Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
Nor does the analogy between the two cases stop here. According to the
pro-slavery biblical argument, slave-holding is only to be justified
in Christian slave-holders, who, in holding slaves, have in view not
only selfish benefit or advantage, but the good of the slaves, (who are
not able to take care of themselves,) and the glory of God. According
to the Mormon biblical argument, polygamy is to be allowed only to the
saints; and that, not for any sensual gratification, but only for the
benefit of the women, (who, according to the Mormon doctrine, cannot
get to heaven without some holy husband to introduce them,) and for the
raising up of a righteous seed to God’s glory.
Their favorite biblical argument, urged with such a tone of triumph and
self-satisfaction in all the southern presbyteries and consociations,
and in some northern ones, being thus newly applied by the Mormons,
our pro-slavery friends are placed in a somewhat delicate dilemma.
For they must either abandon as invalid their dogma of slave-holding
derived from Jewish practices, or, if they still hold on to the
argument, and maintain its force, they must prepare to extend the
right hand of fellowship to Brigham Young and his five and forty
wives. It is, indeed, very natural, in fact inevitable, that slavery
and polygamy, avowed or disavowed, should go together; nor does any
good reason appear why those who find justification for the one in the
Jewish Scriptures should hesitate about accepting the other.
R. Hildreth
THE WAY.
Believe me still, as I have ever been,
The steadfast lover of my fellow men;
My weakness,--love of holy Liberty!
My crime,--the wish that all mankind were free!
Free, not by blood; redeemed, but not by crime;
Each fetter broken, but in God’s good time!
John G. Whittier
AMESBURY, 10th MO. 16, 1852.
THE SLAVE AND SLAVE-OWNER.
“I would rather be anything than a slave,--except a slave-owner!” said
a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs,--the slave but
suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live
only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some
even to die for him.
The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves.
The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to
them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They
are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most
earnest topic of the christian world.
But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him!
True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant
Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of
all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have
been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But from this elevation he
is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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