Such are the wretched quibblings by which abolitionism seeks to pervert the plain meaning of God's Word, as clearly apprehended by the great current of Christian expositors, both ancient and modern, Greek, Latin, and English. We almost feel that an apology is due to the enlightened reader, for detaining him with the formal exposure of these miserable follies; but our promise was to display the thorough emptiness of our opponents.
§ 8. St. Paul reprobates Abolitionists.
One passage of the New Testament remains to be noticed. It is that which commands the exclusion of Abolitionist teachers from church communion, 1 Tim. vi. 3-5. St. Paul had just enjoined on this young minister the giving of proper moral instruction to servants. The pulpit was to teach them the duty of subordination to masters, as to rightful authority; and if those masters were also Christians, then the obligation was only the stronger. See v. 1, 2. The apostle then proceeds, v. 3, "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness," (the opposite teaching of abolitionism contradicts Christ's own word,) "he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."
The more carefully these words of the Holy Ghost are considered, the more exceedingly remarkable will they appear. Doubtless, every reader of previous ages has felt a slight trace of wonder, that the apostle should have left on record a rebuke of such particularity, sternness, and emphasis, when there appeared nothing in the opinions or abuses of the Christian world, of sufficient importance quite to justify it. We have no evidence that, either in the primitive or mediæval church, any marked disposition prevailed to assail the rights of masters over their slaves, to such extent as to threaten the disorganization of civil society or the dishonouring of Christianity thereby. This denunciation of the apostle seems to have been sufficient to give the quietus to the spirit of abolition, so long as any reverence for inspiration remained. Even while the policy of the Roman Church and clergy was steadily directed to the extinction of feudal slavery in Western Europe, it does not appear that the doctors of that church assailed the master's rights or preached insubordination to the slaves. Why then did St. Paul judge it necessary to leave on record so startling a denunciation? The question is answered by the events of our age: these words were written for us on whom these ends of the world have come. And we have here a striking proof that his pen was guided by omniscient foreknowledge. The God who told Paul what to write, foresaw that though the primitive church stood in comparatively slight need of such admonitions, the century would come, after the lapse of eighteen ages, when the church would be invaded and defiled by the deadly spirit of modern abolitionism, a spirit perverse, blind, divisive and disorganizing, which would become the giant scourge and opprobrium of Christianity. Therefore has this stern warning been recorded here, and left standing until events should make men understand both its wisdom and the lineaments of the monster which it foreshadowed. The learned Calvin, and the amiable Henry, in explaining the Epistle to Philemon, allude to the question: Why should this short letter, which directly touches no publick concernment of the churches, written on a personal topick from Paul to his friend, be preserved among the canonical Scriptures by God's Spirit and providence? They answer, that it was placed there because, although short and of private concernment, it teaches us many pleasing lessons of Paul's condescension and courtesy, and above all, of the adaptation of Christianity to visit, purify, and elevate the lowest and vilest of the ranks of men. This is true, so far as it goes; but another part of God's purpose is now developed. He left this little Epistle among his authoritative words, because he foresaw that the day would come when the Church would need just the instructions against insubordination, which are here presented in a concrete case.
Those who have seen and suffered by modern abolitionism best know, how astonishingly true is the picture here drawn of it by the Divine limner. God here declares that the principles of the lawfulness of slavery, the rights of masters, and the duty of obedience in slaves, are wholesome, and according to godliness. In addition, the sacred authority of our Lord Jesus Christ is claimed for them. The Abolitionist who assails these teachings is described as a man proud, yet ignorant. This combined arrogance and vindictiveness, with ignorance of the true facts and merits of the case upon which they presume to dictate, are proverbial in modern abolitionism, according to the testimony of neutral parties, and even of some of their own clique. With a stupid superciliousness, equally ludicrous and offensive, they revile men wiser and better than themselves, and pass an oracular verdict upon questions of which they know nothing. They are doting about questions and strifes of words: that is, as the original word means, their minds are morbid with logomachies, and idle debates, and corrupted by prejudice and the spirit of disputation. ("Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds.") Those who have read thus far in this discussion have seen, in the prejudiced sophisms which we have been compelled to quote for refutation, sufficient evidence of the perverse, erroneous, and disputatious spirit of abolitionism. Their dogmas are not supported by the testimony of Scripture, nor the lights of practical experience, nor sound political philosophy; but by vain and Utopian theories of human rights, and philosophy falsely so called. The fruit of their discussions has been naught but "envy, strife, railings, and evil surmisings." The fact betrays itself in a thousand ways, that envy of the slaveholder and his supposed advantages and power, is the root of much of their zeal. Hence the epithets of "aristocrat," "lordly slaveholder," "Southern nabob," as ridiculously false to fact as envious, which form so large a part of the staple of their abuse. They hate us because they suppose we possessed a privilege of which they were deprived. The angry and divisive tendencies of abolitionism have manifested themselves but too familiarly in the rending of churches, in the awakening of fierce contention wherever it has appeared, in the destruction of the union both of law and of love between the American States, and in a gigantic war which has filled a continent with woe and crime. And the remaining trait of "railings" is verified by the fact that these professed friends of humanity have exhausted the most inhuman stores of vituperation upon a class of Christian people whom none can know without loving for their purity and benevolence. There is no sect that knows how to scold so virulently as the Abolitionists. The apostle adds that they are "men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth." Now it is notoriously the fact that this sect, although claiming to be the special advocates of righteousness, have ever prosecuted their ends by unprincipled and false means. Their party action has been hypocritical and unscrupulous. Their main weapons have been slanders. And the tendency to mendacity has since been illustrated on a scale so grand in the recent War, by falsifications of fact, diplomatic treacheries, and wholesale breaches of covenant, that the accuracy of the apostle's description becomes startling. It would seem that when once a man is swayed by this spirit fully, he is under a fatality to speak untruth, whether he be prime-minister, historian, official of government, or divine.
The last trait of abolitionism which the apostle draws, is one which, at the first glance, strikes the observer with surprise, but which is fully verified by the reality. This is the intensely mercenary spirit of the sect. "Supposing that gain is godliness." Without due reflection, one would suppose that a party animated as much as this is by an intense and sincere fanaticism, and that, a fanaticism of pretended humanity, whatever violences it might commit, would at least be free from the vice of a calculated avarice. But the suppleness of fanaticism in affiliating with every other vice, is not duly appreciated; it is a fact, true, if unexpected, that genuine fanaticism can tolerate any thing except the peculiar object of its hate, and that it is compatible with supreme selfishness. For what is fanaticism but selfishness acting under the forms of pride with its offspring censoriousness, the lust of power, envy, and dogmatism? Modern events verify the apostle's picture: the religion and humanitarianism of abolition are only a covert avarice. The people of the American States are notorious for their worship of wealth, just in proportion as they are swayed by the anti-slavery furor. No party has ever appeared on the stage of Federal politics, whose ends were so avowedly selfish and mercenary. The wrongs of the slave have been the pretext, sectional and personal aggrandizement the true ends. That party, under the phase of "free-soil," has thrown off the mask, and avowed the declaration that the true meaning of their opposition to the rights of Southern masters in the territories is, that "the soil of America belongs to the white man;" and the poor negro, though now a native of it, is begrudged a home and a living upon it. There is no class of people in America which has expended so little of its money for the actual advantage of the black race, as the abolitionists. Usually, the history of the case has been, that they would give of their money, neither to ransom a slave from bondage, nor to aid the cause of African colonization, nor to assist a distressed free negro of their own section: the only use to which they can be induced to apply it is the printing of vituperations against the masters. It was the testimony of the fugitive slaves themselves, that the philanthropy of the Abolitionists extended only to seducing them from their homes; thenceforth their whole thought was to make gain of their godliness. The crowning evidence, however, of the mercenary spirit of this party is in this fact, that their advent to power in the Federal government of the United States has been, according to the testimony of their mutual recriminations, the epoch of an unprecedented reign of peculation and official corruption. Such is the picture of abolitionism as drawn by the Apostle Paul, and verified in America in our day. It is our privilege and our wisdom to obey his closing injunction, "From such withdraw thyself," that we may not become partakers of their sins. From this stern and just denunciation, it may be learned how utterly the New Testament is opposed to the whole doctrine and spirit of the party.
We have now passed in review every passage in the New Testament, in which domestic slavery is directly treated, and we have seen that they every one imply the innocency of the institution. We have discussed many of the evasions by which Abolitionists attempt to escape these testimonies, and have found them utterly unsound. There remain two pleas, of more general application to the New Testament argument, to which the ablest of their advocates seem to attach prime importance. To these we will now attend.
§ 9. The Golden Rule Compatible with Slavery.
One of these general objections to our New Testament argument is the following. They say, Christ could not have intended to authorize slavery, because the tenour and spirit of His moral teachings are opposed to it. The temper He currently enjoins is one of fraternity, equality, love, and disinterestedness. But holding a fellow-being in bondage is inconsistent with all these. Especially is the great "Golden Rule" incompatible with slavery. This enjoins us to do unto our neighbour as we would that he should do unto us. Now, as no slaveholder would like to be himself enslaved, this is a clear proof that we should not hold others in slavery. Hence, the interpretations which seem to find authority for slavery in certain passages of the New Testament, must be erroneous, and we are entitled to reject them without examination. Abolitionists usually advance this with a disdainful confidence, as though he who does not admit its justice were profoundly stupid. But it is exceedingly easy to show that it is a bald instance of petitio principii, and it is founded on a preposterous interpretation of the Golden Rule, which every sensible Sabbath-school boy knows how to explode. Its whole plausibility rests on the à priori assumption of prejudice, that slaveholding cannot but be wicked, and on a determination not to see it otherwise. Our refutation, which is demonstrative, reveals the Socinian origin and Rationalistic character of these opinions. Socinianism harbours loose views of the authority of inspiration, and especially of that of the Old Testament. It scruples not to declare, that these venerable documents contain many admixtures of human error, and wherever it finds in them any thing it does not like, it boldly rejects and repudiates it. Moreover, Socinianism having denied the divinity of our Redeemer Christ, finds itself compelled to attempt an answer to the hard question: Wherein, then, is He greater than Moses, David, or Isaiah? And in what respect does He fulfil those transcendent representations which the Scriptures correctly give of His superiority of person and mission? The answer which orthodoxy makes is plain and good: That it is because He is God as well as man, while they were but sinful men, redeemed and inspired; and that His mission is to regenerate and atone, while theirs was only to teach. But the answer which Socinianism has devised is in part this: Christ was commissioned to reform the moral system of the Old Testament, and to teach a new law of far superior beauty, purity, and benevolence. Thus, they have a corrupt polemical motive to misrepresent and degrade the Old Testament law, in order to make a Nodus vindice dignus, for their imaginary Christ, who does nothing but teach. To effect this, they seize on all such passages as those in the "Sermon on the Mount," which refute Pharisaic glosses, and evolve the true law of love. This is the mint from which abolitionists have borrowed their objections against our Old Testament defence of slaveholding; such as this, that however it may have been allowed to the Hebrews, by their older and ruder law, "because of the hardness of their hearts," it is condemned by the new law of love, taught by Jesus. Now, our refutation (and it is perfect) is, that this law of love was just as fully announced by slaveholding Moses as it is by Jesus; in terms just as full of sweetness, benevolence, and universal fraternity. Yea more, the very words of Jesus cited by them and their Socinian allies, as the most striking instances of the superior mildness and love of His teachings, are in most cases quoted from Moses himself! The authority by which Christ enforced them upon His Jewish auditors was Moses' own! Such is the shameful ignorance of these fanatics concerning the real contents of that Old Testament which they depreciate. Thus, Christ's epitome of the whole law into the two commands to love God and our neighbour, is avowedly quoted from "the law," i. e., the Pentateuch. See Matthew xxii. 36 to 39, and Mark xii. 28 to 33. It may be found in Deut. vi. 4 and 5, and in Levit. xix. 18. Even the scribe of Mark, xii. 32, Pharisee as he was, understood better than these modern Pharisees of abolitionism, that Christ's ethics were but a reproduction of Moses'. He avows the correctness of Christ's rendering of the Pentateuch law, and very intelligently adduces additional evidence of it by evident allusion to 1 Samuel xv. 22, and Hosea vi. 6. Again: does Christ inculcate forgiveness of injuries, benefactions towards enemies, and the embracing of aliens in our philanthropy as well as kindred and fellow-citizens? He does but cite them to the authority of Moses in Levit. xix. 18, Exod. xxiii. 4, 5, Levit. xxiv. 22, Exod. xxii. 21, xxxiii. 9. For here their great prophet himself had taught them that revenge must be left to God, that an embarrassed or distressed enemy must be kindly assisted, and that the alien must be treated in all humane respects as a fellow-citizen, under a lively and sympathetic sense of their own sufferings when they were oppressed aliens in Egypt. The Golden Rule, as stated by our Saviour, is but a practical application of the Mosaic precept "to love our neighbours as ourselves," borrowed from Moses. In Matt. vii. 12, Christ, after giving the Golden Rule, adds, "for this is the law and the prophets." That is, the Golden Rule is the summary of the morality of the Pentateuch and Old Testament prophets. We repeat that there is not one trait of love, of benevolence, of sweet expansive fraternity, of amiable equity, contained in any of Christ's precepts or parables, that is not also found in the Laws of Moses. Their moral teachings are absolutely at one, in principle; and so they must be, if both are from the unchangeable God. To say otherwise is a denial of inspiration; it is infidelity; and indeed abolitionism is infidelity. Our reply, then, is, that Christ's giving the law of love cannot be inconsistent with his authorizing slaveholding; because Moses gave the same law of love, and yet indisputably authorized slaveholding. We defy all the sophisms of the whole crew of the perverse and destitute of the truth, to obscure, much less to rebut this answer, without denying the inspiration and even the common truthfulness of Moses. But that they will not stickle to do: for what do they care for Moses, or Christ either, in comparison of their fanatical idol?
But a more special word should be devoted to the argument from the Golden Rule. The sophism is so bald, and the clear evolution of it has been given so often, even in the humblest manuals of ethics prepared for school-boys, that it is tiresome to repeat its exposure. But as leading Abolitionists continue to advance the oft-torn and tattered folly, the friends of truth must continue to tear it to shreds. The whole reasoning of the Abolitionists proceeds on the absurd idea, that any caprice or vain desire we might entertain towards our fellow-man, if we were in his place, and he in ours, must be the rule of our conduct towards him, whether the desire would be in itself right or not. This absurdity has been illustrated by a thousand instances. On this rule, a parent who, were he a child again, would be wayward and self-indulgent, commits a clear sin in restraining or punishing the waywardness of his child, for this is doing the opposite of what he would wish were he again the child. Judge and sheriff commit a criminal murder in condemning and executing the most atrocious felon; for were they on the gallows themselves, the overmastering love of life would very surely prompt them to desire release. In a word, whatever ill-regulated desire we are conscious of having, or of being likely to have, in reversed circumstances, that desire we are bound to make the rule of our action in granting the parallel caprice of any other man, be he bore, beggar, highwayman, or what not. On this understanding, the Golden Rule would become any thing but golden; it would be a rule of iniquity; for instead of making impartial equity our regulating principle, it would make the accidents of man's criminal caprice the law of his acts. It would become every man's duty to enable all other men to do whatever his own sinful heart, mutatis mutandis, might prompt.