YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

INTRODUCTION.

The following Sermon was preached on Sunday evening,
May 26, 1850, before a large assembly of intelligent and
respectable citizens of Charleston, at the dedication of a
Church erected for the religious instruction of the Negroes.
This building has been put up under the supervision of the
Second Presbyterian Church. The congregation worshipping
in it are under the ecclesiastical watch and control of the
Session of that Church, into which will be received all those
who may become Church members. There is, therefore, no
separate ecclesiastical organization of this congregation.
The Rev. John B. Adger is their Minister, and his successors
will, from time to time, be appointed by the Session of the
Second Church and by the Presbytery of Charleston.
This commodious edifice is in the Gothic style — a model
of neatness and simplicity. Its shape being that of a capital
T, the transepts or wings are appropriated to the use of white
persons, and are entered by separate doors. The cost of this
Church, including the lot and a small building in the rear,
fpr Sunday School purposes, has been about $7,700. A
balance of about $1,700 remained due at the dedication, but
since that time it has been all paid, and the undertaking
stands a pleasing monument of the Christian zeal of our
community for the sound and thorough religious training of
their slaves.

IV ENTltODTJCTION.
At the Suuday School connected with this Church, there
are generally present about one hundred and eighty scholars,
who are taught by the Minister and some twenty or thirty
ladies and gentlemen. Their improvement in religious
knowledge and orderly behaviour, during two years of
instruction, is very manifest.
The Session of the Second Presbyterian Church, anxious
that the profound and comprehensive views of Dr. Thorn-
well, upon the question of our country and our day, should
not be confined to those who heard his Discourse, have
requested and obtained from him a copy for publication. It
is, accordingly, now sent forth as another Scriptural exhi
bition of the Rights and the Duties of Masters.

SERMON.

Colossians iv : 1. Masters, give unto your Servants that which is just
and equal; knowing that ye also have a master in Heaven.
I eejoice in the solemnities of this night. I rejoice
not merely that a new house has been dedicated to the
worship of God and the promulgation of the Gospel ;
which always affords a just occasion of congratulation
and delight, but that a building has been erected —
erected in the metropolis of the State, and erected at
this particular time, for the special benefit of those
who are emphatically the poor of our land. When the
scheme was first projected, opposition was very natu
rally excited to the separation of masters and servants
in the solemn offices of religion, which its execution, to
some extent, involved. It was felt to be desirable that
the different classes of the community should meet
together and experience the salutary influence upon
their relations to each other, which the contemplation
of their common relation to God was suited to exert.
These considerations were not destitute of force, and
they would have been entitled to prevail, had it not
been obvious that the advantages of such promiscuous
assemblies were dearly purchased by the exclusion of
immense numbers of the coloured population from all
adequate opportunities of religious instruction at all.
The question was soon found to be partial separation,
or a partial diffusion of the gospel among the slaves.

6 THE BIGHT'S AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
An enlarged philanthropy prevailed over sentiment —
and the completion of this structure is a declaration to
the world — that neither apprehensions of safety to our
selves, nor of injury to our servants — that neither
mawkish sentimentalism nor absurd jealousy, shall deter
us from providing the negro with the armour of salvar
tion. This triumph of Christian benevolence is the more
illustrious, as having taken place in a community which
has been warned by experience to watch with jealous
care, all combinations of the blacks. Religion has*been
so often the cloak of designing knaves — and religious
assemblies so often prostituted to the unhallowed pur
poses of anarchy and crime, that good men began to
" — apprehend that religion itself might be ultimately ex-
— eluded as a measure of police. But the erection of this
house is a publick proof that the good people of Charles
ton can be bribed by no temptations of interest or
security to confound the abuse with the lawful uses of
a thing — and that while they take every precaution
which wisdom and prudence suggest to guard effectu
ally against the one, they wiE not be driven into any mad
crusade against the other. Bowing with reverence to
the authority of God, and recognizing the obligation to
communicate His will to the children of men, they are
determined to make known His Gospel, in its simplicity
and purity, without any checks or hindrances but
those which shall prevent religious conventions from
being turned into conventions of crime. All they de
mand is that it shall be Christianity which is taught 
the Christianity contained in the Bible, proclaimed by
Apostles and Prophets, and sealed by the blood of a
goodly company of Martyrs and Confessors. The name

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 7
of Jesus is not a name for conspirators to conjure
with — it carries no danger with it — the doctrines of
Jesus are doctrines according to godliness, and our peo
ple, we rejoice to say, have refused under any pretext
of expediency or policy, to league with Herod and
Pontius Pilate, in an unholy combination against the
anointed of the Lord. Time will show that they have
acted wisely, and that this Church will prove a stronger
fortress against insubordination and rebellion than
weapons of brass or iron. ' \f>
The juncture at which you have been led to begin
and carry out this undertaking — it is but just to say — •
affords a proof of your homage to religion, and a vin
dication of your characters, as beautiful as they are
conspicuous. The slave-holding States of this con
federacy have been placed under the ban of the publick
opinion of the civilized world. The philanthppy of
Christendom seems to have concentrated its sympathies
upon us. We have been denounced, with every epithet
of vituperation and abuse, as conspirators against the
dignity of man — traitors to our race, and rebels against
God. Overlooking, with a rare expansion of benevo
lence, the evils which press around their own doors, the
vices and crimes and sufferings of their own neighbours
and countrymen, the philanthropists of Europe and
this country can find nothing worth weeping for but
the sufferings and degradation of the Southern slave,
and nothing worth reviling but the avarice, inhumanity
and cruelty of the Southern master, and nothing worth
labouring to extirpate but the system which embodies
these outrages and wrongs. So monstrous are the mis
representations which ignorance, malice and fanaticism
are constantly and assiduously propagating in regard

8 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
to this relation among us, that if our names were not
actually written under the pictures, we should never
suspect that they were intended for us. In the grave
discussions of philosophy — the solemn instructions of
the pulpit — the light effusions of the poet — in popular
assemblies and legislative halls — among all classes and
conditions of men— we are held up to execration and
contempt ; and our society is shunned as scrupulously
as if the taint of leprousy adhered to us. Even those
who cannot find it in their hearts to join in the violent
maledictions which zeal for humanity has piled upon
us, never venture upon" a plea of justification in our
defence. They pity us — they lament our lot — admit
that our case is bad, desperately bad — but then we are
not so much to be blamed. They curse us in their
sympathies. This insane fury of philanthropy has not been con
tent with speculating upon our degradation and
wretchedness at a distance. It has aimed at stirring up
insurrection in our midst. In the sacred names of reli
gion and liberty, private efforts have been made to turn
the hearts of servants against their masters ; and pub
lick institutions, which the implied faith of the country
should render only vehicles of convenience, have been
treacherously converted into engines of sedition and
organs of tumult. Outlaws from humanity, the Con
stitution of the Country has been unable to protect us
from the machinations of those who, according to the
legitimate use of language, can be much more appro
priately styled Manstealers than ourselves. At this
moment the Union is shaken to its centre by the pre
valence of sentiment over xeason and truth : and the
remarkable spectacle is exhibited of a people con-

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 9
strained in conscience to violate the faith of treaties,
the solemnity of contracts, and the awful sanctity of an
oath ; constrained in conscience to trample in the dust
the plainest obligations of duty, rather than infringe
the speculative rights of man. A spurious charity for
a comparatively small class in the community, is dicta
ting the subversion of the cherished institutions of our
fathers, and the hopes of the human race — the utter
ruin of this vast imperial Republick, is to be achieved
as a trophy to the progress of human development.
That we should be passive spectators of these scenes
of madness and confusion — that we should be indiffer
ent to the condemnation of the civilized world, and
especially to efforts to put in jeopardy our lives, as well
as our property, is not to be expected. The fear of
good men among ourselves has been, that the natural
exasperation which so much unmerited censure and
such extraordinary interference with our affairs have a
tendency to produce, would provoke us to extremities
resulting rather from the violence of resentment than
the dictates of prudence. Perhaps, at the first alarm
ing indications of our moral position, in the estimate of
the world, we indulged too much in the language of
defiance, and permitted ourselves to yield to sugges
tions of policy, which, in our calmer moments, neither
the reason nor the conscience of the country should
approve. It is useless to deny that we were tempted
to resort to measures of legislation, which, while they
contribute nothing to our security, have given a pretext
to the calumnies of our enemies, and embarrassed our
defence in the hands of our friends. But I feel bound,
in candour, to say, that, under the extraordinary pres
sure which has been upon us, it is a matter of astonish-

10 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
ment and of devout thanksgiving to God, that we have
been able, in the regulation of our domestick institutions,
to preserve so much moderation, prudence, humanity
andcaution. When the first explosion had passed off,
we consented to plead our cause at the bar of the world;
we looked more narrowly into the nature and organiza
tion of society — at the origin and extent of the rights of
man — and feeling justified in our own consciences and
in the sight of God, we endeavoured to conduct our
selves with the dignity which a consciousness of recti
tude inspires, and to deserve, if we cannot obtain, the
confidence of mankind. That in the conduct of our
plea we have contributed our full proportion to the
philosophy of government — that we have done much
to expose the fallacies and dangers of prevailing theo
ries in regard to. the scope and purpose of political
institutions — that we have been eminently conservative
in our influence upon the spirit of the age, it seems to
us, cannot be decently denied. To say that we have
run into no extravagancies in our defences of slavery —
that we have not, like all controvertists, been perplexed
with the ambiguity of terms, and betrayed by rashness
into untenable positions, is to say that we are angels
and not men. But, the wonder is, that our excesses
have not been greater and more disastrous. With
infidelity on the one hand, suggesting a short reply to
the indictment of the world, that our Negroes are not
of the same blood with ourselves — a plea which, if it
had been admitted, would have justly drawn down the
curse of God, as well as the execrations of the race ;
with the dictates of a narrow expediency on the other,
suggesting that our safety depended upon the depression
and still lower degradation of the black race : with

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS".. 11
Scylla on the one side and Charybdis on the other, the
wonder is, that we have not been frightened from our
propriety, and driven to the adoption of more measures
that would seem to justify the censures of our enemies.
The inception and successful progress of this entef-^
prise encourage the hope that we mean to maintain our
moderation. It is a publick testimony to our faith, that
the Negro is of one blood with ourselves — that he has
sinned as we have, and that he has an equal interest
with U3 in the great redemption. Science, falsely so
called, may attempt to exclude him from the brother
hood of humanity. Men may be seeking eniinenc-ratad
distinction by arguments which link them with the
brute ; but the instinctive impulses of our nature, com
bined with the plainest declarations of the word of
God, lead us to recognize in his form and lineaments —
in his moral, religious and intellectual nature — the same
humanity in which we glory as the image of God. We
are not ashamed to call him our brother. — The subju
gation of the fears and jealousy which a systematic
misrepresentation of religion, on the part of our invete
rate opposers, has had a tendency to produce, is a pub
lick declaration to the world, that, in our philosophy,
right is the highest expediency, and obedience to God
the firmest security of communities as well as indi
viduals. We have not sought the protection of our
property in the debasement of our species ; we have
not maintained our own interests in this world, by the
deliberate sacrifice of the eternal interests of the thou
sands who look to us for the way of salvation. Under
the infallible conviction — infallible, because the off
spring of the word of God — that lie who walketh
uprightly, walketh surely, we have endeavored to carry

12 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
out a plan which shall have the effect of rendering to
our servants, in the most comprehensive sense, that
which is just and equal. If others feel called to seduce
them into grievous crime, and to ply them with insti
gations to insurrection and tumult, our firmest precau
tions against the threatened danger shall be the faithful
discharge of our duties, which, while it preserves a
conscience void of offence towards God, conciliates the
confidence and affections of man.
If God shall enable us to maintain the moderation
and dignity which become us, and to set an example of
faithfulness and diligence in the discharge of the duties
which spring from the relation of master and servant,
it will be an omen of good. It will be a signal proof
that He has not condemned us, and a cheering token
that in the vicissitudes of human affairs, truth will
ultimately prevail, and we shall stand acquitted at the
bar of the world. The agitations which are convulsing
the kingdoms of Europe — the mad speculations of phi
losophers — the excesses of unchecked democracy, are
working out some of the most difficult problems of
political and social science ; and when the tumult shall
have subsided and reason resumed her ascendency, it
will be found that the very principles upon which we
have been accustomed to justify Southern slavery, are
the principles of regulated liberty— that in defending
this institution we have really been upholding the civil
interests of mankind — resisting alike the social anarchy
of communism and the political anarchy of licentious
ness — that we have been supporting representative,
republican government against the despotism of masses
on the one hand, and the supremacy of a single will on
the other.

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 13
God has not permitted such a remarkable phenome
non as the unanimity of the civilized world, in its
execration of slavery, to take place without design.
This great battle with the Abolitionists, has not been
fought in vain. The muster of such immense forces —
the fury and bitterness of the conflict — the disparity
in resources of the parties in the war — the conspicuous-
ness — the unexampled conspicuousness of the event,
have all been ordered for wise and beneficent results ;
and when the smoke shall have rolled away, it will be
seen that a real progress has been made in the practi
cal solution of the problems which produced the col
lision. What disasters it will be necessary to pass through
before the nations can be. "taught the lessons of Provi
dence — what lights shall be extinguished, and what
horrors experienced, no human sagacity can foresee.
But that the world is now the theatre of an extraordi
nary conflict of great principles — that the foundations
of society are about to be explored to their depths —
and the sources of social and political prosperity laid
bare ; that the questions in dispute involve all that is
dear and precious to man on earth — the most superfi
cial observer cannot fail to perceive. Experiment after
experiment may be made — disaster succeed disaster, in
carrying out the principles of an atheistic philosophy
— until the nations, wearied and heart-sickened with
changes without improvement, shall open their eyes to
the real causes of their calamities, and learn the lessons
which wisdom shall evolve from the events that have
passed. Truth must triumph. God will vindicate the
appointments of His Providence-^and if our institu
tions are indeed consistent with righteousness and truth,

14 THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
we can calmly afford to bide our time — we can watch
the storm which is beating furiously against us, without
terror or dismay — we can receive the assault of the
civilized world — trusting in Him who has all the ele
ments at His command, and can save as easily by one
as a thousand. If our principles are true, the world
must come to them ; and we can quietly appeal from
the verdict of existing generations, to the more impar
tial verdict of the men who shall have seen the issue
of the struggle in which we are now involved. It is not
the narrow question of abolitionism or of slavery — not
simply whether we shall emancipate our negroes or not ;
the real question is the relations of man to society — of
States to the individual, and of the individual to States ;
a question as broad as the interests of the human race.
These are the mighty questions which are shaking
thrones to their centres — upheaving the masses like an
earthquake, and rocking the solid pillars of this Union.
The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists
and slaveholders — they are atheists, socialists, commu
nists, red republicans, jacobins, on the one side, and the
friends of order and regulated freedom on the other.
In one word, the world is the battle ground — Christi
anity and Atheism the combatants ; aud the progress
of humanity the stake. One party seems to regard
Society, with all its complicated interests, its divisions
and sub-divisions, as the machinery of man — which, as
it has been invented and arranged by his ingenuity
and skill, may be taken to pieces, re-constructed, altered
or repaired, as experience shall indicate defects or con
fusion in the original plan. The other party beholds
in it the ordinance of God ; and contemplates " this little
scene of human life," as placed in the middle of a

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 15
scheme, whose beginnings must be traced to the unfath
omable depths of the past, and whose development
and completion must be sought in the still more
unfathomable depths of the future — a scheme, as But
ler expresses it, " not fixed, but progressive — every way
incomprehensible": — in wrhich, consequently, irregula
rity is the confession of our ignorance— disorder the
the proof of our blindness, and with which it is as aw
ful temerity to tamper as to sport with the name of
God. , if, i.
It is a great lesson that, as the weakness of man can
never make that straight which God hath made crooked,
true wisdom consists in discharging the duties of every
relation ; and the true secret of progress is in the im
provement and elevation which are gradually super
induced by this spirit.
The part, accordingly, which is assigned to us in the
tumult of the age, is the maintenance of the principles
upon which the security of social order and the devel
opment of humanity depends, in their applieation to
the distinctive institutions which have provoked upon
us the malediction of the world. The Apostle briefly
sums up all that is incumbent, at the present crisis,
upon the slaveholders of the South, in the words of the
text — Masters, give unto your servants that which is
just and equal, knowing that ye also have a Master in
Heaven. It would be an useless waste of time to spend
many words in proving, that the servants contemplated
by the Apostle were slaves. Finding it impossible to
deny that slavery, as an existing element of society, is
actually sanctioned by Christ and His Apostles, those
who would preserve some show of consistency in their
veneration of the Scriptures, and their condemnation of

16 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
us, resolve the conduct of the founders of Christianity
into motives of prudence and considerations of policy.
While they admit that the letter of the Scriptures is
distinctly and unambiguously in our favour, they main
tain that their spirit is against us, and that our Saviour
was content to leave the destruction of whatsoever
was morally wrong in the social fabric, to the slow
progress of changes in individual opinions, wrought
by the silent influence of religion, rather than endan
ger the stability of governments by sudden and disas
trous revolutions. "The Apostle does not," says a
learned commentator, "interfere with any established
relations, however, as in the case of slavery, morally
and politically wrong — but only enjoins the discharge
of the duties which the very persons themselves recog
nize." It is not for me to explain how the imputation
of a defective morality can be reconciled with the
great Protestant dogma, that the Bible is an adequate
rule of faith and practice ; or upon what principles,
slaveholders should be rejected from the fellowship of
the Christian Church now, when Paul received them as
brethren, and sanctioned the bondage in which they
held their servants.
But it may be worth while to expose the confusion
of ideas, from which this distinction, betwixt the letter
and the spirit of the Gospel, has arisen, and which has
been a source of serious perplexity, both to the defenders
and the enemies of slavery. Many Christian men have
been led, in reference to this subject, to lend their
sanction to principles which, in all other applications,
they would reject with abhorrence, because they have
felt that the genius and temper of Christianity were
inconsistent with the genius and temper of slavery,

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 17
while others, driven to the opposite extreme, from a
faithful study of the letter, have been led to deny the
principles which lie at the foundation of all human
progress, and to assume an attitude in regard to hu
man rights and liberty, which, in their abstract forms,
can be characterized as little less than monstrous.
That is a desperate cause which is either incompatible
with the general tone and spirit of Christianity, or with
the progress of true liberty, which is only another
name for the social and political development of man.
If it can be shown that slavery contravenes the spirit
of the Gospel — 'that as a social relation it is essentially
unfavourable to the cultivation and growth of the
graces of the Spirit — that it is unfriendly to the devel
opment of piety and to communion with God— or that
it retards the onward progress of man — that it
hinders the march of society to its destined goal, and
contradicts that supremacy of justice, which is the soul
of the State, and the life-blood of freedom — if these
propositions can be satisfactorily sustained, then it is
self-condemned — religion and philanthrophy alike re
quire us to labour for its destruction, and every
good man amongst us would feel bound to contribute
to its removal ; and even the voice of patriotism would
demand that we should wipe from our country the foul
reproach of standing in the way of the destined im
provement of mankind.
The confusion upon this subject has arisen from a two
fold misapprehension — one in relation to the nature of
the slavery tolerated in the letter of the Scriptures, and
the other in relation to the spirit of Christianity itself.
It is common to describe slavery as the property of
man in man — as the destruction of all human and
2

18 THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
personal rights, the absorption of the humanity of one
individual into the will and power of another. " The
very idea of a slave," says Dr. Channing* " is that he
belongs to another, that he is bound to live and labour
for another, to be another's instrument, and to make
another's will his habitual law, however adverse to his
own." "We have thus," says he in another place, f
"established the reality and sacredness of human
rights, and that slavery is an infraction of these, is too
plain to need any laboured proof. Slavery violates not
one but all, and violates them not incidentally, but ne
cessarily, systematically, from its very nature." In
other words, in every system of slavery, from the ope
ration of its inherent and essential principles, the slave
ceases to be a person — a man — and becomes a mere
instrument or thing. Dr. Channing does not charge
this result upon the relation as it obtains under particu
lar codes, or at particular times, or in particular places.
He says, distinctly and emphatically, that it violates all
human rights, not incidentally, but necessarily, syste
matically from its very nature. It belongs to the very
essence of slavery to divest its victims of humanity.
" Slavery," says Professor "Whewell, % " is contrary to the fundamental
principles of morality. It neglects the great primary distinction of
Persons and Things — converting a person into a thing, an object merely
passive, without any recognized attributes of human nature. A slave
is, in the eye of the State which stamps him with that character, not
acknowledged as a man. His pleasures and pains, his wishes and de
sires, his needs and springs of action, his thoughts and feelings, are of
no value whatever in the eye of the community. He is reduced to the
level of the brutes. Even his crimes, as we have said, are not acknowl-
* Works, vol. a p. 17. 10th complete edition. Boston, 1849.
t Works, vol. ii. p. 46. , 10th complete edition. Boston, 1849.
t Elements of Morality, vol. i. p. 372-3. American edition.

THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 19
edged as wrongs, lest it should be supposed, that, as he may do a wrong
he may suffer one. And as there are for him no wrongs, because there
are no rights — so there is for him nothing morally right — that is, as we
have seen, nothing conformable to the Supreme Rule of Human Na
ture : for the Supreme Rule of his condition is the will of his master.
He is thus divested of his moral nature, which is contrary to the great
principle we have already laid down ; that all men are moral beings ; a
principle, which we have seen, is one of the universal truths of morality,
whether it be taken as a principle of Justice or of Humanity. It is a
principle of Justice, depending upon the participation of all in a com
mon Humanity; it is a principle of Humanity, as authoritative and
cogent as the fundamental Idea of Justice." ' f<
v
If this be a just description of slavery, the wonder
is, not that the civilized world is now indignant at its
outrages and wrongs, but that it has been so slow in
detecting its enormities, that mankind, for so many
centuries, acquiesced in a system which contradicted
every impulse of nature, every whisper of conscience,
every dictate of religion — a system as monstrously un
natural as a general effort to walk upon the head or
think with the feet. I have, however, no hesitation in
saying, that whatever may be the technical language
of the law, in relation to certain aspects in which sla
very is contemplated, the ideas of personal rights and
personal responsibility pervade the whole system. It
is a relation of man to man — a form of civil society, of
which persons are the only elements, and not a relation
of man to things. Under the Roman code, in which
more offensive language than that employed by our
selves was used in reference to the subject, the Apos
tles did not regard the personality of the slave, as lost
or swallowed up in the propriety of the master. They
treat him as a man — possessed of certain rights, which
it was injustice to disregard, and make it the office of

20 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
Christianity to protect these rights by the solemn
sanctions of religion — to enforce upon masters the ne-.
cessity, the moral obligation, of rendering to their
bondmen that which is just and equal. Paul treats
the services of slaves as duties — not like the toil of
the ox or the ass — a labor extracted by the strin
gency of discipline — but a moral debt, in the payment
of which they were rendering a homage to God. " Ser
vants," says he* " be obedient to them that are your
masters, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling,
in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with
eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as the servants of
Christ, doing the will of God 'from the heart; with
good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men ;
knowing that whatever good thing any man doeth, the
same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond
or free." I need not say to those who are acquainted
with the very elements of moral philosophy, that obe
dience, except as a figured term, can never be applied
to any but rational, intelligent, responsible agents. It
is a voluntary homage to law — implies moral obliga
tion, and a sense of duty, and can only, in the way of
analogy, be affirmed of the instinctive submission of
brute3, or the mechanical employment of instrument
and things, f
* Ephes. iv. 0-9.
t " By a license of speech," says one who can be accused of no patronage to
slavery — " by a license of speech — pardonable in cases where no consequences
result from it — we employ the word so improperly as to say that the sculptor's chisel
obey3 his hand ; but it would be an insufferable affectation to use the abstract term
obedience in such instances, as if the tool were consciously fraught with a moral
quality. Nor may we stretch the proprieties of speech so far as to apply the abstract
term even to the hand. of the artist ; the hand, it is true, obeys the mind  but how
absurd would it be to commend the hand for its obedience, and scarcely less so to
speak of the obedience of a well-trained horse ; although, by an admissible analogy-

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 21
The apostle not merely recognizes the moral agency
of slaves, in the phraseology which he uses, but treats
them as possessed of conscience, reason and will — by
the motives which he presses. He says to them in ef
fect that their services to their masters are duties which
they owe to God — that a moral character attaches to
their works, and that they are the subjects of praise
or blame according to the principles upon which their
obedience is rendered. "The blind passivity of a
corpse, or the mechanical subserviency of" a tool,"
which Dr. Channing, and Prof. Whewell regard as con
stituting the very essence of every system of slavery —
precluding as it does every idea of merit or demerit, of
approbation or of censure, never seems to have entered
the head of the Apostle. He considered slavery as a
social and political economy, in which relations subsisted
betwixt moral, intelligent, responsible beings, invol
ving reciprocal rights and reciprocal obligations. There
was a right to command on the one hand — an obliga
tion to. obey on the other. Both parties might be
guilty of injustice and of wrong — the master might
prostitute his power by tyranny, cruelty, and iniqui
tous exactions — the servant might evade his duty from
indolence, treachery, or obstinate self-will. Religion
held the scales of justice between them — and enforced
fidelity upon each by the awful sanctions of eternity.
This was clearly the aspect in which the Apostle con
templated the subject.
The state of things so graphically described and elo-

we say he obeys the hand and leg of his rider. The fiery, yet obsequious animal,
while yielding himself to the will of his rider, knows nothing of obedience, because
his nature does not include that moral liberty which is the source and soul of the
virtue so named." — Taylor's Loyola and Jesuitism,p. 286.

22 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
quently deplored by the great father of Unitarian
Christianity in America, is a palpable impossibility.
The constitution of the human mind is in flagrant con
tradiction to the absorption of the conscience, will, and
understanding of one man into the personality of
another — it is a thing which cannot be conceived — and
if it ever could take place, the termination of all re
sponsibility on the part of the slave would render it
ridiculous to labour for his spiritual improvement, or
attribute to him any other immortality, than that which
Indian fables ascribe to the dog as the faithful compan
ion of his master. And yet upon this absurdity, that
slavery divests its victims of humanity — that it de
grades them from the rank of responsible and voluntary
agents to the condition of tools or brutes — the whole
philosophical argument against the morality of the
system, as an existing institution — is founded. Moral
ists prove that man can hold no property in man — that
the conscience, in other words, the moral and responsi
ble agency of one person — for to this point the question
is reduced — can never be owned by another — it is not
an article of barter or exchange — the individual cannot
transfer it from himself — and the system which attempts
the impossibility is an outrage upon humanity. We
cheerfully admit that no man can sell his soul to
another— and if the transaction were possible, it would
evidently be a most damning sin. " If suicide," we use
the words of one of the profoundest thinkers of the
day* " if suicide be a crime — and who but the atheist
questions this — so would be the amputation of a limb
for no surgical reason; and so would it be a crime
* Taylor's Loyola and Jesuitism, p. 289. Amer. edition.

THE EIGHTS AND TOE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 23
and a frightful impiety to swallow a drug for the
purpose of effecting a paralysis of one side, or the
extinction of a sense — of sight or of hearing. But
is not man's individual mind and conscience, with
its voluntary convictions of truth and virtue, a faculty
and an element of human nature ? is not the freedom
of the will a sacred bestowment, which every respon
sible being has received from his Maker ? What shall
a man accept in exchange, either for his soul, or for
any one of its elementary prerogatives ? Neither his
soul, nor any of its powers, is really at his disposal — for
not only are these powers in themselves beyond all
price, but if a price could be adduced that should be
their equivalent in whole or in part, the offer could not
be listened to : the proposal is a blasphemy, and it is a
blasphemy in the intention, notwithstanding that such
an intention could never actually be earned out,'? ^We
grant most cheerfully, and we make an admission in no
way inconsistent with Southern slavery, or the slavery
sanctioned in the Bible, that though " the human soul
may be lost, it cannot either be sold or be made a gift of
to another — that conscience may be bound or may be
slaughtered, but cannot be transferred to another's
keeping — that moral responsibility, instead of being
shifted entirely from one to another, or instead of being
shared between two, each taking a half or a portion,
is doubled, whenever it is attempted to be transferred,
or to be deposited, or to be pawned."*
The property of man in man — a fiction to which
even the imagination cannot give consistency — is the
miserable cant of those who would storm by prejudice
* Taylor's Loyola and Jesuitism, p. 289.

24 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
what they cannot demolish by argument. We do not
even pretend that the organs of the body can be said
strictly to belong to another. The limbs and members
of my servant are not mine, but his — they are not
tools and instruments which I can sport with at plea
sure, but the sacred possession of a human being,
which cannot be invaded without the authority of law,
and for the use of which he can never be divested of
his responsibility to God.
If, then, slavery is not inconsistent with the existence
of personal rights and of moral obligation, it may be
asked in what does its peculiarity consist ? What is it
that makes a man a slave ? We answer, the obliga
tion to labour for another, determined by the Provi
dence of God, independently of the provisions of a
contract. The right which the master has is a right,
not to the main, but to his labour • the duty which the
slave owes is the service which, in conformity with this
right, the master exacts. The essential difference be
twixt free and slave-labour is, that one is rendered in
consequence of a contract; the other is rendered hi
consequence of a command. The labourers in each
case are equally moral, equally responsible, equally
."men. But they work upon different principles.
It is strange that Channing and Whewell should
have overlooked the essential distinction of this form
of service, as it lies patent in the writings of philoso
phers who preceded them. The definition given by
Paley, a man pre-eminently marked by perspicuity of
thought and vigour of expression, is exactly the same
in spirit with our own. In the actual condition of so
ciety, the intervention of a contract is not always a
matter of very great moment, since it is not always a

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 25
security to freedom of choice. The Providence of God
marks out for the slave the precise services, in the law
ful commands of the master, which it is the Divine
will that he should render ; the painful necessities of
his case are often as stringent upon the free labourer,
and determine, with a3 stern a mandate, what contracts
he shall make. Neither can he be said to select his
emloyment3. God allots to each his portion — places
one immediately under command — and leaves the
other not unfrequently a petitioner for a master.
Whatever control the master has over the person of
the slave, is subsidiary to this right to his labour; what
he sells is not the man, but the property in his services
— true he chastises the man, but the punishments in
flicted for disobedience are no more inconsistent with
personal responsibilities than the punishments inflicted
by the law for breaches of contract. On the contrary,
punishment in contradistinction from suffering, always
implies responsibility, and a right which cannot be en
forced, is a right, which society, as an organized com
munity, has not yet acknowledged. The chastisements
of slaves are accordingly no more entitled to awaken
the indignation of loyal and faithful citizens — however
pretended philanthropists may describe the horrors
of the scourge and the lash — than the penalties of dis
grace, imprisonment, or death, which all nations have
inflicted upon crimes against the State. All that is
necessary in any case, is that the punishment should
he just. Pain unrighteously inflicted is cruelty — whe
ther that cruelty springs from the tyranny of a single
master, or the tyranny of that greater master, the
State. Whether adequate provisions shall be made
to protect the slave from inhumanity and oppression —

26 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
whether he shall be exempt from suffering except for
disobedience and for crime, are questions to be decided
by the law of the land ; and in this matter the codes
of different nations, and of the same nation at different
times, have been various. Justice and religion require
that such provisions should be made. It is no part of
the essence of slavery, however, that the rights of the
slave should be left to the caprice or to the interest of
the master; and in the Southern States, provisions
are actually made — whether adequate or inadequate it
is useless here to discuss — to protect him from want,
cruelty, and unlawful domination. Provisions are
made which recognize the doctrine of the Apo3tle, that
he is a subject of rights, and that justice must be ren
dered to his claims. When slavery is pronounced to
be essentially sinful, the argument cannot turn upon in
cidental circumstances of the system — upon the defec
tive arrangement of the details — the inadequate secu
rities which the laAv awards against the infringement
of acknowledged rights — it must turn upon the nature
"bf the relation itself, and must boldly attempt to prove
that he ceases to be a man, who is under obligation,
without the formalities of a contract,. to labour under
the direction and for the benefit of another. If such
a position is inconsistent with the essential elements of
humanity, then slavery is inhuman ; if society, on the
other hand, has distinctly recognized the contrary as
essential to good order, as in the case of children, ap
prentices and criminals, then slavery is consistent with
the rights of man, and the pathetick declamation of
'-^abolitionists falls to the ground.
This view of the subject exposes the confusion, which
obtains in most popular treatises of morals, of slavery

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 27
with involuntary servitude. The service, in so far as it
consists in the motions of the limbs or organs of the
body, must be voluntary, or it could not exist at all. If
by voluntary be meant, however, that which results from
hearty consent, and is accordingly rendered with cheer
fulness, it is precisely the service which the law of_
God enjoins. Servants are exhorted to obey from con
siderations of duty ; to make conscience of their tasks,
with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not
to men. Whether, in point of fact, their sendee, in
this sense, shall be voluntary, will depend upon their
moral character. But the same may be said of free
labour. There are other motives beside the lash that
may drive men to toil, when they are far from toiling
with cheerfulness or good will. Others groan under
their burdens as well as slaves, and many a man who
works by contract is doomed to an involuntary ser
vitude, which he as thoroughly detests as the most
faithless slave, who performs nothing but the painful
drudgery of eye-service.
There is a moral bondage, the most galling and de
grading species of servitude, in w*hich he may be held,
as with chains of brass, who scorns to call any man
master on earth. Those who have most patiently stu
died the ends of government and the theory of politi
cal society, who are best prepared to solve the pro
blems connected with the nature and extent of the
individual restraints, which the security of public order
demands—those who have most profoundly investi
gated the whole question of civil and political liberty,
may yet be slaves. They may submit to the sway of
a fiercer and more cruel tyrant than any despot who
ever wielded a sceptre on earth. " Jesus answered them,

28 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
Verily, verily I say unto you, whosoever committeth
sin is the servantor slave' ofjHLJl^JEBSmolilllavery,
from which it was the professed object of their pretended
philosophy to deliver men, was a subject of fruitful and
eloquent declamation among the ancient moralists, phi
losophers and poets. " Who," says Seneca, " is not a
slave. One is in bondage to lust, another to avarice,
another to ambition, and all to fear." " No bondage,"
he adds, " is more grievous than that which is volun
tary." "To be a slave to the passions," says Pytha
goras, " is more grievous than to be a slave to tyrants."
" Count no one free," says Plato, " who is intent on the
indulgence of wicked passions. Such men serve more
cruel masters than those who obtain their slaves by
inheritance and purchase, with a right to enforce obe
dience." " All wicked men," says Cicero, " are slaves.
If slavery be the obedience of a broken and an abject
mind, deprived of the freedom of will, as indeed it is,
who can deny that all frivolous, covetous, wicked men
are slaves." " If you are subject to the perturbations
of fear, the tumult of corrupt desire, or the violence
of anger, you endure," says Claudian, " the yoke of
bondage." This slavery to sin is true slavery ; it is
that which degrades, which renders man unfit for the
improvement of his nature, the society of angels, and
the favour of God. The external circumstances in
which men are placed, the number and variety of their
civil and social privileges, the outward advantages of
rank, birth or fortune, these are not the tilings which
ennoble or depress us in the scale of excellence. The
-~ Monarch on his throne, with prostrate millions around
him, may be little, mean, despicable in the sight of the
holy and the good, while the poor slave, in his humble

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 29
"hovel, or on his pallet of straw, may possess a dignity
and moral grandeur which assert his affinity with hea
ven. There is a freedom which is the end and glory
of man ; the only freedom which the pen of inspira
tion has commended, and which, from its very nature,
is independent of the decrees of kings, or the man
dates of States. It is the freedom which God approves ;
which Jesus bought by his blood, and the Holy Spirit
effectually seals by His grace ; the liberty wherewith
Christ h*"ts made us free. It consists essentially in the
dominion of rectitude, in the emancipation of the will
from the power of sin, the release of the affections
from the attractions of earth, the exemption of the
understanding from the deceits of prejudice and ervcrv-. —
It is a freedom which the truth of God brings with it —
a freedom enjoyed by the martyr at the stake, a slave
in his chains, a prisoner in his dungeon, as well as the
king upon his throne. Independent of time or place,
or the accidents of fortune, it is the breath of the soul
as regenerated and redeemed ; and can no more be
torn from us than the atmosphere of Heaven can be
restrained. If the Son shall make you free, you shall
be free indeed. The ancient philosophers caught a
glimpse of it when they declaimed upon virtue as the
end and perfection of our being ; Cicero almost seized
it when he described him alone as possessed of free
dom of will, who pursues rectitude, rejoices in duty
and regulates his conduct by wisdom and prudence.
This freedom makes man truly a man ; and it is pre
cisely the assertion of this freedom— this dominion of
rectitude— this supremacy of right, which the Apostle
enjoins upon slaves— when he exhorts them to obey
their masters in singleness of heart as unto Christ— to

'60 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
despise eye-service, but to do their work as in the
eye of God. To obey under the influence of these mo
tives, is to be slaves no longer. This is a free service—
a set vice which God accepts as the loyal homage of
the soul— and which proclaims them to be the Lord's
freed-men, while they honour their masters on earth.
Such slavery might be their glory — might fit them for
thrones in the kingdom of God. So far was the Apostle,
therefore, from regarding involuntary servitude as the
'characteristic of slavery, that he condemns such servi
tude as a sin. He treats it as something that is abject,
mean, despicable ; but insists on the other hand, that
slavery dignifies and ennobles the servant, who obeys
from the heart.
But while it may be admitted that slavery is not ab
solutely inconsistent with moral responsibility, nor the
freedom of a moral agent, it may be asked whether
the slave is not stripped of some of the rights which
belong to him essentially as a man ; and in this view,
whether the relation is not incompatible with the spirit
of the Gospel, which asserts and promotes the dignity
and perfection of our race. In other words, whether
there is not a limitation upon the moral freedom of the
slave — whether Ms situation does not preclude him
from discharging his whole duty as a man ; and, there
fore, whether the relation is not ultimately destructive
of the full complement of human rights.
This question, it seems to me, comprises the whole
moral difficulty of slavery ; and it is at this point of
the discussion, that the friends and enemies of the sys
tem are equally tempted to run into extravagance and
excess; the one party denying the inestimable value of
freedom ; the other exaggerating the nature and extent

THE RIGHT'S AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 31
of human rights, and both overlooking the real scope
and purpose of the Gospel, in its relation to the pre
sent interests of man.
That the design of Christianity is to secure the per
fection of the race, is obvious from all its arrangements;
and that when this end shall have been consummated,
slavery must cease to exist, is equally clear. This is
only asserting that there will be no bondage in heaven.
Among beings of the same nature, each relatively per
fect, there can be no other inequalities than those
which spring from superior endowments — the outward
advantages of all must be of the same kind, though
they may vary in degrees proportioned to the capaci
ties of the individuals to enjoy them. If Adam had
never sinned and brought death into the world, with
all our woe, the bondage of man to man would never
have been instituted ; and when the effects of trans
gression shall have been purged from the earth, and
the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness, given to the saints, all bondage shall be
abolished. In this sense, slavery is inconsistent with
the spirit of the Gospel, that it contemplates a state
of things — an existing economy, which it is the design
of the Gospel to remove. Slavery is a part of the
curse which sin has introduced into the world, and
stands in the same general relations to Christianity as
poverty, sickness, disease or death. In other words, it
is a relation which can only be conceived as taking
place among fallen beings — tainted with a curse. It
springs not from the nature of man as man, nor from
the nature of society as such, but from the nature of
man as sinful, and the nature of society as disordered.
Upon an earth radiant with the smile of heaven, or

32 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
in the Paradise of God, we can no more picture the
figure of a slave than we can picture the figures of the
halt, the maimed, the lame and the blind ; we can no
more fancy the existence of masters and tasks than we
can dream of hospitals and beggars. These are the
badges of a fallen world. That it is inconsistent with
a perfect state — that it is not absolutely a good — a
blessing — the most strenuous defender of slavery ought
not to permit himself to deny ; and the devout believer
in Revelation would be mad to close his eyes to the
fact, that the form in which it is first threatened, in
the Bible, is as a punishment for crime. It is a natural
evil which God has visited upon society, because man
kept not his first estate, but fell, and, under the Gospel,
is turned, like all other natural evils, into the means of
an effective spiritual discipline. The Gospel does not
propose to make our present state a perfect one — to
make our earth a heaven. Here is where the philan
thropists mistake. They picture to themselves imagi
nary models of a perfect commonwealth ; they judge
of good and evil by the standard of such ideal schemes ;
they condemn whatever comes short of their concep-
stions, without reference to the circumstances, which,
after all, may make it relatively good. The sterility of
the earth is, no doubt, in itself considered, an evil ; but
in its relations to man, who has lost his integrity, and
to whom labour has become a burden, it is a needful
stimulus of industry, and is so overruled into a blessing.
The distinction of ranks in society, in the same way, is
an evil ; but in our fallen world, an absolute equality
would be an absolute stagnation of all enterprise and
industry. Good and evil, it should never be forgotten,
are relative terms, and what may be good for one man

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 33
may be an evil to another — or what is good at one
time, may be hurtful to the same individual at another.
It can be affirmed of no form of government, and of
no condition in society, that it is absolutely the best or
the worst ; and, in the inscrutable Providence of God,
it is no doubt arranged that the circum:*tance3 of indi-
viduals, and the social and political institutions of com
munities, are, upon the whole, those which are best
adapted to the degree of their moral progress. The
free citizen of England and America could not endure
the condition of African bondage— it would defeat his
individual development. Neither could these nations
endure the lifeless stagnation of Asiatic despotism.
But the governments of Asia may be the only ones
consistent with the moral development of their people,
and subjection to a master, the state in which the Afri
can is most effectually trained to the moral end of his
beinc. When we consider the diversities in moral
position, which sin has been the means of entailing
upon the race, we may be justified in affirming, that,
relatively to some persons and to some times, slavery
may be a good, or to speak more accurately, a condi
tion, though founded in a curse, from whioh the Provi
dence of God extracts a blessing. We are not to judge
of the institutions of the present, by the standard of the
future life — we are not to confound the absolute and
relative. For aught that we know slavery may stand
in somewhat the same relation to political society, in a
world like ours, in which mortality stands to the hu
man body ; and it may be as vain to think of extirpa
ting it, as to think of giving man immortality upon
earth. It may be, and perhaps is, in some of its forms,

34 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
essential to an imperfect society ; and it may be, and
perhaps is, the purpose of God that it should be found
among men, as long as the slime of the serpent is over
the earth. Admit, then, that slavery is inconsistent
with the spirit of the Gospel, as that spirit is to find its
full development in a state of glory— yet the conclu
sion by no means follows, that it is inconsistent with the
spirit of the Gospel, as that spirit operates among re
bels and sinners, in a degraded world, and under a
dispensation of grace. The real question is, whether- it
is incompatible with the spiritual prosperity of individ
uals, or the general progress and education of society.
It is clearly the office of the Gospel to train men, by
virtue of the discipline of temptation, hardship and
evil, for a state of perfection and glory. Nothing is
inconsistent with it which does not present obstacles to
the practice of duty, which its own grace is inadequate
to surmount. Whoever, therefore, would maintain that
slavery is incompatible with the present relations of
the Gospel to man, must maintain that it precludes
him, by its very nature, from the discharge of some of
the duties which the Gospel enjoins. It is nothing to
the purpose to speak of it generally and vaguely as an
evil — it must be shown to be an evil of that specifick
kind which necessitates the commission of sin, and the
neglect of duty. Neither is it sufficient to say that it
presents strong temptations to sin, in the violent mo
tives which a master may press upon a slave, to execute
unlawful commands. This can be affirmed of number
less other situations, in which none will contend that it
is unlawful to be found. The question is — not whether
it is the state most favourable to the offices of piety

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 35
and virtue — but whether it is essentially incompatible
with their exercise. This is the true issue.
The fundamental mistake of those who affirm slavery
to be essentially sinful, is that the duties of all men are
specifically the same. Though they do not state the
proposition in so many words, and in its naked form
would probably dissent from it, yet a little attention
to their reasoning puts it beyond doubt, that this is the
radical assumption upon which they proceed — all men
are bound to do specifically the same things. As there.
are obviously duties of some men, in some relations,
which cannot be practiced by a slave, they infer that
the institution strips him of his rights, and curtails the
fair proportions of his humanity. The argument, fully
and legitimately carried out, would condemn every ar
rangement of society, which did not secure to all its
members an absolute equality of position ; it is the
very spirit of socialism and communism.
The doctrine of the Bible, on the other hand, is that
the specifick duties — the things actually required to be
done, are as various as the circumstances in which men
are placed. Moral perfection does not depend upon
the number or variety of single acts, but upon the gen
eral habitudes of the soul. He is upright whose
temper of mind is in conformity with the law, and
whose prevailing disposition would always prompt him,
in all the relations of life, to "do what is right. There
may be many right things which he may never be re
quired to perform— but he is entitled to the praise of
excellence if he cultivates a spirit which would lead
him to perform them, if circumstances should ever
make them his duty. The heart may be in full and

36 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
perfect sympathy with the whole spirit of the law,
where the moral training has been confined to compara
tively a narrow circle of actual duties. He may be
full of benevolence who has never had the means or
opportunity of costly alms to the poor — he may cherish
the gentleness of a lamb who has received no injuries
to be forgiven — no wrongs to be forgotten — and he
may possess the patience of a martyr, or the fortitude
of a hero, whose virtue has never been tried by severe
suffering or danger. The circumstances in which men
are placed in this sublunary state are exceedingly di
versified, but there is probably no external condition in
which the actual discipline to which men are subjected
may not terminate in the temper of universal holiness.
Some are tried in one way, some in another — some are
required to do one set of things, some another — but the
spirit of true obedience is universally the same — and
the result of an effectual probation is, in every case, a
moral sympathy with the moral perfections of God.
The lesson is the same, however different the text
books from which it has been taught.
Now, unless slavery is incompatible with the habi
tudes of holiness — unless it is inconsistent with the
spirit of philanthropy or the spirit of piety — unless it
furnishes no opportunities for obedience to the law, it
is not inconsistent with the pursuit or attainment of the
highest excellence. It is no abridgement of moral
freedom ; the slave may come from the probation of his
circumstances as fully stamped with the image of God,
as those who have enjoyed an easier lot— he may be as
completely in unison with the spirit of universal recti
tude, as if he had been trained on flowery beds of ease.

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 37
Let him discharge his whole duty in the actual circum
stances of his case, and he is entitled to the praise of a
perfect and an upright man. The question with God is
— not what he has done— but how; — man looketh at the
outward circumstances, but God looketh at the heart.
Hence those moralists are grievously in error, who
have represented slavery as inconsistent with the full
complement of human duty and as a consequent limi
tation upon the spiritual freedom of man, because there
are duties which God has not connected with this con
dition of society. To maintain that the same things
are universally obligatory, without regard to circum
stances or relations, that what is exacted of one must
necessarily be exacted from another, however different
or even incongruous their outward states, is to confound
the obligations of rulers and subjects, of parents and
children, of guardians and wards, and to plunge the
community into irretrievable confusion. All that can
be affirmed is, that the same temper of universal recti
tude is equally incumbent upon all, while it must be
admitted that the outward forms of its manifestations
and expression must be determined by the relations
which Providence has actually assigned to our state.
The slave is to show his reverence for God — the free
dom of his inward man — by a cheerful obedience to
the lawful commands of his master ; — the master, his re
gard for one who is his master in heaven, by rendering
to the slave that which is just and equal. The charac
ter of both is determined, in the sight of God, by the
spirit which pervades their single acts, however the acts
may differ in themselves.
If slavery is not essentially incompatible with the dis-

38 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
charge of the essential duties, as a spiritual service, it is
not destructive of the essential rights of humanity. All
political organizations, our enemies themselves being
judges, are subservient to the interests of the individual.
" A human being, " says Dr. Channing,* in a passage to
which we have no other objection than that it represents
the perfection of the individual as the ultimate end of
his existence, while the Scripture represent it as a means
to a higher and nobler end — the glory of God, " A hu
man being is a member of the community, not as a limb
is a member of the body, or as a wheel is a part of a
machine, intended only to contribute to some general,
joint result. He was created, not to be merged in the
whole, as a drop in the ocean, or as a particle of sand on
the sea-shore, and to aid only in composing a mass. He
is an ultimate being, made for his own perfection as the
highest end, made to maintain an individual existence,
and. to serve others only as far as consists with his own
virtue and progress. Hitherto governments have ten
ded greatly to obscure this importance of the individ
ual, to depress him in his own eyes, to give him the idea
of an outward interest more important than the invisi
ble soul, and of an outward authority more sacred than
the voice of God in his own secret conscience. Rulers
have called the private man the property of the state,
meaning generally by the state themselves, and thus the
many have been immolated to the few, and have even
believed that this was their highest destination. These
views cannot be too earnestly withstood. Nothing
seems to me so needful as to give to the mind the con
sciousness, which governments have done so much to
"Works. Vol. II. p. 77.

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 39
suppress, of its own separate worth. Let the individual
feel that through his immortality, he may concentrate in
his own being a greater good than that of nations. Let
him feel that he is placed in the community, not to part
with his individuality, or become a tool, but that he
should find a sphere for his various power"-, and a pre
paration for immortal glory. To me, the progress of
society consists in nothing more than in bringing out
the individual, in giving him a consciousness of his own
being, and in quickening him to strengthen and elevate
his own mind."
AU this the grace of God, through the instrumen
tality of the gospel, may accomplish in the person of
one w*ho is bound to labor under the direction and au
thority of another. The servant of men may be the
freeman of the Lord. If his situation is compatible,
as it confessedly is, with the achievement of the great
end of his existence — if in the school of bondage he
may be trained for the glorification and enjoyment of
God, he is not divested of any of the rights which be
long to him essentially as man. He may develope his
moral and religious nature — the source and measure of
all his rights — and must, consequently, retain every
characteristick of essential humanity.
No proposition can be clearer than that the rights
of man must be ultimately traced to his duties, and are
nothing more than the obligations of his fellows to let
him alone in the discharge of all the functions, and the
enjoyment of all the blessing3 of his lot. Whatever
puts an obstruction or hinderance to the complement
of his duties, is an encroachment upon the complement
of his rights as a, man. Whatever is incompatible with

40 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
the exercise of his moral nature is destructive of the
fundamental law of his being. But as the moral dis
cipline of man is consistent with the greatest variety
of external condition, it is consistent with the greatest
variety of contingent rights — of rights which spring
from peculiar circumstances and peculiar relations — and
in the absence of which a man may still be a man.
These cannot be treated as a fixed and invariable quan
tity. Dependent as they are upon our duties — which,
in turn, are dependent upon our circumstances, they
fluctuate with the gradations and progress of society —
being wider or narrower according to the spheres in
which we move. It is only by postulating duties for
the slave which God has not enjoined on him — that
any show of decency can be given to the declamations
against the robbery and fraud which have incapacita
ted him to perform them. The slave has rights — all
the rights which belong essentially to humanity, and
without which his nature could not be human, nor his
conduct susceptible of praise or blame. In the enjoy
ment of these rights religion demands that he should
be protected.
But then there are rights which belong to men in
other situations, to which he is by no means entitled ;
the rights of the citizen, for example, and the free mem
ber of the commonwealth. They are not his, for the
simple reason that they are not essential, but contin
gent ; they do not spring from humanity simply con
sidered, for then they would belong to women and chil
dren — but from humanity in such and such relations.
As to the influence of slavery upon the advancement
of society, there can be no doubt, if the government of

THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 41
God be moral, that the true progress of communities
and States, as well as the highest interests of individ
uals, depend upon the fidelity with which the duties are
discharged, in every condition of life. It is the great
law of providential education, that to every one that
hath shall be given and he shall have abundance ; but
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath. In this way the reign of universal jus
tice is promoted, and wherever that obtains, the devel-
opement of the individual, which is the great end of all
social and political institutions, must infallibly take
place. The prosperity of the State at the same time is
secured, and secured, too, without the necessity of sud
den changes or violent revolutions. It will be like the
vigor of a healthful body, in which all the limbs and
organs perform their appropriate functions, without col
lision or tumult, and its ascension to a high degree of
moral elevation will be like the growth of such a body,
silent and imperceptible, the natural result of the bles
sing of God upon the means He has appointed. Let
masters and servants, each in their respective spheres,
be impregnated with the principle of duty — let mas
ters resolve to render unto their servants that which is
just and equal, never transcending the legitimate bounds
of their authority — and servants resolve to cherish sen
timents of reverence for their masters according to the
flesh — never falling short of the legitimate claims on
their obedience, and the chief good of each, as individ
uals and as men, will be mo3t surely promoted, while
each will contribute an important share to the strength
and stability of the commonwealth. The feet are as
indispensable to the head as the head to the feet. The

42 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
social fabrick is made up of divers ingredients, and the
cement which binds them together in durability and
unity is the cement of justice. .
Beside the arguments drawn from considerations of
justice and the essential rights of humanity, the incom
patibility of slavery with the spirit and temper of the
Gospel, is not unfrequently attempted to be made out,
from the injunction of the Saviour to love our neigh
bor as ourselves, and to do unto others as we would
have them to do unto us. The principle, however, upon
which the precept of universal benevolence is interpre
ted in this ease, makes it the sanction of the grossest
wickedness. If we are to regulate our conduct to others
by the arbitrary expectations which, in their circum
stances, our passions and selfishness might prompt us to
indulge, there ceases to be any other standard of moral
ity than caprice. The humour of every man becomes
law. The judge could not condemn the criminal, nor
the executioner behead him — the rich man could not
claim his possessions nor the poor learn patience from
their sufferings. If I am bound to emancipate my slave
because if the tables were turned and our situations
reversed, I should covet this boon from him, I should
be bound, upon the same principle, to promote my
indigent neighbors around me, to an absolute equality
with myself. That neither the Jews, in whose law the
precept was first formally announced, nor the Apostles,
to whom it was more fully expounded by the Saviour, ;
ever applied it in the sense of the Abolitionists, is a
strong presumption against their mode of interpreta
tion. The truth is, it is nothing but the inculcation of
justice from motives of love. Our Saviour directs us to

THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 43
do unto others what, in their situations, it would be
right and reasonable in us to expect from them. We
are to put ourselves in their situations, that we may
duly weigh the circumstances of their case, and so be
prepared to apply to it the principles of universal jus
tice. We are to let no motives of indolence, ease or
apathy prevent us from considering their condition.
We are to take the same interest in them that we would
take in ourselves — and are to extend to them the same
protection of the Divine law which we would insist
upon for ourselves. The rule then simply requires, in
the case of slavery, that we should treat our slaves as
we should feel that we had a right to be treated if we
were slaves ourselves — it is only enforcing by benevo
lence the apostolick injunction — Masters give unto your
servants, that which is just and equal. Do right, in
other words, as you would claim right, -**"*¦
The instances which are usually urged to prove that
slavery is inconsistent with the rights of man, unfortu
nately for the argument, are not peculiar to slavery.
They are incidents to poverty, wherever it prevails in
a distressing form ; and a wise system of legislation could
much more easily detach them from the system of
slavery than from the deep indigence which is sure to
crush the laborer where a crowded population obtains.
They are, at be.st, only abuses in the one case which
might be corrected, while in the other, they seem to be
inseparable elements.
Enough has been said to show that slavery is not
repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel, in its present re
lations to our race. It is one of the conditions in which
God is conducting the moral probation of man— a con-

44 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
dition not incompatible with the highest moral freedom,
the true glory of the race, and, therefore, not unfit for
the moral and spiritual discipline which Christianity has
instituted. It is one of the schools in which immortal
spirits are trained for their final destiny. If it is attend
ed with severer hardships, these hardships are compen
sated by fewer duties, and the very violence of its
temptations gives dignity and lustre to its virtues. The
slave may be fitted, in his humble, and if you please,
degraded lot, for shining as a star in the firmament of
heaven. In his narrow sphere, he may be cherishing
and cultivating a spirit which shall render him meet for
the society of angels and the everlasting enjoyment of
God. The Christian beholds in him, not a tool, not a
chattel, not a brute or thing — but an immortal spirit,
assigned to a particular position in this world of wretch
edness and sin, in which he is required to work out the
destiny which attaches to him, in common with his fel
lows, as a man. He is an actor on the broad theatre of
life — and as true merit depends not so much upon the
part which is assigned, as upon the propriety and dig
nity with which it is sustained — so fidelity in this rela
tion, may hereafter be as conspicuously rewarded, as
fidelity in more exalted stations. Angels and God look
not upon the outward state of man ; — the poverty, rags,
and wretchedness of one — the robes, diadems and
crowns of another, are nothing. True worth is the
moral vesture of the soul. The spirit of obedience,
the love of holiness, sympathy with God, these are the
things which make men beautiful and glorious. This
is true freedom — these are the things which shall endure
and flourish with increasing lustre, when Thrones have

THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 45
crumbled in the dust and Republicks mouldered
among the ruins of the past.
The important question among us is, that which re
lates to the discharge of our own duties as master—
what are the things which are just and equal that we
are required to render to our slaves.
But before attending to this inquiry, it may be well
to notice the popular argument against slavery, drawn
from the fact, that as it must have begun in the perpe
tration of grievous wrong, no lapse of time can make
it subsequently right. Prescription can never sanctify
injustice. The answer turns upon the distinction be
tween the wrong itself and the effects of the wron°\
The criminal act, whatever it may have been, by which
a man was reduced to the condition of bondage, can
never cease to be otherwise than criminal, but the re
lations to which that act gave rise, may, themselves, be
consistent with the will of God and the foundation of
new and important duties. The relations of a man to
his natural offspring, though wickedly formed, give rise
to duties which would be ill-discharged by the destruc
tion of the child. No doubt the principle upon which
slavery has been most largely engrafted into society
as an integral element of its complex constitution — the
principle, that captivity in war gives a right to the life
of a prisoner, for which his bondage is accepted in ex
change, is not consistent with the truth of the case.
But it was recognized as true for ages and generations
 it was a step in the moral developement of nations,
and has laid the foundation of institutions and usages,
which cannot now be disturbed with impunity, and in
regard to which, our conduct must be regulated by the

THE EIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
fact of their existence, and not by speculation upon the
morality of their origin. Our world exhibits, every
where, the traces of sin — and if wre tolerate nothing
but what we may expect to find in a state of perfection
and holiness, we must leave this scene of sublunary dis
traction. The education of States is a slow process.
Their standards of rectitude slowly approximate the
standard of God, and in their ages of infancy, ignorance
and blindness, they establish many institutions upon
false maxims, which cannot subsequently be extirpated
without abandoning the whole of the real progress they
have made, and reconstituting society afresh. These
things, moreover, take place under the sleepless Provi
dence of God, who is surely accomplishing His own
great purposes, and who makes the wrath of man to
praise Him, and restrains, at pleasure, the remainder of
wrath. In treating slavery as an existing institution, a fact
involving most important moral relations, one of the
prime duties of the State is to protect, by temporal le
gislation, the real rights of the slave. The moral sense
of the country acknowledges them — the religion of the
country to a large extent, ensures their observance, but
until they are defined by law* and enforced by penalties
there is no adequate protection of them. They are in
the category of imperfect and not of perfect rights.
The effect of legal protection would be to counteract
whatever tendencies slavery may be supposed to possess
to produce servility and abjectne3s of mind. It would
inspire a sense of personal responsibility — a certain de
gree of manliness and dignity of character, which would
be, at once, a security to the master and an immense

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 47
blessing to the slave. The meanness, cunning, hypocrisy
lying and theft, which accompany a sense of degrada
tion, would give place to the opposite virtues, and there
would be no foundation in our social relations for that
slavery which Cicero defines — oledientia fracti animi
et a/yjecti, et arhitrio carentis suo.
In the different systems of slavery, taken collectively,
all the essential rights of humanity have been recog
nized by law — showing that there is nothing in the re
lation itself, inconsistent with this legal protection. The
right to acquire knowledge — which is practically ad
mitted by us, though legally denied, was fully recog
nized by the Romans, whose slaves were often the teach
ers of their children, and the scholars of the common
wealth. The right of the family was formally protec
ted among the Spaniards; and the right to personal
safety is largely protected by ourselves. But, without
stopping to inquire in what way temporal legislation
may, most effectually, protect the rights of the slave,
we hesitate not to affirm that one of the highest and
most solemn obligations which rests upon the masters of
the South, is to give to their servants, to the utmost
extent of their ability, free access to the instructions and
institution of the Gospel. The injustice of denying to
them food and raiment, and shelter, against which the
law effectually guards, is nothing to the injustice of -de
frauding them of that bread which cometh down from
Heaven. Their labor is ours. From infancy to age,
they attend on us — they greet our introduction into
the world with smiles of joy, and lament our, de
parture with a heartfelt sorrow; and every mo
tive of humanity and religion exacts from us, that we

48 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
should remunerate their services by putting within their
reach, the means of securing a blessed immortality.
The meanest slave has, in him, a soul of priceless value.
"No earthly or celestial language can exaggerate its
worth. Thought, reason, conscience, the capacity of
virtue, the capacity of Christian love — an immortal des
tiny, an intimate moral connection with God ; here are
attributes of our common humanity which reduce to
insignificance all outward distinctions, and make every
human being" a sublime, an awful object. That soul has
sinned — it is under the curse of the Almighty, and no
thing can save it from an intolerable hell but the re
demption that is in Christ Jesus. They must hear this
joyful sound, or perish. For how shall they believe in
Him of wdiom they have not heard, and how shall they
¦tear without a preacher, and how shall they preach ex
cept they be sent ? Our design in giving them the Gos
pel, is not to civilize them — not to change their social
condition — not to exalt them into citizens or freemen —
Otis to save them. The Church contemplates them only
as sinners, and she is straitened to declare unto them the
unsearchable riches of Christ. She sees them as the poor
of the land, under the lawful dominion of their masters ;
and she says to these masters, in the name and by the
authority of God, give them what justice, benevolence,
humanity would demand even for a stranger, an enemy,
a persecutor — give them the Gospel, without which life
will be a curse. Sweeten their toil — sanctify their lives
— hallow their deaths. The solemnities of this night
are a proof that the call has not been wholly disre
garded among us. We have begun a good work, and
God grant that it may never cease until every slave in

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 49
the land is brought under the tuition of Jesus of Naza
reth. None need be afraid of His lessons. It was said'
of Hitn on earth, that He should not cry, nor lift up,
nor- cause His voice to be heard in the streets. He was
no stirrer up of strife, nor mover of sedition. His "re
ligion on the other hand, is the pillar of society, the
safeguard of nations, the parent of social order, which
alone has power to curb the fury of the passions, and
secure to every one his rights ; to the laborious, the re
ward of their industry ; to the rich, the enjoyment of
their wealth ; to nobles, the preservation of their hon
ors ; and to princeSj the stability of their thrones." In
surrection, anarchy and bloodshed — revolt against mas
ters, or treason against States, were never learned in
the school of Him, whose Apostles enjoined subjection
to the magistrate, and obedience to all lawful authority,
as characteristic duties of the faithful. Is any thing to
be apprehended from the instructions of Him in whose
text-book it is recorded : "let as many servants as are
under the yoke, count their masters worthy of all hon
our ?" Christian knowledge inculcates contentment with
our lot ; and in bringing before us the tremendous reali
ties of eternity, renders us comparatively indifferent to
the inconveniences and hardships of time. It subdues
those passions and prejudices, from which all real dan
ger to the social economy springs. "Som-) have objec
ted," says a splendid writer*, "to Lhe instruction of the
lower classes, from an apprehension that it would lift
them above their sphere, make them dissatisfied with
their station in life, and by impairing the habits of sub-
*Robert Hall Advantages of Knowledge to the lower classes. Works. VoL
I p. 202. 4

50 THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS.
ordination, endanger the tranquillity of the State ; an
objection devoid surely of all force and validity. It is
not easy to conceive in what manner instructing men
in their duties can prompt them to neglect those duties,
or how that enlargement of reason which enables them
to comprehend the true grounds of authority, and the
obligation to obedience, should indispose them to obey.
The admirable mechanism of society, together with that
subordination of ranks which is essential to its subsis
tence, is surely not an elaborate imposture, which the
exercise of reason will direct and expose. The objec
tion we have stated, implies a reflection on the social
order, equally impolitick, invidious and unjust. Noth
ing in reality renders legitimate governments so inse
cure as extreme ignorance in the people. It is this
which yields them an easy prey to seduction — makes
them the victims of prejudice and false alarms, and so
ferocious withal, that their interference in a time of
public commotion is more to be dreaded than the erup
tion of a volcano."
Our highest security in these States, lies in the con
fidence and affection of our servants, and nothing will
more effectually propitiate their regards than consistent
efforts, upon our part, to promote their everlasting good.
They will feel that those are not tyrants who are striv
ing to bring them unto God; and they will.be slow to
cast off a system which has become associated in their
minds with their dearest hopes and most precious con
solations. Brutal ignorance is indeed to be dreaded —
the only security against it, is physical force — it is the
parent of ferocity, of rashness, and of desperate enter-
prizes. But Christian knowledge softens and subdues.

THE RIGHTS AND THE DUTIES OF MASTERS. 51
Christ Jesus in binding his subjects to God, binds them
more closely to each other in the ties of confidence,
fidelity and love. We would say, then, to you and to
all our brethren of the South, go on in your present un
dertaking ; and though our common enemies may con
tinue to revile, you will be consolidating the elements
of your social fabrick, so firmly and compactly, that it
shall defy the storms of fanaticism, while the spectacle
you will exhibit of union, sympathy and confidence,
among the different orders of the community, will be a
standing refutation of all their accusations against us.
Go on in this noble enterprise, until every slave in our
borders shall know of Jesus and the resurrection; and
the blessing of God will attend you — and turn back
the tide of indignation which the public opinion of the
world is endeavouring to roll upon you. Go on in this
career, and afford another illustration of what all ex
perience has demonstrated, that Christianity is the cheap
defence of every institution which contributes to the
progress of man.

YAIE

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