SLAVEHOLDING RELIGION.

Maintaining Theological Seminaries.

The following is the conclusion of an advertisement in the Savannah Republican of March 23, 1845:—

“Also, at the same time and place, the following negro slaves, to wit: Charles, Peggy, Antonet, Davy, September, Maria, Jenny, and Isaac, levied as the property of Henry T. Hall, to satisfy a mortgage fi. fa., issued out of the Supreme Court, in favor of the Board of Directors of the Theological Seminary of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, vs. said Henry T. Hall. Conditions, Cash.

C. O’NEAL, Sheriff M. C.“

Buying Church Furniture.

A runaway slave, in 1841, assigned the following as his reason for not communing with the church to which he belonged at the South. “The church,” said he, “had silver furniture for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, to procure which, they sold my brother! and I could not bear the feelings it produced, to go forward and receive the sacrament from the vessels which were the purchase of my brother’s blood.”

Supporting Churches by Slave Jobbing.

The Rev. J. Cable, of Indiana, May 20, 1846, in a letter to the Mercer Luminary, says:—“I have lived eight years in a slave State, (Va.)—received my Theological education at the Union Theological Seminary, near Hampden Sydney College. Those who know anything about slavery, know the worst kind is jobbing slavery—that is, the hiring out of slaves from year to year, while the master is not present to protect them. It is the interest of the one who hires them, to get the worth of his money of them, and the loss is the master’s if they die. What shocked me more than anything else, was the church engaged in this jobbing of slaves. The college church which I attended, and which was attended by all the students of Hampden Sydney College and Union Theological Seminary, held slaves enough to pay their pastor, Mr. Stanton, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS a year, of which the church members did not pay a cent (so I understood it). The slaves, who had been left to the church by some pious mother in Israel, had increased so as to be a large and still increasing fund. These were hired out on Christmas day of each year, the day in which they celebrate the birth of our blessed Savior, to the highest bidder. These worked hard the whole year to pay the pastor his $1000 a year, and it was left to the caprice of their employers whether they ever heard one sermon for which they toiled hard the whole year to procure. This was the church in which the professors of the seminary and the college often officiated. Since the abolitionists have made so much noise about the connection of the church with slavery, the Rev. Elisha Balenter informed me the church had sold this property and put the money in other stock. There were four churches near the college church, that were in the same situation with this, when I was in that country, that supported the pastor, in whole or in part, in the same way, viz: Cumberland church, John Kirkpatrick, pastor; Briny church, William Plummer, pastor, (since Dr. P. of Richmond;) Buffalo church, Mr. Cochran, pastor; Pisga church, near the peaks of Otter, J. Mitchell, pastor.”

Selling Ministers as Slaves.

At the great Convention, at Cincinnati, in June 1845, Mr. Needham of Louisville, Ky., said:—“Sir, in 1844, a Methodist preacher, with regular license and certificate, was placed in the Louisville jail, as a slave on sale. He preached in the jail sermons which would have done credit to any white preacher of the town. He kept a little memorandum in his pocket, in which he marked the number of persons hopefully converted under his preaching. I represented his case to leading Methodists in Louisville, and showed them a copy of his papers which I had taken. Not one of them visited him in his prison. He said he forgave those who had imprisoned him and were about to sell him. He was sold down the river, which was the last time I saw him.”

A Slaveholding D. D. whipping his “b—h” on Sabbath morning preparatory to preaching.

March 28, 1843, in a public address at Cincinnati, the Rev. Edward Smith, True Wesleyan, of Pittsburgh, stated that he had lived in slave states thirty-two years; and, speaking of a certain D. D. of his acquaintance, he adds:—“He was a slaveholder, and a severe one, too, and often, with his own hands, he applied the cowhide to the naked backs of his slaves. On one occasion, a woman that served in the house, committed, on Sabbath morning, an offence of too great magnitude to go unpunished until Monday morning. The Dr. took his woman into the cellar, and as is usual in such cases, stripped her from her waist up, and then applied the lash. The woman writhed and winced under each stroke, and cried, 'Oh Lord! Oh Lord!! OH LORD!!!’ The Doctor stopped, and his hands fell to his side as though struck with palsy, gazed on the woman with astonishment, and thus addressed her, (the congregation must pardon me for repeating his words), 'Hush, you b—h, will you take the name of the Lord in vain on the Sabbath day?’ When he had stopped the woman from the gross profanity of crying to God on the Sabbath day, he finished whipping her, and then went and essayed to preach that gospel to his congregation, which proclaims liberty to the captive and the opening of the prison doors to them who are bound.”

The Greatest Impediment.

“We are about to make an announcement,” says the True American, “which must sound very strange to those whose field of observation is unlike our own: The greatest impediment to the success of the Anti-Slavery movement in the slave States is, the opposition to it of those men who profess to have been commissioned by high Heaven to go abroad and use their efforts for the mitigation of human misery and the extirpation of human wrong! This assertion, which appears so monstrous, will not surprise any one who lives among slaveholders. Our conviction of its truth has been confirmed by extensive observation.”