But the first part of the objectors' premise is also false; polygamy and causeless divorce never were sanctioned by Moses as domestic slavery was. Even admitting the more ignorant rendering of the matter, how wide is the difference in God's treatment of the two subjects! Slaves are mentioned as lawful property, not only in the biographies of God's erring and fallible servants, but in his own legislation; the acquisition of them is a blessing from him; their connexion with their masters is made the basis of religious sacraments; property in slaves is protected by laws of divine enactment; and the rights and duties of them and their masters defined. But when we pass to the subjects of plurality and change of wives, while we see the lives of imperfect, though good men, candidly disclosing these abuses, no legislative act recognizes them, except in the single case of divorce. In all God's laws and precepts, He always says wife, not wives, so carefully does He avoid a seeming allowance of a plurality. The Decalogue throws no protection around concubines, against the coveting of others. The rights and duties of polygamists are never defined by divine law, save in seeming exceptions which will be explained. How unlike is all this to the legislation upon slavery!
What has been already said leaves our argument impregnable. But so much misapprehension exists about the two cases, that the general interests of truth prompt a little farther separate discussion of each. The two enactments touching divorce which present the supposed contradiction in the strongest form, are those of Moses in Deuteronomy xxiv. 1 to 4, and Matthew xix. 3 to 9. These the reader is requested to have under his eye. The form of the Pharisees' question to Christ, ("Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?") concurs with the testimony of Josephus, in teaching us that a monstrous perversion of Moses' statute then prevailed. The licentious, and yet self-righteous Pharisee claimed, as one of his most unquestioned privileges, the right to repudiate a wife, after the lapse of years, and birth of children, for any caprice whatsoever. The trap which they now laid for Christ was designed to compel him either to incur the odium of attacking this usage, guarded by a jealous anger, or to connive at their interpretation of the statute. Manifestly Christ does not concede that they interpreted Moses rightly; but indignantly clears the legislation of that holy man from their licentious perversions, and then, because of their abuse of it, repeals it by his plenary authority. He refers to that constitution of the marriage tie which was original, which preceded Moses, and was therefore binding when Moses wrote, to show that it was impossible he could have enacted what they claimed. What then did Moses enact? Let us explain it. In the ancient society of the East, females being reared in comparative seclusion, and marriages negotiated by intermediaries, the bridegroom had little opportunity for a familiar acquaintance even with the person of the bride. When she was brought to him at the nuptials, if he found her disfigured with some personal deformity or disease, (the undoubted meaning of the phrase "some uncleanness,") which effectually changed desire into disgust, he was likely to regard himself as swindled in the treaty, and to send the rejected bride back with indignity to her father's house. There she was reluctantly received, and in the anomalous position of one in name a wife, yet without a husband, she dragged out a wretched existence, incapable of marriage, and regarded by her parents and brothers as a disgraceful incumbrance. It was to relieve the wretched fate of such a woman, that Moses' law was framed. She was empowered to exact of her proposed husband a formal annulment of the unconsummated contract, and to resume the status of a single woman, eligible for another marriage. It is plain that Moses' law contemplates the case, only, in which no consummation of marriage takes place. She finds no favour in the eyes "of the bridegroom." He is so indignant and disgusted, that desire is put to flight by repugnance. The same fact appears from the condition of the law, that she shall in no case return to this man, "after she is defiled," i. e., after actual cohabitation with another man had made her unapproachable (without moral defilement) by the first. Such was the narrow extent of this law. The act for which it provided was divorce only in name, where that consensus, qui matrimonium facit, (in the words of the law maxim,) had never been perfected. The state of social usages among the Hebrews, with parental and fraternal severity towards the unfortunate daughter and sister, rendered the legislation of Moses necessary, and righteous at the time; but "a greater than Moses" was now here; and he, after defending the inspired law-giver from their vile misrepresentation, proceeded to repeal the law, because it had been so perverted, and because the social changes of the age had removed its righteous grounds. Let the Abolitionists show us a similar change in the law of domestic slavery, made by Christ, and we will admit that the moral conditions of the relation have changed since Moses' day.
The case of the polygamist is still clearer; for we assert that the whole legislation of the Pentateuch and of all the Old Testament is only adverse to polygamy. As some Christian divines have taught otherwise, we must ask the reader's attention and patience for a brief statement. Polygamy is recorded of Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Elkanah, David, Solomon; but so are other sins of several of these; and, as every intelligent reader knows, the truthful narrative of holy writ as often discloses the sins of good men—for our warning, as their virtues for our imitation. And he who notes how, in every Bible instance, polygamy appears as the cause of domestic feuds, sin, and disaster, will have little doubt that the Holy Spirit tacitly holds all these cases up for our caution, and not our approval. But, then, God made Adam one wife only, and taught him the great law of the perpetual unity of the twain, just as it is now expounded by Jesus Christ. (Genesis ii. 23, 24, with Matthew xix. 4 to 6.) God preserved but one wife each to Noah and his sons. In every statute and preceptive word of the Holy Spirit, it is always wife, and not wives. The prophets everywhere teach how to treat a wife, and not wives. Moses, Leviticus xviii. 18, in the code regulating marriage, expressly prohibits the marriage of a second wife in the life of the first, thus enjoining monogamy in terms as clear as Christ's. Our English version hath it: "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other, in her lifetime." Some have been preposterous enough to take the word sister here in its literal sense, and thus to force on the law the meaning that the man desiring to practise polygamy may do so provided he does not marry two daughters of the same parents; for if he did this, the two sisters sharing his bed would, like Rachel and Leah, quarrel more fiercely than two strangers. But the word "sister" must undoubtedly be taken in the sense of mates, fellows, (which it bears in a multitude of places,) and this for two controlling reasons. The other sense makes Moses talk nonsense and folly, in the supposed reason for his prohibition; in that it makes him argue that two sisters sharing one man's bed will quarrel, but two women having no kindred blood will not. It is false to fact and to nature. Did Leah and Rachel show more jealousy than Sarah and Hagar, Hannah and Peninnah? But when we understand the law in its obvious sense, that the husband shall not divide his bed with a second mate, the first still living, because such a wrong ever harrows and outrages the great instincts placed in woman's heart by her Creator, we make Moses talk truth and logick worthy of a profound legislator. The other reason for this construction is, that the other sense places the 18th verse in irreconcilable contradiction to the 16th verse. This forbids the marriage of a woman to the husband of her deceased sister; while the 18th verse, with this false reading, would authorize it.
Once more: Malachi, (chapter ii. 14, 15.) rebuking the various corruptions of the Jews, evidently includes polygamy; for he argues in favour of monogamy, (and also against causeless divorce,) from the fact that God, "who had the residue of the Spirit," and could as easily have created a thousand women for each man as a single one, made the numbers of the sexes equal from the beginning. He states this as the motive, "that he might seek a godly seed;" that is to say, that the object of God in the marriage relation was the right rearing of children, which polygamy notoriously hinders. Now the commission of an Old Testament prophet was not to legislate a new dispensation; for the laws of Moses were in full force; the prophets' business was to expound them. Hence, we infer that the laws of the Mosaic dispensation on the subject of polygamy had always been such as Malachi declared them. He was but applying Moses' principles.
To the assertion that the law of the Old Testament discountenanced polygamy as really as the New Testament, it has been objected that the practice was maintained by men too pious towards God to be capable of continuing in it against express precept; as, for instance, by the "king after God's own heart," David. Did not he also commit murder and adultery? Surely there is no question whether Moses forbids these! The history of good men, alas, shows us too plainly the power of general evil example, custom, temptation, and self-love, in blinding the honest conscience. It has been objected that polygamy was so universally practised, and so prized, that Moses would never have dared to attempt its extinction. When will men learn that the author of the Old Testament law was not Moses, but God? Is God timid? Does he fear to deal firmly with his creatures? But it is denied that there is any evidence that polygamy was greatly prevalent among the Hebrews. And nothing is easier than to show, that if it had been, Moses was a legislator bold enough to grapple with it. What more hardy than his dealing with the sabbatical year, with idolatry? It is objected that the marriage of the widow who was childless to the brother of the deceased, to raise up seed to the dead, presents a case of polygamy actually commanded. We reply, no one can show that the next of kin was permitted or required to form such marriage when he already had a wife. The celebrated J. D. Michaelis, a witness learned and not too favourable, says, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, of this law, "Nor did it affect a brother having already a wife of his own." Book III., ch. vi., § 98. It is objected that polygamy is recognized as a permitted relation in Deuteronomy xxi. 15-17, where the husband of a polygamous marriage is forbidden to transfer the birthright from the eldest son to a younger, the child of a more favoured wife; and in Exodus xxi. 9, 10, where the husband is forbidden to deprive a less favoured wife of her marital rights and maintenance. Both these cases are explained by the admitted principle, that there may be relations which it was sin to form, and which yet it is sinful to break when formed. No one doubts whether the New Testament makes polygamy unlawful; yet it seems very clear that the apostles gave the same instructions to the husbands of a plurality of wives entering the Christian church. There appears, then, no evidence that polygamy was allowed in the laws of Moses.
We have thus shown that the objection of Dr. Channing to our Old Testament argument for the lawfulness of domestic slavery, is false in both its premises. First, it is not true that Moses sanctioned polygamy and causeless divorce in the sense in which he sanctioned slavery. And second, if he did, it would prove that those practices were lawful until they were prohibited by our Redeemer; but domestic slavery has met no such prohibition from him, and is therefore lawful still. If not, why did the divine Reformer strike down the two "sister sins," and leave the third, the giant evil, untouched? There is but one answer: He did not regard it as a sin.
If too much space has been devoted to this objection, the apology is, that it is a subject much misunderstood by Christian divines. The explanation is, that the study of Hebrew antiquities has, in our day, been left so much to German rationalists and secret Socinians; the late essays of British and Yankee scholars being to so great a degree servile imitations of theirs. But these skeptical literati of Germany, while wearing the clergyman's frock for the sake of the emoluments of an established church, have usually been unsanctified men, harbouring the most contemptuous views of Old Testament inspiration. The reader will bear in mind that, whether he is convinced, with us, that Moses actually prohibited polygamy, or not, the refutation of the Abolitionist objection is still perfectly valid.
The seventh and last objection against our Old Testament argument consists of various passages from the Hebrew prophets, which denounce the oppression of the poor, and the withholding of the labouring man's wages. Every phrase which sounds at all like their purpose is violently seized by the Abolitionists, and pressed incontinently into the service of condemning slavery, without regard to the sacred writer's intention or meaning. Were all the texts thus wrested discussed here, this section would be swelled into a book. A few passages which our opponents regard as their strongest will be cited, therefore; and the reply to these will be an answer to all. One such is Isaiah, lviii. 6: "Is not this the fast which I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free; and that ye break every yoke?" Another is found in Jeremiah xx. 13: "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's services without wages, and giveth him not for his work." Another is in Jeremiah xxxiv. 17: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbour." And to find a scriptural stone to pelt the fugitive slave-law, they quote Isaiah xvi. 3: "Hide the outcasts; betray not him that wandereth."
Now, one would think that it should have given some pause to these perversions of Scripture, to remember that these same prophets were undoubtedly slaveholders. Witness, for instance, Elisha, who was so large a slaveholder as to have eleven ploughmen at once, and who, after he devoted himself exclusively to his prophetic ministry, still had his servants, Gehazi and others. (2 Kings, v. 20, and vi. 15.) How could they have aimed such denunciations at slave-owners, and escaped the sarcasm, "Physician, heal thyself?" It should have been remembered again, that Moses' laws, in which slaveholding was expressly sanctioned, were enacted by authority just as divine as that by which Isaiah and Jeremiah preached; that Moses was more a prophet than even they—"the greatest of the prophets;" that his laws were still in full force; that they bore to these prophets' instructions the relation of text to exposition; and that always the great burden of their accusations against their guilty countrymen was, that they had forsaken Moses' statutes. Were the guardians and expounders of the Constitution armed with power not only to repeal, but to vilify, the very law which they were appointed to expound? May the sermon contradict its own text?
Before these rebukes of oppression can be applied, then, as God's condemnation of domestic slavery, it must be proved that in His view slavery is oppression. To take this for granted is a begging of the whole question in debate. But not only is it not proved by any such texts; it is obvious from the above remarks, that it cannot be proved by them, unless God can be made to contradict himself. But when we examine a little the connected words of these prophets themselves, we learn from them what they do mean; and we see an instance, ludicrous if it were not too painful, of the heedless folly with which the Word of God is abused. Thus, in Isaiah, lviii. 6, 7, we proceed to the very next words, and learn that the duty in hand consists in "bringing to their homes the poor that are cast out," and being charitable to "their own flesh." Were the Gentile slaves of the Hebrews "their own flesh" in the sense of the Old Testament, i. e., their kindred by blood? Manifestly, the phrase intends their fellow-citizens of Hebrew blood in distress. Are slaveholders in danger of sinning by driving away from their houses their domestic slaves; and do they need objurgation to make them receive them back? Such is the "infinite nonsense" forced upon Isaiah's words by Abolitionists. There is, then, no reference here to the emancipation of Gentile slaves; but to the duties of charity, justice and hospitality towards the oppressed of their fellow-citizens. And if the passage has any reference to servants, it is only to the sin of detaining Hebrew servants beyond the Sabbatical year's release.