* §her master was willing to sell at a certain price. One of the To prisoners, a slave, was ordered to be flogged; four others, * - called in the papers freemen, were sent to the workhouse; Q and the rest, on paying costs and fines amounting to one hundred and eleven dollars, were set at liberty.* It is not wonderful that a gross and delirious superstition should fail to produce the effect of pure Christianity on the morals of the negroes. Mr. Olmsted gives us strong evidence of their licentiousness; and notably of the licentiousness of those among them who are members of Churches and } make professions of religion.f But indeed the legal sanctity of marriage is so essential a safeguard of morality in Christian countries, that we should expect sinister consequences, to flow ... from its withdrawal. In the South the marriage of a slave is, `--~~ before the law and in the eyes of his master, as the cohabita- o' tion of beasts. The State thus preaches disregard of morality s y to the negro, and the master enforces the preaching of the State by practices from which it was part of the mission of - Christianity to purge the world.s Let the masters and the slaves in America become really follow-Christians: let them become in a true sense one Church : let them share the same Christian education: let them read the same Bible: let them partake of the Communion together: and it will then be seen whether the rela

* Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, Vol. I. p. 36. If we are told, by way of apology for the intellectual and religious condition of the negro slave, that the intellectual and religious condition of the English peasant and his religious relations to the upper classes are unsatisfactory, the answer is, that they are acknowledged to be unsatisfactory, and that since the revival of a religious spirit in the nation a good deal has been done to amend them, as a multitude of schools and a number of new churches with free sittings evince

f Journey in the Back Country, p. 113.

f Olmsted, Journeys and Explorations, Vol II. p. 229. When the Abolitionists are charged with producing the slave-owner's cruelty by their alarming denunciations, they may reasonably ask whether they are also to be charged with producing his lust.

tion between fellow-Christians is really compatible with the relation between master and slave. That there are very great difficulties in the way of a religious as well as of a social fusion between the negroes and the whites, no reasonable man would deny. But this shows that the position into which the piratical cupidity of the whites has brought the two races is an awkward one ; not that it was sanctioned by St. Paul. As things are at present, the plea that Slavery is a great blessing as a missionary agency, and as a mode of bringing the African heathen within the fold of the Church, can scarcely be maintained. Montesquieu has some remarks on the notion that “religion gives those who profess it the right of making slaves of those who do not, in order the better to labor for its propagation.” “It was this notion,” he says, “which encouraged the destroyers of America in their crimes. It was on this idea that they founded the right of making all those nations slaves; for these brigands, who were determined to be both brigands and Christians, were very devout.” It is to be borne in mind that the Apostle, who bids slaves obey their masters and be content with their lot for the sake of their Lord's religion and in the assurance of a higher freedom, also teaches masters to observe justice and equity towards their slaves. “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.” Is “that which is just and equal” given to a slave when he is forbidden to learn to read, when he is denied legal marriage, when he is separated by force from his wife and children, when his evidence is refused in a court of law, when he is made by custom, though not by law, the victim of a penal code under which a master who kills a slave goes unpunished, while a slave who kills a master may be burned alive at a slow fire 2 No doubt many American masters are better than the system. Many Roman masters were better than the system.

But is it possible to believe that the system is one which,
when carried on by Christians against Christians, can be said
to have had its prototype in the relations between a Christian
master, in Apostolic times, and his slave, or to be sanctioned
by the teaching of the Apostles
In a religious community so bound together in life and
death as that of the early Christians, the relation between
Master and Slave, though it was not formally dissolved, must
have been completely transfigured, and virtually exchanged
for a relation between brethren in Christ. The clearest proof
of this is found in that very Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon
which those who defend Slavery on Scriptural grounds re-
gard as their sheet-anchor in the argument. St. Paul sends
back the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master Philemon.
Therefore, we are told, slavery and fugitive-slave laws have
received the sanction of St. Paul. This it seems is so plain,
that the refusal of the other party to acknowledge it is a signal
instance of the manner in which they blind themselves to the
clearest teachings of Scripture, or pervert its precepts in the
interest of a spurious humanity. It is very true that St.
Paul sends back a fugitive slave to his master. But does he
send him back as a slave? The best answer to the argument
drawn from the Epistle to Philemon is the simple repetition
of the words of that Epistle: “I beseech thee for my son
Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: which in time
past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and
to me: whom I have sent again : thou therefore receive him,
that is, mine own bowels: whom I would have retained with
me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in
the bonds of the Gospel: but without thy mind would I do
nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity,
but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a sea-
son, that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a
servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to
me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in

the Lord? If thou count me, therefore, a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account. I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it; albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.”” Onesimus, then, is not sent back as a slave, but as one above a servant, a brother beloved. When fugitive slaves in America are sent back to their masters with such letters as that of St. Paul to Philemon, and treated as St. Paul expects Onesimus to be treated on their return, American slavery will have some claim to be regarded as a Scriptural institution. But in that case it will also be near its end. For such a feeling as the writer of the Epistle supposes to exist in the hearts of Christians as to their relations with each other, though it would not prevent a Christian slave from remaining in the service of his master, would certainly prevent a Christian master from continuing to hold his fellow-Christian as a slave. St. Paul must have known what Slavery under the Roman Empire was. He must have known that it was a vast reign not only of abominable cruelty, but of still more abominable lust. He must have known that it was fed to a great extent by the man-stealing which he classes with murder and parricide. He must have known the deadly effects which it produced on the character of the slave-owner, to whose unbridled passions human beings of both sexes were subjected without limit or redress.j He must have known that this was the real “cancer” which was eating into the vitals of morality and draw

ing society to its ruin. It would have been strange, therefore,
if he had selected this among all the political and social
institutions of the time as the object of a partisanship which
neither he nor any of his fellow-Apostles have in any other
case betrayed. -
The philosophic theory as to ineradicable differences of
race, on which Slavery is now founded by its defenders, is
directly contradicted by the New Testament, for St. Paul
says that “God has made of one blood all nations of men,
for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” “ In conformity
with this declaration, St. Paul and his fellow-Apostles pro-
ceeded to found a Church which was to embrace all nations.
It is difficult to imagine a race of beings fit to apprehend the
sublimest doctrines of Christianity, to live by the Christian
rule, and to hold office in the Christian Church, yet not fit to
be masters of their own persons, to enjoy the rights of hus-
bands and of fathers, to receive the elements of education, or
give evidence in a court of justice.
The only refuge for those who defend Slavery on grounds
of race, if they do not wish to contradict St. Paul, seems to
be to go the full length of saying that the negroes are not “a
nation of men.” And to this suggestion the slave-owner, as
we have hinted before, has given and daily gives a conclu-
sive answer by the practices which fill the country with a
mixed race.
Nor would it be easy to produce from the New Testament
anything which could give color to the view that a class of
free laborers is the fungus and cancer of civilized life, and
that the community is immeasurably benefited when the la-
borer is made a slave. For it was from this diseased and
pestilential element of society, as the advocates of slavery
hold it to be, that the Apostles themselves were chosen. The
founder of Christianity Himself wore the form of a carpen-
ter's son. St. Paul wrought as a tent-maker. He “labored