Your own poor circumstances in this life ought to put you particularly upon this,
and taking care of your souls, for you cannot have the pleasures and enjoyments
of this life like rich free people, who have estates and money to lay out as they
think fit. If others will run the hazard of their souls, they have a chance of
getting wealth and power, of heaping up riches, and enjoying all the ease, luxury,
and pleasure their hearts should long after; but you can have none of these things,
so that, if you sell your souls for the sake of what poor matters you can get in this
world, you have made a very foolish bargain indeed.
This information is certainly very explicit and to the point.
He continues:--
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.
Mr. Jones, in that part of the work where he is obviating
the objections of masters to the Christian instruction of their
slaves, supposes the master to object thus:--
You teach them that “God is no respecter of persons;” that “He hath made
of one blood all nations of men,” “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;”
“All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them;” what use, let me ask, would they make of these sentences from the
gospel?
Mr. Jones says:--
Let it be replied that the effect urged in the objection might result from im-
perfect and injudicious religious instruction; indeed, religious instruction may
be communicated with the express design, on the part of the instructor, to produce
the effect referred to, instances of which have occurred.
But you will say that neglect of duty and insubordination are legitimate effects
of the gospel, purely and sincerely imparted to servants? Has it not in all ages
been viewed as the greatest civiliser of the human race?
How Mr. Jones would interpret the golden rule to the slave,
so as to justify the slave-system, we cannot possibly tell. We
can, however, give a specimen of the manner in which it has been
interpreted in Bishop Meade's Sermons, p. 116. (Brooke's
Slavery, &c., pp. 32, 33.)
“All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so
unto them;” that is, do by all mankind just as you would desire they should do
by you, if you were in their place and they in yours.
Now, to suit this rule to your particular circumstances, suppose you were
masters and mistresses, and had servants under you; would you not desire that
your servants should do their business faithfully and honestly, as well when your
back was turned as while you were looking over them? Would you not expect
that they should take notice of what you said to them? that they should behave
themselves with respect towards you and yours, and be as careful of everything
belonging to you as you would be yourselves? You are servants; do, therefore,
as you would wish to be done by, and you will be both good servants to your
masters and good servants to God, who requires this of you, and will reward you
well for it, if you do it for the sake of conscience, in obedience to his commands.
The reverend teachers of such expositions of Scripture do great
injustice to the natural sense of their sable catechumens, if they
suppose them incapable of detecting such very shallow sophistry,
and of proving conclusively that “it is a poor rule that won't work
both ways.” Some shrewd old patriarch, of the stamp of those
who rose up and went out at the exposition of the Epistle to
Philemon, and who show such great acuteness in bringing up
objections against the truth of God, such as would be thought
peculiar to cultivated minds, might perhaps, if he dared, reply to
such an exposition of Scripture in this way: “Suppose you were
a slave--could not have a cent of your own earnings during your
whole life, could have no legal right to your wife and children,
could never send your children to school, and had, as you have
told us, nothing but labour and poverty in this life--how would
you like it? Would you not wish your Christian master to set
you free from this condition?” We submit it to everyone who is
no respecter of persons, whether this interpretation of Sambo's is
not as good as the bishop's. And if not, why not?
To us, with our feelings and associations, such discourses as
these of Bishop Meade appear hard-hearted and unfeeling to the
last degree. We should, however, do great injustice to the cha-
racter of the man, if we supposed that they prove him to have
been such. They merely go to show how perfectly use may
familiarise amiable and estimable men with a system of oppression,
till they shall have lost all consciousness of the wrong which it
involves.
That Bishop Meade's reasonings did not thoroughly convince
himself is evident from the fact that, after all his representations
of the superior advantages of slavery as a means of religious
improvement, he did, at last, emancipate his own slaves.
But, in addition to what has been said, this whole system of
religious instruction is darkened by one hideous shadow--the
Slave-trade. What does the Southern Church do with her
catechumens and communicants? Read the advertisements of
Southern newspapers, and see. In every city in the slave-raising
States behold the depôts, kept constantly full of assorted negroes
from the ages of ten to thirty! In every slave-consuming State
see the receiving-houses, whither these poor wrecks and remnants
of families are constantly borne! Who preaches the gospel to
the slave-coffles? Who preaches the gospel in the slave-prisons?
If we consider the tremendous extent of this internal trade--if
we read papers with columns of auction advertisements of human
beings, changing hands as freely as if they were dollar-bills
instead of human creatures--we shall then realise how utterly
all those i
nfluences of religious instruction must be nullified by
leaving the subjects of them exposed “to all the vicissitudes of
property.”
CHAPTER X.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
The thing to be done, of which I shall chiefly speak, is, that
the whole American Church, of all denominations, should unitedly
come up, not in form, but in fact, to the noble purpose avowed
by the Presbyterian Assembly of 1818, to seek the entire aboli-
tion of slavery throughout America and throughout Christendom.
To this noble course the united voice of Christians in all other
countries is urgently calling the American Church. Expressions
of this feeling have come from Christians of all denominations in
England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in France, in Switzerland, in
Germany, in Persia, in the Sandwich Islands, and in China.
All seem to be animated by one spirit. They have loved and
honoured this American Church. They have rejoiced in the
brightness of her rising. Her prosperity and success have been
to them as their own, and they have had hopes that God meant
to confer inestimable blessings through her upon all nations. The
American Church has been to them like the rising of a glorious
sun, shedding healing from his wings, dispersing mists and fogs,
and bringing songs of birds and voices of cheerful industry, and
sounds of gladness, contentment, and peace. But lo! in this
beautiful orb is seen a disastrous spot of dim eclipse, whose
gradually widening shadow threatens a total darkness. Can we
wonder that the voice of remonstrance comes to us from those
who have so much at stake in our prosperity and success? We
have sent out our missionaries to all quarters of the globe; but how
shall they tell their heathen converts the things that are done in
Christianised America? How shall our missionaries in Maho-
metan countries hold up their heads, and proclaim the superiority
of our religion, when we tolerate barbarities which they have
repudiated?
A missionary among the Karens, in Asia, writes back that
his course is much embarrassed by a suspicion that is afloat
among the Karens that the Americans intend to steal and sell
them. He says:--
I dread the time when these Karens will be able to read our books, and get a
full knowledge of all that is going on in our country. Many of them are very
inquisitive now, and often ask me questions that I find it very difficult to answer.
No, there is no resource. The Church of the United States
is shut up, in the providence of God, to one work. She can
never fulfil her mission till this is done. So long as she
neglects this, it will lie in the way of everything else which
she attempts to do.
She must undertake it for another reason--because she
alone can perform the work peaceably. If this fearful problem
is left to take its course as a mere political question, to be
ground out between the upper and nether millstones of political
parties, then what will avert agitation, angry collisions, and the
desperate rending of the Union? No, there is no safety but in
making it a religious enterprise, and pursuing it in a Christian
spirit, and by religious means.
If it now be asked what means shall the Church employ,
we answer, this evil must be abolished by the same means
which the apostles first used for the spread of Christianity, and
the extermination of all the social evils which then filled a
world lying in wickedness. Hear the apostle enumerate them:
“By pureuess, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by the Holy
Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the armour of righteousness on the
right hand and on the left.”
We will briefly consider each of these means.
First, “by Pureness.” Christians in the Northern free States
must endeavour to purify themselves and the country from various
malignant results of the system of slavery; and, in particular,
they must endeavour to abolish that which is the most sinful--
the unchristian prejudice of caste.
In Hindostan there is a class called the Pariahs, with which
no other class will associate, eat, or drink. Our missionaries tell
the converted Hindoo that this prejudice is unchristian; for God
hath made of one blood all who dwell on the face of the earth, and
all mankind are brethren in Christ. With what face shall they
tell this to the Hindoo, if he is able to reply, “In your own Chris-
tian country there is a class of Pariahs who are treated no better
than we treat ours. You do not yourselves believe the things
you teach us.”
Let us look at the treatment of the free negro at the North.
In the States of Indiana and Illinois, the most oppressive and
unrighteous laws have been passed with regard to him. No law
of any slave State could be more cruel in its spirit than that
recently passed Illinois by which every free negro coming into
the State is taken up and sold for a certain time, and then, if he
do not leave the State, is sold again.
With what face can we exhort our Southern brethren to eman-
cipate their slaves, if we do not set the whole moral power of the
Church at the North against such abuses as this? Is this course
justified by saying that the negro is vicious and idle? This is
adding insult to injury.
they exclude the coloured population from their schools; they
discourage them from attending their churches by invidious dis-
tinctions; as a general fact, they exclude them from their shops,
where they might learn useful arts and trades; they crowd
them out of the better callings where they might earn an honour-
able livelihood; and having thus discouraged every elevated
aspiration, and reduced them to almost inevitable ignorance,
idleness, and vice, they fill up the measure of iniquity by making
cruel laws to expel them from their States, thus heaping up wrath
against the day of wrath.
If we say that every Christian at the South who does not use
his utmost influence against the iniquitous slave-laws is guilty,
as a republican citizen, of sustaining those laws, it is no less true
that every Christian at the North who does not do what in him
lies to procure the repeal of such laws in the free States, is, so
far, guilty for their existence. Of late years we have had
abundant quotations from the Old Testament to justify all manner
of oppression. A Hindoo, who knew nothing of this generous
and beautiful book, except from such pamphlets as Mr. Smylie's,
might possibly think it was a treatise on piracy, and a general
justification of robbery. But let us quote from it the directions
which God gives for the treatment of the stranger: “If a
stranger sojourn with you in your land, ye shall not vex him.
But the stranger that dwelleth among you shall be as one born
among you; thou shalt love him as thyself.” How much more
does this apply when the stranger has been brought into our
land
by the injustice and cruelty of our fathers!
We are happy to say, however, that the number of States in
which such oppressive legislation exists is small. It is also
matter of encouragement and hope that the unphilosophical and
unchristian prejudice of caste is materially giving way, in many
parts of our country, before a kinder and more Christian spirit.
Many of our schools and colleges are willing to receive the
coloured applicant on equal terms with the white. Some of the
Northern free States accord to the coloured freeman full political
equality and privileges. people, under this
encouragement, have, in many parts of our country, become rich
and intelligent. A very fair proportion of educated men is rising
among them. There are among them respectable editors, eloquent
orators, and laborious and well-instructed clergymen. It gives
us pleasure to say that, among intelligent and Christian people,
these men are treated with the consideration they deserve; and,
if they meet with insult and ill-treatment, it is commonly from
the less-educated class, who, being less enlightened, are always
longer under the influence of prejudice. At a recent ordination
at one of the largest and most respectable churches in New York,
the moderator of the Presbytery was a black man, who began
life as a slave; and it was undoubtedly a source of gratification
to all his Christian brethren to see him presiding in this capacity.
He put the questions to the candidates in the German language,
the church being in part composed of Germans. Our Christian
friends in Europe may, at least, infer from this that, if we have
had our faults in times past, we have, some of us, seen and are
endeavouring to correct them.
To bring this head at once to a practical conclusion, the
writer will say to every individual Christian, who wishes to do
something for the abolition of slavery, Begin by doing what lies
in your power for the coloured people in your vicinity. Are
there children excluded from schools by unchristian prejudice?
Seek to combat that prejudice by fair arguments, presented in a
right spirit. If you cannot succeed, then endeavour to provide
for the education of these children in some other manner. As