Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/22

 of western Europe still preserves in its language the record of the barbarous traffic in  'Slaves,' "

From the account here given we may see how widespread, both in ancient and in modern times, has been the existence of slavery. And the reason already assigned sufficiently explains a fact which would seem otherwise so strange, viz., that slavery, or the disposition to enslave one's fellow-men, springs directly and naturally from the love of rule, which evil passion is the immediate offspring of that self-love which is the essential principle of evil. Hence we see that slavery has been almost as extensive and as universal as evil itself. Here, then, we have the true answer to the question, "Why does God not at once send down His thunderbolts and break all slave-chains at a blow?—why does He permit such wrongs?" He does not destroy it for the same reason that He does not destroy any other evil and all evils: He permits it for the same reason that He permits the existence of evil at all in the world. The essential reason for the permission of any particular evil is to prevent a greater; and the reason for the permission of sin itself, is because it was the only alternative to the destruction of man's mental liberty, and the consequent non-existence of any rational and intelligent creatures in the universe. The possession of reason or rationality, together with mental liberty, is essential to man as man: without it he would be a stock or a statue, or but as one of the lower animals,—either inanimate or irrational. But rationality and liberty imply the power of thought and of choice—the power to turn to this side or that, to