Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/62

50 now look at the effects of slavery on the intellectual, moral, and religious development of the people. The effect on the intellectual, moral, and religious condition of the slave is easily understood. He is only continued in slavery by restraining him from the civilization of mankind in this age. His mind, conscience, soul—all his nobler powers—must be kept in a state of inferior development, otherwise he will not be a slave in the nineteenth century, and in the United States. In comparison with the intellectual culture of their masters the slaves are a mass of barbarians; still more emphatically, when compared with the free institutions of the North, they are savages. This is not a mere matter of inference, the fact is substantiated by the notorious testimony of slave-holders themselves. In 1834 the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia reported that the slaves "may justly be considered the heathen of this country, and will bear comparison with the heathen of any part of the world." "They are destitute of the privileges of the Gospel, and ever will be under the present state of things." "In all the slave States," says the Synod, "there are not twelve men exclusively devoted to the religious instruction of the Negroes." Of the regular ministers "but a very small portion pay any attention to them." "We know but of five churches in the slave-holding States built exclusively for their use," and "there is no sufficient room for them in the white churches for their accommodation." "They are unable to read, as custom, or law, and generally both, prohibit their instruction. They have no Bible—no family altars; and when in affliction, sickness, or death, they have no minister to address to them the consolations of the Gospel, nor to bury them with solemn and appropriate services." They may sometimes be petted and caressed as children and toys, they are never treated as men.