Page:Does the Bible sanction American slavery?.djvu/63

Rh enemy and oppressor of Israel. And this patriotism, narrow as it seems to our enlarged perceptions, was a step in the training of humanity midway between devotion to the tribe and devotion to the kind. The rivulet found its river; perhaps, at some far distant day, the river may find its sea; and as the tribe was merged in the nation, the nation may be merged in the community of man. Already the sharp outline of national distinction begins to be blurred by religious, intellectual, and commercial union. The time may come when our views may seem as narrow and our conduct as selfish to posterity, as the views of antiquity seem narrow and its conduct selfish to us. However that may be, whether the movement which has been going on since the beginning of history has now found its term or not, gradual progress, in which human effort should play its part, not miraculous anticipation of the future, was, as we have before said, the rule of Providence in dealing with the Hebrews as well as with other races. And a Hebrew broke no law of affection known to him, he did no violence to his moral nature, no injury to any one who to him was a brother, by holding a man of another nation as a slave.

An American even if he had lived in the time of Moses, and under the Mosaic law, would not have been allowed by the spirit of that law to sell or hold as a slave a man or woman as white and essentially of the same race as himself, much less his own child. But the Americans do not live in the time of Moses, nor under the Mosaic law. They live in times when the brotherhood of man is known, and the duty of