In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women to a painful death.
And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities of human slavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy Bible.
Renan says:
In all ancient Christian literature there is not one word that
tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master to liberate
the slave, or even that touches the problem of public right
which arises out of slavery.
Mr. Remsburg, in his book, The Bible, shows that in America slavery was defended by the churches on the authority of the sacred Scriptures. He says:
The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers,
derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had
established a precedent by returning a fugitive slave to
his master.
Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the sermons and speeches of Christian ministers to show the influence of the Bible in upholding slavery. Here are some of his many examples:
The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: "There is not one verse in
the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is
not, then, we conclude, immoral."
Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia: "Slavery is
not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible,
but it was positively instituted by God Himself."
I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches was to the Bible.
As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one century a hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany. Mr. Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence. He says: