Page:The duties of masters and slaves respectively (1845).djvu/9

5 from pulpits, which my warm personal friends were desirous I should occupy. I have been refused subscriptions to our Bethel church, because it was to be erected in a slave-holding city: and, on one occasion, after having, on the Sabbath, by invitation from the pastor, preached in a certain church, and assisted at the communion-table, I was, a few days afterwards, insulted, by the thrusting into my hands of a set of resolutions, (duly attested as having been passed at a church meeting,) expressive of their abhorrence of slavery and of slaveholders, and expressive also of their conviction that deep repentance and humiliation of spirit before God were required of them, for the great sin of having recognized a slave-holder as a Christian and a minister, and attended on the dispensation of the word and ordinances at his hands. These resolutions I still have in my possession.

All these several considerations combine to place this matter in a very serious light. If these men are right, then we are wrong; and if so, then the southern portion of the church is guilty of a great sin, and her ministers are guilty of a still greater sin, in that they not only forbear to denounce the institution as sinful, and forbear to call upon their hearers to repent of it, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, by setting all their slaves free at once, but in that they also participate in the guilt of it, as well as connive at it; since ministers, no less than others, employ slaves as servants; and whether those slaves be their own property or merely hired, whether obtained by inheritance or purchase, matters not, as to the principle involved. If to hold slaves be a sin, ministers of the gospel ought to know it; and knowing it, they ought to teach it, no matter what might be the legal penalties, or the personal hazard, of so doing. Your laws can never render murder, adultery, theft, or Sabbath-breaking right, because God's word forbids these crimes: and God's authority is paramount. Before Heaven's decisions mere human law must bow. If, then, God's holy word condemns slavery, the minister of God is bound to condemn it, and to call on his hearers to clear themselves of all participation in it, whatever be the risk attendant on so doing: for what God condemns, human law can never make right.

If, on the contrary, God's holy book does not condemn domestic servitude; if, so far from this, it does distinctly recognize the institution, and lay down directions for the conduct of Christians in both or in either of the relations, as masters or as servants, then the institution is not, in itself and necessarily, sinful, whatever may be the evils individually connected with it, or springing from it. If so, then a man may be a servant, or he may be the owner of many servants, and still be a