Chapter V: The Old Testament Argument (2)

To state the arguments from the laws of Moses and the Decalogue has not required a large space, because those conclusions are so plain and sound, that many words were not needed. But the cavils, objections and special pleadings of the Abolitionists teem like the frogs of Egypt, engendered in the mire of ignorance and prejudice, so numerous because so worthless. And when it is seen that we perhaps expend more space in their refutation than we did in the direct argument, the heedless reader may possibly be inclined to say to himself, that there must be something wrong in an argument to which so much can be objected. We beg him to observe then, that we pause to explode these objections, not because they are of any weight, but because we purpose to make thorough work with our opponents. When we have finished these rejoinders, we shall take the impartial reader to witness, that not only the weight, but the least appearance of plausibility in these cavils has been blown into thin air. And then we shall have the right to infer that their number indicates, not the questionable character of our positions, but only a fixed and blind prejudice against the truth in our adversaries.

It is objected that domestic slavery among the Hebrews was a much milder institution than in Virginia, and that, therefore, we have no right to argue from the one to the other. If it were true that Hebrew slavery was milder, it might show that we were wrong in the way in which we treated our slaves; but it could not prove that slaveholding was wrong. The principle would still be established, for the lawfulness of the relation. But let it be noted that the peculiar mitigations of slavery affected only slaves of Hebrew blood, not Gentiles. Whatever may have been the leniency of the system, the state of the Gentile slaves showed the essential features of slavery among us, the right to the slave's labour for life without his consent, property in that labour, the right to buy, sell and bequeath it; the right to enforce it on the slave by corporal punishments, which might have any degree of severity short of death. (See Exod. xxi. 20, 21.) Virginians had no interest to contend for any stricter form of slavery than this.

Second. It is said that the permission to buy, possess, and bequeath slaves of heathen origin, which we have cited, related only to the seven condemned tribes of Canaan, and was part of the divinely appointed penalty for their wickedness. Even such a man as Dr. Wayland, of Brown University, Rhode Island, has adopted this plea, thus justifying in a prominent instance the assertion that Abolitionism is grounded in a shameful ignorance of facts. The answer to the plea is, that it is expressly contrary to fact. The Hebrews were positively prohibited to reserve any of the seven condemned nations for slaves, and were enjoined to exterminate them all, lest the contagion of their vile morals should corrupt Israel. On the other hand, they were told that they might buy them slaves of any of the other Gentile nations around them, with whom they were to live on terms of national amity. (See Deuteronomy, xx. 10 to 18.) After directing the policy of the Hebrews towards conquered enemies from these nations, and permitting the enslaving of the captives, Moses proceeds: (v. 15.) "Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth; but thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that they teach you not to do after all their abominations," etc. (See also, Josh. vi. 17 to 21; viii. 26; x. 28 to 32, etc., etc.)

Third. It is objected from these very injunctions, that the examples of the commands given to the Israelites are no rules for us; that God commanded them to exterminate the seven nations of Canaan; but if we should therefore proceed to attack and destroy a neighbouring nation which had not assailed us, it would be a horrible wickedness. It is asked: Were the fanatics of the English Commonwealth in the 17th century correct when they justified their barbarities upon royalists by the examples of Joshua's slaughter of the Amorites, and Samuel's of Amalek? And we are told that our argument from Hebrew slavery is of the same absurd kind.

We reply: We willingly accept the instances. God's command to Joshua and Samuel to exterminate the Canaanites and Amalek, does prove that killing is not necessarily murder. This very instance gives us an unanswerable argument against those who oppose all capital punishments as wrong. And just so we employ the other instance, which our assailants say is parallel--Hebrew slavery--to prove that slaveholding is not necessarily sinful. But the instances are not parallel. The sanction of domestic slavery was a statute law for all generations of Hebrews; the command to exterminate the seven tribes imposed a specific task on certain individuals. It is absurd to confound an executive command, given to particular men for the once, under particular circumstances, with the sanctions of a permanent institution, designed to descend from generation to generation. The command to exterminate the seven guilty tribes was the former, the permission to hold slaves the latter. True, the example of Joshua in blotting these tribes from existence, is no authority for us to do likewise, unless we also can show a direct divine commission authorizing us for a special case. But neither was that example authority to any subsequent generation of Hebrews, after Joshua, to exterminate any other pagan tribe. Will any one say that the authority given by Moses to his fellow-citizens to hold slaves was not just as good to enable subsequent generations of Hebrews to hold slaves? Prejudice cannot carry sophistry so far. There is, therefore, no analogy between the two cases, in the point necessary for grounding the objection to our argument.

Fourth. It is said that Moses himself commanded that a runaway slave should not be surrendered to his master; thereby plainly teaching that slaves had a right to their liberty, if they could escape. This, it is urged, proves that there must be some mistake in our conclusions. Of course, this passage is quoted triumphantly as settling the question against the fugitive slave-law, required by the late Constitution of the United States. It is found in Deuteronomy xxiii. 15, 16: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him."

We need no better answer to this citation, than that given by a Northern divine already named, who is no friend to slavery, Rev. Moses Stuart. He says: "The first inquiry of course is: Where does his master live? Among the Hebrews or among foreigners? The language of the passage fully developes this, and answers the question. He has 'escaped from his master unto the Hebrews.' (The text says, unto _thee_, i. e., Israel.) 'He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in one of thy gates.' Of course then, he is an immigrant, and did not dwell among them before his flight. If he had been a Hebrew servant, belonging to a Hebrew, the whole face of the thing would be changed. Restoration or restitution, if we may judge by the tenour of other property laws among the Hebrews, would have surely been enjoined. But, be that as it may, the language of the text puts it beyond a doubt, that the servant is a foreigner and has fled from a heathen master." Mr. Stuart then proceeds to assign obvious reasons why a foreign servant escaping from a heathen master was not to be restored: that the bondage from which he escaped was inordinately cruel, including the power of murder for any caprice; and that to force him back was to remand him to the darkness of heathenism, and to rob him of the light of true religion, which shone in the land of the Hebrews alone. He adds: "But if we put now the other case, viz.: that of escape from a Hebrew master, who claimed and enjoyed Hebrew rights, is not the case greatly changed? Who could take from him the property which the Mosaic law gave him a right to hold? Neither the bondsman himself, nor the neighbours of the master to whom the fugitive might come. Reclamation of him could be lawfully made, and therefore must be enforced." This explanation forces itself upon our common sense. To suppose that Moses could so formally authorize and define slavery among the Hebrews, and then enact that every slave might gain his liberty by merely stepping over the brook or imaginary line which separated the little cantons of the tribes from each other, or even by going to the next house of his master's neighbours, and claiming protection, whenever petulance, or caprice, or laziness should move him thereto; this is absurd; it is trivial child's play. It takes away with one hand what it professed to give with the other. The fact that slavery continued to exist from age to age, is proof enough that the Hebrews did not put the Abolitionist construction on the law. To this agree the respectable Hebrew antiquarians, as Horne, etc.

Fifth. It is urged that Revelation was in its plan progressive, like the morning twilight; that the Mosaic code was the early dawn; that God, for wise reasons, left many points in darkness, which the full daylight of the Gospel has since shown to be sin. And, therefore, several practices, which we are now taught to be sinful, may have been ignorantly followed by good men, and tolerated by this imperfect legislation of God's law. Yet if we, who enjoy a fuller revelation, should indulge in these practices, we should be guilty and disobedient.

Grant this, for the present. Grant, for argument's sake, that it may have been consistent with the plan of revelation to make known at first only a partial rule of duty, leaving some sins unmentioned. Yet surely it was not consistent with the truth and holiness of God, to throw a false light in that partial revelation, on those parts of man's duty which he professed to reveal! So far as any revelation from God goes, it must be a true and righteous one. If it undertook to fix a point of duty, it must fix it correctly, whatever else it might omit. Otherwise; we should have a holy, true, and good Creator, while professing to guide man to duty and life, misleading him to sin and death. Let now the reader note that the lawfulness of slavery was not one of the points omitted. God spake expressly upon it; and what he said was to authorize it.

But we do not admit that Moses' was an incomplete revelation in the sense of the Abolitionists. They are fond of representing the New Testament revelation as completing, amending, and correcting that of the Old. Its details the New Testament does complete; but if it were amended or corrected by any subsequent standard of infallible truth, this would prove it not truly inspired. Indeed, the history of theological opinion shows plainly enough that this anti-slavery view of Old Testament revelation is Socinian and Rationalistic. Modern Abolitionism in America had, in fact, a Socinian birth, in the great apostasy of the Puritans of New England to that benumbing heresy, and in the pharisaism, shallow scholarship, affectation, conceit and infidelity of the Unitarian clique in the self-styled American Athens, Boston. It is lamentable to see how men professing to be evangelical are driven by blind prejudices against Southern men and things, to adopt this skeptical tone towards God's own word. The ruinous issue has been seen in the case of a minister of the Gospel, who, after floundering through a volume of confused and impotent sophisms, roundly declares that if compelled to admit that the Bible treated slavery as not a sin in itself, he would repudiate the Bible rather than his opinions.

But we point these objectors to that Saviour who said, in the full meridian of revealed light of this Old Testament law: "Whosoever shall keep these commandments shall enter into eternal life;" and to the fact that the Decalogue itself twice recognizes the right of the master. Will they say that this too was an old, partial, and imperfect revelation? Not so says the sweet Psalmist of Israel: "The law of the Lord is perfect." Psalms, xix. 7. Whatever Abolitionists may cavil, Jesus Christ acknowledged no more perfect rule of morals than the Ten Commandments, as expounded by the "law and the prophets."

Sixth. An objection has been raised against the Old Testament argument, from the supposed permission of, or connivance at, polygamy and causeless divorce in the laws of Moses. This objection has been urged by Dr. Channing, the celebrated Unitarian, and since, in a more exact form, by Dr. Wayland. In substance it is this: That polygamy was allowed by the Old Testament law, and divorce for a less cause than conjugal infidelity was expressly permitted by Moses. But both these are as expressly forbidden as sinful by our Saviour. Matthew xix. 3 to 9. Therefore the main assertion in defence of slavery, on which the argument rested, does not hold: for these two instances show that a thing is not intrinsically innocent because it was permitted for a time to the Jews.

Our reply is, that both the premises of the objection are absolutely false. Polygamy and capricious divorce never were authorized by Old Testament law, in the sense in which domestic slavery was; and, second, the latter was never prohibited in the New Testament, as polygamy and such divorces expressly are. Either of these facts, without the other, makes the objection invalid, as we shall show; but we shall establish both. Before doing this, however, we would ask: Suppose these assertions of Drs. Wayland and Channing proved that God expressly permitted polygamy and causeless divorce to his own chosen and holy people, and that Jesus Christ yet denounced these things as sins; what is gained? Not only is this part of our defence of slavery overthrown, but the holiness of God is also overthrown; or else the inspiration of the Scriptures. (The latter would be a result evidently not very repugnant to Socinians and their sympathizers.) For then these Scriptures would make Him the teacher of sin to the very persons whom he was setting apart to peculiar holiness. If God did indeed authorize polygamy and causeless divorce in the Old Testament law, then the only inference for the devout mind is, that those things were then innocent, and would still be so, had not Christ afterwards forbidden them. Now, when we pass into the New Testament, and find that domestic slavery (which these objectors would make the parallel of polygamy and divorce without just cause) is not forbidden there, as the latter two were, but is again permitted, authorized and regulated, we must conclude that it is still innocent, as it must have been when a holy God allowed it to his holy people.

But the first part of the objectors' premise is also false; polygamy and causeless divorce never were sanctioned by Moses as domestic slavery was. Even admitting the more ignorant rendering of the matter, how wide is the difference in God's treatment of the two subjects! Slaves are mentioned as lawful property, not only in the biographies of God's erring and fallible servants, but in his own legislation; the acquisition of them is a blessing from him; their connexion with their masters is made the basis of religious sacraments; property in slaves is protected by laws of divine enactment; and the rights and duties of them and their masters defined. But when we pass to the subjects of plurality and change of wives, while we see the lives of imperfect, though good men, candidly disclosing these abuses, no legislative act recognizes them, except in the single case of divorce. In all God's laws and precepts, He always says _wife_, not _wives_, so carefully does He avoid a seeming allowance of a plurality. The Decalogue throws no protection around concubines, against the coveting of others. The rights and duties of polygamists are never defined by divine law, save in seeming exceptions which will be explained. How unlike is all this to the legislation upon slavery!

What has been already said leaves our argument impregnable. But so much misapprehension exists about the two cases, that the general interests of truth prompt a little farther separate discussion of each. The two enactments touching divorce which present the supposed contradiction in the strongest form, are those of Moses in Deuteronomy xxiv. 1 to 4, and Matthew xix. 3 to 9. These the reader is requested to have under his eye. The form of the Pharisees' question to Christ, ("Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife _for every cause_?") concurs with the testimony of Josephus, in teaching us that a monstrous perversion of Moses' statute then prevailed. The licentious, and yet self-righteous Pharisee claimed, as one of his most unquestioned privileges, the right to repudiate a wife, after the lapse of years, and birth of children, for any caprice whatsoever. The trap which they now laid for Christ was designed to compel him either to incur the _odium_ of attacking this usage, guarded by a jealous anger, or to connive at their interpretation of the statute. Manifestly Christ does not concede that they interpreted Moses rightly; but indignantly clears the legislation of that holy man from their licentious perversions, and then, because of their abuse of it, repeals it by his plenary authority. He refers to that constitution of the marriage tie which was original, which preceded Moses, and was therefore binding when Moses wrote, to show that it was impossible he could have enacted what they claimed. What then did Moses enact? Let us explain it. In the ancient society of the East, females being reared in comparative seclusion, and marriages negotiated by intermediaries, the bridegroom had little opportunity for a familiar acquaintance even with the person of the bride. When she was brought to him at the nuptials, if he found her disfigured with some personal deformity or disease, (the undoubted meaning of the phrase "some uncleanness,") which effectually changed desire into disgust, he was likely to regard himself as swindled in the treaty, and to send the rejected bride back with indignity to her father's house. There she was reluctantly received, and in the anomalous position of one in name a wife, yet without a husband, she dragged out a wretched existence, incapable of marriage, and regarded by her parents and brothers as a disgraceful incumbrance. It was to relieve the wretched fate of such a woman, that Moses' law was framed. She was empowered to exact of her proposed husband a formal annulment of the unconsummated contract, and to resume the _status_ of a single woman, eligible for another marriage. It is plain that Moses' law contemplates the case, only, in which no consummation of marriage takes place. She finds _no favour_ in the eyes "of the bridegroom." He is so indignant and disgusted, that desire is put to flight by repugnance. The same fact appears from the condition of the law, that she shall in no case return to this man, "after she is defiled," i. e., after actual cohabitation with another man had made her unapproachable (without moral defilement) by the first. Such was the narrow extent of this law. The act for which it provided was divorce only in name, where that _consensus, qui matrimonium facit_, (in the words of the law maxim,) had never been perfected. The state of social usages among the Hebrews, with parental and fraternal severity towards the unfortunate daughter and sister, rendered the legislation of Moses necessary, and righteous at the time; but "a greater than Moses" was now here; and he, after defending the inspired law-giver from their vile misrepresentation, proceeded to repeal the law, because it had been so perverted, and because the social changes of the age had removed its righteous grounds. Let the Abolitionists show us a similar change in the law of domestic slavery, made by Christ, and we will admit that the moral conditions of the relation have changed since Moses' day.

The case of the polygamist is still clearer; for we assert that the whole legislation of the Pentateuch and of all the Old Testament is only adverse to polygamy. As some Christian divines have taught otherwise, we must ask the reader's attention and patience for a brief statement. Polygamy is recorded of Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Elkanah, David, Solomon; but so are other sins of several of these; and, as every intelligent reader knows, the truthful narrative of holy writ as often discloses the sins of good men--for our warning, as their virtues for our imitation. And he who notes how, in every Bible instance, polygamy appears as the cause of domestic feuds, sin, and disaster, will have little doubt that the Holy Spirit tacitly holds all these cases up for our caution, and not our approval. But, then, God made Adam one wife only, and taught him the great law of the perpetual unity of the twain, just as it is now expounded by Jesus Christ. (Genesis ii. 23, 24, with Matthew xix. 4 to 6.) God preserved but one wife each to Noah and his sons. In every statute and preceptive word of the Holy Spirit, it is always _wife_, and not _wives_. The prophets everywhere teach how to treat a _wife_, and not _wives_. Moses, Leviticus xviii. 18, in the code regulating marriage, expressly prohibits the marriage of a second wife in the life of the first, thus enjoining monogamy in terms as clear as Christ's. Our English version hath it: "Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other, in her lifetime." Some have been preposterous enough to take the word _sister_ here in its literal sense, and thus to force on the law the meaning that the man desiring to practise polygamy may do so provided he does not marry two daughters of the same parents; for if he did this, the two sisters sharing his bed would, like Rachel and Leah, quarrel more fiercely than two strangers. But the word "_sister_" must undoubtedly be taken in the sense of _mates_, _fellows_, (which it bears in a multitude of places,) and this for two controlling reasons. The other sense makes Moses talk nonsense and folly, in the supposed reason for his prohibition; in that it makes him argue that two sisters sharing one man's bed will quarrel, but two women having no kindred blood will not. It is false to fact and to nature. Did Leah and Rachel show more jealousy than Sarah and Hagar, Hannah and Peninnah? But when we understand the law in its obvious sense, that the husband shall not divide his bed with a second mate, the first still living, because such a wrong ever harrows and outrages the great instincts placed in woman's heart by her Creator, we make Moses talk truth and logick worthy of a profound legislator. The other reason for this construction is, that the other sense places the 18th verse in irreconcilable contradiction to the 16th verse. This forbids the marriage of a woman to the husband of her deceased sister; while the 18th verse, with this false reading, would authorize it.

Once more: Malachi, (chapter ii. 14, 15.) rebuking the various corruptions of the Jews, evidently includes polygamy; for he argues in favour of monogamy, (and also against causeless divorce,) from the fact that God, "who had the residue of the Spirit," and could as easily have created a thousand women for each man as a single one, made the numbers of the sexes equal from the beginning. He states this as the motive, "that he might seek a godly seed;" that is to say, that the object of God in the marriage relation was the right rearing of children, which polygamy notoriously hinders. Now the commission of an Old Testament prophet was not to legislate a new dispensation; for the laws of Moses were in full force; the prophets' business was to expound them. Hence, we infer that the laws of the Mosaic dispensation on the subject of polygamy had always been such as Malachi declared them. He was but applying Moses' principles.

To the assertion that the law of the Old Testament discountenanced polygamy as really as the New Testament, it has been objected that the practice was maintained by men too pious towards God to be capable of continuing in it against express precept; as, for instance, by the "king after God's own heart," David. Did not he also commit murder and adultery? Surely there is no question whether Moses forbids these! The history of good men, alas, shows us too plainly the power of general evil example, custom, temptation, and self-love, in blinding the honest conscience. It has been objected that polygamy was so universally practised, and so prized, that Moses would never have dared to attempt its extinction. When will men learn that the author of the Old Testament law was not Moses, but God? Is God timid? Does he fear to deal firmly with his creatures? But it is denied that there is any evidence that polygamy was greatly prevalent among the Hebrews. And nothing is easier than to show, that if it had been, Moses was a legislator bold enough to grapple with it. What more hardy than his dealing with the sabbatical year, with idolatry? It is objected that the marriage of the widow who was childless to the brother of the deceased, to raise up seed to the dead, presents a case of polygamy actually commanded. We reply, no one can show that the next of kin was permitted or required to form such marriage when he already had a wife. The celebrated J. D. Michaelis, a witness learned and not too favourable, says, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, of this law, "Nor did it affect a brother having already a wife of his own."