istinguished
draughter of that address comes to answer the objection, "God's word
sanctions slavery, and it can not, therefore, be sinful," he forgets the
essential limitation of the proposition which he had undertaken to
establish, and proceeds to prove that the Bible condemns slaveholding,
and not merely the kind or system of slavery which prevails in this
country. The argument drawn from the Scriptures, he says, needs no
elaborate reply. If the Bible sanctions slavery, it sanctions the kind
of slavery which then prevailed; the atrocious system which authorized
masters to starve their slaves, to torture them, to beat them, to put
them to death, and to throw them into their fish ponds. And he justly
asks, whether a man could insult the God of heaven worse than by saying
he does not disapprove of such a system? Dr. Channing presents strongly
the same view, and says, that an infidel would be laboring in his
vocation in asserting that the Bible does not condemn slavery. These
gentlemen, however, are far too clear-sighted not to discover, on a
moment's reflection, that they have allowed their benevolent feelings to
blind them to the real point at issue. No one denies that the Bible
condemns all injustice, cruelty, oppression, and violence. And just so
far as the laws then existing authorized these crimes, the Bible
condemned them. But what stronger argument can be presented, to prove
that the sacred writers did not regard slaveholding as in itself sinful,
than that while they condemn all unjust or unkind treatment (even
threatening), on the part of masters towards their slaves, they did not
condemn slavery itself? While they required the master to treat his
slave according to the law of love, they did not command him to set him
free. The very atrocity, therefore, of the system which then prevailed,
instead of weakening the argument, gives it tenfold strength. Then, if
ever, when the institution was so fearfully abused, we might expect to
hear the interpreters of the divine will, saying that a system which
leads to such results is the concentrated essence of all crimes, and
must be instantly abandoned, on pain of eternal condemnation. This,
however, they did not say, and we can not now force them to say it. They
treated the subject precisely as they did the cruel despotism of the
Roman emperors. The licentiousness, the injustice, the rapine and
murders of those wicked men, they condemned with the full force of
divine authori