Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/180

Rh for white men, but not for negroes," "A law rendering perpetual the relation between a negro and his master is no wrong, but a right." Then, in reply to some writer in the Tribune, who had asked, "Have they no souls?" he says, "They may have souls for aught he knew to the contrary; so may horses and hogs." Then, when somebody quotes the Bible in behalf of the rights of men, he answers: "The Bible has been vouchsafed to mankind for the purpose of keeping us out of hell-fire and getting us into heaven by the mysteries of faith and the inner life; not to teach us a government political economy," &c. The American Church repudiates the Christian religion when it comes to speak about the African. It does not apply the golden rule to the slave. The "servants" of the New Testament, in the slave language, were "slaves," and the American Church commands them to be obedient to their masters. There must be no marriage—the affectional and passional union of one man and one woman for life— only transient concubinage. Marriage is inconsistent with Slavery, and the slave wedlock in the American Church is not a Sacrament. "Manifest destiny" is the cry of politicians, and that demands Slavery: "the will of God" is the cry of the priests, and it demands the same thing. I am not speaking of ministers of Christianity; they are very different sort; of men, and preach a very different creed from that— only of the ministers in the churches of commerce. According to the popular theology of all Christendom, Jesus Christ came on earth to seek and to save that which is lost. The good physician does not go among the whole, but among the sick. If he were to come here to seek to relieve the slave, the leading men in the American denominations would tell him he came before he was called; he ran before he was sent—that it was no mission from God to break a single American fetter, nor to let the oppressed go free. Is not the "Constitution" above "Conscience," and the Fugitive Slave Bill more holy than the Bible? the Commissioner of more authority than Christ?