Page:An epistle to the clergy of the southern states, Grimké, 1836.djvu/6

6 visit our guilty country and behold the Christianity of our slave holding states, would not his language be, "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, enslave your fellow men, but I say unto you "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you," and set your captives free!

The sentiment—

is the sentiment of human nature. It is written, by the Almighty, on the soul, as a part of its very being. So that, urge on the work of death as we may, in the mad attempt to convert a free agent into a machine, a man into a thing, and nature will still cry out for freedom. Hear the testimony of James McDowell, in the House of Delegates, in Virginia in 1832.

I need not enter into an elaborate proof that Jewish servitude, as permitted by God, was as different from American slavery, as Christianity is from heathenism. The limitation laws respecting strangers and servants, entirely prohibited cruelty and oppression, whereas in our slave states, "," and the law throws her protecting ægis over the master, by refusing to receive under any circumstances, the testimony of a colored man against a white, except to subserve the interests of the owner.—"It is manifest," says the author (a Christian Minister) of "A calm enquiry into the countenance afforded by the Scriptures to the system of British Colonial Slavery" "that the Hebrews had no word in their language equivalent to slave in the West Indian use of that term. The word עבד obed, is applied to both bond servants and hired, to kings and prophets, and even to the Saviour of the world. It was a general designation for any person who rendered service of any kind to God or man. But the term, in the Colonial sense, could not be at all applied to a freeman." The