This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
348
the negro race not under a curse.

morning mist before their oppressors. They bled in war; they wasted away in the mines; they toiled to death in the sugar mills."[1] And then, when their spirits had fled from earthly thraldom, the "conquerors of the New World" turned toward the vast African continent for new victims to fill up the places they had made vacant by their murderous treatment of the natives.

11. whence this perversion of scripture?

A consideration of this subject would be altogether incomplete, without an attempt to account for the origin of this perversion of the word of God, that is, that the Negro race is under a curse, and devoted to slavery. The writer of this article is fully aware of the responsibility he assumes in making the assertions which follow; but it is his deliberate conviction that this perversion of Scripture originated,

1st. In the unscriptural dogma, still maintained by Christian men, and even ministers, that slavery is consistent with, nay, authorized by, the word and will of God, and that it existed among the Jews under the divine sanction.[2]

  1. Rev. J.S. Stone, D.D.
    "Las Casas and Vieyra might be quoted to show the cruelties which stimulated them in their unwearied efforts to save the original inhabitants from servitude. The Indians vanished from the scene, giving way to a more enduring race, who were thenceforward to monopolize the miseries of slavery."—"Friends in Council," p. 121.
  2. The mind of God upon this subject, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, is thus expressed in Exodus xxi. 16: "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." Can any thing be more explicit?
    So far as the New Testament is concerned, one distinct, unambiguous,