Chapter III: Part 3

I agree, and I disagree, with you. I harmonize in your words,--"The present is eminently a time when the views of every man on the subject of slavery should be uttered in unambiguous tones." I agree with you in this affirmation; because the subject has yet to be fully understood; because, when understood, if THE BIBLE does _not_ sanction the system, the MASTER must cease to be the master. The SLAVE must cease to be the slave. He must be _free_, AND EQUAL IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. _That_ is your "_unambiguous tone_". Let it be heard, if _that_ is the word of God.

But if THE BIBLE _does_ sanction the system, then _that_ "unambiguous tone" will silence abolitionists who admit the Scriptures; it will satisfy all good men, and give peace to the country. That is the "_tone_" I want men to hear. Listen to it in the past and present speech of providence. The time was when _you_ had the very _public sentiment_ you are now trying to form. From Maine to Louisiana, the American mind was softly yielding to the impress of emancipation, in some hope, however vague and imaginary. Southern as well as Northern men, in the church and out of it, not having sufficiently studied the word of God, and, under our own and French revolutionary excitement, looking only at the evils of slavery, wished it away from the land. It was a _mistaken_ public sentiment. Yet, such as it was, you had it, and it was doing your work. It was Quaker-like, mild and affectionate. It did not, however, work fast enough for you. You thought that the negro, with his superior attributes of body and mind and higher advantages of the nineteenth century, might reach, in a day, the liberty and equality which the Anglo-American had attained after the struggle of his ancestors during a thousand years! You got up the agitation. You got it up in the Church and State. You got it up over the length and breadth of this whole land. Let me show you some things you have secured, as the results of your work.

_First Result of Agitation_.

1. The most consistent abolitionists, affirming the sin of slavery, on the maxim of created equality and unalienable right, after torturing the Bible for a while, to make it give the same testimony, felt they could get nothing from the book. They felt that the God of the Bible disregarded the thumb-screw, the boot, and the wheel; that he would not speak for them, but against them. These consistent men have now turned away from the word, in despondency; and are seeking, somewhere, an abolition Bible, an abolition Constitution for the United States, and an abolition God.

This, sir, is the _first result_ of your agitation:--the very van of your attack repulsed, and driven into infidelity.

_A Second Result of Agitation_.

2. Many others, and you among them, are trying in exactly the same way just mentioned to make the Bible speak against slave-holding. You get nothing by torturing the English version. People understand English. Nay, you get little by applying the rack to the Hebrew and Greek; even before a tribunal of men like you, who proclaim beforehand that Moses, in Hebrew, and Paul, in Greek, _must_ condemn slavery because "_it is a violation of the first sentiments of the Declaration of Independence_." You find it difficult to persuade men that Moses and Paul were moved by the Holy Ghost to sanction the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson! You find it hard to make men believe that Moses saw in the mount, and Paul had vision in heaven, that this future _apostle of Liberty_ was inspired by Jesus Christ.

You torture very severely. But the muscles and bones of those old men are tough and strong. They won't yield under your terrible wrenchings. You get only groans and mutterings. You claim these voices, I know, as testimony against slavery. But you cannot torture in secret as in olden times. When putting the question, you have to let men be present,--who tell us that Moses and Paul won't speak for you,--that they are silent, like Christ before Pilate's scourging-men; or, in groans and mutterings,--the voices of their sorrow and the tones of their indignation,--they rebuke your pre-judgment of the Almighty when you say if the Bible sanctions slavery, "it neither ought to be nor could be received by mankind as a divine revelation."

This, sir, is the _second result_ you have gained by your agitation. You have brought a thousand Northern ministers of the gospel, with yourself, to the verge of the same denial of the word of God which they have made, who are only a little ahead of you in the road you are travelling.

_A Third Result of Agitation._

3. Meanwhile, many of your most pious men, soundest scholars, and sagacious observers of providence, have been led to study the Bible more faithfully in the light of the times. And they are reading it more and more in harmony with the views which have been reached by the highest Southern minds, to wit:--That the relation of master and slave is sanctioned by the Bible;--that it is a relation belonging to the same category as those of husband and wife, parent and child, master and apprentice, master and hireling;--that the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, _were ordained in Eden for man, as man_, and _modified after the fall_, while the relation of slavery, as a system of labor, is _only one form of the government ordained of God over fallen and degraded man_;--that the _evils_ in the system are _the same evils_ of OPPRESSION we see in the relation of husband and wife, and all other forms of government;--that slavery, as a relation, suited to the more degraded or the more ignorant and helpless types of a sunken humanity, is, like all government, intended _as the proof of the curse of such degradation, and at the same time to elevate and bless_;--that the relation of husband and wife, being for man, as man, _will ever be over him_, while slavery will remain so long as God sees it best, as a controlling power over the ignorant, the more degraded and helpless;--and that, when he sees it for the good of the country, he will cause it to pass away, if the slave can be elevated to liberty and equality, political and social, with his master, _in_ that country; or _out of_ that country, if such elevation cannot be given therein, but may be realized in some other land: all which result must be left to the unfoldings of the divine will, _in harmony with the Bible_, and not to a newly-discovered dispensation. These facts are vindicated in the Bible and Providence. In the Old Testament, they stare you in the face:--in the family of Abraham,--in his slaves, bought with his money and born in his house,--in Hagar, running away under her mistress's hard dealing with her, and yet sent back, as a fugitive slave, by the angel,--in the law which authorized the Hebrews to hold their brethren as slaves for a time,--in which parents might sell their children into bondage,--in which the heathen were given to the Hebrews as their slaves forever,--in which slaves were considered so much the money of their master, that the master who killed one by an unguarded blow was, under certain circumstances, sufficiently punished in his slave's death, because he thereby lost his money,--in which the difference between _man-stealing_ and _slave-holding_ is, by law, set forth,--in which the runaway from heathen masters may not be restored, because God gave him the benefits of an adopted Hebrew. In the New Testament:--wherein the slavery of Greece and Rome was recognised,--in the obligations laid on master and slave,--in the close connection of this obligation with the duties of husband and wife, parent and child,--in the obligation to return the fugitive slave to his master,--and _in the condemnation of every abolition principle_, "AS DESTITUTE OF THE TRUTH." (1 Tim. vi. 1-5.)

This view of slavery is becoming more and more, not only the settled decision of the Southern but of the best Northern mind, with a movement so strong that you have been startled by it to write the pamphlet now lying before me.

This is the _third result_ you have secured:--to make many of the best men in the North see the infidelity of your philosophy, falsely so called, on the subject of slavery, in the clearer and clearer light of the Scriptures.

_Another Result of Agitation_.

4. The Southern slave-holder is now satisfied, as never before, that the relation of master and slave is sanctioned by the Bible; and he feels, as never before, the obligations of the word of God. He no longer, in his ignorance of the Scriptures, and afraid of its teachings, will seek to defend his common-sense opinions of slavery by arguments drawn from "Types of Mankind," and other infidel theories; but he will look, in the light of the Bible, on all the good and evil in the system. And when the North, as it will, shall regard him holding from God this high power for great good,--when the North shall no more curse, but bid him God-speed,--then he will bless himself and his slave, in nobler benevolence. With no false ideas of created equality and unalienable right, but with the Bible in his heart and hand, he will do justice and love mercy in higher and higher rule. Every evil will be removed, and the negro will be elevated to the highest attainments he can make, and be prepared for whatever destiny God intends. This, sir, is the _fourth result_ of your agitation:--to make the Southern master _know_, from the Bible, his right to be a master, and his duty to his slave.

These _four results_ are so fully before you, that I think you must see and feel them. You have brought out, besides, tremendous political consequences, giving astonishing growth and spread to the slave power: on these I cannot dwell. Sir, are you satisfied with these consequences of the agitation you have gotten up? I am. I thank God that the great deep of the American mind has been blown upon by the wind of abolitionism. I rejoice that the stagnant water of that American mind has been so greatly purified. I rejoice that the infidelity and the semi-infidelity so long latent have been set free. I rejoice that the sober sense North and South, so strangely asleep and silent, has risen up to hear the word of God and to speak it to the land. I rejoice that all the South now know that God gives the right to hold slaves, and, with that right, obligations they must fulfil. I rejoice that the day has dawned in which the North and South will think and feel and act together on the subject of slavery. I thank God for the agitation. May he forgive the folly and wickedness of many who have gotten it up! May he reveal more and more, that surely the wrath of man shall praise him, while the remainder of wrath he will restrain!

_Declaration of Independence_.

I agree with you, sir, that _the second paragraph_ of the Declaration of Independence contains _five affirmations_, declared to be self-evident truths, which, if truths, do sustain you and all abolitionists in every thing you say as to the right of the negro to liberty; and not only to liberty,--to equality, political and social. But I disagree with you as to their truth, and I say that not one of said affirmations is a self-evident truth, or a truth at all. On the contrary, that each one is contrary to the Bible; that each one, separately, is denied; and that all five, collectively, are denied and upset by the Bible, by the natural history of man, and by providence, in every age of the world. I say this now. In a subsequent communication, I will prove what I affirm. For the present I merely add, that the Declaration of Independence stands in no need of these false affirmations. It was, and is, a beautiful whole without them. It was, and is, without these imaginary maxims, the simple statement of the grievances the colonies had borne from the mother-country, and their right _as colonies_, when thus oppressed, to declare themselves independent. That is to say, the right given of God to oppressed children to seek protection in another family, or to set up for themselves somewhat before _twenty-one_ or natural maturity; right belonging to them _in the British family;_ right sanctioned of God; right blessed of God, in the resistance of the colonies _as colonies_--not as individual men--to the attempt of the mother-country to consummate her tyranny. But God gives no sanction to the affirmation that he has _created all men equal_; that this is _self-evident,_ and that he has given them _unalienable rights;_ that he has made government to _derive its power solely from their consent_, and that he has given them _the right to change that government in their mere pleasure_. All this--every word of it, every jot and tittle--is the liberty and equality claimed by infidelity. God has cursed it seven times in France since 1793; and he will curse it there seventy times seven, if Frenchmen prefer to be pestled so often in Solomon's mortar. He has cursed it in Prussia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain. He will curse it as long as time, whether it is affirmed by Jefferson, Paine, Robespierre, Ledru Rollin, Kossuth, Greeley, Garrison, or Barnes.

Sir, that paragraph is an _excrescence_ on the tree of our liberty. I pray you take it away. Worship it if you will, and in a manner imitate the Druid. He gave reverence to the _mistletoe_, but first he removed the _parasite_ from the noble tree. Do you the same. Cut away _this mistletoe_ with golden knife, as did the Druid; enshrine its imaginary divinity in a grove or cave; then retire there, and leave our oak to stand in its glory in the light of heaven. Men have been afraid to say all this for years, just as they have been timid to assert that God has placed master and slave in the same relation as husband and wife. Public sentiment, which you once had and have lost, suppressed this utterance as the other. But now, men speak out; and I, for one, will tell you what the Bible reveals as to that part of the Declaration of Independence, as fearlessly as I tell you what it says of the system of slavery.

_How Men are made Infidels_.

I agree with you that some men have been, are, and will be, made infidels by hearing that God has ordained slavery as one form of his government over depraved mankind. But how does this fact prove that the Bible does not sanction slavery? Why, sir, you have been all your life teaching that some men are made infidels by hearing any truth of the Bible;--that some men are made infidels by hearing the Trinity, Depravity, Atonement, Divinity of Christ, Resurrection, Eternal Punishment. True: and these men find "_great laws of their nature,--instinctive feelings_"--just such as you find against slavery, and not more perverted in them than in you, condemning all this Bible. And they hold now, with your sanction, that a book affirming such facts "_cannot be from God_."

Sir, some men are made infidels by hearing the Ten Commandments, and they find "_great laws of their nature_," as strong in them as yours in you against slavery, warring against every one of these commandments. And they declare now, with your authority, that a book imposing such restraints upon human nature, "_cannot be from God_" Sir, what is it makes infidels? You have been wont to answer, "They _will not_ have God _to rule over them_. They _will not_ have the BIBLE _to control the great laws of their nature."_ Sir, that is the true answer. And you know that _the great instinct of liberty_ is only one of _three great laws_, needing special teaching and government:--that is to say, _the instinct to rule; the instinct to submit to be ruled; and the instinct for liberty._ You know, too, that the instinct _to submit_ is the strongest, the instinct _to rule_ is next, and that the _aspiration for liberty_ is the weakest. Hence you know the overwhelming majority of men have ever been willing to be slaves; masters have been next in number; while the few have struggled for freedom.

The Bible, then, in proclaiming God's will _as to these three great impulses_, will be rejected by men, exactly as they have yielded forbidden control to the one or the other of them. The Bible will make infidels of _masters_, when God calls to them to rule right, or to give up rule, if they have allowed _the instinct of power_ to make them hate God's authority. Pharaoh spoke for all infidel rulers when he said, "_Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?_"

The Bible will make infidels of _slaves_, when God calls to them to aspire to be free, if they have permitted _the instinct of submission to_ make them hate his commands. The Israelites in the wilderness revealed ten times, in their murmuring, _the slave-instinct_ in all ages:--"_Would to God we had died in the wilderness!_"

You know all this, and you condemn these infidels. Good.

But, sir, you know equally well that the Bible will make infidels of men _affirming the instinct of liberty,_ when God calls them to learn of him how _much liberty_ he gives, and _how_ he gives it, and _when_ he gives it, if they have so yielded to this law of their nature as to make them despise the word of the Lord. Sir, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram spoke out just what the liberty-and-equality men have said in all time:--"_Ye, Moses and Aaron, take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them: wherefore, then, lift ye up yourselves above the congregation?"_ Verily, sir, these men were intensely excited by "_the great law of our nature,--the great instinct of freedom."_ Yea, they told God to his face they had looked within, and found the _higher law of liberty and equality--the eternal right--in their intuitional consciousness_; and that they would not submit to his will in the elevation of Moses and Aaron _above them_.

Verily, sir, you, in the spirit of Korah, now proclaim and say, "Ye masters, and ye white men who are not masters, North and South, ye take too much upon you, seeing the negro is created your equal, and, by unalienable right, is as free as you, and entitled to all your political and social life. Ye take, then, too much upon you in excluding him from your positions of wealth and honor, from your halls of legislation, and from your palace of the nation, and from your splendid couch, and from your fair women with long hair on that couch and in that gilded chariot: wherefore, then, lift ye up yourselves above the negro?"

Verily, sir, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram said all we have ever heard from abolition-platforms or now listen to from you. But the Lord made the earth swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram!

I agree with you then, sir, fully, that some men have been, are, and will be, made infidels by hearing that God, in the Bible, has ordained slavery. But I hold this to be no argument against the fact that the Bible does so teach, because men are made infidels by any other doctrine or precept they hate to believe.

Sir, no man has said all this better than you. And I cannot express my grief that you--in the principle now avowed, _that every man must interpret the Bible as he chooses to reason and feel_--sanction all the infidelity in the world, obliterate your "_Notes_" on the Bible, and deny the preaching of your whole life, so far as God may, in his wrath, permit you to expunge or recall the words of the wisdom of your better day.

_Testimonies of General Assemblies_.

I agree with you that the Presbyterian Church, both before and since its division, has testified, after a fashion, against slavery. But some of its action has been very curious testimony. I know not how the anti-slavery resolutions of 1818 were gotten up; nor how in some Assemblies since. I can guess, however, from what I do know, as to how such resolutions passed in Buffalo in 1853, and in New York in 1856. I know that in Buffalo they were at first voted down by a large majority. Then they were reconsidered in mere courtesy to men who said they wanted to speak. So the resolutions were passed after some days, in which the _screws_ were applied and turned, in part, _by female hands_, to save the chairman of the committee from _the effects_ of the resolutions being finally voted down!

I know that, in New York, the decision of the Assembly to spread the minority report on the minutes was considered, in the body and out of it, as a Southern victory; for it revealed, however glossed over, that many in the house, who could not vote directly for the minority report, did in fact prefer it to the other.

I was not in Detroit in 1850; but I think it was established in New York last May that that Detroit testimony was so admirably worded that both Southern and Northern men might vote for it with clear consciences!

I need not pursue the investigation. I admit that, after this sort, you have the stultified abstractions of the New School Presbyterian Church,--while I have its common sense; you have its Delphic words,--I have its actions; you have the traditions of the elders making void the word of God,--I have the providence of God restraining the church from destroying itself and our social organization under folly, fanaticism, and infidelity.

You, sir, seem to acknowledge this; for, while you appear pleased with the testimony of the New School Presbyterian Church, such as it is, you lament that the Old School have not been true to the resolutions of 1818,--that, in that branch of the church, it is questionable whether those resolutions could now be adopted. You lament the silence of the Episcopal, the Southern Methodist, and the Baptist denominations; you might add the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And you know that in New England, in New York, and in the Northwest, many testify against _us_ as a pro-slavery body. You lament that so many members of the church, ministers of the gospel, and editors of religious papers, defend the system; you lament that so large a part of the religious literature of the land, though having its seat North and sustained chiefly by Northern funds, shows a perpetual deference to the slave-holder; you lament that, after fifty years, nothing has been done to arrest slavery; you lament and ask, "Why should this be so?" In saying this, you acknowledge that, while you have been laboring to get and have reached the abstract testimony of the church, all diluted as it is, the common-sense fact has been and is more and more brought out, in the providence of God, that _the slave-power has been and is gaining ground in the United States_. In one word, you have contrived to get, in confused utterance, the voice of the Sanhedrim; while Christ himself has been preaching in the streets of our Jerusalem the true meaning of slavery as one form of his government over fallen men.

These, then, are some of the things I promised to show as the results of your agitation. This is the "_tone_" of the past and present speech of Providence on the subject of slavery. You seem disturbed. I feel sure things are going on well as to that subject. Speak on, then, "in unambiguous tones." But, sir, when you desire to go from words to actions,--when you intimate that the constitution of the Presbyterian Church may be altered to permit such action, or that, without its alteration, the church can detach itself from slavery by its existing laws or the modification of them,--then I understand you to mean that you desire to deal, in fact, with slave-holders as _offenders_. Then, sir, _you mean to exscind the South_; for it is absurd to imagine that you suppose the South will submit to such action. You mean, then, to _exscind the South, or to exscind yourself and others_, or to _compel the South to withdraw_. Your tract, just published, is, I suppose, intended by you to prepare the next General Assembly for such movement? What then? Will you make your "American Presbyterian," and your Presbyterian House, effect that great change in the religious literature of the land whereby the subject of slave-holding shall be approached _precisely_ as you deal with "theft, highway-robbery, or piracy?" Will you, then, by act of Assembly, Synod, Presbytery, Session, deny your pulpits, and communion-bread and wine, to slave-holding ministers, elders, and members? Will you, then, tell New England, and especially little Rhoda, We have purified our skirts from the blood: forgive us, and take us again to your love? What then? Will you then ostracize the South and compel the abolition of slavery? Sir, do you bid us fear these coming events, thus casting their shadow before from the leaves of your book?

Sir, you may destroy the integrity of the New School Presbyterian Church. So much evil you may do; but you will hereby only add immensely to the great power and good of the Old School; and you will make disclosures of Providence, unfolding a consummation of things very different from the end you wish to accomplish for your country and the world.

I write as one of the animalcules contributing to the coral reef of public opinion.

F. A. Ross.

No. II.

Government Over Man a Divine Institute.

This letter is the examination and refutation of the infidel theory of human government foisted into the Declaration of Independence.

I had written this criticism in different form for publication, before Mr. Barnes's had appeared. I wrote it to vindicate my affirmation in the General Assembly which met in New York, May last, on this part of the Declaration. My views were maturely formed, after years of reflection, and weeks--nay months--of carefully-penned writing.

And thus these truths, from the Bible, Providence, and common sense, were like rich freight, in goodly ship, waiting for the wind to sail; when lo, Mr. Barnes's abolition-breath filled the canvas, and carried it out of port into the wide, the free, the open sea of American public thought. There it sails. If pirate or other hostile craft comes alongside, the good ship has guns.

I ask that this paper be carefully read more than once, twice, or three times. Mr. Barnes, I presume, will not so read it. He is committed. Greeley may notice it with his sparkling wit, albeit he has too much sense to grapple with its argument. The Evangelist-man will say of it, what he would say if Christ were casting out devils in New York,--"He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils." Yea, this Evangelist-man says that my version of the golden rule is "diabolical;" when truly that version is the _word_ of the Spirit, as Christ's casting out devils was the _work_ of the Holy Ghost.

Gerrett Smith, Garrison, Giddings, do already agree with me, that they are right if Jefferson spoke the truth. Yea, whether the Bible be true, is no question with them no more than with him. Yea, they hold, as he did, that whether there be one God or twenty, it matters not: the fact either way, in men's minds, neither breaks the leg nor picks the pocket. (See Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.) Messrs. Beecher and Cheever will find nothing in me to aid them in speaking to the mobs of Ephesus and Antioch. They are making shrines, and crying, Great is Diana. Mrs. Stowe is on the Dismal Swamp, with Dred for her Charon, to paddle her light canoe, by the fire-fly lamps, to the Limbo of Vanity, of which she is the queen. None of these will read with attention or honesty, if at all, this examination of what Randolph long ago said was a _fanfaronade of nonsense_. These are all wiser "than seven men that can render a reason."

But there are thousands, North and South, who will read this refutation, and will feel and acknowledge that in the light of God's truth the notion of created equality and unalienable right is falsehood and infidelity.

Rev. A. Barnes:--

Dear Sir:--In my first letter I promised to prove that the paragraph in the Declaration of Independence, which contains the affirmation of created equality and unalienable rights, has no sanction from the word of God. I now meet my obligation.

The time has come when civil liberty, as revealed in the Bible and in Providence, must be re-examined, understood, and defended against infidel theories of human rights. The slavery question has brought on this conflict; and, strange as it may seem, the South, the land of the slave, is summoned by God to defend the liberty he gives; while the North, the clime of the free, misunderstands and changes the truth of God into a lie,--claiming a liberty he does not give. Wherefore is this? I reply:---

God, when he ordained government over men, gave to the individual man RIGHTS, _only_ as he is under government. He first established the family; hence all other rule is merely the family expanded. The _good_ of the family limited the _rights_ of every member. God required the family, and then the state, so to rule as to give to every member the _good_ which is his, in harmony with the welfare of the whole; and he commanded the individual to seek _that good_, and NO MORE.

Now, mankind being depraved, government has ever violated its obligation to rule for the benefit of the entire community, and has wielded its power in oppression. Consequently, the governed have ever struggled to secure the good which was their right. But, in this struggle, they have ever been tempted to go beyond the limitation God had made, and to seek supposed good, not given, in rights, prompted by _self-will_, destructive of the state.

Government thus ever existing in oppression, and people thus ever rising up against despotism, have been the history of mankind.

The Reformation was one of the many convulsions in this long-continued conflict. In its first movements, men claimed the liberty the Bible grants. Soon they ran into licentiousness. God then stayed the further progress of emancipation in Europe, because the spread of the asserted liberty would have made infidelity prevail over that part of the continent where the Reformation was arrested. God preferred Romanism, and other despotisms, modified as they were by the struggle, to rule for a time, than have those countries destroyed under the sway of a licentious freedom.

In this contest the North American colonies had their rise, and they continued the strife with England until they declared themselves independent.

That "Declaration" affirmed not only the liberty sanctioned of the Bible, but also the liberty constituting infidelity. Its first paragraph, to the word "_separation_," is a noble introduction. Omit, then, what follows, to the sentence beginning "_Prudence will dictate_," and the paper, thus expurgated, is complete, and is then simply the complaint of the colonies against the government of England, which had oppressed them beyond further submission, and the assertion of their right to be free and independent States.

This declaration was, in that form, nothing more than the affirmation of the right God gives to children, in a family, applied to the colonies, in regard to their mother-country. That is to say, children have, from God, RIGHT, AS CHILDREN, when cruelly treated, to secure the good to which they are entitled, as children, IN THE FAMILY. They may secure _this_ good by becoming part of another family, or by setting up for themselves, if old enough. So the colonies had, from God, _right_ as colonies, when oppressed beyond endurance, to exchange the British family for another, or, if of sufficient age, to establish their own household. The Declaration, then, in that complaint of oppression and affirmation of right, in the colonies, to be independent, asserts liberty sanctioned by the word of God. And therefore the pledge to _that_ Declaration, of "lives, fortune, and sacred honor," was blessed of Heaven, in the triumph of their cause.

But the Declaration, in the part I have omitted, affirms other things, and very different. It asserts facts and rights as appertaining to man, not in the Scriptures, but contrary thereto. Here is the passage:--

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation
on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

_This is the affirmation of the liberty claimed by infidelity._ It teaches as a fact _that_ which is not true; and it claims as right _that_ which God has not given. It asserts nothing new, however. It lays claim to that individual right beyond the limitation God has put, which man has ever asserted when in his struggle for liberty he has refused to be guided and controlled by the word and providence of his Creator.

The paragraph is a chain of four links, each of which is claimed to be a self-evident truth.

The _first_ and controlling assertion is, "that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL;" which proposition, as I understand it, is, that _every man and woman on earth is created with equal attributes of body and mind_.

_Secondly_, and consequently, that every individual has, by virtue of his or her being created the equal of each and every other individual, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, _so in his or her own keeping that that right is unalienable without his or her consent_.

_Thirdly_, it follows, that government among men must derive its just powers only from the _consent_ of the governed; and, as the governed are the aggregate of individuals, _then each person must consent to be thus controlled before he or she can be rightfully under such authority_.

_Fourthly_, and finally, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, _as each such individual man or woman may think_, then each such person may rightly set to work to alter or abolish such form, and institute a new government, on such principles and in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

This is the celebrated averment of created equality, and unalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, with the necessary consequences. I have fairly expanded its meaning. It is the old infidel averment. It is not true in any one of its assertions.

_All Men not created equal_.

It is not a truth, _self-evident,_ that all men are created equal. Webster, in his dictionary, defines "Self-evident--Evident without proof or reason: clear conviction upon a bare presentation to the mind, as that two and three make five."

Now, I affirm, and you, I think, will not contradict me, that the position, "_all men are created equal"_ is _not_ self-evident; that the nature of the case makes it impossible for it to be self-evident. For the created nature of man is not in the class of things of which such self-evident propositions can by possibility be predicated. It is equally clear and beyond debate, that it is not _self-evident_ that all men have _unalienable rights_, that governments derive their just powers from the _consent_ of the governed, and may be altered or abolished whenever _to them_ such rights may be better secured. All these assertions can be known to be true or false only from revelation of the Creator, or from examination and induction of reasoning, covering the nature and the obligations of the race on the whole face of the earth. What revelation and examination of facts do teach, I will now show. The whole battle-ground, as to the truth of this series of averments, is on the first affirmation, "_that all men are created equal_." Or, to keep up my first figure, the strength of the chain of asserted truths depend on _that_ first link. It must then stand the following perfect trial.

God reveals to us that he created man in his image, _i.e._ a spirit endowed with attributes resembling his own,--to reason, to form rule of right, to manifest various emotions, to will, to act,--and that he gave him a body suited to such a spirit, (Gen. i. 26, 27, 28;) that he created MAN "_male and female_," (Gen. i. 27;) that he made the woman "_out of the man_," (Gen. ii. 23;) that he made "_the man the image and glory of God_, but the woman _the glory of the man_. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man _created for the woman_, but the woman _for the man_," (1 Cor. xi.;) that he made the woman to be the weaker vessel, (1 Pet. iii. 7.) Here, then, God created _the race_ to be in the beginning TWO,--a male and a female MAN; one of them _not equal_ to the other _in attributes of body and mind_, and, as we shall see presently, not equal in rights as to government. Observe, this inequality was fact as to the TWO, in the perfect state wherein they were _created_.

But these two fell from that perfect state, became depraved, and began to be degraded in body and mind. This statement of the original inequality in which man was created controls all that comes after, in God's providence and in the natural history of the race.

_Providence_, in its comprehensive teaching, "says that God, soon after the flood, subjected the races to all the influences of the different zones of the earth;"--"That he hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us." (Acts xvii. 26, 27.)

These "bounds of their habitation" have had much to do in the natural history of man; for "_all men_" have been "_created_," or, more correctly, _born_, (since the race was "created" once only at the first,) with attributes of body and mind derived from the TWO unequal parents, and these attributes, in every individual, the combined result of the parental natures. "_All men_," then, come into the world under influences upon the amalgamated and transmitted body and mind, from depravity and degradation, sent down during all the generations past; and, therefore, under causes of inequality, acting on each individual from climate, from scenery, from food, from health, from sickness, from love, from hatred, from government, inconceivable in variety and power. Under such causes, to produce infinite shades of inequality, physical and mental, in birth--if "all men" were created equal (_i.e._ born equal) in attributes of body and mind--such "creation" would be a violation of all the known analogies in the world of life.

Do, then, the facts in man's natural history exhibit this departure from the laws of life and spirit? Do they prove that "all men are created equal"? Do they show that every man and every woman of Africa, Asia, Europe, America, and the islands of the seas, is created each one equal in body and mind to each other man or woman on the face of the earth, and that this has always been?

Need I extend these questions? Methinks, sir, I hear you say, what others have told me, that the "Declaration" is not to be understood as affirming what is so clearly false, but merely asserts that all men are "created equal" in _natural rights._

I reply that _that_ is _not_ the meaning of the clause before us; for _that_ is the meaning of the next sentence,--the _second_ in the series we are considering.

There are, as I have said, four links to the chain of thought in this passage:--1. That all men are created equal. 2. That they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. 3. That government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 4. That the people may alter and abolish it, &c.

These links are logical sequences. All men--man and woman--are created equal,--equal in _attributes of body and mind_; (for _that_ is the only sense in which they could be _created_ equal;) _therefore_ they are endowed with right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, unalienable, except in their consent; _consequently_ such consent is essential to all rightful government; and, _finally_ and _irresistibly_, the people have supreme right to alter or abolish it, &c.

The meaning, then, I give to that first link, and to the chain following, _is_ the sense, because, if you deny that meaning to the _first link_, then the others have no logical truth whatever. Thus:--

If all men are _not_ created equal in attributes of body and mind, then the _inequality_ may be _so great_ that such men cannot be endowed with right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, unalienable save in their _consent_; then government over such men cannot rightfully rest upon their _consent_; nor can they have right to alter or abolish government in their mere determination.

Yea, sir, you concede every thing if you admit that the "Declaration" does _not_ mean to affirm that all men are "_created_" _equal in body and mind_.

I will suppose in the Alps a community of Cretins,--_i.e._ deformed and helpless idiots,--but among them many from the same parents, who, in body and mind, by birth are comparatively _Napoleons_. Now, this _inequality_, physical and mental, by birth, makes it impossible that the government over these Cretins can be in their "_consent_." _The Napoleons must rule_. The Napoleons must absolutely control their "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," for the good of the community. Do you reply that I have taken an extreme case? that everybody admits sensible people must govern natural fools? Ay, sir, there is the rub. _Natural fools_! Are some men, then, "_created_" natural fools? Very well. Then you also admit that some men are _created_ just a degree above natural fools!--and, consequently, that men are "_created_" in all degrees, gradually rising in the scale of intelligence. Are they not "_created_" just above the brute, with savage natures along with mental imbecility and physical degradation? Must the Napoleons govern the Cretins without their "consent"? Must they not also govern without their "consent" these types of mankind, whether one, two, three, thirty, or three hundred degrees above the Cretins, if they are still greatly inferior by nature? Suppose the Cretins removed from the imagined community, and a colony of Australian ant-catchers or California lizard-eaters be in their stead: must not the Napoleons govern these? And, if you admit inequality to be in birth, then that inequality is the very ground of the reason why the Napoleons must govern the ant-catchers and lizard-eaters. Remove these, and put in their place an importation of African negroes. Do you admit _their inferiority by_ "CREATION?" Then the same control over them must be the irresistible fact in common sense and Scripture of God. _The Napoleons must govern_. They must govern without asking "consent,"--if the inequality be such that "_consent_" would be evil, and not good, in the family--the state.

Yea, sir, if you deny that the "Declaration" asserts "all men are created equal" in body and mind, then you admit the inequality may be such as to make it impossible that in such cases men have rights unalienable save in their "consent;" and you admit it to be impossible that government in such circumstances can exist in such "_consent_" But, if you affirm the "Declaration" _does_ mean that men are "_created_ equal" in attributes of body and mind, then you hold to an equality which God, in his word, and providence, and the natural history of man, denies to be truth.

I think I have fairly shown, from Scripture and facts, that the first averment is not the truth; and have reduced it to an absurdity. I will now regard the second, third, and fourth links of the chain.

I know they are already broken; for, the whole chain being but an electric current from a vicious imagination, I have destroyed the whole by breaking the first link. Or was it but a cluster from a poisonous vine, then I have killed the branches by cutting the vine. I will, however, expose the other three sequences by a distinct argument covering them all.

_Authority Delegated to Adam_.

God gave to Adam sovereignty over the human race, in his first decree:--"_He shall rule over thee_." _That_ was THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. It was not based on the "_consent_" of Eve, the governed. It was from God. He gave to Adam like authority to rule his children. It was not derived from their "_consent_". It was from God. He gave Noah the same sovereignty, with express power over life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It was not founded in "_consent_" of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. It was from God. He then determined the habitations of men on all the face of the earth, and _indicated_ to them, in every clime, the _form_ and _power_ of their governments. He gave, directly, government to Israel. He just as truly gave it to Idumea, to Egypt, and to Babylon, to the Arab, to the Esquimaux, the Caffre, the Hottentot, and the negro.

God, in the Bible, decides the matter. He says, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render, therefore, to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor." (Rom. xiii. 1-7.)

Here God reveals to us that he has _delegated to government his own_ RIGHT _over life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness_; and that that RIGHT is not, in any sense, from the "_consent_" of the governed, but is directly from him. Government over men, whether in the family or in the state, is, then, as directly from God as it would be if he, in visible person, ruled in the family or in the state. I speak not only of the RIGHT simply to govern, but the _mode_ of the government, and the _extent_ of the power. Government _can do_ ALL which God _would do,--just_ THAT,--_no more, no less_. And it is _bound to do just_ THAT,--_no more, no less_. Government is responsible to God, if it fails to do _just_ THAT which He himself would do. It is under responsibility, then, to rule in righteousness. It must not oppress. It must _give_ to every individual "_life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness_," in harmony with the _good_ of the family,--the state,--_as God himself would give it_,--_just_ THAT, _no more, no less_.

This passage of Scripture settles the question, From whence has government RIGHT to rule, and what is the _extent_ of its power? The RIGHT is from God, and the EXTENT of the power is _just_ THAT to which God would exercise it if he were personally on the earth. God, in this passage, and others, settles, with equal clearness, from whence is the OBLIGATION to _submit_ to government, and what is the _extent_ of the duty of obedience? The OBLIGATION to submit is not from individual RIGHT to consent or not to consent to government,--but the OBLIGATION _to submit_ is directly from God.

The EXTENT of the duty of obedience is equally revealed--in this wise: so long as the government rules in righteousness, the duty is perfect obedience. So soon, however, as government requires _that_ which God, in his word, _forbids the subject to do_, he must obey God, and not man. He must refuse to obey man. But, inasmuch as the obligation to submit to authority of government is so great, the subject must _know_ it is the will of God, that he shall refuse to obey, before he assumes the responsibility of resistance to the powers that be. His _conscience_ will not justify him before God, if he mistakes his duty. _He may be all the more to blame for having_ SUCH A CONSCIENCE. Let him, then, be CERTAIN he can say, like Peter and John, "Whether it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye."

But, when government requires _that_ which God _does not forbid_ the subject to do, although _in that_ the government may have transcended the line of its righteous rule, the subject must, nevertheless, submit,--_until_ oppression has gone to _the point_ at which _God makes_ RESISTANCE _to be duty._ And _that point_ is when RESISTANCE will clearly be _less of evil, and more of good_, TO THE COMMUNITY, than further submission.

_That_ is the rule of _duty_ God gives to the _whole_ people, or to the _minority_, or to the _individual_, to guide them in resistance to the powers that be.

It is irresistibly _certain_ that _He who ordains_ government _has, alone, the right to alter or abolish it_,--that He who institutes the powers that be has, alone, the right to say when and how the people, in whole or in part, may resist. So, then, the people, in whole, or in part, have no right to resist, to alter, or abolish government, simply because _they_ may deem it destructive of the end for which it was instituted; but they may resist, alter, or abolish, _when it shall be seen that God so regards it_. This places the great fact where it must be placed,--_under the_ CONTROL _of the_ BIBLE _and_ PROVIDENCE.

_Illustrations_.

I will conclude with one or two illustrations. God, in his providence, ordains the Russian form of government,--_i.e._ He places the sovereignty in one man, because He sees that such government can secure, for a time, more good to that degraded people than any other form. Now, I ask, Has the emperor _right_, from God, to change at once, in his mere "_consent_," the _form_ of his government to _that_ of the United States? No. God forbids him. Why? Because he would thereby destroy the good, and bring immense evil in his empire. I ask again, Have the Russian serfs and nobles,--yea, all,--"consenting," the right, from God, to make that change? No. For the government of the United States is not suited to them. And, in such an attempt, they would deprive themselves of the blessings they now have, and bring all the horrors of anarchy.