they needed
it, a legislation adapted to their social condition, this legislation,
divinely given at that time, may be also divinely abrogated afterward.
And this is what has taken place. Those who quote to us texts from the
Old Testament concerning slavery, appear to have forgotten the saying of
Jesus Christ in reference to another institution, divorce: "It was on
account of the hardness of your hearts." Yes, on account of the hardness
of their hearts, God established among the Israelites, incapable, at
that time, of rising higher, provisory regulations,[B] perfect as
regards his condescension, but most imperfect, as he declares himself,
as regards the absolute truth. He who makes no account of this great
fact will find in the books of Moses, and in the Prophets, pretexts
either for practising to-day what was tolerated only for a time, or for
attacking the Scriptures, indignant at what they contain.

It was Jesus Christ himself, therefore, who drew the line of demarcation
between the law and the Gospel--who announced the end of local and
temporary institutions. Has he revealed other institutions, this time
definitive? To form such an idea of the Gospel, we must never have
opened it. The Gospel is not a Koran. In the Koran, we doubtless find
both civil and criminal laws, and the principles of government; the
Apostles did not once tread on this ground. Fancy what their work would
have been, had they substituted a social for a spiritual revolution--had
they touched, above all, the question of slavery, which formed part of
the fundamental law of the ancient world. And here I wish my thought to
be clearly comprehended: I do not pretend that the Apostles were
conscious of the unlawfulness of slavery, and that they avoided pointing
it out through policy, for fear of compromising their work. No, indeed,
this happened unconsciously. According to all appearances, they held the
opinions of their times, and God revealed nothing to them on the
subject, wishing that the abolition of slavery, like all the social
results of the Gospel, should be produced by moral agency, which works
from within outward, which changes the heart before changing the
actions.

At the time of the Apostles, there were many other abuses than slavery;
they never wrote a word in their condemnation. They make allusions to
war, yet say nothing of the nameless horrors which then attended it;
they speak of the sword placed in the king's hands to punish crime, yet