A SERMON ON SLAVERY.
Delivered by the undersigned in Temperance Hall in Knoxville, on Sabbath, 8th of June, 1856, to a large and attentive audience, composed of citizens and strangers—some from the North and some from the South—occupying one hour and a quarter in the delivery. It is published as it was delivered, without an omission or an alteration. Respectfully, &c.,
W. G. Brownlow.
Text.—"Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed."—1 Tim. vi. 1.
Whoever reflects upon the nature of man, will find him to be almost entirely the creature of circumstances: his habits and sentiments are, in a great measure, the growth of adventitious circumstances and causes; hence the endless variety and condition of our species. That race of men in our country known as Abolitionists, Free-soilers, or Black Republicans, look upon any deviation from the constant round in which they have been spinning out the thread of their existence as a departure from nature's great system; and, from a known principle of our nature, the first impulse of these fanatics is to condemn. It is thus that the man born and matured in a free State looks upon slavery as unnatural and horrible, and in violation of every law of justice or humanity! And it is not uncommon to hear bigots of this character, in their churches at the North, imploring the Divine wrath to shower down the consuming fires of heaven on that great Sodom and Gomorrah of the New World, all that section of country south of Mason and Dixon's line, where this unjust practice prevails.
When an unprejudiced and candid mind examines into the past condition of our race, and learns the fact which history develops, as the inquirer will, that a majority of mankind were slaves, he will be driven to the melancholy reflection, that the world, when first peopled by God himself, was not a world of freemen, but of slaves!
Slavery was really established and sanctioned by Divine authority among even God's chosen people, the favored children of Israel. Abraham, the founder of this interesting nation, and the chosen servant of the Most High, was the owner of more slaves than any cotton-planter in South Carolina or Mississippi. That magnificent shrine, the gorgeous temple of Solomon, commenced and completed under the pious promptings of religion and ancient Free-Masonry, was reared alone by the hands of slaves! Egypt's venerable and enduring pyramids were reared by the hands of slaves! Involuntary servitude, reduced to a science, existed in ancient Assyria and Babylon. The ten tribes of Israel were carried off to Assyria by Shalmanezer, and the two strong tribes of Judah were subsequently carried in triumph by Nebuchadnezzar to end their days in Babylon as slaves, and to labor to adorn the city. Ancient Phœnicia and Carthage were literally overrun with slavery, because the slave population outnumbered the free and the owners of slaves! The Greeks and Trojans, at the siege of Troy, were attended with large numbers of their slaves. Athens, and Sparta, and Thebes—indeed, the whole Grecian and Roman worlds—had more slaves than freemen. And in those ages which succeeded the extinction of the Roman empire in the West, slaves were the most numerous class. Even in the days of civilization and Christian light which revolutionized governments, laboring serfs and abject slaves were distributed throughout Eastern Europe, and a portion of Western Asia—conclusively showing that slavery existed over these boundless regions. In China, the worst forms of slavery have existed since its earliest history. And when we turn to Africa, we find slavery, in all its most horrid forms, existing throughout its whole extent, the slaves outnumbering the freemen at least three to one. Looking, then, to the whole world, we may with confidence assert, that slavery in its worst forms subdues by far the largest portion of the human race!
Now, the inquiry is, how has slavery risen and thus spread over our whole earth? We answer, by the laws of war, the state of property, the feebleness of governments, the thirst for bargain and sale, the increase of crime, and last, but not least, by and with the consent and approbation of Deity!