berate their
slaves, much less is it urged as an imperative and immediate duty. They
are commanded to be kind, merciful and just; and to remember that they
have a Master in heaven. Paul represents this relation as of
comparatively little account: "Let every man abide in the same calling
wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant (or slave), care
not for it; though, should the opportunity of freedom be presented,
embrace it. These external relations, however, are of little importance,
for every Christian is a freeman in the highest and best sense of the
word, and at the same time is under the strongest bonds to Christ," 1
Cor. vii: 20-22. It is not worth while to shut our eyes to these facts.
They will remain, whether we refuse to see them and be instructed by
them or not. If we are wiser, better, more courageous than Christ and
his apostles, let us say so; but it will do no good, under a paroxysm of
benevolence, to attempt to tear the Bible to pieces, or to exhort, by
violent exegesis, a meaning foreign to its obvious sense. Whatever
inferences may be fairly deducible from the fact, the fact itself can
not be denied that Christ and his inspired followers did treat the
subject of slavery in the manner stated above. This being the case, we
ought carefully to consider their conduct in this respect, and inquire
what lessons that conduct should teach us.

We think no one will deny that the plan adopted by the Saviour and his
immediate followers must be the correct plan, and therefore obligatory
upon us, unless it can be shown that their circumstances were so
different from ours, as to make the rule of duty different in the two
cases. The obligation to point out and establish this difference, rests
of course upon those who have adopted a course diametrically the reverse
of that which Christ pursued. They have not acquitted themselves of
this obligation. They do not seem to have felt it necessary to
reconcile their conduct with his; nor does it appear to have occurred to
them, that their violent denunciations of slaveholding and of
slaveholders is an indirect reflection on his wisdom, virtue, or
courage. If the present course of the abolitionists is right, then the
course of Christ and the apostles were wrong. For the circumstances of
the two cases are, as far as we can see, in all essential particulars,
the same. They appeared as teachers of morality and religion, not as
politicians. The same is the fact with our