SLAVERY AND POLYGAMY: DOCTORS OF DIVINITY IN A DILEMMA.
An argument is derived from the Jewish Scriptures in favor of slave-holding, very plausible and weighty with that large class of persons so poorly gifted with hearts as to find it difficult to discriminate between the letter that killeth and the spirit that maketh alive. The Old Testament shows clearly enough, that slave-holding was tolerated among the Jews; and it being assumed that the system of Jewish society, or, at all events, that the Mosaic code was framed after a Divine model, it is alleged to be at least supererogatory, if not actually impious, to denounce as inconsistent with Christianity that which God permitted to his chosen and selected people. Are we to pretend to be better and wiser than Abraham and Moses, David and Solomon?
A recent application of this same argument can hardly fail to operate with many, as what the mathematicians call a reductio ad absurdum; a proof, that is, of the falsity of a proposition assumed, by exhibiting its operation in other cases.
The famous Mormon doctrine of the plurality of wives, now at length openly avowed by the heads and apostles of that new sect, is upheld and justified by this very same argument. It plainly appears from the Old Testament, that polygamy equally with slavery, was one of the social institutions of the Jews, recognized and sanctioned by their laws. And borrowing the tone, and indeed the very words of our pro-slavery theologians,—“Do you pretend,” asks Orson Hyde, one of the Mormon apostles, addressing himself to those who question this new privilege of the saints—“Do you pretend to set yourselves above the teaching of God, and the example of his chosen people?”
Nor does the analogy between the two cases stop here. According to the pro-slavery biblical argument, slave-holding is only to be justified in Christian slave-holders, who, in holding slaves, have in view not only selfish benefit or advantage, but the good of the slaves, (who are not able to take care of themselves,) and the glory of God. According to the Mormon biblical argument, polygamy is to be allowed only to the saints; and that, not for any sensual gratification, but only for the benefit of the women, (who, according to the Mormon doctrine, cannot get to heaven without some holy husband to introduce them,) and for the raising up of a righteous seed to God’s glory.
Their favorite biblical argument, urged with such a tone of triumph and self-satisfaction in all the southern presbyteries and consociations, and in some northern ones, being thus newly applied by the Mormons, our pro-slavery friends are placed in a somewhat delicate dilemma. For they must either abandon as invalid their dogma of slave-holding derived from Jewish practices, or, if they still hold on to the argument, and maintain its force, they must prepare to extend the right hand of fellowship to Brigham Young and his five and forty wives. It is, indeed, very natural, in fact inevitable, that slavery and polygamy, avowed or disavowed, should go together; nor does any good reason appear why those who find justification for the one in the Jewish Scriptures should hesitate about accepting the other.
R. Hildreth