Three Prize Essays on American Slavery Part 6

We know, too, that you are not, in your church capacity, the const.i.tuted arbiters of the question as a question of State policy. And, so long as your legislatures and their const.i.tuencies are resolved on maintaining the system, perhaps you will be unable to effect as much as you desire in the way of promoting its overthrow. And yet, brethren, there is a way in which we think you can, with entire safety and manifest propriety, contribute largely and directly to the extinction of American slavery.

Would the entire Southern church cease all personal partic.i.p.ation in slavery, and throw her whole weight and influence into the scale of slavery's complete subversion, that "consummation devoutly to be wished"

would soon ensue. Slave-holding, no longer practised or justified by the church, but discountenanced, could not long retain its foothold in the State. Now if this be so, our slaveholding brethren will confess that they are imperiously bound, by motives of Christian duty, to liberate their bondmen with all consistent speed. Meantime, and as one important means of qualifying them for freedom, you ought,

2. To see to it that not only your own, but all the bondmen among you,--your entire slave population,--are furnished with the Bible, and qualified to read and comprehend it; and also with stated preaching.

They need a written and preached gospel, were it only to fit them to exchange, with advantage, a state of va.s.salage for the dignity of freemen; for all experience proves that the Bible and the pulpit are of all instruments the best to qualify men safely to exercise the right of self-government. But there is a servitude more dreadful by far than any domestic bondage that men have ever groaned under; and your slaves need the Bible, and the Bible preached, to prove G.o.d's instruments of breaking the chains imposed by Satan, and making them Christ's freemen.

Before G.o.d and in prospect of eternity, the distinctions between the master and his slave dwindle into insignificance. Having souls that are alike impure and alike precious, alike remembered by a dying Saviour and alike in need of the regenerating change, they stand alike in need of G.o.d's Word, written and preached, as the Spirit's instrument in renewing and sanctifying the soul. Hence the Bible and preaching are as much the rightful inheritance of the slave as of the master. We rejoice that these truths and the obligations resulting therefrom are, to some extent, recognized by southern Christians; and that, in spite of certain adverse statutes, so much is being done there for the spiritual well-being of the slaves. Go on, brethren, in the good work of evangelizing your slave population; in teaching them the art of reading and the rudiments of knowledge; in putting the Bible into their hands, and affording them stated opportunities to read it, and to hear it expounded by you and by Christ's ministers. Go on, we say, till there be not one southern slave, who, in point of religious privileges, is not on a footing of equality with yourselves. Prosecuting this laudable work in the spirit of love, you will probably encounter no serious opposition.

The adverse but dead statutes referred to will not, we hope, be galvanized into life, in order to oppose you.

It only remains that we name a few things, which we trust our Southern brethren will unite with us in saying that they should refrain from doing. (1.) You ought not to, and we trust you will not, betray impatience and irritation, whenever we of the North attempt to press the claims of the enslaved on your attention. Your doing this,--as you sometimes have,--seems to indicate, that, in your opinion, we Northern Christians have no responsibility in regard to slavery and its evils; and that when we discuss this theme we make ourselves "busybodies in other men's matters." To the justness of this opinion we cannot subscribe. While we disclaim all right or intention to break our compact with you as States, we feel that American slavery is a question of too great moment to ourselves and to unborn generations for us to have no concern with or responsibility for; and as patriots, as philanthropists, as Christians, we are constrained to do all that we rightfully may for the downfall of this h.o.a.ry system of wrong and woe. If any of you differ with us in opinion on this theme, we trust you will allow us to discuss it to our heart's content; and that you will listen to our reasonings with Christian meekness and candor. Not to do so will be construed as an evidence of intrinsic weakness in your cause. (2.) You will freely admit, we presume, that certain practices are authorized by your slave laws, in which you must not indulge even so long as by any necessity you hold slaves. Your slave codes, for example, do not recognize the sanct.i.ty of family ties and the domestic affections as existing among slaves; but, as Christian masters, you must. You doubtless believe, as do we, that the marriage relation, with all its rights and immunities, was as much designed for the negro as for the white man; that he, as truly as the other, is ent.i.tled to "cleave unto his wife," unexposed to the danger of man's putting asunder what G.o.d hath so closely joined, that "they are no more twain, but one flesh." You believe, too, that G.o.d united husband and wife thus indissolubly, not simply that they might be a help and solace to each other in the toilsome pilgrimage of life, but that the children with which G.o.d should bless them might grow up under their supervision, and by them be qualified for a career of usefulness and honor. Thus you believe, and believing thus, you will not, we trust, counteract G.o.d's benevolent designs, by countenancing, in your own practice, the separation of husbands and wives, or of parents and their offspring. We feel a.s.sured, that, whatever your laws may allow, or non-professing masters around you may do, you will never ignore the conjugal or parental rights of your servants, or indulge in any thing adapted to mar their domestic enjoyment. Were you to do so, we confess we could not extend to you "the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p" as brethren in Christ. Were a church-member of ours to practise thus, we should regard him as amenable to discipline. We should also regard it as disciplinable for a master to overwork, or brutally chastise, or but half feed and clothe his servants; or to hold slaves for mere purposes of gain, or to traffic in them. None of these inhumanities could we reconcile with the obligations of a Christian profession; and we confidently hope that in these views you will heartily concur, and that with them your practice will correspond.

Christian brethren of the North and the South! The question we have been considering is one of vast moment. Upon the right disposition of it are suspended, under G.o.d, interests of immeasurable value, and which stretch far out into the unseen future of our country and the world. Coming ages and unborn generations are to be affected; favorably or otherwise, by the decision of this vexed question; and, brethren, unless I misjudge, its right decision is, to a very great extent, lodged in our hands. As decides the American church, so, methinks, will decide the American people. And now,--may I confess it?--I have dared to hope that the sentiments of this Essay are not only sound, but in unison with the views of the great ma.s.s of American Christians. Are we not agreed in this: that American slavery is a system of deep injustice and wrong, not sanctioned by the Word or the providence of G.o.d; fraught with incalculable mischief to the interests of both masters, and slaves, and to the social and religious well-being of our whole country; a blot on the escutcheon both of the nation and of the church; a weapon for scepticism to wield, and an obstacle to the introduction of millennial glory; and hence, a system which ought speedily to terminate, and which all good men should unitedly oppose and seek to subvert? If we are thus agreed, let us join hands as well as hearts, and, swerving neither to the extreme of pa.s.sive indifference on the one hand nor to that of erratic fanaticism on the other, in the majesty of principle let us move calmly onward, a phalanx of Christian philanthropists, attempting naught but what they are a.s.sured G.o.d would have them attempt, and employing only such means as are warranted by an enlightened conscience. Leaning prayerfully on Him who hears the sighing of the oppressed, let us push vigorously forward, and, though the year of jubilee has not yet fully come, be a.s.sured it will come,--that proud day, when not only "throughout all the land," but throughout the civilized world, liberty shall be proclaimed "unto all the inhabitants thereof." Hasten its advent, "O Thou that hearest prayer," and that "delightest in mercy!"

Amen and Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] An extended pa.s.sage containing the extract may be found conveniently in Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.

[B] Genesis, 10th Chapter. Vide, Kitto's Cyclopaedia, for views in this connection.

[C] Col. 4:1; "Ye masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." That is, act towards them on the principles of justice and equity. Justice requires that all their rights, as men, as husbands, and as parents, should be regarded. And these rights are not to be determined by the civil law, but by the law of G.o.d.... But G.o.d concedes nothing to the master beyond what the law of love allows. Paul requires for servants not only what is strictly just, but t?? ?s?t?ta. What is that? Literally, it is _equality_. This is not only its signification, but its meaning. Servants are to be treated by their masters on the principles of equality. Not that they are to be equal with their masters in authority or station or circ.u.mstances; but that they are to be treated as having, as men, as husbands, and as parents, equal rights with their masters. It is just as great a sin to deprive a servant of the just recompense for his labor, or to keep him in ignorance, or to take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free man. This is the equality which the law of G.o.d demands, and on this principle the final judgment is to be administered. Christ will punish the master for defrauding the servant as severely as he will punish the servant for robbing his master. The same penalty will be inflicted for the violation of the conjugal or parental rights of the one as of the other. For, as the apostle adds, there is no respect of persons with him. At his bar the question will be, "What was done?" not "Who did it?"

Paul carries this so far as to apply the principle not only to the acts, but to the temper of masters. They are not only to act towards their servants on the principles of justice and equity, but are to _avoid threatening_. This includes all manifestation of contempt and ill temper, or undue severity. All this is enforced by the consideration that masters have a Master in heaven, to whom they are responsible for their treatment of their servants.... Believers will act in conformity with the Gospel in this. And the result of such obedience, if it could become general, would be, that first the evils of slavery, and then slavery itself, would pa.s.s away naturally, and as healthfully as children cease to be minors.

_Prof. Hodge's Commentary._

[D] See 2 Brevard's Digest, 229; Prince's Digest, 446.

[E] Civil Code, Art. 35.

[F] Job ch. 32, v. 17-20, Barnes's translation.

[G] It is sometimes said that the crime of adultery is neither perpetrated nor encouraged by the breaking up of slave-families, because, generally, the connections formed are not truly marriage, not being solemnized according to forms of law, and hence the marriage obligation _cannot_ be violated.

It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it is _not_ so. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons.

[H] Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D.

[I] Mehemet Ali.

[J] The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of them without wages,--the withholding that which is just and equal,--should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that emanc.i.p.ation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar circ.u.mstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation.