Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/67

Rh Bouls; Connecticut, 297,675. In 1836, South. Carolina had 364 ministers; Connecticut, 498.

In 1834, there were in the slave States but 82,532 scholars in the Sunday schools; in the free States 504,835; in the single State of New York, 161,768.

A cause which keeps 3,000,000 men in bondage in America and in the nineteenth century, has more subtle influences than those just now considered. It not only prevents the extension of education among the people, but affects the doctrines taught them, even the doctrines taught in the name of God. Christianity is nominally the public religion of America; not of the Government, which extends protection alike to all modes of worship, of the Indian, the Mormon, and the Jew, but of the people. I will not touch the doctrines of the sects, in which Christian differs from Christian, but come to what is general among Christians—a part of the universal religion implied also in human nature itself. All sects, as such, theoretically agree that the most important practical doctrine of Christianity is ; to all men, of all ages, races, and conditions. As the Christian idea of God rises far above the Heathen or Hebrew conception thereof, so the Christian idea of man^s relation to man far transcends the popular notions of human duty which formerly had prevailed. God is "," the God of love; Man, whom we are bound to love as ourselves, and treat as we would be treated. Christian piety, or love of God, involves Christian morality, or love of man.

I lay aside the peculiar theoretical doctrines of the sects, that are preached everywhere, and ask : can the Christian relations of human brotherhood, the Christian duty of love to men, be practically preached in the slave States? I only publish an open secret in saying it is impossible. The forms of Christianity may be preached, not its piety, not its morality, not even its philosophy, or its history. If a man holds slaves in practice and justifies the deed in theory, how can he address an audience of slave-holders and teach them the duty of loving others as themselves? He cannot consistently teach that doctrine, nor they consistently hear.

The doctrines of the public religion are always modified by national habits, history, institutions, and ideas. Chris-