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Untitled Article
The next chapter , on the argument for slavery from the Scriptures , is not very satisfactorily executed . The writer seems embarrassed , either by his own views of Scripture morality , or by his desire not to outrage those of others , incidentally and unnecessarily . We know not how else to
account for the feebleness with which an argument is treated , which is said to produce considerable impression . ii The authority of Scripture is more successfully used than anything else to reconcile good minds to slavery . " The following seems to us but a poor mode of getting over , if it does get over , the difficulty .
* ' Slavery , in the age of the Apostle , had so penetrated society , was so intimately interwoven with it , and the materials of servile war were so abundant , that a religion , preaching freedom to its victims , would hive shaken the social fabric to its foundation , and would huve armed against itself the whole power of the State . Of consequence Paul did not assail it . He satisfied himself with spreading principles ,
which however slowly , could not but work its destruction . He commanded Philemon to receive his fugitive slave , Onesimus , " not as a slave , but above a slave , as a brother beloved ; " and he commanded masters to give to their slaves that which was € just and equal ;* thus asserting for the slave the rights of a Christian and a Man ; and how , in his circumstances , he could have done more for the subversion of slavery , I do not see . ' '—pp . 65 , 66 .
Begging bis pardon , Dr . Channing does see how the apostle could have done more ; he sees it in his own conduct . Slavery has " penetrated society" in America ; the " materials of servile war" are abundant there at the present moment ; and yet Dr . diaiming assails slavery in a mode for which there is no precedent in the writings of St . Paul . He does so , although it is part of his argument that modern negro slavery , with all its mischiefs , is but a light thing in comparison with
the atrocities of slavery as it existed in the ancient world . Another inconsistency is , that while the Apostle ' s abhorrence of shivery is assumed , from the general philanthropy of his character , and the consequent fineness of his moral sense , lie is represented as acting on the morality of expediency , and that , moreover , an expediency of it low and external description , nay , on a fallacious view and gross miscalculation . For , Christianity did arm " against , itself the whole power of the
state" on other grounds ; and did resist that power , and triumph over it . If a dulled perception of the vice of slavery , . arising from familiarity with it as a general and lasting condition of humanity , be not the true solution of the fact , that it was not directly prohibited by the Apostles , we confess we know not where to find one , and must leave the Scripturalists to settle the difficulty as best they can . Dr . Channiug seems rather in haste to escupe from this portion of the , sub-
Untitled Article
400 tihmng on Slavery .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/8/
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