One hundred years ago it was moral to trade in slaves, to own slaves, and to breed slaves. Even twenty-five years ago it was moral to own and breed slaves in the United States of America. Pious Bristol slave-traders in the 18th century endowed churches from the profits of their commerce. To-day slave-holding is not only punishable by law, but the theory of slavery is indignantly repudiated by all decent English folk. And yet supernaturalism maintained and legalised slavery (Leviticus xxv, 44-46). Wilberforce, the English abolitionist, himself a professing Christian, noting that infidel France had set its negroes free, asked in the House of Commons, on February 11th, 1796: “What would some future historian say in describing two great nations, the one accused of promoting anarchy and confusion and every human misery, yet giving liberty to the African; the other country contending for religion, morality, and justice, yet obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice?” In the American Congress, in 1790, the representative of South Carolina affirmed that the clergy did not condemn either slavery or the slave-trade, and Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, maintained that religion was not against slavery. On the 4th September, 1835, the Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, reports that at the celebrated pro-slavery meeting held there, “the clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene.” The rationalist asks, What was it that the consciences of these Christian men said on the subject of slavery only fifty years ago? Even in Boston, Massachusetts, William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, though an earnest Christian, was shut out of Christian society; and the only building in that city of many churches in which he was at first allowed to publicly plead for the abolition of slavery was a hall owned by Abner Kneeland, an infidel who had been convicted and sent to gaol as a blasphemer. Why for centuries did Christians trade in slaves, if supernatural morality is dependent on the immutable judgments of a God-ordained conscience? Why, if slavery was defensible by supernatural moralists only twenty-five years ago, has it now become utterly indefensible?