But the assertion that God requires men to be slaves is a wicked assertion. It charges God with folly and inconsistency. He desires the elevation of man, but slavery brutalizes him. He encourages the enlightenment of the mind and the expansion of the understanding, but slavery darkens the mind and enchains the understanding. God cannot be pleased with the ignorance, stupor, injustice and servile wretchedness which are necessary to the very existence of slavery, and hence he can not make it the duty of any man to be a slave, for this would be the same as to make it his duty to be stupid, ignorant and wretched. No, God does not will that any man or woman should be a slave. Man was made in the image of God’s independence and sovereignty. The instinct of freedom is strong in his bosom. It has resisted oppression in all ages, and it will resist it, with God on its side, until it shall triumph!
We will now inquire whether the apostolic addresses to masters authorize some men to sustain the relation of slaveholders. It should be observed that there are but two places in the New Testament in which the duties of masters are pointed out. Permit us to repeat those duties. “And ye masters do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven.” “Masters give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in heaven.”
Is it possible that from these words men will take license to seize their fellows and convert them into property; despoil them of all their rights; deny them an education; banish them from courts of justice; break up their homes; take their wages without compensation; drive them in chain-gangs from state to state, and whip, beat, and abuse them until they perish from the earth? Yes, it is possible. This has been done. “Was there ever,” said Dr. Wayland, “such a moral superstructure raised on such a foundation? * * If the religion of Christ allows such a license from such precepts as these, the New Testament would be the greatest curse that ever was inflicted on our race.” We remark
1. In these directions there is not the slightest intimation that the masters addressed were slaveholders and that the servants in their employ were slaves. The term slaveholders (andrapodistais,) is not used in the above passages, and this term is only once found in the apostolic writings.[12] It is found in the following text: “Knowing this that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for andrapodistais, (slaveholders or menstealers) for liars, etc.” 1st Tim. 1: 9, 10.
And it is not only a fact that slaveholders are not addressed in these passages, but the directions given are such as no slaveholder in the world can observe. How can a slaveholder give unto a slave that which is just and equal? The slave can own nothing, will nothing, inherit nothing, and hence it is impossible, in the very nature of the case, for his owner to give him a just compensation for his labor. And the slave has a just right to himself to liberty and the very first honest and enlightened effort of a slaveholder to give to his slave that which is just and equal would result in his emancipation! Justice and equality are incompatible with slaveholding. Injustice and inequality are its essential principles. Let us hear Mrs. Stowe’s comment on what Christian legislators have seemed to consider just and equal when making laws for slaves:—
“First, they commence by declaring that their brother shall no longer be considered as a person, but deemed, sold, taken, and reputed, as a chattel personal.—This is “just and equal!”
This being the fundamental principle of the system, the following are specified as its consequences:
1. That he shall have no right to hold property of any kind, under any circumstances.—Just and equal!
2. That he shall have no power to contract a legal marriage, or claim any woman in particular for his wife.—Just and equal!
3. That he shall have no right to his children, either to protect, restrain, guide or educate.—Just and equal!
4. That the power of his master over him shall be ABSOLUTE, without any possibility of appeal or redress in consequence of any injury whatever.
To secure this, they enact that he shall not be able to enter suit in any court for any cause.—Just and equal!
That he shall not be allowed to bear testimony in any court where any white person is concerned.—Just and equal!
That the owner of a servant, for “malicious, cruel, and excessive beating of his slave, cannot be indicted.”—Just and equal!
It is further decided, that by no indirect mode of suit, through a guardian, shall a slave obtain redress for ill-treatment. (Dorothea v. Coquillon et al, 9 Martin La. Rep. 350.)—Just and equal!
5. It is decided that the slave shall not only have no legal redress for injuries inflicted by his master, but shall have no redress for those inflicted by any other person, unless the injury impair his property value.—Just and equal!
Under this head it is distinctly asserted as follows:
There can be no offence against the peace of the state, by the mere beating of a slave, unaccompanied by any circumstances of cruelty, or an intent to kill and murder. The peace of the state is not thereby broken.” (State v. Manner, 2 Hill’s Rep. S. C.)—Just and equal!
If a slave strike a white, he is to be condemned to death; but if a master kill his slave by torture, no white witnesses being present, he may clear himself by his own oath. (Louisiana.)—Just and equal!
The law decrees fine and imprisonment to the person who shall release the servant of another from the torture of the iron collar. (Louisiana.)—Just and equal!
It decrees a much smaller fine, without imprisonment, to the man who shall torture him with red-hot irons, cut out his tongue, put out his eyes, and scald or maim him. (Ibid.)—Just and equal!
It decrees the same punishment to him who teaches him to write as to him who puts out his eyes.—Just and equal!
As it might be expected that only very ignorant and brutal people could be kept in a condition like this, especially in a country where every book and every newspaper are full of dissertations on the rights of man, they therefore enact laws that neither he nor his children to all generations, shall learn to read and write.—Just and equal!
And as, if allowed to meet for religious worship, they might concert some plan of escape or redress, they enact that “no congregation of negroes, under pretence of divine worship, shall assemble themselves; and that every slave found at such meetings shall be immediately corrected without trial, by receiving on the bare back twenty-five stripes with a whip, switch or cowskin.” (Law of Georgia, Prince’s Digest, p. 447.)—Just and equal!
Though the servant is thus kept in ignorance, nevertheless in his ignorance he is punished more severely for the same crimes than freemen.—Just and equal!
By way of protecting him from over-work, they enact that he shall not labor more than five hours longer than convicts at hard labor in a penitentiary!
They also enact that the master or overseer, not the slave, shall decide when he is too sick to work.—Just and equal!
If any master, compassionating this condition of the slave, desires to better it, the law takes it out of his power, by the following decisions:
1. That all his earnings shall belong to his master, notwithstanding his master’s promise to the contrary; thus making him liable for his master’s debts.—Just and equal!
2. That if his master allow him to keep cattle for his own use, it shall be lawful for any man to take them away, and enjoy half the profits of the seizure.—Just and equal!
3. If his master sets him free, he shall be taken up and sold again.—Just and equal!
If any man or woman runs away from this state of things, and, after proclamation made, does not return, any two justices of the peace may declare them outlawed, and give permission to any person in the community to kill then by any ways or means they think fit.—Just and equal!”
(See Key, pp. 241.)
If slaveholding is an illustration of what St. Paul meant by justice and equality, who can tell what is injustice and inequality? Let it be understood that a slaveholder cannot give to a slave, while he holds him as a slave, that which is just and equal, because the greatest injustice and inequality enters into the very nature of the relation of slaveholder. Could a man be a just robber or an honest thief? No, because injustice and dishonesty enter necessarily into the business of robbing and stealing. Even so is it impossible for justice and equality to enter into slaveholding, because, it is in its very nature, robbery, theft, extortion, oppression, and a complication of almost all villainies.
It is clear from the examination of all the passages in the New Testament relating to masters and servants, that those masters were not slaveholders and that those servants were not slaves.
But it will be asked did not slavery exist in the apostles’ days? We answer it did exist. The Roman government tolerated chattel slavery. Why then did not the apostles regulate it by prescribing the duties of slaveholders and slaves? It has been assumed, and justly too, that “slavery no more than murder can be regulated. That which is essentially and eternally wrong has nothing in it on which the claim of morality can rest. Morality requires its destruction, not its regulation.”[13] The law of God does not point out the duties of liars, adulterers and thieves, because as such, they can have no duties. So God did not attempt to regulate Roman slavery which was a most vile and crushing despotism. He did not intend that SLAVERY should be continued, and hence it was not to be regulated but destroyed. We have no evidence in the above passages that SLAVEHOLDERS were admitted into the church of Jesus Christ by the apostles.