Allow me to relate a fact which occurred in the spring of this year, illustrative of the character and knowledge of the negroes at this time. I was preaching to a large congregation on the Epistle to Philemon; and when I insisted upon fidelity and obedience as Christian virtues in servants, and, upon the authority of Paul, condemned the practice of running away, one-half of my audience deliberately walked off with themselves, and those that remained looked anything but satisfied, either with the preacher or his doctrine. After dismission, there was no small stir among them: some solemnly declared that there was no such epistle in the Bible; others, "that it was not the gospel;" others, "that I preached to please masters;" others, "that they did not care if they ever heard me preach again."—pp. 24, 25.
Lundy Lane, an intelligent fugitive who has published his memoirs, says that on one occasion they (the slaves) were greatly delighted with a certain preacher, until he told them that God had ordained and created them expressly to make slaves of. He says that after that they all left him, and went away, because they thought, with the Jews, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it'?"
In these remarks on the perversion of the gospel as presented to the slave, we do not mean to imply that much that is excellent and valuable is not taught him. We mean simply to assert that, in so far as the system taught justifies the slave-system, so far necessarily it vitiates the fundamental ideas of justice and morality; and, so far as the obligations of the gospel are inculcated on the slave in their purity, they bring him necessarily in conflict with the authority of the system. As we have said before, it is an attempt to harmonize light with darkness, and Christ with Belial. Nor is such an attempt to be justified and tolerated, because undertaken in the most amiable spirit by amiable men. Our admiration of some of the laborers who have conducted this system is very great; so also is our admiration of many of the Jesuit missionaries who have spread the Roman Catholic religion among our aboriginal tribes. Devotion and disinterestedness could be carried no further than some of both these classes of men have carried them.
But, while our respect for these good men must not seduce us as Protestants into an admiration of the system which they taught, so our esteem for our Southern brethren must not lead us to admit that a system ■which fully justifies the worst kind of spiritual and temporal despotism can properly represent the gospel of him who came to preach deliverance to the captives.
To prove that we have not misrepresented the style of instruction, we will give some extracts from various sermons and discourses. In the first place, to show how explicitly religious teachers disclaim any intention of interfering in the legal relation (see Mr. Jones' work, p. 157):
By law of custom, they are excluded from the advantages of education; and, by consequence, from the reading of the word of God; and this immense mass of immortal beings is thrown, for religious instruction, upon oral communications entirely. And upon whom? Upon their owners. And their owners, especially of late years, claim to be the exclusive guardians of their religious instruction, and the almoners of divine mercy towards them, thus assuming the responsibility of their entire Christianization!
All approaches to them from abroad are rigidly guarded against, and no ministers are allowed to break to them the bread of life, except such as have commended themselves to the affection and confidence of their owners. I do not condemn this course of self-preservation on the part of our citizens; I merely mention it to show their entire dependence upon ourselves.
In answering objections of masters to allowing the religious instruction of the negroes, he supposes the following objection, and gives the following answer:
If we suffer our negroes to be instructed, the tendency will be to change the civil relations of society as now constituted.
To which let it be replied, that we separate entirely their religious and their civil condition, and contend that the one may be attended to without interfering with the other. Our principle is that laid down by the holy and just One: "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's." And Christ and his apostles are our example. Did they deem it proper and consistent with the good order of society to preach the gospel to the servants? They did. In discharge of this duty, did they interfere with their civil condition? They did not.
With regard to the description of heaven and the torments of hell, the following is from Mr. Jones' catechism, pp. 83, 91, 92:
Q. Are there two places only spoken of in the Bible to which the souls of men go after death?—A. Only two.
Q. Which are they?—A. Heaven and hell. ***** Q. After the Judgment is over, into what place do the righteous go?—A. Into heaven.
Q. What kind of a place is heaven?—A. A most glorious and happy place. ***** Q. Shall the righteous in heaven have any more hunger, or thirst, or nakedness, or heat, or cold? Shall they have any more sin, or sorrow, or crying, or pain, or death?—A. No.
Q. Repeat "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."—A. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying;
