Page:The duties of masters and slaves respectively (1845).djvu/25

21 provision when by age or infirmity disabled from work. An unfeeling, cruel master, who over-works his servants, or who allows them not a sufficiency of food, shelter, and clothing, is withholding from them that which is just and equal, and he cannot be a Christian.

But the master owes to his servants, 2, Kind and considerate treatment. Kindness is due from us to all men, but especially should it temper the authority we exercise over those subjected to our control: so says the inspired Apostle. "Ye masters! do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening; knowing that your Master, also, is in heaven. Neither is there respect of persons with him." Eph. 6:9. A rash, boisterous, passionate, or vindictive master is a great affliction to faithful servants. A master has, it is true, the power to treat his servants harshly, but he has not the right: and if he does so treat them, he is not a Christian; he is flying in the very teeth of God's law, and trampling its precepts under foot. But a master owes to his servants,

3, Due instruction and care for their morals, even if this life only be contemplated.

Our servants are human beings, our fellow men: of different complexion from us, it is true; but they are men, like ourselves, subject to God's law, conscious of the difference between right and wrong, and responsible for their actions. Neither the negro nor the white man can be truly happy, nor useful to the entire extent of his capacity, without due moral training. Our servants are entitled to receive at our hands faithful, regular, and minute instruction, and that from their earliest childhood, up to maturity, even to old age, and in all that pertains to good conduct and pure morals. On this point I am painfully convinced there is a great defect in the practice of the church.

Wicked men, who are reckless in their own conduct, may be expected to neglect the moral instruction of their slaves, for they neglect the instruction of their own children. But a Christian master is bound to regard his slaves as moral agents, whose well being depends on their own conduct, and whose conduct will flow from the principles he instils into them, or allows them to imbibe. Servants, just as regularly and as faithfully as our children, ought to be instructed in all moral duties, such as honesty, truth, industry, temperance, chastity, and self government in all respects. When guilty of a sin, they should be admonished; and, if need be, corrected, with kindness, but with inflexible firmness. Nothing would tend more to improve the moral character, and the entire condition of servants; nothing would contribute more fully, in the long run, to increase their value as servants, (because it would cherish all the virtues which make their service to be depended on,) than would the