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PREFATORY REMARKS
When the discourse which is now placed
before the public in pamphlet form, was first delivered, I little anticipated that it
would attract and occupy public attention in the manner and to the extent which it has
done. The subject had not been chosen by myself; I was called upon to expose a pernicious
fallacy. Under a strong sense of duty I did it; not by any reasoning of my own, but by a
statement of facts, supported by the authority of Scripture. That such a sober statement,
and the inferences to be deduced therefrom, should prove very unpalatable to men of
extreme opinions, and that they should do their utmost to refute my discourse, was
naturally to be expected. Accordingly they have tried their best, from newspaper
paragraphs of a few lines up to elaborate articles of many columns. With what success, it
is for public opinion to decide. It seems, however, that the public, like myself, thinks
that "facts are facts.: So long as the one great fact is not produced—THE TEXT
OF SCRIPTURE WHICH DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY DENOUNCES SLAVEHOLDING AS A SIN—so long as
this has not been done, my statements remain incontrovertible. As that text has not been
quoted, which it never can be, SINCE IT DOES NOT EXIST, all the fiery attacks and
declamations against me are but "leather and prunella."
It is true that the attempt has been made
to find such a text; and that Matt. vii. 12: "All things whatsoever you would that
men should do to you, do you even so to them," has been quoted. I might answer that
this great precept, the practical explication of the command, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor like thyself," was not only known to the ancient Hebrews and even to heathen
Greeks, full four hundred years before the sermon on the Mount, but likewise to all
Christian nations upwards of 1800 years after that sermon; but that by ancients and
moderns it never was brought to bear on slaveholding till within the last (comparatively)
few years. But I prefer to take my answer from the New Testament. The writer of the
"Epistle to Philemon" had, before his conversion, been the disciple of Gamaliel,
a descendant of that Hebrew sage [Hillel], who, in the Talmud (tr Sabbath fo. 31),
declares that the rule "whatsoever is hateful to thee do not unto others"
[Levit. xix. 18] is the sum and substance of the Law. After his conversion he became one
of the principal teachers of Christianity. But though he must have entered into the spirit
of the sermon on the Mount far more fully and truly than the writers in the
"Tribune" can do—and perhaps for that very reason, he sent back the
fugitive slave, Onesimus, to his owner. Proof sufficient on the authority of Paul of
Tarsus, that the text, Matt. vii. 12, has no special application to slaveholding.
The long tirade in the "Tribune"
of this day must go for what it is worth. It is before the public; so is my discourse.
Each of the two must stand or fall on its own merits. But I am convinced my discourse will
not fall, for it embodies "the word of our G-d, which standeth good for ever."
M. J. R.
New York, Jan. 15th, 1861.
THE BIBLE VIEW OF SLAVERY
"The people of Nineveh believed in
G-d, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them even to the least
of them. For the matter reached the King of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, laid
aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and seated himself in ashes. And he caused
it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by decree of the King and his magnates,
saying; 'Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor
drink any water. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry with all their
strength unto G-d; and let them turn every individual from his evil way and from the
violence that is in their hands. Who knoweth but G-d may turn and relent; yea, turn away
from his fierce anger, that we perish not.' And G-d saw their works, that they turned from
their evil way: and G-d relented of the evil which he had said that he would inflict upon
them; and he did it not."—Jonah iii. 5-10.
My friends, we meet here this day under
circumstances not unlike those described in my text. Not many weeks ago, on the invitation
of the Governor of this State, we joined in thanksgiving for the manifold mercies the L-rd
had vouchsafed to bestow upon us during the past year. But "coming events cast their
shadows before," and our thanks were tinctured by the foreboding of danger impending
over our country. The evil we then dreaded has now come home to us. As the cry of the
prophet, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," alarmed that people,
so the proclamation, "the Union is dissolved," has startled the inhabitants of
the United States. The President—the chief officer placed at the helm to guide the
vessel of the commonwealth on its course—stands aghast at the signs of the times. He
sees the black clouds gathering overhead, he hears the fierce howl of the tornado, and the
hoarse roar of the breakers all around him. An aged man, his great experience has taught
him that "man's extremity is G-d's opportunity;" and conscious of his own
inability to weather the storm without help from on high, he calls upon every individual
"to feel a personal responsibility towards G-d," even as the King of Nineveh
desired all persons "to cry unto G-d with all their strength"—and it is in
compliance with this call of the Chief Magistrate of these United States that we, like the
many millions of our fellow-citizens, devote this day to public prayer and humiliation.
The President, more polished, though less plain-spoken than the King of Nineveh, does not
in direct terms require every one to turn from his "evil way, and from the violence
that is in their hands." But to me these two expressions seem in a most signal manner
to describe our difficulty, and to apply to the actual condition of things both North and
South. The "violence in their hands" is the great reproach we must address to
the sturdy fire-eater who in the hearing of an indignant world proclaims "Cotton is
King." King indeed, and a most righteous and merciful one, no doubt, in his own
conceit; since he only tars and feathers the wretches who fall in his power, and whom he
suspects of not being sufficiently loyal and obedient to his sovereignty. And the
"evil of his ways" is the reproach we must address to the sleek rhetorician who
in the hearing of a G-d fearing world declared "Thought is King." King indeed,
and a most mighty and magnanimous one—no doubt—in his own conceit; all-powerful
to foment and augment the strife, though powerless to allay it. Of all the fallacies
coined in the north, the arrogant assertion that "Thought is King" is the very
last with which, at this present crisis, the patience of a reflecting people should have
been abused. For in fact, the material greatness of the United States seems to have
completely outgrown the grasp of our most gifted minds; so that urgent as is our need,
pressing as is the occasion, no man or set of men have yet come forward capable of rising
above the narrow horizon of sectional influences and prejudices, and with views
enlightened, just, and beneficent, to embrace the entirety of the Union and to secure its
prosperity and preservation. No, my friends, "Cotton" is not King, and
"Human thought" is not King. Hashem melech! Hashem alone is King! Umalkuso
bakol mashalah, and His royalty reigneth over all. This very day of humiliation and of
prayer—what is it but the recognition of His supremacy, the confession of His power
and of our own weakness, the supplications which our distress addresses to His mercy? But
in order that these supplications may be graciously received, that His supreme protection
may be vouchsafed unto our Country, it is necessary that we should begin as the people of
Nineveh did; we must "believe in G-d."—And when I say "We," I do
not mean merely us handful of peaceable Union-loving Hebrews, but I mean the whole of the
people throughout the United States: the President and his Cabinet, the President elect
and his advisers, the leaders of public opinion, North and South. If they truly and
honestly desire to save our country, let them believe in G-d and in His Holy Word; and
then when the authority of the Constitution is to be set aside for a higher Law, they will
be able to appeal to the highest Law of all, the revealed Law and Word of G-d, which
affords its supreme sanction to the Constitution. There can be no doubt, my friends, that
however much of personal ambition, selfishness, pride, and obstinacy, there may enter into
the present unhappy quarrel between the two great sections of the Commonwealth—I say
it is certain that the origin of the quarrel itself is the difference of opinion
respecting slave-holding, which the one section denounces as sinful—aye, as the most
heinous of sins—while the other section upholds it as perfectly lawful. It is the
province of statesmen to examine the circumstances under which the Constitution of the
United States recognizes the legality of slave-holding; and under what circumstances, if
any, it becomes a crime against the law of the land. But the question whether
slave-holding is a sin before G-d, is one that belongs to the theologian. I have been
requested by prominent citizens of other denominations, that I should on this day examine
the Bible view of slavery, as the religious mind of the country requires to be enlightened
on the subject.
In compliance with that request, and after
humbly praying that the Father of Truth and of Mercy may enlighten my mind, and direct my
words for good, I am about to solicit your earnest attention, my friends, to this serious
subject. My discourse will, I fear, take up more of your time than I am in the habit of
exacting from you; but this is a day of penitence, and the having to listen to a long and
sober discourse must be accounted as a penitential infliction.
The subject of my investigation falls into
three parts:—
First, How far back can we trace the
existence of slavery?
Secondly, Is slaveholding condemned as a
sin in sacred Scripture?
Thirdly, What was the condition of the
slave in Biblical times, and among the Hebrews; and saying with our Father Jacob,
"for Thy help, I hope, O L-rd!" I proceed to examine the question, how far back
can we trace the existence of slavery?
I. It is generally admitted, that slavery
had its origin in war, public or private. The victor having it in his power to take the
life of his vanquished enemy, prefers to let him live, and reduces him to bondage. The
life he has spared, the body he might have mutilated or destroyed, become his absolute
property. He may dispose of it in any way he pleases. Such was, and through a great part
of the world still is, the brutal law of force. When this state of things first began, it
is next to impossible to decide. If we consult Sacred Scripture, the oldest and most
truthful collection of records now or at any time in existence, we find the word evved
"slave" which the English version renders "servant," first used by
Noah, who, in Genesis ix. 25, curses the descendants of his son Ham, by saying they should
be Evved Avadim, the "meanest of slaves," or as the English version has
it "servant of servants." The question naturally arises how came Noah to use the
expression? How came he to know anything of slavery? There existed not at that time any
human being on earth except Noah and his family of three sons, apparently by one mother,
born free and equal, with their wives and children. Noah had no slaves. From the time that
he quitted the ark he could have none. It therefore becomes evident that Noah's
acquaintance with the word slave and the nature of slavery must date from before the
Flood, and existed in his memory only until the crime of Ham called it forth. You and I
may regret that in his anger Noah should from beneath the waters of wrath again have
fished up the idea and practice of slavery; but that he did so is a fact which rests on
the authority of Scripture. I am therefore justified when tracing slavery as far back as
it can be traced, I arrive at the conclusion, that next to the domestic relations of
husband and wife, parents and children, the oldest relation of society with which we are
acquainted is that of master and slave.
Let us for an instant stop at this curse
by Noah with which slavery after the Flood is recalled into existence. Among the many
prophecies contained in the Bible and having reference to particular times, persons, and
events, there are three singular predictions referring to three distinct races or peoples,
which seem to be intended for all times, and accordingly remain in full force to this day.
The first of these is the doom of Ham's descendants, the African race, pronounced upwards
of 4,000 years ago. The second is the character of the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs,
pronounced nearly 4,000 years ago; and the third and last is the promise of continued and
indestructible nationality promised to us, Israelites, full 2500 years ago. It has been
said that the knowledge that a particular prophecy exists, helped to work out its
fulfillment, and I am quite willing to allow that with us, Israelites, such is the fact.
The knowledge we have of G-d's gracious promises renders us imperishable, even though the
greatest and most powerful nations of the olden time have utterly perished. It may be
doubted whether the fanatic Arab of the desert ever heard of the prophecy that he is to be
a "wild man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him." But
you and I, and all men of ordinary education, know that this prediction at all times has
been, and is now, literally fulfilled, and that it has never been interrupted. Not even
when the followers of Mahomet rushed forth to spread his doctrines, the Koran in one hand
and the sword in the other, and when Arab conquest rendered the fairest portion of the Old
World subject to the empire of their Caliph, did the descendants of Ishmael renounce their
characteristics. Even the boasted civilization of the present century, and frequent
intercourse with Western travellers, still leave the Arab a wild man, "his hand
against everybody, and every man's hand against him," a most convincing and durable
proof that the Word of G-d is true, and that the prophecies of the Bible were dictated by
the Spirit of the Most High. But though, in the case of the Arab, it is barely possible
that he may be acquainted with the prediction made to Hagar, yet we may be sure that the
fetish-serving benighted African has no knowledge of Noah's prediction; which, however, is
nowhere more fully or more atrociously carried out than in the native home of the African.
Witness the horrid fact, that the King of Dahomey is, at this very time, filling a large
and deep trench with human blood, sufficient to float a good-sized boat; that the victims
are innocent men, murdered to satisfy some freak of what he calls his religion; and that
this monstrous and most fiendish act has met with no opposition, either from the pious
indignation of Great Britain, or from the zealous humanity of our country.
No, I am well aware that the Biblical
critics called Rationalists, who deny the possibility of prophecy, have taken upon
themselves to assert, that the prediction of which I have spoken was never uttered by
Noah, but was made up many centuries after him by the Hebrew writer of the Bible, in order
to smoothe over the extermination of the Canaanites, whose land was conquered by the
Israelites. With superhuman knowledge like that of the Rationalists, who claim to sit in
judgement on the Word of G-d, I do not think it worth while to argue. But I would ask you
how it is that a prediction, manufactured for a purpose—a fraud in short, and that a
most base and unholy one, should nevertheless continue in force, and be carried out during
four, or three, or even two thousand years; for a thousand years more or less can here
make no difference. Noah, on the occasion in question, bestows on his son Shem a spiritual
blessing: "Blessed be the L-rd, the G-d of Shem," and to this day it remains a
fact which cannot be denied, that whatever knowledge of G-d and of religious truth is
possessed by the human race, has been promulgated by the descendants of Shem. Noah bestows
on his son Japheth a blessing, chiefly temporal, but partaking also of spiritual good.
"May G-d enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem," and to this
day it remains a fact which cannot be denied, that the descendants of Japheth (Europeans
and their offspring) have been enlarged so that they possess dominion in every part of the
earth; while, at the same time, they share in that knowledge of religious truth which the
descendants of Shem were the first to promulgate. Noah did not bestow any blessing on his
son Ham, but uttered a bitter curse against his descendants, and to this day it remains a
fact which cannot be gainsaid that in his own native home, and generally throughout the
world, the unfortunate negro is indeed the meanest of slaves. Much has been said
respecting the inferiority of his intellectual powers, and that no man of his race has
ever inscribed his name on the Pantheon of human excellence, either mental or moral. But
this is a subject I will not discuss. I do not attempt to build up a theory, not yet to
defend the moral government of Providence. I state facts; and having done so, I remind you
that our own fathers were slaves in Egypt, and afflicted four hundred years; and then I
bid you reflect on the words of inspired Isaiah (lv. 8.), "My thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the L-rd."
II. Having thus, on the authority of the
sacred Scripture, traced slavery back to the remotest period, I next request your
attention to the question, "Is slaveholding condemned as a sin in sacred
Scripture?" How this question can at all arise in the mind of any man that has
received a religious education, and is acquainted with the history of the Bible, is a
phenomenon I cannot explain to myself, and which fifty years ago no man dreamed of. But we
live in times when we must not be surprised at anything. Last Sunday an eminent preacher
is reported to have declared from the pulpit, "The Old Testament requirements served
their purpose during the physical and social development of mankind, and were rendered no
longer necessary now when we were to be guided by the superior doctrines of the New in the
moral instruction of the race." I had always thought that in the "moral
instruction of the race," the requirements of Jewish Scriptures and Christian
Scriptures were identically the same; that to abstain from murder, theft, adultery, that
"to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with G-d," were
"requirements" equally imperative in the one course of instruction as in the
other. But it appears I was mistaken. "We have altered all that now," says this
eminent divine, in happy imitation of Molière's physician, whose new theory removed the
heart from the left side of the human body to the right. But when I remember that the
"now" refers to a period of which you all, though no very aged men, witnessed
the rise; when, moreover, I remember that the "WE" the reverend preacher speaks
of, is limited to a few impulsive declaimers, gifted with great zeal, but little
knowledge; more eloquent than learned; better able to excite our passions than to satisfy
our reason; and when, lastly, I remember the scorn with which sacred Scripture (Deut.
xxxii. 18) speaks of "newfangled notions, lately sprung up, which your fathers
esteemed not;" when I consider all this, I think you and I had rather continue to
take our "requirements for moral instruction" from Moses and the Prophets than
from the eloquent preacher of Brooklyn [Henry Ward Beecher]. But as that reverend
gentleman takes a lead among those who most loudly and most vehemently denounce
slaveholding as a sin, I wished to convince myself whether he had any Scripture warranty
for so doing; and whether such denunciation was one of those "requirements for moral
instruction" advanced by the New Testament. I have accordingly examined the various
books of Christian Scripture, and find that they afford the reverend gentleman and his
compeers no authority whatever for his and their declamations. The New Testament nowhere,
directly or indirectly, condemns slaveholding, which, indeed, is proved by the universal
practice of all Christian nations during many centuries. Receiving slavery as one of the
conditions of society, the New Testament nowhere interferes with or contradicts the slave
code of Moses; it even preserves a letter written by one of the most eminent Christian
teachers to a slaveowner on sending back to him his runaway slave. And when we next refer
to the history and "requirements" of our own sacred Scriptures, we find that on
the most solemn occasion therein recorded, when G-d gave the Ten Commandments on Mount
Sinai—
There where His finger scorched, the
tablet shone;
There where His shadow on his people shone His glory, shrouded in its garb of fire,
Himself no eye might see and not expire.
Even on that most solemn and most holy
occasion, slaveholding is not only recognized and sanctioned as an integral part of the
social structure, when it is commanded that the Sabbath of the L-rd is to bring rest to Avdecha
ve'Amasecha, "Thy male slave and thy female slave" (Exod. xx. 10; Deut. v.
14). But the property in slaves is placed under the same protection as any other species
of lawful property, when it is said, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, or
his field, or his male slave, or his female slave, or his ox, or his ass, or aught that
belongeth to thy neighbor" (Ibid. xx. 17; v.21). That the male slave and the female
slave here spoken of do not designate the Hebrew bondman, but the heathen slave, I shall
presently show you. That the Ten Commandments are the word of G-d, and as such, of the
very highest authority, is acknowledged by Christians as well as by Jews. I would
therefore ask the reverend gentleman of Brooklyn and his compeers—How dare you, in
the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten
Commandments—how dare you denounce slaveholding as a sin? When you remember that
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job—the men with whom the Almighty conversed, with whose names
he emphatically connects his own most holy name, and to whom He vouchsafed to give the
character of "perfect, upright, fearing G-d and eschewing evil" (Job i.
8)—that all these men were slaveholders, does it not strike you that you are guilty
of something very little short of blasphemy? And if you answer me, "Oh, in their time
slaveholding was lawful, but now it has become a sin," I in my turn ask you,
"When and by what authority you draw the line?" Tell us the precise time when
slaveholding ceased to be permitted, and became sinful?" When we remember the
mischief which this inventing a new sin, not known in the Bible, is causing; how it has
exasperated the feelings of the South, and alarmed the conscience of the North, to a
degree that men who should be brothers are on the point of embruing their hands in each
other's blood, are we not entitled to ask the reverend preacher of Brooklyn, "What
right have you to insult and exasperate thousands of G-d-fearing, law-abiding citizens,
whose moral worth and patriotism, whose purity of conscience and of life, are fully equal
to your own? What right have you to place yonder grey-headed philanthropist on a level
with a murderer, or yonder mother of a family on a line with an adulteress, or yonder
honorable and honest man in one rank with a thief, and all this solely because they
exercise a right which your own fathers and progenitors, during many generations, held and
exercised without reproach or compunction. You profess to frame your "moral
instruction of the race" according to the "requirements" of the New
Testament—but tell us where and by whom it was said, "Whosoever shall say to his
neighbor, rakah (worthless sinner), shall be in danger of the council; but
whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of the judgment." My friends, I
find, and I am sorry to find, that I am delivering a pro-slavery discourse. I am no friend
to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to the practical working of slavery.
But I stand here as a teacher in Israel; not to place before you my own feelings and
opinions, but to propound to you the word of G-d, the Bible view of slavery. With a due
sense of my responsibility, I must state to you the truth and nothing but the truth,
however unpalatable or unpopular that truth may be.
III. It remains for me now to examine what
was the condition of the slave in Biblical times and among the Hebrews. And here at once
we must distinguish between the Hebrew bondman and the heathen slave. The former could
only be reduced to bondage from two causes. If he had committed theft and had not
wherewithal to make full restitution, he was "sold for his theft." (Exod. xxii.
3.) Or if he became so miserably poor that he could not sustain life except by begging, he
had permission to "sell" or bind himself in servitude. (Levit. xxv. 39 et seq.)
But in either case his servitude was limited in duration and character. "Six years
shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing" (Exod. xxi. 2).
And if even the bondman preferred bondage to freedom, he could not, under any
circumstances, be held to servitude longer than the jubilee then next coming. At that
period the estate which had originally belonged to his father, or remoter ancestor,
reverted to his possession, so that he went forth at once a freeman and a landed
proprietor. As his privilege of Hebrew citizen was thus only suspended, and the law, in
permitting him to be sold, contemplated his restoration to his full rights, it took care
that during his servitude his mind should not be crushed to the abject and cringing
condition of a slave. "Ye shall not rule over one another with rigor," is the
provision of the law. (Lev. xxv. 46.) Thus he is fenced round with protection against any
abuse of power on the part of his employer; and tradition so strictly interpreted the
letter of the law in his favor, that it was a common saying of Biblical times and homes,
which Maimonides has preserved to us, that "he who buys an Hebrew bondman gets
himself a master." Though in servitude, this Hebrew was in nowise exempt from his
religious duties. Therefore it is not for him or his that the Ten Commandments stipulated
for rest on the Sabbath of the L-rd; for his employer could not compel him to work on that
day; and if he did work of his own accord, he became guilty of death, like any other
Sabbath-breaker. Neither does the prohibition, "thou shalt not covet the property of
thy neighbor," apply to him, for he was not the property of his employer. In fact,
between the Hebrew bondman and the Southern slave there is no point of resemblance. There
were, however, slaves among the Hebrews, whose general condition was analogous to that of
their Southern fellow sufferers. That was the heathen slave, who was to be bought
"from the heathens that were round about the land of Israel, or from the heathen
strangers that sojourned in the land; they should be a possession, to be bequeathed as an
inheritance to the owner's children, after his death, for ever" (Levit. xxv. 44-46.)
Over these heathen slaves the owner's property was absolute; he could put them to hard
labor, to the utmost extent of their physical strength; he could inflict on them any
degree of chastisement short of injury to life and limb. If his heathen slave ran away or
strayed from home, every Israelite was bound to bring or send him back, as he would have
to do with any other portion of his neighbor's property that had been lost or strayed.
(Deut. xxii. 3.)
Now, you may, perhaps, ask me how I can
reconcile this statement with the text of Scripture so frequently quoted against the
Fugitive Slave Law, "Thou shalt not surrender unto his master the slave who has
escaped from his master unto thee: (Deut. xxiii. 16). I answer you that, according to all
legists, this text applies to a heathen slave, who, from any foreign country escapes from
his master, even though that master be an Hebrew, residing out of the land of Israel. Such
a slave—but such a slave only—is to find a permanent asylum in any part of the
country he may choose. This interpretation is fully borne out by the words of the precept.
The pronoun "thou," is not here used in the same sense as in the Ten
Commandments. There it designates every soul in Israel individually; since every one has
it in his power, and is in duty bound to obey the commandments. But as the security and
protection to be bestowed on the runaway slaves are beyond the power of any individual,
and require the consent and concurrence of the whole community, the pronoun
"thou" here means the whole of the people, and not one portion in opposition to
any other portion of the people. And as the expression remains the same throughout the
precept, "With thee he shall dwell, even among ye, in the place he shall choose in
one of thy gates where it liketh him best," it plainly shows that the whole of the
land was open to him, and the whole of the people were to protect the fugitive, which
could not have been carried out if it had applied to the slave who escaped from one tribe
into the territory of another. Had the precept been expounded in any other than its
strictly literal sense, it would have caused great confusion, since it would have
nullified two other precepts of G-d's law; that which directs that "slaves, like
lands and houses, were to be inherited for ever," and that which commands
"property, lost or strayed, to be restored to the owner." Any other
interpretation would, moreover, have caused heartburning and strife between the tribes,
for men were as tenacious of their rights and property in those days as they are now. But
no second opinion was ever entertained; the slave who ran away from Dan to Beersheba had
to be given up, even as the runaway from South Carolina has to be given up by
Massachusetts; whilst the runaway from Edom, or from Syria, found an asylum in the land of
Israel, as the runaway slave from Cuba or Brazil would find in New York. Accordingly,
Shimei reclaimed and recovered his runaway slaves from Achish, king of Gath, at that time
a vassal of Israel (Kings ii. 39, 40). And Saul of Tarsus sent back the runaway slave,
Onesimus, unto his owner Philemon. But to surrender to a ruthless, lawless heathen, the
wretched slave who had escaped from his cruelty, would have been to give up the fugitive
to certain death, or at least to tortures repugnant to the spirit of G-d's law, the tender
care of which protected the bird in its nest, the beast at the plough, and the slave in
his degradation. Accordingly, the extradition was not permitted in Palestine any more than
it is in Canada. While thus the owner possessed full right over and security for his
property, the exercise of that power was confined within certain limits which he could not
outstep. His female slave was not to be the tool or castaway toy of his sensuality, nor
could he sell her, but was bound to "let her go free," "because he had
humbled her" (Deut. xxi. 14). His male slave was protected against excessive
punishment; for if the master in any way mutilated his slave, even to knock a single tooth
out of his head, the slave became free (Exod. xxi. 26, 27). And while thus two of the
worst passions of human nature, lust and cruelty, were kept under due restraint, the third
bad passion, cupidity, was not permitted free scope; for the law of G-d secured to the
slave his Sabbaths and days of rest; while public opinion, which in a country so densely
peopled as Palestine must have been all-powerful, would not allow any slave-owner to
impose heavier tasks on his slaves, or to feed them worse than his neighbors did. This,
indeed, is the great distinction which the Bible view of slavery derives from its divine
source. The slave is a person in whom the dignity of human nature is to be
respected; he has rights. Whereas, the heathen view of slavery which prevailed at
Rome, and which, I am sorry to say, is adopted in the South, reduces the slave to a thing,
and a thing can have no rights. The result to which the Bible view of slavery leads us,
is—1st. That slavery has existed since the earliest time; 2d. That slaveholding is no
sin, and that slave property is expressly placed under the protection of the Ten
Commandments; 3d. That the slave is a person, and has rights not conflicting with the
lawful exercise of the rights of his owner. If our Northern fellow-citizens, content with
following the word of G-d, would not insist on being "righteous overmuch," or
denouncing "sin" which the Bible knows not, but which is plainly taught by the
precepts of men—they would entertain more equity and less ill feeling towards their
Southern brethren. And if our Southern fellow-citizens would adopt the Bible view of
slavery, and discard the heathen slave code, which permits a few bad men to indulge in an
abuse of power that throws a stigma and disgrace on the whole body of slaveholders—if
both North and South would do what is right, then "G-d would see their works and that
they turned from the evil of their ways;" and in their case, as in that of the people
of Nineveh, would mercifully avert the impending evil, for with Him alone is the power to
do so. Therefore let us pray.
Almighty and merciful G-d, we approach
Thee this day, our hearts heavy with the weight of our sins, our looks downcast under the
sense of our ingratitude, national and individual. Thou, Father all-bounteous, hast in
Thine abundant goodness plentifully bestowed upon us every good and every blessing,
spiritual, mental, temporal, that in the present state of the world men can desire. But we
have perverted and abused Thy gifts; in our arrogance and selfishness we have contrived to
extract poison from Thy most precious boons; the spiritual have degenerated into unloving
self-righteousness; the mental have rendered us vainglorious and conceited; and the
temporal have degraded us into Mammon-worshipping slaves of avarice. Intoxicated with our
prosperity, we have forgotten Thee; drunken with pride, we reel on towards the precipice
of disunion and ruin. What hand can stay us if it be not Thine, O G-d! Thou who art
long-suffering as Thou art almighty, to Thee we turn in the hour of our utmost need. Hear
us, Father, for on Thee our hopes are fixed. Help us, Father, for thou alone canst do it.
Punish us not according to our arrogance; afflict us not according to our deserts. Remove
from our breasts the heart of stone, and from our minds the obstinacy of self-willed
pride. Extend thy grace unto us, that we may acknowledge our own transgressions. Open our
eyes that we may behold and renounce the wrong we inflict on our neighbors. G-d of justice
and of mercy, suffer not despots to rejoice at our dissensions, nor tyrants to triumph
over our fall. Let them not point at us the finger of scorn, or say, "Look there at
the fruits of freedom and self-government—of equal rights and popular
sovereignty—strife without any real cause—destruction without any sufficient
motive." Oh, let not them who trust in Thee be put to shame, or those who seek Thee
be disgraced. Almighty G-d, extend thy gracious protection to the United States. Pour out
over the citizens thereof, and those whom they have elected to be their rulers, the spirit
of grace and of supplication, the spirit of wisdom and brotherly love, so that henceforth,
even as hitherto, they may know that union is strength, and that it is good and pleasant
for brethren to dwell together in unity. And above all things, L-rd merciful and gracious,
avert the calamity of civil war from our midst. If in Thy supreme wisdom Thou hast decreed
that this vast commonwealth, which has risen under Thy blessing, shall now be separated,
then we beseech Thee let that separation be peaceable; that no human blood may be shed,
but that the canopy of Thy peace may still remain spread over all the land. May we address
our prayers to Thee, O L-rd, at an acceptable time; mayest Thou, O G-d, in Thy abundant
mercy, answer us with the truth of Thy salvation. Amen.
THE END.
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