“It must not be imagined that because the people of this country are
almost perpetually engaged in conflicts with their neighbours, the
slaughter of human beings is therefore very great. They pursue war, as
it is called, partly as an amusement, or to _keep their hands in it_;
and partly to benefit themselves by the capture of slaves.”
One decrepit old woman was the victim of a hundred engagements, at Cape
La Hoo, during a three years’ war. Lander describes those who claim to
be free, as _the war men of the path_, who are robbers. He says, p. 145,
“they subsist solely by pillage and rapine.”
Such is the condition of the poor free negro in Africa. The chieftain
often, it is true, has goats, sheep, fields of corn and rice; but we
mistake when we suppose that the slaves, the surplus of whom were
formerly sent to market, were the proprietors of such property. At
Katunqua, p. 179, Lander describes the food to be “such as lizards,
rats, locusts, and caterpillars, which the natives roast, grill, bake,
and boil.” No people feed on such vermin who possess fields and flocks.
We can form some notion of their companionship, from p. 110: “It is the
custom here, when the governor dies, for two of his favourite wives to
quit the world on the same day;” but in this case they ran and hid
themselves. Also, p. 182: “This morning a young man visited us, with a
countenance so rueful, and spoke in a tone so low and melancholy, that
we were desirous to learn what evil had befallen him. The cause of it
was soon explained by his informing us that he would be doomed to die,
with two companions, as soon as the governor’s dissolution should take
place.”
There is little or no discrepancy among travellers in their descriptions
of the Africans. Their state of society must have been well known to
Paley; yet Paley gives us a picture of their state of society from
imagination, founded upon that state of society with which his pupils
were conversant: “Because the slaves were torn away from their parents,
wives, children, and friends, homes, companions, country, fields, and
flocks.”
If the picture drawn by Paley were the lone consideration addressed to
our commiseration in the argument against slavery as a Divine
institution of mercy, we should, perhaps, be at some loss to determine
what amount was due from us to the African slave, who had thus been
_torn from the danger of being put to death_!—_thus torn from his fields
of lizards and locusts, and flocks of caterpillars!_
But what shall we think of an argument, founded on relations in England,
but applied to Africa, where no such relations exist?
It is a rule to hesitate as to the truthfulness of all that is stated,
when the witness is discovered to be under the influence of a prejudice
so deeply seated as to mislead the mind, and especially when we discover
a portion of the stated facts to be either not true or misapplied.
The reasons assigned by Dr. Paley why the Christian Scriptures did not
prohibit and condemn slavery, we deem also quite erroneous:—“For
Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world,
abstained, as behooved it, from intermeddling with the civil
institutions of any;” and then asks, with an air of triumph, “But does
it follow from the silence of Scripture concerning them, that all the
civil institutions that prevailed were right? or that the bad should not
be exchanged for better?”
We wish to call particular attention to this passage, for, even after
having examined the books of the Greek philosophers, we are constrained
to say we have never seen a more beautiful sophism.
Is it a fact, then, that Jesus Christ and his apostles did compromise
and compound with sin, as Dr. Paley thinks it behooved them, and with
the design to avoid opposition to the introduction of Christianity?
Say, thou humble follower of the lowly Jesus, art thou ready to lay down
thy life for Him who could truckle to sin—to a gross, an abominable sin,
which alone would destroy the purity of his character and the divinity
of his doctrine? In all love, we pray Him who holds your very breath in
his hand, to cause you to tremble, before you shall say that Jesus
Christ was a liar, and his apostles perjured!
“I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman * * * as the Father
hath loved me, so have I loved you; continue ye in my love. Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye
are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you
not _servants_, for the _servant_ knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but I
have called you friends; for ALL THINGS that I have heard of my Father,
I have made known unto you.” _John_ xv. 1, 9, 13, 15.
“And when they were come to him, he said unto them; ye know, from the
first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you,
at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with
many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the
Jews. And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you; but have
showed you, and have taught you publicly and from house to house.
Wherefore, I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood
of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you ALL THE COUNSEL
OF GOD.” _Acts_ xx.
Had St. Paul foreseen the attack upon his character, made by Dr. Paley,
seventeen hundred and eighty-five years after, and that upon his Master
and their religion, he need not have altered his language to have
repelled the slander.
“Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have
obtained like precious faith with us, through the righteousness of God
and of our Saviour Jesus Christ: grace and peace be multiplied unto you,
through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord, according as
his divine power hath given unto us ALL THINGS THAT PERTAIN UNTO LIFE
AND GODLINESS, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory
and virtue.” 2 _Pet._ i. 1, 2, 3.
And what says this holy man,—what says this same Peter, touching the
subject of Dr. Paley’s remarks?
“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the
good and gentle, but also to the froward, * * * for hereunto were ye
called.” 1 _Pet._ ii. 18–21.
Permit us to inquire whether the language of Jesus Christ himself, of
St. Paul and St. Peter, does not, in a strong degree, contradict the
supposition of Dr. Paley? And let us inquire whether it is probable that
a class of men, devoted to the promulgation of a doctrine which ran so
counter to many of the civil institutions, customs, habits, and
religions then in the world, as to have subjected them to death, would
have secretly kept back a part of their creed, when, to have made it
known, could not have increased their danger; and, especially, as by the
creed itself, such keeping back would have insured to them the eternal
punishment hereafter?
“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which
is of God: that we might know the things that are freely given to us of
God; which things we also speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” 1 _Cor._ ii. 12, 13. “And
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying all power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
teaching them to observe ALL THINGS whatsoever I have commanded you; and
lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” _Matt._
xxviii. 18–20. “And now, O Father, glorify thou me, with thine own self,
with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.
Now they have known ALL THINGS whatsoever thou hast given me of thee:
for I have given unto them the WORDS which thou gavest me, and they have
received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee.” _John_
xvii. 5–8.
It is not possible that we could have had greater evidence that the
whole counsel of God, illustrating the Christian duty, was delivered to
the apostles, and through them, to the world. Besides, the very
presumption of the incompleteness of the instruction undermines the
divinity of the doctrine.
There is, perhaps, no one who does not feel pain, sometimes almost
unspeakable, when we see a great man leaning upon the staff of error,
especially when such error is palpable, gross, and calamitous in its
tendency and effects.
But, cheering as the early ray of hope, and welcome as the rest-giving
witness of a covenant, will be the proof that human weakness still had
power to wade from out the miry labyrinth of error—to stand upon the
rock from whence even human eyes might behold some few glimpses of the
rising effulgence of truth.
We have some evidence that Dr. Paley did, at a later period of his life,
adopt a more consistent view of the Christian Scriptures, touching the
subject of this inquiry. In his “Horæ Paulinæ,” a work of exceeding
great merit, on the subject of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church,
he enumerates and classifies the subjects of Paul’s instruction, among
which slavery is conspicuously mentioned, and then says—“That though
they” (the subjects) “be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the
persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the
existence and reality of the circumstances” (subjects) “could have
suggested them to the writer’s thought.”
In all Christian love and charity, we are constrained to believe that he
had discovered his error; and that, had his life been spared longer, he,
with diligence and anxiety, would have expunged from his works charges
so reflecting on himself, and contrary to the character of the God of
our hope.
------------------