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In my original essay, I said nothing of Paul's letter to Philemon, concerning Onesimus, a runaway slave, converted under Paul's preaching at Rome; and who was returned by the Apostle, with a most affectionate letter to his master, entreating the master to receive him again, and to forgive him. O, how immeasurably different Paul's conduct to this slave and his master, from the conduct of our abolition brethren! Which are we to think is guided by the Spirit of God? It is impossible that both can be guided by that spirit, unless sweet water and bitter can come from the same fountain. This letter, of itself, is sufficient to teach any man, capable of being taught in the ordinary way, that slavery is not, in the sight of God, what it is in the sight of the abolitionists.
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Now, my dear sir, if, from the evidence contained in the Bible to prove slavery a lawful relation among God's people under every dispensation, the assertion is still made, in the very face of this evidence, that slavery has ever been the greatest sin-- everywhere, and under all circumstances-- can you, or can any sane man bring himself to believe, that the mind capable of such a decision, is not capable of trampling the Word of God under foot upon any subject?
If it were not known to be the fact, we could not admit that a Bible-reading man could bring himself to believe, with Dr. Wayland, that a thing made lawful by the God of Heaven, was, notwithstanding, the greatest sin--and that Moses under the law, and Jesus Christ under the Gospel, had sanctioned and regulated in practice, the greatest sin known on earth--and that Jesus had left his church to find out as best they might, that the law of God which established slavery under the Old Testament, and the precepts of the Holy Ghost which regulate the mutual duty of master and slave under the New Testament, were laws and precepts, to sanction and regulate among the people of God the greatest sin which was ever perpetrated.
It is by no means strange that it should have taken seventeen centuries to make such discoveries as the above, and it is worthy of note, that these discoveries were made at last by men who did not appear to know, at the time they made them, what was in the Bible on the subject of slavery, and who now appear unwilling that the teachings of the Bible should be spread before the people--this last I take to be the case, because I have been unable to get the northern press to give it publicity.
Many anti-slavery men into whose hands my essays chanced to fall, have frankly confessed to me, that in their Bible reading, they had overlooked the plain teaching of the Holy Ghost, by taking what they read in the Bible about masters and servants, to have reference to hired servants and their employers.
You ask me for my opinion about the emancipation movement in the State of Kentucky. I hold that the emancipation of hereditary slaves by a State is not commanded, or in any way required by the Bible. The Old Testament and the New, sanction slavery, but under no circumstances enjoin its abolition, even among saints. Now, if religion, or the duty we owe our Creator, was inconsistent with slavery, then this could not be so. If pure religion, therefore, did not require its abolition under the law of Moses, nor in the church of Christ--we may safely infer, that our political, moral, and social relations do not require it in a State; unless a State requires higher moral, social, and religious qualities in its subjects, than a Gospel church.
Masters have been left by the Almighty, both under the patriarchal, legal, and Gospel dispensations, to their individual discretion on the subject of emancipation.
The principle of justice inculcated by the Bible, refuses to sanction, it seems to me, such an outrage upon the rights of men, as would be perpetrated by any sovereign State, which, to-day, makes a thing to be property, and to-morrow, takes it from the lawful owners, without political necessity or pecuniary compensation. Now, if it be morally right for a majority of the people (and that majority possibly a meagre one, who may not own a slave) to take, without necessity or compensation, the property in slaves held by a minority, (and that minority a large one,) then it would be morally right for a majority, without property, to take anything else that may be lawfully owned by the prudent and care-taking portion of the citizens.
As for intelligent philanthropy, it shudders at the infliction of certain ruin upon a whole race of helpless beings. If emancipation by law is philanthropic in Kentucky, it is, for the same reasons, philanthropic in every State in the Union. But nothing in the future is more certain, than that such emancipation would begin to work the degradation and final ruin of the slave race, from the day of its consummation.
Break the master's sympathy, which is inseparably connected with his property right in his slave, and that moment the slave race is placed upon a common level with all other competitors for the rewards of merit; but as the slaves are inferior in the qualities which give success among competitors in our country, extreme poverty would be their lot; and for the want of means to rear families, they would multiply slowly, and die out by inches, degraded by vice and crime, unpitied by honest and virtuous men, and heartbroken by sufferings without a parallel.
So long as States let masters alone on this subject, good men among them, both in the church and out of it, will struggle on, as experience may dictate and justify, for the benefit of the slave race. And should the time ever come, when emancipation in its consequences, will comport with the moral, social, and political obligations of christianity, then Christian masters will invest their slaves with freedom, and then will the good-will of those follow the descendants of Ham, who, without any agency of their own, have been made in this land of liberty, their providential guardians.
Yours, with affection,
THORNTON STRINGFELLOW
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