When the untruthfulness of the lesson taught involves a misconception of
the character and laws of God, its direct tendency is to create in the
mind an idea of, we may say, an image of God and his laws, as decidedly
different from him and his law as is the lesson taught from the truth;
and here, perhaps, through all time, has been the commencement of
idolatry.
Is it not as much idolatry to worship a false image of the mind, as it
would be an image of wood or stone?
You teach that δοῦλος, _doulos_, does not mean _slave_ in the word of
God; you consequently teach that God disapproves of it, and that his
laws forbid it. We say the exact contrary. It is therefore evident that
the idea, the image we form in the mind of our God, is quite different
from the idea you form in your mind of your God. But God cannot possess
a contradiction in quality; therefore the God we worship must be a
different God from the God you worship. But there can be but one God;
therefore your God is a false God, or our God is a false God. You are an
idolater, or we are one.
And shall it be said that our language is too strong?—unnecessarily
extreme in its denunciation?—unwarranted by the views, by the language
held by the advocates of abolition and the friends of the anti-slavery
movements now in action in the Northern sections of our country? Hear
the proclamation of Mr. Wright, an eloquent speaker, before the
Anti-Slavery Society, as reported in the Boston papers, May 30th, 1850:
“Down with your Bible!—down with your political parties!—down with your
God that sanctions slavery! The God of Moses Stuart, the Andover God,
the God of William H. Rogers, which is worshipped in the Winter-street
Church, is a monster, composed of oppression, fraud, injustice,
pollution, and every crime, in the shape of slavery. To such a God I am
an atheist.”
Thus the enemies of Jehovah give rapid proof of their idolatry.
It may be well here to remark, that the doctrine thus strange and astray
from truth, may be expected to engraft itself upon such intellects as
are led to the conclusion that man possesses within himself an unerring
guide between right and wrong,—a doctrine which to us appears deeply
fraught with ruin to the individual, and degradation to public morals.
We therefore condemn, most decidedly, the doctrine that man possesses a
mental power called “moral sense,” “conscience,” or the “light within
us,” which enables him unerringly to decide on right and wrong. You may
as well say it will always enable him to discern the truth. Nor do we
comprehend how the mind can entertain such a notion, unless the
intellect is thus impressible that the mind can believe in the existence
of what would be a sister faculty, clairvoyance, or a thousand other
such fantasies.
Man possesses no power by which he can know God, only as he has revealed
himself by inspiration and by the daily manifestations of his law. We
prefer to worship the God of Abraham and Moses, who gave them directions
how slaves should be governed, and of whom they should be purchased:—the
God of the Bible, in which he has plainly revealed the reason why they
are slaves. The history of the human intellect gives proof that among
its strong characteristics is a desire, a fondness to search into
mystery. While this quality stimulates to inquiry after truth, in well
organized minds, it is an important means of man’s improvement and
progression. But in the absence of all guides which can direct the path
to successful inquiry, or by the substitution of false lights, man has
ever gone astray. Here idolatry commences her reign.
The condition of man, from the most exalted instance of mental power,
down to the most abject degradation of the African savage, is for ever
marked and located by the fact, whether the guides to truth in their
influence on him and his race have been universal, or only occasional;
whether their influence has been obeyed only at distant periods, or at
all times rejected. It is the law of God, man shall not progress to
greatness only under the guidance of truth; under the guidance of
falsehood, man degenerates to insignificance, crime, slavery, or to
inglorious death.
We do not propose that any man or any race has, without exception, been
under the constant influence of those axioms that guide the mind along
the thread of truth; but that some men and some races have deviated far
more than others, and that the effect of such difference is quite
perceptible. Some races have become highly improved, while others only
give evidence that they belong to the animal race of men.
Distinctions from this source arose between Cain and Abel; between the
sons of Noah, Abraham, and the fire-worshippers of his day; between
Jacob and Esau; and between the Israelites and the idolaters of the
surrounding Hamitic tribes. This love of searching into mystery without
using the aids to find truth, has at all times of the world, when
supreme power was the object of contemplation, led men to idolatry,
sometimes of the grossest kind; to the belief in mysterious influences,
supernatural agencies, of spirits and demons, magic, witchcraft, &c.
To the same order of causes we are to attribute the sentiment
entertained by some, that certain portions of Scripture and certain
words sometimes contain unknown, hidden, secret, or mysterious meanings
or instructions. Such views involve the proposition that such words,
when used in the Scripture, have a different meaning than when otherwise
used by men, and are to be translated into another language by
substituting different ideas than those expressed by such words when
used by man in his own oral or written language.
Do they forget that the language of man is the language of God? That
revelation is always adapted to the understanding of men? They forget to
know this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private
interpretation. It happens that men take their own circumscribed view of
the providence of God, as God’s ordinance touching a matter, and if
Scripture is in contradiction, then they search for mysterious or
unusual meaning, and give it such interpretation as they imagine suits
the case.
Hence theologians who deny that slavery is of Divine authority, are led
to the necessity of also denying that the Greek word δοῦλος, _doulos_,
means slave; or that, in its verbal formation, it expresses a cognate
action.
The frequency of the use of this word in the copies of the ancient Greek
Testament, as left us in the evangelical writings of the apostles; the
varied manner in which they have applied the term, in figurative
illustration, in comparison, in the most simple explanations, as well as
in the expression of the primitive idea which they intended to convey by
it, would seem to be sufficient proof that whatever such primitive idea
may have been, yet that it surely was in exact conformity to the common
and received opinion of its signification among those who wrote in and
used the Greek language. This is very clear, since it is often used and
addressed to the Greeks themselves, insomuch that no temerity has ever
yet asserted that this word is of different import when found in the
writings of the apostles than when found in the Greek authors generally.
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