this would be taken as a

sanction. Hence, God gives us a set of plain general principles, of

obvious application under the law of love." Therefore, it is argued,

we are not to expect that the sin of slaveholding should be singled

out. Enough that general principles given exclude it.

There is a portion of truth in this statement of the matter, and in

the grounds assigned for it. But waiving for the present the exposure

of the groundless assertion that there are any general principles in

the New Testament condemnatory of slaveholding, we deny that this book

teaches morals only by general rules. It also does it, in a multitude

of cases, by special precepts. A multitude of special sins prevalent

in that and all ages are singled out. This being so--the lists of

particular sins being so full and specific as they are--we assert it

would have been an unaccountable anomaly to pass over a thing so

important, open, prevalent, had it been intrinsically wrong. But why

does Revelation omit a number of particulars, and state general

principles? For the lack of room, it is said. The other plan would

have made the Bible too large. Now we ask, as the case actually stands

in the New Testament, would not a good deal of room have been saved as

to slavery, by simply specifying it as wrong? It is a queer way to

economize space, thus to take up a subject, define it at large, limit,

modify it, retrench its abuses, lay down in considerable detail a part

of its duties and relations; and then provide by some general

principle for its utter prohibition! Would not the obvious way have

been, to say in three plain words, what was the only fundamental

thing, after all, which, on this supposition, needed to be taught,

"Slavery is sinful?" This would have settled the matter, and also have

saved space and ambiguity, and made an end of definitions,

limitations, abuses, inferences and all, in the only honest way. But

farther, we admit that the Bible has left a multitude of new

questions, emerging in novel cases, to be settled by the fair

application of general principles, (which are usually illustrated in

Scripture by application to some specific case.) Now must not an

honest mind argue, that since the human understanding is so fallible

in inferential reasonings, especially on social ethics, where the

premises are so numerous and vague, and prejudices and interests so

blinding, a special precept, where one is found applicable, is better

than an inference probably doubtful? Will it not follow a 'thus saith

the Lord,' if it has one, rather than its own deduction which may be a

blunder? Well, then, if God intended us to understand that he had

implicitly condemned slavery in some general principles given, it was

most unlucky that He said any thing specific about it, which was not a

specific condemnation. For what He has specifically said about it must

lead His most honest servants to conclude that He did not intend to

leave it to be settled by general inference, that He exempted it from

that class of subjects. Had God not alluded to it by name, then we

should have been more free to apply general principles to settle its

moral character, as we do to the modern duel, not mentioned in

Scripture, because it is wholly a modern usage. But since God has

particularized so much about slaveholding, therefore, honesty,

humility, piety, require us to study his specific teachings in

preference to our supposed inferences, and even in opposition to them.

Here, then, we stand: Inspiration has once expressly authorized

slaveholding. Until a repeal is found equally express, it must be

innocent.

§ 3. _Christ applauds a Slaveholder._

Our Lord has thrown at least a probable light upon his estimation of

slaveholders by his treatment of the Centurion of Capernaum, and his

slave. The story may be found in Matthew viii. 5 to 13, and Luke vii.

2 to 10. This person, though a Gentile and an officer of the Roman

army, was, according to the testimony of his Jewish neighbours, a

sincere convert to the religion of the Old Testament, and a truly good

man. He had a valued slave very sick, called in Matthew his "boy,"

(παις,) a common term for slave in New Testament times; but Luke calls

him again and again his "slave," (δουλος.) Hearing of Christ's

approach, he sent some of his Hebrew neighbours, (rulers of the

synagogue,) to beseech our Lord to apply his miraculous power for the

healing of his sick slave. A little later he appears himself, and

explains to Jesus, that it was not arrogance, but humility, which

prevented his meeting him at first, with his full confidence. For as

he, though a poor mortal, was enabled, by the authority of an officer

and master, to make others come and go at his bidding, so he knew that

Christ could yet more easily bid away his servant's disease. And

therefore he had not deemed it necessary to demand (what he was

unworthy to receive) an actual visit to his house. Hereupon Christ

declares with delight, that he "had not found so great faith, no, not

in Israel." This was high praise indeed, after the faith of a

Nathanael, a John, a James, a Mary Magdalene, a Martha, and a Lazarus.

Yet this much-applauded man was a slaveholder! But our Lord comes yet

nearer to the point in dispute. He speaks the word, and heals the

slave, thus restoring him to the master's possession and use. Had the

relation been wrong, here, now, was an excellent opportunity to set

things right, when he had before him a subject so docile, so humble,

so grateful and trustful. Should not Christ have said: "Honest

Centurion, you owe one thing more to your sick fellow-creature: his

liberty. You have humanely sought the preservation of his being, which

I have now granted; but it therefore becomes my duty to tell you, lest

silence in such a case should confirm a sinful error, that your

possession of him as a slave outrages the laws of his being. I cannot

become accomplice to wrong. The life which I have rescued, I claim for

liberty, for righteousness. I expect it of your faith and gratitude,

that instead of begrudging the surrender, you will thank me for

enlightening you as to your error." But no; Christ says nothing like

this, but goes his way and leaves the master and all the people

blinded by his extraordinary commendation of the slave-owner, and his

own act in restoring the slave to him, to blunder on in the belief

that slavery was all right. Certain we are, that had Dr. Channing, or

Dr. Wayland, or the most moderate Abolitionist, been the

miracle-worker, he would have made a very different use of the

occasion. However he might have hesitated as to immediate and

universal emancipation, he would have felt that the opportunity was

too fair to be lost, for setting up a good strong precedent against

slavery. Hence we feel sure that Christ and they are not agreed in the

moral estimate of the relation.

§ 4. _The Apostles separate Slavery and its Abuses._

We find the apostles everywhere treating slavery, in one particular,

as the Abolitionists refuse to treat it; that is to say,

distinguishing between the relation and its incidental abuses. Our

accusers now claim a license from the well-known logical rule, that it

is not fair to argue from the abuses of a thing to the thing itself.

Hence they insist that in estimating slavery, we must take it in the

concrete, as it is in these Southern States, with all that bad men or

bad legislation may at any time have attached to it. And if any

feature attaching to an aggravated case of oppression should be proved

wrong, then the very relation of master and slave must be held wrong

in itself. The bald and insolent sophistry of this claim has been

already alluded to. By this way it could be proved that marriage,

civil government and church government, as well as the parental

relation, are intrinsically immoral; for all have been and are abused,

not only by the illegal license of individual bad men, but by bad

legislation. Just as reasonably might a monk say to all Mohammedans,

that marriage is a sin, for the character of the institution must be

tried in the concrete, with all the accessaries which usually attend

it in Mohammedan lands, and most certainly with such as are

established by law; and among these is polygamy, which is sinful;

wherefore the marriage relation is wrong. And this preposterous logick

has been urged, although it has been proved that, in the vast majority

of cases in these States, masters did preserve the relation to their

slaves, without connecting with it a single one of the incidents,

whether allowed by law or not, which are indefensible in a moral view.

To say that the relation was sinful, in all these virtuous citizens,

because some of the occasional incidents were sinful, is just as

outrageous as to tell the Christian mother that her authority over her

child is a wicked tyranny, because some drunken wretch near by has

been guilty of child-murder. But our chief purpose here is to show,

that the apostles were never guilty of this absurdity; and that, on

the contrary, they separated between the relation and its abuses, just

as Christian masters now claim to do.

Let the reader note then, that the type of slavery prevailing where

the apostles preached, was, compared with ours, barbarous, cruel, and

wicked in many of its customary incidents, as established both by

usage and law. Slaves were regarded as having neither rights nor legal

remedies. No law protected their life itself against the master. There

was no recognized marriage for them, and no established parental or

filial relations. The chastity of the female slave was unprotected by

law against her master. And the temper of society sanctioned the not

infrequent use of these powers, in the ruthless separation of

families, inhuman punishments, hard labour, coarse food, maiming, and

even murder. Such were the iniquities which history assures us

connected themselves only too often with this relation in the

apostles' days, and were sanctioned by human laws.

But did they provoke these inspired law-givers to condemn the whole

institution? By no means. As we have seen, they nowhere pronounce the

relation of master and slave an inherent wrong. They everywhere act as

though it might be, and when not abused, was, perfectly innocent. And

that it might be innocent, they forbade to the members of the

Christian church all these abuses of it. Thus they separated between

the relation and its abuses. Doubtless, the standard which they had

in view, in commanding masters to "render to their servants those

things which are just and equal," _was the Mosaic law_. We have seen

how far this was in advance of the brutalities permitted by pagan

laws, and how it protected the life, limbs, and chastity of servants

among the Hebrews. This law, being founded in righteousness, was in

its general spirit the rule of the New Testament church also. When

this separation is made by the apostles between the relation and its

abuses, we find that the former includes, as its essentials, just

these elements: a right to the slave's labour for life, coupled with

the obligation on the master to use it with justice and clemency, and

to recompense the slave with a suitable maintenance; and on the

slave's part, the obligation to render this labour with all good

fidelity, and with a respectful obedience. Is not this just the

definition of slavery with which we set out?

§ 5. _Slavery no Essential Religious Evil._

The Apostle Paul teaches that the condition of a slave, although not

desirable for its own sake, has no essential bearing on the Christian

life and progress; and therefore, when speaking as a Christian

minister, and with exclusive reference to man's religious interests,

he treats it as unimportant. The proof of this statement may be found

in such passages as the following: 1 Cor. xii. 13, "For by one Spirit

we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,

whether we be bond or free: and have all been made to drink into one

Spirit." Galat. iii. 28, "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is

neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; for we are

all one in Jesus Christ." So, substantially, says Colos. iii. 11. But

the most decisive passage is 1 Cor. vii. 20, 21: "Let every man abide

in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a

servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it

rather." (Paul had just defined his meaning in the phrase "calling in

which he was called," as being circumcised or uncircumcised, bond or

free.)

The drift of all these passages is to teach that a man's reception by

Christ and by the Church does not depend in any manner on his class or

condition in secular life; because Christianity places all classes on

the same footing as to the things of the soul, and offers to all the

same salvation. When, therefore, men come to the throne of grace, the

baptismal water, the communion table, distinctions of class are left

behind them for the time. Hence, these distinctions are not essential,

as to the soul's salvation. The last passage quoted brings out the

latter truth more distinctly. Is any Christian, at his conversion, a

Jew? That circumstance is unimportant to his religious life. Was he a

Gentile? That also is unimportant. Was he a slave when converted to

Christ? Let not this concern him, for it cannot essentially affect his

religious welfare: the road to heaven is as open to him as to the

freeman. But if a convenient and lawful opportunity to acquire his

freedom, with the consent of his master, occurs, then freedom is to be

preferred. Such is the meaning found in the words by all sober

expositors, including those of countries where slavery does not exist.

Who can believe that the apostle would have taught thus, if slavery

had been an iniquitous relation?

But when he tells the Christian servant that freedom is to be

preferred by him to bondage, if it may be rightfully acquired, we must

remember the circumstances of the age, in order to do justice to his

meaning. The same apostle, speaking of marriage, says, "Art thou

loosed from a wife? seek not to be bound." Does he mean to set himself

against the holy estate of matrimony, and to contradict the divine

wisdom which said that "it is not good for man to be alone?" By no

means. He explains himself as advising thus "because of the present

distress." Exposure to persecution, banishment, death, made it a step

of questionable prudence at that time, to assume the responsibilities

of a husband and father. Now the laws and usages of the age as to

slaves were, as we have seen, harsh and oppressive. But worse than

this, many masters among the heathen were accustomed to require of

their slaves offices vile, and even guilty; and scruples of conscience

on the slave's part were treated as an absurdity or rebellion. In such

a state of society, although the relation of servitude was not in

itself adverse to a holy life, the prudent man would prefer to be

secured against the possibility of such a wrong, by securing his

liberty if he lawfully could. Moreover, society offered a grade, and a

career of advancement, to the "freedman" and his children. Master and

slave were of the same colour; and a generation or two would

obliterate by its unions the memory of the servile condition. But in

these States, where the servant's rights were so much better protected

by law and usage, and where the freed servant, being a black, finds

himself only deprived of his master's patronage, and still debarred as

much as ever from social equality by his colour and caste, the case

may be very different. Freedom to the Christian slave here, may prove

a loss.

Now who can believe that the Apostle Paul would have spoken thus of

slavery, if he had thought it an injurious and iniquitous relation, as

hostile to religion, as degrading to the victim's immortal nature, and

as converting him from a rational person into a chattel, a human

brute? He treats the condition of bondage, in its religious aspects,

precisely as he does accidents of birth, being born circumcised or

uncircumcised, a citizen of the Empire or a subject foreigner, male or

female. We have a practical evidence how incompatible such language is

with the Abolitionist first principle, in their very different

conduct. Do they ever say to the Christian slave: "Art thou called

being a servant? care not for it." We trow not. They glory in teaching

every slave they can to break away from his bondage, even at the cost

of robbery and murder. And Mr. Albert Barnes informs his readers, that

in his interviews with runaway slaves, he long ago ceased to instruct

them that it was their duty to return to their masters. It is evident,

therefore, that this abolitionist and St. Paul were not agreed.

§ 6. _Slaveholders fully Admitted to Church-membership._

We now proceed, in the sixth place, to a fact of still greater force:

that slaveholders were admitted by Christ to full communion and good

standing in the Christian church. Let us first establish the fact. In

Acts X. 5-17, we learn that the pious Cornelius had at least two

household servants, (οικετων, one of the Septuagint words for

domestic slave.) There is no hint of his liberating them; but the

Apostle Peter tells his brethren, Acts xi. 15-17, that he was obliged to

admit him by baptism to the church, by the act of God himself. Says he:

"Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us,"

(power of miracles,) "who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was

I, that I could withstand God?" So he baptized him and his servants

together. Again we find the Epistle to the Ephesians addressed in the

first verse, "to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful

brethren in Christ Jesus," with a blessing in the second verse

appropriate to none but God's children. When, therefore, in subsequent

parts of the Epistle, we find any persons addressed in detail with

apostolic precepts, we conclude of course that they are included in

"the saints and faithful." But all expositors say these terms mean

church members in good standing. If we find here any persons commanded

to any duty, we know that they are church members. This thought

confirms it, that St. Paul knew well that his office gave him no

jurisdiction over the external world. He had himself said to the

church authorities at Corinth, "What have I to do, to judge them that

are without?" 1 Cor. v. 12. Now, in the sixth chapter and ninth verse

of Ephesians, we find him, after commanding Christian husbands,

Christian wives, Christian parents, Christian children, and Christian

slaves, how to demean themselves, addressing Christian masters: "And

ye, masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening,

knowing that your Master also is in heaven," &c. Here, therefore, must

have been slaveholders in good standing in this favourite church,

which was organized under St. Paul's own eye. The Epistle to the

Colossians is also addressed "to the saints and faithful brethren in

Christ which are at Colosse:" and in ch. iv. 1, Christian slaveholders

are addressed: "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just

and equal," &c. There were, therefore, slaveholders in full communion

at Colosse. Again: Mr. Albert Barnes (whom we cite here for a

particular reason which will appear in the sequel) says correctly,

that Timothy received his first Epistle from St. Paul at Ephesus,

three or four years after that church was planted, having been left in

charge there. But in Ephes. vi. 2, St. Paul Writes: "And they" (i. e.

these Christian slaves) "that have believing masters, let them not

despise them because they are brethren, but rather do them service

because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit," (i.

e. of the blessings of redemption.) "These things teach and exhort."

There were still slaveholders then, in this church, three or four

years after its organization; and Timothy is commanded to have them

treated as brethren faithful and beloved, partakers of the favour of

God. The Epistle to the Ephesians, according to the same Mr. Barnes,

was written from four to seven years after the founding of the church,

and that to the Colossians from ten to thirteen. So that this

membership of slaveholders had continued for these periods.

But we have a stronger case still. St. Paul, during his imprisonment

at Rome, addresses Philemon of Colosse thus: "Paul, a prisoner of

Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto our dearly beloved and

fellow-labourer, (συνεργος) and to our beloved Apphia and

Archippus, our fellow-soldier, and to the church in thy house."

Philemon, then, was a church member; his house was a place of meeting

for the church; he was beloved of Paul; and last, he was himself a

Christian minister. (Such is the only meaning of συνεργος

here, according to the agreement of all expositors, of whom may be

mentioned Bloomfield, Doddridge, and Dr. Edward Robinson of New York.)

But Philemon was a slaveholder: the very purpose of this affectionate

epistle was to send back to him a runaway slave. Here, then, we have a

slaveholder, not only in the membership, but ministry of the Church.

Now when we consider how jealously the apostles guarded the purity of

the church, it will appear to be incredible that they should receive

slaveholders thus, if the relation were unrighteous. The terms of

admission (for adults) were the renunciation of all known sin, and a

credible repentance leading to reparation, where ever practicable.

Even the Baptist, who was unworthy to loose the shoe-latchet of

Christ, could say: "Bring forth therefore the fruits meet for

repentance." From all the prevalent and popular sins of Pagan society,

the church members were inexorably required to turn away; else

excommunication soon rid the church of their scandal. Thus, 1 Cor. v.

11, says: "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any

man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an

idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an

one no not to eat." Christ separated his church out of the world, to

secure sanctity and holy living. To suppose that he, or his apostles,

could avowedly admit and tolerate the membership of men who persisted

in criminal conduct, betrays the very purpose of the church, and

impugns the purity of the Saviour himself. And here, all the evasions

of Abolitionists are worthless; as when they say that Christ's mission

was not to meddle with secular relations, or to interfere in politics;

for the communion of the church was his own peculiar domain; and to

meddle with every form of sin there was precisely his mission.

Entrance to the church was voluntary. The terms of membership were

candidly published; the penalty for violating them was purely

spiritual, (mere exclusion from the society,) and interfered with no

man's political rights or franchises. So that within this spiritual

society, Christ had things his own way; there was no difficulty from

without that could possibly restrain his action; and if he tolerated

deliberate sin here, his own character is tarnished.

So cogent is this, that Mr. Albert Barnes, in his 'Notes' on 1 Tim.

vi. 2, seeks to evade it thus: "Nor is it fairly to be inferred from

this passage that he (Paul) meant to teach that they (masters) might

continue this (i. e. slaveholding) and be entitled to all the respect

and confidence due to the Christian name, or be regarded as

maintaining a good standing in the church. Whatever may be true on

these points, the passage before us only proves, that Paul considered

that a man who was a slaveholder _might_ be converted, and be spoken

of as a 'believer' or a Christian. Many have been converted in similar

circumstances, as many have in the practice of all other kinds of

iniquity. What was their duty _after_ their conversion was another

question."

That is, as a murderer or adulterer _might_ become a subject of

Almighty grace, so might a slaveholder; but all three alike must cease

these crimes, when converted, in order to continue credible church

members! To him who has weighed the Scripture facts, this statement

will appear (as we shall find sundry others of this writer) so

obviously uncandid, that it is mere affectation to refrain from

calling it by its proper name, dishonesty. The simple refutation is in

the fact, by which Mr. Barnes has convicted himself, that the

slaveholders were still in the churches from three to thirteen years

after they were organized, with no hint from the apostle that they

were living in a criminal relation; that they were still beloved,

approved, yea applauded, by Paul; and that one of them was even

promoted to the ministry. The last case is particularly ruinous to Mr.

Barnes. For when did Philemon first acquire his slave Onesimus? Before

the former first joined the Church? Then Paul permitted him to remain

all these years a member, and promoted him to the ministry, with the

'sin of slavery' unforsaken! Was it after he joined the church? Then a

thing occurred which, on Mr. Barnes' theory, is impossible: because

buying a slave, being criminal, must have terminated his church

membership.

We thank God that it is true that some sinners of every class are

converted. But their conversion must be followed by a prompt

repentance and forsaking of their sins. Thus, it is said to the

Corinthians, 1 Cor. vi. 9 to 11: "Be not deceived; neither

fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor

abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor

drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom

of God. And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are

sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by

the Spirit of our God." According to the Abolitionists, another class

of criminals fully deserving to be ranked in the above black

list--slaveholders--enter the church under Paul's administration,

without being washed or sanctified. If slaveholding is wrong, it was

their duty on entering the Church to repent of, forsake and repair

this wrong; to liberate their slaves, and to repay them for past

exactions so far as possible. If this was their duty, it was the duty

of the apostle to teach it to them. But he has not taught it: he has

taken up the subject, and merely taught these masters that they would

discharge their whole duty by treating their slaves, as slaves, with

clemency and equity; and then he has continued them in the Church. It

remains true, therefore, that this allowed membership of slaveholders

in the apostolic churches, proves it no sin to own slaves.

§ 7. _Relative Duties of Masters and Slaves recognized._

Another fact equally decisive is, that the apostles frequently enjoin

on masters and slaves their relative duties, just as they do upon

husbands and wives, parents and children. And these duties they

enforce, both on master and servant, by Christian motives. Pursuing

the same method as under the last head, we will first establish the

fact, and then indicate the use to be made of it.

In Ephesians vi. 5 to 9, having addressed the other classes, the

Apostle Paul says: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your

masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness

of your heart as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers;

but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;

with good-will doing service as to the Lord and not unto men; knowing

that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of

the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same

things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master

also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

In Colos. iii. 22 to iv. 1, inclusive, almost the same precepts occur

in the same words, with small exceptions, and standing in the same

connexion with recognized relations. Let the reader compare for

himself. In 1 Tim. vi, 1, 2, we read: "Let as many servants as are

under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the

name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have

believing masters, let them not despise them because they are

brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and

beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort." So,

in the Epistle to Titus, having directed him how to instruct sundry

other classes in their relative duties, he says, ch. ii. 9 to 12:

"Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please

them well in all things: not answering again; not purloining, but

showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our

Saviour in all things. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation

hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and

worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this

present world," etc. So, the Apostle Peter, 1 Ep. ii. 18, 19:

"Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the

good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if

a man for conscience towards God endure grief, suffering wrongfully."

The word for _servant_ in all these passages is δουλος, except the

last, where the Apostle Peter uses οικετια. But this is also proved

to mean here, domestic slaves proper, by the current Septuagint and New

Testament usage, by its relation to δεσποταις, (masters,) which

always means in this connexion the proprietor of a slave, and by the

reference in the subsequent verse to being buffeted for a fault; an

incident of the slave's condition, rather than of the hired freeman's.

Now the drift of all these precepts is too plain to be mistaken.

Slaves who are church-members are here instructed that it is their

religious duty to obey their masters, to treat them with deferential

respect, and with Christian love where the masters are Christian, and

to render the service due from a servant with fidelity and integrity,

without requiring to be watched or threatened. The motives urged for

all this are not carnal, but evangelical, a sense of duty, love for

Christ and his doctrine, the credit of which was implicated in their

Christian conduct here, and the expectation of a rich reward from

Jesus Christ hereafter.

But the apostles are not partial. In like manner they positively

enjoin on masters who are church-members, the faithful performance of

their reciprocal duties to their slaves. They must avoid a harsh and

minatory government: they must allot to the slave an equitable

maintenance and humane treatment, and in every respect must act

towards him so as to be able to meet that judgment, where master and

slave will stand as equals before the bar of Jesus Christ, at which

social rank has no weight. These precepts imply, of course, that both

master and servant are church-members; otherwise they would not have

been under the ecclesiastical authority of the apostles. They imply

with equal clearness, that the continuance of the relation was

contemplated as legitimate: for if this is terminated as sinful, the

duties of the relation are at an end, and such precepts are so much

breath thrown away. Does any sophist insist that the "rendering of

that which is just and equal" must not be less than emancipation? The

very words refute him; for then he would no longer be his servant, and

the master no longer master; so that he could owe no duties as such.

Further, the same passage proceeds to enjoin on the slave the duties

of a continued state of servitude. We repeat: all these passages

contemplate the continuance of the relation among church-members, as

legitimate. What would men say of the Christian minister who should

instruct the penitent gambler how to continue the stated practice of

his nefarious art in a Christian manner: and the penitent adulterer

how to continue his guilty connexion exemplarily? When such a

law-giver as Christ legislates concerning such a thing, there is but

one thing he can consistently enjoin: and that is its instant

termination. If slaveholding is a moral wrong, the chief guilt, of

course, attaches to the master, because on his side is the power. When

the apostles pass, then, from the duties of servants to those of

masters, it is unavoidable that they must declare the imperative duty

of emancipation. But they say not one word about it: they seek to

continue the relation rightfully. Therefore, either slaveholding is

not wrong, or the apostles were unfaithful. The explanation of these

passages, which we have given, is that of all respectable expositors,

especially the British, no friends of slavery.

The attempt is made to argue, that if this were correct, then the holy

apostles would be implicated in a connivance at the excesses and

barbarities which, the history of the times tells us, often attached

to the servile condition. The answer is: that they condemn and

prohibit all the wrongs, as criminal, and leave the relation itself as

lawful. No other defence can be set up for their treatment of the

conjugal and parental relations. Antiquarians tell us they also were

then deformed by great abuses. The wife and child were no better than

slaves. Over the latter the father had the power of life and death,

and of selling into bondage. From the former he divorced himself at

pleasure, and often visited her with corporal punishment. How do the

apostles treat these facts? They recognize the relation and forbid its

abuses. Shall any one say that because these abuses were current,

therefore they should have denounced the domestic relations, and

invented some new-fangled communism? Or shall it be said that, because

they have not done this, they wink at the wife-beatings, the

child-murders, and the other barbarities so common in Greek and

Oriental families? We trow not. Why then should these absurd

inferences be attached to their treatment of domestic slavery?

But the favourite evasion of these Scriptures is that of Dr. Wayland:

"The scope of these instructions to servants is only to teach

patience, fidelity, meekness, and charity, duties which Christians owe

to all men, even their enemies." In like strain, Mr. Albert Barnes, in

his 'Notes on Ephesians,' vi. 7, writes: "But let not a master think,

because a pious slave shows this spirit, that therefore the slave

feels the master is right in withholding his freedom; nor let him

suppose, because religion requires the slave to be submissive and

obedient, that therefore it approves of what the master does. It does

this no more than it sanctions the conduct of Mary and Nero, because

religion required the martyrs to be unresisting, and to allow

themselves to be led to the stake. A conscientious slave may find

happiness in submitting to God, and doing His will, just as a

conscientious martyr may. But this does not sanction the wrong, either

of the slave-owner or of the persecutor." It is difficult to restrain

the expression of natural indignation at so shameless a sophism as

this, which outrages at once the understanding of the reader and the

honour of Christ. It represents the pure and benign genius of

Christianity as walking abroad, and finding oppressor and oppressed

together, the oppressor avowedly within her reach, as well as his

victim, as a subject of her spiritual jurisdiction and instruction. To

the one she is represented as saying: "Oh, injured slave! glorify thy

meek and lowly Saviour under this unrighteous oppression, by imitating

His patience." Turning then to the other, who is present, and equally

subject to her authority, must she not, of course, give the

correlative injunction: "Oh, master! since thy yoke is wicked, cease

instantly to persecute Christ in the person of his follower." But no:

abolitionism represents her as saying nothing at all on this point;

but merely dismissing his side of the case with the injunction to

oppress equitably! The honest mind meets such a statement, not only

with the '_Incredulus sum_,' but with the '_Incredulus odi_,' of the

Latin satirist. And the suffering victim of oppression could not but

feel, while he recognized the duty of patience, that the counterpart

treatment of his oppressor by Christianity was a foul injustice. The

fact that Christ and apostles admitted these masters, with these

slaves, to the same communion, proves that the comment of Mr. Barnes

is preposterous. The fact that these Christian slaves are commanded to

treat these pretended oppressors as "brethren, faithful and beloved,

partakers of the benefit," proves it. Do the apostles, while enjoining

patience under the persecutions of a bloody Nero, admit that Nero,

with his brutality, to the same Christian communion with the peaceful

and holy victims, address him as "saint and faithful in Christ Jesus,"

and instruct him to burn and tear the Christians for their faith, in a

godly manner? The comment is disproved by Peter, when he says that

there were slave-owners who were "good and gentle," as well as others

who were "froward." Does truth or common sense distinguish "good and

gentle" persecutors? It is disproved farther, by the fact that the

apostles do not enjoin patience only, on these servants, as on

Christians forbearing under an injury; but they enjoin duty,

obedience, and fidelity also, as upon Christians paying reciprocal

obligations. It is not patience under ruthless force, which they

require, as a tribute to Christ's honour; but it is obedience due to

the master's legitimate authority, and that, a tribute due to the

master also. Servants must "show all good fidelity." This implies an

obligation to which to be faithful. Fidelity does not exist where

there is no debt. To unrighteous exaction we may be submissive; but

fidelity has no place. But the crowning refutation is, that St. Paul

sent back an escaped slave to his master Philemon, from Rome to

Colosse, hundreds of miles away. Will any one say that the duty of

Christian submission and patience under wrongs extends so far as to

require an injured Christian to go back several hundred miles, and

hunt up his oppressor in order to be maltreated again, after

Providence had enabled him to escape from his injuries? If Mr. Barnes

is correct, Onesimus should have claimed that he had now availed

himself of Christ's own command: "When they persecute you in one city,

flee ye into another;" and was rightfully concealed in the midst of

the vast metropolis. This was requiring him to "turn the other cheek"

with a vengeance: to waive the right of peaceable escape which his

Divine Lord had given him, and go all the way to Asia to be unjustly

smitten again! There is this farther absurdity: the pious servant is

required to stretch his forbearance to so Quixotic a degree, as to

waive, not only the claim of forcible self-defence, but that of legal

protection. (Oh that the holy Abolitionists had practised towards the

injured South a little tythe of this forbearance which their learned

scribe so consistently inculcates!) Is it Christ's requirement, that

the Christian under oppression must refuse the shield of legal

protection? Did Paul think thus, when, prosecuted at the bar of

Porcius Festus by unscrupulous enemies, he claimed the rights of his

citizenship with so admirable a union of forbearance and courage? Now,

if Messrs. Wayland and Barnes are right, these oppressed slaves

possessed a tribunal in common with their oppressors, to which they

could lawfully, peacefully, forgivingly, yet righteously summon them:

_the church court_. They could have demanded of these authorities,

with the strictest Christian propriety, to use all their spiritual

powers, so far as they went, to induce the masters, their

fellow-members, to give them that liberty which was their due. But, so

exceedingly forbearing are they, that they not only forego forcible

resistance, but the peaceable claim of their ecclesiastical right, for

fear they might be thought to act in an impatient manner! A highwayman

meets me in a wood, and begins to beat me and rob me: I have a weapon,

but I forbear to use violence against him. Meantime, the legal

authorities pass by, and I also forbear to claim their protection

under the law, lest it should scandalize the amiable highwayman, and

make him think less favourably of my religion!

It may be well, in concluding this point, to notice the plea that

Christians were required by the apostles to render not only patience

and submission to the Emperor Nero, but also allegiance and hearty

obedience. Yet none will say that Nero was a righteous ruler. We

reply, the case is precisely in our favour: for it proves the

proposition exactly parallel to ours, that civil government is a

lawful institution, notwithstanding it is abused. The government of

the Cæsars was providentially the _de facto_ one, and Nero, bad as he

was, its recognized head. As such, all his magisterial acts which were

not specifically contrary to God's law, were legitimate, and were the

proper objects of the civic obedience of the Christian subject.

Otherwise, the apostles would never have exacted it for him. The

instance does imply, therefore, that civil government is a lawful

relation; and this is precisely what we infer from the parallel

instances of obedience enjoined on servants to masters. If

Abolitionists are not willing to argue that the relation of ruler and

subject is sin _per se_, notwithstanding the obedience required to

Nero, they cannot argue from their proposed analogy between Nero's

cruelties and slaveholding. But an equally conclusive reply is, that

apostles never admitted a Nero, with his barbarities in full sway, to

the same communion-table with his patient Christian victims,

commanding the latter to forbear as towards a wrongdoer, and yet

failing to give him the correlative command, to cease the wrong-doing.

§ 8. _Philemon and Onesimus._

The Epistle to Philemon is peculiarly instructive and convincing as to

the moral character of slavery. This Abolitionists betray, by the

distressing wrigglings and contortions of logic, to which they resort,

in the vain attempt to evade its inferences. The whole Epistle need

not be recited. The apostle, after saluting Philemon as a brother and

fellow-minister, and commending him in terms of peculiar beauty,

warmth, and affection, for his eminent piety, and his hospitalities

and charities to Christians, proceeds thus, v. 8 to 19: "Though I

might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient,

yet, for love's sake, I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul

the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. I beseech thee for

my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds; which in time past

was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me; whom I

have sent again: thou, therefore, receive him, that is, mine own

bowels: Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might

have ministered unto me in the bonds of the Gospel. But 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 shouldst receive him forever; not now as a servant,

but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much

more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord. If thou count me

therefore, a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee,

or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account; I Paul have written it

with mine own hand, I will repay it," &c. That it may not be supposed

we give an explanation of these words warped to suit our own views, we

will copy the very words of the judicious Dr. Thomas Scott, one of the

most fair and reasonable of expositors, and a declared enemy of

slavery. In his introduction to the Epistle, he says: "Philemon seems

to have been a Christian of some eminence, residing at Colosse, (Col.

iv. 9, or 17,) who had been converted under St. Paul's ministry, (19,)

perhaps during his abode at Ephesus, (Acts xix. 10.) When the apostle

was imprisoned at Rome, Onesimus, a slave of Philemon, having, as it

is generally thought, been guilty of some dishonesty, left his master

and fled to that city, though at the distance of several hundred

miles. When he came thither, curiosity or some such motive induced him

to attend on St. Paul's ministry, which it pleased God to bless for

his conversion. After he had given satisfactory proof of a real

change, and manifested an excellent disposition, by suitable

behaviour, which had greatly endeared him to Paul, he judged it proper

to send him back to his master, to whom he wrote this epistle, that he

might procure Onesimus a more favourable reception than he could

otherwise have expected." Notes on v. 12 to 16: "Onesimus was

Philemon's legal property, and St. Paul had required, and prevailed

with him, to return to him, having made sufficient trial of his

sincerity: and he requested Philemon to receive him with the same

kindness as he would the aged apostle's own son according to the

flesh, being equally dear to him, as his spiritual child. He would

gladly have kept him at Rome, to minister to him in his confinement,

which Onesimus would willingly have done in the bonds of the Gospel,

being attached to him from Christian love and gratitude; and as he

knew that Philemon would gladly have done him any service in person,

if he had been at Rome, so he would have considered Onesimus as

ministering to him in his master's stead. But he would not do any

thing of this kind without his consent, lest he should seem to extort

the benefit, and Philemon should appear to act from necessity, rather

than from a willing mind. And though he had hopes of deriving benefit

from Onesimus' faithful service, at some future period, by Philemon's

free consent, yet he was not sure that this was the Lord's purpose

concerning him; for perhaps he permitted him to leave his master for

a season in so improper a manner, in order that, being converted, he

might be received on his return with such affection, and might abide

with Philemon with such faithfulness and diligence, that they should

choose to live together the rest of their lives as fellow-heirs of

eternal felicity. In this case he knew that Philemon would no longer

consider Onesimus merely as a slave, but view him as 'above a slave,

even a brother beloved.' This he was become to Paul in an especial

manner, who had before been entirely a stranger to him; how much more,

then, might it be supposed that he would be endeared to Philemon, when

he became well acquainted with his excellency! seeing he would be near

to him both in the flesh as one of his domestics, and in the Lord, as

one with him in Christ by faith."

Thus far Dr. Scott. These are substantially the views given of this

epistle by Calvin, Whitby, Henry, Doddridge, McKnight, Hodge, and

others: none of whom were slaveholders, or friends of the institution.

Now, our purpose is not to vindicate the intrinsic innocence of

slaveholding here, by dwelling again upon the just arguments, which

have been already stated: that a slaveholder here receives from an

inspired apostle the highest Christian commendations; and that he is

addressed as a brother minister in the church. The Epistle presents

still more emphatic evidence: First, if the relation is unrighteous,

and the master's authority unfounded, then the only ground upon which

the duty of the slave's submission rests, is that of Christian

forbearance. When the wicked bonds were once happily evaded, and the

oppressed person in safety, that ground of obligation was wholly at

an end. A captive has been unlawfully detained by a gang of

highwaymen, for the purpose of exacting ransom. He has given them the

slip, and is secure. Is there any obligation to go back, because,

while there, there was an obligation to refrain from useless violence

and bloodshed? Let us even suppose that the means of the captive's

escape were in some point immoral: does this fact make it his duty to

go back and submit himself to the freebooters? By no means. To God he

ought to repent of whatever was immoral in the manner of his escape:

but he is bound to make no reparation for it to the robbers, because

they had no right to detain him at all. But we see St. Paul here

enjoining on the newly-awakened conscience of Onesimus, the duty of

returning to his master. That the apostle sent him, and that he went

back under a sense of moral obligation, is proved by two facts: St.

Paul had a strong desire to retain him, being greatly in need of an

affectionate domestic, in his infirm, aged, and imprisoned condition,

but he felt that he must not. (Verse 13.) Paul had no power, except

moral power, to make Onesimus go back, being himself a helpless

captive; so that the latter must have been carried back by a sense of

duty. Hence this instance proves, beyond a cavil, that the relation of

master and servant was moral; it lies above the level of all those

quibbles which we have been compelled to rebut.

Second: the transaction clearly implies a moral propriety or ownership

in Onesimus' labour, as pertaining to Philemon; of which the latter

could not be rightfully deprived without his consent. For proof, see

the fact that Paul says, (v. 14,) "Without thy mind I would do

nothing, that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but

willingly." The attendance of Onesimus on Paul, _i. e._, the bestowal

of his labour, would have been, if given, Philemon's "benefit" to

Paul. If, as Abolitionists say, Onesimus belonged to himself, how

could it be Philemon's benefit, or benefaction? See also the fact that

St. Paul (v. 18) explicitly recognizes the justice of Philemon's claim

to indemnity for Onesimus' bad conduct. In order to smoothe the way

for his pardon by his justly offended master, he proposes to pay this

himself, whatever it may be, and (v. 19) gives the force of a

pecuniary bond to his promise, by writing and signing it with his own

hand: (the rest of the Epistle, as the most of Paul's, being evidently

written by an amanuensis.) Some expositors, indeed, explain the 18th

verse by supposing that Onesimus, when running away, had stolen

something from Philemon. There is not a particle of evidence for this

in the narrative; and it is a most unsafe method of explaining the

Scriptures, to do it by bringing in gratuitous surmises. But be this

as it may, Paul's language covers both suppositions, of debt for his

delinquent services, and retention of his master's property: ("If he

hath wronged thee, or oweth thee any thing.") Is it objected that St.

Paul suggests, v. 19th, that gratitude ought to cause Philemon to

forego the exaction of such a vicarious payment from him? The reply

is, that the very nature of this plea implies most strongly the legal

completeness of Philemon's title to the compensation. A poor man is

sued for a debt. His only answer is, that he thinks the suitor ought

to be _generous_ enough to remit this debt to him, inasmuch as he had

once saved that suitor's life. Surely this plea is itself an admission

that the debt is legal; and if the claimant chooses to be ungracious

enough to press it under the circumstances, it must be paid. Moreover,

Philemon's debt of gratitude was, thus far, to Paul, and not to

Onesimus. Paul's stepping under the burden of his debt was an act of

voluntary generosity only. The apostle makes no claim of any

obligation, even of courtesy, from Philemon to his delinquent slave.

But if Onesimus' labour was Philemon's property, of which he could not

be rightfully deprived without his own consent, and for the loss of

which he was entitled to an equivalent, slaveholding cannot be in

itself unlawful. We have here a recognition of the very essence of the

relation.

This case is so fatal to the theory of all Abolitionists who admit the

canonical authority of the Epistle, that desperate efforts are made to

pervert its meaning. Mr. Albert Barnes, Coryphæus of these expository

sophists, says in one of his comments, that it does not appear from

the Epistle that Paul really sent Onesimus back to his master at all!

"There is not the slightest evidence that he _compelled_, or even

urged him to go. The language is just such as would have been used on

the supposition, either that he _suggested_ to him to go and bear a

letter to Colosse, or that Onesimus desired to go, and that Paul sent

him agreeably to his request. Compare Philip. ii. 25, Col. iv. 7, 8.

But Epaphroditus and Tychicus were not sent against their own will;

nor is there any more reason to think that Onesimus was." Mr. Barnes

then adds the notable reason, that Paul had no sheriff or constable

to send Onesimus by; so that if he did not choose to return, he could

not compel him. But the stubborn fact is, that Onesimus went; and it

must be accounted for. This author's account is, that he probably

found he had not mended his condition by running away, and so, desired

to return to regain his comfortable home; whereupon Paul availed

himself of the occasion to write to his friend. This solution is not

particularly honourable to the religious character of either party: we

shall neither insult the apostle by adopting, nor the understanding of

readers by refuting it. As to Paul's 'sending' of Epaphroditus to

Phillippi, and Tychicus to Colosse, we note that the word is not the

same with the one used of Onesimus. This is ανεπεμψα; and it is

expressly defined by Robinson's Lexicon as an authoritative sending

up, or remitting to a higher tribunal, such as the sending of Paul by

Festus to Cæsar, Acts xxv. 21. Further, Paul did 'send' these two

brethren, not indeed as slaves are sent, but by his apostolic

authority, to which they doubtless cheerfully responded. Paul had no

physical force by which to drive Onesimus all the way from Rome to

Colosse; but there is such a thing as moral power, and the fact that

the conscience of the sent freely seconds the righteous authority of

the sender, surely does not prove this authority to be naught. How

perverse must he be, who can see in the words, "whom I (Paul) have

sent," nothing but that Onesimus sent himself! Is not this the state

of facts, plain to any honest mind: that Paul instructed him it was

his duty to return to his lawful master, and as his spiritual teacher

told him to do so? And this injunction the converted Onesimus

cheerfully obeyed.

Mr. Barnes also says, it is not proved that Onesimus was a literal

slave at all; he may have been a hired servant or apprentice. Here, as

will appear more fully, he expressly contradicts himself. But as to

the assumption, we reply, that Onesimus is called, v. 16, δουλος, a

name never given to the hired servant: that he is sent back to his

rightful owner, a thing which necessarily implies his slavery: that

St. Paul intercedes for him; and that he recognizes his master's

property in his labour. The whole company of expositors, ancient and

modern, until Mr. Barnes, have declared that Onesimus was Philemon's

slave.

But others again, following the same notable guide, learn that he was

manumitted by the letter of Paul; so that they find here, not a

justification of the slaveholder, but an implied rebuke of slavery.

Thus contradictory is error! Just now he was not a slave at all: now

he is a slave manumitted; and that by one who had no power to do it.

The ground claimed for the latter position is, v. 16, "Not now as a

servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved." Now, the obvious

sense of these words is, that Philemon should now receive Onesimus

back, not as a slave only, but as both a slave and Christian brother.

For proof: By what law could Paul manumit another man's servant? And

he had admitted Philemon's rightful authority, v. 10, by saying: "I

beseech thee for my son Onesimus." Why beseech, if he might have

commanded? If Paul had a right to emancipate, why did he send him back

at all, when every other motive prompted to keep him? He again

disclaims such right, v. 14, "But without thy mind I would do

nothing." Still another proof appears, v. 18, 19, where St. Paul

fully recognizes Onesimus' continued servitude by undertaking to pay

for his delinquencies. The Epistle then adds, that Philemon was "to

receive him back forever," v. 15, _i. e._, for life. The residence of

a free denizen or dependent could not be defined as for life; because

he would go away whenever he pleased. And last, St. Paul expressly

declares that this life-long relation was to be political as well as

spiritual, both that of a servant and fellow-Christian--"How much more

(beloved) now unto thee both in the flesh and in the Lord."

Such are the wretched quibblings by which abolitionism seeks to

pervert the plain meaning of God's Word, as clearly apprehended by the

great current of Christian expositors, both ancient and modern, Greek,

Latin, and English. We almost feel that an apology is due to the

enlightened reader, for detaining him with the formal exposure of

these miserable follies; but our promise was to display the thorough

emptiness of our opponents.

§ 8. _St. Paul reprobates Abolitionists._

One passage of the New Testament remains to be noticed. It is that

which commands the exclusion of Abolitionist teachers from church

communion, 1 Tim. vi. 3-5. St. Paul had just enjoined on this young

minister the giving of proper moral instruction to servants. The

pulpit was to teach them the duty of subordination to masters, as to

rightful authority; and if those masters were also Christians, then

the obligation was only the stronger. See v. 1, 2. The apostle then

proceeds, v. 3, "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to

wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the

doctrine which is according to godliness," (the opposite teaching of

abolitionism contradicts Christ's own word,) "he is proud, knowing

nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof

cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of

men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain

is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."

The more carefully these words of the Holy Ghost are considered, the

more exceedingly remarkable will they appear. Doubtless, every reader

of previous ages has felt a slight trace of wonder, that the apostle

should have left on record a rebuke of such particularity, sternness,

and emphasis, when there appeared nothing in the opinions or abuses of

the Christian world, of sufficient importance quite to justify it. We

have no evidence that, either in the primitive or mediæval church, any

marked disposition prevailed to assail the rights of masters over

their slaves, to such extent as to threaten the disorganization of

civil society or the dishonouring of Christianity thereby. This

denunciation of the apostle seems to have been sufficient to give the

_quietus_ to the spirit of abolition, so long as any reverence for

inspiration remained. Even while the policy of the Roman Church and

clergy was steadily directed to the extinction of feudal slavery in

Western Europe, it does not appear that the doctors of that church

assailed the master's rights or preached insubordination to the

slaves. Why then did St. Paul judge it necessary to leave on record so

startling a denunciation? The question is answered by the events of

our age: these words were written for us on whom these ends of the

world have come. And we have here a striking proof that his pen was

guided by omniscient foreknowledge. The God who told Paul what to

write, foresaw that though the primitive church stood in comparatively

slight need of such admonitions, the century would come, after the

lapse of eighteen ages, when the church would be invaded and defiled

by the deadly spirit of modern abolitionism, a spirit perverse, blind,

divisive and disorganizing, which would become the giant scourge and

opprobrium of Christianity. Therefore has this stern warning been

recorded here, and left standing until events should make men

understand both its wisdom and the lineaments of the monster which it

foreshadowed. The learned Calvin, and the amiable Henry, in explaining

the Epistle to Philemon, allude to the question: Why should this short

letter, which directly touches no publick concernment of the churches,

written on a personal topick from Paul to his friend, be preserved

among the canonical Scriptures by God's Spirit and providence? They

answer, that it was placed there because, although short and of

private concernment, it teaches us many pleasing lessons of Paul's

condescension and courtesy, and above all, of the adaptation of

Christianity to visit, purify, and elevate the lowest and vilest of

the ranks of men. This is true, so far as it goes; but another part of

God's purpose is now developed. He left this little Epistle among his

authoritative words, because he foresaw that the day would come when

the Church would need just the instructions against insubordination,

which are here presented in a concrete case.

Those who have seen and suffered by modern abolitionism best know,

how astonishingly true is the picture here drawn of it by the Divine

limner. God here declares that the principles of the lawfulness of

slavery, the rights of masters, and the duty of obedience in slaves,

are wholesome, and according to godliness. In addition, the sacred

authority of our Lord Jesus Christ is claimed for them. The

Abolitionist who assails these teachings is described as a man proud,

yet ignorant. This combined arrogance and vindictiveness, with

ignorance of the true facts and merits of the case upon which they

presume to dictate, are proverbial in modern abolitionism, according

to the testimony of neutral parties, and even of some of their own

clique. With a stupid superciliousness, equally ludicrous and

offensive, they revile men wiser and better than themselves, and pass

an oracular verdict upon questions of which they know nothing. They

are doting about questions and strifes of words: that is, as the

original word means, their minds are morbid with logomachies, and idle

debates, and corrupted by prejudice and the spirit of disputation.

("Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds.") Those who have read

thus far in this discussion have seen, in the prejudiced sophisms

which we have been compelled to quote for refutation, sufficient

evidence of the perverse, erroneous, and disputatious spirit of

abolitionism. Their dogmas are not supported by the testimony of

Scripture, nor the lights of practical experience, nor sound political

philosophy; but by vain and Utopian theories of human rights, and

philosophy falsely so called. The fruit of their discussions has been

naught but "envy, strife, railings, and evil surmisings." The fact

betrays itself in a thousand ways, that envy of the slaveholder and

his supposed advantages and power, is the root of much of their zeal.

Hence the epithets of "aristocrat," "lordly slaveholder," "Southern

nabob," as ridiculously false to fact as envious, which form so large

a part of the staple of their abuse. They hate us because they suppose

we possessed a privilege of which they were deprived. The angry and

divisive tendencies of abolitionism have manifested themselves but too

familiarly in the rending of churches, in the awakening of fierce

contention wherever it has appeared, in the destruction of the union

both of law and of love between the American States, and in a gigantic

war which has filled a continent with woe and crime. And the remaining

trait of "railings" is verified by the fact that these professed

friends of humanity have exhausted the most inhuman stores of

vituperation upon a class of Christian people whom none can know

without loving for their purity and benevolence. There is no sect that

knows how to scold so virulently as the Abolitionists. The apostle

adds that they are "men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth."

Now it is notoriously the fact that this sect, although claiming to be

the special advocates of righteousness, have ever prosecuted their

ends by unprincipled and false means. Their party action has been

hypocritical and unscrupulous. Their main weapons have been slanders.

And the tendency to mendacity has since been illustrated on a scale so

grand in the recent War, by falsifications of fact, diplomatic

treacheries, and wholesale breaches of covenant, that the accuracy of

the apostle's description becomes startling. It would seem that when

once a man is swayed by this spirit fully, he is under a fatality to

speak untruth, whether he be prime-minister, historian, official of

government, or divine.

The last trait of abolitionism which the apostle draws, is one which,

at the first glance, strikes the observer with surprise, but which is

fully verified by the reality. This is the intensely mercenary spirit

of the sect. "Supposing that gain is godliness." Without due

reflection, one would suppose that a party animated as much as this is

by an intense and sincere fanaticism, and that, a fanaticism of

pretended humanity, whatever violences it might commit, would at least

be free from the vice of a calculated avarice. But the suppleness of

fanaticism in affiliating with every other vice, is not duly

appreciated; it is a fact, true, if unexpected, that genuine

fanaticism can tolerate any thing except the peculiar object of its

hate, and that it is compatible with supreme selfishness. For what is

fanaticism but selfishness acting under the forms of pride with its

offspring censoriousness, the lust of power, envy, and dogmatism?

Modern events verify the apostle's picture: the religion and

humanitarianism of abolition are only a covert avarice. The people of

the American States are notorious for their worship of wealth, just in

proportion as they are swayed by the anti-slavery furor. No party has

ever appeared on the stage of Federal politics, whose ends were so

avowedly selfish and mercenary. The wrongs of the slave have been the

pretext, sectional and personal aggrandizement the true ends. That

party, under the phase of "free-soil," has thrown off the mask, and

avowed the declaration that the true meaning of their opposition to

the rights of Southern masters in the territories is, that "the soil

of America belongs to the white man;" and the poor negro, though now a

native of it, is begrudged a home and a living upon it. There is no

class of people in America which has expended so little of its money

for the actual advantage of the black race, as the abolitionists.

Usually, the history of the case has been, that they would give of

their money, neither to ransom a slave from bondage, nor to aid the

cause of African colonization, nor to assist a distressed free negro

of their own section: the only use to which they can be induced to

apply it is the printing of vituperations against the masters. It was

the testimony of the fugitive slaves themselves, that the philanthropy

of the Abolitionists extended only to seducing them from their homes;

thenceforth their whole thought was to make gain of their godliness.

The crowning evidence, however, of the mercenary spirit of this party

is in this fact, that their advent to power in the Federal government

of the United States has been, according to the testimony of their

mutual recriminations, the epoch of an unprecedented reign of

peculation and official corruption. Such is the picture of

abolitionism as drawn by the Apostle Paul, and verified in America in

our day. It is our privilege and our wisdom to obey his closing

injunction, "From such withdraw thyself," that we may not become

partakers of their sins. From this stern and just denunciation, it may

be learned how utterly the New Testament is opposed to the whole

doctrine and spirit of the party.

We have now passed in review every passage in the New Testament, in

which domestic slavery is directly treated, and we have seen that

they every one imply the innocency of the institution. We have

discussed many of the evasions by which Abolitionists attempt to

escape these testimonies, and have found them utterly unsound. There

remain two pleas, of more general application to the New Testament

argument, to which the ablest of their advocates seem to attach prime

importance. To these we will now attend.

§ 9. _The Golden Rule Compatible with Slavery._

One of these general objections to our New Testament argument is the

following. They say, Christ could not have intended to authorize

slavery, because the tenour and spirit of His moral teachings are

opposed to it. The temper He currently enjoins is one of fraternity,

equality, love, and disinterestedness. But holding a fellow-being in

bondage is inconsistent with all these. Especially is the great

"Golden Rule" incompatible with slavery. This enjoins us to do unto

our neighbour as we would that he should do unto us. Now, as no

slaveholder would like to be himself enslaved, this is a clear proof

that we should not hold others in slavery. Hence, the interpretations

which seem to find authority for slavery in certain passages of the

New Testament, must be erroneous, and we are entitled to reject them

without examination. Abolitionists usually advance this with a

disdainful confidence, as though he who does not admit its justice

were profoundly stupid. But it is exceedingly easy to show that it is

a bald instance of _petitio principii_, and it is founded on a

preposterous interpretation of the Golden Rule, which every sensible

Sabbath-school boy knows how to explode. Its whole plausibility rests

on the _à priori_ assumption of prejudice, that slaveholding cannot

but be wicked, and on a determination not to see it otherwise. Our

refutation, which is demonstrative, reveals the Socinian origin and

Rationalistic character of these opinions. Socinianism harbours loose

views of the authority of inspiration, and especially of that of the

Old Testament. It scruples not to declare, that these venerable

documents contain many admixtures of human error, and wherever it

finds in them any thing it does not like, it boldly rejects and

repudiates it. Moreover, Socinianism having denied the divinity of our

Redeemer Christ, finds itself compelled to attempt an answer to the

hard question: Wherein, then, is He greater than Moses, David, or

Isaiah? And in what respect does He fulfil those transcendent

representations which the Scriptures correctly give of His superiority

of person and mission? The answer which orthodoxy makes is plain and

good: That it is because He is God as well as man, while they were but

sinful men, redeemed and inspired; and that His mission is to

regenerate and atone, while theirs was only to teach. But the answer

which Socinianism has devised is in part this: Christ was commissioned

to reform the moral system of the Old Testament, and to teach a new

law of far superior beauty, purity, and benevolence. Thus, they have a

corrupt polemical motive to misrepresent and degrade the Old Testament

law, in order to make a _Nodus vindice dignus_, for their imaginary

Christ, who does nothing but teach. To effect this, they seize on all

such passages as those in the "Sermon on the Mount," which refute

Pharisaic glosses, and evolve the true law of love. This is the mint

from which abolitionists have borrowed their objections against our

Old Testament defence of slaveholding; such as this, that however it

may have been allowed to the Hebrews, by their older and ruder law,

"because of the hardness of their hearts," it is condemned by the new

law of love, taught by Jesus. Now, our refutation (and it is perfect)

is, that this law of love was just as fully announced by slaveholding

Moses as it is by Jesus; in terms just as full of sweetness,

benevolence, and universal fraternity. Yea more, the very words of

Jesus cited by them and their Socinian allies, as the most striking

instances of the superior mildness and love of His teachings, are in

most cases quoted from Moses himself! The authority by which Christ

enforced them upon His Jewish auditors was Moses' own! Such is the

shameful ignorance of these fanatics concerning the real contents of

that Old Testament which they depreciate. Thus, Christ's epitome of

the whole law into the two commands to love God and our neighbour, is

_avowedly quoted_ from "the law," _i. e._, the Pentateuch. See Matthew

xxii. 36 to 39, and Mark xii. 28 to 33. It may be found in Deut. vi. 4

and 5, and in Levit. xix. 18. Even the scribe of Mark, xii. 32,

Pharisee as he was, understood better than these modern Pharisees of

abolitionism, that Christ's ethics were but a reproduction of Moses'.

He avows the correctness of Christ's rendering of the Pentateuch law,

and very intelligently adduces additional evidence of it by evident

allusion to 1 Samuel xv. 22, and Hosea vi. 6. Again: does Christ

inculcate forgiveness of injuries, benefactions towards enemies, and

the embracing of aliens in our philanthropy as well as kindred and

fellow-citizens? He does but cite them to the authority of Moses in

Levit. xix. 18, Exod. xxiii. 4, 5, Levit. xxiv. 22, Exod. xxii. 21,

xxxiii. 9. For here their great prophet himself had taught them that

revenge must be left to God, that an embarrassed or distressed enemy

must be kindly assisted, and that the alien must be treated in all

humane respects as a fellow-citizen, under a lively and sympathetic

sense of their own sufferings when they were oppressed aliens in

Egypt. The Golden Rule, as stated by our Saviour, is but a practical

application of the Mosaic precept "to love our neighbours as

ourselves," borrowed from Moses. In Matt. vii. 12, Christ, after

giving the Golden Rule, adds, "for this is the law and the prophets."

That is, the Golden Rule is the summary of the morality of the

Pentateuch and Old Testament prophets. We repeat that there is not one

trait of love, of benevolence, of sweet expansive fraternity, of

amiable equity, contained in any of Christ's precepts or parables,

that is not also found in the Laws of Moses. Their moral teachings are

absolutely at one, in principle; and so they must be, if both are from

the unchangeable God. To say otherwise is a denial of inspiration; it

is infidelity; and indeed abolitionism is infidelity. Our reply, then,

is, _that Christ's giving the law of love cannot be inconsistent with

his authorizing slaveholding; because Moses gave the same law of love,

and yet indisputably authorized slaveholding_. We defy all the

sophisms of the whole crew of the perverse and destitute of the truth,

to obscure, much less to rebut this answer, without denying the

inspiration and even the common truthfulness of Moses. But that they

will not stickle to do: for what do they care for Moses, or Christ

either, in comparison of their fanatical idol?

But a more special word should be devoted to the argument from the

Golden Rule. The sophism is so bald, and the clear evolution of it has

been given so often, even in the humblest manuals of ethics prepared

for school-boys, that it is tiresome to repeat its exposure. But as

leading Abolitionists continue to advance the oft-torn and tattered

folly, the friends of truth must continue to tear it to shreds. The

whole reasoning of the Abolitionists proceeds on the absurd idea, that

any caprice or vain desire we might entertain towards our fellow-man,

if we were in his place, and he in ours, must be the rule of our

conduct towards him, whether the desire would be in itself right or

not. This absurdity has been illustrated by a thousand instances. On

this rule, a parent who, were he a child again, would be wayward and

self-indulgent, commits a clear sin in restraining or punishing the

waywardness of his child, for this is doing the opposite of what he

would wish were he again the child. Judge and sheriff commit a

criminal murder in condemning and executing the most atrocious felon;

for were they on the gallows themselves, the overmastering love of

life would very surely prompt them to desire release. In a word,

whatever ill-regulated desire we are conscious of having, or of being

likely to have, in reversed circumstances, that desire we are bound to

make the rule of our action in granting the parallel caprice of any

other man, be he bore, beggar, highwayman, or what not. On this

understanding, the Golden Rule would become any thing but golden; it

would be a rule of iniquity; for instead of making impartial equity

our regulating principle, it would make the accidents of man's

criminal caprice the law of his acts. It would become every man's duty

to enable all other men to do whatever his own sinful heart, _mutatis

mutandis_, might prompt.

The absurdity of the abolitionist argument may be shown, again, by

"carrying the war into Africa." We prove from it, by a process

precisely as logical as theirs, that emancipation is a sin. Surely the

principle of the Golden Rule binds the slave just as much as the

master. If the desire which one would feel (_mutatis mutandis_) must

govern each man's conduct, then the slave may be very sure that, were

he the master, he would naturally desire to retain the services of the

slaves who were his lawful property. Therefore, according to this

abolition rule, he is morally bound to decline his own liberty;

_i. e._, to act towards his master as he, were he the master, would

desire his slave to act.

It is clear, then, that our Saviour, by His Golden Rule, never

intended to establish so absurd a law. The rule of our conduct to our

neighbour is not any desire which we might have, were we to change

places; but it is _that desire which we should, in that case, be

morally entitled to have_. To whatsoever treatment we should

conscientiously think ourselves morally entitled, were we slaves

instead of masters, all that treatment we as masters are morally bound

to give our servants, so far as ability and a just regard for other

duties enables us. Whether that treatment should include emancipation,

depends on another question, whether the desire which we, if slaves,

should very naturally feel to be emancipated, is a righteous desire

or not; or, in other words, whether the obligation to service is

rightful. Hence, before the Golden Rule can be cited as enjoining

emancipation, it must first be settled whether the master's title is

unrighteous. The Apostle Paul gives precisely the true application of

this rule when he says: "Masters, give unto your servants that which

is just and equal." And this means, not emancipation from servitude,

but good treatment as servants; which is proven by the fact that the

precept contemplates the relation of masters and servants as still

subsisting. All this is so clear, that it would be an insult to the

intelligence of the reader to tarry longer upon the sophism. We only

add, that the obvious meaning above put upon the Golden Rule is that

given to it by all sensible expositors, such as Whitby, Scott, Henry,

before it received an application to this controversy. Yet, though

this obvious answer has been a hundred times offered, abolitionists

still obtrude the miserable cheat, in speeches, in pamphlets, in

tracts, as though it were the all-sufficient demonstration of the

anti-Christian character of slavery. They will doubtless continue a

hundred times more to offer it, to gull none, however, except the

wilfully blind.

§ 10. _Was Christ Afraid to Condemn Slavery?_

The other general evasion of the New Testament argument for the

lawfulness of slavery, is to say: That Jesus Christ and his apostles

did not indeed explicitly condemn slavery; but that they forbore from

doing so for prudential reasons. They saw, say these abolitionists,

that it was a sin universally prevalent, entwined with the whole

fabrick of human society, and sustained by a tremendous weight of

sinful prejudice and self-interest. To denounce it categorically would

have been to plunge the infant church, at its feeble beginning, into

all the oppositions, slanders, and strifes of a great social

revolution, thus jeopardizing all its usefulness to the souls of men.

For this reason, Christ and his apostles wisely refrained from direct

attack, and contented themselves with spreading through the world

principles of love and equity, before which slavery would surely melt

away in due time. So say all the abolitionists. So says Dr. Wayland,

in substance, not only in his discussion of slavery, but in his more

responsible and deliberate work, the "Moral Science." In that essay,

Bk. II., Pt. II., Chap. I., § 1, he says: "The Gospel was designed,

not for one race, or for one time, but for all races, and for all

times. It looked not at the abolition of this form of evil for that

age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the important object

of its author was to gain it a lodgement in every part of the known

world: so that by its universal diffusion among all classes of

society, it might quietly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil

passions of men; and thus, without violence, work a revolution in the

whole mass of mankind. In this manner alone could its object, a

universal moral revolution, have been accomplished. For if it had

forbidden the evil instead of subverting the principle--if it had

proclaimed the unlawfulness of slavery, and taught slaves to _resist_

the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the

two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world; its

announcement would have been the signal of servile war, and the very

name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst the

agitations of universal bloodshed. The fact that, under these

circumstances, the Gospel does not forbid slavery, affords no reason

to suppose that it does not mean to prohibit it; much less does it

afford ground for belief that Jesus Christ intended to authorize it."

Such is the Jesuitry which is gravely charged, by a professed minister

of the Christian religion, and prominent instructor of youth, upon our

Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles! Such is the cowardly prudence

which it imputes to men who, every one, died martyrs for their moral

courage and unvarying fidelity to truth. And thus is the divine origin

and agency by which, the Bible declares, and by which alone

Christianity is to succeed in a hostile world, quietly left out of

view; and American youth are taught to apprehend it as a creed which

has no Divine king ruling the universe for its propagation, no

Almighty providence engaged for its protection, no Holy Ghost working

irresistibly in the hearts of such as God shall call, to subdue their

enmity to the obedience of Christ: but Christianity is merely a human

system of moral reform, liable to total extinction, unless it is a

little sly in keeping back its unpopular points, until an adroit

occasion offers, (such, for instance, as the power and support of a

resistless Yankee majority in some confederation of slaveholders,) to

make the unpopular doctrine go down, or at least, to choke off those

who dare to make wry faces! Christ and the twelve went out, forsooth,

into a sinful and perishing world, professing to teach men the way of

salvation; and yet, although they knew that any sin persevered in must

damn the soul, they were totally silent as to one great and universal

crime! They came avowedly to "reprove the world of sin, of

righteousness, and of judgment;" and yet uttered no rebuke for this

"sum of all villainies." They went preaching the Gospel of repentance

from all known sin, as the sole condition of eternal life: and yet

never notified their hearers of the sin of one universal practice

prevalent among them, lest, forsooth, they should raise a storm of

prejudice against their system! Nay, far worse than this: they are not

satisfied with a _suppressio veri_, but as though to insure the fatal

misleading of the consciences which they undertook to guide to life,

their policy of pusillanimity leads them to a positive _suggestio

falsi_. Had they been simply and wholly silent about the great sin,

this had been bad enough. But this is not what they did. It is a

glozing deceit to attempt to cover up the case under the pretended

admission that "the Gospel does not forbid slavery," as though this

were the whole of it. Christ and his apostles allude to slavery: they

say a multitude of things about it: they travel all around it: they

limit its rights and define its duties: they retrench its abuses: they

admit the perpetrators of its wrong, (if it be a wrong,) unrepenting,

into the bosom of the church, and to its highest offices. They do

almost every thing which is calculated to justify in masters the

inference that it is lawful. And then they finally dismiss the whole

matter, without one explicit warning of its sinfulness and danger.

According to this theory, the apostles find their trusting pupils on

the brink of the precipice, surrounded with much darkness; and having

added almost every circumstance adapted farther to obfuscate their

consciences, they coolly leave them there, with no other guidance than

a reference to those general principles of equity which, beautifully

taught by Moses, had already signally failed to enlighten them.

Dr. Wayland's hypothesis is also deceitful and erroneous, in

representing Christ as having no alternatives save the one which he

imputes to him, or else of so denouncing slavery as to "teach slaves

to _resist_ the oppression of their masters," and thus lighting the

flames of servile war. Is this so? When a given claim is condemned by

the Bible as not grounded in right, does it necessarily follow on

Gospel principles that those on whom it is made must resist it by

force? Surely not. The uniform teaching of our Saviour to the wronged

individual is, "that he resist not evil." Christ, if he had regarded

slaveholding as sinful, would not indeed have incited slaves to

resistance, any more than he did the victims of polygamy which he

condemned. But he would have taught his disciples the sinfulness of

the relation, and within the pale of his own spiritual commonwealth,

the Church, he would have enforced reformation by refusing to admit or

retain any who persevered in the wrong. Less than this he could not

have done.

The hypothesis is also false to facts and to the actual method of his

mission towards deeply rooted sins, as declared both by his words and

conduct. He expressly repudiates this very theory of action. He

declares that he came "not to send peace on earth, but a sword:" and

announces himself as the grand incendiary of the world. How degrading

to the almighty king of Zion is this imputation of politic cowardice!

And how different from the real picture where we see him boldly

exposing the hypocrisy of the Jewish rulers, and assailing their most

cherished deceptions, though he knew that the price of his

truthfulness would be his blood! And can this paltry theory be true of

that Paul, who took his hearers to record, in full view of his dread

account, that he was "clear from the blood of all men, because he had

not shunned to declare to them all the counsel of God?" (Acts, xx.

27.) This of the man who everywhere assailed and explicitly denounced

the idolatry of Greece and Rome, established by law, entwined with

every feeling, and defended by imperial might? This of men who,

sternly reprobating the universal libertinism of the heathen world,

attacked what every one, countenanced by sages and statesmen, regarded

as a lawful indulgence? This of men who boldly roused every prejudice

of the Jewish heart, by declaring their darling system of rites and

types effete, their ceremonial righteousness a cheat, and the middle

wall of partition between them and the Gentiles, the bulwark of their

proud spiritual aristocracy, broken down? It is slander.

Finally, this hypothesis represents that Saviour who claimed

omniscience, as adopting a policy which was as futile as dishonest. He

forbore the utterance of any express testimony against the sin of

slaveholding, say they, leaving the church to find it out by deduction

from general principles of equity. But in point of fact, the church

never began to make such deduction, until near the close of the 18th

century. Neither primitive, nor reformed, nor Romanist, nor modern

divines taught the doctrine of the intrinsic sinfulness of

slaveholding. The church as a body never dreamed it. Slavery remained

almost universal. It remained for the political agitators of

atheistic, Jacobin France, almost eighteen hundred years after

Christ's birth, to give active currency to this new doctrine, and thus

to infuse energy into the fanaticism of the few erratic Christian

teachers, such as Wesley, who had hitherto asserted this novelty. Now,

did Christ foresee this? If he did not, he is not divine. If he did,

then Dr. Wayland believes that he deliberately chose a plan which

consigned seventeen centuries of Christians to a sin, and as many of

slaves to a wrong, which he all along abhorred. _Credat Judoeus

Apella!_

The book from which we have extracted these words of Dr. Wayland, was

put forth by him as a text-book for the instruction of young persons

in academies and colleges, in the _science of morals_. We are informed

that it is extensively used for this purpose. What can be expected of

that people which suffers the very springs of its morality to be thus

corrupted, by inculcating these ethics of expediency? Not satisfied

with teaching to mortals that species of morality, so called, which

makes convenience the measure of obligation, this scribe of their

Israel imputes the same degrading principle to the Redeemer of men,

and Author of religion, in thus suppressing the truth, and intimating

error to whole generations of his own followers, in order to avoid the

inconveniences of candour. So that unsuspecting youth are thus taught

to approve and imitate this corrupt expediency, in the very person of

the Redeemer God, whom they are commanded to adore. Will the Yankee

give an actual _apotheosis_ to his crooked principles, in the person

of an imaginary New England Christ? We thank God that this is not the

Christ of the Bible, nor our Redeemer, but only the hideous invention

of "men of perverse minds and destitute of the truth." But since we

are taught (Psalm cxv. 8) that they who worship false Gods are like

unto them, that is to say, that idolaters always reproduce in

themselves all the abominations which they adore in their idols, we

need no longer wonder at any thing which the Yankee people may do.

Hence that state of publick morals blazoned to the world by the

effrontery of their own corrupt press, charged upon each other in

their mutual recriminations, and betrayed in their crimes against the

general weal.

In concluding the biblical part of this discussion, it may be expected

that we should indicate more exactly the influence which we suppose

Christianity ought to have exerted upon slavery, and its ultimate

destiny under pure Bible teachings. It may be asked: "When you claim

that slavery is literally and simply a righteous relation, in itself,

if it be not perverted and abused; do you mean that this is the normal

and perfect relation for the labouring man; that this is to be the

fullest and most blessed social development of Christianity: that it

ought to subsist in the best states of Christian society, and will

endure even in the millennium?" We reply, that one uniform effect of

Christianity on slavery, has been to ameliorate it, to remove its

perversions and abuses, just as it does those of the other lawful

relations among men; to make better masters and better servants, and

thus to promote the welfare of both. Domestic slavery has been

violently and mischievously ended in the South; and it is doubtless

ended here in this form, finally. And it has long been manifest that

the radical and anti-Christian tendency of the age is likely speedily

to break up this form of servitude in other places where it still

prevails. But true slavery, that is, the involuntary subjection of one

man to the will of another, is not thereby any more abolished than sin

and death are abolished. And least of all will real bondage of man to

man be abolished in countries governed by radical democracy. The

Scriptural, the milder and more benign form of servitude is swept

away, in the arrogance of false political philosophy, to be replaced

by more pretentious but more grinding forms of society. But, it may be

asked: Will not the diffusion of the pure and blessed principles of

the Gospel ultimately extinguish all forms of slavery? We answer: Yes,

we devoutly trust it will, not by making masters too righteous to hold

slaves, but by so correcting the ignorance, thriftlessness, indolence,

and vice of labouring people, that the institution of slavery will be

no longer needed. Just so, we hope that the spread of Christianity

will some day abolish penitentiaries and jails: but this does not

imply that to put rogues into penitentiaries is not now, and will not

continue, so long as rogues shall continue to deserve imprisonment, an

act which an angel might perform without sullying his morality. So

likewise, we hope that our ransomed world will see the day when

defensive war and military establishments will be superseded:

superseded not because defensive war and the calling of the Christian

soldier are immoral when one's country is wrongfully invaded; but

because there will be none immoral enough to commit the aggressions

which now justify these costly, though righteous expedients of

defence. There appears, in many minds, a strange impotency to

comprehend the truth, that the strict righteousness of the relation

maintained, and the treatment observed towards a person, may depend on

that person's character. They will not see that, as it may be strictly

moral to punish one who is guilty because of his guilt, and yet

suffering is not intrinsic good in itself; so it may be perfectly

righteous to hold a class in bondage, which is incapable of freedom,

and yet it may be true still that bondage is not a good in itself.

Because they cannot accept the extreme dogma, that domestic slavery is

the _beau ideal_ of the proper relation of labour to capital, they

seem to imagine that they are bound in consistency to hold that it is

somehow an evil. Yet they have too much reverence for God's word to

assert, with the abolitionists, in the teeth of its fair meaning, that

slavery is sin _per se_. So, they attempt to stand on an intermediate

ground of invisible and infinitesimal breadth. The plain solution of

the matter is, that slavery may not be the _beau ideal_ of the social

organization; that there is a true evil in the necessity for it, but

that this evil is not slavery, but the ignorance and vice in the

labouring classes, of which slavery is the useful and righteous

remedy; righteous so long as the condition of its utility exists.

Others pass to another extreme, and seeing that the Bible undoubtedly

teaches that slaveholding is righteous, they liken the relation to

those of the husband and father. There is, however, this obvious

difference: These relations were established in paradise before man

fell. Their righteousness and usefulness are not dependent on the

fact that man is a sinner, and they would be appropriately continued

as long as men are in the body, though all were perfectly wise and

holy. But the propriety of slavery, like that of the restraints and

punishments of civil government, rests on the fact that man is

depraved and fallen. Such is his character, that the rights of the

whole, and the greatest welfare of the whole, may, in many cases,

demand the subjection of one part of society to another, even as man's

sinfulness demands the subjection of all to civil government. Slavery

is, indeed, but one form of the institution, _government_. Government

is controul. Some controul over all is necessary, righteous, and

beneficent: the degree of it depends on the character of those to be

controuled. As that character rises in the scale of true virtue, and

self-command, the degree of outward controul may be properly made

lighter. If the lack of those properties in any class is so great as

to demand, for the good and safety of the whole, that extensive

controul which amounts to slavery, then slavery is righteous,

righteous by precisely the same reason that other government is

righteous. And this is the Scriptural account of the origin of

slavery, as justly incurred by the sin and depravity of man.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT.

§ 1. The flimsy character of the arguments based by the abolitionists

on the Scriptures, betrays another than a biblical origin for their

doctrines. They come primarily not from God's word, but from

"philosophy falsely so called;" the abolitionists, having determined

on them in advance, are only concerned with the sacred records, to

thrust them aside by quibbles and evasions. But the only sure and

perfect rule of right is the Bible. This, we have seen, condemns

domestic slavery neither expressly nor by implication. It shows us the

institution in the family of the "Father of the faithful," the "friend

of God," and there recognized by God himself in the solemn sacrament

of the Old Testament circumcision: We have found it expressly

authorized to God's chosen people, Israel, and defended in the

Decalogue itself: We see it existing throughout the ages of that

dispensation, while inspired men, so far from condemning, practised

it: We see that it is not removed by the fuller light of the New

Testament; but on the contrary, its duties are defined, and

slaveholders admitted to all the privileges of the Church: We learn,

in a word, that domestic slavery existed throughout the ages of

revelation, was practised continually by multitudes of God's own

people, was never once rebuked, but often recognized and authorized.

We assert then, that, according to that infallible standard, it is

lawful.

Yet, it is condemned in unmeasured terms by most of the people of

Christendom, is said to be abhorrent to the political ethicks of the

age, and has been reprobated by some of the fathers of our own

commonwealth. What then? In the emphatic language of the book whose

protection we claim: "Let God be true, but every man a liar." Nor are

we much concerned to explain away this collision between human

speculation and God's word. When we consider the weakness of human

reason, and the mortifying history of its vagaries; when we remember

how many dogmas once held for axioms are now exploded, and what

monstrous crimes and follies have been upheld by the unanimous consent

of philosophers, we are not afraid to adopt the teachings of the

All-Wise, in preference to the deductions of blundering and purblind

mortals. When the political experience of the world shall have matured

and corrected the opinions of men, we have no fear but that all the

truly wise, and good, and philosophical, will justify us, and will

acknowledge that this simple, this decried, this abhorred expedient of

inspired law-givers was, after all, best conformed to the true wants

and welfare of those to whom it was applied, and wiser than any of the

conceited _nostrums_ of political quackery; that, in short, "the

foolishness of God was wiser than men." Here, then, we place our feet;

and our answer to reviling abolitionists and a frowning world is: Your

reproach is not against us, but God. Go and convict the All-Wise of

folly, the Infinite Holiness of injustice. Amidst the cruel

sufferings of the war which was thrust upon us for this institution,

and of the violent and disastrous overthrow of our liberties; amidst

the floods of obloquy which our interested persecutors have belched

forth upon us, and the contemptuous neglect of the nations, our

confidence is in God's countenance. He permits us to be sorely

chastened for our sins; but he will not finally suffer his own honour

to be reproached. He will surely rebuke in the end, the folly and

impiety of our slanderers, and "bring forth our righteousness as the

noonday."

The Socinian and skeptical type of all the evasions of our Scriptural

argument has been already intimated. If the most profane and reckless

wresting of God's word will not serve their turn, to make it speak

abolitionism, then they not seldom repudiate its authority. One of

their leaders, long a professed minister of the Gospel, declares, at

the close of a train of tortuous sophisms, that if he were compelled

to believe the Bible countenances slavery, he should be compelled to

give up the Bible: thereby virtually confessing that he had never been

convinced of the infallibility of that which, for thirty years, he had

been pretending to preach to men as infallible. Others, more blatant

and blasphemous, when compelled to admit that both the Bible and the

American constitution recognized slavery, exclaimed: "Give me, then,

an anti-slavery constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an

anti-slavery God!"

Orthodox Christians have always held it as a rule perfectly settled,

that a revelation which was made to yield to any and every supposed

deduction of reason, would be no authoritative rule of faith at all.

It is only when the express word of Scripture clearly contradicts a

proposition which appears to be a primary intuition of the reason,

that it constitutes any difficulty in the reception of God's word. But

can this prejudice against slavery claim to be such? The tests of such

truths are, that they shall be seen in their own light to be true;

that they shall be necessary; and that all sane human beings shall

inevitably believe them, if they comprehend the terms of the

statements. Obviously, abolitionism can claim none of these traits.

Instead of being self-evident, we shall show that it is a mere

deduction from a deceitful and baseless theory. To the mind of all

former ages, it has failed to commend itself as true. All ancient

nations, and most moderns, have believed the contrary. All ancient

philosophers, and all Bible saints, the latter at least as

conscientious and clear-headed as modern fanatics, believed slavery to

be lawful. The great philosophers of the middle ages, surpassed by

none in acumen, and guided by the uninspired lights of a Plato,

Aristotle and Cicero, thought and wrote without suspecting the

sinfulness of slavery. Thousands of Christians in the Southern States,

of as enlightened and honest consciences as any in the world, lived

and died masters, with no other self-reproach than that they did not

more faithfully fulfil the master's duties. Since it is not a

self-evident, not a necessary, not a universally received truth, that

slavery is sinful, we therefore claim the authority of the Scriptures

as conclusive, and boldly repudiate all logical obligation to

reconcile them with the vain conclusions of human speculation. "He

that reproveth God, let him answer it."

Yet we acknowledge the obligation of those who undertake to expound

God's word, "to commend it to every man's conscience in the sight of

God," so far as the self-confidence and petulance of the depraved

reason will permit. To show, therefore, that we have no fear of any

legitimate human speculation, and to do what in us lies "to justify

the ways of God to men," we propose in this chapter to examine the

ethical argument against slavery with some care.

§ 2. _Misrepresentations Cleared._

But abolitionists, by their audacious assumptions, endeavour to throw

the question out of the pale of discussion: they exclaim that it needs

no wire-drawn inference, it is self-evident, that a system which

dehumanizes a human being, and makes his very person like a brute's

body, the property of another creature; which necessitates the

entailing of ignorance and vice; which ignores the marital and

parental rights; which subjects the chastity of the female to the

brute will of her master, and which fills Southern homes with the

constant outcry of oppression, is an iniquity: and that he who

attempts to cite the testimony of reason and Scripture in defence of

such wrongs, offers an insult to their minds and consciences which

self-respect requires them to repel at once. The malignant industry of

our enemies in propagating these monstrous slanders, compels us,

therefore, to pause at the outset of the discussion, to rebut them,

and disabuse the minds of readers. And it is here asserted, once for

all, that the popular apprehension of the slave's condition and

treatment, spread throughout Europe and the North, _is utterly false_:

that it is the result of nothing less than persistent, wilful, and

almost incredible lying on the part of interested accusers; and that

this is recognized by every intelligent European and Northern man who

has resided among us long enough truly to know the institution of

slavery. The character disclosed by the Yankees in the war lately

closed, has effectually taught the rest of the world to recognize the

probability of our charge.

The reader is first, then, requested to recall the definition of

American slavery admitted by us in the beginning of the fifth chapter.

It is not an ownership of the servant's moral personality, soul,

religious destinies, or conscience; but a property in his involuntary

labour. And this right to his labour implies just so much controul

over his person as enables his master to possess his labour. Our

doctrine "hath this extent, no more." This we established beyond cavil

by a reference to our laws and usages. Now, the abolitionist argues

that the master's claim over the servant, if just, must imply a right

to employ any means necessary to perpetuate it, such as to keep the

mind of his slaves stupid and dark, because this is necessary to

prevent his aspiring to his liberty. We reply that such means are not

necessary in the nature of the case. To assert their necessity

audaciously begs the question. If the master's claim were so

essentially unrighteous, that any intelligent reflection in the slave

would justify his indignation and resistance, then it might be more

convenient for the master to make him an unreflecting animal. But the

very subject in debate is, whether the claim is unrighteous. Suppose

that the relation can be demonstrated to be right, reasonable, and

beneficent for the servant, (which is what we assert,) then the only

effect of intelligent reflection and of knowledge and virtue combined

in the slave's character, will be to render him better satisfied with

his condition. So that to degrade his soul is not a necessary means

for perpetuating the master's authority, and not a part of the rights

of masters. And now, it is emphatically asserted that Southern

masters, as a class, did not seek or desire to repress either the

mental or religious culture of their servants' souls; but the

contrary. It is our solemn and truthful testimony, that the nearly

universal temper of masters was to promote and not to hinder it; and

the intellectual and religious culture of our slaves met no other

general obstacle, save that which operates among the labouring poor of

all countries, their own indifference to it, and the necessities of

nearly constant manual labour. If there was any exception, it was

caused by the mischievous meddling of abolitionists themselves,

obtruding on the servants that false doctrine so sternly condemned by

St. Paul. Southern masters desired the intelligence and morality of

their servants. As a class, masters and their families performed a

large amount of gratuitous labour for that end; and universally met

all judicious efforts for it from others with cordial approval. An

intelligent Christian servant was universally recognized as being, in

a pecuniary view, a better servant. Is it asserted that there is still

much degrading ignorance among Southern negroes? True: but it exists

not because of our system, but in spite of it. There is more besotted

ignorance in the peasantry of all other countries. It is the

dispassionate conviction of intelligent Southerners, that our male

slaves presented a better average of virtue and intelligence than the

rank and file of the Federal armies by which we were overrun: and even

the negro troops of our conquerors, although mostly recruited from the

more idle and vicious slaves, were better than the white! The Africans

of these States, three generations ago, were the most debased among

pagan savages. A nation is not educated in a day. How long have the

British people been in reaching their present civilization under God's

providential tutelage? The South has advanced the Africans, as a

whole, more rapidly than any other low savage race has ever been

educated. Hence we boldly claim, that our system, instead of

necessitating the ignorance and vice of its subjects, deserves the

credit of a most beneficent culture.