MACPHAIL'S

EDINBURGH ECCLESIASTICAL JOURNAL.

No. CLXIX.

FEBRUARY 1860.

"GOD AGAINST SLAVERY."

NEVER, perhaps, since the beginning of time has the world had offered to its observation, so preposterous an anomaly as is presented to it in our day by the great Republic of America. Nowhere on the face of the earth are to be heard such loud and incessant boastings of liberty as in the United States; such vapouring denunciations against the most trifling infringement of the rights of the individual; such vehement assertions of the absolute equality of every citizen of the commonwealth; and yet this much vaunted land of freedom contains 3,000,000 of human beings, born subjects of its laws, who are held in more cruel bondage than it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive, until it became a "domestic institution" of its Southern States; and a vast population of intelligent, industrious, helpful men, whose existence is economically of great value to the commercial interests of the commonwealth, but to whom, though they are nominally free, every right which makes freedom sweet is tyrannically denied. Next to their liberty there is nothing on which the Americans so much value themselves as their piety. They assume to be the most spirituallyminded, and rigorously virtuous people in the world; yet through all their borders, from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico, they maintain a system which makes the teaching of the Bible, to a large proportion of their people, an offence punishable by death; and the violation of of every law of the Decalogue, every command of the Gospel, the immunity, the privilege, the right, the necessity of the rest of it. Did folly, did madness, ever reach to such a height before?—we think not; and the self-delusion in which they have heretofore wrapped themselves having gained its culminating point, they begin to have some misgivings as to their attitude before the world, and to perceive

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that whatever they may think of it themselves, other people will not believe while they make merchandise of men, that the flag with the stars and stripes is the banner of freedom; or that incest and adultery, red-handed murder, robbery, cruelty, and violence, are the characteristics of the disciples of Jesus Christ. They are very angry that the world in general will not allow them to wear their mask of hypocrisy gracefully; that prying eyes will look over the walls of their whited sepulchre and spy out the corruption and all uncleanness that lie on its inner side; but they are awakening to the fact that it is so; that their beloved country, instead of being the admiration, is the derision of all other nations, and that their boasted Constitution must be a laughing-stock to the world, so long as one slave presses the soil of America! Who knows but that wounded vanity may effect what serious remonstrance has failed to accomplish, and that they may lay aside their garments rolled in blood, not because they have grown weary of them, but because they cannot persuade others that they are a becoming attire.

Having predetermined that slavery should exist amongst them as an institution of their country, and being anxious like many other rogues to cover their villany with the cloak of respectability, they have rejected the admonitions of honest teachers, and held out a premium to those who would "prophecy unto them smooth things." Instead of listening to the voice of the charmer that charmed wisely," they have said to the wolf in sheep's clothing: "Make this all straight for us,-square God's Word to our dealings, make our consciences sit easily under it, and our name to be honoured in the gates of the nations, and ye shall lack for nothing, your days shall be passed in pleasantness, and ye shall be held in respect by all people;" and Satan, who never wants emissaries to do his work, has sent them, in shoals, men of learning, and eloquence, and zeal, to teach them how they may "hold the truth in unrighteousness;"-how, building up the loftiest and most impregnable fortress of orthodox doctrine for their habitation, they may, from its battlements, quote God's own words, to justify their violation of His most clearly enunciated laws. Under such teachers, the American churches have almost universally become, not the churches of Christ, but the churches of Judas, that betrayed his Master with a kiss. Professing themselves the most devoted of the Saviour's disciples; sending the most zealous missionaries to proclaim His Gospel to the benighted heathen; holding the most wonderful Religious Revivals; preaching the most evangelical sermons; they yet "do not unto others, as they would that others should do unto them;" like the Pharisees of old, they literally "lay heavy burdens on men's shoulders grievous to be borne ;" "the hire of the labourers which have reaped down their fields, is by them kept back by fraud;"-they "have despised the poor;"-" they have afflicted strangers;"-"they have changed the truth of God into a lie, and as they have not liked to retain God in their knowledge, God has given them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient." For what crime that can outrage, what sin that

can shock, what vice that can disgrace humanity, do they not daily commit, by reason of that ENORMOUS WICKEDNESS, the fulfilment of all other wickednesses, which they dare to say is a divinely appointed institution amongst them? It is true that in other lands are to be found men guilty of all the sins which Paul charged against the Romans and Corinthians; but the Christian churches in those lands denounce the sins and refuse the hand of fellowship to the sinners; whereas the so-called Christain churches of America 66 are puffed up," and have not rather mourned that they who have done those deeds may be taken away from amongst them.

But thanks to an ever gracious God, who never leaves Himself without a witness amongst any people at any time, even in America there have never been altogether wanting men to testify to the truth in this matter. The Society of Friends have always protested against the iniquity, and in their own quiet, but energetic, and effective. manner, have aided in its overthrow; the Roman Catholics as a Church, repudiate it utterly ;-before their altars the slave and his master have ever been alike ;—and in later times, no inconsiderable party, rejecting all communion with churches betraying the Master they profess to serve by their advocacy of, or silence regarding slavery, bear witness, by their ardent zeal for the liberty of the slave, and the generous sacrifices they have made in his cause, to the sincerity of their allegiance to the Saviour. He has himself told us, that by their fruits we should know his disciples, and judging by this criterion, we are bound to acknowledge, that no where in the world are to be found such true and faithful soldiers of the Cross as amongst the Abolitionists of America, men who have suffered the loss of all things, wealth, ease, reputation, life itself, not for a mere political principle, or religious dogma, but literally for Christ's bleeding body in his suffering poor.

Long and valiantly has this noble army of martyrs fought the good fight against the mighty giant Slavery in his tower of wickedness. He has but laughed them to scorn, secure that the foundations of his citadel can never be shaken so long as he can keep truth on the outside of the church doors. But his day of doom seems at last to have arrived. To a watchman on the towers of the citadel itself God has called, "Cry aloud! spare not; lift thy voice like a trumpet, and shew this people their transgressions. They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a people that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God; they ask of me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to me; but behold! it is for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Tell them that the service I would have of them, is not to afflict their souls, to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under them; but to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that they break every yoke;" and the watchman has answered, "I am ready to do thy will, O Lord." May the American people in this their day of visitation, know the things that belong unto their peace, listen to the watchman's

voice and repent, like the men of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah, that the Almighty seeing their works, that they have turned from the evil of their ways, may avert from their country the evils which must of necessity overtake it, if they repent not!

Dr George Cheever has been for the last seventeen years pastor of a Congregationalist Church in New York City, and during all this long period has kept silence on the great sin of his country, not quite satisfied it may be that his fellow ministers were wrong in alleging that it was sanctioned by divine authority; unwilling to lose the influence for good he possessed over his own people in advocating a cause of the merits of which he was not quite assured; averse to placing himself in opposition to his brethren in the ministry; and above all, probably afraid of exciting the angry passions which are certain to be evoked by every agitation of this question, before he was sure of the validity of his warrant for pursuing a contrary course. That assurance has at last been given to him; after the most careful study

we may say the most fastidiously minute investigation of the Scriptures both Old and New, he has satisfied himself that so far from furnishing any pretext for the enslavement of man by his fellow man, they not only throughout their entire extent utterly condemn and forbid such a thing, but have so perfectly hedged in mankind from the perpetration of such a villany, by the enactment of special laws prohibiting alike man-stealing, (the only crime but murder punishable with death according to the Mosaic polity) and man-selling; by instituting stated periods of release from all legal contracts whatever, more especially those entered into between masters and servants; by protecting the fugitive servant from pursuit or recapture; by the denunciations of God's wrath against individuals and nations who transgress those laws; by the proclamation of His abhorrence of oppression in every form; by the inculcations in the Gospel of His Son, of all those gentle affections, that blessed charity which regards every man as its neighbour however removed from ordinary sympathy by national prejudice, or religious rancour; and by the annunciation of the great truth that "God has made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the whole earth," as to render its practice impossible to those who sincerely acknowledge their divine authority; and clothing himself with the whole armour of faith, he has boldly, with all the fearlessness and almost with the power of one of the Hebrew Prophets, lifted his voice against the sin of the people, and declared God's truth regarding it. And, God be praised! he has been enabled to say: "Seldom have I found a heart more thirsty for divine truth, more attentive under it, and more manifestly responding to it, and grateful for it, than in the great congregations whom God in his good providence brought out to listen to these sermons. I commenced them, much questioning as to the result, but determined to leave consequences to God, and to proclaim out and out, the whole truth in His word in regard to the great reigning and destroying sin of our country. I endeavoured to do this, to the best of my ability. The event was, that instead of driving men away in anger, the assertion of the freedom of the pulpit, and