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CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY: 
 
 /cy 
 
 A REVIEW OF 
 
 DOCTORS FULLER AND WAYLAND, 
 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY. 
 
 WILLIAM HAGUE 
 
 . BOSTON: 
 GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN 
 
 59 WASHINGTON STEEET. 
 
 1847. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY 
 
 REVIEW 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 RICHARD FULLER, D.D. 
 
 OP BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND 
 
 n^ 
 
 FRANCIS WAYLAXD, D.D. 
 
 OF PROVIDE XCE, RHODE ISLAND. 
 
 ,5 
 
 DOMESTIC SLAVERY, CONSIDERED AS A SCRIPTURAL 
 INSTITUTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HAGUE 
 
 ^ BOSTON: 
 
 GOULD, KENDALL, & LINCOLN, 
 
 59 Washikgtox Street. 
 
 1847, 
 
t. 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, 
 Bsr GOULD, KENDALL, AND LINCOLN, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 boston: 
 Printed by S. N. Dickinson & Co. 
 52 Washington Street. 
 
oi PREFACE. 
 
 More than a year had elapsed after the publication of 
 the work containing a correspondence between the Kev. 
 Drs. Fuller and Watland, and entitled, " Domestic 
 Slavery, considered as a Scriptural Institution," before the 
 author of the following pages had any thought of writing 
 a review of the controversy. 
 
 Having long been a sincere admirer of Dr. Wayland as 
 a writer, a philosopher, and a teacher, he could not but re- 
 gret the more deeply, on that account, the position taken 
 by him, as to the manner in which primitive Christianity 
 treated slavery ; but then, he had no doubt that some of 
 his brethren more immediately connected with the periodi- 
 cal press would do justice to that main part of the dis- 
 cussion. No such review, however, has appeared. 
 
 Some time since, at a social meeting of the Boston 
 Conference of IMinisters, the writer was led to express his 
 disappointment as to this matter, and to state his view 
 of the scriptural argument. He was appointed by the 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 Conference to prepare an article on the subject, to be 
 read at a succeeding meeting. This was done, and the 
 publication of the following Eeview was called for by a 
 unanimous vote. In compliance with the wishes of his 
 brethren, therefore, the author commits it to the press, 
 under the full belief, that if its doctrine be true, the eifect 
 will be good ; and, on the other hand, that if its doctiine 
 be erroneous, the error will be made manifest, and that 
 some few, at least, will become wiser by the discovery. 
 Boston, March 24, 1847. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 
 
 Domestic Slavery, considered as a Scriptural Institution. 
 In a Correspondence between the Rev. Richard Ful- 
 ler, D.D., of Beaufort, S. C, and the Rev. Erancis 
 Watla>'I), D.D., of Providence, R. I. New York : 
 Lewis Colby. Boston : Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 
 
 We have before us a remarkable book. In 
 the lapse of ages, it will probably be regarded as 
 an instructive fact in the history of Christian 
 civilization, that in the nineteenth century, in the 
 Republic of North America, — famed through 
 the world as the asylum of the oppressed and the 
 home of liberty, — two Christian ministers, distin- 
 guished for piety and learning, united in the 
 common work of sending the gospel to the Pagan 
 nations, should have felt themselves called upon 
 to engage in an earnest discussion of the ques- 
 tion. Whether Christianity sanctions slavery ; or 
 whether the continuance of that relation between 
 master and slave, which involves the acknow- 
 ledgment of a right on the part of one man to 
 hold the body and mind of another man as pro- 
 perty, is compatible with the principles of Christ- 
 ianity, — with the letter or the spirit of its law ? 
 Nor will the extraordinary character of this 
 event be at all diminished by the consideration, 
 that both of the disputants belonged to the denomi- 
 nation of Baptists, who had been often known in 
 the world as the advocates of religious liberty, — 
 1# 
 
b CHRISTIANITY 
 
 asserters of tlie inalienable rights of the human 
 soul ; who, in the darkest ages of Romish ty- 
 ranny, declared with a martyr-spirit, before kings 
 and magistrates, that one fundamental doctrine of 
 the new dispensation, " that conscience should be 
 free, and all men be permitted to worship God 
 as they are persuaded that he requires ; " and 
 who, in different centuries, have been the perse- 
 cuted chamjDions of the great truth, that the Bi- 
 ble alone is the binding rule of religious faith, — 
 'that to its possession every man has a right, as 
 by it every man will be judged. 
 
 Yet the volume before us furnishes proof that 
 such a fact has transpired ; that, after all that 
 has been written, even by avowed infidels, in 
 praise of Christianity, for its effects on the social 
 condition of man ; after all that has been done to 
 elevate the poor and the oppressed ; after all that 
 it has taught respecting the common origin and 
 the common redemption of the race ; after all the 
 prophecies which it has held forth, through many 
 centuries, touching the design of God that man- 
 kind shall form a common brotherhood ; after all 
 the evidence which theologians have urged in 
 proof of its being a divine revelation, drawn from 
 its influence on the abolition of slavery, — it is still 
 boldly asserted by a Christian minister, that the 
 essential principles of the slave-system itself 
 Christianity does not reprobate, but that a man 
 may claim to be by right the sovereign lord and 
 owner of his fellow-man, and yet to be his brother 
 in Christ, and faithful in the discharge of all the 
 duties which are enjoined by " the new com- 
 mandment." Such is the position of Dr. Fuller ; 
 a position which we aver to be built on the sand, 
 to have no foundation in the teachings of the 
 
AND SLAVERY. 7 
 
 New Testament ; a position such, that, if it were 
 true, would show that the " old commandment " 
 of Judaism, which abolished slavery, was better 
 than the new commandment of Christianity, 
 which allows it; would show that Christianity 
 was not fit to win its way through all the tribes 
 of men, as a universal religion ; would show, in 
 spite of all its pretensions to miraculous evi- 
 dence, that as yet the Messiah of ancient 
 PROPHECY, the Messiah of man, the Deliverer 
 of the oppressed, the Desire of nations, the 
 jDreacher of " liberty to the captive," has not 
 come ; and that, with the Jew, we must take our 
 place of lowly waiting for the " Consolation of 
 Israel," and the Promised seed in whom " all the 
 families of the earth " are to be blessed. 
 
 Eloquent as is Dr. Fuller in argument and 
 appeal, fervent as is the religious spirit which he 
 breathes, earnest though he is as a preacher of 
 pardon to the sinner, yet, by advocating such a 
 doctrine of slavery as an element of Christianity, 
 he has done greater disservice to the cause of 
 religion and humanity, than could possibly be 
 achieved by all the traffickers of human flesh 
 whom the laws of Christian nations now con- 
 demn as pirates. We say this in sorrow, not in 
 anger ; for to express one's deep, calm, solemn 
 conviction of a terrible truth, is not at war with 
 the law of kindness. The actual dealers of slaves, 
 of whom we speak, avow their profession to be that 
 of rapacity ; their motive to be the love, of gain ; 
 and it is impossible for them to corrupt public 
 sentiment, as may the Christian teacher. They 
 commit a great sin ; but to misrepresent Christ- 
 ianity on this subject is to take away the remedy 
 for sin. They bring thousands of their fellow- 
 
8 CURISTIANITY 
 
 creatures into bondage ; but to make men believe 
 that Christianity sanctions a system of bondage 
 which thus begins, is to cut the sinew of all the 
 moral power in the world which can destroy 
 that system. They can affect the opinions of 
 society but little, because they are abhorred as 
 the enemies of their race ; but the minister of 
 religion is revered as the interpreter of the di- 
 vine will. They can do nothing to erect the 
 bulwarks of the law around their trade in men, 
 and around the markets whose demands they sup- 
 ply ; but he does very much to rear a legal 
 defence around a scheme of oppression, and to 
 perpetuate a social wrong on earth, " which hell 
 itself might shrink to own." What though it be 
 said that in him God may account it as an error 
 of judgment, and not a sin of the heart ? Be it 
 so ; but charity to the man must not conciliate 
 us to his error. We must still declare it to be 
 an error ; and, with the New Testament in our 
 hands, must say to the most amiable of men, 
 " Though you, or an angel from heaven," preach 
 this doctrine as a part of Christ's gospel, we 
 pronounce the sentiment to be wicked, inhuman, 
 antichristian, and " accursed." 
 
 In speaking thus, we are far from denouncing, 
 indiscriminately, all those who stand in the legal 
 relation of slave-holders, as unworthy of being 
 regarded as Christian brethren ; for a man may 
 hold this relation, in a legal sense, against his 
 own consent. He may deem himself the victim 
 of misfortune ; he may feel bound to avail him- 
 self of his legal power, for the protection of his 
 brethren ; and especially he may, before God, as 
 a Christian man, abjure all right and title to his 
 fellow-men as property. Such a man, though 
 
AND SLAVERY. U 
 
 nominally master of a thousand slaves, is more 
 truly a philanthropist, and more worthy the fel- 
 lowship of the universal church, than is the 
 Northern Christian who never saw a slave, and 
 still declares that Christianity sanctions slavery. 
 The former is a slaveholder in name, but not in 
 truth and in spirit ; the latter is called a non- 
 slaveholder, but a change of residence would 
 make him an owner of men and women, and he 
 is now a slaveholder in principle, in feeling, and 
 in guiltiness. The author of. the Sermon on the 
 Mount assures us, that God judges men, not 
 merely according to their overt acts, but accord- 
 ing to the intents of their hearts, — the objects of 
 their approval or abhorrence. 
 
 Hence we have been deeply interested in the 
 argument contained in these letters, conducted 
 by a leading writer of the South and another of 
 the North. Not being of those who would say, 
 " This discussion belongs to the realm of abstrac- 
 tions ; it is better to let it alone, and to deal only 
 with facts ; " we deem the discussion itself as a 
 fact of the highest moment. For ourselves, we 
 have not been aware, till recently, how exten- 
 sively the opinion defended by Dr. Fuller pre- 
 vails among Southern Christians, — how far they 
 have departed from the purer doctrines of their 
 fathers. We supposed that, to a wider extent 
 than seems now to be the case, they had agreed 
 with us in believing that Christianity entirely con- 
 demns the slave system ; and that in proportion 
 as their influence in the state was increasing, the 
 day of emancipation was hastening on. We had 
 often thought of them, as lacking a proper degree 
 of zeal in the work ; as being timid and tardy, 
 and too subservient to the schemes of worldly 
 
10 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 politicians ; but we had never believed them so 
 generally to have embraced a corrupt doctrine, 
 to have perverted the high principles of Christ- 
 ianity, and to have been pressing into the support 
 of slavery a religion which came into the world 
 " to comfort the broken-hearted, to lift up those 
 who were bowed down, to break every yoke, and 
 let the oppressed go free." 
 
 While there are many things in these letters 
 incidentally thrown out on both sides, which may 
 be worthy of notice at some time, we wish now 
 to consider the main question proposed, and the 
 way in which it is treated. 
 
 The main question is, Does Christianity sanc- 
 tion slavery ? Dr. Fuller asserts the affirmative 
 in the clearest terms. He says : " I find my 
 Bible condemning the abuses of slavery, but per- 
 mitting the system itself." Page 4. 
 
 " The matter stands thus : the Bible did au- 
 thorize some sort of slavery ; if now the abuses 
 admitted and deplored by me be essentials of all 
 slavery, then the Bible did allow those abuses." 
 Page 10. 
 
 " Slavery was everywhere a part of the so- 
 cial organization of the earth ; and slaves and 
 their masters were members together of the 
 churches ; and minute instructions are given to 
 each as to their duties, without even an insinua- 
 tion that it was the duty of masters to emanci- 
 pate. Now I ask, could this possibly be so, if slav- 
 ery were a ' heinous sin ' ? No ! every candid 
 man will answer no I " Page 12 
 
 " I put it to any one whether the precepts to 
 masters, enjoining of course their whole duty, 
 and not requiring, not exhorting them to emanci- 
 pate their slaves, are not conclusive proof that 
 
AND SLAVERY. 11 
 
 the apostles did not consider (and as a New Tes- 
 tament precept is for all ages, that no one is now 
 justified in denouncing) slave-holding as a sin." 
 Page 194. 
 
 From these citations it is evident, that the ar- 
 gument of Dr. Fuller, as to the teaching of the 
 New Testament, rests on two points : 
 
 1. The fact that the relation of master and 
 slave was recognized throughout the civilized 
 world, by the law of the Roman empire. 
 
 2. The silence of the New Testament, as to 
 the duty of dissolving that relation. 
 
 This argument has respect, necessarily, to the 
 slave system recognized by the Roman law, 
 which was then so extensively supreme, because 
 there is no evidence that our Saviour or the 
 apostles ever came in contact with slavery under 
 the Jewish law. Among the people of Pales- 
 tine, involuntary servitude had been brought to 
 an end, hundreds of years before the Christian 
 era, by the natural operation of the code of Mo- 
 ses. Every slave bought of the heathen received 
 the offer of freedom at the end of every seventh 
 year, if he were a Jewish proselyte ; and whether 
 he were a Jewish proselyte or not, the jubilee 
 trumpet sounded forth the decree of liberty at 
 the close of every half century. The passage 
 quoted by Dr. Fuller, from the xxv. chapter 
 of Leviticus, which forbids the purchase of bond- 
 men from any except the heathen and strangers, 
 saying : " Of them shall ye buy bondmen and 
 bondmaids, and ye shall take them as an inherit- 
 ance for your children after you, to inherit them 
 for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen 
 for ever ; "* must be understood, in consistency 
 
 * Verse 46. 
 
12 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 with the law of the jubilee, which had been laid 
 down in a preceding part of that same chapter,! 
 which says : " Thou shalt cause the trumpet of 
 the jubilee to sound, on the tenth day of the 
 seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye 
 make the trumpet sound throughout all your 
 land ; and ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and 
 proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all 
 THE INHABITANTS THEREOF : it shall be a jubi- 
 lee unto you : and ye shall return every man 
 unto his possession, and every man unto his fam- 
 ily."* Such was the law of jubilee ; limiting the 
 sales of men, as it did the sales of land, whereof 
 it said : " According to the multitude of years 
 after the jubilee, thou shalt buy of thy neighbor ; 
 according to the multitude "of years thou shalt 
 increase the price thereof, and according to the 
 fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of 
 it:" when, therefore, another law enacts that 
 bondmen shall be purchased of the children of 
 the heathen, instead of the children of Israel, it 
 must be understood that the purchase is modified 
 by the previous law, and that the meaning of the 
 latter statute is not the entail of perpetual slav- 
 ery on any class, but simply the confining of the 
 Jews in the purchase of servants, always and for 
 ever, to the children of the heathen. 
 
 If there were any doubt on this point, our 
 interpretation of the meaning of the law would 
 be confirmed by considering the fact, that the 
 inspired prophets treated the continuance of sla- 
 very as inconsistent with the spirit of the Mosaic 
 precepts. In saying this, however, we do not 
 mean to intimate that they ever had occasion to 
 denounce any kind of oppression possessing the 
 
 * Verses 9, 10. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 13 
 
 character of American slavery ; for nothing like 
 that could have existed a single day in Palestine 
 after the entrance of the Israelites. American 
 slavery originated in kidnapping men and women 
 from Africa ; but this was the only kind of theft 
 which the law of Moses made a capital crime. 
 " He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if 
 he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put 
 to death" (Ex. xxi. 16). The man-steal er, and 
 the man-seller, and the slaveholder, were alike 
 liable to capital punishment. The Mosaic law 
 would have always prevented the slavery of the 
 United States, and would destroy it instantly 
 now, if put in operation. In Palestine, war, 
 debt, poverty, and voluntary contract, originated, 
 at different periods, a servitude which was tem- 
 porary, the periodical abolition of which was 
 provided for by law. Against this abolition, ava- 
 rice would naturally revolt, and seek to evade 
 the law for the sake of gain. On this point the 
 Prophet Isaiah lifted up his voice like a trumpet, 
 instead of treating it as a subject too delicate to 
 be mentioned, "cried aloud and spared not," 
 saying, " Behold, ye fast for strife, and debate, 
 and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not 
 this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the 
 bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, 
 and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye 
 break every yohe'^^^^ If the churches of the 
 South should make proclamation of a fast like 
 this, who would doubt that it involved the eman- 
 cipation of the slave, and that this would be a 
 fast most acceptable to God ? 
 
 Similar in spirit is the language of the 
 
 * Is. Iviii. 6. 
 
14 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 Prophet Jeremiah in regard to an effort on the 
 part of the covetous rulers of that day, to renew 
 the bondage of the Hebrew servants after they 
 had been released. See the xxxivth chapter, 
 from the 12th verse onward. "Then the word 
 of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord, 
 saying, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, 
 I made a covenant with your fathers in the day 
 that I brought them forth out of the land of 
 Egypt, out of the house of bondmen, saying. At 
 the end of seven years let ye go every man his 
 brother, a Hebrew who hath been sold unto 
 thee ; and when he hath served thee six years, 
 thou shalt let him go free from thee ; but your 
 fathers hearkened not unto me, neither inclined 
 their ear. And ye were now turned and had 
 done right in my sight in proclaiming liberty 
 every man to his neighbor, and ye had made a 
 covenant before me in the house which is called 
 by my name. But ye turned and polluted my 
 name, and caused every man his servant and 
 every man his handmaid, whom he had set at 
 liberty at their pleasure, to return and brought 
 them into subjection unto you, to be unto you 
 for servants and for handmaids. Therefore thus 
 saith the Lord : Ye have not hearkened unto me 
 in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother 
 and every man to his neighbor: behold, I pro- 
 claim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the 
 sword, and to the pestilence, and the famine, and 
 I will make you to be removed into all the 
 kingdoms of the earth, and I will give the men 
 that have transgressed my covenant, into the 
 hands of their enemies, and into the hand of 
 them that seek their life, and their dead bodies 
 shall be meat unto the fowls of heaven and unto 
 the beasts of the earth." And thus it was. Je- 
 
AND SLAVERY. 15 
 
 rusalem was plundered and burnt, and the Baby- 
 lonish captivity made short work with the rem- 
 nants of Jewish slavery, which had resisted the 
 spirit of the Mosaic institutions. It is with good 
 reason, therefore, that Mr. Barnes, in his work 
 on slavery, reaches the conclusion, that " slavery 
 altogether ceased in the land of Palestine," and 
 asks, " On what evidence would a man rely to 
 prove that slavery existed at all in that land in 
 the time of the later prophets, of the Maccabees, 
 or when the Saviour appeared? There are 
 abundant proofs that it existed in Greece and in 
 Rome ; but what is the evidence that it existed 
 in Judea ? So far as I have been able to ascer- 
 tain, there are no declarations that it did, to be 
 found in the canonical books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, or in Josephus. There are no allusions to 
 laws or customs which imply that it was preva 
 lent. There are no facts, no coins or medals, 
 which suppose it." Page 226. 
 
 Corroborative of this position is the fact, that 
 the pictures of life and manners contained in the 
 four gospels are not in harmony with the suppo- 
 sition of the existence of slavery among the Jews. 
 In the parable of the prodigal son, which deline- 
 ates the condition of a rich land-holder, the term 
 to denote servants is ^ladioi, from /maOog, a re- 
 ward, and is properly rendered, hired servants. 
 This word could not be applied to a slave. In 
 the parable of the shepherd, in John x. the word 
 fjiodono;, from the same root, is used, and is trans- 
 lated " hireling." The same word is employed 
 for the servants of the fishermen, in the beginning 
 of Mark's gospel. There is not furnished to us 
 in the New Testament, or any contemporary his- 
 tory, the least vestige of a reason for believing 
 
16 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 that our Saviour or the apostles ever came in 
 contact with slavery in their native country. 
 
 If this be so, there is very good reason why no 
 instance can be cited from the gospel, of our 
 Lord's rebuking the sin of slavery by giving a 
 command enjoining emancipation. He uttered 
 precepts adverse to all sin and all systems of 
 wrong, but rebuked only the specific evils which 
 fell under his notice. Hence we read nothing of 
 his condemning the caste of India, the sports of 
 Roman gladiators, or the vices of the theatre, 
 which were censured even by the Pagan moral- 
 ists themselves. No argument, therefore, can be 
 drawn in favor of slavery from the lack of any 
 specific rebuke of it in the teaching of our Lord. 
 In his day, the Jewish law, instead of sanctioning 
 any form of slavery, had already extirpated it 
 from the land. 
 
 Important as is this distinction between the 
 social state of Judea and of the Gentile world, 
 between the operation of the Jewish and of the 
 Roman law, it is altogether overlooked by Dr. 
 Fuller, and it does not appear that Dr. Wayland 
 has given to this point any particular attention. 
 Its bearing, however, on the main question, is 
 direct and momentous. 
 
 We now revert to the position of Dr. Fuller, 
 that the Roman law established slavery ; that the 
 scripture addresses those who held the relation of 
 master and slave, and is silent as to the duty of 
 emancipation. To this assumption Dr. Wayland 
 readily concedes, remarking, "I think it must be 
 evident that the precepts of the New Testament 
 furnish no justification of slavery, whether they be 
 considered either absolutely, or in relation to the 
 usage of the Roman empire at the time of Christ. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 17 
 
 All that can justly be said, seems to me to be 
 this : the New Testament contains no precept pro- 
 hibitory of slavery. This must, I think, be 
 granted ; but this is all." Page 89. 
 
 The mode in which the new dispensation is 
 supposed to have borne upon the slave-system is 
 thus expressed by Dr. Wayland : " By teaching 
 the master his own accountability ; by instilling 
 into his mind the mild and humanizing truths 
 of Christianity ; by showing him the folly of sen- 
 suality and luxury, and the happiness derived 
 from industry, frugality, and benevolence, it 
 would prepare him, of his own accord, to liberate 
 his slave, and to use all his influence toward the 
 abolition of those laws by which slavery was 
 maintained. By teaching the slave his value and 
 his responsibility as a man, and subjecting his 
 passions and appetites to the laws of Christianity, 
 and thus raising him to his true rank as an intel- 
 lectual and moral being, it would prepare him for 
 the freedom to which he was entitled, and render 
 the liberty which it conferred a blessing to him , 
 as well as to the State of which he now, for the 
 first time, formed a part." Page 100. But this 
 statement of the case, it appears to us, falls far 
 short of the truth, and grants a great deal too 
 much ; it involves a concession, which gives to 
 the scriptural argument of his opponent an ap- 
 pearance of strength which it does not really 
 possess. It is yielding to the advocate of slavery 
 an advantage, which, in Dr. Fuller's hands, has 
 been made to take on the aspect of a triumph. 
 All the world confess that Dr. Wayland is an 
 elegant writer and a strong reasoner : but the 
 strongest reasoner cannot create truth ; the high- 
 est result that he can achieve, in a discussion like 
 2* 
 
18 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 this, is to use effectively the elements of truth and 
 power with which reason and revelation have 
 furnished him. But after such a concession as 
 this, we cannot conceive it to be within the scope 
 of the human intellect to impart to the scriptural 
 argument against slavery an appearance of great 
 strength. To give it force and poignancy, to 
 direct it with quickening and commanding energy 
 to the conscience of the slaveholder, is impossible. 
 Hence, when Dr. "Wayland is borne along by the 
 course of his reasoning within the realm of philos- 
 ophy, or utters in our ears the appeals of a Chris- 
 tian philanthropy, our hearts answer to him ; we 
 feel the potent spell of " thoughts that breathe 
 and words that burn," and bow ourselves with 
 reverence before the majesty of truth. But when 
 he speaks as an interpreter of the Bible, on this 
 subject, seeking to give voice to the teachings of 
 Jesus, he seems to have been " shorn of the locks 
 of his strength," and to appear before us as 
 another man. What he says is well said, but the 
 moral effect is weak. The utterance of God's 
 revelation is feeble and tremulous, compared with 
 the clear, bold, and awful propositions of philoso- 
 phy. "The mind of Christ," on a practical 
 matter, of the deepest interest to humanity, 
 for all time, is made obscure to the view of an 
 earnest inquirer ; and though our Lord is seen 
 to be, in fact, befriending the right side, yet he 
 speaks to us " as the scribes," and not " as one 
 having authority." Who can avoid such an im- 
 pression as this, on perceiving that the reply to 
 Dr. Fuller's claim of a scriptural sanction, which 
 fills several pages, contains a beautiful exposition 
 of the true doctrine of expediency ; of the differ- 
 ence between opposing a deeply-rooted and or- 
 
AND SLAVERY. 19 
 
 ganized evil, by positive enactments, and by the 
 inculcation of a great principle which shall work 
 like leaven and gradually subvert it ; of the supe- 
 rior wisdom of the latter method ; and then urges 
 a defence of the apostles for tolerating slavery as 
 a social evil, on the ground that, by this subtle 
 and effectual method, they sought to accomplish 
 its extinction ? If the Christian doctrine " hath 
 this extent, no more," it will be very slow in the 
 work of delivering the American captive ; and our 
 regret, therefore, on reading such a statement of 
 it, has been increased by perceiving that Mr. 
 Barnes has taken substantially the same position. 
 But in all these exhibitions of the scriptural 
 doctrine, we doubt not that there is a cardinal 
 mistake ; and that mistake is in defining the rela- 
 tion denoted by the words " servant " and " mas- 
 ter," dovlo^, and Kvpwc or SeaTrorTjg, by the law of 
 Rome instead of " the law of Christ." In the 
 community of Christians this latter governed all 
 relations. For unto whom were these three 
 epistles of Paul and one of Peter, which contain 
 the passages referred to, originally addressed? 
 To the world at large ? No. To the subjects of 
 the Roman empire, as such ? No. To men, as 
 men and citizens ? No. They were addressed 
 to little communities of Christians voluntarily 
 united as churches, as those who were " called to 
 be saints," " the faithful brethren in Christ ; " to 
 those who had " come out from the world and 
 been separate ; " to the regenerated, baptized, 
 and sworn subjects of the Messiah's kingdom ; to 
 those who had received, as their first lesson, the 
 doctrine that, unless they could willingly give up 
 " houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or 
 mother, or wife, or children, or lands " (or ser- 
 
20 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 vants), "for their Lord's sake, they were not 
 worthy of him ; " to those, and those only, who, 
 having been " aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, and strangers from the covenants of prom- 
 ise," had now been " brought nigh by the blood 
 of Christ, who had broken down the middle wall 
 of partition between them, and made them to sit 
 together in heavenly places." Before the epistles 
 were written, all these persons had risen above 
 the level of the Roman law to a higher moral 
 realm, wherein Christ swayed a sceptre of sove- 
 reignty ; unto whom, looking up, they could say, 
 with the voice of a common adoration, in response 
 to his own announcement to them. Thou alone art 
 our master, and all we aee brethren. 
 
 A change so great as this, expressed or implied 
 in every title, formulary, and peculiar phrase of 
 the apostolic epistles, modified at once all the 
 permanent relations of life, — held forth to their 
 view a new doctrine of right, a new standard by 
 which to judge of all the duties pertaining to the 
 connections in which they stood, and new motives 
 of action, drawn from their communion as subjects 
 of a common Lord, and heirs of the same heaven- 
 ly inheritance. And after they had thus " learned 
 Christ, the t^uth as it was in him," — even from 
 the lips of apostles, who had preached to them, 
 like Paul on Mars' Hill, in the days of their very 
 paganism and unregeueracy, that " God had made 
 of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all 
 the face of the earth," * did their case now re- 
 quire a letter of special instruction to inform 
 them that one of their number had no right to 
 hold the other as property, — to exact his toil by 
 
 * Acts xvii. 26. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 21 
 
 violence, or to bind him by the terrors of the 
 civil law to do service against his own consent, 
 lest silence on this subject should be fairly con- 
 strued into a divine toleration of the prevailing 
 heathen custom ? As well might we suppose 
 that special instructions would be necessary to 
 direct them not to sacrifice their children unto 
 Moloch, or not to fight each other as gladiators, 
 or not to obey the law of the emperor which 
 commanded all faithful citizens to. deliver up the 
 Christians to the civil authority. Where the law 
 of the empire was at variance with the law of 
 Christ, who can doubt to which they would yield 
 the supremacy ? 
 
 That this view of the case is true and just, will 
 appear further, if we consider how greatly a 
 knowledge of the law of Christ modified a Chris- 
 tian's sense of duty touching the other permanent 
 relations of life. It is certainly an error into 
 which many have fallen, to discuss this subject 
 as if, by the law of Rome, the right of slave- 
 property inhered only in the relation indicated 
 by the icords master and servant ; whereas it 
 pertained as really to the relation indicated in 
 the New Testament by the words yovevg and tekvov 
 — parent and child. Any school-boy may learn 
 the origin of this domestic slavery from the first 
 chapter of Goldsmith's History of Rome. It is 
 clear, not only from Cicero, in his treatise on the 
 laws, but from nearly all the Roman writers, his- 
 torians, and poets, that every father had the power 
 of life and death over his children — could expose 
 them to death in infancy ; and not only so, but a 
 child was not deemed legitimate, or treated as 
 such, unless the father took it formally from the 
 ground, and placed it on his bosom. Hence arose 
 
22 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the phrase " tollere filium" — to educate. Dr. 
 Adam, m his Roman Antiquities, presents the 
 following statements : " Even when his children 
 were grown up, the father might imprison, 
 scourge, send them bound to work in the country, 
 and also put them to death by any punishment he 
 pleased, if they deserved it. Hence, a father is 
 called a domestic judge or magistrate, by Seneca. 
 A son could acquire no property but by his father's 
 consent ; and what he did thus acquire was called 
 his peculium, as that of a slave.* The condition 
 of a son was, in some respects, harder than that 
 of a slave. A slave, when sold once, became free ; 
 but a son, not, unless sold three times. The 
 power of the father was suspended when the son 
 was promoted to any public office, but not extin- 
 guished. For it continued, not only during the 
 life of the children, but likewise extended to 
 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. None 
 of them became their own masters (sui juris), till 
 the death of their father and grandfather. A 
 daughter, by marriage, passed from the power of 
 her father under that of her husband."t 
 
 In the emancipation of a son from the authori- 
 ty of his father, the law prescribed a tedious 
 process, which the parties were obliged to observe. 
 In the presence of witnesses, before the tribunal 
 of a magistrate, the father gave over his son to 
 the purchaser, adding these words, ^'3£ancupo 
 tihi hunc filium qui meus estT '" But as, by the 
 principles of the Roman law, a son, after being 
 manumitted once and again, fell back into the 
 power of his father, the imaginary sale was thrice 
 
 * Livy, n. 41. 
 
 t Roman Antiquities, 50, 51. N. Y. 1826. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 23 
 
 to be repeated, either on the same day and before 
 the same witnesses, or on different days and be- 
 fore different witnesses ; and then the purchaser, 
 instead of manumitting him, which would have 
 conferred a jus patronatus on himself, sold him 
 back to the natural father, who immediately man- 
 umitted him by the same formalities as a slave. 
 Thus the son became his own master. Sui juris 
 f actus est. — Livy, VII. 1 6. In emancipating a 
 daughter or grandchildren, the same formalities 
 were used, but only once ; they were not thrice 
 repeated, as in emancipating a son. Unica man- 
 cipatio siifficiehat." 
 
 Tedious as these processes seem, they were 
 rigidly observed ; and there was very little abate- 
 ment of them until the reign of Justinian, five 
 centuries after Christ. These laws were not 
 a dead letter : the incidental allusions to pater- 
 nal authority indicate that the severest execu- 
 tions of them were familiar to the minds of the 
 people. Thus Sallust, in his history of Cata- 
 line's conspiracy (§ 40), says, " A Fulvius, son 
 of a senator, was taken on the road, brought 
 back to the city, and put to death by his father's 
 orders." In his history of the Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire, Gibbon remarks, " The 
 exclusive, absolute, and perpetual dominion of the 
 father over his children, is peculiar to the Roman 
 jurisprudence, and seems to be coeval with the 
 foundation of the city. The paternal power was 
 instituted or confirmed by Romulus himself; and, 
 after the practice of three centuries, it was in- 
 scribed on the fourth table of the Decemvirs. 
 In the forum, the senate, or the camp, the adult 
 son of a Roman citizen enjoyed the public and 
 private rights of a person : in his father's house, 
 he was a mere thing ; confounded by the laws 
 
24 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 with the moveables, the cattle, and the slaves, 
 whom the capricious master might alienate or 
 destroy without being responsible to an earthly- 
 tribunal. The hand which bestowed the daily 
 sustenance might resume the voluntary gift; and 
 whatever was acquired by the labor or fortune of 
 the son, was immediately lost in the property of 
 the father. At the call of indigence or avarice, the 
 master of a family could dispose of his children 
 or his slaves. According to his discretion, a 
 father might chastise the real or imaginary faults 
 of his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by 
 exile, by sending them to the country to work in 
 chains among the meanest of his servants. The 
 majesty of a parent was armed with the power 
 of life and death ; and the example of such 
 bloody executions which were sometimes praised 
 and never punished, may be traced in the annals 
 of Rome beyond the times of Pompey and Au- 
 gustus. Without fear, though not without danger 
 of abuse, the Roman legislators had reposed an 
 unbounded confidence in the sentiments of pater- 
 nal love ; and the oppression was tempered by 
 the assurance, that each generation must succeed 
 in its turn to the awful dignity of parent and 
 master." * 
 
 But now, to all this antichristian power con- 
 ferred by the Roman law on the parent, there is 
 not the slightest allusion in the epistles. Is the 
 Christian father there commanded not to kill his 
 son, as he had the legal right to do ? Is he told 
 not to sell him ? Is he told not to treat him as a 
 slave ? Is he urged to manumit him ? No — 
 
 * Milman's Gibbon, HI. 169. Gibbon quotes the Jus- 
 tinian code, saying, Nulli enira alii sunt homines, qui talem 
 in liberos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 25 
 
 nothing of this. Let us ask, in the strain of the 
 writers on slavery, whence this profound silence 
 on these important points of Christian ethics, 
 which must have attracted the notice of the 
 apostles ? Is it not clear as the light, that this 
 deeply rooted and organized evil of Jilial slavery 
 arising from Pagan ideas and usages, the apos- 
 tles thought it expedient to tolerate awhile, but to 
 inculcate broad principles which should work like 
 leaven, gradually extirpate it, and so, in the 
 process of time, raise the members of the 
 Christian family to that dignity of freedom, that 
 security of life, and to that equality of privileges, 
 which were conferred by the Jewish law before 
 the coming of Messiah? Such is the apology 
 to be made for the apostles in this case, accord- 
 ing to the reasonings and concessions against 
 which we speak. And is this the best defence 
 which we, as Christians, can urge for the silence 
 of Paul, and Peter, and John, respecting these 
 things ? If so, well may they pray from their 
 celestial exaltation, Lord, save us from our 
 friends — shield thou our apostoHc character from 
 the imputations of those who are called by thy 
 name and acknowledge our authority. 
 
 Thanks be unto God, we are not reduced to 
 the necessity of acquiescing in any such apolo- 
 gies or explanations touching the silence of the 
 apostles on the duty of setting captives or child- 
 ren free. These evils were not written upon, 
 as practical matters, to Christian churches, be- 
 cause, under " the law of Christ," the son needed 
 no emancipation. When that law was received 
 by a family, the son was already free. The 
 father's right to govern him, during his minority, 
 arose from his duty to guard him in years of 
 3 
 
26 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 weakness, and to train liim up amidst the season 
 of youth, ignorance, and inexperience, "in the 
 way he should go," so that, when old, he would 
 not depart from it. Instead, therefore, of an 
 apostle's writing to Christian churches against 
 such horrible evils as the Roman law entailed 
 on the relation of father and son, or on the right 
 of the son to liberty, or on the duty of emanci- 
 pation, it was enough, simply to say, " Fathers, 
 provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them 
 up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this 
 right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which 
 is the first command with promise."* As in the 
 spiritual kingdom of Christ, where his religion 
 had sway, Christianity did not, for a moment, tol- 
 erate the filial slavery of Rome, so neither did it 
 tolerate her servile slavery. The silence of the 
 apostles as to emancipation has the very same 
 relation to the one kind of servitude as to the 
 other ; and the idea of tolerating slavery, as a 
 system, was not entertained by Christians in 
 early times, until it appeared in company with 
 the most abominable and fatal corruptions. 
 
 Not only in the relation of the child to the 
 father, but also in that of the wife to the husband, 
 did the Roman law establish a power adverse to 
 the precepts and the spirit of Christianity. In 
 case of any offence whatever, the husband was 
 the supreme judge, invested with authority to 
 acquit her or to condemn her to death. The law 
 placed her like a slave at his feet, and her life 
 hung on his decree. Observe the testimony of 
 Dionysius Halicarnassensis on this point : — " The 
 law obliged the married women, as having no 
 
 * Ephesians, vi, 1 — 3. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 27 
 
 other refuge, to conform themselves entirely to 
 the temper of their husbands. — But if she com- 
 mitted any fault, the injured person was her 
 judge, and determined the degree of her punish- 
 ment. In case of adultery, or where it was 
 found she had drunk wine (which the Greeks 
 would look upon as the least of all crimes), her re- 
 lations, together with her husband, were appoint- 
 ed her judges, who were allowed by Romulus to 
 punish both these crimes with death."* This 
 law, of so ancient date, continued to be operative 
 under the empire. Tacitus mentions a case 
 which occurred at Rome, in the year 57, in the 
 reign of Nero : — " Pomponia Graecina, a woman 
 of illustrious birth, and the wife of Plantius, who, 
 on his return from Britain, entered the city with 
 the pomp of an ovation, was accused of embrac- 
 ing a foreign superstition. The matter was re- 
 ferred to the jurisdiction of her husband. Plau- 
 tius, m conformity to ancient usage, called to- 
 gether a number of her relations, and in their 
 presence sat in judgment on the conduct of his 
 wife-t It has often been said, to the honor of 
 Roman chastity, that for more than five centuries 
 not an instance of divorce transpired in Rome ; 
 but it is very evident that this fact is to be ac- 
 counted for, rather from the rigor of the law, 
 which bound the destiny of the wife to that of her 
 husband, than from the superior virtue of the 
 people. There was little occasion for a formal 
 divorce where a husband exercised the authority 
 of an absolute despot, and where an offending 
 wife had no right of appeal from his decision to 
 that of a civil tribunal. 
 
 Another feature of the marriage relation, under 
 
 * Dionys. Hal. ii. 25. t Annal. xiii. 32. 
 
28 CHRISTIANITy 
 
 the Roman government, deserves attention here. 
 Between a citizen and a foreigner there could be 
 no legal marriage,"^ and the offspring of such a 
 union were deemed illegitimate. They were 
 called Hybridas or Mongrels, and their condition 
 was very little better than that of slaves. Livy 
 mentions that when the Campanians were forced 
 to go to Rome to pay their taxes, they offered a 
 petition that the children, whom they had by Ro- 
 man wives, might be treated as legitimate, and 
 made their lawful heirs.t Indeed, this sort of 
 union was not dignified by the name of marriage, 
 any more than was a union between slaves ; for 
 in both cases it was stigmatized by the same de- 
 grading appellation.! Of this firmly established 
 law there was no change until the days of the 
 Emperor Caracalla. During more than two cen- 
 turies of the Christian era, the children who may 
 have sprung from the marriage of a Roman citi- 
 zen and a Jew, or a Greek, were denied the rights 
 and honors of a legitimate birth. Paul himself, 
 who was a Roman citizen, declared that he had 
 a right to "lead about a wife" with him; but 
 had he or any one of the Roman converts been 
 pleased to marry a Galatian or a Syrian Chris- 
 tian, the law would, as far as concerned civil 
 rights, have placed the offspring of such a union 
 on a level with the children of a base and crimi- 
 nal connection. 
 
 Now, when we consider that the marriage re- 
 lation lies at the basis of all organized and Cliris- 
 tianized society, it may be well to inquire how it 
 
 * Non erat cum extenio connubmm. Senec. Ben. iv. 35. 
 
 t Livy, xxxviii. 36. 
 
 j Conuubium est matrimonium inter cives ; inter servos 
 autem, aut inter civium et peregrinse conditionis hominem, 
 aut servilis, non est connubium sed contuhernium. Boeth. in 
 Cic. Top. 4. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 29 
 
 is, that in the epistles of Paul, all of which were 
 addressed to persons living under the Koman em- 
 pire, no care is taken to guard the churches 
 against the specific evils of this Pagan legislation, 
 which, in the eyes of multitudes, had been em- 
 balmed and hallowed by time ; had been blended 
 with the very elements of domestic and social 
 life ; had been sustained in every age by the 
 most illustrious examples, and had interwoven it- 
 self with the earliest remembrances and associa- 
 tions of the civilized world, touching human rights, 
 the fitness of things, and the moral order of the 
 universe. Strange as it may seem to some, no 
 husband, in all the realm of the Ctesars, is told 
 that his wife had been raised by Christianity 
 above the level of her condition under the Roman 
 law. No one is told that the domestic despotism, 
 on which Roman society was based, was an abom- 
 ination in the sight of Heaven, and that it was a 
 contravention of the original law of Paradise, 
 which placed the man and the woman on the 
 ground of a true moral equality. No Roman cit- 
 izen is forbidden to scourge his wife for drinking 
 wine ! Even her life is left at his mercy ; and in 
 all the New Testament there is not issued a sin- 
 gle command forbidding a Christian man to kill 
 his wife for any fault which might render her, in 
 his judgment, worthy of death ! And yet Chris- 
 tianity arose and spread in a part of the earth 
 where it found the exercise of such power not on- 
 ly common, but where that power was embodied 
 in forms of law, enthroned in the palace, sustain- 
 ed in the preetorium, and revered by public opin- 
 ion. What now shall we infer from the silence 
 of the sacred scripture on these points? The 
 domestic relations themselves are fully recogniz- 
 3# 
 
30 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 ed, moral precepts are given to all who are uni- 
 ted in them ; but why are these enormous evils, 
 which affected so deeply the condition of innu- 
 merable wives and children, left untouched ? Is 
 it that apostolic Christianity, with a wisdom and 
 prudence worthy of all imitation, saw fit to tol- 
 erate all these things, being content to teach those 
 broad and mighty principles which, working grad- 
 ually at the core of society, would achieve its 
 regeneration, after a series of ages, and thus, on 
 grounds of expediency, withheld from its own 
 disciples the plain truth of God with a view to 
 ultimate effect ? Certainly ; according to the con- 
 cessions of those who have controverted Dr. Ful- 
 ler, this must be the explanation ; but, according 
 to the reasonings of Dr. Fuller himself, Chris- 
 tianity must have intended to sanction the legal 
 powers which these relations had so long confer- 
 red, and only to guard against their abuse ! But 
 will any man who has become converted to 
 Christianity by reading the gospels, by listening to 
 Christ's own discourses, and by opening his soul 
 to their spirit, remain calmly satisfied with either 
 of these positions ? By no means. He will re- 
 coil equally from them both. Indeed, Dr. Fuller, 
 in his reply to Dr. Wayland's explanation on 
 this point, writes like a man who could not avoid 
 despising the apostles themselves if they had held 
 back the truth in that way ; and with the most of 
 his earnest remonstrance we sympathize to the 
 whole extent of our capacity of feeling. With 
 truth and justness does he say, " The apostles took 
 heaven to witness that they had kept back noth- 
 ing ;" and in addressing, not only the people, but 
 the pastors, who were to teach the people, and 
 bequeath their ministry to their successors, they 
 
AND SLAVERY. 31 
 
 asserted their purity from the blood of all men, 
 because they " had not shunned to declare the 
 whole counsel of God." Yet they had shunned 
 even to hint to masters that they were living in 
 a " sin of appalling magnitude/' and had kept 
 back truth, which, if you are right, was of tre- 
 mendous importance." 
 
 These words must be felt forcibly by those to 
 whom they are addressed ; but we thank God 
 that the New Testament presents no such diffi- 
 culty as that which suggested this appeal on be- 
 .half of the apostles. The reason why those faithful 
 guides did not hint to masters that they were liv- 
 ing in •" a sin of appalling magnitude," was not 
 that slaveholding had been sanctified, but simply 
 because these persons, at the era of their conver- 
 sion to Christianity, had entered into a new spir- 
 itual kingdom, and interpreted all their relations 
 and duties by the light of its heavenly principles, 
 and not by the light of the Roman law or any 
 other human code. Their souls had risen supe- 
 rior to the Roman law, as a guide to duty or a 
 rule of life, as truly as our Christian converts in 
 China have risen above the law of " the celestial 
 empire." Christianity had not yet become cor- 
 rupted ; its public teachers had not quite yet be- 
 gun to modify its oracles so as to suit a false 
 philosophy, to harmonize with the prevailing ideas 
 of Roman civilization, and so to turn away its 
 disciples " from the simplicity that is in Christ." 
 These first Christians used words which had a 
 weight of meaning in them, when they spoke of 
 their moral isolation from society, when they 
 called themselves " a peculiar people," the sub- 
 jects of a " new creation," members of " the 
 household of God," " fellow-citizens of the com- 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 monwealth of Israel,"* and said "the world 
 knoweth us not." The precepts of Christ had 
 taken complete possession of their minds; had 
 not only transformed their theology, but their 
 moral characters, and their social relations. In 
 their view, one sentence of Christ's Sermon on 
 the Mount possessed more moral worth and live- 
 ly efficacy, than all the lectures of the philoso- 
 phers, and the laws of the twelve tables put to- 
 gether. Before they took the vows of their pro- 
 fession, they had " counted the cost," and were 
 ready to suffer the loss of all things. As much 
 as in them lay, they obeyed the civil law ; but in 
 their lives they " surpassed the laws." So en- 
 tirely did the word of Christ rule them, that they 
 would not allow the civil law to arbitrate at all 
 on matters which pertained to their own mutual 
 relations. " Dare any of you," says the apostle 
 to some who needed special instruction,—" dare 
 any of you, having a matter against another, to 
 go to law before the unjust, and not before the 
 saints ?"t Far from availing themselves of any 
 power granted by the civil law to retain their 
 brethren in bondage, their religion forbade them 
 to refer to that law any question respecting their 
 duties to each other. 
 
 Now in reading what is written to societies so 
 constituted, it is a great error to infer that the 
 apostles either sanctioned or tolerated any rela- 
 tion between man and man as established by the 
 Eoman law, because we do not find in their epis- 
 tles a particular denunciation of it. 
 
 In regard to any such relation which may be in 
 question, the main thing to be ascertained is this : 
 How do the precepts of Christ bear upon it? 
 
 * Ephes. ii. passim. f 1 Cor. vi. 1. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 3S 
 
 These the early churches had acknowledged as 
 their guide ; to these they had vowed allegiance. 
 Whatever conflicted with these, they had sworn 
 to abandon, in the very act of their baptism, by 
 which they had owned the sovereignty of the 
 ]Messiah, in whose kingdom there was no place 
 found for those distinctions of privilege, which, 
 according to the Roman law, pertained to rank, 
 sex, birth, blood, and nationality : " For," says 
 the apostle, " as many of you as have been bap- 
 tized into Christ, have put on Christ ; there is 
 neither Jew nor Greek — there is neither bond 
 nor free — there is neither male nor female ; 
 FOR YE are all one in Christ Jesus." * That 
 legislation which had raised one class above an- 
 other, on the ground of those distinctions which 
 are here named, primitive Christianity thus 
 heartily renounced, as being incompatible with 
 the law of Christ. 
 
 In order to feel the force of this statement, let 
 any one fairly consider what a weight of argument 
 the phrase which we have just repeated, carried 
 with it to the ear of a primitive Christian. " The 
 LAW OF Christ ! " In the apostolic age that was 
 no mere abstraction. It was the Law of laws. Its 
 authority was imperial. Its decision was ulti- 
 mate. In addressing the church of Galatia, Paul 
 said, " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so 
 fulfil the laio of Christ : " f thus appealing to it, 
 without citing the words of any precept, he im- 
 plied that it was well understood. When it was 
 referred to in this way, all knew that the law of 
 benevolence — the law of mutual love — was in- 
 tended, by way of eminence. The apostle James 
 
 * Galatians, iii. 27, 28. f Galatians, vi, 2. 
 
34: CHRISTIANITY 
 
 alludes to it in a similar manner, in a passage 
 which contains a warning against discourteous 
 treatment of the poor : " If ye fulfil ' the royal 
 law ' according to the scripture, thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well ; but if ye 
 have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are 
 convicted of the law as transgressors." * Our 
 Lord had laid it down, in his early teachings, 
 among the first principles of his religion : " All 
 things whatsoever ye would that men should do 
 to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law 
 and the prophets." t The equal love of our 
 neighbor he connected with supreme love to God, 
 and on these two commandments he declared that 
 all true religion depends.^ But when he pro- 
 ceeds to expound this law respecting our neighbor, 
 what does he teach as to its bearing and extent ? 
 Did he imply that it was to be restricted to a 
 particular nation, or rank, or color, or proximity 
 of place ? The majority of his audiences, we 
 know, did limit it by their sectional prejudices and 
 national antipathies ; but in the parable of the 
 good Samaritan, he taught them that the precept 
 erases these bounds, enjoins love to man as man, 
 our fellow-creature and our brother, and bids us 
 to do good to all men as we have opportunity. 
 The Priest and the Levite of his day, who treated 
 such an interpretation with contempt, he pictures 
 to our view in all their native deformity. In ad- 
 dition to this "law of love," he gave another 
 especially to his disciples, enforced by a motive 
 drawn from his peculiar relation to them, "A 
 new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
 
 * James, ii. 8, 9. 
 
 t Matthew, vii. 12. J Matthew, xxii. 37 — 40. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 35 
 
 one another ; even as I have loved you, that ye 
 also love one another." However a refined and 
 artful criticism may treat such precepts in these 
 days, they were understood by the early Chris- 
 tians in their plain sense, and interpreted accord- 
 ing to " the simplicity that is in Christ." A com- 
 munity governed by such laws as these, could 
 never make a man serve as a slave, nor would 
 it be possible for one of them to hold his Christian 
 brother in bondage against his will for a single 
 hour. 
 
 Moreover, it may be well to observe, in this 
 connection, that the distinction on which the tem- 
 porary slavery of Judea had been founded by the 
 Mosaic code was entirely abolished by Christian- 
 ity : we mean the distinction between Jews and 
 Heathen. The breaking down of this " middle 
 wall of partition " was the great glory of the new 
 dispensation. "We know how deeply " the lead- 
 ing men " of our Saviour's generation were of- 
 fended with his teaching on this point ; how bit- 
 terly Jewish pride must have scowled upon him, 
 when he said, in allusion to a Gentile's faith, 
 " Many shall come from the east and west, and 
 shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven ; but the chil- 
 dren of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer 
 darkness." The preaching of this doctrine was a 
 bold feature in the ministry of the apostles ; and 
 the mere mention of it, by one of them, caused a 
 crowd in Jerusalem to give vent to their anger by 
 casting dust into the air, and by crying aloud, 
 ^' Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it 
 is not fit that he should live." * Yet these mar^ 
 
 * Acts xxii, 22. 
 
36 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tyrs to truth were faithful to their trust and 
 conquered by " the word of their testimony." 
 They were true reformers. In founding a new 
 community, they laid, broadly and plainly, the 
 basis on which it was to rest. And as the tem- 
 porary structure of Mosaic slavery was made to 
 depend on a distinction which it was the design 
 of Christianity to abolish at the very outset, we can 
 easily imagine how abhorrent from the convic- 
 tions and sentiments of the first disciples must 
 have been the idea of a slave-system in the Chris- 
 tian church. 
 
 In exact accordance with these views, is the 
 style and manner of apostolic address in the Epis- 
 tles of the New Testament. The terms used to 
 designate the relation of master and servant are 
 not those which imply man's ownership of man ; 
 and from the terms themselves, the advocate of 
 slavery can prove nothing, because the same and 
 corresponding terms are used in lands where 
 slavery does not exist. The exact import of the 
 term will vary according to the law by which you 
 determine the condition of a doulos, or servant : 
 just as it is now in this land ; in Carolina a serv- 
 vant means a slave, and in New England it 
 means a freeman voluntarily hired. But how 
 entirely Christianity modified the relation, may be 
 seen by consulting the direction which Paul gave 
 to Timothy, respecting the discharge of his duty 
 as a Christian teacher. It occurs in the 6 th 
 chapter of the 1st Epistle, the 1st and 2d verses. 
 Here, no advice is given to the young pastor as to 
 his manner of addressing masters : it relates to 
 servants only. And of servants, two classes are 
 contemplated ; first, those who were Christian 
 servants of heathen masters, are considered. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 37 
 
 This class is designated by being " under the 
 yoke." " Let as many servants as are under the 
 yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, 
 that the name of God and his doctrine be not 
 blasphemed." This, as Christians, they w^ere 
 urged to do, even though they might be subject 
 to the worst oppression, in agreement with the 
 address of Peter to the same class ; " for this is 
 thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God 
 endure grief, suffering lorongfuUy.'' A heathen 
 master, interpreting the rights of a servant by the 
 light of the Roman law, would be very likely to 
 commit acts of gross injustice ; but the precept 
 enjoining a meek endurance of this wrong, for 
 Christ's sake, can, of course, furnish no sanction to 
 the master's continuance of it. But now, in this 
 epistle to Timothy, Paul proceeds, in the next 
 sentence, to speak of a different class of cases ; 
 those in which both the parties were Christians. 
 And here it is quite remarkable, that, instead of 
 directing masters to treat their servants kindly, he 
 calls upon servants themselves to heioare lest they 
 should DESPISE THEIR MASTERS ! His words 
 are, " And they that have believing masters, let 
 them not despise them, because they are brethren ; 
 but rather do them service because they are faith- 
 ful and beloved, partakers of the benefit." Who 
 does not see that this exhortation arose from the 
 fact, that, when both the parties had come under 
 the law of Christ, Christianity had changed the 
 relation in which they stood — had enfranchised 
 the slave — had made him one of the " brethren " 
 — had invested him with a new dignity and new 
 rights ; so that now, instead of the master being 
 under a new temptation to treat the servant 
 wrongfully, there was greater danger lest the ser- 
 4 
 
38 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 vant should abuse his elevation, should abandon 
 the master's service, or treat him with contempt ? 
 Evidently the style, the letter, and the spirit 
 of these directions to Timothy, indicate a funda- 
 mental change which Christianity had wrought in 
 the relation of these two classes of persons, where 
 both had come " under the law " of the new dis- 
 pensation. They had now risen to that high con- 
 dition described in the words of their common 
 X/ord, " One is your Master, even Christ, and all 
 ye are brethren." Violence, or involuntary sub- 
 jection to bondage, Avas incompatible with such a 
 change ; and now the apostle was chiefly anxious 
 that the parties should not separate from each 
 other, but by continuing together on friendly 
 terms, and, in the discharge of mutual duties, 
 should prove to the world that the law of Chris- 
 tian love is a better cement for society than the 
 law of force. No class of persons had it in their 
 power to afford a brighter demonstration of this, 
 than that of enfranchised servants. If they avail- 
 ed themselves of their acknowledged rights to 
 forsake their old masters, the new religion would 
 be dishonored; if they remained, and yielded 
 faithful service from a principle of love and of 
 religious obligation, Christianity would, through 
 them, reveal its moral and conservative tendency, 
 and would be sure to gain new victories. The 
 appeal which was made therefore to Christian 
 servants on this behalf, has a most important 
 bearing, and proves alike that they had all " been 
 called unto liberty," and that it was expected that 
 the spirit of their religion would dispose them 
 not to " use their liberty for an occasion to the 
 flesh." * If any one deem the case to be other- 
 
 -* Galatianp. v. 13. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 3\) 
 
 wise, just let him imagine how preposterous it 
 would seem for any grave and reverend bishop 
 of our day, or for any public body in the country, 
 to send a message to the young pastors of South 
 Carolina, urging them to teach the slaves of 
 Christian planters " not to despise their masters " ! 
 Surely, such a message would sound strangely to 
 the planters themselves ; and if it were carried 
 into effect by some obedient Timothy, they would 
 see " the foolishness of preaching," in a new point 
 of light. 
 
 The same idea of a change in the relations of 
 these two classes accomplished by Christianity, 
 is implied and indicated by Paul's address to 
 those who belonged to the church of Ephesus.* 
 There he first addresses servants, and urges 
 them to be exemplary in rendering obedience to 
 their masters, for the sake of honoring the cause 
 of Christianity — "as the servants of Christ, 
 doing the will of God from the heart, with good 
 will doing service to the Lord, and not to 
 MEN." Undoubtedly, this precept was intended 
 to be as unlimited as that given by Peter (1 Pet. 
 ii. 19), that is, to cases wherein the servant was 
 called to " endure grief, for conscience toward 
 God, suffering ivrongfully .'' However fro ward 
 or perverse (a^oUog) the master might be, how- 
 ever unjust his demands, the Christian servant 
 was summoned to the exercise of patience and 
 submission, in imitation of Christ, who, " when he 
 suffered, threatened not, but committed himself to 
 Him that judgeth righteously." Of course, Pe- 
 ter did not mean to sanction the wrong ; and so, 
 too, in this exhortation of Paul to the Ephesians, 
 
 * Eph. vi. 5—9. 
 
40 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 he meant to urge the Christian servant to bear 
 wrong meekly, without giving a sanction to the 
 wrong itself. Even if he were subjected to the 
 worst, of heathen masters, the apostle wished 
 him to cultivate all fidelity in his service, not on 
 the ground of right or justice, but because God 
 would reward his submission to injustice, if it 
 were exercised in order to promote the honor 
 and triumphs of religion. The specific motive 
 by which the Christian servant is excited to do 
 this, is thus expressed : " With good will doing 
 service to the Lord, and not to men ; knowing that 
 whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same 
 shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be 
 bond or free." 
 
 But when, in the next sentence, Paul makes a 
 transition, and addresses himself to masters who 
 were Christians, his words are few, but very sig- 
 nificant; for, while he tells them to remember 
 that tribunal where there is no respect of per- 
 sons, he not only forbids their using force in the 
 government of their servants, but even to refrain 
 from threatening to do so. He says, *' Ye mas- 
 ters, 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 the Greek text, the word uTcsdrjv^ 
 translated threatening, is preceded by the article, 
 and has a more specific sense. Dr. Bloomfield 
 has evidently bestowed some labor on the pas- 
 sage, in investigating the force of the terms ; 
 and says (in his Notes on the Greek Testa- 
 ment), that the word, with the article, signifies, 
 " the punishments awarded by the law." This 
 being the case, the precept given by the apostle 
 to Ephesian masters was a direct prohibition 
 
AND SiLAVEKY. 41 
 
 against their availing themselves of power con- 
 ferred by the Roman law' in the government of 
 their servants. It was an explicit command to 
 them to rise above the Roman law in this rela- 
 tion, and to regulate their conduct by the law of 
 Christ, at whose judgment-seat they must stand. 
 But the Roman law being set aside, where could 
 the Christian master find any authority in the 
 law of Christ for holding his brethren in invol- 
 untary servitude by means of violence? Such 
 a pretension no man possessing ordinary self- 
 respect, would venture to set up. An intelligent 
 Southerner has aptly said, that the slave sys- 
 tem, as it is, may be defended on the ground of 
 necessity, just as war is defended, in some cases, 
 "because the government which it requires is 
 nothing more nor less than a prevalence of mar- 
 tial law." This witness is true ; but how a state 
 of martial law is to be maintained by men whose 
 religion forbids them, not merely to remit legal 
 punishments, but even to " forbear threatening," 
 is a problem which yet remains for those Chris- 
 tian casuists who claim the blessed Jesus as the 
 patron of slavery. 
 
 The passage in the epistle to the Colossians 
 (iii. 22 — 25 and iv. 1) presents no feature of 
 the case different from that which has already 
 been exhibited. Christian servants were ex- 
 horted to cultivate the domestic virtues on those 
 same grounds which have been already sug- 
 gested. They are bidden to rise superior to the 
 legal relation, and to yield a voluntary service for 
 the sake of their heavenly Master, and then fol- 
 low these spirit-stirring words : " And whatso- 
 ever ye do, do it heartily to the Lord, and not to 
 
 men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive 
 
 4.* 
 
45 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the 
 Lord Christ." The spirit which glows in the 
 address is abhorrent from the idea that any man 
 had a rightful claim to hold these Christian 
 brethren in an involuntary servitude. 
 
 The address which follows to the masters who 
 had become Christians, is, in this case also, very 
 brief. It simply commands them to be just, and 
 to remember their own accountability. " Mas- 
 ters, give unto your servants that which is just 
 and equal, knowing that you also have a Master 
 in heaven." There is not a free country in the 
 world, and there never will be one, where this 
 precept will not be appropriate and needful. 
 
 There is, in the New Testament, another apos- 
 tolic precept which relates to the relative duties 
 of servants. It is in the epistle to Titus (ii. 9, 
 10) ; but its letter and spirit are in entire accord- 
 ance with those which we have already quoted. 
 This class of persons are urged to make the 
 relation in which they stood a means of advanc- 
 ing the Christian religion ; to do this by so living 
 as to " adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in 
 all things." In that age of ardent Christian 
 love, the promotion of the cause of Christ was 
 deemed a counterpoise to every evil. No doubt, 
 many of these servants would have gladly con- 
 tinued in subjection to Pagans, if by so doing they 
 could gain new trophies for their Redeemer, 
 just as it has been known that Christians, filled 
 with the missionary spirit, have actually sold 
 themselves into servitude, in order to extend the 
 cause of human salvation. At a period glowing 
 with this holy martyr-spirit, it was common for 
 the friends of Christ to content themselves with 
 any lot in wliich they could promote his glory, 
 
AND SLAVERY. 43 
 
 and easy for them to respond to the apostle's 
 appeal : " Art thou called, being a servant ? Care 
 not for it; but if thou mayest be free, use it 
 rather : for he that is called in the Lord, being a 
 servant, is the Lord's freeman.^ ' 
 
 As an incidental illustration of this state of 
 things which we have been contemplating, it 
 would be difficult to imagine any thing more ex- 
 pressive than the letter of Paul to Philemon. 
 The whole of it is in exact accordance with that 
 condition of the Christian church, which distin- 
 guished the apostolic age, when it consisted of 
 scattered communities in Pagan lands, who had 
 come under the law of Christ, and had ceased to 
 determine their duties by the civil law, or to 
 avail themselves of the powers which it confer- 
 red, to promote their own worldly benefit by acts 
 of oppression. Onesimus had been the slave of 
 Philemon. He had fled away from his master, 
 and became a Christian, under the ministry of 
 Paul, at Rome. This converted slave the apos- 
 tle wished to retain at Rome, to minister unto 
 his own necessities ; but he did not wish to do it 
 without the concurrence of his beloved Phile- 
 mon, his " fellow-laborer." According to the 
 law of Rome, Onesimus was still the property of 
 Philemon, who, as a citizen, had a legal claim 
 upon all his services ; but the letter does not in- 
 timate the slightest probability that Philemon, 
 the Christian, would or could urge that claim. 
 So far from this, it is distinctly asserted that the 
 relation of the two parties had been essentially 
 changed. How could that fact be more clearly 
 expressed than in the following words : " For 
 
 * 1 Cor. vii. 21,22. 
 
44 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that 
 thou shouldst receive him for ever ; not now as 
 a servant, hut above a servant, a brother beloved, 
 specially to me, but how much more unto thee, 
 both in the flesh and in the Lord ?"* This latter 
 phrase effectually guards the interpretation of the 
 letter against that sophistry which concedes that 
 Onesimus was Philemon's brother, considered as 
 a Christian, but refuses to extend the acknow- 
 ledgment of brotherhood to civil relations and to 
 common life. It shows that the apostle did not 
 speak of brotherhood in some refined, ethereal, 
 spiritual sense, which had no practical issues, but 
 in a sense which would develope itself in substan- 
 tial benefits to Onesimus as a mail, as a fellow- 
 creature possessing a kindred nature, and endowed 
 with the same moral, social, and physical sensi- 
 bilities as was Philemon himself. Certainly there 
 need be no difficulty in admitting the fact of so 
 great a change, when we see that Paul identifies 
 the happiness and interests of Onesimus with 
 his own, and says to his former master : " If 
 thou count me as a partner, receive him as my- 
 self." 
 
 Only a single observation further, on this let- 
 ter, is necessary here ; which is, that the object 
 of Paul's writing it, was not to beg for the 
 liberty of Onesimus, but to perform an act 
 of friendship towards Philemon ; to awaken in 
 his heart a sympathetic joy over the conversion 
 of his lost servant ; and to afibrd him an opportu- 
 nity to do his own duty in the case, freely and 
 cheerfully. The first impulse of the apostle's 
 mind was to retain Onesimus, without sending 
 
 * Verses 15, 16. 
 
AND SLAVERy. , 40 
 
 him back at all ; but he concluded that it would 
 be most satisfactory, on the whole, to place it 
 Avithin the power of his old Colossian friend to 
 express his own feelings towards Onesimus, as a 
 man and a Christian. Mark the expression of 
 this sentiment : " Whom I would have retained 
 with me, that in thy stead he might have minis- 
 tered 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." A similar phrase occurs in the 
 Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ix. 7), where 
 Paul shows them, that, although they were bound 
 by the law of Christ to contribute a supply to the 
 wants of their persecuted brethren, he wished 
 them to do it from a principle of love, and not 
 by constraint : " Every man, as he has purposed 
 in his heart, so let him give ; not grudgingly or 
 of necessity." The style of address in the letter 
 to Philemon is analogous to this ; for although 
 the law of Christ forbade him to hold his '' be- 
 loved brother" Onesimus in a state of servitude, 
 by force or threatening, yet Paul deemed it desir- 
 able that Philemon should show openly that he 
 was governed by Christian principle in this case, 
 and not by a sense of hard constraint, or the awe 
 of an apostolic command. 
 
 We have now examined those precepts of the 
 apostles, touching relative duties, on which the 
 advocates of slavery found their argument. It 
 appears to us, not merely that they accord with 
 the position which we have taken on the doc- 
 trine of Christianity, but that they cannot be 
 clearly and consistently understood unless they 
 are seen from this point of view. There is one 
 statement of Paul, however, bearing on the whole 
 
46 . CHRISTIANITY 
 
 subject, which ought not to be overlooked. It is 
 one which shows that Christianity places the 
 crime of man-stealing on the same ground of sin- 
 fulness as did the law of Moses. As we have 
 already seen, by that law, it was not only a capi- 
 tal crime to steal a man, but also to have in one's 
 possession a man who had been stolen. Jewish 
 servitude never originated in man-stealing ; and 
 if in any house, or village, or town, or commu- 
 nity, there had been found a slave-system which 
 owned such an origin, the Mosaic law would have 
 abolished it immediately when that fact had been 
 established. Now, in the opening of the First 
 Epistle to Timothy (i. 10), Paul views the 
 crime thus treated of old in the same point of 
 light, when he classes men-stealers with man-slay- 
 ers, and perjured persons, and other transgressors 
 of the divine law. But all know that American 
 slavery did originate in man-stealing, which even 
 the civil law has denounced as piracy. Those 
 who now hold in their possession the descendants 
 of the first captives, have not, in the sight of 
 God, any more right to their persons as property, 
 than our fathers had to the first captives them- 
 selves, whom they purchased from the hands of 
 the bloody slave-dealer, fresh and reeking from 
 the coast of Africa. If the men of the present 
 generation deplore their unsought relation to this 
 oppressive system as a misfortune, — if it be 
 their main anxiety to learn in what way they 
 may set themselves right in regard to it, — the Al- 
 mighty, it may be hoped, will be long-suffering 
 and forbearing toward their slowness, and will 
 mercifully consider their difficulties ; but if, on 
 the other hand, they ratify the sins of our prede- 
 cessors, and vindicate their own right to posses- 
 
AND SLAYERT. 47 
 
 sion by the assumed sanctions of religion, He 
 whose stored vennreance hunsf over the Ammon- 
 ites during four centuries, until "' their iniquity 
 was full,"' will in like manner sweep this whole 
 realm of sanctimonious oppression with the be- 
 som of desolation, and attest to the universe, by 
 his mighty acts, that " the throne of iniquity hath 
 no fellowship " with heaven. 
 
 Neither religion, philosophy, nor humanity, 
 furnish any standing-place whereon a man may 
 press such a claim of right by the plea of pre- 
 scription. There is nothing in human nature 
 which responds to such an argument, when we 
 bring the case closely home to ourselves. Time 
 was, we know, when in Algiers there were a 
 large number of white slaves, both English and 
 Americans. Suppose, for a moment, that our own 
 government had never succeeded in rescuing our 
 fellow-citizens from that foreign bondage, and 
 that now their descendants, our own relatives by 
 blood and family, had become the inheritance of 
 a new race of owners. What if, on demanding 
 the release of these captives, their lords should 
 meet us with such Christian arguments as are 
 found in the letters of Dr. Fuller, should declare 
 to us that they had not had any thing to do with 
 bringing those poor people there, that they had 
 found themselves in a relation of ownership to 
 them, that this had now become a permanent el- 
 ement of their social organization, that slavery 
 had been tolerated by our own holy religion in 
 the Roman empire, and that they now appealed 
 to us, by our regard to order, to justice, to civil 
 claims of property which time had consecrated, 
 and especially by our reverence for the primitive 
 and prudent teachings of that Christianity in 
 
48 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 which we so much gloried, that we should show 
 ourselves to be the lovers of peace, and leave 
 them undisturbed, in the enjoyment of those 
 rights with which Divine Providence had so long 
 invested them ? Would our friends in South 
 Carolina then be found yielding quietly to the 
 power of these " sacred truths," and paying hom- 
 age to the intellect of the Christian Teacher who 
 had, by means of them, so wonderfully enlighten- 
 ed the minds of the Algerines ? Would not then 
 a single wail, wafted over the waters from a cap- 
 tive boy bearing the name of one of their own 
 families, at once identify his cause with that of 
 the first sufferers, and dissolve this claim to prop- 
 erty in man founded on prescription ? Would 
 not every one of them feel the decisions of such 
 a question at his pulse? And surely, if this 
 sense of right and justice in us, short-sighted be- 
 ings, can arouse our souls to overleap a long in- 
 terval of years, to dispel the misty illusions of 
 time, and to look at things by the simple light of 
 their own unchanging moral nature, let us not 
 harbor the thought that time can consecrate 
 wrong doing, or avert its penalties, under the 
 government of that Supreme Ruler, before whom 
 " a thousand years is as one day ;" who has sol- 
 emnly declared that he will " visit the iniquities 
 of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation ;" and who declared, through 
 the lips of the Messiah, to the people of Jerusalem, 
 that, unless they abjured the sins of their fathers, 
 they would fall beneath the weight of a woe 
 which had for ages been treasuring up its stores 
 of fatal judgment. 
 
 It is with good reason, therefore, that we agree 
 in sentiment with Dr. Fuller when he says. 
 
' AND SLAVElir. 49 
 
 " Compared with slavery, all other topics which 
 now shake and inflame men's passions in these 
 United States are really trifling."* On this ac- 
 count it is that we feel how unspeakably weighty 
 is the obligation which has, from the first, rested 
 on the American church, to hold forth God's tes- 
 timony touching the nature of the evil with un- 
 wavering fidelity. Dr. Fuller observes that sla- 
 very was introduced here " in spite of the pro- 
 tests of the colonies."! But why was this note 
 of remonstrance permitted to die away, and to 
 be changed, first, into soft tones of apology for 
 the system, and at last into the voice of bold and 
 eloquent defence ? Had the Christian church 
 been faithful to her mission, the result had been 
 very difterent. It is a truth, however, that in re- 
 lation to this subject, the American church has, 
 to a great extent, laid aside the character of a 
 true and faithful witness, and has incurred cen- 
 sures similar to those which are recorded in the 
 second chapter of the Book of Revelation, against 
 the ancient church of Pergamos, for holding back 
 her testimony, in relation to the prevailing sys- 
 tem of idolatry. The message there addressed 
 to her, contrasts her early state of purity with 
 that of the first decline of her character. " These 
 things saith he who hath the sharp sword with 
 two edges ; I know thy works, and where thou 
 dwellest, even where Satan's seat is ; and thou 
 boldest fast my name, and hast not denied my 
 faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was 
 my faithful martyr, who was slain among you 
 where Satan dwelleth ; but I have a few things 
 against thee, because thou hast there them that 
 hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak 
 
 * Page 3. t Page 131. 
 
 5 
 
50 OHKISTIANITY' 
 
 to cast a stumbling-block before the children of 
 Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to 
 commit fornication. Repent, or else I will come 
 unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with 
 the sword of my mouth." 
 
 Now, here it is certainly interesting to observe, 
 that, in order to prepare this Christian church for 
 the rebuke which he was about to utter, our Lord 
 shows to them that he was mindful of all the pe- 
 culiar difficulties with which they were surround- 
 ed ; that, in estimating the results of a people's in- 
 fluence, he has regard to their place of residence, 
 the state of society on which they operate, and 
 the peculiar forms of depravity with which they 
 may be called to wrestle. Pergamos was conse- 
 crated to the Cabiri, a particular class of deities, 
 and so drenched in the slough of superstition that 
 every man and every child seemed to be mad up- 
 on their idols. The Athenians were given up to 
 idolatry, but they loved it for its associations with 
 art and genius, and in it they worshipped the 
 beautiful ; but the people of Pergamos loved it 
 more for its lower elements, and were more pen- 
 etrated with its essential spirit. Of such a place 
 it might be truly said, " Satan's seat is there ;" 
 for although he is called " the god of this world," 
 although, as we look abroad over the nations, ev- 
 ery region bears the insignia of his sway, yet, 
 comparatively speaking, some parts seem to be 
 like tributary provinces ; while others, for their 
 wickedness, appear to lie near the seat and capi- 
 tal of his empire. The recognition of this fact in 
 the inspired message which we have here quoted, 
 brings out to view an encouraging truth, that, al- 
 though our Lord expects much of his church on 
 earth, there is not an obstacle in her path which 
 he has not fnllv measured. 
 
AND SLAVERY. 51 
 
 The spirit of the accusation, then, against 
 the Christians of Pergamos, may be thus stated, 
 that, ahhough the Most High -would make the 
 most merciful allowances for the small amount of 
 results accomplished by the church in that city, 
 he would malie none at all for their corrupting 
 the principles of his religion — although he could 
 bear with the small quantity of good influence 
 which they had put forth, he could not bear with 
 the deterioration of its quality. Small success in 
 promulgating the gospel may be charitably ac- 
 counted for, but to mutilate the gospel itself is a 
 sin which he will visit with condign severity. 
 The message itself gives evidence, that, after the 
 church at Pergamos had resisted her outward 
 foes with a holy and heroic spirit, she was yield- 
 ing to the influence of those who were ready to 
 accommodate their Christianity to the times, say- 
 ing that an external conformity to the usages of 
 idolatry was innocent and expedient. Perhaps 
 some of them advanced, in effect, what has since 
 been urged with zeal by the Papists, that the 
 way to win the heathen to Christianity is not to 
 be too rigidly separate from them, but to tolerate 
 many errors for the present, and to turn a partici- 
 pation in the rites and festivals to a good account. 
 The allusion to Balak shows that some of these 
 Christians had already drunk of the " Ammoni- 
 tish wine," which intoxicated the Israelites, 
 which led them to honor Baal Peor and to for- 
 sake the law of God. Their conformity did not 
 stop at the first step ; " their table became a snare 
 and a trap," and their spirit of idolatry led to ev- 
 ery species of evil. Their destiny, as a church, 
 was involved in their fidelity to first principles. 
 Hence the message sent to them from the isle of 
 Patmos directs its woe against all those who per- 
 
52 CHKisTiA^nr 
 
 vert the Divine word, or bring down the standard 
 of its principles to the level of their own con- 
 venience. That is a great sin, because it destroys 
 the remedy for sin. A single Christian, or a 
 church, may be able to make but little headway 
 against a prevailing custom, against popular opin- 
 ion, against a badly organized state of society ; 
 but every church, every man, and every woman, 
 may hold up a sound testimony, may state the 
 truth of God correctly, and leave the consequence 
 to Him, whether it be to let it work gently hke 
 leaven, or to be as the fire and the hammer 
 which breaks the rock of flint. 
 
 This remark has respect to the proper treat- 
 ment of all sins which are called '• organic," — 
 those which are deeply interwoven with the 
 elements of the social structure, as, for instance, 
 idolatry or slavery. Time was when almost 
 universally, throughout this country, men owned 
 slavery to be a sin ; that is, a thing which is in 
 itself a transgression of the law of righteousness. 
 Scarcely anywhere could a man be heard to say, 
 that either its commencement or its continuance 
 was sanctioned by reason or scripture. Amidst the 
 agitation of recent years, however, many leading 
 men in the land have deemed the avowal of such 
 a sentiment to be contrary to a safe policy, and 
 have proclaimed slavery to be, not an entailed 
 misfortune, but a righteous relation sanctioned by 
 the Christian scriptures. Now, in this juncture, 
 Divine Providence undoubtedly called the Chris- 
 tian church in the slave-states to a great duty ; 
 to proclaim, on the one hand, that she was averse 
 to all fanatical violence, wrath, and strife ; and, on 
 the other, that to her. Heaven had committed a 
 pure and free Christianity, which teaches that 
 " God has made of one blood all nations <^o z^—^" 
 
AND SLAVERY. 53 
 
 upon the face of the earth," — that the men of 
 Europe or America have no more right of own- 
 ership in the flesh and blood of the children of 
 Africa, than the Africans have in theirs ; and that, 
 not power, or wealth, or color, can give to man a 
 right of property in man. This testimony she 
 should have held forth with a calm martyr-spirit, 
 seeking nought by violence, but to overcome by 
 the blood of the Lamb and the word of his testi- 
 mony. But, alas ! to a great extent, her ministry 
 and members have succumbed to the laws, the 
 politics, the statesmanship, and the spirit of this 
 world, — have altered the testimony of Christ's 
 word, and have publicly declared that his religion 
 sanctions a system of slavery. If the apostle 
 John, who was inspired of old to warn the declin- 
 ing churches of Asia, could descend from heaven 
 with a special message to this portion of the 
 American church, its "burden" and its tone 
 would probably agree with those of this letter to 
 Pergamos, saying, " I know where thou dwellest, 
 even in the midst of a system which Satan has 
 devised to grind your brethren with hard bondage. 
 I know how little thou canst do to change the 
 laws and customs of this people, and break the 
 bands of oppression ; but I have a few things 
 against thee, because -thou hast there them that 
 hold the doctrine of the devil, saying that this sys- 
 tem is from me^ and that it bears the sanction of 
 your Lord and Master. Repent, or else I will 
 come unto thee quickly, and will fight against 
 thee with the sword of my mouth." 
 
 Of such a spirit, we believe, would be the 
 
 message sent to a portion of our American church, 
 
 if the oracle of God should illuminate another 
 
 Patmos. The man who, in the view of the civil 
 
 6 
 
54 CHKISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. 
 
 law, is regarded as a slaveholder, but who, in 
 heart, abhors the system, testifies against it as 
 unrighteous, and does what he can to bring it to 
 an end, is guiltless, compared with him, either at 
 the South or the North, who never owned a slave, 
 but who says that Christianity sanctions slavery. 
 The one is the unwilling victim of a system ; the 
 other is the voluntary advocate of a principle, 
 which, if true, fixes on Christianity all the guilt 
 of the system itself. The one exerts an influence 
 which tends to destroy the system ; the other, an 
 influence which tends to perpetuate it. The one 
 utters a testimony, however feeble, in harmony 
 with the voice of the Bible ; the other muflles 
 God's trumpet, so that it can pour forth no note 
 of warning, but only gentle sounds, which soothe 
 rather than alarm the conscience of the oppressor. 
 As we have said before, the truths involved in 
 this message proclaimed by the voice of inspira- 
 tion, apply to the church's testimony respecting 
 all organic sins whatsoever, — to all wrong cus- 
 toms which have received the support of society. 
 It will not do for a Christian, or an association of 
 Christians, to say. We cannot alter them, and 
 therefore yield to them. In many things we all 
 may have been subjected to a false system, whose 
 influence we have inhaled like a subtle atmo- 
 sphere ; but at any rate we can testify against it ; 
 we can hold forth the law of trutli and righteous- 
 ness ; we can make known the word of God, 
 " uncorrupt and pure ; " and thus, battling against 
 one and another sin, may keep it from concealing 
 its native vileness by enrobing itself in the au- 
 thority of religion, and proudly wearing the sanc- 
 tions of Christ, like stars in its crown of triumph. 
 
 END. 
 
7w 
 
 ONESIMUS: 
 
 Or, the Apostolic Direction to Christian Masters, in 
 reference to their Slaves. By Evangelicus. 
 
 Price 25 cents. 
 
 NOTICES OF THE PEESS. 
 
 An eminent statesman of the South, in a communication to the 
 publishers, in reference to the work, says : — " It is just and philo- 
 sophical, free from fanaticism, and enlightened by the pure spirit of 
 Christianity, as well as by correct general information on slaTery. 
 It is the pious friend of both master and slave ; and this is wise 
 beyond almost all Northern treatises." 
 
 The author proceeds to compare American Slavery with that which 
 occasioned the Apostle's directions to masters, and then to examine 
 and enforce the directions themselves. He states in the preface, that 
 his " Essay is not designed to subserve the interest of any party." 
 He directs his remarks wholly to professing Christians. His opinion 
 is, that the directions of the Apostle, duly carried out, would so 
 modify the system of slavery as eventually to break it up. The tone 
 and manner of the writer are kind and conciliatory.— iVcw York 
 Baptist Advocate. 
 
 It is written in an excellent spirit, with close logic, and severe 
 perspicuity, and is evidently from a practised pen. Its plan, of 
 course, is gradualism. Abolitionists will consider its capital fault 
 to consist in its deducing from particular precepts (addressed to 
 Christians when their condition precluded more direct action), the 
 conduct suitable for a Christian community having discretionary 
 power to sustain or dissolve the relation.— Zton's Herald, Boston. 
 
 The views of the writer, whether approved or not, are worthy of 
 being considered, and the style and manner cannot give offence to 
 any. — Baptist Record, Philadelphia. 
 
 Much valuable information is thrown together in a very condensed 
 form, on the nature of slavery as it existed in the days of the Apostles. 
 The author, having shown the particular points wherein slavery under 
 the Roman government resembled, and wherein it differed from 
 slavery as it exists in the United States, proceeds to examine the 
 duties of masters in relation to their slaves. The work is evidently 
 the production of a scholar, and he has clearly shown that if men 
 would act in accordance with the Apostle's directions, slavery would 
 cease to exist.— Christian Secretary, Hartford, Ct. 
 
 This is a calm, scholar-like, and Christian examination of the 
 teachings of the sacred writers, as to a most important class of duties. 
 It states simply, and as far as we can judge, correctly, the leading 
 principles of Christian duty on the subject of which it treats. — 
 Princeton Revievj. 
 
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 BOOKBINDING 
 
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