statute by any State would be a practical abolition of slavery in
that State.
But it is said that St. Paul sent Onesimus back to his master.
Indeed! but how? When, to our eternal shame and disgrace,
the horrors of the Fugitive Slave Law were being enacted in
Boston, and the very Cradle of Liberty resounded with the
groans of the slave, and men harder-hearted than Saul of Tarsus
made havoc of the Church, entering into every house, haling men
and women, committing them to prison; when whole Churches
of humble Christians were broken up and scattered like flocks
of trembling sheep; when husbands and fathers were torn from
their families, and mothers, with poor, helpless children, fled at
midnight, with bleeding feet, through snow and ice, towards
Canada; in the midst of these scenes, which have made America
a by-word, and a hissing, and an astonishment among all nations,
there were found men, Christian men, ministers of the gospel of
Jesus, even--alas that this should ever be written!--who,
standing in the pulpit, in the name, and by the authority of
Christ, justified and sanctioned these enormities, and used this
most loving and simple-hearted letter of the martyr Paul to
justify these unheard-of atrocities!
He who said, “Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is
offended and I burn not?”--he who called the converted slave
his own body, the son begotten in his bonds, and who sent him
to the brother of his soul with the direction, “Receive him as
myself, not now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved”
--this beautiful letter, this outgush of tenderness and love
passing the love of a woman, was held up to be pawed over by
the polluted hobgoblin fingers of slave-dealers and slave-whip-
pers as their lettre de cachet, signed and sealed in the name
of Christ and his apostles, giving full authority to carry back
slaves to be tortured and whipped, and sold in perpetual
bondage, as were Henry Long and Thomas Sims! Just as
well might a mother's letter, when, with prayers and tears, she
commits her first and only child to the cherishing love and
sympathy of some trusted friend, be used as an inquisitor's war-
rant for inflicting imprisonment and torture upon that child.
Had not every fragment of the apostle's body long since moul-
dered to dust, his very bones would have moved in their grave,
in protest against such slander on the Christian name and faith.
And is it to come to this, O Jesus Christ! have such things
been done in thy name, and art thou silent yet? Verily, thou
art a God that bidest thyself O God of Israel the Saviour!
CHAPTER V.
But why did not the apostles preach against the legal
relation of slavery, and seek its overthrow in the State? This
question is often argued as if the apostles were in the same con-
dition with the clergy of Southern churches, members of repub-
lican institutions, law-makers, and possessed of all republican
powers to agitate for the repeal of unjust laws.
Contrary to all this, a little reading of the New Testament
will show us that the apostles were almost in the condition of
outlaws, under a severe and despotic government, whose spirit
and laws they reprobated as unchristian, and to which they
submitted, just as they exhorted the slave to submit, as to a
necessary evil.
Hear the apostle Paul thus enumerating the political privileges
incident to the ministry of Christ. Some false teachers had
risen in the Church at Corinth, and controverted his teachings,
asserting that they had greater pretensions to authority in the
Christian ministry than he. St. Paul, defending his apostolic
position, thus speaks: “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak
as a fool,) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes
above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the
Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I
beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck,
a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings
often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine
own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”
What enumeration of the hardships of an American slave can
more than equal the hardships of the great apostle to the Gen-
tiles? He had nothing to do with laws except to suffer their
penalties. They were made and kept in operation without
asking him, and the slave did not suffer any more from them
than he did.
It would appear that the clergymen of the South, when they
imitate the example of Paul, in letting entirely alone the civil
relation of the slave, have left wholly out of their account how
different is the position of an American clergyman, in a republi-
can government, where he himself helps to make and sustain the
laws, from the condition of the apostles, under a heathen
despotism, with whose laws he could have nothing to do.
It is very proper for an outlawed slave to address to other
outlawed slaves exhortations to submit to a government which
neither he nor they have any power to alter.
We read, in sermons which clergymen at the South have
addressed to slaves, exhortations to submission, and patience,
and humility, in their enslaved condition, which would be ex-
ceedingly proper in the mouth of an apostle, where he and the
slaves were alike fellow-sufferers under a despotism whose laws
they could not alter, but which assume quite another character
when addressed to the slave by the very men who make the laws
that enslave them.
If a man has been waylaid and robbed of all his property, it
would be very becoming and proper for his clergyman to endea-
vour to reconcile him to his condition, as, in some sense, a dis-
pensation of Providence; but if the man who robs him should
come to him, and address to him the same exhortations, he cer-
tainly will think that that is quite another phase of the matter.
A clergyman of high rank in the Church, in a sermon to the
negroes, thus addresses them:--
Almighty God hath been pleased to make you slaves here, and to give you
nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to,
as it is his will that it should be so. And think within yourselves what a terrible
thing it would be, after all your labours and sufferings in this life, to be turned into
hell in the next life; and after wearing out your bodies in service here, to go into
a far worse slavery when this is over, and your poor souls be delivered over into
the possession of the devil, to become his slaves for ever in hell, without any hope
of ever getting free from it. If, therefore, you would be God's freemen in heaven,
you must strive to be good and serve him here on earth. Your bodies
, you know,
are not your own; they are at the disposal of those you belong to; but your
precious souls are still your own, which nothing can take from you if it be not your
own fault. Consider well, then, that if you lose your souls by leading idle wicked
lives here, you have got nothing by it in this world, and you have lost your all in
the next; for your idleness and wickedness is generally found out, and your
bodies suffer for it here; and, what is far worse, if you do not repent and amend,
your unhappy souls will suffer for it hereafter.
Now, this clergyman was a man of undoubted sincerity. He
had read the New Testament, and observed that St. Paul
addressed exhortations something like this to slaves in his day.
But he entirely forgot to consider that Paul had not the rights
of a republican clergyman; that he was not a maker and sus-
tainer of those laws by which the slaves were reduced to their
condition, but only a fellow-sufferer under them. A case may
be supposed which would illustrate this principle to the clergy-
man. Suppose that he were travelling along the highway, with
all his worldly property about him, in the shape of bank-bills.
An association of highwaymen seize him, bind him to a tree, and
take away the whole of his worldly estate. This they would have
precisely the same right to do that the clergyman and his brother
republicans have to take all the earnings and possessions of their
slaves. The property would belong to these highwaymen by
exactly the same kind of title--not because they have earned it,
but simply because they have got it and are able to keep it.
The head of this confederation, observing some dissatisfaction
upon the face of the clergyman, proceeds to address him a reli-
gious exhortation to patience and submission, in much the same
terms as he had before addressed to the slaves. “Almighty
God has been pleased to take away your entire property, and to
give you nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which
you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it should be
so. Now, think within yourself what a terrible thing it would
be, if, having lost all your worldly property, you should, by dis-
content and want of resignation, lose also your soul; and, having
been robbed of all your property here, to have your poor soul
delivered over to the possession of the devil, to become his pro-
perty for ever in hell, without any hope of ever getting free from
it. Your property now is no longer your own; we have taken
possession of it; but your precious soul is still your own, and
nothing can take it from you but your own fault. Consider well,
then, that if you lose your soul by rebellion and murmuring
against this dispensation of Providence, you will get nothing by
it in this world, and will lose your all in the next.”
Now, should this clergyman say, as he might very properly,
to these robbers, “There is no necessity for my being poor in
this world, if you will only give me back my property which you
have taken from me,” he is only saying precisely what the slaves,
to whom he has been preaching, might say to him and his fellow-
republicans.
CHAPTER VI.
But it may still be said that the apostles might have com-
manded Christian masters to perform the act of legal emancipa-
tion in all cases. Certainly they might, and it is quite evident
that they did not.
The professing primitive Christian regarded and treated his
slave as a brother; but in the eye of the law he was still his
chattel personal--a thing, and not a man. Why did not the
apostles, then, strike at the legal relation? Why did they not
command every Christian convert to sunder that chain at once?
In answer, we say that every attempt at reform which comes
from God has proceeded uniformly in this manner--to destroy
the spirit of an abuse first, and leave the form of it to drop away
of itself afterwards--to girdle the poisonous tree, and leave it to
take its own time for dying.
This mode of dealing with abuses has this advantage, that it
is compendious and universal, and can apply to that particular
abuse in all ages, and under all shades and modifications. If
the apostle, in that outward and physical age, had merely attacked
the legal relation, and had rested the whole burden of obligation
on dissolving that, the corrupt and selfish principle might have
run into other forms of oppression equally bad, and sheltered
itself under the technicality of avoiding legal slavery. God,
therefore, dealt a surer blow at the monster, by singling out the
precise spot where his heart beat, and saying to his apostles,
“Strike there!”
Instead of saying to the slaveholder, “Manumit your slave,”
it said to him, “Treat him as your brother,” and left to the
slaveholder's conscience to say how much was implied in this
command.
In the directions which Paul gave about slavery, it is evident
that he considered the legal relation with the same indifference
with which a gardener treats a piece of unsightly bark, which he
perceives the growing vigour of a young tree is about to throw
off by its own vital force. He looked upon it as a part of an old
effete system of heathenism, belonging to a set of laws and usages
which were waxing old and ready to vanish away.
There is an argument which has been much employed on this
subject, and which is specious. It is this. That the apostles
treated slavery as one of the lawful relations of life, like that of
parent and child, husband and wife.
The argument is thus stated: The apostles found all the rela-
tions of life much corrupted by various abuses.
They did not attack the relations, but reformed the abuses, and thus restored the relations to a healthy state.
The mistake here lies in assuming that slavery is the lawful
relation. Slavery is the corruption of a lawful relation. The
lawful relation is servitude, and slavery is the corruption of ser-
vitude.
When the apostles came, all the relations of life in the Roman
Empire were thoroughly permeated with the principle of slavery.
The relation of child to parent was slavery. The relation of wife
to husband was slavery. The relation of servant to master was
slavery.
The power of the father over his son, by Roman law, was very
much the same with the power of the master over his slave.*
He could, at his pleasure, scourge, imprison, or put him to death.
The son could possess nothing but what was the property of his
father; and this unlimited control extended through the whole
lifetime of the father, unless the son were formally liberated by
an act of manumission three times repeated, while the slave could
be manumitted by performing the act only once. Neither was
there any law obliging the father to manumit; he could retain
this power, if he chose, during his whole life.
Very similar was the situation of the Roman wife. In case
she were accu
sed of crime, her husband assembled a meeting of
her relations, and in their presence sat in judgment upon her,
awarding such punishment as he thought proper.
For unfaithfulness to her marriage-vow, or for drinking wine,
Romulus allowed her husband to put her to death.† From
this slavery, unlike the son, the wife could never be manumitted;
no legal forms were provided. It was lasting as her life.
The same spirit of force and slavery pervaded the relation of
master and servant, giving rise to that severe code of slave-law,
which, with a few features of added cruelty, Christian America,
in the nineteenth century, has re-enacted.
With regard, now, to all these abuses of proper relations, the
gospel pursued one uniform course. It did not command the
Christian father to perform the legal act of emancipation to his
son; but it infused such a divine spirit into the paternal rela-
tion, by assimilating it to the relation of the heavenly Father,
that the Christianised Roman would regard any use of his bar-
barous and oppressive legal powers as entirely inconsistent with
his Christian profession. So it ennobled the marriage relation
by comparing it to the relation between Christ and his Church;
commanding the husband to love his wife, even as Christ loved
the Church, and gave himself for it. It is said of him, “No
man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the Church;” “so ought everyone to love
his wife, even as himself.” Not an allusion is made to the bar-
barous, unjust power which the law gave the husband. It was
perfectly understood that a Christian husband could not make
use of it in conformity with these directions.
In the same manner Christian masters were exhorted to give
to their servants that which is just and equitable; and, so far
from coercing their services by force, to forbear even threaten-
ings. The Christian master was directed to receive his Chris-
tianised slave, “not now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother
beloved;” and, as in all these other cases, nothing was said to
him about the barbarous powers which the Roman law gave
him, since it was perfectly understood that he could not at the
same time treat him as a brother beloved and as a slave in the
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