At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery; they never wrote a word in their condemnation. They make allusions to war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it; they speak of the sword placed in the king's hands to punish crime, yet say nothing of those atrocious tortures, in the first rank of which must be cited crucifixion; they make use of figures borrowed from the public games, yet say nothing either of the combats of the gladiators, or of the abominations which sullied other spectacles; they unceasingly call to mind the reciprocal relations of husbands and wives, of parents and children, yet say nothing of the despotic authority which the Roman law conferred upon the father, or of the debasement to which it condemned the wife. The evangelical method is this: it has not occupied itself with communities, yet has wrought the profoundest of the social revolutions; it has not demanded any reform, yet has accomplished all of them; the atrocities of war and of torture, the gladiatorial combats and immodest spectacles, the despotism of fathers and the debasement of women, all have disappeared before a profound, internal action, which attacks the very roots of the evil.
Not only does the Gospel forbear to touch on social and religious problems, but, even on questions of morals, it refuses to furnish detailed solutions. Its system of morality is very short; and in this lies its greatness, through this it becomes morality instead of casuistry. Cases of conscience, special directions, a moral code, promulgated article by article—you will find in it nothing of this sort. What you will find there, and there alone, is a growing morality, which passes my expression. Two or three sayings were written eighteen centuries ago, and these sayings contain in the germ a series of commandments, of transformation, of progression, which we have not nearly exhausted. I spoke a moment since of the progress of revelations; I must speak now of the progress which is being wrought in virtue of a revelation constantly the same, but constantly becoming better understood, which multiplies our duties in proportion as it enlightens our conscience. With the one saying: "What ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also to them," the Gospel has opened before us infinite vistas of moral development.
Before this one saying, the cruelties and infamous customs of ancient society, not mentioned by the Apostles, have successively succumbed; before this one saying, the modern family has been formed; before this one saying, American slavery will disappear as European slavery has disappeared already. With this saying, we are all advancing, we are learning, and we shall continue to learn. Yes, the time will come, I am convinced, when we shall see new duties rise up before us, when we cannot with a clear conscience maintain customs, what, I know not, which we maintain conscientiously to-day.
This carries us somewhat further, it must be granted, than a list of fixed duties ne varietur; it opposes slavery in a different manner than a sentence pronounced once for all. The Gospel took the surest means of overthrowing it when, letting alone the reform of institutions, it contented itself with pursuing that of sentiments; when it thus prepared the time when the slaveholder himself would be forced to ask what is contained in the inexhaustible saying: "What ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them." Even in the heart of the Southern States, despite the triple covering of habits, prejudices, and interests, this saying is making its way, and is disturbing the consciences of the people much more than is generally believed. And the work that it has begun it will finish; it will force the planters to translate the word SLAVERY, to consider one by one the abominable practices which constitute it. Is it to do to others as we would that they should do to us, to sell a family at retail? To maintain laws which give over every slave, whether wife or maiden, to her owner, whatever he may be, and which take away from this maiden, from this wife, the right of remembering her modesty and her duties—what do Christians call this? To produce marketable negroes, to dissolve marriages, to ordain adulteries, to inflict ignoble punishment, to interdict instruction—is this doing to others what we would that they should do to us?
The Christian sense of right is relentless, thank God; it does not suffer itself to be deceived by appearances; where we dispute about words, it forces us to go to facts. Now, look at the facts which are really in question in America, when the great subject of slavery is discussed there theoretically. Against the great evangelical system of morality, the Judaical interpretations of such or such a text have little chance. The epistle of Paul, sending back to Philemon his fugitive slave Onesimus, is quoted to us. Assuredly, the Apostle pronounces in it no anathema against slavery, nor does he exact enfranchisement; these ideas were unknown to him; but he says: "I beseech thee for my son whom I have begotten in my bonds, whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is my own bowels. Without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved. Having confidence in thy obedience I wrote unto thee, knowing that thou wilt do also more than I say."
Does any one fancy Philemon treating Onesimus, after this epistle, as fugitive slaves are treated in America, putting up his wife and children directly after for sale, or delivering him, over to the first slave merchant that was willing to take charge of him, and carry him a hundred leagues away? It is so certain that Philemon did more than had been told him, that the Epistle to the Colossians shows us the "faithful and well-beloved brother Onesimus" honorably mentioned among those concerned about the spiritual interests of the church.
Do what one will, there is an implied abolition of slavery (implied but positive) at the bottom of that close fraternity created by the faith in the Saviour. Between brethren, the relation of master and slave, of merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would say to-day if the epistle to Philemon were addressed to them; and it is addressed to them; the Onesimuses of the South—and such there are—are thus thrown upon the conscience of their masters, their brothers.
I have said enough on the subject to dispense with examining very numerous passages in which slavery is supposed by the writers of the New Testament. The duties of masters and of slaves are laid down by them without doubt, and the existence of the institution is not contested for a moment; only, it is brought face to face with that which will slay it: the doctrine of salvation through Christ, of pardon, of humility, of love, is, in itself, and without the necessity of expressing it, the absolute negation of slavery.
It has fully proved so, and the early ages of Christianity leave no doubt as to the interpretation given by Christians to the teachings of the Apostles. Despite the rapid corruptions introduced into the churches, we see one brilliant fact shining forth in them: emancipations becoming more frequent, slaves, as well as free men, succeeding to ecclesiastical offices, spiritual equality producing the fruit which it cannot help producing, namely, legal equality. Observe, too, how the edicts of the emperors multiplied as soon as the influence of Christianity was exerted in the Roman world. And all these edicts had but one aim: to sweeten servitude, to increase affranchisement by law, to facilitate voluntary emancipation.
What the Gospel did then against European slavery, it is doing now against American slavery. Its end is the same; its weapons are the same; they have not rusted during eighteen centuries. Those planters of the English islands were not mistaken, who, instinctively divining where lay their great enemy, had recourse to every measure to expel missionaries from among them. Neither were those Texan executioners mistaken, who lately put to death the missionary Bewley, a touching martyr to the cause of the slaves. I ask, in the face of the gallows of Bewley, what we are to think of that prodigious paradox according to which the Gospel is the patron of slavery. To those who mistake its meaning on this point, the Gospel replies by its acts; it replies also by the unanimous testimony of its servants. What is more striking, in fact, than to see that, apart from the country in which the action of interests and habits disturbs the judgment of Christians, there is but one way of comprehending and interpreting the Scripture on this point? Consult England, France, Germany; Christians everywhere will tell you that the Gospel abolished slavery, although it does not say a single word which would proclaim this abolition. Why, if the doubt were possible, would not diversity of opinions be also possible among disinterested judges? To speak only of France, see the synods of our free churches, which continually stigmatize both Swedish intolerance and American slavery; see an address signed three years ago by the pastors and the elders of five hundred and seventy-one French churches, which has gone to carry to the United States the undoubted testimony of a conviction which in truth is that of all.