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practice, even among Protestants; else why so many different faiths? so many antagonistical systems of theology? So many contradictory forms of church policy? and last, but not least, so much wrath, contention, strife and jangling, all about words—which discussion only darkens, and explanations mystify? and the church of Christ, that should be the focus of peace, holiness and love, resembles the arena of vulgar politics.
To the “law and the testimony” we will go, and from them take nothing but example and precept.
And the first example of slavery we have here, is in the family of Abraham, “the father of the faithful”—the church of Christ—nor could the whole number of his slaves have been small, seeing he had three hundred and eighteen born in his own house, or bought with his money, that were fit for war. So then, even father Abraham was a trafficer in human flesh.
The next prominent example we have is Job, whose slaves must have amounted to several thousands; and yet this man had the most honorable testimony of his God, as being “a perfect and upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil.” Now, if to hold slaves is among the greatest of sins, as the anti-slavery party affirm it is, then God’s testimony respecting Job’s eschewing evil, is false and hypocritical; and, according to the standard of abolitionists for graduating the degrees of criminality that attaches itself to slave-holders, Job must have been the greatest sinner in the land of “Uz”—and Satan the greatest fool for trying to get one already so securely his own. But the abolitionists must pardon us for preferring the testimony of God to their affirmations.
But it may be replied that these cases are not in point, because they existed before the giving of the law. Well, then, to the law let us go: and here we find Moses, under the direction of God, authorising slavery and legislating for it. Read the enactments on the subject.
See Exodus xxi. chap., beginning at the 2d verse.
“If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve thee; and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.
“If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him children, the wife and children shall be her master’s; he shall go out by himself.
