Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

every man who can reason intelligently. If the sinfulness of divorce and polygamy under the New Testament, though they were tolerated in the Old Testament, rests upon the fact that Jesus personally first, and subsequently through Paul, expressly repealed the toleration, then plainly the ethical propriety of slavery under the New Testament rests with equal certainty upon the fact that Jesus Christ did not repeal the toleration of slavery in the Mosaic code. And the Great Head of the church-" the same yesterday, today and forever"—having not only allowed the relation of master and slave to exist in that ancient church to which He gave the law of love as the rule of life between man and man, but also having allowed it to continue without repeal or rebuke in the New Testament church, what Christian man, with any intelligent reverence for His holy law, dares gainsay it? For remember that while the rationalizing apostates and infidels may consistently enough set up their humanitarian philosophisms, and "inner light," and spiritual instincts," as the standard to which God's Word must conform, it is the part of a sincere and truly rational Christian man to bow reverently to the plain teaching of God's holy word. And even though these judgments given by Moses and Jesus seem to him "past finding out," and occasionally repugnant to the teachings of his natural heart, he but applies to Moses and Jesus the admired maxim of Coleridge concerning Plato, "When I cannot understand his ignorance I confess myself ignorant of his understanding."

66

Your attention is the more earnestly requested to the brief argument of this section, because it will be found that, under the hazy verbiage of this popular declamation about the "law of love" and the teachings of Jesus"purer and milder" than the teachings of Moses-lurk ever the germs of that fatal heresy which begins with sep

arating, in idea, Jesus and John and Paul and Peter from Moses and David and Isaiah, in framing the ethical law of the Christian church. This once done, Moses and David and Isaiah no longer are "gospel " in the sense that Jesus and Paul and Peter are; then, by the inevitable laws of logical gravitation, that Moses and David and Isaiah did not in like sense with Jesus and Paul and Peter "speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," nor are "all Scriptures," in like sense, "given by inspiration of God." Then begins the transition to a hypocritical infidelity in the chaffer about the inspired and uninspired shreds of the Scripture history and teaching; then, finally, the conclusion that Jesus and Paul were mistaken in supposing Moses inspired; and therefore cannot themselves be inspired of God.

Many good men indeed indulge in this sort of declamation about the "purer and higher" ethical law of the gospel, and the darker and more imperfect ethical ideas of Moses, who are far from meaning to be either rationalists or infidels themselves; but they seem to forget that the effect on less sincere or intelligent minds is, practically, a preparation of the soil for receiving the germinal seeds of infidelity from the first plausible apostate who may rise up, ambitious of a distinction in destroying the church, which he cannot obtain by faithful toil in edifying it.*

*The author of this discourse has been held to speak uncharitably and unkindly in terming the current philanthropism "infidel," and the acceptance of it by the church " apostasy." He may be allowed to say that while he would be far from applying the term "infidel " personally to any one who may have unwittingly fallen into the snare by the pressure of popular fanaticism; nor the term apostate to every man in the church who has been betrayed into the slighter forms of this rationalistic reasoning concerning the Scriptures; still, on the ground of the highest Christian expediency, he denominates these heresies from their tendencies and final results rather than from their present degree of development. The masses of the people will understand and

66

SECTION VI.

In the final reorganization of the visible church, through the Apostles, under the dispensation of the Spirit, the ethical propriety of slavery, especially of the enslaving of Jews, must have been forced upon their attention. Yet the Apostles not only admitted slaveholders and their slaves together into the church, but enjoined the Christian duties of masters and slaves, precisely in the same manner as the duties of ruler and subject, husband and wife, parent and child.

THIS argument, which has been cumulative at every step, cumulates still more rapidly when we come now to examine the history of the reorganization of the Jewish church, as the church of all nations, through Christ's Apostles under the dispensation of the Spirit. Notoriously, in every community of the world-wide Roman Empire, as they went preaching the gospel and planting Christian churches, they found slavery existing by that Roman code already described as subsequently reduced into form by the lawyers of Justinian. To say the least of it, this code was equally as rigid and not more restrictive of the rights of masters than the modern American code. Now into this New Testament church, just as into the Abrahamic and Mosaic church, slaveholders and their slaves were admitted as its constituent elements. While great care is taken to

take the alarm from the brief language describing final results, far more readily than from circumlocutions descriptive of each precise stage of the inevitable progress. To denounce that as impious which has been tolerated in the church of God by inspired authority simply because a popular philanthropism demands it, or to put the language of Scripture to torture in order to appease popular philanthropism and secure its patronage for religion, is not infidelity or apostasy, but is not such, chiefly for the same reason that a pig is not a hog or a calf not an ox.

instruct both in their relative duties, and at the same time to instruct them that the Mosaic civil and ceremonial laws have expired by limitation, not a word is said anywhere of a repeal of the ancient ethical rule of life, to the church, or of dissent from the toleration of slavery in it.

But a still more positive proof to the contrary is found in the fact that even in the case of Jewish slaves-who would naturally argue, from the prohibition of the old law against enslaving a Hebrew, that their conversion and the conversion of their masters should operate a dissolution of their relation as master and slave-the Apostles uniformly urged upon them the principle that it was not the mission of the gospel to break up the social and civil relations of men. The fact that the Apostles read and expounded Moses in their preaching to many Jewish slaves, permanently reduced to bondage, would naturally suggest to them the notion of the sinfulness of such a bondage to those of whom Jehovah had said, "They are My servants-they shall not be sold as bondmen." This fact furnishes the explanation of the peculiar motive urged by the Apostles upon slaves to remain content in their estate-" that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed." These slaves themselves, and their Judaizing friends, would insist upon it, as a religious question, that for a Jew to be a per. petual bondslave was an insult to Jehovah, who claimed him as His servant under the Abrahamic covenant; just as "tribute to Cæsar was, if voluntary, an insult to Jehovah, the King and proprietor of the soil of Canaan. It was therefore impossible but that, in the apostolic churches, the question of slavery, as against Jewish masters, must be met; and also as to the relation of Jewish slaves to their heathen masters: even to say nothing of the innumerable cases of converted heathen slaves and their masters.

On turning now to the apostolic instruction on the

whole subject, nothing can be plainer than that they meant to tolerate the relation of master and slave just as it existed under the laws of the empire. Nay, more, that they meant to teach distinctly the right of masters to the service of their slaves, and the duty of their slaves to serve them faithfully and conscientiously.

This

Thus in 1 Cor. 7: 20, 21, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called" (i. e., your calling as Christ's elect has made no change whatever in your civil relations). "Art thou called being a slave? Care not for it; but if thou mayst be made free, use it rather." As Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, suggests-though unfortunately himself smitten of late with the prevailing anti-slavery epidemic the almost universal judgment of the ancient commentators is that both the Greek text and the connection of this passage require it to be read, not as our translation is commonly understood to read it, "If thou canst honestly be made free, then use the opportunity-prefer freedom;" but "Even though thou canst be made free-use rather your present condition-remain a bondman." is not only the reading of the ancient commentators, but of the most learned and authoritative of all the modern German and English critics. Alford, among the latest and highest, insists upon this as the only proper reading. If we accept this as the meaning of Paul's instruction, it at once settles the question. But not being disposed to rest this argument on disputed interpretations, where there is even any show of reason for doubt, let us accept even the present popular interpretation of this injunction; still, as the most candid of modern anti-slavery critics admit, the whole argument of the Apostle proceeds upon the assumption of the lawfulness of the relation, and borrows from it, after the manner of Jesus in His teaching, His illustration of the relation of all Christians to Christ as his slaves

« AnkstesnisTęsti »