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REPLY 
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS' REVIEW OF 
 REV. HENRY J. VAN DYKE'S SERMON 
 
 ON 
 
 BIBLICAL SLAYEM; 
 
 ALSO, 
 
 TO HIS ^TUER AETICLES ON THE SAME SUBJECT, 
 PUBLISHED IN "THE WOELD." 
 
 . BY 
 
 J. HOLMES AGNEW. 
 
 / NEW YORK: 
 D.'APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
 1861. 
 
 Price :— Single copy, 10 cents ; 100 copies, $6 ; 500 copies, $25. 
 
7'7- 
 
 y^n 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The following pages were prepared for "The 
 World," and wiitten successively as Professor Lewis' 
 articles appeared. His treatise, liowever, was extended 
 so far beyond a simple answer to Mr. Van Dyke, that, 
 by the time he reached his conclusion, it was thought 
 undesirable, then, to admit this reply into "The 
 World's" columns. 
 
 The "American Society for Promoting National 
 Unity " having desired and unanimously recommended 
 the issue in its present form, it is thus given to the 
 public. It ^vill, probably, not reach all the readers of 
 "The World," as was desirable, yet it is intended to 
 give it as wide circulation as possible ; and it is hoped 
 that those who have read Professor Lewis' series, wiU 
 also read the Reply. 
 
 It is an independent investigation, the Professor's 
 articles and the Scriptures ha\dng been the basis ; and 
 all the author asks is an unbiassed judgment on the 
 argument. He thinks himself standing securely on the 
 Bible ground. If not, he has no desire to stand at all. 
 
 J. H. A. 
 
 April Wtk, 18G1. 
 
 Enteeed, according to Act of Congress, In tho ycnr ISGl, by D. Appleton & Compakt, In the 
 Clerk's Ofllco of tho District Court for tho Southern District of New York. 
 
REPLY 
 
 GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 
 
 " If ever the moral aspects of the slavery question are to 
 be discussed in its roots," says Professor Lewis, " this would 
 seem a proper time for such discussion. There is a right and 
 a wrong somewhere in this matter, and we think they can be 
 found." My object, in this review, will be to sift the argu- 
 ment of Prof. Lewis, that the chaff, if any, may be blown off, 
 and only the clean wheat of truth remain ; to be a pearl-diver, 
 and, if in the shell there be a pearl, put it into the casket of 
 Truth ; if only a shell, throw it away. It is best always to 
 grant to an antagonist all that he may fairly claim, all that 
 would strike a candid and unprejudiced mind as fairly his due ; 
 and then, on the points, where you have the manifest advan- 
 tage, ply him with energy. Whatever conclusion is reached, 
 after a fair examination of the question, we mean to accept, 
 without regard to North or South, Kepublican or Democrat. 
 "We know that easy as to cut the air is it, to address readers 
 thoroughly prepossessed with the sentiments you intend to advo- 
 cate ; and hard, on the other hand, as to strike your hand on 
 the edge of a Damascus blade, to utter opinions counter to 
 those cherished by your hearers. We accept the office, how- 
 ever, relying on the good judgment and the patience of our 
 readers, to hear us through. "We shall arrive at a conclusion, 
 which, it is thought, will commend itself to the conviction of 
 the Christian church. 
 
4 GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 
 
 In tlie Professor's initial paragraph, there is too much of 
 the inferential and of the ad captandum^ too little of the rigid 
 exactitude of naked truth, too higli a laudation of tlie " sublim- 
 ity of that great, conscientious vote of the iNorth," to which he, 
 doubtless, contributed. It might, with propriety, be asked : 
 Who have been " breaking up the Union, for the sake of " anti- 
 slavery ? "Who is " giving ease to the consciences of those " 
 who would violate compacts, speak evil of dignities, despise 
 governments, and defy the powers that be ? "Who is " virtually 
 justifying their proceedings ? " The Professor is doing these 
 things quite as manifestly, to many minds, at least, if not to his 
 own, as Mr. Yan Dyke, in his sermons, is sustaining the ex- 
 tremists of the South. It may as well, also, be here premised, 
 that Prof. Lewis and myself are, as I have presumed, of one 
 mind in respect to the supreme authority of the Scriptures, as 
 a standard of truth, and that we alike reject the fatal dogma, 
 that human instinct or sentiment, or even conscience, is deter- 
 minative of moral questions. Men must, indeed, obey con- 
 science, for, if they do not, they do wrong {7'elati'vely) ; yet, in 
 obeying conscience, they do not necessarily nor always do right, 
 {absolutely) the rigid. 
 
 Prof. Lewis first directs attention to a " fallacy to be found 
 in most Northern productions similar to Mr. Yan Dyke's," i. e., 
 the adoption of a 'Dia ^nedia, in which the writer avoids the 
 " odiousness of the extremest ground of the extreme South," 
 and yet palliates the Southern idea and action, and antagonizes 
 the ^Northern. He " distrusts the maxim in medio Veritas,'''' and 
 says " it is not scriptural." " Truth seldom is precisely in the 
 middle." In reply to this, it may suffice to say that in medio, 
 midway, was never intended by tlie author of the maxim, nor 
 any one else who ever quoted it, to mean that the truth was 
 ^^ precisely ^'' in the middle, but somewhere off from the two 
 extremes ; as we say of a ship at sea, " she was mid-ocean," 
 not intimating that she was precisely half-way between the two 
 coasts of Europe and America. And then, as to the maxim 
 being " not scriptural," I must beg leave to differ from my 
 learned friend. ISTot that it occurs verhatim in the Scriptures, 
 but that it is of tlie s])irit of the Scriptures, and that the apos- 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 5 
 
 ties, especially Paul, the learned and the bold, acted it out. 
 When a clearly-defined wrong was done, when an indisputable 
 principle, known and read of all men, was at stake, none was 
 more decided and denunciatory than he ; but when it was a 
 question not involving a fixed and immutable principle, though 
 of grave importance, he took the via media, the middle ground, 
 and " became all things to all men." His letters abundantly 
 illustrate this, and his reproof of Peter at Antioch confirms it. 
 And what did the college of apostles at Jerusalem, in respect 
 to a question of Gentile rights referred to them ? What but 
 walk on the via media ? 
 
 To prove the changes in the line of direction of the via 
 media, and the tendency toward the extreme, it is afiirmed 
 that " every new move of the stronger extremist has drawn 
 the mediist after him ; " the direction, because of the corrup- 
 tion of human nature, being downward, from moderatism to 
 extremism. So, then, it follows that the " Republican party," 
 which has, in the Professor's judgment, swallowed up the Aboli- 
 tionists, as Aaron's serpents did those of the Egyptian magi- 
 cians, must, after a while, evomit and be itself the eaten instead 
 of the eater ; i. e., must, as mediists, succumb to the power of 
 the extremists ; or else the dogma of the Professor is not true ; 
 or else, if the contrary is the fact in the ISTorth, and the medi- 
 ists have controlled the extremists, and reduced them to " a 
 mere handful, without influence, without votes, and ever grow- 
 ing smaller," then there is no reason why the same may not be 
 true in the South, and the mediists there also (untrammelled, 
 unagitated, undisturbed by the I^orth, and left to work out 
 their own institutions under Providence) finally control and 
 subdue the extremists. 
 
 After these preliminaries, and before coming directly to his 
 argument, the Professor concedes that, " as against the Aboli- 
 tionists, Mr. Yan Dyke has borne himself right valiantly," 
 and proved the " anti-biblical and infidel tendency " of their 
 doctrine, because they attack slavery " on the ground of mere 
 natural right." He also " concurs, at least exegetically, in Mr. 
 Yan Dyke's view of 1 Tim. vi,, and other passages." Now it 
 seems to us clear that, if Mr. Yan Dyke's argument is good as 
 
6 GOVEENMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 
 
 against Abolitionists, in Prof. Lewis' judgment, he must mean 
 either that it is good as against raids, personal liberty bills, in- 
 citements to insurrection, etc., or as against the Abolitionism 
 which Mr. Yan Djke himself set up and defined as consisting 
 in the " belief that slaveholding is a sin, is onorally wrong.''^ 
 " This is its characteristic doctrine and its strength," says the 
 author of the sermon. If tlie latter, then Mr. Yan Dyke's 
 argument is good against Prof. L. and all who sympathize with 
 him in the sentiments of his reply. For, if that reply is an 
 argument for any thing, it is assuredly an argument, or an at- 
 tempt at one, for the moral wrong, the sin of slavery. And, 
 moreover, it is apparent that Mr. Yan Dyke is contending, not 
 against an Abolitionism which " attacks slavery on the ground 
 of mere natural right," but against one which maintains the 
 moral wrong, the sin of slavery, on the groimd of the Bible 
 and of Christianity. Hence his appeal is to the Bible, in order 
 to meet his antagonists just on their own ground, and to sweep 
 from beneath them the very foundations on which they so tri- 
 umphantly claim to stand. And precisely here is the essence, 
 the strength, the vi7nis of that conscientious conviction of the 
 wrong of slavery which permeates and contaminates the very 
 vitals of a portion of the I^orthern church. Tlien, again, the 
 argument of Mr. Yan Dyke on the infidel tendency of abolition 
 is good against anti-slavery mediism even, which rejects bibli- 
 cal evidence when it comes in conflict with human instincts, 
 generally adventitious, educated feelings or sensibilities. And 
 to us it seems there is rather a tendency toward this in the re- 
 ply, if not in the author. The concession made to the soundness 
 of Mr. Yan D.'s exegesis of 1 Tim. vi., is immediately qualified 
 by the presumption that the Professor sees " an interior spirit 
 in those texts," " an apostolic stand-point," " a changed condi- 
 tion of the world," which render the exegesis, though abso- 
 lutely true, " the letter that killeth, instead of the spirit that 
 giveth life." Although cautioned that " it is vain to say that 
 this is a mere transcendental fancy, by which the force of 
 Scripture may be ever turned aside," we cannot avoid the fear 
 that the Professor became involved in a nebular transcenden- 
 talism, which, by some powerful rcflcctmg telescope of his own. 
 
GOVERNJIENT AND OWNERSHIP. 7 
 
 might be resolved for bim into brilliant twinkling stars, and 
 yet leave all ordinary observers the vision of nothing but a 
 well-defined mass standing out boldly and clear to the percep- 
 tion. There is, indeed, " the letter that killeth," and there is, 
 also, "'the spirit that giveth " not life, but death ; death to 
 truth, death to the Bible, death even to Christ. ]^ow, it is 
 very manifest to every biblical scholar, and such Dr. Lewis 
 confessedly is, that the passage in Tim., treating solely and 
 simply of mutual duties arising from the relations of moral 
 beings, is as wide asunder from any of those cases in which 
 " inspiration itself warns us of danger," of the literal, or let- 
 ter-interpretation, as heaven from earth. The " letter," the 
 literal meaning here, is just what we want, what we must take. 
 "We dare not go beyond it. It is the mutual duties of master 
 and slave, in the plainest possible terms. 'No fancy, no 
 " spirit," but just what the apostle says. One might imagine 
 that old Origen himself had become transmigrated and em- 
 bodied in the humanity that would be delving just here for an 
 underlying, invisible " spirit." 
 
 "We are glad, now, to reach the scriptural argument j)roper. 
 On the part of Professor Lewis, it lies in the distinction be- 
 tween lordsM]) and ownersMjp, or government and property^ 
 and in the fact that the latter characterizes Southern Slavery, 
 while the former was the peculiarity of the patriarchal and 
 Homeric. 
 
 The argument from the O. T. is pronounced " utterly worth- 
 less, even as against the Abolitionist," because the slavery 
 which awakens his antagonism is so essentially, so monstrously 
 different from what is called slavery in the O. T., that no fair 
 comparison can be made. Though it should be proven, is the 
 intimation, that slavery existed and was recognized under the 
 patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, it would be no justifica- 
 tion of American slavery. Tlie latter is then portrayed as con- 
 sisting predominantly in the idea of property^ and that idea 
 realized in the perpetration of all manner of crimes ; in the 
 " crushing out of humanity," " the outcasting from the State," 
 " the reduction of a -person to a ihing^ a chattel, an animated 
 tool. The former as a servitude, whose predominant idea was 
 
8 govi:knment and owneeshtp. 
 
 government merely, and that idea realized in exclusion of caste, 
 no-sale, kindness, sympathy, familiarity of social life, illus- 
 trated by tlie_relation between Abraham and his slave Eliezer. 
 Then is it trimnphantly asked : " Have we elevated the idea 
 of servitude ? " " Have we been improving it ? " " Then 
 may we quote the patriarchs." We have next, consecutively, 
 the following statements and propositions : " both ideas, lord- 
 ship and ownership, enter into slavery," and " the predomi- 
 nance of the one over the other determines its character." 
 " The claim of power, even when wrongful, is perfectly con- 
 sistent with human dignity." Power, the most despotic, is not 
 degrading, though it drive its subject, against his will, to be 
 murdered " at the cannon's mouth," and to leave behind him 
 a lone widow and helpless children in abject poverty. " To be 
 owned is degrading." " To be property, and nothing more, is 
 dehumanizing, both to owner and owned." 
 
 The gist of Dr. Lewis' reply is just here ; and yet, in these 
 statements, and the stirring appeals growing out of them, we 
 seem to find fallacy, unfairness, assumption, and assertion. 
 In eloquent utterings the Professor dwells, at length, on the 
 degradation, the dehumanization, the every thing that is ab- 
 horrent both to Christ and humanity, which are involved in 
 the idea of ownership, and that the essence, the characteristic 
 of American Slavery. Humanity shrinks from the idea of 
 property in man. Jesus feels it, Christianity abhors it, as 
 " brutalizing the race." All this is eloquent, touching, tender. 
 Yet we are here chiefly to reason and to expound ; and the 
 main question is. Are these things so ? 
 
 Is ownership of a fellow-man degrading ? Is this a univer- 
 sal idea ? Does it belong to the race ? History says not ; but 
 the opposite. All ages, all the families of man, have recog- 
 nized the idea of ownership without blushing, have practised 
 on it without the feeling of degradation. And how is it at the 
 South ? How, with the man and woman there, accustomed 
 from infancy to the idea, as familiar with it as with that of the 
 parental relation ? Do they shrink back appalled at the idea ? 
 Have they any such experiences, any such gefuehl, as the Ger- 
 mans would say, in connection with this idea, as harrow up 
 
GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 9 
 
 the very soul of Dr. Lewis ? Yerily, no. Then, has Dr. Lewis 
 any right to claim it as an universal idea ; any right to en- 
 wrap it with his own notions and sentiments, and then insist 
 that, just in that form, it must be realized in every soul ? 
 "Where, in the history of humanity or in the Word of God, do 
 we find these distinctions so dogmatically insisted on as moral 
 axioms ? And how do we know, as he asserts, that the patri- 
 archs never " sold a slave? " Because it is not recorded of any 
 one, sooth the Professor. On this principle of interpretation 
 we should allow much not allowed, and disallow much that is 
 allowed. There is a manifest reason why the buyer is spoken 
 of rather than the seller : but, beside this, if one bought, (and 
 this is granted,) another must have sold : nor is it very appar- 
 ent how an Hebrew could buy an Hebrew, unless an Hebrew 
 sold him to him. But see Gen. xxxvii., 28 ; xvii., 13, 27 ; Exod. 
 xii., 44 ; Lev. xxv., 39 ; Dent, xv., 12. Li these and other 
 passages, selling of men is distinctly stated or clearly implied. 
 The Professor is also mistaken in asserting that slaves are " never 
 mentioned in the 0. T., as property, never reckoned along with 
 the flocks and the herds." See Gen. xii., 15, 16 ; xx., 14 ; 
 xxiv., 35 ; xxvi., 14 ; xxxii., 5, etc. Li all these passages slaves 
 are reckoned along with flocks and herds, " Sheep and oxen, 
 and male slaves and female slaves." " Flocks and herds, and 
 silver and gold, and male slaves and female slaves, and camels 
 and asses." " Oxen and asses and flocks, and male slaves and 
 female slaves." 
 
 It is clear as day that the idea of property did attach to the 
 patriarchal, biblical slavery ; to that of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob 
 and Moses. And that it was not the predominant idea, or that 
 the other, government, was, is inferentially asserted rather than 
 proved. Moreover, if the idea of property, of ownership was 
 in it at all, as it must have been according to the Professor, 
 being an idea necessary to slavery, then there was not prob- 
 ably at that time, nor is there to be now, ascribed to it that 
 " degradation, that dehumanization, that brutalization," which, 
 in the Professor's mind, are its germ and its casement, its all 
 in all : then the patriarchs and the prophets probably did not 
 feel themselves degraded lij the relation, nor in it. 
 
10 GOVERNMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 
 
 Why, again, is it necessaiy to show that " the Texan slave- 
 holder " has " improved^'' the social status of the slave, and ad- 
 vanced hun beyond that of the patriarchal, in order to quote 
 the latter in justification of the former? Appeal is made to 
 slavery under the O. T. simply to prove that the relation of 
 master and slave existed, was recognized and regulated by law, 
 not that the same system 'prevailed^ the same legal or adventi- 
 tious circumstances accompanied it. And if the idea of owner- 
 ship^ or property in man is found there, then it is fair to 
 quote O. T. slavery in justification of modern slavery per se^ 
 although ownership be its basis. Its evils are extraneous, ad- 
 ventitious, growing out of the corrupt passions of man. Its 
 blessings, too, may be great ; are great, in very many instances. 
 It were easy to select, in the South, many an Eliezer, many a 
 slave as faithful as Ulysses', and receiving as much of the con- 
 fidence and respect of his master. "We could tell tales of 
 familiar social life there, between master and slave, that would 
 put to the blush the man, who talks loudly of freedom, equal- 
 ity, manhood, lordship, and yet subjects to a deeper degrada- 
 tion the Irish servant, or the colored freeman, who does the 
 menial service of the house, under an exclusion from the family- 
 life, from the family board, under a caste of separation and 
 exclusiveness, embittered with wormwood and gall. And does 
 the classic Professor forget what Hector said to his wife, on 
 parting for the war, and what a slavery was implied in it, in 
 that early Grecian period, that Homeric age ? And sad to say, 
 even the favorite slave of Ulysses, in his absence, had bought 
 and owned a slave himself. We are ready, also, to contend, 
 and to prove, that in the Southern slavery the idea of govern- 
 ment " is the predominant one, and not that of ownership or 
 mere property. 
 
 And why is " subjection to power, however despotic, not 
 degrading," but to be owned necessarily so ? It is easy, per- 
 haps, to throw a halo of " glory " around the idea of power, 
 however dictatorial and tyrannical, and under it the man may 
 march to the cannon's mouth : and yet many a poor creature 
 under the conscription of a despot, torn from wife, children, 
 home, and driven to the field of carnasre and of death, would 
 
GOVEKlSraiENT AKD OWNEESHIP. H 
 
 gladly forego all " the gloiy " of the idea, for the quiet com- 
 fort of being owned and cared for, in health and sickness, in 
 manhood and age. " All that a man hath will he give for his 
 life," even liberty. Tes, life without liberty, is estimated more 
 highly, and that by a divinely-implanted instinct, than the name 
 of liberty with compulsory exposure to death at the cannon's 
 mouth. Nor is this degrading. Freedom is not the highest 
 happiness^ nor the greatest Messing. I could own a fellow- 
 man, for his good, and neither feel that I was degrading my- 
 self, nor him. In this dej^artment of the " Reply," there is too 
 much of the '■'■ petitio jyrincijni^^'' too much taken for granted. 
 Besides, slavery is but " subjection to power," even where 
 property is the chief element of the power. It is a power, too, 
 regulated by law, which reaches and binds both master an"d 
 slave. And, though in the abstract, power may not be degrad- 
 ing, yet, in its exercise, it may be monstrously so, both to the 
 potentate and his subject, as in the Emperor Nero. So the ab- 
 straction of ownership, the mere relation thus expressed, may 
 be not at all dehumanizing, whilst the exercise of it, the action 
 imder it, may be so in the extreme. And, indeed, further on, 
 in his first article, to which we are now confined, the Professor 
 concedes the essence of the argument, when he afiirms that, 
 " it is not the mere presence, but the predominance of the idea 
 of property, which gives its chief moral character to slavery." 
 If, then, the mere presence of the property-idea., or of owner- 
 ship, gives no moral character to the relation, property or own- 
 ership may exist, and there yet be no bad moral character, no 
 sin in it : and if so, then it may not be, it is not degrading. 
 But strano-e is it that the Professor should have become so 
 etherealized by his idea of the dignity of power, as to have 
 forgotten the lessons of history, both ancient and modern. All 
 the worst concomitants of modern slavery, which he denounces 
 as the worst the world ever knew, are nothing in comparison 
 with the horrid inflictions of inquisitorial and other powers 
 on their subjects. Even the power of abused capital, and es- 
 pecially of legislation by aristocratic and oligarchic wealth, 
 is incomparably more grinding and debasing to its abjects, 
 than the severest lashes ever laid on the back of the poor 
 
12 GOVEENMENT AND OWNEKSHIP. 
 
 slave, or the bitterest deprivations and exactions to whicli lie 
 is ever subjected. 
 
 And now, as to the charge laid against Southern Christians 
 of an " uneasy conscience," quieted only by the opiate of great 
 blessings to the negro, or by the bitter drug of " throwing the 
 slave from the pale of humanity," and trying to believe him but 
 semi-human, and thus landing in infidelity, it is simply harsh 
 and unfair. It grows, psychologically, out of the transfusion 
 of his own climatic and adventitious feelings into the bosoms 
 of his Southern fellow-christians. He, in like outward circum- 
 stances, retaining his own interior views, would have an uneasy 
 conscience, therefore, they must. Tliere might, possibly, be 
 more of the " easy conscience " in gliding smoothly along in 
 Northern seas, tideless and stormless ; in walking with the 
 multitude, in augmenting the majesty of that " sublime vote," 
 and shouting hosannas with the triumphant, numberless throng ! 
 There may, too, be quite a strong " tendency to infidelity " in 
 exalting natural instincts above the Bible, or letting them have 
 free play, without the restraint of revealed truth. 
 
 In all this preliminary and foundation-argument, we think 
 our learned friend has erred, in connecting indissolubly with his 
 idea of ownership, all the very worst evils of the slave-system, 
 the flagrant wrongs and barbarities often perpetrated by the 
 godless overseer and the inhuman slave-driver. But the abuse 
 of a thing is no valid argument against its use. The human 
 body is often prostituted and debased by its owner, and 
 even to have one at all may be a degradation in the view of 
 angels, yet none of us would exactly like to be without one, in 
 this life, nor can we, because of its abuse, abate or despise its 
 use, or its propriety. 
 
 We think, too, that the Professor has been somewhat car- 
 ried away by his inwrought feeling about property in man, 
 wrought up to the predominance of sentiment and passion, not 
 in the bad sense, or he would have scanned more closely many 
 of his epithets and phrases. In describing Southern slavery as 
 " the outcasting from the State," it were well for us to remem- 
 ber how utterly an outcast, in this regard, as well as socially, is 
 \\\(ifree negro of the North. In descanting so impassionedly 
 
GOVEENMENT AKD OWNEESHIP. 13 
 
 on " the crushing out of the human brotherhood any whose 
 nature Christ has assumed," it was forgotten that this can have 
 no logical force, because it applies neither to the immense mass 
 of Southern Christians who do not entertain, yea revolt at the 
 idea, nor to those sciolists, who do, for they would deny that 
 Christ did assume that semi-homo, or homo-animal nature. 
 Then, again, when it is said that the slaveholder " if a ruler, 
 in distinction from an owner, must be a ruler of brutes, of seem- 
 ing men, of a half-humanity, brutalized in appearance, though 
 looking like us," who does not see and feel the extravagance 
 of the declarations ! Why, instead of being brutalized in ap- 
 pearance, the slave, under the slave system, has been lifted 
 up immensely in his humanity, both spiritually and bodily. 
 Compare him with his kin, fresh from the bogs or deserts of 
 Africa ; with the cargo of the ship " Wanderer," with the native 
 Congo or the negro of Guinea ! 
 
 But our amazement is extreme as we read : " It is said 
 *Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's manservant,' and the 
 text is often quoted to prove the scriptural lawfulness of the 
 modern human bondage ; but so it is also said, ' Thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbor's wife.' The argument is as good in the 
 one case as in the other." That is, if it prove ownership right, 
 as to slave, so also as to wife. And does it not prove it ? Is 
 it not a manifest recognition, by the Divine Lawgiver, of the 
 rectitude of the relation, the right of owner ship in the master ? 
 If not, how could there be sin in the coveting f And if no sin 
 in coveting, how could it be so emphatically, so j)ositively, for- 
 bidden ? If the neighbor, the holder of the slave, had no right 
 to him, then was there no lorong in the coveting of him. But 
 God pronounces it wrong, absolutely forbids it, and thus, by 
 necessary implication, justifies the relation. "We acknowledge, 
 also, that the argument is just " as good " in the other case 
 quoted, the coveting of a neighbor's wife. Why not ? And 
 what objection is there to it ? None whatever. The prohibi- 
 tion here also proclaims the rectitude of the relation, whether 
 you call it ownership or not, sustained by the husband to the 
 wife, making the coveting, in this case, just as wrong as in the 
 other, and no more so. The husband had the right to his wife, 
 
14 GOVEEIOIENT AND OWNERSHIP. 
 
 as the master to liis slave, aud to covet the one or the other was 
 equally wrong. ]^or does the fact, that the prohibition is the 
 same in the two cases, prove that ownership was the relation 
 in both, at least in the same sense, but it does equally justify 
 both relations, and pronounce coveting in both equally sinful. 
 iN^either slave nor wife, each in his own relation, could be 
 coveted, and therefore either could be rightly held. But 
 should it be said that the relation implied in the terms " man- 
 servant and maidservant," is not ownership but lordship ; and 
 that the prohibition, therefore, justifies no other than such re- 
 lation, in any state of slavery, I reply, that this is assertion 
 without proof ; and I assert, on the contrary, that the idea of 
 ownership is the idea of the relation here expressed by those 
 terms, and I prove it by appeal to the Professor's own decla- 
 ration that this idea is necessarily in slavery, but more especially 
 by collation of the legal documents and historical writings of 
 the people to whom the Law was given. 
 
 And again, if it be said that the prohibition does not imply 
 right in the possessor in the thing possessed, but forbids the 
 coveting as well where the thing coveted is wrongfully held, 
 our reply is that this notion grows out of confounding desire 
 with coveting, the latter implying, in any divine enactment, 
 that the thing coveted belongs to another, is his hy right, 
 moral or legal, or both. Does not coveting, also, as a legal 
 term, imply that you would have a right to possess the thing, 
 if not owned by another. In other words, does it not apply 
 only to things lawful, things you might rightly possess, as a 
 wife, in distinction from a mistress. This is, perhaps, a new 
 view of the law. We think it the logical and legal intei'preta- 
 tion, and would commend it to those capable of judging. 
 
 It is not the common idea of the Law, that its language, 
 " whatever is thy neighbor's," implies property in the preced- 
 ing objects specified, but this, that the prohihition itself, the 
 term employed, of necessity implies property and the I'ight of 
 holding. 
 
 We have extended our argument somewhat on the first 
 article of the Professor, which we think his chief and his 
 strongest ; but we hope not to weary the patience of our read- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 15 
 
 ers, in the future discussion. It is a subject of deejj interest, 
 and should be well weighed by thinking minds, both North 
 and South. " Too long has the appeal been made to every 
 thing else but truth." 
 
 AEGUMENT FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 Having proved, as we think, the existence and divine re- 
 cognition of slavery under the Old Testament Dispensations, 
 and that property or ownership was a coexistent, if not pre- 
 dominant idea in that slavery, that buying and selling belonged 
 to it ; having disrobed the idea of property in man of that 
 garb of degradation with which the Professor had invested it, 
 and exposed his distinctions between ownership and power, 
 as rather fancy than fact ; having shown that the ideas and ac- 
 tualities of Jewish slavery were such as to be a proper basis 
 of comparison between that and modern slavery, and having 
 given our interpretation of the Moral Law on this point, it is 
 intended, in this number, to review the Professor's argument 
 on Lev. xxv., 44^6. " Both thy bondmen and bondmaids 
 which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round 
 about you. Of them may ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 
 Moreover of the children of strangers that do sojourn among 
 you ; of them may ye buy, and of their families that are with 
 you, which they beget in your land, and they shall be yom- 
 possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your 
 children after you, to inherit them as a possession ; they shall 
 be your bondmen forever." Tliis passage proves : 1. Permis- 
 sion to hold slaves, not hired servants, for the Professor well 
 knows the distinction between the two Hebrew words ; 2. To 
 luy them, and that with money, not ransom ; for this would 
 not apply to the second class, those " begotten in their land ; " 
 3. To buy of the heathen round about ; 4. Of sojourners and 
 their families ; 5. They should be owned, be property ; 6. Be 
 property for life, just that and no less does the word /br^^-y^r 
 mean, unless it may indicate that they and their offspring in 
 successive generations forever, shall be the possession of the 
 family ; 1. To be bequeathed, in the same relation, as slaves, to 
 2 
 
16 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 
 
 children. Their " children after them were to inherit them as 
 a possession.^'' If the possession of the parents was that of 
 owjiersJiip obtained by purchase, then was the right and title 
 in the children the same. 
 
 It is conceded by Mr. Van Dyke, and the Professor inti- 
 mates it to be clear, that " what is said of the enslavement of a 
 Jew by a Jew cannot be applied to modern slavery, because, 
 in the former, provision was made for redemption, liberation 
 after a time. This is the universal view, we believe. But is 
 it correct ? Why is not the argument as good in its essence, 
 from the law relating to the bondage of Hebrews, as from the 
 passage now under consideration ? Although it differs from 
 the modern bondage and from that of Lev. xxv., 44-46, in 
 the provision for a limitation of time and a redemption, there 
 is given a special reason for that limitation, to wit, that the 
 Hebrews themselves had been, as a people, already long in 
 bondage. But beside this, in that very bondage or slavery, 
 there is the same idea of property, of purchase and ownership, 
 as in the other. The time of possession is limited, but the 
 title, the right, the relation, for that time, is the same. It 
 would, therefore, be fair and logical to reason, as well from 
 this as the other slavery of the ' heathen round about,' that the 
 divine law recognized slavery in the relation of ownership, 
 slavery per se. Then, if so, that relation in the modern sla- 
 very cannot be wrong ^er ««." 
 
 "Without conceding, therefore, to Prof. Lewis or Mr. Yan 
 Dyke, what we laiow is universally conceded, that no argu- 
 ment for modern slavery can be based on the law regulating 
 the bondage of a Jew, let us proceed to examine the Profes- 
 sor's reasoning on the passage quoted above. He denies any 
 force in the argument founded on this passage, in justification 
 of slavery ijer se, and offers two answers. One " greatly 
 weakens" the argument, and the other "renders it utterly 
 worthless." Tlie diluting answer of the Professor consists in 
 the fact, as lie represents it, of an utter want of resemblance 
 between the two slaveries, the Jewish and the American. 
 The points of contrast are found in the differences between 
 the two peoples, and in the mercantile feature of the modern 
 
OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEET. 17 
 
 slavery ; tlie vendibility of tlie slave not attaching to the 
 Jewish. 
 
 Since truth is our sole object, and fair interpretation or pur- 
 pose, we feel compelled here to differ with Dr. Lewis, and to 
 dilute somewhat his own argument. When he denominates 
 the Jews an " agricultural, untrafficking theocracy," and the 
 South " commercial, cotton-growing States ; " he seems to us 
 utterly to fail in making out a striking contrast. The Hebrews 
 "agricultural;" the Southern States " cotton-growing," i.e., 
 agricultural. Tlie Hebrews " untrafficking," Southern States 
 "commercial," the latter attribute scarcely belonging more 
 to the one than to the other ; the former not specially charac- 
 teristic of the Hebrews, their traffic having been, by no means, 
 restricted for those days, as even the biblical history proves. 
 But the burden of the Professor's first answer consists in his 
 denial of vendibility to the Jewish slavery, and his reasoning 
 on the question of God's permission of sin. In order to get rid 
 of the language of the law, " ye may 5wy," and to remove 
 even a " seeming resemblance," he tells us, what he presumes 
 every body knows, that huying, in such cases, meant the " pay- 
 ment of ransom," " sometimes the ransom of life." Alas ! for 
 the interpretation of our scholarly professor. If the word did 
 mean to ransom., incase of captives in war, it did also mean to 
 huy with money. "What ! " huy in such cases," i. e., in this 
 case, in this law, means paying a ransom ! Let us so translate : 
 " Of them (the heathen) may ye pay ransom for bondmen. 
 Moreover, of the children of strangers that do sojourn among 
 you, and of their families, which they beget in your land, for 
 them ye maj pay ransom.^^ No reference here to captives ran- 
 somed from death by substituting a life-slavery. Evidently sim- 
 ple trade, traffic. Children born in the land, too, could be hought 
 into perpetual slavery, transmissible to posterity. Does h^iy, in 
 this case, mean to pay ransom ? "Wliat ransom, and for what ? 
 
 Having thus attempted to remove all possibility of com- 
 parison between the Jewish and Southern slavery as founded 
 on this Levitical law, by denying the usage of language, and 
 astounding both the common sense and the learning of his 
 readers, he reverts to the old idea, argued at length in his first 
 
18 OLD TESTAJIENT SLAVERY. 
 
 article, that altliougli " permitted to buy, there is not a word 
 of selling,^'' " no reckoning of them as property with corn, wine, 
 herds, flocks." The false assmnption on both these points, has 
 already been fully met by quotations from the Scriptures, and 
 need not be repeated. The Professor might well be here called 
 on for proof of his oft-repeated assertions, when he so fre- 
 quently demands evidence of Mr, Yan D.'s statements. That 
 there is too much of mere vendibility attached to the slave by 
 many in the South, might be conceded, and yet that this idea 
 did not attach to the Hebrew's slave, and that it was never 
 abused by the wicked, our author has utterly failed to prove. 
 The Professor should know that there was a slave-maH among 
 the Jews. Yet, we are obliged to discover that, even in this argu- 
 ment on the absence of the mercantile in the Jewish slavery, its 
 presence is inadvertently confessed. " There are intimations in 
 the Jewish history that it was, at certain times, more merce- 
 nary. Then we hear the thunderings of the prophets, as in Isa. 
 Iviii., Y, ' Loose ye wicked bonds, unbind the servile knots, set 
 free the oppressed, Ireah asunder every yoke.^ " If, at times, 
 more mercenary, then, at all times, positively mercenary. This 
 is precisely as we contend and prove. And, moreover, we 
 think the " then thunderings of the iDrophets," when more 
 mercenary, leaves us clearly to infer that the mere mercenary 
 idea itself was not an object of the prophet's denunciation, un- 
 less the Professor will here retract his own affirmation, and fall 
 back on the extremest literal interpretation, making the thun- 
 derings apply to the relation itself, to simple slavery fer se. 
 But it is not possible for him here to accept the literal inter- 
 pretation. He would not stake his scholarship on it ; for just 
 here, in prophetic, excited denunciations, is the place for figu- 
 rative expressions, for the " spirit, the interior view." 
 
 But now the Professor is obliged to meet a shai-p question 
 of some objector, to wit: "Is it consistent that God should 
 give a permission, and then rebuke men so sweepingly for tak- 
 ing the benefit of it ? " and his reply is : " God docs permit 
 what he rebukes men for doing. He permitted Balaam to go 
 to Balak, and then sharply rebuked him for going." But to 
 reconcile the discord in this passage, we are told that " God 
 
OLD TESTAMEl^ SLAVERY. 19 
 
 gave Mm permission to go that lie might hless, but Balaam 
 went to curse, and so God rebuked him, because he "went to 
 ^uTse?'' The case does not prove his proposition that God per- 
 mits what, jtijet what, he rebukes men for doing. He per- 
 mitted the going, rebuked the cursing. The "imreasoning 
 beast " might here arise, if there "were for him a resurrection, and 
 pronounce, in the presence of our learned Professor, his o"wn 
 words : " ' God is wiser than men,' says Mr. Van Dyke, where 
 he would rebuke the Abolitionists. "We have no thought at all 
 of disputing the truth of that proposition, but might think it 
 capable of some application to others, who assume so boldly 
 to be the exclusive defenders of Deity." 
 
 But the permission given in the passage of Lev. xxv., which, 
 according to the Professor, was to imy ransoTn for captives, we 
 are further taught, was a merciful permission, growing out of 
 the " spirit of the times." The spirit of the times justifying 
 God in permitting, in allowing and regulating, by statutory 
 enactment, slavery ^^r se ; the buying of men and women into 
 bondage to be a possession and an inheritance forever ! If this 
 was sin in itself in the sight of God, we see not how God could 
 thus enact, maugre the argument on Balaam and the ass. We 
 think as little of the assertions about " slave hunts in Moab," 
 and " Solomon's never thinking of bringing home, from Ophir, 
 human chattels along with his gold dust, asses, and ivory." 
 Perhaps he needed none just then : perhaps he was not accus- 
 tomed to go just in that direction for such articles, whilst that 
 was the place for the traffic in gold dust, asses, and ivory." 
 
 "We confess to a dulness of perception which does not see 
 the force nor propriety of the argument on the fugitive slave 
 law of Dent, xxiii., 15, 16, The newly adopted view of the 
 Professor applies it equally to all slaves, whether of Hebrew or 
 of foreign origin, vrhilst generally it is limited, in construction, 
 to the latter. Our objection to the Professor's interpretation 
 lies chiefly in the fact, that it seems a necessity of scholarship 
 and of the usage of language, to interpret the pronouns, thou, 
 thee, in this case, as generic, not specific, as meaning the nation 
 as a body politic, a people and thus including each individual. 
 •Consequently it is in contrast with the " heathen around about," 
 
20 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEEY. 
 
 and lias no application to an Hebrew slave. Tliis view is con- 
 firmed by the usus loquendi of the entire chapter and of almost 
 the entire book, and indisputably by the 16tli verse itself. " He 
 shall dwell with thee, among you, (the people,) in the place of 
 his choice, in one of thy gates. Thou slialt not oppress him." 
 In one of thy gates, cannot mean a gate of a particular man or 
 family, but a locality in one of the tribes. Besides, the render- 
 ing is utterly inconsistent with j)rineiples of legal construction. 
 No clause of a general statute can be so rendered as to mar the 
 consistency of the whole. And there would be a most mani- 
 fest inconsistency in the enactment of authority to buy slaves 
 of the heathen, with a perfect license to the slave to escape 
 from his Hebrew master and an absolute prohibition of his 
 surrender. Believe it, who can ! E^ot I. It is a contempt on 
 Deity. 
 
 The Professor is lame, also, here in his " strict construc- 
 tion " of the lawyers, when he says that, " had the words 
 escaped unto thee from his master, meant y/'c»w^ the heathen^'' 
 the language would have been general and collective ; " who 
 shall have escaped from any of the nations round ahout theeP 
 !N"ow, we humbly think not, because whilst the usage of speech, 
 and the very law itself necessarily point to the foreign fugitive, 
 the equally necessary implication is, that he had a master 
 there, not that he was an immigrant from Moab or Idumea. 
 Consequently the law would specify that fact, and exonerate the 
 Jew from whatever right or claim there might be in the heathen 
 master. 
 
 The Professor winds up this first answer to the argument 
 founded on Levit. xxv., by the insinuation that " the permitted 
 bondage " was " a statute not good," Ezek. xx., 25 — " for the 
 Israelites," and that the liberation of a slave was regarded by 
 " the early Christian church as a good work." In reply to the 
 former, it is only needful to read Ezek. xx., especially vs. 10, 
 11, 33, seq., to satisfy one's self that the " statute not good " had 
 no sort of reference to the slave-code, but that, on the contrary, 
 it was one of those described in vs. 10, 11, as good and now dis- 
 obeyed, although special reference is had to idolatry and Sab- 
 bath-breaking. In regard to the latter, it is ah extra, it be- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 21 
 
 longs not to the point at issue. If the proof were adduced, it 
 could be fully met. We shall here and now simply assert, 
 that, in the " early Christian church," during the first three 
 centuries, the liberation of a slave^ in itself considered, was not 
 pronounced a " good work," the liberation of captives from the 
 chains of barbarians was ; nor was the idea of proj^erty in man 
 discarded as abhorrent, but the right even of a wicked, heathen 
 master was recognized, and on the baptism of his slave, the 
 obedience of the latter to the former was rigidly enjoined, 
 whilst the testimony of the Christian master to the obedience 
 and good behavior of his slave was requisite to his admission 
 to baptism. 
 
 The second answer of Dr. Lewis to the reasoning and con- 
 clusion based on this passage of Leviticus, is this, that mider 
 the Christian dispensation there has ceased to be any " heathen 
 round about," that the word was " the antithesis of Jew, not of 
 Christian." Consequently, if no heathen now, authority given 
 the Jews to buy slaves of the heathen, cannot be plead in justi- 
 fication of any slavery under the present disjoensation. This 
 reply, he thinks, " utterly sweeps away this stronghold of the 
 pro-slavery cause," and he calls on any one to detect a fallacy 
 in it. With due deference to the Professor's reasoning power, 
 which, however, we think a little diluted with water-colors, we 
 shall assail the argument very briefly. 
 
 The Jewish was a " nation kept apart," " a people by it- 
 self," " the type of the better humanity to come." " Hence a 
 Jew was nearer to a Jew than to any other race." ^' He was 
 allowed to hold bondmen from the heathen." " Who are 
 heathen now ? is the vital question." ^' The wall of partition 
 has been broken down." " In Christ all are one — all free — 
 free spiritually, free from all that degrades, free from owner- 
 ship." " As, anciently, Israelite to Israelite, so, in the ' new 
 covenant' with humanity, is every man to every man." " All 
 are brethren now," In all this, there is a deep truth, but a 
 shading thrown upon it, which makes it look like a difterent 
 thing from the reality. It might be replied to two of the 
 above statements, that as " Jew was more to Jew than to any 
 other race," so is American to American ; and as the nation 
 
22 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEKY. 
 
 was a " type of tlie better humanity," and possessed slayery, 
 tliat might also exist under the antitype, the higher humanity. 
 But the general rej)ly to the general and pervading tenor of 
 the above quotations, is, that they much mistake the precise 
 idea of the relation between the Jew and the heathen in the 
 passages referred to, and of that between the church and the 
 world of the present day. The wall of partition between Jew 
 and Gentile was indeed broken down in Christ. But was it, 
 at all, in the sense indicated by Prof. Lewis' comments ? If 
 the Apostle meant, by this, any thing more than that Christ, 
 by his life and death, broke up that dispensation which had 
 limited the blessings of the true religion to one people, and 
 excluded the Gentile world, and secured the future dispensation 
 of the gospel to the latter as well as the former, to all, then it 
 seems to us he failed to make his meaning clear. In Christ 
 Jesus all are indeed one ; all are, indeed, free. But how ? 
 Does this- signify that the whole Gentile world has become 
 Christian, is possessed of the blessings which are proffered to 
 faith in Christ ? Or does it simply mean that there is no longer 
 a " peculiar people," " to whom pertaineth the adoption, and 
 the glory, and the covenants, and the service of God, and the 
 promises ? " Can it, does it mean, that what Jew was to Jew 
 anciently, joint participant in peculiar privileges in fact, every 
 man is now to every man, joint partaker of his proffered mer- 
 cy ? Are all, indeed,, one m Christ, or only they who are one 
 in him by faith ? Are all " spiritually free," in any sense other 
 than this, that all peoples are alike entitled to the blessings of 
 the new covenant I Certainly not in the sense of being in 
 Christ by faith ; assui-edly not in the sense of Christ's own 
 declaration : " if the Son shall make you free, then shall ye be 
 free indeed." And can the Professor show us, in the bond or 
 in the " spirit " of it, that Christ's freedom includes, as he says, 
 freedom from owiiiershtp or bondage ? And when he des-cants 
 eloquently on the " dogma of the life or blood unity of the race " 
 as kindred to that of the incarnation, does he mean to say that 
 the dogma is peculiar to the new covenant ? Does not that 
 very dogma find its basis in the very first chapter of the Bible, 
 and run equally through every page of the Old as of the 
 
OLD TESTAJVIEISTT SLAVEKY. 23 
 
 Kew Testament ? But aside from all tliis general reasoning or 
 interpretation, do we not " detect a fallacy " in the very state- 
 ment of his main proposition : " The Jew was allowed to hold 
 bondmen from the heathen " ? To warrant his reasoning and 
 justify his conclusion, it should have inserted the little word 
 only after " heathen^ For in answering his vital question : 
 " who ai'e the heathen ? " he comes to the deduction that now 
 there are no heathen, in the then sense of the word, and hence 
 the conclusion, that there can be no authority from that law 
 for human bondage. Thus is " utterly swept away this strong- 
 hold." But since the premise fails to be true, the conclusion 
 falls with it. The logic is thus : Ye shall buy of the heathen. 
 There are now no heathen. Tlierefore, you cannot now buy at 
 all. But suppose we put the case truthfully thus : Ye may 
 buy of your hretJiren^ also, for a limited time. Africans are your 
 brethren. Therefore ye may buy of them limitedly. All we 
 mean to say here is that oionersMp is equally recognized in both 
 sjjecies of slavery, that of heathen and of brethren, and there- 
 fore, should the Professor even be successful in sweeping away 
 the stronghold, by his denial of the applicability of that law, 
 because of the present non-existence of any heathen correspond- 
 ent to those designated in the statute, the argument from the 
 Mosaic statutes would not fail. Appeal could still be success- 
 fully made to the law allowing the slavery of a brother Jew, 
 in the relation of oionersMp^ and thus justifying what, in the 
 Professor's view, is the distinctive and damning characteristic 
 of the modem slavery. For if ownership could exist, under 
 certain circumstances, for seven years, it could under others, for 
 life. And if, for a few years not degrading, then not at all. 
 
 But we find another fallacy, in the statement, that " Israel 
 was tlie type of the better humanity." Is it not rather the 
 type of " the spiritual Israel," " the body of Christ," his church 
 universal ? Or rather is it any type at all, in the proper sense 
 of the word ? Bead more from the Professor : " Of your fel- 
 low-men ye shall not make slaves. Ye may rule them, sternly, 
 if necessary, but ye may not oion them." " Tliis is a smpcr se." 
 " The church is for all nations. We have all one home, one 
 brotherhood, as well as one Saviour." All this is well, properly 
 
24 OLD TESTAIMEIST SLAVEEY. 
 
 understood : but our metaphysics does not j)ermit us to see 
 what more relation it has to the question of slavery, even own- 
 ershij), than to an hundred other things. If this glorious truth 
 of the unity of the race m Christ, the breaking down of the 
 wall of partition, the oneness of the home, of the brotherhood, 
 of the Saviour for all nations, is to be thus plead against human 
 bondage ; in the same spirit and with the same propriety, may 
 it be plead against all social wrongs, against all distinctions, and 
 launch us on the dark sea of socialism. These things, these 
 biblical expressions, are not to be thus interpreted. No law of 
 interpretation will justify it. 
 
 And yet again, what biblical exposition follows. " Te can- 
 not plead any more the language of the old law : ' they shall 
 be your possession, to make bondmen of the nations round 
 about you. God has given them to Christ — ' the heathen for 
 a possession.'' " Eight on the basis of this, there follows a * 
 warm appeal to the Christian world to go out and take posses- 
 sion of the nations, in the name of Christ, ^'us-i ichere they are, 
 to which we add a hearty Amen. Yet, this seems to us very 
 little, and certainly not directly, to the point : and the idea 
 attached to Christ's ^oss^mo^z- of the heathen is amazingly new 
 and strange. It is this : God has given the heathen, i. e., all 
 the Gentile world, to Christ for a possession, therefore no man 
 can possess or own another in the relation of slavery. The 
 possession of Christ is now substituted for the possession under 
 the Levitical law. Can it be possible that the Professor has 
 overlooked the fact that he uses the word possession in two 
 different senses? It cannot be that he so interprets that 
 prophetic gift of the heathen to Christ as to mean any thing 
 more, any thing else than that they shall all finally come to the 
 knowledge of Ilim as the Eedeemer, shall be imbued with the 
 sj)irit of his gospel and become members of his kingdom of 
 righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Any other 
 interpretation, and especially such as the Professor intimates, 
 would lead to monstrosities in hermencutics. But then, such 
 possession, such as was manifestly contemplated by the Spirit 
 and the prophet, lies entirely outside of the question of human 
 bondage, utterly l)eyond all the merely governmental and social 
 
OLD TESTAJIENT SLAVERY. 25 
 
 relations of life. It rather regards and permeates tliem all, 
 " rendering to Coesar tlie things that are Caesar's," but not 
 rudely laying its hand on tlie established order of govern- 
 ments. A man may be a slave and yet be the possession of 
 Jesus in the very highest sense preconceived by the prophet ; 
 and even in the clanking chains of o^vnership, and by means 
 of it, have tens of thousands become the freemen, the possession 
 of Christ, the one ownership not interfering with the other, 
 yea, co-existing with it. And it may not be anticipating to 
 say, just here, that these very Gentiles, these " sons of Adam, 
 brethren redeemed by Christ," were the slaves of the times of 
 Christ and his Apostles. And assuredly all that is so glowingly 
 said about telling " the African that Christ has hought liim^'' has 
 no direct application to the subject in hand ; nor all the rhet- 
 oric about telling him the story of the cross, where he is ; nor 
 that about " climatic nationalities : " for the poor manacled 
 slave of the South, "just where he is," can as well be taught 
 that Christ has hought him, as the degraded, brutalized hu- 
 manity " on the banks of his native Chadda and Zambesi ; " 
 and as to climatic temperaments and local habitations, there is 
 as much reason for the immigration of the African to our South- 
 ern clime, as the Saxon and Celt to our N^orthern. 
 
 The third article of the Professor, now under consideration, 
 closes with some " home questions ; " all of them, perhaps, not 
 in the best taste, and each and every one easily answered. 
 The substance of all is contained in the following : " When a 
 slave in the South becomes a Christian, will he be still a Jieath- 
 en, subject to enslavement, or will he be entitled to his free- 
 dom ? " Let Paul to Philemon answer this. He having done 
 it, we abstain. Yet we may answer the question, by asking 
 another : Did the Jew free his heathen bondman, if he became 
 a Jew ? That is an all-sufficient reply. Yet we might further 
 ask : AVas it not the great object to make him a Jew, and redeem 
 him from the idolatry of heathendom ? Should the Professor 
 take the alternative that the slave could not become a Jew, so 
 as to enjoy religious privileges, then he would most triumph- 
 antly upset his whole argument, by the confession that this 
 Hebrew slavery surpassed, in caste and cruelty, the worst fonn 
 of the Southern. 
 
26 AEGUMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAJVIEJ^. 
 
 ARGUMEJTT FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 PRELmmAKY to tlie argument derived from the New Testa- 
 ment, Professor Lewis reverts to liis two constituent ideas of 
 slavery, power and property, wliicli lie pronounces logically 
 distinct. Intending to be brief, it needs only to be remarked, 
 tliat, if property is one of tlie constituent ideas in slavery, one 
 witliout wliicli it cannot be, or stand together^ tben it follows 
 that it was in the idea of slavery, patriarchal, Jewish, Koman, 
 or Christian, as well as American ; and consequently his long 
 argument on the property-idea, the sum and substance of his 
 entire argument, is by himself essentially annihilated. As to 
 their being logically distinct, thus much may be said : Property 
 necessarily implies power, but power not necessarily property. • 
 He talks, also, of the " morality of slavery " as determined by 
 the " absence or presence, predominance or subordinance " of 
 the one or the other idea : so that morality is attributable of 
 slavery, if only power be present, although he had before said, 
 it will be remembered, that it did not depend on the mere 
 presence. " Property," too, it is contended, " is essentially 
 selfish, powxr essentially unselfish,^' a proposition which needs 
 more than assertion, for thoughtful minds, one which it would 
 be difficult to maintain, for few things are more selfish than 
 power and the desire of power, ambition. The application of 
 the statement to the Southern planter is very unfair and un- 
 tenable, because, even assuming the truth of his proposition, 
 he must allow that the slave there is lield not only as property 
 but as person also, as chattel-personal. 
 
 The Professor now grants that we cannot judge of individ- 
 uals, whether in this or that one the selfish or unselfish idea pre- 
 dominate, but we can form a correct judgment of a national 
 slavery, a slavery of an age. " Tlie hidividual can tell for him- 
 self Avhethcr he is a man-oioner or a man-ruler,'''' that is, ac- 
 cording to the logical distinction of the Professor, whether he 
 is selfish or unselfish, whether he governs only for good, or owns 
 only for evil. ^Noav it seems to us very clear that a Christian 
 
AEGUMEISTT FKOM THE NEW TESTAJVCENT. 2'? 
 
 master can be botli owner and ruler, and yet be as unselfish in tlie 
 relation, as most men are in the other relations of life ; and it 
 is equally clear that one may be an owner and own for the 
 good of the slave, unselfishly / another may be a mere ruler 
 and not an owner, and rule tyrannically, selfishly, l^ow, in 
 the former case, when the master holds, render law, " unselfish- 
 ly or for the good of the slave," is he justified in holding, in 
 owning ? The Professor's reasoning afiirms that he is, and 
 thus he surrenders himself captive to his own logic. 
 
 The case of the centurion is just here adduced as a case in 
 point, an apt illustration of the idea of power, the ruling or 
 governing for good, and to this is injected a doubt whether the 
 ho pais of the centurion was a slave. It is an extreme case 
 that takes advantage of every doubt, and to the man in danger 
 of execution our laws freely accord it. The Professor will at 
 least allow that the probabilities are strongly in favor of the 
 judgment that he was a slave, not only because he is called 
 doulos as well Si&pais, but because we should scarcely expect 
 a Koman centurion to hold his servant in any other relation : 
 and if so, ownership in the centurion was not inconsistent with 
 unusual piety and faith in Jesus, " such faith as he had not 
 found, no, not in Israel." But the case is even stronger. Can 
 the Professor believe that, posited as the Saviour was with him, 
 he could or should have abstained from pronouncing on the 
 inhumanity and unchristianness of property in tnan, if he re- 
 garded that, as the Professor does, the most " degrading, de- 
 humanizing of ideas," and especially in view of the relation of 
 humanity to this very Christ, so graphically portrayed by the 
 pen of this ready writer I If that was a sin, particularly if a 
 crying sin, could Jesus, the immaculate, any more have with- 
 held from putting this disciple to the test on that point, than 
 he did from trying the amiable young man by demanding of 
 him the sacrifice of his property ? ITever ! never ! This were 
 far more degrading to our Master than ownership of man to 
 man. Tlie thought of such a possibility, we confess, detracts 
 at once from that high, pure, ethereal, superhuman, divine con- 
 ception we have, and love to hold, of Jesus. "When we feel 
 ourselves obliged to abandon that idea of him, we shall feel 
 
28 AHaUilENT FROM THE NEW TESTAIMENT. 
 
 like accepting Min only as a great Teaclier, suited to his day. 
 Whicli may it never be ! 
 
 Ah, this holy and blessed Master of ours looked more to the 
 inner than to the outer life, more to the existence in the soul 
 of a living faith in himself as the Christ, than to the social 
 and governmental relations of the man, if so be, in those 
 relations, he evinced the spirit and temper of the Christian. 
 This man was an officer of the Koman empire, having soldiers 
 under him and slaves subject to his will, faithfully discharg- 
 ing political and social duties, whilst he permeated them 
 all with the spirit of Christ. We hear of no release of his 
 soldiers, no emancipation of his slaves, but we do read of 
 his loving the one and exacting obedience of the other. 
 
 The author next distributes the slavery ages into Patriarch- 
 al, Jewish, Koraan, Christian, applying to each his property- 
 scale, and attributing to the last the maximum of the property- 
 idea. Its essence is "gain per 5^." The Eoman was "less 
 mercenary," had " less caste,'' though " more cruel, less de- 
 humanizing," " hurt humanity less." ITow the whole of this 
 reasoning, if it may be so called, is simply the expandmg of 
 the idea of ownership, which the Professor has labored, first to 
 evolve as the summuvi malum, the radical dehumanization of 
 the race, the substratum of all that is evil in slavery, and then 
 to attach preeminently to the American Slavery. Hence his 
 declaration that Roman lawyers ever pronomiced slavery as 
 ao-ainst natural right, but never made a Dred Scott decision. 
 Now, the former it would be difficult for him to prove, the lat- 
 ter has no application, for at Rome there were no such consti- 
 tutional provisions as with us, never an occasion on which 
 such a decision or the opposite could possibly have been de- 
 manded. 
 
 But granting, argues the Professor, that the Roman slavery 
 was worse than the modern, as most would certainly concede, 
 yet the silence of Christ and his Apostles as to its evils, their 
 exhortations to patience and submission and cheerful obedience 
 on the part of the slave, constitute no justification of slavery. 
 But we beg leave here to differ. The silence of Christ and his 
 Apostles, their never having, on any occasion, whilst so many 
 
AEGTIMElSrT FEOM THE KEW TESTAJMEjSTT. 29 
 
 offered, uttered one word of condemnation, even in letters to 
 tlie cliurclies, in which they recognize its existence, is most 
 amazing and inexplicable, if they deemed of it as the Profes- 
 sor does ; if the mere status were so monstrously degrading and 
 dehumanizing. 
 
 And again, however much exhortations to submission may 
 fall short of justification of the thing submitted to, in them- 
 selves considered, yet we think the gist of the argument, as we 
 should put it, has been wholly overlooked by the Professor. 
 Beside the fact that the exhortations embrace cheerful, hearty 
 obedience to a rightful authority, as well as submission to hard 
 and cruel impositions by the froward, it is apparent that, if the 
 thing itself, the mere ownership or holding of the slave in 
 bondage under the Koman law, were wrong, as idolatry, mur- 
 der, theft, cruelty, etc., Christ would have denounced that, as 
 well as its abuse. But further, the strength of argument, in 
 our estimation, lies rather in an unnoticed direction. See 1 
 Cor. vi., 9, 10 ; Gal. v., 19-21 ; Eph. v., 3-5 ; Col. iii,, 5-9 ; 
 1 Tim. i., 9, 10 ; 1 Pet. iv., 3, 14 ; Kev. xxi., 8 ; xxii., 15. In 
 these several passages, " the works of the flesh," and the sins 
 wliich indicate an unrenewed nature, exclude from the city of 
 God, and subject to " the second death," are specifically and 
 reiteratedly recited, and yet, not in one single instance is slav- 
 ery enumerated or most distantly hinted at. And it might 
 be pardonable here to make use of the argumentum ad homi- 
 nem and remind Dr. Lewis, that, as the non -enumeration of 
 slaves, in which we have shown him to be mistaken, however, 
 with other property of the Hebrews, as flocks and herds, is to 
 his mind proof positive that the property idea was wanting in 
 the Jewish servitude, equally conclusive must be the absence 
 of slavery from the inventory of unchristian and damning sins. 
 The damning and unchristian idea must not attach to it, can- 
 not belong to it. Remarkable indeed it is, that this crying sin 
 of ownership in man is never once denounced nor even hinted 
 at as a crime which must blot one's name out of the book of 
 life, though it be held, by many of Christ's followers, to be a 
 sin of scarlet dye, and " a covenant with hell." 
 
 It is appropriate here, also, to recall the fact that, whenever 
 
30 ARGUMET^^T PROM THE NEW TESTAirENT. 
 
 the unity of the Christian church is spoken of, the oneness in 
 Christ, it is in such wise as to recognize this relation, and in- 
 clude the bond and free : " for by one spirit are we all baptized 
 into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, 
 for the body is not one member, but many." " Tliere is neither 
 Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither 
 male nor female : for ye are all one in Christ Jesus," " Where 
 there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumci- 
 sion, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free : but Christ is all and 
 in all." Col. iii. 11. In the exhortations based on this verse, 
 exhortations to the elect of God, to wives, husbands, chil- 
 dren, fathers, servants, masters, the chief relations of life, in 
 which, on the one part, obedience and submission are duties, 
 hear how this clear-headed, heavenly -instructed apostle, just in 
 this connection, just on this fundamental statement of the 
 union of all classes, bond and free, in Christ, hear how he talks 
 to the hond : " Servants," slaves, " obey in all things your mas- 
 ters according to the flesh ; " your oivniiig masters. " And 
 whatever ye do, do heartily, for ye serve," in thus doing, " the 
 Lord Christ." ISTow, if these passages prove or assert any 
 thing, they assert this \ that in the brotherhood, the body of 
 Christ, there do just as certainly exist the master and slave, 
 as the male and female, the Jew and the Greek, and that the 
 one Spirit, permeating the one Body, shall alike sanctify them 
 all, not disrupting, but combining these relations with the 
 " bond of perfectness." 
 
 We now come to the Professor's comments on 1 Tim. vi., 
 1-5, and we confess to not a little surprise, in view of the ia- 
 tegrity of our brother. His running commentary first perverts 
 the evident meaning of the passage, and then finds the " key 
 which unlocks the whole difficulty right here ; " "a believing 
 master never could regard his helicvmg douloi^''' slaves, " as 
 property." " It is Christianly inconceivable ; " " he could not 
 ovm, y " " the golden rule would not allow it ; " " the loving 
 thoughts of the apostle could not entertain it." Tlie perver- 
 sion lies in the insertion of the word " helieving " before mas- 
 ters. Tliese servants, he says, " arc enjoined to obey their 
 masters, their helieving masters." " Persons who teach other- 
 
AEGIMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 31 
 
 wise are condemned." Now, if any one, scliolar or no seliolar, 
 will turn to tlie passage and read ys. 1, 2, he must see that, in 
 the first, there is not only no believing there, but that the speci- 
 fication of the second necessarily excludes the qualifying term 
 helieving^ from the first. In the first verse it is : " Let as many 
 servants (all) as are imder the yoke, count their masters, etc." 
 In the second : " And they that have helieving masters, let them 
 not despise, etc." Out of as many as are under the yoke, out 
 of the entire class of slaves, some have Ijelicving masters. Tliese 
 are singled out in the second verse, and thus become specific, 
 and the duty here enjoined varies a little from that in the first 
 verse, and is founded on a specific and different reason from 
 the honor required of all, in the first. Whether the Professor 
 is teaching " otherwise " than conformably to the apostle's in- 
 junction, it were well for him to search out, lest his own de- 
 scription of such teachers attach to himself, and he be found 
 " doting about questions of words, and perverse disputings " 
 logomachies " of men destitute of the truthP 
 
 " The key, also, which unlocks the whole difficulty," has, 
 somehow, become so rusty since it left the Professor's hand, or 
 so involved in transcendental and instinctive ligaments, that it 
 will not work in the wards of the lock. It fails to open the 
 safe for us. It is " mere moonshine " to try to get over the 
 plain, simple truth of this and other similar passages, in which 
 the same obedience is taught to the master, who was " froward," 
 unrighteous^ and " buflTeted his slave for doing well," inflicting 
 suffering " wrongfully," unrighteously ', mere vain logomachy^ 
 to endeavor to blunt the edge of the truth, by rhetorically en- 
 larging on the " apostle's loving thoughts," " the Christian 
 inconceivableness, the impossibility of a Christian master re- 
 garding his slave as property," the abnegation of " owner- 
 ship," " the oneness in Christ," etc., etc. 
 
 Who told our author that these things are so ? Has God ? 
 Has Christ ? Have the apostles ? Has any thing higher than 
 his own instincts, his own psychological condition ? We pre- 
 sumed, at the outset, that we agreed as to the sole standard of 
 truth, but we begin to fear. We affirm and prove that the 
 early Pauline Christian master could ow7i, and did ow)i, under 
 
32 AEGUaiENT TEOM TUE NEW TESTAJIENT. 
 
 law, as in the South, and did not, nor was required to, emanci- 
 pate. Where, as the Professor so often asks, where the re- 
 quirement ? 
 
 Nor does it seem to us that the Professor gains any thing 
 for his cause, by his contrast between the political status of 
 the Poman empire and the American republic, there being, 
 in the former, none of " those social rights and social duties so 
 much boasted of in the latter." Pecause, forsooth, there was 
 " no citizenship, in the modern sense, no voting, no political 
 rights," therefore the slave must submit and be obedient, un- 
 der the tyrannical 'power / but here, where there is citizenship, 
 let him seek it, let him have it ! Put there was a citizenship 
 imder the Poman power. Paul had it. There was the freeman 
 and the freedman, there was position enough higher than that 
 of a slave. Why not urged to seek that, as well as now, the 
 higher political freedom ? And we doubt, besides, whether 
 the Professor advocates the universal right of voting by all 
 men, of all colors. 
 
 And now again, our author affirms that the " real issue " is, 
 that there is not a word of buying or selling slaves in the 1^. T., 
 nor a case of discipline for the sin anywhere recorded. Most 
 marvellous ! " Not a word of buying and selling." " Not a 
 recorded case of discipline for it." It would be strange, in- 
 deed, if the apostles should stop, in their letters, to tell us 
 whether Epenetus, Andronicus, Apelles, Aristobulus, Pufus, 
 Gains, Erastus the chamberlain of the city, ever bought or 
 sold a slave. These transfers of property in man were prob- 
 ably common in those days and not noteworthy, the Professor's 
 psychologic idiosyncrasy to the contrary notwithstanding, al- 
 though even he thinks it " barely possible there might have 
 been something with the reseiriblance of a sale, but which was 
 merely a method taken by one brother for placing another 
 brother in a better condition " ! ! ! 
 
 And then, as to " discipline," why should there be any ? 
 The presumption is the other way, that there would be none, 
 if neither Christ nor his apostles denounced the relation as 
 wrong, and especially if recognized as a customary and legal 
 
AEGUMENT FEOM TIIE NEW TESTAMEISTT. 33 
 
 act. But further, -where are the recorded cases of discipline 
 for covetousness, for calumny, for slander, etc., etc. ? 
 
 It may be M'ell enough for the Professorial chair to dilate 
 on clerical blindness, and to express astonishment " at this 
 jpretended argument from the ITew Testament, which amounts 
 to nothing, even when put in the strongest light." It is barely 
 possible that they who think they see, see not, and become 
 " blind leaders of the blind." At any rate, we think the Pro- 
 fessor particularly unfortunate in tlie quotations he makes to 
 offset this strong light, and make it seem to be darkness. " If 
 a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other," 
 quotes the Professor : and triumphantly asks, thereupon : 
 " Does that justify the smiter and the smiting ? " Most assur- 
 edly not, is our reply ; but there is, in this case, no legal nor 
 recognized relation of any kind, governmental or other, be- 
 tween the smiter and the smitten, none, whatever, but the uni- 
 versal relation of man to man as brothers of the Adamic fam- 
 ily. " Honor the king." " Does that prove monarchy ? " 
 Why, no ; but it does prove the right of the reigning power to 
 the honor, and the duty of the subject to render it. It here 
 proves a relation, and an instituted relation, out of which grow 
 rights and duties. And only when the investiture of authority 
 is monstrously abused can the rights and duties cease. So 
 of the other quotations. Those I have given are the strongest. 
 
 And now our author closes up his argument by a linguical, 
 critical disquisition on the word doulos. " It may denote," 
 he says, " the servile condition. It may signify a suhject.''^ 
 Tlie Professor has not read Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, the 
 tragic and comic writers of Greece to so little purpose, as not 
 to know that doiilos does mean, and preeminently mean, a slave, 
 man in a servile condition, whilst it does also signify a subject. 
 And that it does signify a slave in the IST. T., in those passages 
 on which our argument mainly rests, he assuredly cannot can- 
 didly and critically deny. But " there is a word in the Greek 
 language," proceeds the Professor, " that is always servile? 
 ever used to denote slaves as property, the word andrajpodwiP 
 It is true that this term has a very servile smell about it, and 
 one does not like to handle it much. For this reason, perhaps, 
 3 
 
34 AEGUJIENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 the Doctor so quickly dropped it. Had lie handled it a little 
 more, turning it over and over, he probably would have found 
 some of the properties he attributed to it suddenly evanishing : 
 e. g. : " exceedingly common in the classic Greek," " very fa- 
 miliar wherever Paul travelled," " always used with the ser- 
 vile notion," " denoting that that to which it is applied is a 
 thing or chattel, without true personality." It need not be so 
 wondered at that the New Testament and Paul never used it, 
 although " so common in Athenian Greek." The reasons, 
 doubtless, 'were,Jirst, that doulos was the usual word to ex- 
 press the slave relation of the Koman empire, and that an- 
 drapodon, instead of being " exceedingly common," " very 
 familiar wherever Paul travelled," etc., was exceedingly rare, 
 nor did it, as asserted, " denote a thing without personality," but 
 a person sold into slavery ; secondly, that Paul and other apos- 
 tles would naturally prefer, in full recognition, however, of 
 their servile state, to employ a term not so degrading as an- 
 drapodon. Why should he choose to denominate these Chris- 
 tian slaves, vile things, lit only to be at the feet of another, as 
 the word means, or to be " kicked and cuffed." There is no 
 conceivable reason why Paul should, notwithstanding his 
 recognition of the right of property in the master, ever make 
 use of a word, uncommon at the time, and specifically designed 
 to lower the humanity-idea, l^or does the Professor, in our 
 view, establish his scholarship by his criticism on the word 
 andrapodlstes, which he translates, slave-trader ^ in our version, 
 man-stealer. 1 Tim. i. 9, 10. " The law is made for patri- 
 cides and matricides, for man-slayers, for men-stecders, etc." 
 The " association" here, in which the apostle puts the andra- 
 podistes, is such, he thinks, that Paul could never have applied 
 the idea of human property, the thing in which the andrapo- 
 distes dealt, to a man, much less to a Christian brother. The as- 
 sociation is truly bad enough, but it is most unfortunate for 
 the Professor that the master, the slaveowner merely, is not one 
 of the members of the association. It is only the " slave-tra- 
 d'Cr^'' or man-stecder, according to our version. And we verily 
 believe, witli Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, and all good lexi- 
 cographers, that the slave-trader, in the apostle's category, was 
 
AEGtJMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 35 
 
 first the stecaler, and then the selleT or trader : he did the former 
 in order to the Latter. Tlie only representatives of the class in 
 our country are those who kidnap other people's slaves, and 
 abet those who do, by building underground railroads and 
 writing books on the inhumanity and horridity of slavery : for 
 the word distinctively means one loTio Icidiiaps, steals free men 
 or other 'peoplo's slaves for the purjpose of selling. Moreover, 
 as in the South the slave-trader is despicable, and not admitted 
 into society, whilst the slave-owner has a high social status, so 
 the same distinction was probably made in the apostle's day. 
 The one was a legalized and reputable social relation, whilst 
 the other excluded the perpetrator from the pale of a high 
 civilization. Hence the apostles associated the slave stealer 
 and trader with the " unholy and profane, murderers of fathers 
 and mothers, perjurers, etc.," whilst he left out the slave oivner 
 or master. Easy it is for the learned Professor, from his own 
 stand-point, to seize on certain passages of the glorious gospel 
 of the blessed God, and, with the aid of imagination, infuse 
 into them his own idiosyncracy ; but whether his stand-point is 
 biblical, is quite another question. Since 1776 it has been 
 supremely easy in this land of peculiar liberty, to portray in 
 glowing colors the beautiful form of freedom, to represent 
 lovely crowds sweetly kissing her feet, and other multitudes 
 throwing their festal wreaths over her head and neck, whilst 
 they make the very heavens to ring with their plaudit hosannas. 
 But instead of all this, to go and sit down as a worshipper at 
 the pedestal of naked, angular Truth, where probably few will 
 sympathize with your veneration, is not so genial. Yet is it a 
 higher worship than the other. 
 
 And now, just now, it is very easy, and it may be very 
 popular, to talk beautifully of some of the spiritual ideas of 
 the Gospel ; yet this may all be quite incidental and transcen- 
 dental to the argument. It may be palatable, indeed, to serve 
 up a dish of highly spiced sophistry, and pass it round among 
 the guests for something solid ; but it will turn to wormwood 
 in the mouth and to gall in the stomach. Such we deem those 
 closing passages of the Professor. They are solely applicable 
 to the purely gain-loving master, to the abominable abuses of 
 
36 ARGUMENT FROM THE ISTEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 slavery, whilst the biblical argument relates only to the thing 
 itself, to the relation of master and slave, constituting mutual 
 rights and duties. 
 
 One thing is very certain, that, if apostles sent letters to 
 churches, they must have intended them to be understood as 
 referring to things then existing, however applicable, also, to 
 things future. And no Greek, nor Jew, nor Roman of that day, 
 could possibly have put any other interpretation on the words 
 of Paul and Peter than this : that obedience on the part of 
 subordinates was one of the first and highest of Christian 
 duties ; that subordination was ordained of God ; that the 
 relation of master and slave was consistent with Christianity, 
 though it were a relation of ownership, and that mutual rights 
 and duties grew out of this relation, incumbent on both ; that 
 to be a Christian slave of even a " froward " master was not a 
 matter to be " cared for," and might be a privilege, whilst to 
 be a Christian slave of a " believing " or Christian master, was 
 to be in one of the most tender and loving relations of life ; 
 and that he who taught otherwise was " proud, knowing noth- 
 ing " of the subject, and not to be accepted as a Christian 
 teacher. " From such withdraw thyself," says the apostle. So 
 that, really, whilst Northern ministers and chm-ches, in refusing 
 fellowship with slaveholders act without authority, and con- 
 trary to the teaching and action of the apostles, Southern 
 churches and ministers might quote Scripture, if so disposed, 
 for non-intercourse with such Abolition teachers, and exclude 
 them, on the authority of Paul, from recognition as ministers 
 of the truth. 
 
 And now let us look a little more closely into the " interior 
 spirit " of the Gospel on which the Professor descants so largely 
 and so warmly. "We confess, here, to seeing differently from 
 the Doctor. Our spiritual eye may be affected with a cataract 
 or a paralysis of the nerve, unfitting us for reading the "Word 
 intelligently ; and yet, we are much inclined to believe, rather, 
 that the Professor has borrowed some spiritualistic glasses of 
 modem days, which have the power of throwing a mist of ob- 
 scurity over the printed page of the Gospel, whilst they reveal, 
 in large letters, some otherwise invisible lines. Or he reads. 
 
AEGUMElfT FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 37 
 
 perhaps, some Palimpsest copies, in whicli tlie original writings, 
 long defaced, are illumed with the interior view, not percep- 
 tible in the common version. 
 
 To our vision this seems the inner meaning and spirit of the 
 whole Bible, the " apostolic stand-point" as well; to wit: that 
 the material is for the moral, the mutable for the immutable. 
 The whole creation travaileth in pain together, waiting for a 
 redemption. Earth crumbles, elements melt, the heavens are 
 rolled together as a scroll. Life is a vapor, a shadow, a pass- 
 ing cloud, a weaver's shuttle. Its relations are of little ac- 
 count. The fashion, the sliapes, the forms, the relations, the 
 all of this world, is passing away. Look beyond. That is 
 Christ's doctrine, as well as of Moses, prophets, and apostles. 
 There even the tenderest relation of life ceases, and they 
 " neither marry nor are given in marriage." It was of little 
 moment to the sweet singer of Israel, whether he were the 
 king on the throne or the subject at its foot, whether the son 
 of Jesse tending his father's flocks on the hill-sides of Judea, 
 or the crowned and jewelled monarch on the summit of Zion. 
 In this view, also, Christ, the executive of all government and 
 the head of a kingdom not of this world, thought it not worth 
 the while to stoop to the consideration of the mere temporary 
 relations of earth, not touching the established and existing 
 forms of social and political life, not even inquiring whether a 
 man were master or slave, except as to the mutual duties of 
 both, but ever looking beyond and pointing to higher and eter- 
 nal relations, to be secured by faith and obedience, in every 
 condition and position of life. He regarded submission to 
 Csesar, even to Kero, thus illustrating the higher life, as of far 
 more importance to the subject than the rupture of the bonds 
 of organized society. 
 
 Let us not, then, think so much of hurling thunderbolts at 
 the head of the Southern master, of building " underground 
 railroads " to nm off the slave, of sending emissaries, living 
 and lifeless, to hurry them up to a false sense of their rights, 
 of breaking their chains, and unbinding their bonds, of giving 
 them political liberty, as if this were the acm^ of earth's hopes 
 and blessings. Let us not think that to be " born of Abra- 
 
38 aegujVient feom the new testament. 
 
 ham," is the excejlence of life, but let us rather hear the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, when, he says : " K the son shall make you free, 
 then shall ye be free indeed," Yes, there is something higher, 
 better than mere human freedom, better than descent from the 
 free and the noble, something that permeates the soul, and 
 makes up an interior life, which is comparatively regardless of 
 outward circumstances and temporal relations ; something that 
 lifts a Lazarus above his pampered lord, that inspires songs in 
 the prison, whose music drowns the clanking of chains and 
 breaks the dungeon doors ; a something that welcomes faggots 
 and bonds of slavery, if it be but the Master's will ; something 
 which lights up a smile of joy on the beaming face of the 
 Christian slave never reflected from the brow of the ungodly 
 and froward master, which makes him happier in his toils, 
 though under the lash, than if merely crowned with all the 
 freedom which earth and state could give him ; something, in 
 fine, which should lead us all to sing, not, " Give me liberty or 
 give me death," but give me Christ or give me naught. A 
 freedman in him, it matters little whether I be the subject of 
 a tyrannical monarch or the citizen of a free republic ; whether 
 I toil, from childhood up, in the dark, miasmatic mines, or in 
 the close, oily, fibrous atmosphere of the ever-clinking factory, 
 or in the kitchen cabinet of a master, or the cotton-field of the 
 planter. I would rather be a slave all my days, and sit at the 
 feet of Jesus to learn patience, humility, and meekness, and 
 then go to wear the laurels of victory in his heavenly kingdom 
 forever, tlian to possess here the highest honors freedom can 
 bestow, and then sink, a lost soul, into the darkness of eternal 
 night. I do not say that to be all this and be qualified for it in 
 freedom is not, in some wise, better ; but I do mean to say 
 that prophets, and Christ, and apostles, thought liberty of little 
 account ; in the comparison, scarce worth a thought or a word. 
 See the apostolic earnestness : " I determined to know 
 nothing else, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Ah yes, 
 may the Professor say, as a ground of pardon and of reconcilia- 
 tion. True, but I take a higher point of observation, a stand- 
 point from which is seen all that the other presents, and bright 
 and beauteous visions beyond. ^^Knoio nothing elseJ^ Yes, 
 
AEGUlVrEI^n? FROM TIIE NEW TESTAMENT. 39 
 
 all tlie gorgeousness of eartli's trappings is just nothing ; all 
 the mere adventitious surroundings of man are mere bubbles : 
 to be in Christ is all, is every thing. Whether a' man be a 
 slave or a freeman, Avhether a capitalist or a laborer, whether 
 a serf or a lord, whether a subject or a sovereign, is to me of 
 no consideration. To think of these things, to dwell on man's 
 rights, and woman's rights, as tlie all-absorbing aim and effort, 
 is just as if, whilst I could direct my glass to the burning 
 glories of the Sun of Eighteousness and to the pearly gates 
 and golden streets and etliereal mansions of the heavenly city, 
 I should turn it rather to the floating specks or the dark spots 
 in that sun's atmosphere and the dreary abysses of the second 
 death. ]^ever thus did Paul, nor Peter. They deemed it bet- 
 ter for the slave even to continue in his social status, and there 
 to exhibit the transforming power of the gospel, than to grasp 
 after liberty. 
 
 And if Jesus thought it not needful for him to reprove the 
 pious centurion for hqlding office under a most tyrannical 
 power, and at the same time holding property in man ; (and 
 that he did no scholar should dispute if He thought it well to 
 receive this man to intimate fellowship) ; and to commend 
 his faith to the pious of all ages ; if He deemed it not degrad- 
 ing nor dehumanizing to oion a fellow man, why should we 
 shrink from the contamination of contact with slaveholders ? 
 why should we, in the spirit of the feeling, " Stand off, for I 
 am holier than thou," denounce and curse him, and put caste 
 upon him in both church and state ? Oh, for more of Christ's 
 humility and self-abasement. " He thought it not robbery 
 to be equal with God, yet took upon him the form of a ser- 
 vanty It were better for us to follow his steps, take his guid- 
 ance, do as he did in this matter, than to be foremost in advo- 
 cacy of human rights and universal liberty, maugre all the 
 jewels it might set in our brow. Let Him be our teacher, and 
 to whatsoever that teaching shall lead, let us gladly follow. 
 
 I cannot believe that Jesus Christ ever intended that his 
 church should make aggressive attacks on governments or on 
 organized legal relations in state-life or social-life. Govern- 
 ment was his own ordinance, and to violate it a greater sin and 
 
40 SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 
 
 evil than to antagonize its institutions as to the relations of 
 social and political life. " My kingdom is not of this world." 
 It permeates all governments, all kingdoms, all dominions, all 
 states. Intended to be adapted to the Oriental, the Indian, 
 the Islander, the African, the all of peoples and of govern- 
 mental forms : not to disturb but to control ; not so much to 
 guard " Natural Eights," as to give new rights and to infuse 
 a spirit of life into all and over all. 
 
 E'ow, there is a ground on which North and South, free- 
 holder and slaveholder can meet, Lewis and Palmer, Hodge 
 and Thornwell, N. Adams and N. Rice, Barnes and Ross, a 
 panoplied host, clad in the armor of the gospel, the shield of 
 faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. 
 Thus accoutred and thus led, our legions shall go forth, con- 
 quering and to conquer, and, instead of fighting shadows and 
 abstractions, beating the air, shall fight the good fight of faith, 
 and under the banner of the cross, which ever waved over the 
 apostles' heads, shall deal deadly blows to the enemies of our 
 faith : and, under the great Captain of our salvation, shall enter 
 the citadel and subject the Prince of the power of the air, even 
 Satan, the Deceiver of the nations and the enemy of all righte- 
 ousness. 
 
 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 
 
 In this article. Prof. Lewis begins by laying down some 
 conceded principles, the chief of which is, that " the power of 
 the clergy to afi'ect the world for good or ill, can have no second 
 place." 
 
 But the PiK)fessor finds in the clergy and in the church 
 little recognition of this controlling power, but " a wide desire 
 to find some easier or less responsible place," a disj)Osition " to 
 talk of Christianity as a power smoothly mixing with the world, 
 moulding it by the silent efiicacy of doctrines never preached, 
 of a spirit never exhibited, insensibly leavening it without any 
 disturbing force." Men, who adopt extreme views, requiring 
 a wresting of the Scriptures for their support, are very prone to 
 become harsh in their judgments and extremists in tl^e^''' 
 
SLAVEEY AUB THE CHUECH. 41 
 
 charges. The clergy, undoubtedly, under a deep sense of 
 their weakness, amid the dark and damning powers of sin and 
 Satan in this accursed world, often cry out, " Who is sufficient 
 for these things ? " and feel deeply and humbly that they are 
 but " earthen vessels ; " yet it is too much for the recluse Pro- 
 fessor to charge on the ministry of Jesus Christ in this land, 
 the absolute desertion of their " high calling," the dastardly 
 choice of expecting powerful effects from " doctrines never 
 preached," " a spirit never exercised ; " the " desire to find some 
 easier way " than aggression on the world, the world " spiritu- 
 ally," as he says ; i. e., the world in its sinful principles and 
 imgodly practices. Tantum siifficit. "We fear, more and 
 more, the power over the Professor of the one idea of owner- 
 ship. 
 
 We now come to the great question of his fifth article : 
 " Has the church moulded politics, or politics the church ? " 
 and the Professor answers it thus : " The Christianity of the 
 South, the Christianity, to a wide extent, of the North, has been 
 moulded, and continues to be moulded, by the politicians." 
 " The clergy have followed in the worldly wake." 
 
 With beautiful, christian " sarcasm," too, with an irony, 
 for which he apologizes, by calling it " the irony of fact," he 
 pours out a torrent of bitterness on those of the clergy who 
 might assume that the change of view on the subject of slavery 
 was attributable to the influence of the church, growing out 
 of a more independent biblical study. 
 
 And now, to the proof of his own answer to the question, 
 to wit, that politics has controlled the church. What is that 
 proof? Wherein does it consist ? First, in the fact of a mere 
 " whisper, and hardly that, in condemnation of the Dred Scott 
 decision." lo ! triomphe ! to Dr. Cheever ! And, " why have 
 our churches," the Prof, asks, " felt so little that deep wound 
 to Christianity, as well as to humanity ? " This is at best a 
 negative proof, though in reality failing in every attribute of 
 evidence. To be proven : Politics control the clergy. Proof 
 first : " The clergy have failed to condemn and denounce the 
 Dred Scott decision. Kow, in our humble opinion, there is no 
 relation in the proof to the proposition, and of course no rea- 
 
42 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 
 
 soning, no logic. It takes for granted what is not true, that 
 the clergy is aj)pointed to review the decisions of the Judicial 
 Powers of the Government, and if it fail so to do, it is under 
 the control of politics. AVhereas Christ, the Master and Head 
 of the clergy, emphatically declined, in more than one case, to 
 undertake any such review, or to give any judicial decisions, 
 saying : " My kingdom is not of this world." " Give unto 
 Caesar," leave unto Csesar, " the things that are Csesar's." 
 " Who made me a judge ? " And if there were any force in 
 such a reason, it were just as forceful to adduce the mere 
 whisper, and hardly that, in condemnation " of the clearly un- 
 constitutional " Personal Liberty Bills. 
 
 Moreover, it is quite as Christian and quite as facile, to pre- 
 sume that the abstinence from " condemnation," in this case, on 
 the part of the ministry, grew out of a higher conception of 
 their calling than that implied in the Professor's charges ; a 
 conception resting on both the precepts and example of the 
 Master, and of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, and leading 
 them to regard the preaching of Christ and Him crucified as 
 of far more import, obligation, and utility, than to be revising 
 and denouncing the decisions of Supreme Judges, presumed to 
 be acting under the solemnity of their oaths. The " Dred 
 Scott decision " was simply a legal, judicial interpretation of 
 the Constitution, which the Court was sworn to interpret, by 
 constitutional law, and which it sustained, also, by a process 
 of reasoning founded on facts and their relations, which meets 
 the general approbation of unbiassed judges and of thinking 
 men. The pulpit, certainly, could not, with much propriety, 
 or authority, from the Master, undertake to denounce it as un- 
 christian, antichristian, wicked, or of " the world." And even 
 though a Boanerges, or an Iconoclast, here and there, should, 
 in a frenzy, deem himself officially appointed to thunder in the 
 political heavens, and thus to crush the idols of the political 
 church ; and though a quiet monk, or son of consolation even, 
 should shout after him. All hail ! it would not follow that 
 they two only were the faithful ministers of Christ, the sole 
 interpreters of his Gospel, the purest specimens of vicegerency 
 
SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 43 
 
 on eartli. Nay verily ; but ratlier tliey, who preacli " the 
 truth as it is i7i Jesus," and walk humbly with God. 
 • In regard to the decision itself, a single word. The Pro- 
 fessor pronounces it, a " sinking of the colored man to the 
 level of the brute," a " deciding that he is no member of the 
 state, that is, no member of humanity ; " and he quotes Aris- 
 totle in conhrmation : " Out of the state," says the greatest 
 philosopher of antiquity, " man ceases to be properly man ; " 
 cut off from " all inemhership with a social human organism, 
 he sinks to the level of the brute." The Professor knows, as 
 he must have read the philosopher, that this author includes 
 the slave in " the social human organism," in municipal society, 
 in the state, and of course, as it seems to us, had no reference 
 whatever to a slave, as ceasing, in that relation, to be " prop- 
 erly man," and sinking to " the level of the brute." He evi- 
 dently refers to man in a state of barbaric individualism, being, 
 in no sense, part or parcel of a regulated community, a state. 
 His rendering, too, of the Dred Scott decision is sui generis. 
 It decides, he says, that the slave is " no member of the state 
 at all, that is, no member of humanity." Now, first, his state- 
 ment of the decision is untrue, and secondly, his expletive still 
 more so. It does not follow that, if the decision were that he 
 is no member of the state, he is therefore no member of human- 
 ity ; and it is gross injustice so to represent either to himself 
 or to unthinking readers. Nor is it true that the decision pro- 
 nounces the colored man " no member of the state." Only 
 that, under the Constitution, he is not entitled to the rights of 
 citizenshii). The Professor sees the difference between this and 
 his statement. 
 
 His second proof of the assertion, that politics control the 
 clergy and the church, is no more negative, but positive. It 
 consists in taking a stand-point of his own, and there summon- 
 ing up before him, on the one hand, the General Assembly of 
 the Presbyterian Church of these United States ; on the other, 
 the celebrated Southern statesman, John C. Calhoun. Now, the 
 former of these august personages in the spectacle, stands up 
 mighty and majestic, holding in his hand the act of 1818, a 
 verv Lutheric bill of denunciation against slavery. But, hav- 
 
44 SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 
 
 ing thus bombasted awhile, with tremendous gesticulation and 
 ejaculation, this awful personage quietly subsides, and, in a 
 dissolving view, gradually evanishes into nonentity. The lat- 
 ter, appearing as " a young j)olitician," then as " a member 
 of the Senate," and then " Yice-president of the United States,'' 
 and then, in the foreground of the picture, " the champion of 
 slavery," " the oracle, the Bible of the Southern States ;" and 
 though with " no great power of individual statesmanship "(? !) 
 though " a disappointed, worldly politician, with no rank as a 
 Christian, even if a nominal believer," (who made thee a 
 judge ?) yet dri\dng off his antagonist, the General Assembly, 
 chasing the dissolving view into a dim shadow, and himself 
 filling the foreground, background and middle, the all, of the 
 canvas. 
 
 In other words, and without a figure, the Professor quotes 
 the action of the assembly as the noblest Abolition testimony, 
 represents it as lying a dead letter on the old minutes, essentially, 
 though not formally repealed ; whilst the rise and the disap- 
 pointment of Calhoun in his unmet aspirations for the Presi- 
 dency, became marked by his announcement of a new doctrine 
 of slavery, which led the clergy to a new study of the Bible, 
 resulting in a general adoption of his views in the South, and 
 extensively in the iJ^orth. This, then, is the Professor's second 
 and chief argument, to which he devotes two whole columns 
 of the " Woi5d." 
 
 Forty-two years ago, the General Assembly denounced 
 slavery as an awful sin, equalling " the Abolitionists in strength 
 of language," About forty-two years ago, John C. Calhoun 
 just " rose into notice as a young politician." The politician 
 and the ecclesiastical act were born together, the one, like 
 Minerva, full sized and equipped ; the other an infant stripling. 
 But, lo ! as we gazed, the mighty man evanished, the stripling 
 became a power in the country. Therefore, says the Professor, 
 the stripling conquered the giant- Calhoun was the cause of 
 the failure of the act. Politics controlled the church. Calhoun 
 beat the drum, and the Christian forces assembled. lie gave 
 the v»'ord, the panoplied hosts fought under his banner. Tlie 
 Great Master's voice they could no longer hear, nor anv more 
 
SLAVEEY AND THE CHITECH. 45 
 
 fight under the banner of the cross. Poor deserters ; we pity 
 you ! Why do you not now, since your leader is gone, a dis- 
 appointed politician, without a particle of piety, too, why do 
 you not, we beseech you, hear the trumpet call of the valiant 
 Professor, and, under his lead, retrace your steps, and, by a 
 counter-march, wheel into the legions of the gi'eat captain, ac- 
 coutred in all the armor of the Abolition-regiment ? 
 
 A few passing comments. The Professor attributes the 
 new study of the Bible by God's ministers and people, to the 
 dictation of Calhoun. Is it not possible to see a better motive? 
 — " Politics," lie says, " has moulded our biblical and theo- 
 logical thinking." Why is this singularly true of one class of 
 ministers ? Why not as easy and as true, to say of the Profes- 
 sor and his sympathizers, that their " biblical thinking is 
 moulded by politics ; " that mighty ISTorthern politicians and 
 their doctrines of " non-extension " and " irrepressible conflict " 
 control him ? 
 
 And when he intimates that the "learned and devout 
 English, Scotch, and German commentators do not discover 
 the doctrine," of biblical slavery, that it is found only " in 
 association with slavery," what does he mean ? I aver that all 
 of them, who are recognized authorities in hermeneutics, in- 
 cluding also our own, do interiDret the Bible words, and phrases, 
 and passages, bearing on the subject, in such way as truthful 
 exegesis requires, and as sustains the positions disputed by the 
 Professor. 
 
 We wonder that, as the Professor has changed his own 
 views, and turned a complete sommersauU in Jive years, which 
 he has nohly acknowledged, writing himself, "Lewis verstis 
 Lewis," a rare humility ; we wonder he could not conceive that 
 the Presbyterian church, or many in it, might vary their views 
 of The Act, \w forty-two years. He, at least, should have made 
 some allowance for his brethren, rather than berate his own 
 church as he does. Perhaps beating up recruits, and trying to 
 frighten learned divines and unlearned laity into his ranks ! 
 It is very manifest, at least, from the tenor of his closing re- 
 marks or exhortations, in which he calls on his church, to " go 
 back to her old testimony," to " repeal, renounce, repent," or 
 
46 SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 
 
 " enforce in word and discipline," witli " the decision of a 
 power having the keys, that an assault is intended, perhaps in 
 the next assembly. And then, to " re-examine Scripture instead 
 of holding fast to an ecclesiastical action^'' is the " casting down 
 of Zion." An ecclesiastical act above and beyond Scrijptv/ral 
 study and doctrines based on it, what shall we say of it ? Eather 
 too high ! 
 
 There is, throughout this article, we are sorry to see it, 
 and to say it, an undue, and unfitting censoriousness, sarcasm, 
 and obloquy of God's ministry and church — an essential Aboli- 
 tionism hard in its terms. 
 
 SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 
 
 In his sixth article, the Professor continues the proof of his 
 proposition, that jMitics control the church, and slavery politics. 
 Facts, he says, prove it. And the first fact is, that the nation's 
 existence is imperilled, and slavery is the cause. This " fearful 
 element of evil in our nation's infancy was suffered to remain," 
 in expectation that " the spirit of freedom " would soon extin- 
 guish it. " Without this pervading sentiment, the Constitution 
 would never have been formed." This is, indeed, one view of 
 the case, but whether the fact-vieio, or not, is another ques- 
 tion. Tliere is a diflferent view, quite as clearly, at least, yea, 
 more clearly written on the page of history, that without slav- 
 ery, the Constitution could never have been formed ; and, per- 
 haps, further reading might convince us that it was not " held 
 everywhere and by all, that the spirit of freedom would soon 
 cause to disappear every thing not in perfect harmony with it ;" 
 indeed, that there was far from being an expectation by the 
 fathers, that slavery would die out, " by letting it alone." In- 
 stead of the epitaph on our country's tomb being, " Died of 
 slavery,^'' it were well for him who writes it, to search deeply 
 into causes, and scrutinize carefully on the post-mortem exami- 
 nation, in order to see whether the truthful inscription should 
 not be. Died of unchristian meddling with slavery, and con- 
 sequent violation of compacts. Whilst it was " let alone," for 
 nearly fifty years, it grew side by side with the freedom of the 
 
SLAVERY AKD POLITICS. 4^ 
 
 North, the one symbolized by the stm-dy oak, the other by the 
 tall and graceful palmetto. But when the spirit of Abolition- 
 ism began to work and to leaven the masses of the North, it 
 could not be exorcised ; but, possessing its subjects with a fu- 
 ror, it made them meddlers in other people's matters, and they 
 spread an infecting virus even into the body politic, which 
 marred its beauty, maimed its limbs, and shore it of its auburn 
 locks. 
 
 So a nest of spiteful vipers might lie in repose in the cradle 
 of a sleeping babe, or coil harmless around its limbs, until 
 roused by some demon spell ; and then, and not till then, would 
 they infuse their venom into its blood, and eat out its life. The 
 poisonous fangs were, indeed, in this case, the immediate cause 
 of death, yet those fangs lay still in their sheath, never spit out 
 their venom, nor affected the beauteous thing, until irritated 
 from without by some tormenting goad. 
 
 TVe look further, and through the article, for the other 
 facts " barely to state which is to render the conclusion in- 
 controvertible ; " the conclusion that slavery and politics con- 
 trol religion ; but we can find fio)ie. There is the expression 
 of an evident feeling of goneness, as the doctors might say, 
 while the Professor descants on the fading away of the " hope 
 that our Christianity would heal it," the " indifferency to which 
 good men have given their clerical countenance," instead of 
 preaching against this political evil, as he himself here sets it 
 forth ; which, by the way, did not the apostles. The goneness 
 becomes an apoplexy, when, in conclusion, he again dilates on 
 that awful " Dred Scott decision," and almost pronounces judg- 
 ment on Mr. O'Conor, the Tract Society, and all men and 
 ministers who cannot, and do not, see in it the very virus of 
 the damned, and denounce it most lustily from the consecrate 
 pulpit of the church. Tliere are good men and true, North, 
 South, East, and West ; there are holy messengers of the cross, 
 who read and interpret that same judicial decision very differ- 
 ently from the Professor, and many, too, who may read it 
 much as he does, and yet not deem it of their special duties, 
 as he does of his, to thunder against it from the pulpit, nor to 
 write it down through the Press. 
 
48 SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 
 
 The great difficulty witli our Professor here, as elsewhere, 
 is, that, with wizard wand he conjures up unreal witches, and 
 then, as easily, with wizard wand, bids them down again into 
 their wonted darkness. He is evidently undertaking to estab- 
 lish his theory that ownersM]) for gain is the essence, the all in 
 all of slavery, and that this is utterly inconsistent with the prac- 
 tice of the golden rule. And, whilst he evidently expects his 
 opponents to include in the idea of slavery, all and every of its 
 concomitant though unnecessary and unusual abuses, he him- 
 self refuses to accept the real issue, to wit : not whether sla- 
 very abounds in abuses, but whether a slavery legalized and 
 regulated by law, consisting essentially in a right to the time, 
 talents, and services of others without their consent, with a 
 right to sell the same, and a correspondent obligation of care, 
 kindness, protection, and provision, on the part of the owner ^ 
 whether such a slavery is inconsistent with the principles of 
 the Bible, and the practice of Christianity. It is likewise over- 
 looked that the slave is always called a person to distinguish 
 him from other property. 
 
 Wlien, also, he denies the application of the golden rule to 
 the system of slavery, and asserts that servile ownership can- 
 not exist under it, he becomes involved in one of his transcen- 
 dental clouds, and cannot see the bold principles of the Bible 
 standing out like great promontories in a sea of light and love. 
 The exposition of this golden rule, given by its great Author 
 himself, is this : " Tliou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 Such is his summary of the second table of the Law, as it is 
 called, embracing our duties to our neighbors ; and the golden 
 rule covers the same ground, not that of duties owing to God. 
 IS'ow, the last of the laws of the second table, the tenth com- 
 mandment, as well as the fourth, clearly recognizes the rela- 
 tions of slavery, property-slavery, too ; and Christ, therefore, 
 embraces it in his summary or law of love, and thus proclaims 
 its application to " a servile ownership," equally with all the 
 other relations recognized in this commandment. 
 
 Again, if this " claim of servile ownership," this slavery, 
 which we are discussing, " lies out of the pale of Christianity," 
 and cannot consist with the golden rule, it is amazingly strange 
 
THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 49 
 
 that the Author of the rule, after having promulgated it and 
 laid it down as a principle to be put into the comer-stone of his 
 church, should nevertheless forget to remind the centurion that 
 his " servile ownership," his masterly relation to his doulos, (for 
 it is ho pais only in Matthew, and that, too, means slave,) his 
 slave, " lies out of the pale of Christianity, out of the kingdom 
 of God, in a region of outer darkness," so utterly inconsistent 
 with his fundamental law, that it " could have no place under 
 it," and must be abandoned. 
 
 And again, Paul and Peter must have understood the sig- 
 nificance of that golden rule of the master, quite as well as any 
 teachers of modern days, and they, in their injunctions on mas- 
 ters and slaves, never even hint that servile ownership was out- 
 side the law of love ; but, on the contrary, by application of its 
 principle to the mutual duties of such relation, positively place 
 the relation itself, not outside of, but inside, and under this 
 heavenly and Christian Rule. 
 
 THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE RACE. 
 
 In his next chapter, the Professor with a great deal of the 
 " inner sense," the sentimental heart, and an almost utter ne- 
 gation of the pure intellect, although he again quotes Aristotle, 
 the " Pure Intellect " philosopher of antiquity, proceeds to 
 comment, both dramatically and sentimentally, on the text of 
 Paul on Mars' Hill : " God hath made of one blood all nations 
 to dwell upon all the face of the earth." " Its application to 
 slavery was obvious enough," he says ; but Paul's higher 
 object was not " to preach merely a political jubilee," but to 
 lead the soul to that all-embracing article, that all men are the 
 " offspring of God," and that " He hath made of one blood,'^ 
 of one life, " all nations." And then he asks, with rhetoric in- 
 terrogation, " Can one such being own another ? " It might 
 be queried whether Dr. Lewis is justified here, in charging Paul 
 with preaching a "^c»?^'^^mZ jubilee," but we let that pass. 
 
 The Professor, as if haunted by his new evolution of the 
 idea of ownersTii'p, runs off again into a prolix eulogy of his 
 distinction between ruling and owning, or government and 
 
 4: 
 
50 THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 
 
 2yroperty, just as if it ever needed a new bolstering up, like a 
 verj feeble, sinking patient. This, it seems to tis very much, 
 to need, and we leave it to its fall without adding another 
 blow. 
 
 Having transfused, as he presumes, his own degraded no- 
 tion of owning into the feelings of his readers, he leaves it 
 there to work its effect on the conscience, strengthening the 
 idea, meanwhile, by superadding that " the blood is the life, 
 the one generic life," which flows alike in all, and binds each 
 member to every other in a relation of kinshij?., which must 
 forever forbid the idea of ownership of a fellow-man, a Idns- 
 onan. Yet the Professor did, in an earlier article, most strenu- 
 ously contend that Christ had bought us, owned us, that we 
 were his 2)ossession, and that hence no one else could oum any 
 of us, any of the race. The interpretation we did not accept ; 
 but we may ask the Professor whether ownership is in Christ 
 degradmg, such ownership as he there assigned to him ? 
 
 He now ascends higher than the one generic life, the one 
 hlood of the first Adam, and confers on the race " a divine hu- 
 manity," even that derived from Christ's assumption of it, his 
 new sinless humanity coming out of the old ; and thus, histori- 
 cally and generically connected with it, elevating the whole, 
 both antecedent and subsequent, to his own human life. 
 " Qirist makes a new bond, a new generic, or life-bond, between 
 all the sons of Adam." 
 
 But this is not all. " Tliere is a higher relation still," a di- 
 vine life growing up on faith in Jesus, but still finding its 
 " ground " in the universal renewed human life imparted by the 
 incarnation. Having thus built up three humanities, the first 
 Adamic, the second Adamic, and the divine, or that of the Chris- 
 tian brotherhood, the Professor reiterates his old question with 
 a triple emphasis : " Can two such sons of God stand in the rela- 
 tion of owner and owned ? " Why, although the Professor 
 " feels that this is not a mere mystic sentimentality,^^ we yet 
 cannot avoid asking. Did any two such sons of God ever stand 
 in such relation f And, has Christ, the Head of all this trij^lo 
 humanity, the emibodiment of it, if ive may so say, has He ever 
 told us that they cannot stand in such relation ? To the latter 
 
THE BLOOD-mnTY OF THE EACE. 51 
 
 we fire bomid to reply, nowhere. To the former, that Christ 
 and his apostles have led us unhesitatingly to believe that 
 many did, in their day ; and, in our own, we thinlc we have 
 seen them. But we find, in the Professor, instinctive senti- 
 ments for Christian principles, personal idiosyncrasy for bibli- 
 cal facts. Yet, to ward off the " charge of sentimentalism," he 
 advises us that this " argument is the same in substance as was 
 made, two thousand years ago, by one who was called the 
 ' Pure Intellect,' the unemotional reason." He refers to Aris- 
 totle's treatise on pJiilia, friendsMj), in his Nichomachean 
 Ethics, Ch. 8, Bk. XI. " There can be no true philia, no real 
 human friendship," says this unemotional philosoxDher, accord- 
 ing to Professor Lewis, " between a despotes, as owner, (the 
 Professor's translation,) and a dozdos, as property, or a thing 
 owned." Thanks are due our scholar for these translations of 
 despotes and doulos, owning master' and owned thing or prop- 
 erty, the very same we are wont to make of these terms in the 
 New Testament, and which, we are sorry, the Professor forgot, 
 when he translated there, and hope he will evermore remem- 
 ber, both when he reads for himself, and interprets for others 
 not learned in the Greek. ITotice, also, the use of do^dos, not 
 andrapodon, by the old sage, just when he calls the slave 
 property. 
 
 Tlie reason Aristotle gives for his denial of philia between 
 the despotes and doulos, master and slave, is this : " where there 
 is no lioinon, there is no dikaion, and where no dllcawn, no 
 philia^ " As a slave, therefore, there can be to him no friend- 
 shij)," " in other words," adjcls the Professor, " no human rela- 
 tion," which Aristotle does not say, although much in the 
 practice of saying just what he meant. Indeed, he allows the 
 opposite, that there can be a human relation, although no 
 friendship. It is further declared, also, by our Professor, that 
 " the apostle could never have regarded the relation as one of 
 property," or he could not have enjoined the duty of obedience. 
 The idea is that there could be no such thing as duty in such 
 condition, no " community,^^ no " riglit^'' no mutuality of any 
 kind, no relation. 
 
 To all these presumptions, as to what apostles could do, or 
 
52 THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 
 
 could not do, we liave only to say : that is not the question, but 
 what they did do, and the necessary inferences from their act- 
 ual doings. As to Aristotle's doctrine, that friendship? could 
 not exist between master and slave, his definition, embracing 
 the requisites for it, renders his conclusion a necessity. It is 
 very true that toward a mere thi7ig owned, toward the slave in 
 that sense, there could not be j^AzY/^ ; yet toward him as a 
 man, as having moral qualities and an emotional nature, though 
 in the servile condition, there could be, and Aristotle knew 
 there was, philia, friendship, and more than friendship. And 
 so did apostles think. All their instructions imply that, whilst 
 the master legally owned his slave, he yet could, and should, 
 regard him as an object heloved for the Great Master's sake. 
 
 Thus far had we written without consulting Aristotle, rely- 
 ing on his pure intellect for the belief that we had given his 
 real views. But on going to the Astor Library, (our own be- 
 ino- boxed for removal,) and renewing our acquaintance with 
 the old philosopher and metaphysician, we were gratified to find 
 the case even stronger than had been supposed ; but we con- 
 fess to a little surprise, on finding that, as in translating 
 1 Tim. vi., 1, the Professor had added a word neither in the 
 original nor in the version, so here he had unfortunately 
 omitted just that part of the very passage quoted from Aris- 
 totle, which is absolutely essential to its fair understanding, to 
 the expression of the real view of the great philosopher. We 
 quote him in full : " There is no friendship {philia) toward, or 
 in relation to a slave, wherein or in as far as he is a slave, 
 {doidos,) for there is no community, {koinon,) joint participation. 
 In as far then as he is a slave, there is no friendship toward 
 him, but (how important to tlie sense of the sentence !) in 
 as far as he is a man, human, {anthropos,) there is also cer- 
 tainly friendship to the extent of his humanity, {Tcath hoson 
 anthropos i) for there seems to be a sort of 'mutuality of 
 right ' {dihaion) with every man toward or in relation to every 
 one capable of community {hoindnesai) in law and compact." 
 He had said before : " Li as far as, or to the extent to which, 
 there is joint participation, community, so far, to that extent, is 
 
THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 53 
 
 there friendship, for there is also the right, justice, (dikaion,) 
 ' mutuality of right.' " 
 
 From this passage it is luminously clear that Aristotle's idea 
 was totally different from that of the Professor, and just as 
 manifest that his idea was misapprehended and misrepresented. 
 Aristotle had laid down to hoinon as the basis of friendship, 
 the essential to dikaion^ right or justice. Equality was not 
 essential to it, whilst humanity., community of nature, was. 
 Hence a monarch could have Sijphilia friendship for his subject, 
 a father for his child. A common nature, humanity was here, 
 although equality was not. Hence no pTiilia toward an ani- 
 mal, though pMlesis, fondness^ there could be. Kone toward 
 a thing without life, animal life, apsitchos : none, for example, 
 between the artisan and his tool. ISTone toward a slave, {dou- 
 los,) in as far as he is a slave, for a slave, as such, is an animate 
 instrument ; the instrument an inanimate slave. Yet regard- 
 ed as a man, having a hoinon with his master in humanity, 
 there could be for the slave a 'philia. All this makes it evi- 
 dent how Aristotle viewed the slave as a chattel-personal, an 
 instrument of his master for use, service, and yet jointly partak- 
 ing with him of a humanity which brought him within the 
 domain of the philia, or friendship. 
 
 It is worthy of note, too, in passing, that Aristotle, in this 
 same chapter, represents tyranny as the deflection from mon- 
 archy, the bad form of that species of government, yet govern- 
 ment still. But " in tyranny," he says, " there is no philia, 
 friendship, or very little, nor justice, {dihaion^ nor hoinon, 
 community." This, remember, is the so much lauded govern- 
 ment, lordship, as distinguished from slavery, ownership, and 
 yet in it there is no philia, the very negation which makes 
 the Professor's hair stand on end, when he thinks of it as not 
 belonging to the relation of slavery ! And Aristotle says yet 
 more on this subject, right here. " In Persia the authority of 
 the father is tyrannical, for he uses his sons as slaves. So is 
 the authority of the despotes, the master. This, the latter, 
 however, is right y that, the former, wrong, owing to the poM'cr 
 of different circumstances." A tyrannical exercise of authority 
 
54 THE CHEISTIAN EELATION IN SLAVERY. 
 
 by a master justifiable, right, dikaion, says Aristotle, but not 
 by a father. 
 
 To show that this gi'eatest of ancient philosophers did not 
 hold the view attributed to him by the Professor, and impressed 
 on his readers by the manner of his quotation, I take the liber- 
 ty, here, of quoting somewhat from his Politics, Bk. I. — " So- 
 ciety is not a mass, but a system, implying distinction of parts,^ 
 with many moral and physical diiferences, relative and recipro- 
 cal, the powers of one supplying the deficiencies of another." 
 " To form a commonwealth from elements of equal value and 
 dignity is absurd." "Forecast should guide improvidence, 
 reason subject passion, and wisdom command folly." " Only 
 those are incdienable rights, which one cannot exercise for an- 
 other." " "What persons are presumed to have and yet cannot 
 exercise, it is folly to call inalienable." " A perfect or com- 
 plete family consists of slaves and free." " The parts of a 
 family are master and slaves, husband and wife, parents and 
 children." " By lavj one is a slave and another free ; but by 
 nature there is no difi'erence." " A slave is relative to use, the 
 possession and property of his master." " Slavery is founded 
 both on utility sa\^ justice, {dikaion.)" " Tliere are two species 
 of slavery, one founded in nature, the other in law. In the 
 first, the master as fit to command as the slave to obey, their 
 interests are mutual ; and this community of interests begets 
 good-will." By the " community of interests " he means that 
 it is equally for the good of the slave as of the master, that 
 the latter should command and control, as the former obey. 
 " The master has a right to command." And it must be con- 
 ceded, he further says, " that the slave is capable of virtues," 
 is not a mere tool. 
 
 THE CHEISTIAK RELATION IN SLAVERY 
 
 " Can there be a true Christian relation," asks Professor 
 Lewis, in his last article, " between a man owned, and another 
 man, who claims to be his owner?" We hesitate not to 
 answer, Tes : especially as it is too evident to be controverted, 
 that our blessed Lord, Paul and Peter, have answered it in the 
 
THE CHEISTIAN EELATION IN SLAVEEY. 55 
 
 affirmative. Yon have only to read Clirist's interview with 
 the centnrion, portions of Panl to the Corinthians, Ephesians, 
 Colossians, to Timothy and Philemon, and of Peter's epistle, in 
 order to feel it, as well as to see it. " The wayfaring man, though 
 a fool, cannot err therein," and " he who rnnneth may read it." 
 But the Professor answers his own question negatively, by at- 
 taching to the term oioning the very acme of " the degradation 
 of humanity, its deepest hurt, its irreconcilableness with the 
 oneness of believers in Christ, its debasement of the Christian 
 life, and the Christian love, its low, repulsive, mercenary, 
 earthly feeling." Now, all this, as it seems to us, is as much 
 to be proven, as that ownership negates the Christian relation. 
 In other words, it is begging the question, by a round-about 
 way of piling up huge and monstrous epithets on that poor 
 little pedestal of three letters, oion. To bear so much, it should, 
 at least, have been always written in capitals, OWIT. 
 
 The distinction here made between the hired laborer and 
 the slave, that the former has a " free will " and " room for all 
 the moral relations," which the latter has not, is a distinction 
 without a difference, a mere verbal logomachy. The free will, 
 the absolute expressed choice or consent, is not essential to 
 obligation on the one part, and right on the other. The rights 
 and duties of parent and child depend on no freedom of loill, 
 no exercise of choice on the part of the child, but grow out of 
 a natural and constituted relation between the parties, origin- 
 ating obhgations. The same is true of the rights of govern- 
 ment and the duties of subjects, specially whilst yet minors. 
 Yet in these and other cases, there is full play-room for the 
 moral relations, as much as in the case of the pinched and 
 poorly-paid hired servant. And so of the slave. He, in the 
 relation he bears to his master, under law, has room for all the 
 moral relations, and has as much/;'d6 will for the discharge of 
 duty and the exercise of right as is either beneficial or desir- 
 able. Free will must be put under restraint of some kind or it 
 runs, much more naturally and forcefully, into evil than to good. 
 So did it with our mother Eve and our father Adam, and so 
 has it done ever since when left unbridled and licensed. Give 
 it the reins and it drives humanity, Jehu-like, to ruin. All law 
 
56 THE CHEISTIAJS^ RELATION IN SLAVEEY. 
 
 is restriction On free will ; all government also, whether pater- 
 nal, monarchical, tyrannical or republican ; and one of the first 
 inj mictions of Christianity is, obedience even to self-constituted 
 _and hereditary Powers. Besides, it is a miserable free will, 
 which chooses, under a necessity^ to be harnessed, in nudity 
 (woman too !) to the little car in the dark, deep mines ! 
 
 The Professor next undertakes to show that the golden rule 
 of the gospel can have no application in the relations of slavery, 
 whilst in those of the hired service it has " perfect application." 
 And his assertion is based on the fact, that it contains " a 
 would and a should., a desire and a condition." " Whatso- 
 ever ye would that men should do : " " a mutual claim and a 
 mutual right,^^ which " cannot exist between an owner and 
 what is owned." " There is here no would and should, no 
 mutual ought involving a mutual right, and furnishing the 
 ground of a mutual lovey " The fact that the golden rule of 
 love and obligation can have no place in this claim of servile 
 ownership, shows that it lies out of the pale of Christianity." 
 
 These quotations give the full view of the Professor on 
 this point, and, although perhaps taking and antithetic, we do 
 not appreciate them as argumentative or forceful. We con- 
 cede that, in the Savior's golden rule, for which the world 
 must ever bless Him, there is a would and a shoidd, the one 
 expressing condition and obligation, the other desire : but we 
 do not, in this concession, acce]")t his conclusions. According 
 to his own analysis of the rule, the desire or wish of the one 
 party, we think, must be limited to that which is right, that 
 which the other party ought to do. It cannot, of course, em- 
 brace every wanton or fanciful woidd or wish, but only such 
 as you can rightfully feel, and the other would be bound, 
 obligated to do. Your would must consist with his should. 
 If men should do what you would they sliould, then you must 
 do even so to them. Your obligation to do for others is not as 
 extensive as might be your own wishes from others, but is re- 
 lieved and regulated by the rectitude of your desires in regard 
 to others. You must have a right, on j)rinciples of moral 
 obligation, to demand of another, in the same circumstances, 
 what you are bound to do for another. Now, the Professor 
 
THE CHRISTIAN RELATION IN SLAVERY. 57 
 
 asserts that things cannot exist, where there is property in 
 man, that slavery destroys free will, mutuality of claim, of 
 right, of love. lie may, indeed, first convert a slave into an 
 ass, a man into a brute, then thrust his convert down oiir 
 throats, insist on his conception of slavery or ownership, and 
 then deny to such Irute all moral powers, all sense of right and 
 wrong, and then jump very easily to the conclusion, that be- 
 tween him and an owning master there can be no mutual 
 ougJit, no mutual right nor love ; and consequently, that " the 
 golden rule," which implies responsible agents, " can have no 
 place in this claim of servile ownership." This is not only 
 fallacious reasoning, but it is equally in opposition to the ac- 
 tion of the author of the rule. Did not Christ intend this 
 golden maxim to apply to the relations he found existing in 
 the Eoman empire and in the families of his own followers ? 
 The question answers itself. 
 
 Now suppose we reverse the process, and reason thus. 
 Christ proclaimed this law of love and his Apostles carried it 
 out in exhortations and precepts, just when and where there 
 existed, in and out of the church, an oionership-slavery, worse 
 in many features than that of our Southern States. But there 
 is in this law of love, the golden rule, " a loould and a sliould^'' 
 " an ought including a will and an obligation : there is a mu- 
 tual claim and a mutual right." Then we are in a dilemma. 
 Either Christ uttered his great law of social and Christian life 
 knowing that it had " no application " to pervading relations 
 of social life, or he announced it believing that, with its would 
 and shoidd, its obligation and rights it had just as much appli- 
 cation to these relations of " servile ownership," as to any 
 other. We accept the latter, and deduce the conclusion, that 
 " the golden rule of love and obligation can have place" here ; 
 that slavery does not " lie out of the pale of Christianity, out 
 of the kingdom of God," but in it ; and that there is not in it 
 " a dead absorption of every moral idea." 
 
 And then to talk as if in it there were " no ground of a 
 mutual love ! " "Why the facts of the case are so opposite to 
 this, as to offer the most triumphant overthrow of the state- 
 ments which culminate in such a deduction. "Where, in any 
 
58 PEOPEKTY IN MAN. 
 
 other system of miitnal dependence, any other system of service, 
 not excepting the most gentle species of liired service ever ex- 
 tant, do you find such manifestations of mutual love ? The 
 very terms of address on both parts, the devotion of the slave 
 to his master, his master's wife and children, and the tender re- 
 turns of care and kindness on their part, have become pro- 
 verbial, and cannot and do not exist where the free hired ser- 
 vice prevails. If there is " no ground for this mutual lovej" 
 this is a rare specimen of humanity, and we should be inclined 
 to start a theory, not of semi-homo, semi-manhood, but of 
 super-homo. But we abstain here from theories, intending to 
 look at simple biblical facts. 
 
 The Professor avers, very consistently we grant, that " the 
 hirer has a moral claim, because a free will has promised it ; " 
 but, in the other case, there can be no moral claim, because no 
 free will, no voluntary contract. Then, fathers and mothers, 
 beware that you do not too early listen to the Apostle's advice 
 and exact obedience of your children. Beware, too, of the 
 wisdom of Solomon, in this regard ! Conscripts under the 
 " dignity of power," rebel, desert your standards, rush into 
 anarchy. There is " no moral claim," because " no free will 
 of yours has promised the service ! " 
 
 PROPEFwTY IN MAN. (LEWIS AND HODGE.) 
 
 In article seventh, Professor Lewis reverts to the old idea 
 of property in man, or ownership, on which he had already 
 dwelt at such length, in his primary articles. Kow, mainly 
 for the purpose of controverting and converting Dr. Hodge of 
 Princeton, known and read of all men. In the latter hope, we 
 presume, he is doomed to fail, as in the former, we think him 
 utterly unsuccessful. The definition of Dr. Hodge is that 
 " when one man is called the property of another, it can only 
 mean that the one has the right to tise the services of another.''^ 
 This Dr. Lewis disputes, and pronounces a " sophism," substi- 
 tuting his own definition as the indisputable truth, to wit : 
 " Property in anything is simply property in the iise or uses 
 that may he made of that tliingP " To complete the idea, 
 
PKOPEETY IN MAN. 59 
 
 there must be nothing in the thing owned, which, as will, can 
 oppose the will of the owner in the free use of it ; nor any thing 
 from without, which hinders its vendibility." " No room left 
 for the distinction between ownership of a man, and that of a 
 horse." " The one is a right to get all the uses possible out of 
 a man ; the other, to get all the possible uses out of an animal." 
 " The owner of a man has a right to the use of his will and of 
 his Christianity," 
 
 What Dr. Hodge will say to all this we know not, but for 
 ourselves we have to say, that there seems in it more of 
 " sophism " than in the accepted definition of the Doctor. Yery 
 much of j)roperty is made so, becomes so, only by law, and the 
 law may distinctly define the attributes of the property, we 
 think, or leave them to be inferred from the nature of the case, 
 the qualities and capacities of the thing owned. If the law, 
 then, make a man property, it is competent, also, to define the 
 natui-e of the property, and to restrict it to the services of the 
 man, excluding the right to own his Christianity and his will. 
 Or it can leave that to be determined by the nature and rela- 
 tions of the property. In this case man could not, by common 
 consent nor common sense, become nor be considered property 
 in the same sense with a horse or an ox or a farm. It is 
 " Christianly and humanly inconceivable," to use one of the 
 Professor's phrases. 
 
 But to the Professor's own definition. "Wherein does it 
 difl:er, really, from Dr. Hodge's ? The one is " right to sei'- 
 vices; " the other " property in the uses to be made of a thing," 
 or, as it should be, right to these uses. And, in fact, he him- 
 self considers them synonyms, immediately interpreting his 
 definition thus : " Property in a horse is the right to use the aui- 
 mal as a horse, for the service a horse can do." There is 
 sophism, here, in the Professor's use of the little word may in 
 his definition quoted above, as he thinks there is in Dr. Hodge's 
 use of only in his definition. He surely would not contend 
 that property imiDlies right to all possible uses of the thing 
 owned. If not, to what uses, then, in case of a man, other 
 than those implied, included in services ? "Will he say that 
 property, proprium, of necessity gives right to use a horse so 
 
60 PEOPERTY EST MAN". 
 
 as to abuse liim, to violate his nature, to put liim to uses not 
 conformable to bis being, however possible they might be ? 
 Much less can he rationally contend that property in man, in- 
 telligent man, necessarily gives right to use him as if he were 
 not more than a brute, not possessed of a soul. Tims, whether 
 you regard this property as founded in nature or constituted 
 by law, you must limit your ideas of the property by the qual- 
 ities of the object. Because you own the soil and may there- 
 fore plough it, it does not follow that you may plough the back 
 of the slave, because you own him. If you own a bull, and 
 may therefore chain him to his stall or use him purposely for 
 the generation of his kind, it does not follow, from your own- 
 ing a man, that you have a right to do the same things with 
 him. There is no pretence, nor could there be any, that prop- 
 erty in man includes the ownership of his soul, as the Profes- 
 sor contends. It is just ridiculous, and grows not out of any 
 just definition of property ever before given ; and we think 
 neither the philosophic nor legal world will accept his own. It 
 will probably remain his property, no one wishing ever to buy 
 it, much less to claim it. 
 
 "We do not confound " hired labor " with slave labor, and 
 reason from one to the other, as some do. It is often more bit- 
 ter, and is an abject slavery, yet is it not exactly compulsory. 
 The man may choose to die rather than submit to it, but he is 
 free, in a sense, to accept or reject the terms. Yet is this con- 
 ceded distinction no proof that the one is right, the other 
 wrong. Liberty to do as you choose, freedom from subjection 
 to another, is not a necessity of manhood, nor always its right. 
 We know it is said : " Man has a right to liberty." "What right ? 
 Where did ho get it ? A. right by his own nature ? Doubted. 
 A right given him of God, his Maker ? Where ? Let us not 
 so hastily give ourselves up to dogmas, which may have no 
 foundation in Scripture, but much in infidelity, and mere an- 
 thropology. 
 
 And now, on " the practical questions, as they would style 
 them," he quotes from a sermon by Rev. ISTeal Cleavland, which 
 we have not seen, as stating those questions well. " Does this 
 relation contradict the laws of love ? " " Does it hinder a de- 
 
PEOPEETY IN MAN. 61 
 
 sire after tlie spiritual and temporal welfare of servants ? " 
 " What hinders to teach them the truths of the Gospel ? " And 
 Professor Lewis answers this by simply remarking that pages 
 of just such questions could be asked, and adding : " Why, 
 nothing hinders, if you treat the man as your dependent and 
 benefactor," as Mr. C. had described the slave. " But this hin- 
 ders, this claim of ownership, which is of the essence of mod- 
 ern slavery." " When it becomes supreme, it utterly extin- 
 guishes all Christian love." " Ownership is essential worldli- 
 ness ; tliere can be no deeper worldliness." " There is no other 
 ownership than to own for worldly gain." Kemember, oivner- 
 ship alone is the evil, in the Professor's view. Not so thought 
 Christ and apostles. Yet the Professor pronounces Mr. C. 
 Q'lght in calling the slave the " benefactor " of his master. 
 If so, then, according to Aristotle, he is capable of the higher 
 friendship. 
 
 Tlie fallacy and fault of the Professor's statements are 
 transparent, and seem to become translucent at least to him- 
 self. For he immediately devotes a large part of a column in 
 telling us, (after having settled and sealed it that ownership 
 is the essence, the virus of slavery,) that, " if the idea of owner- 
 ship is discarded, except as under law, then we have no quar- 
 rel with them." Then tliere is no quarrel with a legalized 
 oivnership, a slavery which rests on law, and discards ex- 
 traneous evils. This is a frank surrender of his stronghold, 
 his Fort Sumter. After a terrible struggle, he at last evacu- 
 ates. Pie gives up the gist, and the half in length, of his 
 whole argument, that ownership, property in man, is the damn- 
 ing idea in slavery. This is very much like Lewis versus 
 Lewis, even in the same treatise. 
 
 But still, he rises again from his suicidal fall, and springs 
 upon the old game. Such an idea of slavery, he contends, 
 does not exist, and cannot exist. It is essentially mercenary, 
 low, selfish ; and to prove it, he quotes again from a sermon 
 of " the Rev. James Smylie, of Amity Presbytery," who con- 
 tends that buying, selling, holding a slave for gain, is not sin. 
 And, as if this doctrine were to be maintained on the basis of 
 the golden rule, or, at least, as consistent with it, he once more 
 
62 PEOPERTY m MAN. 
 
 reverts to this law of love, and gives ns, definitively, his inter- 
 pretation of it, and pronounces it an emphatic " precept against 
 slavery." His interpretation is : " Whatsoever ye may rightly 
 wish that men should do, etc. ; " and he thinks " there is implied 
 in it an unchanging equality, that exists among all true human 
 relations," and asserts, as conformable to this, that " all men 
 have an equal right to life and liberty." In this he difi'ers 
 again from the " Pure Intellect," the great Stagyrite. 
 
 But it is apparent to every reflecting mind, that the ques- 
 tion is only shoved a step further back : What may one rightly 
 wish ? May the slave rightly wish his liberty ? Aristotle 
 would answer, No. We, however, accept the Bible, and not 
 Aristotle, as our guide in this matter ; and although the Pro- 
 fessor, by the ruling he so often applies to Mr. Van Dyke, 
 might be held to the literal precept, we are ready to grant the 
 essential rectitude of his rendering, agreeing as it does, with 
 that of Chalmers, and others of the best commentators. Then, 
 of course, it is to be determined whether or not the slave may 
 rightly, or whether or not he ought to, desire his liberty. This 
 necessarily opens up again the whole subject for discussion, 
 and the answer, if right, must be founded on the Word of 
 God. It seems, also to us, a pertinent question : Does it follow 
 that, because one party, in a certain relation to another, has 
 abstractly, or in some sense, a riglit to wish a thing, the other 
 party is bound to grant it % A child might, in some sense, 
 rightly wish for something, and yet the parent not be bound, 
 all things considered, to grant it. A criminal, a prisoner might, 
 in certain regards, rightly wish exemption from chains, and 
 yet it might not be the duty of the State, all things considered, 
 to grant the wish. In both these cases, as in others, the wish 
 might be right, in view only of the nature, the sensibilities and 
 affections of the child or criminal, yet, in view of other consid- 
 erations, wider and higher, the duty to grant the wish would 
 not follow. 
 
 But, finally, to assure himself and others, that a Christian 
 man cannot hold a fellow-man, much less a fellow-Cliristian, as 
 property, he inquires : Who is the Christian man ? We accept 
 every word of his Scriptural answer to this question. lie is 
 
PKOPEETY EST MAN. 
 
 63 
 
 « a pilgrim," " a seeker of a better country," " a sojourner," 
 
 " seeking a city wliicli liath foundations," " one wlio felt that 
 
 tlie fasHon of tlie world was passing away," " who souglit not 
 
 his own," " whose citizenship was in heaven," " looking for a 
 
 crown of glory," one who " loved others as he loved himself, 
 
 even better," " a friend of Christ," " a brother beloved," "one 
 
 who regards the poor, and gives him a high place, higher than 
 
 the rich " And we add, one whose " affection was set on 
 
 things above, and not on things on the earth," who felt that, 
 
 " though the outward man perish, the inward is renewed day 
 
 by day; for the light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
 
 worketh out a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory 
 
 whilst we look not at the things seen, but at the thmgs not 
 
 seen ; for the things seen are temporal, but the thmgs not seen, 
 
 ^^'"^Thisis iust that "interior spirit" of the entire Bible, of 
 which we have already spoken, and which made it of smal 
 account to Christ or his apostles to dwell on the mere temporal 
 relations of life ; of little moment to the slave to pant after a 
 legal, political liberty, if so be he were the freedman of Chiist , 
 which led Paul to tell him, if he became a Christian, bemg a 
 slave, not to care much for that, but to abide patiently and 
 Chri tianly in his calling, and which authorized the master to 
 say • " Let the dead bury their dead :" there are higher mterests 
 than those even of the tenderest family relations 
 
 We may, in other issues, take up some related subjects, and 
 should like much, even in this, to draw a comparison between 
 the exercises of governmental and of slave power ; biit as our 
 
 010X0 now I to reply to the articles of Professor Lewis as 
 btfly as possible, we Abstain from further discussion and en- 
 Hr'ement: and leave what we have ^vl^itten m the hands of 
 H m who is the source of all truth, that He may give it its 
 Seleffect. If there is error, our prayer is tha we may see 
 
 it ; if truth, that we and others may be established m it. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 73 
 

 
 
 
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