Three Prize Essays on American SlaveryThurston, R. B. (Richard Bowers)
Religion
Three Prize Essays on American Slavery
Thurston, R. B. (Richard Bowers)
Slavery -- United States; Slavery and the church -- United States
In the third place, we should use every endeavor to disseminate the
gospel of Christ, and bring its principles to bear upon all classes of
persons, North and South. If we can do this effectually, it is all
sufficient. The Gospel, if faithfully applied, is a sure remedy for
every social and moral evil that ever existed. We at the North should
demonstrate to our slave-holding friends whom we wish to influence, that
we ourselves are governed by its spirit, and actuated by its principle,
in all that we do in relation to this subject. It is not ambition, a
lust for power, sectional jealousy, a spirit of censoriousness or
ill-will, that prompts us to what they have been in the habit of
regarding as intermeddling with their affairs, in which we have no
concern, but a spirit of love,--love not less to them than to their
slaves. And then, in the temper of Christ, we will bring the Gospel to
bear on the slaveholder's conscience and sense of justice. We will hold
up and keep before his mind the great rule of life given by Him who
spake as never man spake,--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do you even so to them." Let this rule be once adopted and carried
out, and it is enough. Human beings would no more be sold as beasts in
the market, and driven to unrequited toil; the minds of men would no
longer be kept in ignorance; the domestic circle would never again be
invaded by the hand of sordid avarice separating husbands and wives,
parents and children, doing savage violence to the noblest affections
of our nature; the Bible would be put into the hands of every slave, and
he would be taught to read it; common schools and Sabbath schools would
be everywhere established and maintained, as well for the slave as for
the white child; the master would regard those whom he now holds as
property as his own brethren, going with him to the same judgment, and
destined finally to dwell with him as his equals, in the same heaven,
and to wear as bright crowns and sing as rapturous a song as he. He
would immediately set himself about preparing his slaves for
emancipation, and for the enjoyment of those natural rights, of which
they have for so long a time been most unjustly deprived. In short,
slavery, as the term is now understood, would cease instantly, and a
kind, parental guardianship would take its place, and every southern
plantation would be transformed into a moral garden of beauty and
happiness, and universal and entire emancipation would follow with the
least possible delay. And, finally, we should if possible bring the
Gospel to bear upon the great body politic, upon our presidents, our
governors, our National and State legislators. It would seem that some
of our lawmakers are much better acquainted with Blackstone and Vattel,
than they are with the Lord Jesus Christ, or they would not disgrace
our statute-books with laws which ignore the "higher laws" of God. We
should often remind them that this is a Christian, and not a heathen or
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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