Chapter VI · THE NEW TESTAMENT ARGUMENT. (continued 2)

Dr. Wayland's hypothesis is also deceitful and erroneous, in representing Christ as having no alternatives save the one which he imputes to him, or else of so denouncing slavery as to "teach slaves to resist the oppression of their masters," and thus lighting the flames of servile war. Is this so? When a given claim is condemned by the Bible as not grounded in right, does it necessarily follow on Gospel principles that those on whom it is made must resist it by force? Surely not. The uniform teaching of our Saviour to the wronged individual is, "that he resist not evil." Christ, if he had regarded slaveholding as sinful, would not indeed have incited slaves to resistance, any more than he did the victims of polygamy which he condemned. But he would have taught his disciples the sinfulness of the relation, and within the pale of his own spiritual commonwealth, the Church, he would have enforced reformation by refusing to admit or retain any who persevered in the wrong. Less than this he could not have done.

The hypothesis is also false to facts and to the actual method of his mission towards deeply rooted sins, as declared both by his words and conduct. He expressly repudiates this very theory of action. He declares that he came "not to send peace on earth, but a sword:" and announces himself as the grand incendiary of the world. How degrading to the almighty king of Zion is this imputation of politic cowardice! And how different from the real picture where we see him boldly exposing the hypocrisy of the Jewish rulers, and assailing their most cherished deceptions, though he knew that the price of his truthfulness would be his blood! And can this paltry theory be true of that Paul, who took his hearers to record, in full view of his dread account, that he was "clear from the blood of all men, because he had not shunned to declare to them all the counsel of God?" (Acts, xx. 27.) This of the man who everywhere assailed and explicitly denounced the idolatry of Greece and Rome, established by law, entwined with every feeling, and defended by imperial might? This of men who, sternly reprobating the universal libertinism of the heathen world, attacked what every one, countenanced by sages and statesmen, regarded as a lawful indulgence? This of men who boldly roused every prejudice of the Jewish heart, by declaring their darling system of rites and types effete, their ceremonial righteousness a cheat, and the middle wall of partition between them and the Gentiles, the bulwark of their proud spiritual aristocracy, broken down? It is slander.

Finally, this hypothesis represents that Saviour who claimed omniscience, as adopting a policy which was as futile as dishonest. He forbore the utterance of any express testimony against the sin of slaveholding, say they, leaving the church to find it out by deduction from general principles of equity. But in point of fact, the church never began to make such deduction, until near the close of the 18th century. Neither primitive, nor reformed, nor Romanist, nor modern divines taught the doctrine of the intrinsic sinfulness of slaveholding. The church as a body never dreamed it. Slavery remained almost universal. It remained for the political agitators of atheistic, Jacobin France, almost eighteen hundred years after Christ's birth, to give active currency to this new doctrine, and thus to infuse energy into the fanaticism of the few erratic Christian teachers, such as Wesley, who had hitherto asserted this novelty. Now, did Christ foresee this? If he did not, he is not divine. If he did, then Dr. Wayland believes that he deliberately chose a plan which consigned seventeen centuries of Christians to a sin, and as many of slaves to a wrong, which he all along abhorred. Credat Judœus Apella!

The book from which we have extracted these words of Dr. Wayland, was put forth by him as a text-book for the instruction of young persons in academies and colleges, in the science of morals. We are informed that it is extensively used for this purpose. What can be expected of that people which suffers the very springs of its morality to be thus corrupted, by inculcating these ethics of expediency? Not satisfied with teaching to mortals that species of morality, so called, which makes convenience the measure of obligation, this scribe of their Israel imputes the same degrading principle to the Redeemer of men, and Author of religion, in thus suppressing the truth, and intimating error to whole generations of his own followers, in order to avoid the inconveniences of candour. So that unsuspecting youth are thus taught to approve and imitate this corrupt expediency, in the very person of the Redeemer God, whom they are commanded to adore. Will the Yankee give an actual apotheosis to his crooked principles, in the person of an imaginary New England Christ? We thank God that this is not the Christ of the Bible, nor our Redeemer, but only the hideous invention of "men of perverse minds and destitute of the truth." But since we are taught (Psalm cxv. 8) that they who worship false Gods are like unto them, that is to say, that idolaters always reproduce in themselves all the abominations which they adore in their idols, we need no longer wonder at any thing which the Yankee people may do. Hence that state of publick morals blazoned to the world by the effrontery of their own corrupt press, charged upon each other in their mutual recriminations, and betrayed in their crimes against the general weal.

In concluding the biblical part of this discussion, it may be expected that we should indicate more exactly the influence which we suppose Christianity ought to have exerted upon slavery, and its ultimate destiny under pure Bible teachings. It may be asked: "When you claim that slavery is literally and simply a righteous relation, in itself, if it be not perverted and abused; do you mean that this is the normal and perfect relation for the labouring man; that this is to be the fullest and most blessed social development of Christianity: that it ought to subsist in the best states of Christian society, and will endure even in the millennium?" We reply, that one uniform effect of Christianity on slavery, has been to ameliorate it, to remove its perversions and abuses, just as it does those of the other lawful relations among men; to make better masters and better servants, and thus to promote the welfare of both. Domestic slavery has been violently and mischievously ended in the South; and it is doubtless ended here in this form, finally. And it has long been manifest that the radical and anti-Christian tendency of the age is likely speedily to break up this form of servitude in other places where it still prevails. But true slavery, that is, the involuntary subjection of one man to the will of another, is not thereby any more abolished than sin and death are abolished. And least of all will real bondage of man to man be abolished in countries governed by radical democracy. The Scriptural, the milder and more benign form of servitude is swept away, in the arrogance of false political philosophy, to be replaced by more pretentious but more grinding forms of society. But, it may be asked: Will not the diffusion of the pure and blessed principles of the Gospel ultimately extinguish all forms of slavery? We answer: Yes, we devoutly trust it will, not by making masters too righteous to hold slaves, but by so correcting the ignorance, thriftlessness, indolence, and vice of labouring people, that the institution of slavery will be no longer needed. Just so, we hope that the spread of Christianity will some day abolish penitentiaries and jails: but this does not imply that to put rogues into penitentiaries is not now, and will not continue, so long as rogues shall continue to deserve imprisonment, an act which an angel might perform without sullying his morality. So likewise, we hope that our ransomed world will see the day when defensive war and military establishments will be superseded: superseded not because defensive war and the calling of the Christian soldier are immoral when one's country is wrongfully invaded; but because there will be none immoral enough to commit the aggressions which now justify these costly, though righteous expedients of defence. There appears, in many minds, a strange impotency to comprehend the truth, that the strict righteousness of the relation maintained, and the treatment observed towards a person, may depend on that person's character. They will not see that, as it may be strictly moral to punish one who is guilty because of his guilt, and yet suffering is not intrinsic good in itself; so it may be perfectly righteous to hold a class in bondage, which is incapable of freedom, and yet it may be true still that bondage is not a good in itself. Because they cannot accept the extreme dogma, that domestic slavery is the beau ideal of the proper relation of labour to capital, they seem to imagine that they are bound in consistency to hold that it is somehow an evil. Yet they have too much reverence for God's word to assert, with the abolitionists, in the teeth of its fair meaning, that slavery is sin per se. So, they attempt to stand on an intermediate ground of invisible and infinitesimal breadth. The plain solution of the matter is, that slavery may not be the beau ideal of the social organization; that there is a true evil in the necessity for it, but that this evil is not slavery, but the ignorance and vice in the labouring classes, of which slavery is the useful and righteous remedy; righteous so long as the condition of its utility exists. Others pass to another extreme, and seeing that the Bible undoubtedly teaches that slaveholding is righteous, they liken the relation to those of the husband and father. There is, however, this obvious difference: These relations were established in paradise before man fell. Their righteousness and usefulness are not dependent on the fact that man is a sinner, and they would be appropriately continued as long as men are in the body, though all were perfectly wise and holy. But the propriety of slavery, like that of the restraints and punishments of civil government, rests on the fact that man is depraved and fallen. Such is his character, that the rights of the whole, and the greatest welfare of the whole, may, in many cases, demand the subjection of one part of society to another, even as man's sinfulness demands the subjection of all to civil government. Slavery is, indeed, but one form of the institution, government. Government is controul. Some controul over all is necessary, righteous, and beneficent: the degree of it depends on the character of those to be controuled. As that character rises in the scale of true virtue, and self-command, the degree of outward controul may be properly made lighter. If the lack of those properties in any class is so great as to demand, for the good and safety of the whole, that extensive controul which amounts to slavery, then slavery is righteous, righteous by precisely the same reason that other government is righteous. And this is the Scriptural account of the origin of slavery, as justly incurred by the sin and depravity of man.