Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/128

116 it was from this diseased and pestilential element of society, as the advocates of slavery hold it to be, that the Apostles themselves were chosen. The founder of Christianity Himself wore the form of a carpenter’s son. St. Paul wrought as a tent-maker. He “laboured working with his own hands.” And he laid upon his followers in broad terms, and without making any exception, the injunction “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Judging from his language, we should say that if there was any particular form of society which the Apostle desired to found, it was not one in which the true citizen should be exempt from labour, but one in which labour should be the lot of all, and all should contribute to the common store.

Feudalism tried to prove that the Apostles were gentlemen by birth, entitled to bear coats of arms. They would have to undergo some historical transformation of a similar kind to make them fit founders of the religion professed by the Slave-owning aristocracy of the South.

“Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere labourer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them? Such is the opinion of Chancellor Harper, put forth in his address to the South Carolina Institute. Was it the opinion of a Master who washed His disciples’ feet?