Does the Bible sanction American slavery?/Section 4
SECTION IV.
The New Testament is not concerned with any political or social institutions: for political and social institutions belong to particular nations and particular phases of society. But now the fulness of time is come. Greek and Roman conquest and Greek intellect have conspired together to break down the exclusive barriers of narrow nationality. Upon the more exalted minds the great truth of the universal brotherhood of man has begun to dawn, and Cicero has advanced far enough to see that the universe “is one great commonwealth of gods and men.” The gods of the nations have been overthrown, and have left the hearts of men open and craving for a new faith. The Jewish religion itself has burst its bounds and become active in conversion. Therefore the expectation of Israel and of the world is fulfilled. The universal religion arrives. The Chosen People having done its appointed work in preparing the way for the Messiah, merges in the people of believers throughout the world. The family which ate of the Passover opens out into the Household of Faith. The Son of David is the Son of Man.
We shall hear no more, then, of social and political reforms, such as Moses introduced by his code into the laws and customs of the Hebrew nation. Whatever is done will be done for the whole of mankind and for all time. The present will be sacrificed without hesitation to the future. If it be necessary for the eternal purpose of the Gospel, the Apostle will submit to all the injustice of heathen governments, and receive martyrdom at the hand of a Nero. If it be necessary for the same purpose, the slave of a heathen master will patiently remain a slave.
Nothing indeed marks the divine character of the Gospel more than its perfect freedom from any appeal to the spirit of political revolution. The Founder of Christianity and His Apostles were surrounded by everything which could tempt human reformers to enter on revolutionary courses. Their nation was grievously oppressed and shamefully degraded. The rulers and princes of Judæa were sensual and cruel tyrants; and their tyranny was supported by a central tyranny, equally cruel and sensual, which had its seat at Rome. Injustice in the form of Pilate sate on the judgment-seat. A foreign soldiery filled the land, “doing violence,” “accusing men falsely,” “not content with their wages;” and, what was worse than all, stalking in the arrogance of conquest over the burning hearts of the Chosen People. So oppressive was the fiscal system that the name of a collector of the taxes was a byeword of loathing and of shame. The distress of the people was such that multitudes were ready to follow a teacher into the wilderness, not for the sake of his words, but for the sake of a little bread. And from this oppression there was no appeal to remorse in the breast of the oppressor, or to the tribunal of a civilized world. There was no hope but in patriotic arms. Nor was the nation incapable of wielding them. The spirit of Gideon and of Judas Maccabeus glowed in it still. It cherished the constant hope of a great Deliverer. It was ready to rise. It rose, before long, with an energy which, though the issue was the destruction of Jerusalem, shook for a moment the adamantine throne of Rome. And even before the last great struggle more than one insurgent chief was able to lead his thousands into the wilderness. Everything, to a human apprehension, counselled an appeal to the strong hand: and strong hands and brave hearts were ready to answer to the call.
Nevertheless our Lord and His Apostles said not a word against the powers or institutions of that evil world. Their attitude towards them all was that of deep spiritual hostility and of entire political submission. The dominion of a foreign conqueror, the presence of his soldiery, the extortions of his tax-gatherers, the injustice of his judges, the iniquitous privileges of the conquering Roman, the iniquitous degradation of the conquered Jew,—all these, as well as slavery, are accepted with unquestioning resignation. The things which are Cæsar’s are rendered unto Cæsar, though Cæsar is a Tiberius or a Nero. To endure patiently the dominion of those monsters, it has been truly said, was the honour of Christianity and the dishonour of mankind.
Had this implicit submission to political power not been preached by our Lord and His Apostles, and enforced by their example, the new religion must, humanly speaking, have perished in its birth. The religious movement would infallibly have become a political movement, as Protestantism did when preached by Wycliffe and Huss to an oppressed people. And then the Roman would have come upon it and crushed it with his power. To support it against the Roman legions with legions of angels was not a part of the counsels of God.
St. Peter says, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”[1] Is this an exhortation to modern society to establish, or suffer to be established, in the midst of Christianity, freedom, and equal law, an institution under which men are subject to the frowardness of masters, and under which they may be buffeted and made to suffer without regard to justice? If it be, it is equally an exhortation to modern society to embrace the whole circle of institutions which persecuted the Apostles and which crucified Christ.
“Submit yourselves,” St. Peter has said just before, “to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.”
St. Paul, like St. Peter, in several places commands slaves to obey their masters. But St. Paul, like St. Peter, also commands the masters themselves to obey a despotic Emperor and his arbitrary satraps. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” Channing says, “This passage was written in the time of Nero. It teaches passive obedience to despotism more strongly than any text teaches the lawfulness of slavery. Accordingly, it has been quoted for ages by the supporters of arbitrary power, and made the stronghold of tyranny. Did our fathers acquiesce in the most obvious interpretation of this text? Because the first Christians were taught to obey despotic rule, did our fathers feel as if Christianity had stripped men of their rights? Did they agree that tyranny was to be excused because forcible opposition to it was in most cases wrong? Did they argue that absolute power ceases to be unjust, because, as a general rule, it is the duty of subjects to obey? Did they infer that bad institutions ought to be perpetual, because the subversion of them by force will almost always inflict greater evil than it removes? No: they were wiser interpreters of God’s Word. They believed that despotism was a wrong notwithstanding the general obligation upon its subjects to obey; and that whenever a whole people should so feel the wrong as to demand its removal, the time for removing it had fully come.”
St. Paul knew what the “higher powers” were. He had suffered a life of persecution, stripes, imprisonments, and stonings at the hands of unbelievers. He was looking forward to a martyr’s death at the same hands. Did he intend Christians to do these things to each other, or Christian Society to suffer these things to be done? Is there anything in the words of this or of any Apostle which would forbid Cromwell to protect the Protestants of Savoy by his intervention against their bloody persecutors, or which would have forbidden him, if necessary, to protect them with his arms?
“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.”[2] Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.”[3] These passages and the others in the New Testament relating to the established institutions of the time, inculcate on the disciples resignation to their earthly lot on spiritual grounds, and for the sake of a heavenly hope in which all earthly differences are swallowed up and lost. They do not inculcate social or political apathy; they do not pass, nor have they ever been held by men of common sense to pass, upon the Christian world a sentence of social or political despair. The faculties for social improvement, and the desire to redress inequality and injustice, which God had given us, the Son of God did not take away. On the contrary, He and His Apostles increased those faculties and that desire a thousand-fold by the principles of mutual affection and duty which they instilled into the heart of man, and by the new force of self-devotion which they added to his moral powers.
The relation of the Gospel to Slavery is well stated in a passage quoted by Channing from Wayland’s “Elements of Moral Science:”—“The very course which the Gospel takes on this subject, seems to have been the only one that could have been taken in order to effect the universal abolition of Slavery. The Gospel was designed, not for one race or for one time, but for all races and for all times. It looked, not at the abolition of this form of evil for that age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the important object of its Author was to gain it a lodgment in every part of the known world; so that, by its universal diffusion among all classes of society, it might quietly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil passions of men, and thus, without violence, work a revolution in the whole mass of mankind. In this manner alone could its object, a universal moral revolution, have been accomplished. For if it had forbidden the evil instead of subverting the principle, if it had proclaimed the unlawfulness of Slavery, and taught slaves to resist the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world; its announcement would have been the signal of servile war; and the very name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst the agitations of universal bloodshed. The fact, under these circumstances, that the Gospel does not forbid Slavery, affords no reason to suppose that it does not mean to prohibit it; much less does it afford ground for belief that Jesus Christ intended to authorize it.”
Channing himself says, “Slavery, in the age of the Apostle, had so penetrated society, was so intimately interwoven with it, and the materials of servile war were so abundant, that a religion, preaching freedom to the slave, would have shaken the social fabric to its foundation, and would have armed against itself the whole power of the State. Paul did not then assail the institution. He satisfied himself with spreading principles, which, however slowly, could not but work its destruction.”
“Christianity,” says Neander, “effected a change in the convictions of men from which a dissolution of the whole relation of slavery, though it could not be immediately accomplished, yet, by virtue of the consequences resulting from that change, was sure eventually to take place. This effect Christianity produced, first of all, by the facts to which it was a witness, and next by the ideas which, by means of these facts, it set in circulation. By Christ, the Saviour for all mankind, the differences among men resulting from sin were reconciled, by Him the original unity of the human race was restored. These facts must now operate in transforming the life of mankind. Masters as well as servants were obliged to acknowledge themselves the servants of sin, and must alike receive, as the free gift of God’s grace, their deliverance from this common bondage—the true, the highest freedom. Servants and masters, if they had become believers, were brought together under the same bond of an heavenly union, destined for immortality; they became brethren in Christ in whom there is neither bond nor free, members of one body, baptized into one Spirit, heirs of the same heavenly inheritance. Servants were often the teachers of their masters in the Gospel, after having, first of all, in their lives and actions exhibited before them the loftiness of a divine life, which must be shewn forth even under the most painful of relations, and shine forth the more brightly by the contrast.”[4]
Not only did St. Paul and the other Apostles spread principles and ideas which were sure to work the destruction of Slavery and of the other political and social wrongs of which that corrupt and unjust world was full; but they embodied these principles and ideas in an institution, founded by their Lord, of which it may be said that though so little revolutionary in appearance that the most jealous tyranny might have received it into its bosom without suspicion, it exceeded in revolutionary efficacy any political force which has ever been seen in action among men. At the Supper of the Lord the conqueror was required, on his allegiance to Christianity, to partake in the holy meal with the conquered, the master with the slave; and this in memory of a Founder who had died the death of a slave upon the Cross, and who at the institution of the rite had performed the servile office of washing His disciples’ feet.
In its social aspect as well as in other respects the Lord’s Supper is the antitype and counterpart of the Passover, but in this as in its other aspects it is of far deeper and holier significance, and the symbol not of a family or national union, but of the union of mankind. It is difficult to imagine how any harsh distinctions between man and man could long maintain themselves against its equalizing and reconciling power. Nor has it failed to accomplish its object in this respect where it has been administered according to the intention of its founder. Where it has been administered in a way quite different from His intention, its efficacy could not be expected to be so great. During the feudal ages the relations between the lord and the serf were almost as unchristian as those between the modern slave-owner and his slave. But during the feudal ages the Supper of the Lord, as well as the worship of which it was the centre and the culmination, had lost its primitive character. It had ceased to be a communion in the full sense of the word, and had become a sort of magic rite administered to each member of the Church by the priest, the talisman and chief support of sacerdotal power.
In few countries were the people more oppressed and degraded by feudal tyranny down to the time of the Reformation than in Scotland. After the Reformation the lower classes were socially raised; and all classes have since become united in a remarkable degree, considering that the political institutions of the country remain aristocratic. It is reasonable to refer this in a great measure to the social character of the religious system. National education has no doubt done much; but national education has its source in the spirit of the national religion. Long after the Reformation the material condition of the poor in Scotland, owing to the poverty of the country, remained very wretched; and towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Scottish peasantry had already played no mean part in the religious history of the world, Fletcher of Saltoun, a republican of the Classical school, proposed to redeem the Covenanters from their miserable, unprotected, and anxious state, and to restore them again to careless happiness under fatherly guidance, by making them prædial slaves.
If the Slave partook of the Lord’s Supper, much more would he partake in all the other acts of Christian worship. Of course also he would fully share all the religious knowledge of his brethren, and everything that could enable them worthily to worship the God of Truth. He might, as Neander says, be the religious teacher of his master. And as his religious life was blended with that of his fellow-Christians, so his body would rest with theirs in death.
In America, as we have already had occasion to say, there appears, generally speaking, to be no religious communion between the Master and the Slave. The two classes do not belong in any practical sense to the same Church. They can scarcely be said even to unite in public worship; they do not join in family prayer, nor do they really partake together of the Supper of the Lord. The presence of a white man is indeed required by law at all the religious meetings of the negroes; but it is not for the purpose of taking part in their prayers.[5]
More than this, it is only by putting names for things that the American Master and Slave can be said to be of the same religion. In some States the Master, for the better security of what is now called a divine institution, forbids the slave by law to be taught to read: so that the Bible is legally closed to him.[6] And even in the States where this legal prohibition does not exist, the state of public opinion and the almost total want of schools seem effectually to prevent the education of the great mass of the slaves.[7] And altogether, from their mode of life, and the debasing treatment to which they are subjected, their minds are too degraded to worship God in spirit and truth like those to whom a Christian education has been given. The result is that the worship of the negro in America is little more spiritual or rational than his worship in Africa. He still dances, and shouts to a fetish, though that fetish bears the name of the Christian’s God.
Mr. Olmsted says, “In most of the large rice plantations which I have seen in this vicinity (South Carolina) there is a small chapel, which the negroes call their prayer-house. The owner of one of these told me that having furnished the prayer-house with seats having a back rail, his negroes petitioned him to remove it, because it did not leave them room enough to pray. It was explained to me that it is their custom, in social worship, to work themselves up to a great pitch of excitement, in which they yell and cry aloud, and finally, shriek and leap up, clapping their hands and dancing, as it is done in heathen festivals.”[8] No doubt “heathen festival” is the right name.
The same writer has given a description of the religious exercises of negroes, which he witnessed himself in a chapel, not on a plantation, but in the city of New Orleans.[9] It is such that it could scarcely be transcribed without shocking the reader, and the religious state which it reveals has nothing, but the names which are hideously profaned, in common with the religion of Christians.
It seems that the American Slave-owners are so conscious of the connexion between truth and freedom that they sometimes repel with dread even the oral instruction of slaves in the truth. In South Carolina a Methodist clergyman had been chosen by his Church as a discreet and cautious man to preach to slaves. He was stopped by a remonstrance signed by more than three hundred and fifty of the leading planters and citizens. He pleaded that it was his intention to confine himself to verbal instruction. “Verbal instruction,” replied the remonstrants, “will increase the desire of the black population to learn…. Open the Missionary sluice and the current will swell in its gradual onward advance. We thus expect a progressive system of improvement will be introduced, or will follow from the nature and force of circumstances which, if not checked, (though it may be shrouded in sophistry and disguise,) will ultimately revolutionize our civil institutions.” The missionary withdrew, and the local newspaper in announcing his withdrawal stated that the great body of the people were manifestly opposed to the religious instruction of their slaves, even if it were only given orally.[10]
And when, in despite of the difficulties thrown in the way, some religious knowledge has been obtained by the negroes, the enjoyment of it seems to be not very secure. Twenty-four coloured men, most of them apparently free, were found assembling privately in the evening at Washington, and were lodged in the watch-house. When they were examined before a magistrate, no evidence was offered, nor does it appear to have been even suggested, that they were meeting for any criminal purpose. On searching their persons, there were found a Bible, a volume of Seneca’s “Morals,” “Life in Earnest,” the printed constitution of a Society the object of which was stated to be to relieve the sick and bury the dead, and a subscription paper to purchase the freedom of a slave whom her master was willing to sell at a certain price. One of the prisoners, a slave, was ordered to be flogged; four others, called in the papers free men, were sent to the workhouse: and the rest, on paying costs and fines amounting to one hunded and eleven dollars, were set at liberty.[11]
It is not wonderful that a gross and delirious superstition should fail to produce the effect of pure Christianity on the morals of the negroes. Mr. Olmsted gives us strong evidence of their licentiousness; and notably of the licentiousness of those among them who are members of Churches and make professions of religion.[12] But indeed the legal sanctity of marriage is so essential a safeguard of morality in Christian countries, that we should expect sinister consequences to flow from its withdrawal. In the South the marriage of a slave is, before the law and in the eyes of his master, as the cohabitation of beasts. The State thus preaches disregard of morality to the negro, and the master enforces the preaching of the State by practices from which it was part of the mission of Christianity to purge the world.[13]
Let the Masters and the Slaves in America become really fellow-Christians: let them become in a true sense one Church: let them share the same Christian education: let them read the same Bible: let them partake of the Communion together: and it will then be seen whether the relation between fellow-Christians is really compatible with the relation between Master and Slave.
That there are very great difficulties in the way of a religious as well as of a social fusion between the negroes and the whites, no reasonable man would deny. But this shews that the position into which the piratical cupidity of the whites has brought the two races is an awkward one; not that it was sanctioned by St. Paul. As things are at present, the plea that Slavery is a great blessing as a missionary agency, and as a mode of bringing the African heathen within the fold of the Church, can scarcely be maintained. Montesquieu has some remarks on the notion that “religion gives those who profess it the right of making slaves of those who do not, in order the better to labour for its propagation.” “It was this notion,” he says, “which encouraged the destroyers of America in their crimes. It was on this idea that they founded the right of making all those nations slaves; for these brigands, who were determined to be both brigands and Christians, were very devout.”
It is to be borne in mind that the Apostle, who bids slaves obey their masters and be content with their lot for the sake of their Lord’s religion and in the assurance of a higher freedom, also teaches masters to observe justice and equity towards their slaves. “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal: knowing that ye also have a Master in Heaven.” Is “that which is just and equal” given to a slave when he is forbidden to learn to read, when he is denied legal marriage, when he is separated by force from his wife and children, when his evidence is refused in a court of law, when he is made by custom, though not by law, the victim of a penal code under which a master who kills a slave goes unpunished, while a slave who kills a master may be burned alive at a slow fire?
No doubt many American masters are better than the system. Many Roman masters were better than the system. But is it possible to believe that the system is one which, when carried on by Christians against Christians, can be said to have had its prototype in the relations between a Christian master, in Apostolic times, and his slave, or to be sanctioned by the teaching of the Apostles?
In a religious community so bound together in life and death as that of the early Christians, the relation between Master and Slave, though it was not formally dissolved, must have been completely transfigured, and virtually exchanged for a relation between brethren in Christ. The clearest proof of this is found in that very Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon which those who defend Slavery on Scriptural grounds regard as their sheet anchor in the argument. St. Paul sends back the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master Philemon. Therefore, we are told, slavery and fugitive slave laws have received the sanction of St. Paul. This it seems is so plain, that the refusal of the other party to acknowledge it is a signal instance of the manner in which they blind themselves to the clearest teachings of Scripture, or pervert its precepts in the interest of a spurious humanity. It is very true that St. Paul sends back a fugitive slave to his Master. But does he send him back as a slave? The best answer to the argument drawn from the Epistle to Philemon is the simple repetition of the words of that Epistle: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me: whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels: whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered 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. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord? If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account. I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.”[14]
Onesimus, then, is not sent back as a slave, but as one above a servant, a brother beloved.
When fugitive slaves in America are sent back to their masters with such letters as that of St. Paul to Philemon, and treated as St. Paul expects Onesimus to be treated on their return, American slavery will have some claim to be regarded as a Scriptural institution. But in that case it will also be near its end. For such a feeling as the writer of the Epistle supposes to exist in the hearts of Christians as to their relations with each other, though it would not prevent a Christian slave from remaining in the service of his master, would certainly prevent a Christian master from continuing to hold his fellow Christian as a slave.
St. Paul must have known what Slavery under the Roman Empire was. He must have known that it was a vast reign not only of abominable cruelty, but of still more abominable lust. He must have known that it was fed to a great extent by the man-stealing which he classes with murder and parricide. He must have known the deadly effects which it produced on the character of the Slave-owner, to whose unbridled passions human beings of both sexes were subjected without limit or redress.[15] He must have known that this was the real “cancer” which was eating into the vitals of morality and drawing society to its ruin. It would have been strange therefore if he had selected this among all the political and social institutions of the time as the object of a partisanship which neither he nor any of his fellow Apostles have in any other case betrayed.
The philosophic theory as to ineradicable differences of race, on which Slavery is now founded by its defenders, is directly contradicted by the New Testament, for St. Paul says that “God has made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”[16] In conformity with this declaration, St. Paul and his fellow Apostles proceeded to found a Church which was to embrace all nations. It is difficult to imagine a race of beings fit to apprehend the sublimest doctrines of Christianity, to live by the Christian rule, and to hold office in the Christian Church, yet not fit to be masters of their own persons, to enjoy the rights of husbands and of fathers, to receive the elements of education, or give evidence in a court of justice.
The only refuge for those who defend Slavery on grounds of race, if they do not wish to contradict St. Paul, seems to be to go the full length of saying that the negroes are not “a nation of men.” And to this suggestion the Slave-owner, as we have hinted before, has given and daily gives a conclusive answer by the practices which fill the country with a mixed race.
Nor would it be easy to produce from the New Testament anything which could give colour to the view that a class of free labourers is the fungus and cancer of civilized life, and that the community is immeasurably benefited when the labourer is made a slave. For it was from this diseased and pestilential element of society, as the advocates of slavery hold it to be, that the Apostles themselves were chosen. The founder of Christianity Himself wore the form of a carpenter’s son. St. Paul wrought as a tent-maker. He “laboured working with his own hands.” And he laid upon his followers in broad terms, and without making any exception, the injunction “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Judging from his language, we should say that if there was any particular form of society which the Apostle desired to found, it was not one in which the true citizen should be exempt from labour, but one in which labour should be the lot of all, and all should contribute to the common store.
Feudalism tried to prove that the Apostles were gentlemen by birth, entitled to bear coats of arms. They would have to undergo some historical transformation of a similar kind to make them fit founders of the religion professed by the Slave-owning aristocracy of the South.
“Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere labourer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them? Such is the opinion of Chancellor Harper, put forth in his address to the South Carolina Institute. Was it the opinion of a Master who washed His disciples’ feet?
It is difficult to understand how people who hold these sentiments can even use, without a sense of unfitness, the common language of Christianity. Such phrases as “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant,” must seem to them to denote something sordid and degrading.
“It is by the existence of slavery,” says another Southern writer, “exempting so large a portion of our citizens from labour, that we have leisure for intellectual pursuits.” But there is something in the spirit of the Gospel which, whether rightly or wrongly understood, has led Christianity, instead of cherishing an exclusive intellectual order, to educate the poor; and to draw forth, by all the means in its power, the intellectual gifts of that class for the highest service of the community. Great systems of education, the direct offspring of Christianity, and a multitude of Christian foundations for the purpose of education, bear witness to the fact. Nor do the comparative fruits of the two systems, so far as they have been tried, condemn the common practice of the Christian world. On the contrary, the principle that all orders are “members one of another” seems, when applied to education, to act more favourably on the intellect even of the higher class than the opposite principle. “From the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the James,” says a traveller in the South, “I did not (that I remember) see, except perhaps in one or two towns, a thermometer, nor a book of Shakspeare, nor a pianoforte or sheet of music; nor the light of a carcel or other good centre table or reading-lamp, nor an engraving or copy of any kind of a work of art of the slightest merit.” “I am not speaking,” he adds, “of what are commonly called ‘poor whites;’ a large majority of all these houses were the residences of shareholders, a considerable proportion cotton-planters.”[17] Some of the compositions which are the fruits of the “intellectual leisure” purchased by the hopeless degradation of the labouring class are before us. They are among the most barbarous ever produced by civilized man. They seem moreover to turn mainly on one subject. The presence of a great social wrong absorbs such intellect as the community has in the work of its justification. It does not leave the real leisure and the serenity of mind which philosophy, science, and poetry demand.
New England has taken the course sanctioned by Christendom and condemned by the Slaver. Like Scotland, or even more than Scotland, she has made a system of popular education the basis of her Commonwealth, and established throughout her territory the free schools which, above all other free institutions, the South, as we have seen, repudiates and abhors. The result of this is that intelligence is generally diffused among the people, and that the great writers of England have a second and an ample Empire in the North. The highest fruits of intellect are everywhere long in ripening; and this must especially be the case in a nation of which a large part consists of immigrants, intent on obtaining the means of subsistence, and the energies of which are to a great extent absorbed in providing the material basis of civilization and reclaiming a vast expanse of virgin land. Under such circumstances, the love of utility must be expected to predominate over that of beauty, practical invention over pure science, practical discussion over the pursuit of theoretic truth. Yet the North has already produced writers in different departments who take a high place in literature, and who may fairly be regarded as the earnest of still better things to come. Men of intellect are very apt, from their natural fastidiousness, to dislike Equality; yet if they look over history they will find that Equality has been their best friend.
There is nothing, the prevalence of which in a community is more fatal to high intellect, than gross luxury. And there can be no doubt that in a modern Slave State gross luxury prevails in the highest degree. The ancient Slave States at the time of their intellectual greatness were comparatively free from luxury, at least of the grosser kind.
In fact, the character to which the Slave-owners aspire seems to be not so much that of the Christian, with its charity and humility, or even that of the intellectual Greek, as that of the ancient Roman. “The relations between the North and the South,” says a Southern organ, “are very analogous to those which subsisted between Greece and the Roman Empire, after the subjugation of Achaia by the Consul Mummius. The dignity and energy of the Roman character, conspicuous in war and politics, were not easily toned and adjusted to the arts of industry and literature. The degenerate and pliant Greeks, on the contrary, excelled in the handicraft and polite professions. We learn from the vigorous invective of Juvenal, that they were the most useful and capable of servants, whether as pimps or professors of rhetoric. Obsequious, dexterous, and ready, the versatile Greeks monopolized the business of teaching, publishing, and manufacturing in the Roman Empire, allowing their masters ample leisure for the service of the State, in the Senate or in the field.” In confirmation of this historical theory it may be remarked that the Romans of the Southern States, like those of the Capitol, sprang from an asylum. One who was much concerned in the foundation of Virginia said of that Colony, that “the number of felons and vagabonds transported did bring such evil characters on the place, that some did choose to be hanged ere they would go there, and were.”
It is true that the planters also claim a reputation for chivalry; and chivalry, no doubt, has its root deep in Christianity. But we must beg leave to add that a chivalry which exercises uncontrolled tyranny over defenceless victims, which flogs women naked, which buys and sells them as the wretched victims of brutal lust, which breeds human beings like cattle, which tears husbands from their wives and children from their mothers, which stands by and exults or moralizes while men are burned alive at slow fires, is a chivalry such as the Christian world has not yet seen. The type of character which it tends to produce may be higher than that of St. Louis, Edward I., and Bayard, but it certainly is not the same.
We have said that the founders of Christianity, when they preached political resignation as necessary for the time, did not pass on mankind a sentence of political despair. They submitted to the powers of an evil world, but they nevertheless did, and meant to do, that by which those powers would be destroyed. They bade the slave remain a slave, but it was in order that he might not imperil the sacred deposit of Christian principle which bore with it the redemption of the slave for ever. The kingdom of Christ was not of this world, but nevertheless its liegemen looked forward to the day when “the kingdoms of this world should become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and that He should reign for ever and ever.”
Therefore the Church, whenever she has been herself, and whenever she has acted in the spirit of her Founder, has laboured, not by inciting revolution, but by inculcating social duty and kindling social affection, to do away with all unjust and harsh distinctions between man and man, to diffuse the principles of fraternity and equality in their true sense through the world, and to make each community a community indeed. Therefore she has instinctively and steadily insisted on the education of the poor. Therefore she has steadily assailed slavery and caste, and feudal serfdom, and all such barriers as prevented the different classes of men in Christian nations from becoming members one of another. The brotherhood of man, in short, is the idea which Christianity in its social phase has been always striving to realize, and the progress of which constitutes the social history of Christendom. With what difficulties this idea has struggled; how it has been marred by revolutionary violence, as well as impeded by reactionary selfishness; to what chimerical hopes, to what wild schemes, to what calamitous disappointments, to what desperate conflicts, it has given birth; how often, being misunderstood and misapplied, it has brought not peace on earth but a sword,—it is needless here to rehearse. Such miscarriages, such delay, could not be averted unless the nature of man was to be changed, or the effort by which his character is formed, and which appears to be the law of his being, was to be superseded by the fiat of Omnipotence. Countless ages have no doubt yet to run before the idea is realized and the hope fulfilled. Still, as we look back over the range of past history, we can see beyond doubt that it is towards this goal that Christianity as a social principle has been always tending and still tends.
No sooner did the new religion gain power in the world, than the slave law, and the slave system of the Empire, began to be undermined by its influence. In unconscious alliance with Stoicism, to which among all the ancient systems of Philosophy it had the most affinity, Christianity broke in upon the despotism of the Master, as well as upon the despotism of the Father and the Husband. The right of life and death over the Slave was transferred from his owner to the magistrate. The right of correction was placed under humane limitations, which the magistrate was directed to maintain. All the restrictions on the enfranchisement of Slaves were swept away. The first Christian Emperor recognised enfranchisement as a religious act, and established the practice of performing it in the Church before the Bishop, and in the presence of the congregation. The liberties of the freedman were at the same time cleared of all odious and injurious restrictions. This remained the policy of the Christian Empire. The Code of Justinian, the great monument of Imperial jurisprudence, is highly favourable to enfranchisement, and that on religious grounds.
The facility of enfranchisement, and the prospect of enlarging that facility, would conspire with political prudence to prevent Christianity from coming into direct collision with Roman slavery. Hope was not denied to the Roman slave. But hope is denied, or almost denied, to the American slave. In most of the Southern States the law withholds the power of enfranchisement from the master, against whose benevolence and generosity it seems the State is more concerned to guard, than against his cruelty and lust. A slave can be emancipated only by the authority of the Legislature or by a Court of Law, and upon special cause shewn; and further, the condition of a Negro when emancipated is such, as to make freedom at once a very qualified and a very precarious boon. The free Negro is still to a great extent excluded from the rights of a citizen and a man. His evidence is not received against a white man;[18] the law does not secure to him the safeguard of a trial by a jury of his peers; he has no vote or voice in framing the laws by which he is governed, and degrading restrictions are imposed even upon his religious worship. He is liable to be brought back into slavery in many ways,—among others, by being married to a slave; and if his freedom is challenged, he must bring white witnesses to prove himself free.[19] By the Roman Law the presumption was in favour of freedom, and under the Empire, freedmen not only enjoyed full liberty, but from their industry and pliancy often engrossed too much power in the State.
But the Roman world was doomed; and it was doomed partly because the character of the upper classes had been deeply and incurably corrupted by the possession of a multitude of slaves. The feudal age succeeded; the barbarian conqueror took the place of the Roman master, and a new phase of slavery appeared. Immediately Christianity recommenced its work of alleviation and enfranchisement. The codes of laws framed for the new lords of Europe under the influence of the Clergy, shew the same desire as those of the Christian Emperors, to break in upon the despotism of the Master, and assure personal rights to the Slave. The laws of the Lombards, for instance, protected the Serf against an unjust or too rigorous master; they set free the husband of a female slave who had been seduced by her owner; they assured the protection of the Churches to slaves who had taken refuge there, and regulated the penalties to be inflicted for their faults, instead of leaving them subject to an arbitrary will.[20] In England the Clergy secured for the Slave rest on the Sunday, and liberty either to rest or work for himself on a number of holy days. They exhorted their flocks to leave the savings and earnings of the prædial slave untouched. They constantly freed the slaves who came into their own possession. They exhorted the laity to do the same, and what living covetousness refused, they often wrung from deathbed penitence. This they did constantly and effectually during the early part of the Middle Ages, while the Church was still to a great extent in a missionary state, and had not yet been turned into an establishment allied with political power. Afterwards no doubt a change came over the spirit of the Clergy in this, as well as in other respects. The Church became an Estate and a part of the feudal system. Her Bishops became Spiritual Lords. And these Spiritual Lords in the time of Richard II. voted with the Temporal Lords, for the repudiation of the King’s promise of enfranchisement to the villains, and the last serfs who remained in existence were found on the estates of the Church.
Twice vanquished, in the shape of Ancient Slavery and in the shape of Feudal Serfdom, the enemy rose again in the shape of Negro Slavery, the offspring not of Roman or Barbarian Conquest, but of commercial avarice and cruelty. And again Christianity returned to the struggle against the barrier thus a third time reared by tyranny and cupidity in the path of her great social hope and mission, the brotherhood of Man. By the mouth of Clarkson and Wilberforce she demanded and obtained of a Christian nation the emancipation of the Slaves in the West Indies. And if in the case of American Slavery, the upper classes of this country, from political considerations, have shewn a change of feeling, and the Clergy of the Established Church have gone with the upper classes, the Free Churches, more unbiassed organs of Christianity, have almost universally kept the faith.
If, then, we look to the records of Christianity in the Bible, we find no sanction for American Slavery there. If we look to the history of Christendom, we find the propagators and champions of the faith assailing Slavery under different forms and in different ages, without concert, yet with a unanimity which would surely be strange if Christianity and Slavery were not the natural enemies of each other.
On the other side of the Atlantic two communities are now grappling in deadly conflict. The principle of one of them is Free Labour, while that of the other is Slavery; and few can doubt that this is the root of their antagonism, whatever may be the immediate cause of the present war.
It can hardly be denied that the community of New England, of which Free Labour is the principle, was founded under the auspices of Christianity, though it may have been Christianity of an austere and narrow kind, such as persecution produces in peasant hearts. The avowed object of the settlement was “the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith;” and one of the fathers of the Colony said, “It concerneth New England to remember that they were originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade. If any man among us make religion as twelve, and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit of a true New Englandman.” The settlers at first, like the Early Church, had all things in common, till the natural desire of separate property arose, and in this, as in other respects, the little religious community became a nation. The primary germ of the Puritan settlement has, of course, been overlaid by a vast alien immigration; the original character of the people has to a great extent disappeared under the vast growth of the commercial element; and other things have taken place which would make it difficult for one of the Pilgrim Fathers, if he could return to life, to recognise the offspring of his “religious plantation” in the America of the present day. Still the great Christian idea so far survives that it remains the fundamental principle of the community to treat all men as equally entitled to the full benefit of the social union, and to make the State a brotherhood of which all are equally recognised as members. And the destinies of a community of which this can be said, whatever may be its defects, its errors, or its misfortunes, cannot cease to be an object of interest to Christendom.
Virginia and the Confederate States, on the other hand, of which Slavery is declared to be the fundamental principle, were assuredly not founded under the auspices of Christianity. They were founded by mere commercial adventurers of the very lowest kind. They were fostered by that darker Power which waits on the beneficent genius of commerce, and of which slave-trading Bristol was then the chosen seat. This power has been worshipped in all ages with human misery and blood. It has led men in all ages to reduce their fellow men to slavery for their own profit. It leads men now to put their own children under the lash of the overseer. Nor does the Slave Power fail, in its extremity, to receive the sympathy of the element from which it is sprung. The heart of capitalist tyranny everywhere is with that supreme tyranny of capital which makes its victims slaves. Feudalism, too, knows its own, and feels its affinity to a system under which, as in the times of serfdom, the labourer is under the absolute dominion of the lord.
Christian England tampered with Slavery for wealth. She has paid the penalty of her offence in the depraving influence of the West Indian slave-owners on the character and manners of this nation, in the heavy sum which, when the hour of remorse arrived, was given to purchase Emancipation, and in the burden and expense of holding a number of useless dependencies in the West Indies; a burden and expense which will probably be greatly increased if a great Slave Power is established on the neighbouring shore. The Christian States of North America have tampered with Slavery for Empire and for the pride of a great Confederacy; and they have paid the penalty, first in the poison which the domination of the Slave-owner has spread through their political and social system, and secondly, in this dreadful and disastrous war.
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- ↑ 1 Pet. ii. 18–24.
- ↑ Gal. iii. 28.
- ↑ 1 Cor. vii. 20–24. Some commentators on this passage take “use it rather” (μᾶλλον χρῆσαι) as “use slavery rather”—“prefer to remain a slave.” They say that the general sense of the passage requires this. Why so? The passage preaches tranquil acquiescence in a man’s present state. But to exhort a man to acquiesce tranquilly in his present state is not to exhort him to refuse a better if it presents itself. The expression “care not for it” (μή σοι μεγέτω) surely does not imply that slavery is in the opinion of the writer to be considered the better state. In εἰ καὶ δύνασαι, the καὶ may very well be taken, it is conceived, as merely lending emphasis to δύνασαι, and in fact as almost pleonastic. [Cf. Soph. Aj. 1106, δεινόν γ᾿ εἶπας, εἰ καὶ ζῇς θανών] ‘If freedom is offered thee, without thy seeking, accept it.’ So just before (ver. 13–15), a believing wife is enjoined not to leave an unbelieving husband if he be pleased to dwell with her; but it is added, “if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.” The woman is not to break the bond: but she is not to cling to it if separation is offered her. When we look to the general tone and tenor of St. Paul’s teaching on these matters, so far removed from enthusiasm and asceticism; when we consider that he knew the Old Testament, in which freedom is clearly treated as preferable to bondage; and when we remember that he had himself no scruple in asserting his privilege as a Roman citizen; it is difficult to believe that he can have enjoined a Christian Slave, when enfranchisement from a heathen master was offered him, to refuse the boon. It is not however of much consequence to the present argument which way the passage is taken; since St. Paul’s precept, whatever it may be, is clearly given on spiritual, not on social or political, grounds.
- ↑ Church History, vol. i., p. 372. Eng. trans.
- ↑ See Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, vol. i., p. 45.
- ↑ In North Carolina, to teach a slave to read or write, or sell or give him any book (Bible not excepted) or pamphlet, is punished with thirty-nine lashes, or imprisonment, if the offender be a free negro; but if a white, then with a fine of 200 dollars. The reason for this law, assigned in its preamble, is, “that teaching slaves to read and write tends to dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion.”—Goodell’s American Slave Code, p. 299.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 301.
- ↑ Journeys and Explorations, vol. i., p. 259.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 388.
- ↑ Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, vol. ii., p. 214.
- ↑ Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, vol. i., p. 36. If we are told, by way of apology for the intellectual and religious condition of the negro slave, that the intellectual and religious condition of the English peasant and his religious relations to the upper classes are unsatisfactory, the answer is that they are acknowledged to be unsatisfactory, and that since the revival of a religious spirit in the nation a good deal has been done to amend them, as a multitude of schools and a number of new churches with free sittings evince.
- ↑ Journey in the Back Country, p. 113.
- ↑ Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, vol. ii., p. 229. When the Abolitionists are charged with producing the Slave-owner’s cruelty by their alarming denunciations, they may reasonably ask whether they are also to be charged with producing his lust.
- ↑ Phil. v. 10–19.
- ↑ Let it be observed that in those days there were no Abolitionists to disturb, by their fanatical attacks, the kindly relations between the Slave and his Master, or to mar the harmonious working of the institution. The world saw, by a fair and decisive experiment, what it was to give man a despotic and uncontrolled power over man. That tyranny is mildest when it is unchecked and undenounced is a theory flattering to human nature, but not verified by the experience of history.
- ↑ Acts xvii. 26.
- ↑ Journeys and Explorations, vol. ii., p. 285.
- ↑ “It is an inflexible and universal rule of slave-law, founded in one or two States upon usage, in others sanctioned by express legislation, that the testimony of a coloured person, whether bond or free, cannot be received against a white person.”—Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, quoted by Goodell, p. 279.
- ↑ Goodell’s American Slave Code, pt. iii., ch. i.
- ↑ Sismondi, Rep. Ital., vol. i., p. 74.
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