LESSON I.
In the inquiry into the scriptural views of slavery, by Albert Barnes, Philadelphia, 1846, page 322, we find the following assertion: “No man has a right to assume that when the word δοῦλος, doulos, occurs in the New Testament, it means a slave, or that he to whom it was applied was a slave.”
Our object in our present study is to prove that this assertion is not true; and our object further is to prove that when the word δοῦλος, doulos, occurs in the New Testament, it means a slave, and that he to whom it was applied, as an appropriate distinctive quality, was a slave.
Suppose some infidel, a monomaniac in the study of infidelity, should put forth the proposition that when the words Jesus Christ occur in the New Testament, no one had the right to assume that they meant the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. We should feel it a needless labour to refute it; a foolish, false assertion often does not merit or require refutation, but the falsity of propositions may not be equally obvious to all, as in the present case.
The premises include the observance of the constitution, idioms, and use of the Greek language.
To him whose mind can flash upon the volume of Greek literature, like the well-read schoolboy upon the pages of Dilworth,—our present study and argument will be unnecessary and useless; but, as unsavoury as it may seem, from the evidence that reaches us, we doubt whether the great mass of those called learned, do not remember and practise their Greek only as the old veterans in sin do the evening and morning prayers of their childhood.
But, however that may be, a great proportion of us know no language but our own, and take on trust what any Magnus Apollo may choose to assume concerning others. The assertions of one man, unaccompanied by evidence, may excite little or no attention; but we have seen the substance of this assertion put forth by the abolition clergy in various small publications, no doubt having great weight in their immediate vicinage.
We fear those who sit under such teaching may grope in deep darkness; and may we humbly pray, that, like the stroke of Jove, the light of the Almighty may reach them from afar.