PREFACE.
This little work is entitled A Chapter on Slavery, because it was originally written as a Chapter of the author's lately published work, God Manifest. The object of that work was to set forth the goodness and wisdom of God, as manifested in his works and Word, and also to explain the reasons for the permission of evil in the world. In elucidating the latter subject, various evils, moral, physical, and social, were cited as examples, and the causes of their permission sought to be made plain. Slavery was one of the evils intended to be dwelt upon, and its origin shown, together with the reasons for its temporary permission, under Divine Providence, and the probable mode of its future removal. But the Chapter, when written out, being found to be quite disproportionate, in length, to its proper place in a work of that general character, it was thought best to omit it from that work, and publish it in a separate form. Hence the present publication.
In treating this interesting subject, the author has striven to speak in a calm and dispassionate manner,—the only way, indeed, in which a matter involving such great and varied interests ought to be spoken of. He has endeavored to look at it not merely from a civil and a moral point of view, but also from a spiritual one—from which it has not, perhaps, been sufficiently contemplated. He has sought to show the workings of a Divine Providence in the permission of negro slavery, the probable object of that permission, and the means already in operation by which the same Providence designs to bring it gradually to an end. He has sought to make the reflecting, and particularly the religious, portion of the community who are interested in this subject, feel and realize—what in principle they must know to be true—that this great concern, affecting, as it does, the welfare of so many millions of human beings, has not been abandoned by an overruling Providence, and is by no means disregarded by a God of goodness—as some in their haste and passion seem to think—but that He is working for it quietly, but effectively, and that in due time He will show His hand, and bring forth the desired result.
Finally, the writer has endeavored, in discussing this somewhat exciting subject, to do justice to all parties concerned: to exonerate the Americans, his countrymen, so far as he thinks they deserve exoneration; to lay upon the European originators of American slavery their due share of the blame; but, especially, to show that in Africa itself is to be sought the true fountain and source of the slavery of Africans in the New World: thus, that negro slavery is but another instance of evil and moral degradation punishing itself. Yet, in conclusion, looking rather to the future than to the present or the past, he has endeavored to hold out the hope of a final deliverance from this evil, and to show the means by which he believes that deliverance is ultimately to be accomplished.
- September 24, 1860.