ants, obey your
masters." Having declared fugitive slaves to be "the heroes of the age,"
he had not, as we may suppose, any very decided taste for the
commonplace Scriptural duties of submission and obedience. Nay, he
spurns at and rejects such duties as utterly inconsistent with the
"inalienable rights of man." He appeals from the oracles of eternal
truth to "the testimony of the times." He appeals from Christ and his
apostles to Sarah W. Morton. And yet, although he thus takes ground
directly against the plainest precepts of the gospel, and even ventures
to brand some of them as "imperfect," he has the hardihood to rebuke
those who find therein, not what it really contains, but only a
reflection of themselves!

The precept in question is not an isolated injunction of the New
Testament. It does not stand alone. It is surrounded by other
injunctions, equally authoritative, equally explicit, equally
unequivocal. Thus, in Eph. vi. 5: "Servants, be obedient to them that
are your masters according to the flesh." Precisely the same doctrine
was preached to the Colossians: (iii. 22:) "Servants, obey in all
things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as
men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God." Again, in St.
Paul's Epistle to Timothy, he writes: "Let as many servants as are under
the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of
God and his doctrine be not blasphemed." Likewise, in Tit. ii. 9, 10, we
read: "Exhort servants to be obedient to their own masters, and to
please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but
showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our
Saviour in all things." And in 1 Pet. ii. 18, it is written: "Servants,
be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and
gentle, but also to the froward." Yet, in the face of these passages,
Mr. Sumner declares that it is the duty of slaves to fly from bondage,
and thereby place themselves among "the heroes of the age." He does not
attempt to interpret or explain these precepts; he merely sets them
aside, or passes them by with silent contempt, as "imperfect." Indeed,
if his doctrines be true, they are not only imperfect--they are
radically wrong and infamously vicious. Thus, the issue which Mr. Sumner
has made up is not with the slaveholders of the South; it is with the
word of God itself. The contradiction is direct, plain, palpable, and
without e