united wages with
work. Whoever renders the one is entitled to the other. And this
manifestly according to a mutual understanding and a voluntary
arrangement. For the doctrine that I may force you to work for me for
whatever consideration I may please to fix upon, fairly opens the way
for the doctrine, that you, in turn, may force me to render you whatever
wages you may choose to exact for any services you may see fit to
render. Thus slavery, even as involuntary servitude, is cut up by the
root. Even the Princeton professor seems to regard it as a violation of
the principle which unites work with wages.

The apostle James applies this principle to the claims of manual
laborers--of those who hold the plough and thrust in the sickle. He
calls the rich lordlings who exacted sweat and withheld wages, to
"weeping and howling," assuring them that the complaints of the injured
laborer had entered into the ear of the Lord of Hosts, and that, as a
result of their oppression, their riches were corrupted, and their
garments moth-eaten; their gold and silver were cankered; that the rest
of them should be a witness against them, and should eat their flesh as
it were fire; that, in one word, they had heaped treasure together for
the last days, when "miseries were coming upon them," the prospect of
which might well drench them in tears and fill them with terror. If
these admonition and warnings were heeded there, would not "the South"
break forth into "weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?" What else
are its rich men about, but withholding by a system of fraud, his wages
from the laborer, who is wearing himself out under the impulse of fear,
in cultivating their fields and producing their luxuries? Encouragement
and support do they derive from James, in maintaining the "peculiar
institution" whence they derived their wealth, which they call
patriarchal, and boast of as the "corner-stone" of the republic?

In the New Testament, we have, moreover, the general injunction, "_Honor
all men_." Under this broad precept, every form of humanity may justly
claim protection and respect. The invasion of any human right must do
dishonor to humanity, and be a transgression of this command. How then,
in the light of such obligations, must slavery be regarded? Are those
men honored, who are rudely excluded from a place in the human family,
and shut up to the deep degradation and nameless horrors of chattelship?
_Can they be held as slaves, an