These remarks may suffice by way of an introduction, and they will serve to indicate the course we intend to pursue, if the announcement of the text has not already done that. Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, &c. The word here rendered servants means slaves, converted to the Christian faith; and the word rendered yoke signifies the state of slavery in which Christ and the apostles found the world involved when the Christian Church was first organized. By the word rendered masters we are to understand the heathen masters of those Christianized slaves. Even these, in such circumstances, and under such domination, are commanded to treat their masters with all honor and respect, that the name of God, by which they were called, and the doctrine of God, to wit, Christianity, which they had professed, might not be blasphemed, might not be evil spoken of in consequence of their improper conduct. Civil rights are never abolished by any communication from God's Spirit; and those fiery bigots at the North who propose to abolish the institution of slavery in this country are not following the dictates of God's Spirit or law. The civil state in which a man was before his conversion, is not altered by that conversion; nor does the grace of God absolve him from any claims which the State, his neighbor, or lawful owner may have had on him. All these outward things continue unaltered: hence, if a man be under the sentence of death for murder, and God see fit to convert him, he is not released from suffering the extreme penalty of the law!
The Church of Christ, when originally constituted, claimed no right, as an ecclesiastical organization, to interfere in any way with the civil government. This was the principle upon which the Church was founded, as announced by its immortal Head. When Christ was doomed by a cruel Roman law to its most ignominious condemnation, he did not so much as resist it, because it was law, nor did he complain of it as oppressive.
"Then Pilate entered into the judgment-hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?... Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence.... To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth."—John xviii. 33-37.
When Christ came into the world on the business of his mission, he found the Jewish people subject to the dominion of the Roman kingdom; and in no instance did he counsel the Jews to rebellion, or incite them to throw off the Roman yoke, as do the vagabond philanthropists of the North in reference to the existing laws of the United States upon the subject of slavery. Christ was, by lineal descent, "The King of the Jews," but he did not assert his temporal power, but actually refused to be crowned in that right.
Under the Roman law, human liberty was held by no more certain tenure than the whim of the sovereign power, protected by no definite constitution. Slavery constituted the most powerful and essential element of the government, and that slavery was of the most cruel character, and gave to the master absolute discretion over the lives of the slaves. Notwithstanding all this, Christ did not make war upon the existing government, nor denounce the rulers for conferring such powers, although he looked upon cruel legislation in the light in which the character of his mission required. And although the Church itself was not what it should have been, in no instance did Christ ever denounce that. The only denunciations the Saviour ever uttered, were those against the doctors and lawyers, ministers and expounders of the Jewish code of ecclesiastical law.
But allow us to present the case of the Apostle Paul, as proof more palpable and overwhelming, on this very point. He had been falsely accused, cruelly imprisoned, and tyrannically arraigned; and that, too, before a licentious governor, an unjust and dissipated ruler, and an unprincipled infidel. The Roman law in force at the time arrested the freedom of speech, denied the rights of conscience, and even forbade the free expression of opinion in all matters conflicting with the provisions of the laws of the Roman government. In his defence before Felix, Paul never so much as speaks of Roman law, though well acquainted with it, but "he reasoned of righteousness, and temperance, and the judgment to come." Here was a suitable occasion to condemn the regulations and to question the authority of the villainous statutes of Rome; but instead of this, Paul plead his rights under the unjust regulations of the law. He charged Felix with official delinquency, with personal crime, and, as a man, he held him up to public scorn, and threatened him with the vengeance of God! He appealed to the law, and justified himself by the law. He claimed the rights of a "Roman citizen"—demanded the protection due to a Roman citizen—and he scorned to find fault with the law, cruel and unjust as he knew it to be. And the consequence was, that the licentious infidel who ruled, "trembled."
The views we have here presented are not at all new, but have been uniformly acted upon by evangelical Christians, in all ages of the world. Since the days of St. Paul and Simon Peter, no reformer has appeared who was more violent than that good and great man, Martin Luther. John Calvin possessed a revolutionary spirit—he fought every thing he believed to be wrong—he was unyielding in his disposition, and unmitigated in his severity. Yet neither of these great men ever made war upon the existing laws of their respective countries. John Wesley was the great reformer of the past century—he reformed the whole ecclesiastical machinery of the modern Church of Christ; and his doctrines, and manner of conducting revivals, are leading elements of American Christianity. But Mr. Wesley never made war upon the English government, under which he lived and died. On the other hand, it is a matter of serious complaint among sectarians not friendly to the spread of Methodism, that Wesley wrote elaborately against the war of the Revolution. He was devoted to law and order, and he deemed it a religious duty to oppose all resistance to existing laws. In his troubles at Savannah, Georgia, like Paul before the licentious governor, he appealed to the law, and sought by every means in his power to be tried under the law, asking only the privilege of being heard in his own defence! And it was, in all the instances we have mentioned, "that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed," to quote the expressive language of the text, that existing laws have been adhered to by the propagators of gospel truth.
The essential principles of the great moral law delivered to Moses by God himself, are set forth in what is called the tenth commandment, in the 20th chapter of Exodus: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." Now, the only true interpretation of this portion of the Word of God is, that the species of property mentioned are lawful, and that all men are forbid to disturb others in the lawful enjoyment of their property. "Man-servants and maid-servants" are distinctly consecrated as property, and guaranteed to man for his exclusive benefit—proof irresistible that slavery was thus ordained by God himself. We have seen learned dissertations from the pens of Abolitionists, saying, that the term "servant," and not "slave," is used here. To this we reply, that both the Hebrew and Greek words translated "servant," mean also "slave," and are more frequently used in this sense than in the former. Besides, the Hebrew Scriptures teach us, that God especially authorized his peculiar people to purchase "bondmen for ever;" and if to be in bondage for ever does not constitute slavery, we yield the point.
The visionary notions of piety and philanthropy entertained by many men at the North, lead them to resist the Fugitive Slave Law of this government, and even to violate the tenth commandment, by stealing our "men-servants and maid-servants," and running them into what they call free territory. Nay, the villainous piety of some leads them to contribute Sharpe's Rifles and Holy Bibles, to send the uncircumcised Philistines of New England into Kansas and Nebraska, to shoot down the Christian owners of slaves, and then to perform religious ceremonies over their dead bodies! Clergymen lay aside their Bibles at the North, and females, as in the case of that model beauty, Harriet Beecher Stowe, unsex themselves to carry on this horrid and slanderous warfare against slaveholders of the South! And English travellers, steeped to the nose and chin in prejudices against this government and our institutions, have written books upon the subject. The Halls, Hamiltons, Trollopes, and Miss Martineaus, et ed omne genus, all have misrepresented us! These English writers all denounce slavery, and eulogize Democracy; as if an Englishman could be a Democrat, in the modern, vulgar sense of the term, and be a consistent man!
But we do not propose, in this brief discourse, to enter into any defence of the African slave trade. Although the evils of it are greatly exaggerated, its evils and cruelties, its barbarities, are not justified by the most ultra slaveholders of this age. The vile traffic was abolished by the United States, even before the British Parliament prohibited it. All the powers in the world have subsequently prohibited this trade—some of the more influential and powerful of them declaring it piracy, and covering the African seas with armed vessels to prevent it!