Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/155

Rh slaveholder, the slave-hunter, the slave-driver, the slave-trader, the slave-breeder, not out of his sins, but in his sins. For eighty years the Southern Church has contributed nothing to the theology of America; not a new thought worth the nation's hearing, no great truth on any theological, religious, or moral theme. Nay, there is not a single hymn sung by a Southern voice that finds its way into a Northern church.

Then, too, consider the cruelty. Remember that the South solemnly burns alive, with green wood, criminals from the humblest class of society, as sport to the “gentlemen” of the land. Remember that when an assassin dealt your noble senator a coward's blow, more bitter than death, remember that all the Southern religion said it was a good thing! Thus see the effect of Slavery on your own brothers, in their own churches, called after Christ, with the same Gospel before them, out of which the grand truths of humanity so preach themselves to you and me.

How Slavery degrades the Churches of the North! Some men it silences, and they dare not speak of the great outrage against the democratic institutions of America, against the natural rights of man, the law of God. Other men it makes madmen or idiots in their religious faculty, and they boldly proclaim that this great crime against mankind is a “revelation from Almighty God.”

My ears are not preternaturally delicate, yet from childhood up I could not hear profane words profanely spoke without a shudder; but no swearing of the lowest men I ever encountered in an Ohio railroad car, or met in an Illinois bar-room, has ever filled me with such horror as the profanity of ministers in their pulpits, out of this Bible which they call God's Word, in the name of Jesus whom they affect to worship as God, attempting to justify the foulest wrong which man ever does to man. The State maker Slavery a measure, but the Church baptizes it as a principle.

Look at the Bible Society, counting its money by millions, which has not a New Testament for a slave. Look at the Foreign Missionary Society; where are its Evangelists to preach the “acceptable year of the Lord” unto American heathen, who fill up whole Galilees of Southern Gentiles? Look at the American Tract Society;