The following quotation appears in the literary section of Concordia Publishing House’s American Calendar for German Lutherans, 1920, pp. 35-36, edited by Pastor H. Weseloh.
Today’s Women’s Work and the Future of Humanity.
Speaking on this topic Mrs. Martin told the National League of Women: “The future shall lie in the womb of women. As long as women are in business, in the factory, and at the voting booth, the womb is empty and the future is in danger. Women’s suffrage is only an appendage to women’s commercial activity and means the downfall of the race. Because it is precisely the strongest and most powerful women who go out to earn money instead of having and bringing up children, future generations decline. Every independent woman who accepts a high salary as a substitute for a passel of children is a murderess of posterity. The strong, physically and mentally healthy children that could be born are sacrificed for Parisian clothes and automobiles. The cradle is emptied to fill expensive restaurants, the home abandoned so that girls’ rooms are overcrowded with lavish furnishings. A high salary for men means early marriage. High wages for women means postponed marriage, feminist politics, empty homes and race suicide.”–God keep us Christians, old and young, open-eyed to these serious truths that are bright as the sun’s light! The world that loves darkness cannot be helped; it does not even respect the natural order of creation on which everything rests.
Though it is worse for women to preach than seek public office, vote, or compete with men for public work, it is also true that any preacher who condemns the former but is silent on the latter, should be stripped of his office.
The following selections from Der Lutheraner are taken from the 50th and 51st volumes of that publication which appeared in 1894 and 1895. CFW Walther was the editor of der Lutheraner until his death in 1887 after which each issue has the following on its title page:
“Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other states. Edited by the Faculty of the Theological Seminary in St. Louis.”
The source is indicated at the top of each selection.
Der Lutheraner, 50th Volume, April 24, 1894. Issue. 9. p. 71 (title page article)
Women’s Rights.
What someone is authorized to do, or a service he can require others to perform, is his right, just as that which he is commanded and ought to perform is his duty.
A right of the woman istherefore something she is authorized to do. Now these authorizations are different according to the various fields of law or legal relationships. In her relationship to God, in the area of religion, the woman, if she is a child of God, has the powers that God has granted to all his children on earth, the right to pray, to use the means of grace, to rejoice in God, her Savior, to take comfort in his grace and protection, as such rights were exercised by the Canaanite woman in the Gospel. In the area of family life, a woman has the right in her relationship with her spouse to have love, fidelity, protection, and provision from him; as a mother, she has the right to command her children, as God has granted her such authority in the fourth and sixth commandments, and civil law also guarantees her these and other rights in this area.
But woman is also a member of human and civil society, and the rights she has or should have in this area are what people usually think of when they talk about women’s rights in our time, and which we will briefly discuss in this paper.
Human society is the community of men for mutual service, and in so far as this community is regulated by laws, it is called civil society or the state. But the powers granted or guaranteed to a member of such a society by the existing orders or laws are his rights in this sphere. Now, human and civil society does not exist by chance. When God created the first humans, he said: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Gen. 1:28. And also after the Fall and when the waters of the flood had receded, God blessed Noah and his sons, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth . . . Every living thing that stirreth and liveth shall be your meat: as the green herb have I given you all things. . . . Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, his blood also shall be shed by man. . . . Be fruitful and multiply, and be active on the earth, that you may be multiplied.” Gen. 9:1-7. And also in the New Testament, the purpose of the civil order and its God-protected preservation is stated, “that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and honorableness.” 1 Tim. 2:2. That men may dwell with one another and increase in number and enjoy the goods of the earth, protected in body, goods and honor, enjoying temporal well-being, should be the proximate purpose of all human orders; this purpose should be served by every member of human and civil society for his part, and to this purpose should also be directed the duties and rights of the individual members of society to mutual service. The existing orders and laws, by which the rights of the individual are determined, will therefore correspond most to the purpose of the community if they open up and assign to each member of it the sphere of activity which most corresponds to his capacity for service.
If we now ask where the sphere of activity will lie in which the woman can prove herself primarily as a useful member of society, the answer will have to be: in the home, in the family, with the children, where the man is to cultivate rest and gather strength for the work which is appropriate to his physical and mental constitution. This is already indicated by the body of the woman, which is smaller, more delicate, weaker than that of the man, and thus more suited to the domestic work in the family kitchen, in the nursery, just as in particular the share in the fulfillment of the word: “Be fruitful and multiply,” which is assigned to her alone for all time by God already at creation, makes the protection of domestic seclusion a necessity for her and is incompatible with the exercise of most male occupations. But also the dispositions of mind and spirit, which are predominantly peculiar to the female sex, that woman is gentler, milder, more considerate, more compassionate, more sensitive, more fearful than man, make her more skillful for activity in the domestic circle and less suitable for activity in the harsher environment of commercial life with its many struggles and duties, which call for strength and determination and strong courage and a firm demeanor, in short, a masculine nature. And if we now consider how important for the well-being of the individual, the family, the whole nation is the work that takes place in the domestic sphere, in the education of the children, their physical and spiritual care in healthy and sick days, how great is the influence exerted on the husband by the decent, careful, sympathetic housewife when she remains and works in her feminine vocation, we must admire and praise the wisdom and goodness of God, who in creation has given man such a helper, who is so well equipped in body and spirit for this important activity, without which no nation can flourish, the activity of the woman in the quiet domesticity of the family circle. Thus, the distribution of rights and duties in human society will be the wisest, most wholesome, and also most in accordance with God’s intention, according to which woman is and remains assigned the activity of wife, mother, educator and caretaker of the children, and of the helper loved, nourished, protected, and honored by the man. Such an order of things is then also at the same time the one in which the woman herself is in the best position, enjoys the richest, noblest happiness that this earthly life can offer her.
It is therefore an ominous sign of the times when, in our day, precisely in the world of women, there is a noticeable exodus from the sphere of activity of women which God has assigned to them and which has been granted to them by a sensible order of social life. This happens when women crowd into the hustle and bustle of public life, into the courtrooms and department stores, onto the oratory stages and the battlefields of political parties, or into various workshops of male craftsmanship; when the girls, instead of helping housewives as servants in the kitchen or as parlormaids and nannies, and at the same time undergoing a good school of training and experience for their own later vocation as housewives, go in droves to work in factories and commercial businesses, where they often perish in body and soul; when women take up the practice of legal advocacy or go about the country making speeches for political or social agitation. One example may illustrate the extent of this trend. The report of the Labor Commissioner in the State of Michigan of 1892, a volume of 472 pages, contains 189 pages of statistics on women wage earners in that state and lists 137 branches of labor and 378 types of employment in which women and girls work. This does not include teachers, writers, book agents, and many others who work on their own account. It is also noted that employers are looking to hire more and more women workers, as they find advantage in the average weekly wage of $4.81 they pay them. Thus, women are competing with men in industrial life, while they are more and more removed and alienated from their female sphere of activity. With the growing number of women in business, they come to feel of their own accord that they are an element in industrial life that must be concerned about its rights. They say, for example, “Equal work, equal pay!” And since industrial life is interwoven with political life in many ways, especially in this country, the next step is to claim political rights for women, political voting rights, the right to hold political office, and thus to join the ranks of men in political life. This is quite consistent with the fact that quite a few of the spokeswomen of this movement for the assertion of so-called women’s rights are already seriously advocating the introduction of a women’s costume that comes closer to men’s clothing. Everything is designed to turn woman, as holy scripture (Col. 3:18; Eph. 5:22, 33; 1 Tim. 2:9-15; 5:10, 14; Tit. 2:4-5; 1 Pet. 3:1-6; Prov. 31:10-31) so sweetly describes her, into a repulsive distortion, a woman without femininity, a creature that does not want to be what she should be, and cannot be what she wants to be, that has thrown away her crown to reach for another one, but instead she receives a fool’s cap and does not even notice it.
But how should we Christians behave in these times? Answer: we should be the salt of the earth and seek the best of the city, (Matth. 5:13. Jer. 29:7). But when the Savior continues Matth. 5: “But if the salt becomes dull, wherewith shall one salt?” he shows us to consider that we should first of all guard ourselves against the perversities of the world, which we should then counteract in the world. Our Christian women and girls should first of all recognize their own vocation and let it be dear and valuable to them and be content and faithful in it as in the circle in which they can primarily serve their neighbor and thus be pleasing to God and valuable to people. And Christian fathers and mothers should encourage and educate their daughters to this end, and not send them with preference to factories or department stores instead of letting them serve with domestic work at home or as servants in respectable, if possible Christian families and learn and and become fond of housework. This does not mean that a Christian girl may not temporarily pursue an occupation in which, for example, she learns to sew efficiently or to deal with the sick, or that there may not be circumstances in a family that make it necessary or desirable for the daughters to seek other than domestic work. In such cases, it will be necessary to choose primarily those occupations with which women and girls can best serve other women and girls, and of which it is therefore desirable that they remain in women’s hands, the businesses of dressmakers and other seamstresses, cleaners, saleswomen in stores where women are the main customers, and the like. In general, however, the rule should be kept that our growing daughters should not be removed in the long term from domestic work, if we want to set a good example for our part and especially educate our daughters to become women who are willing, skilled, and capable of domestic work and who would know to treasure the rights of the housewife as the highest, noblest earthly rights of women, instead of looking down on them with contempt, as is unfortunately the way of so many American women thinking that they strive higher when they seek other kinds of occupation. It would certainly be good if, especially in larger cities, suitable individuals took it upon themselves to help such girls who would like to work as domestic servants find suitable positions; and in cities where we have several congregations, an intelligence agency led by a Christian widow, for example, where employers and job seekers, including girls from neighboring rural areas seeking employment in the city, could turn to, would be of great benefit in this regard.
Then, however, in the event of a referendum on the admission of women to the political vote, as has occurred in Kansas this year, we Christian citizens will seek the best interests of the city and the state by casting our votes unanimously against such pernicious mischief, and thus do what we can on our part to put a dam against the unfounded so-called women’s rights movement, which is being carried on by fanatical women and politicians speculating on women’s votes. A[ugust].G[raebner].[1]
Der Lutheraner, 50th Volume, April 24, 1894. Issue. 9. p. 76
Women’s emancipation. Judge Weand stated in the case of Miss. Richardson in Montgomery County, Pa. that the superior court in Philadelphia had ruled that women could practice as attorneys in Pennsylvania, and then went on to say, “We would be compelled by propriety and courtesy to neighboring courts, as well as to the superior court, to allow such woman attorneys to practice their profession here as have been admitted there. By so doing, we would grant to the women of other counties rights which we deny to the female inhabitants of our county. If, on the other hand, we refused to admit women from other counties, other courts might turn the tables and exclude our lawyers from their courts. Women are now preaching God’s word, leading teaching institutes, practicing medicine, serving as school directors, public notaries, justices of the peace, and serving in many other capacities from which they were excluded only a few years ago. Twelve women have been admitted to practice law in the Supreme Federal Court and have also been recognized by the Superior Court of this state, as well as by some county courts. Besides, women have been admitted to the bar as advocates in Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Texas, Oregon, the District of Columbia, Wyoming, Washington, Utah, and probably other states, and Montgomery County cannot be left behind in a movement which will open to women a new and honorable field for the acquisition of their livelihood.” This perversion of the divine and natural order of things, where men become women and women become men, and misjudge and despise their wonderful vocation in the family, will avenge itself in dreadful ways, and, if the same becomes more and more widespread, must finally bring about the spiritual and physical ruin of the people in its wake. F(riedrich). B(ente).[2]
Der Lutheraner, 50th Volume, June 5, 1894. Issue. 12. p. 99
Women in the preaching ministry. A news article reports: “A female Baptist preacher, Mrs. Munns in Dawson, Kentucky, was recently licensed to perform weddings. She is thus the only woman in that state who is authorized to officiate at a marriage in the official capacity of a minister.”–When women become doctors, lawyers, and politicians, common sense tells everyone in general that it is not appropriate for the female sex. But if women push themselves into the office of public ministry, they have God’s express word against them, for St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 14:34, 35: “Let your wives keep silence among the congregation; for they shall not be permitted to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. It is evil for women to speak among the congregation.” And again 1 Tim. 2:12: “But I do not suffer a woman to teach, neither will I suffer her to be the master over man, but to be quiet.”-The sects do not care for these clear words, as for so many others, because they do not suit their purposes. But whoever wants to accept from holy scripture only what suits him and fits him, basically accepts nothing at all from God’s word, because he accepts even what he accepts, not because God says it, but because it suitshim. F(riedrich).B(ente).[2]
Der Lutheraner, 51st Volume, February 26, 1895. Issue. 5. p. 40
Should women be ordained? Under this heading, the “Christliche Botschafter [Christian Ambassador]”, the organ of the “Evangelische Gemeinschaft [Evangelical Association]”,[3] discusses the recent negotiations of the General Conference of the Free Methodists on this point. After long and heated debate, the motion to ordain women was defeated. The “Ambassador” hopes that this question will not come before the General Conference of its association and that it will “remain so for a while,” “as it is God’s order according to the view of our church”; that the women would like to be “so absorbed in their own, God-ordained profession”, “that they would not feel like competing with the man even in the pulpit.” He recalls the words that the German Emperor recently spoke publicly: “I could wish nothing better for the men of my nation than that women follow the example of their Empress, and devote themselves, as she does, to the three great Cs: the church, children, and cooking.” L[udwig].F[ürbringer].[4]
Der Lutheraner, 50th Volume, May 22, 1894. Issue. 11. p. 91
The Women’s Rights Movement has again occupied many tongues and pens in recent times. In English pulpits it has been preached for and against, in ecclesiastical and secular journals it has been written for and against, in meetings it has been spoken and voted for and against, with petitions and signatures it has been agitated for and against. In an English newspaper we read: “Women’s suffrage has never been so popular in any time or country as it is today in the United States. The slow growth of the movement has been replaced by powerful pressure; frequent victories are being reported, and to all appearances the power of women will soon become an important factor in the settlement of all contentious social and political questions. Catholics and Protestants are equally infavor of it, and in the ruling circles of society advocacy of the movement will be the rule, not the exception as heretofore. The adoption of women’s suffrage meets with little opposition, since the same apparently bears the stamp of a desirable blessins.” From these and similar statements it is sufficiently clear how necessary and timely it is for us Lutherans to make known our position on this contemporary disease and to counter the assertion that “Catholics and Protestants are equally infavor of it” with the declaration that we are decidedly against the establishment of a social order which would be a disorder, would have its source in a disregard for the divinely intended world order, and would bear its fruit in many a mischief and disruption of domestic and civil life. A[ugust].G[raebner].[1]
page 14 Women emancipation
Der Lutheraner, 50th Volume, January 16, 1894. Issue. 2. p. 14 (title page article)
Women’s emancipation is also making good progress in Germany, as it is in this country. A German magazine entitled “Frauenwohl [Women’s Welfare]” recently declared itself against the church’s marriage rite, stating: “The church, the ruler of our conscience, which likes to call itself mother, has done everything to alienate a large part of its noblest, best and thinking children. We women would have an endless number of things to complain about. The word: ‘Let the woman keep silence in the congregation’ has almost become a curse. We will be silent no longer. Paul’s saying was authoritative for that time, not for us anymore. We claim the right to withdraw from a compulsion that wants to restrict our conscience, all the more so since, to all appearances, the oldest form of association, marriage, seems to be approaching a change. But the church does quite wrong in sanctioning a completely unequal distribution of duties for both parties in the wedding; for while the man is to accept the wife ‘out of God’s hand,’ the woman is admonished to be ‘subject to the man in the Lord.’ What a sad regression to the false humility of woman, to servitude, to presumption on the part of the church, which wants to put a stop to the free movement and development within womankind!”
Rev. Dr. Wilhelm Sihler, (1801-1885). Third Pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran, Fort Wayne, Founder of the Fort Wayne Seminary, Founding Vice-President of the Missouri Synod, and President of the Ohio and Indiana District.
This article was published by C. F. W. Walther in Der Lutheraner Volume 19.
Slavery Considered in the Light of Holy Scripture.[1][2]
(Submitted by Prof. Dr. Sihler.)
[Volume 19, St. Louis, Mon. February 1, 1863, No. 12.]
A Christian is a person whose heart and conscience are bound solely and exclusively by what God’s Word, or Holy Scripture, says. Whatever is contrary to the holy ten commandments, with which the natural or moral law written by God in the heart of all people also agrees, that is sinful, criminal and condemnable to him. And it is all the same to him, how the mass of the unbelievers regards it and perhaps lifts up to heaven what he, according to God’s word, must reject and cast down to hell.
Again, what God does not forbid in his law, but puts into the use of his Christian freedom, that is no sin to him, even if a large number of selfish, unbelieving idolaters of the human spirit, even under the pretense of love, reject and repudiate it with hatred and disgust. We now want to apply this principle, which is an undeniably correct principle for all those who want to be Christians, to slavery, and investigate from God’s Word how it applies and especially whether it is a sin to keep slaves; for it could easily be the case that some newer readers of this publication do not have a conscience sufficiently informed by God’s word; and therefore they are in danger of being misled and confused by the clamor of abolitionist fanatics, who try to spread their delusion as far as possible and to persuade others as if slavery were against Christianity or even contrary to a sound legal state of the civil community. If only this were abolished and, where possible, all slaves were immediately set free — thus they proceed in their ravings — then it could not fail that the citizens of the United States would be blissful people as heroes of humanity and benefactors of mankind, and would bring back the golden age and restore the lost paradise.
From which spirit such delusion originates, we will see later, after we have recognized the truth from God’s word. It is obvious from Holy Scripture that through the deception and seduction of the devil our first parents in paradise and all of us in them have fallen from faith and obedience to God into unbelief and disobedience to God and thus have become servants and slaves of the devil. That is why Christ calls him the strong and armed one,[3] even the prince of this world[4], i.e. of the children of unbelief; and this is the real actual bondage and slavery in which all men as sinners from their mother’s womb (Ps. 51[5]) are imprisoned, be they, according to their outward nature and worldly position, superiors or inferiors, free or slaves. We are all, in our inherited sin and its constant manifestations in real sins, from the inward conscious impulse to the grossest outbreak in deed, miserable, will-less slaves of the devil, whom this tyrant leads captive either by the bonds of mammon-service, ambition, worldly lusts, or by the subtle sins of conceitedness, self-righteousness, and sanctimoniousness; and according to his will, are on the broad path that leads to damnation.
And if the strongest had not overcome the strong, if the seed of the woman had not crushed the serpent’s head, if the Son of God had not destroyed the works of the devil by paying our debt on the cursed wood of the cross as the Son of God and Mary and suffering our punishment of death, and by virtue of his resurrection had set free the children of death and freed the slaves of the devil: we, the children of Adam, would all have remained in this miserable and terrible captivity and bondage, and would have nothing to await after temporal death, the wages of sin, but the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
It is therefore without any contradiction that we all, according to God’s Word, in Adam, as children of wrath by nature, are all also slaves of the devil, but in Christ we are all saved from the wrath of God and redeemed from the terrible spiritual bondage under the tyranny of the devil.
But if both are equally true according to the nature of sin and grace, it is a small thing that God, within this standing contrast, according to his holy punitive justice, has also from time immemorial, just as He has imposed poverty, famine, sword, and pestilence, also imposed temporal bondage and slavery on certain people, although the particular sins that caused God to impose this special punishment are not known to us everywhere. Indeed, according to God’s wonderful ways with mankind, He often lets those bear the consequences of sin whose personal sin is not punished by it. (Joh. 9:1-3[6]) For even the hardest servitude, in which a person is subjected with his body to the will of the master who owns him as property, cannot be compared to the fact that he has stolen himself from his rightful owner, God, and sold himself to sin and the devil, Rom. 7:14[7]; but then God, by virtue of the redemption in Christ, has no other purpose in these temporal punishments than to lead the bonded prisoner to repentance and to reveal to him his dear Son as his Savior, so that he may be redeemed from the power of sin and the devil through the true faith of the Gospel and become truly free and a dear child of God, even if he also has to remain in the state of servanthood, since he is not allowed to dispose of his person according to his will, and is even a saleable commodity. Again, what special advantage have the freemen, if they conduct their rule over their servants and slaves whether in a more patriarchal[8] or in a more despotic way, if they remain unbelievers and after this short temporal rule the saying of the Lord of all lords resounds against them: “Bind their hands and feet and throw them out into the outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”? [Matthew 22:13[9]]
After these introductory and fundamental truths, we will now proceed to the matter itself, and first deal with the cause of bodily slavery, which alone is sin. First of all we find the important passage Gen. 9:25-27[10], in which the holy patriarch Noah, after he had found out about his mockery by his son Ham, pronounced, by the stimulus of God, the following curse against Ham’s son Canaan (who had undoubtedly participated in the gross sin of his father against Noah) and his descendants: “Cursed be Canaan and a servant of all servants among his brothers. And said further, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. God spread out Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant.”
From the first verse of this passage and from the concluding words of the two following verses, it now becomes irrefutably clear that God, after His righteous judgment through Noah’s mouth, visited the sin of Ham and Canaan on their Descendants by continuous, servile bondage or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japheth. But that this curse did not break out of a carnal anger of Noah and did not fade away without a trace in the air, is clear from the history of the later time. For those Canaanites, who (contrary to God’s commandment, Deut. 20:17[11]) were not exterminated by Israel (Shem’s descendants) with the edge of the sword, but were spared out of selfishness, and were consigned by the victors and conquerors of the land, as we see from Jos. 16:10 and 17:13[12], to perpetual serfdom and servitude. But the Canaanites, who lived in Gibeon and were known to have deceived Israel through a fraudulent covenant, received the following harsh sentence from Joshua’s mouth, Jos. 9:23: “Therefore you shall be cursed, so that there shall not cease from among you servants who cut wood and carry water to the house of my God.”[13]
But as God remembers mercy in the midst of wrath, these Gibeonites who had been made slaves and those other Cananites had access to his word opened to them through their dwelling among Israel, so that after they had repentantly recognized their sins in the Law of Moses, they could become righteous before God through the gospel and through faith in the promised seed of Abraham, our Lord Christ, and thus truly free from the dominion of sin.
Another passage, which also proves that within the general, spiritual slavery of all natural men under the dominion of sin and the devil, bodily slavery is a temporal judgment of God against sin, similar to famine, sword, and pestilence and other plagues, is Deut. 28:68[14], which reads thus: “And the LORD shall bring you again into Egypt with ships full, by the way of which I said, thou shalt see it no more (cf. 17:16[15]). And there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondmaids, and there shall be no buyer.”
This threatening word of the Lord by Moses’ mouth is one of many others, which he directs in this chapter (verses 15-69[16]) against his own covenant people, if they would not obey his voice and would not keep his commandments and laws. And also this threat of God has been fulfilled in later times; because in the ships of the Sydonians and Tyrians after the destruction of Jerusalem Jewish slaves bought by the Babylonians were brought to Egypt for sale.
A third passage of a similar nature is found in the prophet Jeremiah, 5:19 and 17:4[17], where it reads: “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your own land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours; and you (Israel) shall be cast out of your inheritance which I have given you, and will make you servants of your enemies in a land which you do not know; for you have kindled a fire of my wrath which will burn forever.”
From this it is obvious that especially because of the apostasy and idolatry, which naturally resulted in a multitude of gross transgressions of the second table, the children of Israel in the kingdom of Judah were led into captivity and slavery in Babylon before and after the destruction of Jerusalem. But since among these there were also those who sat by the waters of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion (Ps. 137:1[18]), the gracious and merciful God comforted these shattered hearts and terrified consciences through the prophet Ezekiel with the promise of the Messiah; and as from God’s own mouth, the prophet was to say to them (33:11[19]): “As surely as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his ways and live.”
But it was quite different and much worse for the people of Israel about 600 years later, after they had not only crucified the Lord of glory and killed the Prince of life, but also for the most part rejected the gracious gospel for about 40 years in malicious unbelief. For after the second destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., many thousands of Jews, prisoners of war, were sold into slavery at a ridiculous price and scattered among all nations without prophets, without consolation, and under the judgment of blindness and hardening,[20] as it still stands today; for only a few individuals, “the elect of grace,” have been saved through the centuries by the gospel in the Christian church.
Thus we should have seen from God’s word that slavery, i.e. the state in which a man is another’s according to body and possessions, and thus is deprived of his personal freedom with regard to the disposal of his person and the choice of his employment, is indeed a consequence of sin and a peculiar manifestation of God’s punitive justice. But there is no essential difference between it and other punishments of God, as, for example, deformity, poverty, famine, and other plagues; yes, compared, for example, with epidemics, wars, volcanic eruptions, strong earthquakes, where many people are often dragged into eternal damnation by a quick evil death, slavery appears as a milder punishment of God. And this is especially the case where the slaves are within the Christian church and under the sound of the gospel, and truly even the Negro slaves brought here are much better off than if they had fallen at home in the bloody feuds of their tribes or had been sacrificed as prisoners of war to the gods of the victors or had become more and more spiritually rotten in their own idolatry as slaves of the devil.
We now proceed to prove from God’s Word, namely the Holy Scriptures, that nowhere, neither in the Old nor in the New Testament, does it forbid or even disapprove slavery or, more precisely, the owning and keeping of slaves or bonded servants.
Thus we read that the Lord God speaks to the children of Israel through Moses (Lev. 25:44-46[21]): “If you want to have bonded servants and maids, then you shall buy them from the heathen who are around you, from the sojourners who are strangers among you and from their descendants whom they beget in your land; these you shall have for your own and you shall possess them, and your children after you for property for ever, they shall be your bonded servants.” Over these the masters were also granted a stricter regiment than over impoverished tribesmen and fellow believers who had sold themselves as servants to their debtors.
For when God says in regard to these, “But over your brethren the children of Israel none shall rule with severity,” it is evident from this that this was permitted to the lords over their bond servants to a greater extent, whether they had come into their power by purchase or captivity in war, or had been born in their houses. For most of them, namely those of Canaan’s lineage, who remained later among Israel, as e.g. the Gebeonites, were actually to be “banished,” that is, cursed with eradication and completely exterminated, as wicked idolaters and perpetrators of shameful immoral abominations (Lev. 18[22]) according to God’s strict judgment during the conquering of the land of the Lord. If, however, some of them remained among Israel, because Israel was too negligent and not zealous enough to execute God’s judgments on them, it was only in accordance with God’s justice that their lot as slaves was harsher than that of the Israelite servants; for these [latter], whom the debtor was not allowed to treat as serfs, nor to sell, were to rejoin their family and their fathers’ possessions in the seventh year, Lev. 25:39-43[23]; Ex. 21:2[24].
Furthermore, when the Lord forbids, Exodus 20:17[25], “Do not lust after your neighbor’s manservant or maidservant,” He confirms the rightful ownership of them. But God could not possibly have done this if the possession of sold, bonded servants and maids were sinful in itself. Likewise, Holy Scripture describes the ownership of servants and maids, that is, of slaves in bondage, as a blessing from the Lord. For thus Eliezer, the suitor for Isaac, speaks to Rebekah’s parents and her brother Laban, Genesis 24:35[26]: “And the Lord hath blessed my lord abundantly, and waxed great, and hath given him sheep, and oxen, and silver, and gold, and menservants, and maidservants, and camels, and asses.” And the same is reported of Jacob, (Gen. 30:43[27]) and of Job (1:3[28]).
Among other earthly goods, the godly patriarchs also possessed servants and maids as a blessing from the Lord and as part of their earthly blessings. But none of them is said to have had a bad conscience about the legitimacy of this possession and property and to have freed his servants and maids. Rather, we learn that these faithful fathers, who certainly had the Holy Spirit in them, also considered the children of these servants and maids as their rightful property; for it is expressly reported about Abraham in Genesis 14:14[29] that he had 318 servants who were born in his house. And these he armed, when he pursued with this small group in bold courage of faith Kedor Laomor, the king of Elam, and his three allied kings from the Orient, in order to rescue Lot and his children from him, which he also succeeded in doing.
But someone might raise the objection: in the household governance of the old covenant, legal discipline prevailed, and there, however, the fathers, as later their descendants, the people of Israel, found slavery as an existing thing and used it without hesitation. Also, in antiquity, as an existing institution, there had been no free day laborers and hirelings, who, after free self-determination and disposal of their person, served sometimes this, sometimes that master according to the pleasure of their will. But in the household of the new covenant, in the Christian church, things are different; there the gospel and Christian love rule; and it is strictly contrary to this that one man is the slave, the saleable bondservant of another, and that the latter has the power and strength to use the bodily strength of his slave for his own advantage for any unsinful service he desires. God is said to have created all men; before Him all are equal, also Christ redeemed all men and acquired the same freedom for all.
We intend also to answer especially this objection later. For now it suffices to prove that in the New Testament itself, Christians are by no means forbidden to keep slaves and to make use of this institution and civil order handed down from paganism and Judaism, according to Christian freedom; For since it is not sinful in and of itself and is not contrary to God’s commandment, neither Christ’s nor his apostles’ mouths censure or disapprove of it, however, the Lord punishes usury and overcharging as sins against love, which not a few abolitionist Sabbatarians practice with the greatest zeal; These holy people even help to equip and dispatch slave ships in order to smuggle slaves from the African coast to America, against the civil law of their own country, while at the same time they agitate for the quickest possible release of the existing slaves. No! Not slavery as a human institution, but only the sinful abuse, which is attached to it in many ways and of course always in conflict with love, receives due censure, especially in the New Testament.
The following are the testimonies in which the Holy Spirit not only does not disapprove of the existence of slavery (let alone urges its immediate abolition), but recognizes and accepts the slave’s calling to service as unsinful: in 1 Tim. 6:1[30], St. Paul writes to Timothy: “The servants who are under the yoke should hold their masters in high esteem, so that the name of God and the doctrine be not blasphemed.”
If slavery were against the gospel and bodily bondage against the spiritual freedom of a Christian, the apostle could not have written these words. Rather, he would have had to make it a matter of conscience for the converted slaves to break the yoke, even by violent self-help and rebellion, if secret escape were impossible. Therefore, in 1525, the Anabaptist rebel, Thomas Münzer, acted thus who incited the Thuringian serf-peasants to revolt against their bodily masters, having previously confused their minds with false unevangelical teaching. For he taught them to despise spiritual freedom, whereby Christ had freed them from the yoke of the law in order to become righteous before God by His works, as well as from all human statutes and commandments, and exchange this for bodily freedom; and so it happened that, against love, they gave place to the flesh, revolted against their bodily masters, burned their castles, plundered their possessions, and murdered the defenseless; And by this they proved that they were indeed servants of corruption and slaves of the devil, but not such people who, through true faith in Christ, were truly freed from that yoke and from the dominion of sin and the devil, and enjoyed freedom of the children of God in the midst of the servitude of the saints. Luther also writes about this in his “Refutation of the 12th Articles of the Peasants,” regarding the 3rd Article:
“There is to be no serf because Christ has redeemed us all? What is this? This would be to make Christian liberty into liberty of the flesh. Did not Abraham and other patriarchs and prophets own serfs? Read what St. Paul has to say about servants, who at that time were all in bondage. Therefore this article is directly opposed to the Gospel and it is rapacious, for everyone who is a bondman to remove himself from his master. A bondman can very well be a Christian and have Christian freedom, just as a prisoner or sick person can be a Christian, but yet is not free. This article proposes to make all men equal, and turn the spiritual kingdom of Christ into a worldly one, which is impossible. For a worldly kingdom cannot exist where there is no class distinction, where some are free, some are prisoners, some are masters, and some are vassals, etc.” (Luther’s Works by Walch, Vol. 16, pp. 85 ff.) Thus St. Paul and Thomas Münzer, together with his kindred abolitionist spirits of more recent times, of English and German tongue, have nothing to do with each other. These speak out of the enthusiastic spirit, in which the murderer and liar has played his part from the beginning, even if he disguises himself here as an angel of light. St. Paul, however, speaks from the Holy Spirit, which, as we know, is the spirit of true Christian love, peace, and wholesome order. Out of this Spirit, in 1 Tim. 6:1 he admonishes the believing slaves that they should “hold worthy of all esteem” even their unbelieving and heathen masters — for only in the following verse does he speak of their behavior toward their believing masters — and indeed for the sake of the fourth commandment and godly order, according to which it pleases the Lord to make them slaves and to make those unbelievers their bodily masters; For it was precisely in such a relationship of service that they had the best opportunity to exercise faith through love and, through their willing and joyful obedience, meekness, humility and patience, to let the glory of the gospel of Christ, which so miraculously transforms and renews the heart and will through faith, shine powerfully, as it were, as a silent sermon and a speaking testimony to their unbelieving masters. And there is no doubt that many of these masters, when they saw the godly conduct of their slaves after their conversion, while they had been lazy, thieving, unfaithful, etc. before, were won to the gospel.
Similarly, St. Peter writes about believing wives who had unbelieving husbands that they should be subject to them, so that those who did not believe in the word would be won over by the wives’ conduct without the word, when they saw their chaste conduct in fear. 1 Peter 3:1-2[31].
So St. Paul admonishes the believing slaves therefore also to hold their unbelieving masters in honor, “lest the name of God and the doctrine be blasphemed.” This would undeniably have been done by the pagan masters if their Christian slaves had acted against them according to the flesh, had demanded their bodily freedom from them and, in case of refusal, had run away or, under the pretense of Christian freedom, had withdrawn from them the obedience owed or had even revolted against them with an armed hand and open violence in order to gain their bodily freedom. Of course, the pagan masters, who were uninformed about the nature of the Gospel, would have blamed the Christian doctrine for such an impudent undertaking and sacrilegious start of their slaves, and would have blasphemed it as a source of all disorder and disobedience, even of rebellion and outrage, and would have profaned the name of Christ as the head of the rebels; for before their slaves had heard this new doctrine, their malice would never have broken out so defiantly as to demand their liberty as a right now due to them.
In a similar way — for it is the same Holy Spirit who speaks through all the apostles — St. Peter also writes, 1 Peter 2:18-21[32]: “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called.”
This exhortation also contains the exact opposite of what the old Anabaptists incited the serf-peasants to do and what the newer abolitionists incite the slaves to do. Yes St. Peter intensifies the already stated admonition of his fellow apostle; for he admonishes the believing slaves that they should be submissive and obedient to their heathen masters not only out of grateful love for their goodness and leniency, but that they should show the same submissiveness “with all fear” and reverence also to the “strange,” that is, the bad and perverse masters, for whom they could do nothing right and who ruled over them with severity; For this is grace and pleasing to God, and also entails the reward of grace, if they, in order not to sin through impatience and disobedience against God and against the conscience enlightened and sharpened by the gospel and faith, bear the evil, that is harsh words and blows, and suffer the injustice; for to suffer for iniquity, as rightly befalls the disobedient and insubordinate slaves, is a punishment justly inflicted and truly no glory.
If, however, they endured all sorts of things from their “strange” masters while being faithful to their service, this is grace from God, for this is what they were called to do; and Peter goes on to paint their Lord and Savior before the faithful slaves as a model of sanctification, that they not only confess him with their mouths, but also follow him in deeds and suffering. Furthermore every Christian, and therefore also every believing slave, is called not only to do good, but also to suffer evil from the one who benefits from his good deeds, namely his physical master.
Similarly, St. Paul (Titus 2:9-10[33]) admonishes the believing slaves “to be submissive to their own masters, to please them will in all things, not answering again; not to purloin, but to show all good fidelity;” and as above he had admonished them (in 1 Timothy 6:1) against dishonorable behavior toward their heathen masters, “that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed,” likewise here he exhorts them to the same Christian virtues, “that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.” But in Col. 3:22-24[34] his words to the believing slaves read thus: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh (be they heathens or Christians); not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he had done: and there is no respect of persons.”
Precisely these two last verses are very important in this admonition of the Apostle. For, after they had been redeemed from the slavery of sin and the devil through faith in Jesus Christ and had attained to the blessed freedom of the children of God, he is far from declaring their continuing slavery to heathen masters as something shameful and unworthy of their present spiritual nobility. Rather, he calls their present slave service, which is sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ and performed in Christian love for their masters, even if they are pagans, a service to God [Gottesdienst]. Likewise, it does not occur to St. Paul to hold out to or place in view of the believing slaves the prospect of the quickest possible liberation from bodily bondage as a necessary or urgently desirable good for those who have become spiritually free. Rather, he opens the prospect of heaven for them and testifies, as from the mouth of the Lord, that after their faithful service on earth they would receive a glorious reward and recompense in heaven, and even inherit the Kingdom of Glory. On the other hand, he also threatens them with the judgment of God if they do “wrong” against faith and conscience, including trying to attain their bodily freedom by sinful means.
In all these passages, interpreted according to the word, there is not even the slightest hint that even the slavery of Christians under pagan masters is something contrary to the gospel and spiritual freedom. Rather, St. Paul writes, 1 Cor. 7:22[35]: “He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman.” But the apostle is just as far from making it a matter of conscience for Christian slaves to remain in the state of slavery. Indeed, he says in vv. 20-21 in general: “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it,” that is, do not be troubled with thoughts as if you could not be a righteous Christian, serve God, and please the Lord even as a slave. But then he adds: “But if you can become free (that is, by honest and sincere means, that someone buys you out or that your master releases you out of favor), then much rather do that,” do not let the permitted opportunity pass by unused.
But now, another point is to be considered according to God’s word, namely, what the relationship of converted slaves to their believing masters was to be and whether they could claim their bodily release from them as an act of their brotherly love. There is no trace of this in the New Testament either. Rather, St. Paul writes about the behavior of believing slaves towards their Christian masters, (1 Tim. 6:2[36]) thus: “And they that have believing masters, should not despise them with the pretense that they, [namely the servants] are the [spiritual] brothers of their masters,” so that through the same faith in Christ and the same sonship of God they are equal to them before God; “but rather do them service, (that is, perform their service all the more faithfully and willingly), because they (the servants) are faithful and beloved (by God, and by their physical Christian masters) and are partakers of the benefit (of salvation and spiritual deliverance from the dominion of sin through the gospel).”
Therefore in all these admonitions, especially those of the apostle Paul, about how the believing slaves should behave towards their pagan or Christian masters, there is not the slightest hint that their spiritual redemption by Christ from the slavery of sin and the devil brings immediate physical liberation with it. Rather, St. Paul always keeps bodily and spiritual freedom sharply apart as two completely different areas, while the enthusiasts of older and newer times confuse the two. According to his view, that is, according to the truth of God, the matter always stands thus: “He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.” 1 Cor. 7:22[37].
The apostle Paul confirms his teaching and admonition by his own actions. There was an unbelieving slave named Onesimus who had come to Rome after he had escaped from a believing slave owner named Philemon in Colossae, who had been converted by Paul earlier. There he was converted to faith in the Lord Christ through the preaching of St. Paul, “[who] dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him” (Acts 28:30[38]) to hear the word of God, and thus became spiritually free. What does the apostle do? If he had been a righteous Anabaptist or abolitionist preacher, he would have declared Onesimus bodily free right away, or made it a matter of conscience for Philemon to leave Onesimus bodily free; then he would have considered it contrary to the gospel, shameful and unworthy for one believer to be the slave of another; after all, they had both put on Christ and were both God’s children; and there would be “neither bond nor free.” (Gal. 3:25[39]) St. Paul did not do so, but even though the converted Onesimus, did and could do all kinds of services of love for him, and even though his master, Philemon, was freed by the apostle from the slavery of sin and the devil, and was bound to grateful love in return, he still sent Onesimus back to his master with a letter imbued with the sweetness of the evangelical spirit and Christian love. And also in this his own handwritten letter, in which he commends this “my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, my own heart,” to Philemon’s heart for loving acceptance and forgiveness for his escape — also in this letter there is not contained the slightest hint to set this slave free bodily, who was indeed now at the same time “above a servant, a beloved brother” (namely his, Philemon’s). And surely Onesimus, as a Christian, as one anointed by the Holy Spirit and enlightened by God’s Word, would have known how to use his physical freedom for the glory of God and the benefit of mankind; and it would have been much different than if now, for example, a southern planter, seduced by abolitionist heresy in pamphlets and sentimental novels, had set free unconverted slaves, who until then could only be kept in outward obedience by coercion and fear of punishment. And is it not so that the runaway slaves to Canada, who unfortunately, contrary to the law, have been encouraged in all sorts of ways in the northern states, are by their laziness and immorality a great plague to that country?
On the other hand, in his letter Paul only expresses his joy that Onesimus (which means “useful”) now lives up to his name, because he “was useless to you (Philemon), but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.” (v. 11[40]).
[Volume 19, St. Louis, Monday, February 15, 1863, No. 13.]
The summary result of all these quotations from Holy Scripture, interpreted and applied according to the text and the faith, is therefore this: First: The gospel and the faith in Christ that it brings about, through which man, and thus also the physical slave, is made a partaker of spiritual deliverance from the slavery of sin and the devil in the forgiveness of sin and the reception of the Holy Spirit, has in and of itself nothing to do with the state of his physical slavery; for the gospel has to do only with the soul of the bodily slave, and primarily in its relationship to God, in order to redeem it from his wrath and severe judgment and to transform it into the blessed freedom of the children of God. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with the external nature and the bodily servitude of the slave to his master, in so far as it would give the slave a means of raising and asserting a legal claim to his bodily release from slavery against his master. And just as little does the gospel make it a matter of faith and love for the believing slave owner, that is, a matter of conscience, to set his slaves free in the flesh, even if they are his brothers in Christ.
Secondly: Just as it is the nature and character of the gospel through faith in Christ to sanctify, permeate, and spiritually enliven all other worldly orders and civil institutions, social relationships, customs, habits, and rights (provided they are not in themselves contrary to the commandments of God, and therefore sinful), so also is this done with slavery. And even if, due to human sin, all kinds of evil and pernicious abuse had been attached to this and that inherently unsinful institution and state or condition, such as the merchant profession (cf. Sir. 26:29, 27:1-2)[41], or unlimited monarchy (cf. 1 Sam. 8:9-17)[42], or to a particularly high degree to slavery, it is nevertheless contrary to the nature of the gospel and to the love of Christ, which is gradually improving from within, to insist in a stormy and violent manner even on the elimination of the abuses that cling to it, let alone to immediately remove the thing itself, to which the trouble adheres. For such unevangelical behavior is only the activity of arrogant legislators and workers, who everywhere in their revolutionary method of healing tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the old and new abolitionists also do.
The gospel, however, by entering into the institution of slavery, which it found everywhere historically, works the following salutary fruit through faith in Christ and the change of mind of the slaves and slaveholders brought about by it, while leaving it in existence for the time being.
First of all, through faith, the heart, mind, spirit and will of the converted slaves are salutarily transformed respecting their physical masters. Before their conversion and spiritual deliverance from the slavery of sin and the devil, they were — by virtue of unbelief — lazy, stubborn, thieving, unfaithful, unwilling, spiteful, wrathful, groveling, false, whoring, lying, and eye-pleasing people, and where they obeyed outwardly, it was only out of fear of punishment or out of a desire for reward and praise; but inwardly there was no willing obedience and outwardly no service of true love; out of compulsion and with unwillingness they did the work commanded them and avoided the grosser outbreaks of evil. Hence Scripture so often speaks of servile fear, servile spirit and obedience in a derogatory way. And even where patriarchal house governance existed, where they had kind and gentle masters and received just treatment, they still remained, according to heart, mind, and will, unchanged and unregenerated in their inherited unbelief and disobedience, blindness and malice, aversion and spitefulness; for even the law of the holy ten commandments in correct spiritual interpretation is not able, in spite of all attached enticements and promises, as well as threats and curses, to substantially transform the heart and the will of the natural man, if he is a slave or not bodily free, and to place him in right obedience to God and man. Rather, the law, without the accompaniment of the gospel, works the exact opposite of what it demands, out of the guilt of the corrupted nature and in order to bring its extreme wickedness and corruption to light. For the more sharply the law presses upon man and demands perfect holiness of his nature and perfect obedience and love toward God in all his doings, the more vehemently it arouses man’s anger, hatred and aversion towards God and His holy will expressed in the law; and the more vehemently the desire to transgress flares up and the greater the mass of sins of commission and omission becomes. But since the law at the same time continues to pronounce the wrath of God against the children of unbelief, without giving man the desire and power to keep it, it proves itself in every man, as he is by nature (so also in every unconverted slave) to be the letter that kills, the office that preaches damnation.
But when the law thus testifies to the conscience of these bonded servants, they certainly recognize from it their sinful misery and ruin, shame and remorse, fear and terror before God’s wrath and judgment. And at the same time they realize that they have a much stricter spiritual master in the law than their physical master can ever be, for in the worst case he can punish them severely in body or have them killed. The law, however, to which their conscience assents, keeps them locked up in soul and body as evil and bankrupt debtors under its compulsion and curse, as in an unbreakable debtor’s tower and iron net, threatens them incessantly with the eternal torment and agony of hell, and lets them feel and experience the foretaste of it abundantly in the gnawing and biting of the evil conscience.
But also to them, as to all poor sinners, the law, according to God’s good gracious will, should become a disciplinarian for Christ. As soon as the gospel comes to them by some means and they do not resist the Holy Spirit, thereby kindling faith in Christ in their hearts, they receive forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit, are spiritually reborn and seated in the heavenly places in Christ.[43] Then they are also redeemed from the slavery of sin and the devil and made truly free through the Son, so that they are no longer slaves to sin, but live for Him who died for them and rose again. As Christ gave himself to them with his nature and work, so now, as far as the new man lives in them, they give themselves to their neighbor in love with their nature and work. Then their heart’s attitude towards their physical masters becomes essentially different from what it was before. Then their most noble thoughts and aspirations are not to become physically free as soon as possible; they close their ears to abolitionist sneaks and corner preachers and consider it theft to steal away from their master by secretly escaping.
On the contrary, they now begin to truly serve him in the fear and love of God. For by the power of faith in Christ and by the impulse of the Holy Spirit who dwells in them and enlightens and governs them through God’s Word, they apply all honest diligence and zeal to be faithful in the fulfillment of the duties of their calling and to comply with those exhortations of the apostles. Instead of the evil qualities, the habitual sins and vices with which they were afflicted before their conversion, they are now seen to have good works and virtues, wrought and sanctified by faith in Christ. As children of God, as saints and beloved, as a voluntary people in the love of Christ, they are now, predominantly, obedient, diligent, faithful, sober, chaste, disciplined, humble, meek, patient, true, sincere, and adorn the doctrine of God their Savior throughout by godly conduct and walk worthy of the Gospel.
If they have faithful, kind, and gentle masters, they recognize this as an undeserved benefit of God and make all the more effort to prove their grateful love for them through faithful service, but they are far from putting themselves on an equal footing with them in a carnal way or even claiming their bodily release as a right to which they are entitled. If, on the other hand, they have unconverted, strict, and whimsical masters, they regard this as a salvific cross, have heartfelt mercy on their devil-mastered lords and never tire of following their Lord Christ in action and suffering, taking up their cross and also showing such masters all willing obedience and good faith, bearing unjust and tyrannical treatment with patience and gentleness and praying diligently for their masters that God will grant them grace to repent.
Thus we have now demonstrated what a salutary transformation the gospel, by kindling faith in Christ in the hearts of the slaves, also brings about in their behavior toward their physical masters. But before we give the proof for how the same gospel and the same faith also bring about a salutary change in the hearts of slaveholders in their behavior toward their slaves, let us first make a helpful and appropriate observation.
We have learned above that slavery is a punishment of sin from God, although not so terrible as the evil and quick death of the guilty criminal. Nevertheless, we find already in the Old Testament, how God shows his mercy against the slaves by special decrees, and resists the mercilessness of the slave owners. Thus, God decreed (Gen. 17:12[44]) that Abraham should circumcise not only the slaves born to him at home, but also the slaves bought from all sorts of strangers.
Thereby they also entered into the covenant of grace that God established with Abraham and his seed; and although, according to their bodily descent, they were guests and strangers, they were admitted through this sacrament into the spiritual citizenship of Israel. And through this they also took part in the adoption and the glory, in the covenant and the law, in the [temple] service[45] and the promise — for this practice was to be kept among Abraham’s descendants from then on. (Rom. 9:4[46]) Likewise, God commanded Moses (Ex. 12:43-44[47]) that no stranger should eat of the Passover lamb, but whoever was a purchased servant should be circumcised first and then eat of it. Also, according to the third commandment, the slaves were to have rest from their work on the Sabbath day (Ex 20:10[48]), could participate in the services, hear the word of God, and were also to be brought to the sacrificial meals and feasts. (Deut. 12:12, 18; 16:11[49]) Furthermore, the Lord Himself protects the bonded servants bought from the Gentiles or who came under the power of Israelite masters through captivity against the tyrannical treatment of their masters. For “if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.” (Ex. 21:20[50]) Furthermore, if the masters knocked out the teeth of their servants or maidservants or spoil an eye by striking them with their fists, they should be released on account of this. (Ex 21:26-27[51]) But the most precious thing was that the slaves also should be made partakers of the New Testament promises of grace. For thus says the Lord through the prophet Joel (2:29[52]): “And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.”
Thus, in view of these bodily and especially spiritual benefits, the slaves of the Jews were much better off than if they, among the heathens of their kindred race, had perhaps been given bodily freedom, but nevertheless, as being outside the realm of the divine word, without God and without hope in this world, remained spiritually dead in transgressions and sins and were not freed from the spiritual slavery of sin and the devil. And similarly, as already mentioned, the Negroes brought over from Africa are much better off by coming into the realm of the gospel, even though so many sins against the fear of God and the love of one’s neighbor are connected with their coming over. God provided even more kindly and lovingly for the Israelite slaves, when free Hebrews (Neh. 5:5[53]) were sold by the court to a lord because of damages they could not compensate (Ex. 22:3[54]), or by debtors they could not repay (2 Kings 4:1[55], Is. 50:1[56]), or sold themselves because of impoverishment (Lev. 25:39[57]). They were not to serve as serfs [Leibeigene], nor were they to be sold like them and treated with the same severity. (vv. 40-42[58]) Rather, according to the law, they received their freedom in the Sabbath or Jubilee year after six years of service (Ex. 21:2[59], Deut. 15:12[60], Lev. 25:40[61]), and had to be provided with sheep, grain, oil, and wine by their former masters. (Deut. 15:13[62])
How little God was against the lifelong bondage of one Israelite to another, however, is clear from Ex 21:6[63] and Deut 15:17[64]. For if the servant, after his six years of service, did not want to make use of the legal freedom, but out of love for his master (also for his wife and his children, who might have been given to him by the master, and who otherwise both remained with the master upon his release (Ex. 21:4-5[65]), preferred to remain with his master as a servant for life, then this could happen; only his ear was to be pierced with an awl before the elders — a sign of servitude that was also in use among other peoples of antiquity.
If we now turn to the New Testament, we also find the appropriate evangelical admonitions for the believing masters with regard to their behavior toward their slaves. Thus we read (Col. 4:1[66]), “Masters, give unto your servants what is right and equal,” that is, fair, do not put them to excessive work, give them the necessary rest and refreshment, and provide for them according to need, as also belonging to your “household”, (1 Tim. 5:8[67]), “knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven” that is, do not forget that one day you will have to give an account to the Lord of all lords of how you have behaved toward your slaves. St. Paul admonishes the masters in a similar way, Eph. 6:9[68]: “And ye masters, do the same (what is right and just in the fear of God) unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven (and over you as his slaves); neither is there respect of persons with him.” (he rewards and punishes with righteous judgment according to his word, whether someone is master or slave).
Now as many of the physical masters who received forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ by means of the voice of the gospel, and took these admonitions of St. Paul to heart; their hearts, minds, and wills were also salutarily transformed toward their physical slaves. If the latter were also converted to Christ out of heathendom, they recognized them as their dear brothers in Christ and did not consider themselves higher than them before the Lord (Gal. 3:28[69]). They also let Christ’s kindness and benevolence shine out in all their dealings with them, regarded them as their housemates and members of their family, cared for their needs in a fatherly way, did not impose undue work on them, granted them the necessary rest and refreshment, and took due care that they remained in the teaching and discipline of the divine word. Nevertheless, they did not cease to regard themselves as their masters, according to the salutary order of God in this world, clothed with the majesty of the Father’s name and the fourth commandment, to maintain punctual obedience and, where necessary, by the discipline of the law, to sharply punish the flesh of their Christian slaves, although in fatherly love. Nor were they bound, as God’s Word did not make them conscience-stricken, to give their slaves bodily freedom on account of being their brothers in Christ, although circumstances did arise from time to time that this happened. If their slaves were still heathen, they could of course not recognize them before God as their brothers in Christ, but they took all the more care that they, as those who had also been freed, by God’s grace and through Christian teaching, came to repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Christ, and thus were saved from the dominion of darkness and brought to the blessed freedom of the children of God.
Moreover, their behavior towards these pagan slaves was not essentially different from their behavior towards Christian slaves. Also towards them, under the governance of Christian fatherly love, the seriousness of the law and the gentleness of the gospel were wholesomely connected with each other in their discipline and regiment. And where, at the present time, there are any Christian-minded slave owners, the same thing happens essentially towards their Christian and heathen slaves; for the gospel and the faith in Christ kindled by it have everywhere in slaves and masters the same salutary effects as just described.
If, on the other hand, we consider the conduct and procedure of the older and newer abolitionists towards slaveholders and slaves, we find that it is utterly contrary to the gospel and faith in Christ and stems from a completely different spirit from the Holy Spirit and love of Christ. For it is the spirit of unbelief and enmity against Christ, the spirit of disobedience against God’s command and the spirit of insurrection and rebellion against his wholesome discipline and punishment against the children of Adam, sinners; It is the spirit of carnal reason emancipating itself from obedience to God’s word, in short, the spirit of man opposing God in arrogant self-idolatry by deception of the devil, which, where possible, overthrew the Triune God from His throne in order to sit on it and rule the world.
From this God-denying, antichristian and scripture-denying spirit have flowed for about 100 years the shameful and harmful writings of the English, French, and German deists, naturalists, rationalists, communists, and Friends of Light, in which the triune God of the Bible is dismissed as contrary to reason and instead the bastard (produced by the liar from the very beginning and the carnal reason of the apostate man) who is called “god, virtue and immortality,” is raised to the throne of the divine majesty. From this spirit came the children of the devil (the murderer from the beginning) the bloodthirsty regicides and blood-spilling monsters of the French Revolution. There, as is well known, our Lord God was deposed by popular decree on the impetus of the same, and in his place, a prostitute was worshiped as the goddess of reason by the educated madmen and uneducated rabble.[70] And what wonder if then, under the deceptive pretense of brotherhood, freedom, and equality, one party overthrew the other and delivered thousands to the guillotine and flooded France with blood. And while the guillotine continuously threw so many children of unbelief into hell every day and gave the devil a true feast, nothing but mutual suspicion, distrust, partisan hatred, rancor, malice, boasting, vengefulness, and the like prevailed between the still-living, free, and equal brothers who had been redeemed from the yoke of the allegedly unbearable royal power, so that under this regiment of freedom, brotherhood, and equality hell on earth was already to be found.[71]
The abolitionist fanatics and vocal leaders of our day and in this land come from the same spirit, who, deceived by the devil, and as deceivers of the ignorant and uncertain[72] are a devouring cancer and a malignant worm in the marrow of the people. It is true that they also adorn themselves with beautiful-sounding names, just as the devil does not like to be black, but white, even an angel of light. It is humanity and philanthropy (friendliness and love of man) that they carry before them as a figurehead. Behind it, however, they are the men of overthrow and destruction, who care little that the Constitution and the Union would perish if they could only carry through their insane enthusiasm, their singular goal; for that is their purpose, wherever possible, to emancipate all Negro slaves with one blow and to bless their own or foreign countries with these poor people, who are almost entirely uneducated for Christian, civil, and moral use of physical freedom.
In this regard, they have for years been pushing and dragging the slavery issue around in the Congress in a most excited manner, even without any motive, and have no hesitation in stirring up and embittering their Southern brethren. For this purpose they also give their speeches outside of congress in all kinds of larger and smaller gatherings, as heroes of freedom and happiness of mankind, with more or less luck and skill, in order to increase their following; and even preachers of the gospel are not ashamed, as abolitionist speechmakers, to fanaticize one part of their audience for themselves under a deceptive appeal of God’s word and against the simple understanding of Scripture and Christian doctrine, and to instill disgust and repugnance in the other, but to deceive both of them regarding the right foundation and edification in and on God’s word. To the same end, preachers and non-preachers let their pernicious foolishness go out through the press in all kinds of pamphlets, in order to spread it even further, even under Christian pretenses; and in them they have no hesitation in presenting unverified facts about the treatment of Negro slaves in the South as true and certain, and in immediately drawing conclusions about all slaveholders from individual cases of tyrannical treatment. Over this they pour the broth of their sentimental effusions of the heart in order to move other softly constituted souls to a holy indignation, if not to a crusade for the liberation of the Negroes, at least in feelings and thoughts. Indeed, their holy zeal for the emancipation of the Negro slaves goes so far that they not only, as already mentioned above, help runaway slaves across the border to Canada, with plans and action in violation of the Fugitive Slave Law, but they also dispatch spies to the South, disguised for example as peddlers, in order to, where possible, stir up trouble here and there among the blacks, to encourage them to run away, and to bring them into a hostile position against their masters by instilling their poison abolitionist potion. In summary, even if the reasons for the civil war which has now broken out and is continuing, and the manifold miseries of the country which flow from it, lie deeper, it cannot be denied that the enthusiast madness of abolitionism is one of the nearest and foremost causes of this ruin. This rage for emancipation, however, is again partly the natural consequence of the self-emancipation of arrogant carnal reason from obedience to the divine word and from true faith in Christ, and partly an inner judgment of God, who is wont to punish sin by sin.
But the outbreak of party fury into civil war and its horrors is then the external judgment of God for the same apostasy and contempt of the divine word.
It is not our intention to go into this in more detail this time. Only this much is certain, that the present abolitionism, far from helping the slaves in a salutary way, works just the opposite. In part, it drives individual slaveholders, who are more despotic than patriarchal-minded, to harsher measures, and perhaps even entire slave states to harsher laws against their slaves, and furthermore, it hinders the power of the Gospel, which, though slow and gradual, is all the more thoroughly and lastingly transforming from within.
The history of our German people, for example, shows this healing power. During the many and often very bloody wars of the individual tribes [Stämme] against each other, the victors also made their prisoners of war into slaves; and their lot was in part much harder than that of the Negroes here in the southern slave states. Then it happened by God’s gracious guidance that through the fervent zeal for love of those godly monks in English and Irish monasteries, Columbanus, Gall, Kilian, Willibrord and especially Boniface and his companions,[73] the preaching of the Gospel penetrated to our fathers in the 7th and 8th century and the Christian church also began to draw from among them.
Wherever, here and there through God’s word, individual slave masters and bonded servants became true believers in Christ and were converted, their mutual behavior naturally became different and better than before, as already explained above; the old things passed away, and through the rejuvenating and renewing power of the gospel and through faith in Christ everything became new in this respect as well. The same outward physical relationship of masters and slaves to each other, in which previously only compulsion and fear, mutual hatred and distrust prevailed, now became for both a training school of love, humility, gentleness, patience, and mutual trust in the prevailing attitude of the believing Christian-minded heart.
In the course of the centuries, however, it happened that the Christian church, even among our ancestors, grew from a mustard seed into a mighty tree, under whose branches the birds of the heavens dwelt; it happened at the same time that the Christian doctrine, the sweet and gracious gospel, proved to be a spiritual leaven; the longer that hearts were won for the faith in Christ and penetrated with it, the more there were. Slowly but surely the customs became milder and conformed to a Christian mind; even in the laws of the various countries, Christian doctrine and the educational power of the church exerted a wholesome influence, so that love and justice came more and more into their own.
This influence then also extended to slavery. Gradually, the harshest form of slavery ceased to exist, in which the slaves, who until then had been a commodity for sale, were absolutely at the mercy of the will (even the whims) of their owners, who could even impose the death penalty on them without further accountability and responsibility.
With the emergence and spread of the feudal order, since many formerly free and small landowners came under the protection of the great and powerful and entered into a certain dependent relationship with them — then in connection with that, this harsh form of serfdom ceased. The serfs now became glebae adscripti, that is, such people who, with their children and descendants, were attached to a certain property belonging to their lords. As little as they were entitled to free self-determination and disposal over their person and the choice of their work; just as little did their lords have unlimited power over them; and depending on the extent of their maintenance by their lords, the circle of their servitude and their work was also circumscribed, according to custom and law, and their persons enjoyed the legal protection of the laws against any encroachments of tyrannical lords. In this relationship, they were usually given time and opportunity to acquire property.[74]
From this transitional form and intermediate stage between complete serfdom and complete freedom, from this state of “bondage,” an even greater degree of freedom developed as “the bonded” grew in intellect, education, and civic morality. They were released from their bondage to the soil; and although they were not yet free and independent landowners on a larger scale, they became tenants of a larger landlord whom they could choose at will, and to whom, depending on the contract and agreement, as is now the case, for example, with the peasants in the Russian Baltic provinces, they must annually render a certain amount of manual labor or wages, or both, for the use of their leased land.
This wholesome educating power of the Gospel in the transformation of slavery, which works gradually, quietly, and wisely from within and yet so powerfully and lastingly, has unfortunately been most violently interrupted here in this country by the urging and raging of the fanatical abolitionists; and the most distressing and regrettable thing about this interruption is especially the fact that it has been caused to a great, if not to the greatest part, by those who, according to their actual profession, should especially be fighting it, namely by the preachers, especially those of the Methodists; for it is said that almost all of them do more harm than professional political abolitionist partisans, both in their speeches on their religious stages, where they feed their poor people with poisonous abolitionist weeds instead of God’s Word, and in their journals and pamphlets. And also by this they prove anew that they are no sons of the gospel, no true confessors of Christ and no righteous followers of the Apostles in doctrine and conduct, but legalist, hypocritical busybodies and erroneous and flattering enthusiast spirits, who, in a disgraceful and harmful way, incurably mix up spiritual and bodily freedom.
Instead of acting verbally and in writing as Christian preachers in an evangelical way against the evils and abuses of slavery, it is precisely these unfortunate and blinded people who are always urging the rapid abolition of slavery in a stormy and violent way: and it is precisely they who really have helped to bring this pernicious civil war, which they love to call a “holy” one, upon the country and to make the rupture between the North and the South, where possible, incurable. Now it could still be possible that, in spite of the raving and shouting of these senseless people, that the shouting, pleading and sighing of the true believers and children of God would obtain from their heavenly Father to heal the existing rupture once more, to give the whole people a grace period for repentance and to turn the fury of His wrath away from them, so that the quarreling factions would not yet wear each other down to complete exhaustion and crumbling. But it could also be that if the greater arrogance and reliance on flesh were with the North, the South would be able to assert its political independence and also gain external recognition. In both cases, the question would arise: What does the gospel, or more precisely, what should truly evangelical-minded people do in the first place, be they preachers or statesmen or landowners, etc., inside and outside the slave states in order to have a salutary effect on the here and there corrupted condition of slavery?
[Volume 19, St. Louis, Monday, March 1, 1863, No. 14.]
To the question that was raised in closing: What does the gospel, or more precisely, what should truly evangelical-minded people do in the first place, be they preachers or statesmen or landowners, etc., inside and outside the slave states in order to have a salutary effect on the occasionally corrupt condition of slavery? we answer as follows:
First of all, this would be the most important thing, to bring the pure Christian — that is, Lutheran — doctrine orally and in writing, which they would be able to do, more and more into the slave states and to bring slaveholders as well as slaves as far as possible into their sphere. It is true that there are Lutheran congregations in the southern states, but they are usually only called that, and are not; for they nearly all belong to the so-called Lutheran General Synod, which fundamentally denies the ninth and tenth articles of the Augsburg Confession, is reformed in its doctrine, Methodist in its practice, and unionist in its attitude.
How unclear and confused, how enthusiastic and partisan this synod is in itself, however, is irrefutably proven by the recent political discord in the country and the civil war that has broken out; for it too, like almost all other churches and their synods, is now divided, according to its political partisanship, into two hostile camps, a northern and a southern one.
How should such an impotent synod, in these stormy times, which is not held together by the unity and power of the church confession, on the basis of the divine word, which does not know how to separate and distinguish between law and gospel, or bodily and spiritual freedom — how should such a synod, as an ecclesiastical body, be in a position to have a salutary effect on the formation of healthy evangelical knowledge and attitudes, especially on the slaveholders of the South?
On the other hand, it would be highly necessary to bring the slave owners in the southern states — for in the border states, as is well known, the slaves are treated mildly on average — on the basis of evangelical knowledge and by way of inner conviction, to first abolish the grosser evils and abuses, even corruptions in the slavery system.
These include, for example, the separation of spouses or of parents and younger children by the sale of one or the other, which is said to occur from time to time in the most southern[75] states; furthermore, the perhaps excessive burden of work and the arbitrariness and harshness of the slave overseers in the infliction of corporal punishment; and therefore, the fundamental keeping down of the slaves in a state of crudeness and ignorance, in that they are regarded and treated only as living machines of service and like working domestic animals, and even the more capable are deprived of the means of attaining a certain level of knowledge and morality, which was possible even among the slaves of the pagan Romans. And, furthermore, the fact that in some states the learning of reading by slaves is forbidden by law, may also be to a large extent the fault of the revolutionary fliers and pamphlets of the abolitionists, as the dizzying and delirious spirit of these heroes of freedom and human happiness could only have had a corrupting effect on the poor slaves.
Thirdly, it would be urgently desirable that those evangelically minded men, gifted with love and wisdom, would gain a salutary influence on the legislation in individual slave states by oral and written means, insofar as these sanction those and other grosser evils by existing laws and encourage the personal harshness and severity of individual slaveholders, or at least do not oppose them.
If these truly philanthropic efforts of Christian love and wisdom were gradually heard and received in the slave states, the way would be paved at the same time to train the slaves inwardly, where possible, to the right use of bodily freedom, primarily through the teaching and discipline of the divine word and human means of education.
It would then also become clear through experience whether the children of Ham, considered as slaves, have the ability to attain civic independence and self-government as bodily freemen, or whether political dependence and servitude under the children of Japheth would be their permanent fate.
For the abortive experiments with Haiti, where the freed Negroes are revealed as lazy, ragged, loitering sluggards, do not yet furnish convincing proof of the innate incapacity of the Negro race for civic moral self-reliance and self-government.
Just as little, however, do the freed individual Negroes scattered here and there in the northern states, who present themselves as Christian-minded, intelligent, industrious people, prove the opposite. On average, the freed Negroes also seem to have a certain aversion to work in cultivating the land, since the poorer ones almost never hire themselves out as farmhands, but prefer to become barbers, cooks, and servants in inns; the well-off, however, very seldom buy land to work it themselves, but prefer to invest their money in such a way that they make as much money as possible with as little work as possible, following the example of the free white Americans.
This aversion to work in contrast to the industrious cultivation of the land, following the example of our industrious German countrymen, is, however, a bad omen and speaks more against than in favor of their future total physical emancipation; for it is difficult to deduce what the mass of the later freedmen, who, for example, would find sufficient room for profitable work as tenants in the South, should do other than cultivate land. Otherwise, they would be best used here, in my humble opinion, partly for their own advancement, partly for the support of the large plantation owners there; for experience shows that white workers are on average not able to perform the same work in the hotter regions as the muscular Negroes originating from the tropical zone, who feel all the better physically the more the burning sun drives the oily sweat on their skin. Thus they are less susceptible to climatic diseases than the whites. But to transfer them all to Liberia, or to this or that of the Central American Free States, if these would allow it, would be, especially at the present time, neither for themselves, nor for the regions and their inhabitants, to which they were sent, in any way salutary and profitable, since they are not at all trained and educated for the productive use of their physical freedom. Everything depends on whether and how such education and training is put into practice. If, to this end, where possible, the pure and truthful teaching of the divine word and suitable human means of education worked together in harmony during their present state of slavery, it would become increasingly clear during the course of this labor of love whether and to what extent the Negro race was capable of and suitable for the use of bodily freedom which would be beneficial to them and to others.
On the one hand, of course, it cannot be denied, and history has confirmed it many times, that through the gradual evangelization and Christianization of whole tribes and peoples, many gifts and powers that had hitherto been suppressed or had degenerated into sinful abuse and destructive selfishness were freed and at the same time brought into the service of love and moral, lawful order for wholesome use and common benefit. For example, this has happened in recent times in some island groups of the fifth continent, on the Sandwich, Friendship, and Society Islands, and is still happening on other islands of the South Seas, especially on New Zealand.
On the other hand, it is always questionable whether individual tribes, even though Christianity has found its way into them, are capable of the wholesome use of full bodily freedom, of civic and moral independence, and of the establishment and maintenance of a political community, especially a republican one. There are, after all, enough people in the Christian states — indeed, the greatest number of them — who, irrespective of their Christian and moral worth, in their state of dependence, even of servitude, yet for lack of higher intellectual talent, would never be able to build up a civic community on their own and to maintain it in a prosperous course, for they lack the managing ability; they are indeed the supporting feet, the running legs, the working hands of a body politic, but they need the eye that guides them, the mouth that speaks for them.
It is perhaps similar with whole tribes [Stämmen] and ethnicities [Völkerschaften] who, in spite of their conversion to Christianity, would hardly be able to escape the state of childhood and immaturity and work their way up to civil and moral independence and self-government without mixing with more talented tribes [Stämmen].
[Volume 19, St. Louis, Mon. March 15, 1863, No. 15.]
As far as the already Christianized Negroes are concerned, I have the report of a German naval officer who visited the Negro Republic of Liberia on the west coast of Africa in 1854 in a squadron. Its territory covers 450 German square miles and was then populated by 215,000 inhabitants. Of these, 200,000 are uncivilized natives who have recognized and submitted to the rule of the Republic, and 15,000 are Christian and civilized colored immigrants from the states of the Union here. As is known, the first colony of the present Republic of Liberia was founded on the coast of Upper Guinea by the North American Colonization Society in 1823. This company set itself the task of buying the freedom of as many blacks as possible and establishing an asylum for them in their homeland. Through purchases from neighboring Negro lords, it later expanded to the size indicated above, and in a period of 23 years the society sent 10,000 colored people there.
With regard to the above-mentioned reporter, it must be noted from the outset, in accordance with the truth, that he possesses a healthy, sober view and a fine power of observation and comprehension directed to the actual conditions, which does not appear to be influenced and clouded by a passionate partisan interest, either for or against slavery, to the detriment of the truth.
This eyewitness reports with regard to agriculture, to which the Republic is primarily directed, that it is practiced very casually by the free Negroes, although the excellently lush and fertile soil is unparalleled in the world and rewards even the slightest effort and work many times over, “The free colonist who emerges from the Negro race” — so it says — “only brings himself to cultivate just as much land as bare self-preservation requires. In the vicinity of Monrovia — that is the name of the capital and seat of the government in honor of the former President Monroe — one sees several thousand fields with coffee and sugar plantations, which are flourishing splendidly. However, these belong to only 5 to 6 more intelligent industrious mixlings [Mischlinge]. Further inland, one finds no trace of such plantations, although their rich yield is obvious. The ordinary black does not have the drive to do more than to gain a carefree livelihood, which comes to him with little effort in a country so favored by nature. The sluggishness which is inseparable from the character of the Negro, will therefore be the downfall of Liberia’s future.[76] The Negro wants only sufficient food and necessary clothing for himself and his family, and works merely to avoid the greatest material hardship. Farming is too arduous for him; he does not even raise cattle. Even most of the meat consumed in Liberia is imported from abroad. Only small-scale trade is still a business for him. As a craftsman, he produces such rough work that only he is satisfied by it. Any industrial object in the cities (of which there are 4) that has any claim to value comes from outside. The republic has existed with its present borders for almost 30 years, yet possesses only one road, 4 (German?) miles long, on which a wagon can travel. This road was built under the presidency of the American agent and with American money; it leads from Monrovia toward the interior. Since Liberia has become self-governing, nothing else has been done to facilitate communication.
The nearby virgin forests are the abode of countless ravenous animals that incessantly harass the colonists; these forests are also the source of the deadly miasmas (noxious vapors)[77] that kill almost half of the immigrants. It is in the interest of the state as well as of the individual to cut down the forests and to use the valuable timber as an article of commerce or even just to burn them. One would at least improve the climate, and at the same time gain millions of acres of the most beautiful virgin soil. But one is content with extracting from the forest only what is most necessary, the wood for building a house, the spot for the production of a small field, and still allows oneself to be attacked by wild animals, still breathes in death and infirmity with the poisonous vapors.”
From this description of how the freed or ransomed Negroes behave toward the cultivation of the land, it seems clear that they are just as reluctant and disgruntled by nature as they were in their former state of slavery. Just as here they are moved to work only by iron necessity and the fear of punishment, so in Liberia it is by fear of hunger and starvation, since there they have no master to provide for the satisfaction of their bodily needs. And it is difficult to foresee how they, without mixing with the white race, which, however, is utterly unthinkable, could escape from their natural life, cease to be slaves of their immediate natural needs, how they could become diligent and knowledgeable cultivators of larger stretches of land and become masters of the soil, and how they could rise in this way to a higher level of education and civilization.
How the above-mentioned intermixture has a lifting effect on the individual in the Negro race is also evident from the above description; for from it we have seen right at the beginning how the mulattoes [Mulatten], these mixlings [Mischlinge] of whites [Weißen] and Negresses [Negerinnen], possess a higher degree of understanding and prosperity. However, according to the testimony of the same reporter, the evil has been revealed in Liberia that it is these very mulattoes who form a kind of aristocratic caste and “would have long since seized all power if they were not still supervised and kept in check by the colonization society. As soon as this restraint ceases, rule must fall to them, because property and intelligence will always dominate poverty and stupidity. The Republic hereby comes to an end, while the mixlings make themselves masters of the land and turn into despots and slave owners. Actually, this is already the case, and it is the gentle, industrious Kroomen (an oppressed native Negro tribe), who look upon themselves as born beasts of burden, who willingly submit to the yoke of slavery. On the aforementioned sugar and coffee plantations, in the houses of the wealthy mixlings and Christian Negroes, the whip is already swung just as mercilessly over the Kroomen, who are used as servants, as it was formerly swung in America and the West Indies over the naked backs of their present masters. There are no worse masters than mixlings. Although born of the blood of the white and black races, they hate both irreconcilably, and they make them suffer for this hatred where they can. Moreover, the mixlings are possessed of an indomitable greed for money, and their flabby morals allow them to find every means of acquisition justified. Now they seek wealth in the cultivation of their plantations; but they will certainly prefer to engage in the more profitable slave trade as soon as the opportunity presents itself.—This cannot be said of the Christian Negroes, but they would do nothing to prevent it. The mass of Negro Christians are far too indolent and indifferent; and as long as they suffer no material hardship, it would be irrelevant to them whether Liberia were a republic, a monarchy, or a slave state, if only they themselves need not work.”
However, the Christian preachers there of all sorts and colors do not seem to contend unanimously and vigorously with the word of God and especially with the gospel against these moral corruptions that contradict the word of God. They — most of them are Methodists and Baptists — are content, after their own fashion, to give the blacks the stamp of their puritanical legal formal righteousness; for neither there nor here do they consistently recognize, by virtue of their heresies, the true nature and way of the gospel unmixed with the law and its works, which, after and with the operation of the law, as the revealer of sin and taskmaster of Christ, righteously converts, regenerates and renews the repentant sinner alone through true faith in Christ, and works the love of God and neighbor in him, and in this way also helps him to a truly moral and living activity in his civil community. In contrast, the gospel spares everything that is not intrinsically sinful but natural, as, for example, temperament, manners, habits, customs, and so on. In the manner of Christ’s love, it enters into all these natural things in order to heal them where they are diseased and where they exist among the people in a healthy way, to sanctify them and to gradually transform them into a nobler form more in keeping with the Christian sense and spirit. On the other hand, it avoids and flees coercion, the false displays of virtue, and the excessive heat of the law, which does not produce vigorous and healthy fruit, nor plants that the heavenly Father has planted and watered through the gospel.
Our author now also provides a full report of this legalist compulsion and work of the preachers there. He writes: “The blacks on the streets walk silently and with deliberate steps, the aristocrats with high white neckbands, like Puritan preachers, the lowly, though not so evenly, yet with the same solemnly composed faces. They greet each other in a formal, measured manner. If a few passers-by happen to speak together, they do so in unctuous speech and in a low voice, as if they were in a church and feared to disturb the devotion.
Whoever knows the indestructible cheerfulness of the blacks, which needs only the slightest impulse to gush forth in the most unrestrained manner, their delight in chatting and their great joy in singing — qualities which even the harshest treatment cannot suppress — must be astonished at the enormous contrast which in this respect manifests itself among the inhabitants of Monrovia.
This is the result of religious coercion exercised by the missionaries upon the inhabitants; in misconstrued zeal they have so forcibly and unnaturally changed the harmless character of the people. The clergy, both those sent by the American Missionary Societies and the native ones, exercise a great dominion over the minds of the blacks. But it seems that it is not based on love, but on fear.
If the founders of the Free State, who consisted strictly of churchmen, wanted Liberia to be regarded as a bulwark of Christianity and, to this end, sought to spread and strengthen their own principles with the help of the missionaries, there is certainly no objection to this. The small number of crimes that are punished in Liberia also proves that it has indeed succeeded in eradicating the evil passions in the minds of the blacks.” (The author means, of course, to repressing of the grosser outbreaks of the same through fear of punishment).
“But this was only done violently at the expense of the character of the Negroes, in that their childlike nature was likewise suppressed and deprived of all vigor or led to hypocrisy by means of the punishment of even the most innocent pleasures. For example, young girls are strictly forbidden to dance; only church songs are permitted. Any cheerful get-together is thus inhibited and actual sociability is lacking. In addition, friendly interaction is also disturbed by sectarianism, which is just as prevalent here as in the United States. The intolerance of the clergy has led to a situation in which the individual confessions and sects face each other harshly and in isolation, and everyone shuns contact with those who believe or think differently. That this also hinders the flourishing of the political community is obvious.”
From this description of the law-mongering and works-focused preachers there, it is clear enough that they, directly against the essence and working of the gospel, begin the process in reverse, as it were. That which is a voluntary fruit of the gospel, they try to force out by the law. Not dancing and not singing frivolous, worldly songs, for example, certainly does not make one a Christian; but he who is a believing Christian has nothing to do with dancing and such singing, because he knows and enjoys a better pleasure and a nobler joy, against which all the lusts and pleasures of this world seem to him to be gussied up corpses and apples of Sodom. In this area, too, dealing with the law can for the most part produce nothing but proud, self-righteous, works-righteous Pharisees who think they will find their righteousness before God in such outward doings, but not in Christ through faith. Another part, however, consists of secret Epicureans, who avoid what is forbidden only out of compulsion and fear of punishment, while the desire and lust for it inwardly burns all the more fiercely and occasionally gives vent to itself all the more unrestrainedly and satisfies itself all the more intemperately, the tighter and tighter the straitjacket is that is put on them.
How little hope the author has for the prosperous future of this Negro republic, in view of the ecclesiastical, political and social conditions of Liberia, is evident from his concluding words, which read thus:
“The colony, founded and cultivated under great expectations of civilization, is heading in the exact opposite direction, even if it will not arrive at this state of things for another half century. The blame for this lies in the nature of things; for the Negroes are and remain incapable of developing a civilized community of their own accord, whatever name it may have. They can be made to imitate and become accustomed to the outside world through compulsion, but as soon as this coercion disappears, they fall back into their natural barbarism without pause. The dark skin prepares the way for the whites; it will leave the stage after its work is done. As the Indians have disappeared from America, so the Negro will disappear from Africa with the incursion of the civilized peoples, even if thousands of years must pass.”
One cannot deny, of course, that this judgment of the author (who got to know the Negroes in Brazil, the East Indies and Africa) about their ability for civic-moral independence, for self-directed engagement with and independent influence on other peoples and states, i.e. for world-historical significance, has a lot going for it.
I, on the other hand, although I am more inclined to his view than not, given the way in which the Negroes have been converted to Christianity up to now, ultimately refrain from passing an unconditional judgment on the absolute inability of the Negro race to become a cultured people and to form independent states, but rather commend to God, the almighty, wise and benevolent builder and governor of all peoples, this matter as well. In my entire treatment, it has only been in my heart to prove the following points:
First, that according to God’s word, slavery is a consequence and punishment of sin, but not sinful in itself, that is, contrary to God’s commandments, even though at the same time much evil, even corruption, clings to it. Therefore, it cannot be a sin as such for any man to keep slaves.
Secondly, that everything depends on slave owners and slaves believing in Christ through the gospel and being converted to God, and thus both being freed from the slavery of sin and the devil.
Thirdly, that thereby their mutual behavior be wholesomely transformed and placed in the service of Christian love, without thereby making a bodily release of the slaves immediately necessary.
Fourth, that nevertheless, according to the evidence of history, the gospel, in the course of time, tended to alleviate and gradually abolish slavery in its harsh forms.
Fifth, that the older and newer abolitionism, as stemming from a completely different spirit, is utterly contrary to this salutary influence of the gospel and, even if it is dressed up with the figurehead of Christianity, is aggressively opposed to it and only worsens the lot of the slaves.
Sixthly, that here in this country, after the raging and storming of the emancipation mania has been eliminated and overcome (if God gives grace to that end), the gospel and the true faith in Christ thereby wrought must take up and continue its labor of love again, in order first to free unconverted slaveholders and slaves from the slavery of sin and the devil, and gradually to educate and train the latter to the Christian and moral use of bodily freedom.
Seventh, that the present method of conversion, which is customary in the country, and the associated ransom or release of the Negro slaves, will hardly enable them, by their own efforts and without mixing with the white race, to work their way out of a condition dominated only by the satisfaction of natural needs — and up into a higher condition, in which the moral and civil law, and the cultivation of natural materials and forces ordered by both, hold sway.
In conclusion, it should be expressly noted that this entire treatment, as proceeding from the word of God and supervised and guided by the same, has nothing to do with the question of slavery from the political point of view. Nor is it at all in the intention of this essay to become involved in any way in such steps and measures, which this or that slave state would like to do or take in recent times by legal means, to abolish slavery as quickly as possible in their respective areas. Whatever is wise or unwise, salutary or harmful in this procedure may be discussed and negotiated in more detail in political journals.
[1] This article was published in 1863 in four installments in Der Lutheraner, the Missouri Synod’s then flagship periodical. The source issue of each section is indicated at its head. Wilhelm Löhe also published the concluding summary statements from this essay in July 1863 in his periodical Kirchliche Mittheilungen aus und über Nord-Amerika. Another printing appeared in Baltimore in April 1863 by A. Schlitt, who appended the essay with the following remarks: Upon careful perusal of the above treatise, I found particular comfort in the soundness of the biblical proofs and other propositions cited therein; for which reason I desired to be allowed to reproduce the same by further printing. I therefore turned to the author, who also graciously granted me this wish.
[2] [Original footnote] It is therefore self-evident that the following treatment has nothing to do with the question of slavery from the political point of view, and thus does not interfere with the question of what measures a slave state might take in this present political crisis with regard to the present or later abolition of slavery from the point of view of its particular budget.
—The Author.
[3]Luke 11:21 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:
[5]Ps 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
[6]Joh. 9:1-3 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
[7]Rom. 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
[8] Throughout, Sihler contrasts patriarchal (i.e. fatherly and caring, yet firm) masters with despotic or brutal ones.
[11]Deut. 20:17 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:
[12]Jos. 16:10 and 17:13 And they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute.
Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute; but did not utterly drive them out.
[20] [Original footnote] It is also part of this that the Lord has sold them under the great god Mammon and the spirit of the swindler, because they did not want to recognize Christ, the treasure of all treasures. And it is also part of God’s judgment on the apostate Christians of the present time that the pseudo-intellectual Jews belong to their choir leaders, as well as that the rich Jews are the financiers and creditors of the Christian princes.
[21]Lev. 25:44-46 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.
[23]Lev. 25:39-43 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile: and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.
[24]Ex. 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
[27]Gen. 30:43 And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.
[28]Job 1:3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.
[29]Genesis 14:14 And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.
[41]Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 26:29; 27:1-2 A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong; and an huckster shall not be freed from sin. Many have sinned for a small matter; and he that seeketh for abundance will turn his eyes away. As a nail sticketh fast between the joinings of the stones; so doth sin stick close between buying and selling.
[42]1 Sam. 8:9-17 Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
[44]Gen. 17:12 And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.
[46]Rom. 9:4 who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;
[47]Ex. 12:43-44 And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: but every man’s servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.
[48]Ex. 20:10 but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
[50]Ex 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
[51]Ex 21:26-27 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. 27 And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.
[52]Joel 2:29 and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
[53]Neh. 5:5 Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards.
[54]Ex. 22:3 If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him; for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.
[55]2 Kings 4:1 Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.
[56]Is. 50:1 Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
[57]Lev. 25:39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:
[59]Ex. 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
[60]Deut. 15:12And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.
[61]Lev. 25:40but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile:
[62]Deut. 15:13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:
[63]Ex 21:6 then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.
[64]Deut 15:17 then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise.
[65]Ex. 21:4-5 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
[66]Col. 4:1 Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.
[67]1 Tim. 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
[68]Eph. 6:9 And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.
[69]Gal. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
[71] [This note does not appear in the original publication in Der Lutheraner, but does appear in the edition published by A. Schlitt in Baltimore with the designation “Anm. des Verfassers” (Note of the author.)] Nevertheless, it should not be denied that under Louis XIV and XV the most shameful profligacy of the court, the unjust one-sided tax burden on the citizens and peasants, the cruelty of criminal justice and the arbitrariness of the police had increased in a terrible way and the despotism of the royal power was quite as complete as in any Asiatic world empire of the pagan past. This long and hard pressure inevitably resulted in a powerful counter-pressure, a strong reaction. But the fact that this reaction took the horrible form of unlawful and violent self-help and, according to the just judgment of God, turned into the many-headed tyranny of the partisan rage of arrogant and domineering demagogues, made the French Revolution, even according to the judgment of pagan morality, let alone before the judgment seat of the divine word, one of the most criminal and damnable deeds in world history. —The author’s note.
[72] [Original footnote] It self-evident that they are far different from their seducers. For lack of sharpness of mind and judgment, and stupefied and confused by the clamor and fallacies of their seducers, they are unable to distinguish clearly and sharply the abuses and depraved conditions of slavery from the slavery itself, but confuse the two. D. E.
[74] [Original footnote] In a similar way, for example, some serfs of the large Russian landowners are allowed to trade in the country with the permission of their lords in exchange for an annual fee, the obrok, and there are very rich merchants among them. However, legally they and their children remain attached to the landed property of their lords, whose wealth is estimated according to the number of “souls” belonging to their estates.
[75]südlichsten ‘most southern’ in original; südlichen ‘southern’ in Schlitt edition.
[76] “The cliff upon which something fails” is a German idiom. Friedrich Hölderlin writes, “Ich glaube, daß die Ungeduld, mit der man seinem Ziele zueilt, die Klippe ist, an der gerade oft die besten Menschen scheitern.” I believe that the impatience with which one rushes toward one’s goal is the cliff that often causes the best people to fail.
The following appeared in Lehre und Wehre V. 24 (1878) p. 308:
The Influence of Judaism. In the General Evangelical-Lutheran Church Paper of May 31st we read: “Repeatedly we have received statements from the “strangers in our home” that the decline of Christianity points to the fulfillment of their hope to raise Judaism to the status of world religion, and if not Judaism with its national statutes and customs, then at least the modern Jewish worldview. Already years ago a chief rabbi said: “They make an effort, these limited and short-sighted Christians, to snatch a soul from us here and there, and rejoice royally when they have done it! But they do not notice that we are also doing missionary work better, more skillfully and more successfully than they, that we are gaining territory after territory on their own soil. Only a short time yet, and everything that is truly sophisticated among the Christians will no longer need Christ, and will be able to cope just as well without Christ as we do. The time is approaching when the great majority of Christians will have returned to our faith in God, our monotheism. The future belongs to us. We are converting en masse and unnoticed.” From a simple Jewish teacher, who was Chasan (Kantor in the synagogue), we heard the same thing expressed. Therefore, now give the Jews only the combined, non-confessional elementary school, or whatever one wants to call the thing, and they will seize this lever for the fulfillment of the hope of modern Israel, and we will no longer be surprised if, as it really happened, the local school council of a Bohemian municipality does not entrust the Catholic or Evangelical pastor, but the rabbi, with the composition of the so-called school prayers, or when a Jew, as a teacher of a combined school, writes “a prayer suitable for all confessions” and forbids to pronounce the name of Christ.
The following appeared in Lehre und Wehre V. 9 (1863) pp. 26-27
The Jews and Freemasons.
Dr. Münkel reports the following about the influence that the Jews and Freemasons have finally gained on all public affairs in Europe in his Neues Zeitblatt of Oct. 3. of last year.
“A Berlin Freemason has issued a cry of distress, to which the elections of April and May of this year for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies have urged him. He reports that in Berlin 217 Jews were elected as electors, and in two districts only Jews were elected. This is an alarming event, since every Jew is a born progressive or a democrat who necessarily works toward the overthrow of princely power because it stands in the way of the Jews’ penetration of the highest offices of state. The Jews would not have achieved such successes if they had not been used and pushed forward by the rapidly growing Progressive Party in order to shake the religious and political foundations of the state.
The threads of the connection between Jews and progressives are joined in the Masonic lodges. For in these lodges, progress reigns in a frightening manner, as the Berlin elections once again prove. The nine Progressives who were elected as deputies with the help of the Jewish electors are all Freemasons, and from the 23 Berlin lodges at least three quarters of the Freemasons voted for them. ‘Practically the same ratio is in Breslau, Magdeburg, Stettin and all cities where lodges and Freemasons are widely distributed, wherefore they wrote in their secret writing: Wherever our union flourishes, it has become a power against which no one is able to do anything, which will triumph over everything and everyone.’ This means that the Federation will eventually give birth to the Free State without the Church.
The Jews are welcome collaborators in this association. Even if they were temporarily excluded from some lodges, they are now generally accepted in all lodges of the world. Only in Berlin, for the sake of the King, no Jews are accepted, but they are accepted through a back door, by admitting them as brothers as soon as they have been accepted elsewhere. The Jew, however, knows how to help himself even better, he profits from a certain peculiar feature of Freemasonry. Three masons are allowed to make someone a mason, and in doing so they have the right to communicate the masonic secrets outside the lodges without the usual ceremonies. The Jews use this to draw their co-religionists into the secrets of the Order and to establish an Order next to the Order, in which bribery and speculative arts do their work. ‘While no Christian lodge is any longer inaccessible to the Jews, there exist Jewish lodges where admission is absolutely denied to any non-Jew. In London, where, as is well known, the real hearth of the revolution is under the Grand Master Palmerston, there are two Jewish lodges where no Christian ever finds admission, or is even allowed over the threshold. The threads of all revolutionary elements that are in Christian lodges lead into these lodges. Such a Jewish lodge is now the highest revolutionary tribunal in Rome. In Leipzig, at mass time, there is always a secret Jewish lodge which, strangely enough, never opens itself to a Christian mason.’ If the lodges work for general progress, then of course the Jewish lodges work for Jewish progress; the one uses the other, and the cleverest robs the other blind. But, crucify, crucify! resounds from both regarding the church.
The Berlin Freemason concludes: ‘O would that the All-Gracious would mitigate for the nobles and princes the severe trials now befalling them as a result of their indulgence and guilelessness towards the actual “hypocrites” and let them come to a clear understanding of the aspirations of the revolutionary “works” hidden in the Masonic League.’ Yes, if only! Even Von Bennigsen, as Grand Master of the German Eclectic Masonic League and President of the National Association, delivered a good piece of work, of which the procedure of catechesis is the crown. The King of Prussia’s eyes are said to have opened somewhat at this writing, and he is said to have found the ‘hypocrites’ where he did not look for them at the beginning of his reign. Hopefully he has not found them too late!
The Order of Masons is, by the way, a mere vessel which the tendencies of the age make use of in their own way, as well as of the Jews. Accordingly, it is sometimes more, sometimes less dangerous. But the secrecy of an inaccessible covenant must always cause concern, because it can serve as a hiding place as well as a vehicle for dangerous machinations. Bishop Ketteler of Mainz is therefore right to demand that the federation be made public at a time when publicity is the law everywhere in all proceedings. But this would be the end of the Masonic Order, and not the end of secret orders. For if a certain party wants to rule the world and have everything controlled by its strings, it must demand that everything in state and church be drawn into the light of publicity, in order to be able to treat it with the arrows of suspicion or the protection of vociferous praise, while the party itself does undisturbed mole work in the dark. The Berlin Freemason should not complain if his brethren take his whole hand after he has offered them his finger.”
The following appeared in Lehre und Wehre V. 46 (1900) p. 180
Luther League of America. From May 22nd to 24th, this association held its meetings in Cincinnati. There two female members, Sister Jennie Christ and Miss Magdalene King, gave speeches. Sister Jennie spoke on deaconess work and Miss Magdalene on women’s work in the church. The latter said, among other things, “The future of the church depends on the children, and the future of the children is in the hands of woman…. It is as natural for woman to work for children as it is for the sun to shine or for flowers to bloom…. Woman has a special influence over boys. She softens and uplifts them. She encourages and guides them and gives the sympathy for which the heart longs.”–What Miss King says here is not exceptionally deep and ingenious, but otherwise quite correct. But if she had wanted to act on her words, she would have stayed at home, where the very children are for whom she shines and blossoms, and left public speaking to men. And as for the Luther League, it should, if not before, at least after this speech, have made a decision at once to send Miss King and her sisters home from the League to the women’s sphere. And if the Luther League cannot or will not see this, then the respective synods have the duty to make it clear to the Luther League that according to God’s Word, woman is not to teach publicly, but is to remain silent in the congregation. 1 Tim. 2:12, 1 Cor. 14:34-35. Moreover, we would like to note here that “The Lutheran World” should not take its mouth too full when it brags about the Luther League. It writes, for example: “The Luther League is one of the broadest organizations in this country. It embraces all young people’s societies of every name and description of every division of the Lutheran body in this country.” But from our Synod, for example, not a single society belongs to the Luther League. We mention this because we consider it not an honor, but unionism and a denial of the truth to join the Luther League. And without proof, even the “World” should not accuse us of this sin. F[riedrich]. B[ente].
The following appeared in Lehre und Wehre V. 52 (1906) p. 329
Rome and Women’s Suffrage. The Roman bishop McQuaid of Rochester explained: “Nothing counts in the United States but votes. The time will come when women will vote, and then we will see the greatest voting the world ever saw. We are not afraid of woman suffrage. Our Catholic women will save the day for us.” According to this, the goal of the Romanists is domination of the state by the papal church and the means to this end is the woman in the confessional and at the ballot box. F[riedrich]. B[ente].
Walther published the following remark in Lehre und Wehre V. 12 (1866) p. 121:
Women’s Emancipation. In Massachusetts the Legislature has granted women the right to serve as preachers and to officiate weddings. Since women’s emancipation has not succeeded in the state, they have imposed it on the church. W[alther].
John Henry Hopkins, First Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont
This book review appears in Lehre und Wehre Volume 11 (1865), Number 4 (April), pages 102-113.
“A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery,
From the days of the Patriarch Abraham, to the nineteenth century. Addressed to the Right Rev. Alonzo Potter, D. D., Bishop of the Prot. Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. By John Henry Hopkins, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. New York: W. J. Pooley &. Co, Harpers Building, Franklin Square, pp. VII, & 376 8vo.”[1], [2]
That the devil has succeeded splendidly in driving Christianity out of a large part of the present generation by making humanists out of Christians,—that also the present so-called Christian theology itself is infected, poisoned and corrupted by humanism, no sober Christian will or can deny. At every turn he is haunted by the ill-fated cry: “Liberty and equality!”—On every line of the prevailing daily literature someone is trying to prove to him that our treasure and salvation is not above, where Christ is, but that the truly reasonable, educated, and noble man must find his salvation in himself, and that therefore his endeavors for himself and others are only to be directed to breaking down all so-called restricting barriers, in order to procure for himself free access to all earthly treasures and free space for a full enjoyment of them. And only then, but also certainly then, will there be heaven on earth!
Even if upon a mere reasonable examination of these and similar manifestations of the “human spirit that has come to the right self-awareness,” nonsense and endless confusion of all concepts and conditions arise as a pitiable result; nevertheless even “theologians” of earlier and more recent times, but especially of the most recent time, have allowed themselves to be blinded by the devil to such an extent that they have paid homage to humanism—if initially only to this or that part of its aspirations—as being in harmony with divine revelation, and have become humanists. Even if they are not clearly aware of the spirit that drives them, if they only want to be righteous servants of Christ (which regarding some of them certainly cannot be denied), their speeches and writings prove, nevertheless, that, in certain matters at least, they mix Christ’s kingdom and the world’s kingdom together and portray all kinds of worldly, civil orders, which the gospel allows to remain, not only as hindering barriers, but even as sinful conditions that are to be abolished. This has happened especially with regard to slavery. Theologians of all stripes have declared that slavery, especially the relationship of the master to his slaves, is in itself, that is, in its essence, sin. One, in order to cut off from the outset all objections to such an assertion contrary to Scripture, pointed to Golgotha and asked: “Did not Christ by his death and shedding of blood make all men free?” Isn’t that appalling? Is that not enthusiast madness? Is the spirit that drives one to such assertions and proofs any better than that which fills the manifest children of unbelief? Does that spirit really become a righteous one by taking God’s word in its mouth? Isn’t the devil most dangerous when he uses God’s word?
It is truly refreshing in this time of progress (called “progress” because everything is to be turned upside down) to be able to read through a work like the “View of Slavery” which lies before us. This book combats with all seriousness, with worthy weapons, and with the most brilliant success the manifestations of humanism in the slavery question. And if here the honored reader of “Lehre und Wehre” is shown a selection of this work, it is mainly done in order to draw attention to its precious content and to encourage him to purchase it.
The author, Dr. J. H. Hopkins, is a bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Vermont. He is, as he expressly remarks (pp. 51, 52), “no lover of slavery, and no advocate for its perpetuity any longer than circumstances may seem to require.” He says: “All my habits, sympathies, and associations are opposed to slavery and in favor of abolition.” “I am, and always shall be, in favor of a gradual, just, and kindly abolition of slavery, whenever it may please Divine Providence to incline the minds of Southern statesmen to adopt it.” Therefore, in 1857, the author published a work, “The American Citizen,”[3] in which he presented, among other things, a plan for a “gradual and thorough” abolition of slavery, a plan which said essentially the same thing as that presented by the President of the United States in his address to Congress in 1862[4]. But the “ultra-abolitionism” (as the author calls it), which teaches that it is sinful to hold a man as a slave under any circumstances, and teaches that the relation of masters and slaves makes a mockery of the principles of Christianity; that the Constitution of the United States, because it protects the rights of the slaveholder, is “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell,” and that slavery is the root of all evil and slaveholding among Christians is such a crime for which even hell has no sufficient punishment,—the author combats this ultra-abolitionism, whose teachings he condemns. His whole book is the testimony of a “man in Christ” against this hypocritical abolitionism, which is really nothing but a child of unbelief and one of the many arms of humanism, whereby it draws its “millions” into its happy community, with the result, of course, of choking the inner life.
The history of the present work (which should always be kept in mind for a better understanding of it) is briefly as follows: The author was asked in 1860 from New York “to state in writing [his] opinion of the Biblical argument on the subject of negro slavery in the Southern States.”[5] This he did in a pamphlet entitled: “Bible View of Slavery,” (pp. 5-41. of the present book). Against this appeared a “Protest” from the Bishop and clergy of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, signed by Alonzo Potter, Bishop, and a multitude of Episcopal preachers in Pennsylvania. To this our author replied (pp. 44-50), promising an accurate exposition “of the truth in wherein [he] stand[s],” joined with the testimony of ecclesiastical authorities and history from the apostles’ time to the present day. We find this exposition in our book in pages 51-376.
Let us now turn our attention to the actual content of the present work. In his “Bible View of Slavery” the author defines slavery as servitude for life, passing also to the descendants. And “this kind of bondage appears to have existed as an established institution in all the ages of our world, by the universal evidence of history, whether sacred or profane.”[6] Now he does not want to deny that slavery may be an evil; but then it is only a physical, not a moral one, and therefore no sin, because sin is transgression of the law. If it is now asked: What does the Bible say about slavery?—One must not answer according to one’s own ideas, desires, habits, and personal relationships. For a Christian can only be sure of his judgment if it agrees with God’s Word. Convinced by the word for a long time, the author also only lets the word give answer to the above question. The curse of Noah over Canaan, Abraham’s household, the (9th and) 10th commandment, as well as other regulations and ordinances of the Mosaic law concerning slavery, are first brought forward as proof that the relationship of the master to his slaves was by no means regarded as a sinful one by God, but rather regulated and confirmed by him. The fact that the Lord Christ does not utter a word against slavery, although in his time it was widespread throughout Judea, and the Roman Empire counted sixty million slaves, as well as the well-known sayings of the apostles concerning “servants and masters,” he cites as evidence for the legality of slavery from the New Testament.
The author then proceeds to the refutation of various objections against slavery, on which occasion the well-known propositions from the Declaration of Independence: that all men are born equal, etc., are thoroughly and all-round illuminated and dispatched. One will not read this section without rich profit, even if one could not agree with the author’s reasoning everywhere. Throughout this section also, we see a man who is not dominated by the spirit of the times, who does not sacrifice the Word of God to his favorite opinions, but who lets the Word be his lamp and a light unto his path. What he says against the objections regarding: “Barbaric treatment of slaves;” “Immorality as a necessary consequence of the possession of slaves;” “Ownership of men;” “Would you like to be a slave?” “Separation of spouses, or of parents from children;” “polygamy and slavery were permitted in the Old Testament;”—is as true as it is thorough. He also knows very well how little these principles of his appeal to the taste of his fellow citizens and neighbors. But he does not want to suppress the truth out of cowardice in order to make himself agreeable. “It can not be long” (he says), “before I shall stand at the tribunal of that Almighty and unerring Judge, who has given us the inspired Scriptures to be our supreme directory in every moral and religious duty. My gray hairs admonish me that I may soon be called to give an account of my stewardship. And I have no fear of the sentence which He will pronounce upon an honest though humble effort to sustain the authority of His Word, in just alliance with the Constitution, the peace, and the public welfare of my country.”[7] —So far “The Bible View.”
In the following chapters of the present work, written as a defense, substantiation, and closer analysis of the “Bible View”, the author shows a thorough knowledge as well as a skillful treatment of the accumulated material. In a mass of excerpts from the writings of older and newer philosophers, jurists and theologians, from the resolutions of councils, etc., we do not have chaos in our book, but we find everything well ordered and appropriately strung together, so that one may follow the author at every turn not only without fatigue, but with ever curious interest. We find a “cloud of witnesses,” who all, although coming from the most different times, countries, and relations, directly or indirectly represent the author’s object. To the Justinian institutions we are first referred, and afterwards led to the “fathers, councils, historians, lawyers, divines and commentators.”[8] They all proved “that Christianity never undertook to abolish slavery, even when it extended over all races and all varieties of men—that religion operated to ameliorate, but not to do it away—that its extinction in Europe was not the result of any direct assault, but a gradual dying out through the changes of society—that the first positive attack upon it was not from the Church, nor from Christians, but from the Atheists of the French Revolution; and that it was never supposed to be a sin to hold a slave, where the laws of the country authorized it, until our own age assumed the novel work of ultra-abolitionism.”[9]
It would perhaps not be without interest for the reader to have some of the otherwise probably less known excerpts shared here. From the institutions of Justinian it is shown that the laws of the Roman Empire recognized and regulated slavery during the reign of the Christian Emperor Justinian; that slavery existed according to the law of nations, that its origin was attributed to war (for those captured in battle were subject to death, from which slavery saved them, and therefore the Romans called them servi, “saved ones”). It is further shown that the slavery of those times was by no means limited to Ham’s descendants, but included all nations with which the Romans had ever waged war; and although therefore many slaves were equal to their masters in descent, knowledge, skill, and mental energy, yet power over the life and death of their slaves was conferred upon the masters, and even the church in the fourth century could not emancipate a slave, even if he had been ordained a bishop, without the knowledge and consent of his master.
After our author, as it were in passing, enlists Aristotle and Philo of Alexandria as witnesses for himself, the writings of the “Fathers” are presented. There we first hear Tertullian regarding the attempt to draw away a slave from the service of his master. “What can be more unjust, what more iniquitous, what more shameful than an attempt to benefit the slave in such a way that he shall be snatched from his master, that he shall be delivered to another, that he shall be suborned against the life of his master, while he is yet in his house, living on his granary and trembling under his correction? Such a rescuer would be condemned in the world no less than a man-stealer.”[10] Then we hear Jerome on 1 Tim. 6:1, 1 Cor. 7:21. and Eph. 6:5-9.
From Augustine the following passage, among others, is shared: “The first and daily power of man over man, is that of the master over the slave. Almost every house has this sort of power. There are masters, there are also slaves—those names are different, but men and men are equal names. And what saith the Apostle, teaching slaves to be subject to their masters? ‘Ye bondservants, be obedient to your masters according to the flesh, because there is a Master according to the Spirit.’ He is the true Master and Eternal, but these are temporal, according to the time. While thou art walking in the way, while thou art living in this world, Christ is not willing to make thee proud. This happens to thee that thou mayest be made a Christian, and having a man for thy master, thou art not made a Christian that thou shouldst disdain to serve. Yet since thou servest man, by the order of Christ, thou dost not serve the man, but Him who has so ordered thee. And therefore he (the Apostle) saith: ‘Obey your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in simplicity of heart, not as eye-servants, or as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the mind, with good will’[11] Behold, therefore, he does not make free men of servants, but he makes good servants of bad servants. How much do the wealthy owe to Christ, who thus regulates their home.”[12]
St. Basil the Great, in his rules for the monastic orders, says: “Moreover, let slaves detained under the yoke, if they fly to the convent of the brethren, be first admonished and made better, and then be returned to their masters; in which the blessed Paul is to be imitated, who, when he had brought forth Onesimus, through the Gospel, sent him back to Philemon.”[13] Space does not allow to share testimonies also from Chrysostom, Prosper, and Gregory the Great. Also out of quite a number of conciliar decisions only one shall be shared here. At the Council of Gangra A. D. 341 it was decided: “If anyone, under pretext of religion, shall teach a slave to despise his own master, that he should depart from his service and no longer submit to him with benevolence and honor, let him be accursed.”[14]
After some excerpts from Fleury’s Church History and from Bingham’s “Antiquities of the Christian Church,” we find Melanchthon and Calvin (Luther is missing, which is very regrettable!) presented as witnesses from the Reformation era, and then comes a long series of exegetes from the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians. It will be to the author’s credit that he always lets these witnesses speak to us to such an extent that we can form our own judgment about their actual views on the question at hand. That there are also such statements which are contrary to the biblical doctrine of slavery, will surprise no one, if one considers that many of the witnesses are people who are not always ready to give up cherished views to the service of truth in matters “where reason fights against faith.” But those very anti-biblical statements about slavery are only occasional,—and even if a testimony cannot serve to make the waverers firm and certain because of such internal contradictions, it is always the case with our compiler, that even these witnesses do not declare slavery to be sin per se, so far as and as long as they interpret a relevant passage of Scripture,—and that is sufficient for his purpose. On the whole, many of the cited testimonies give the impression that their writers, initially subdued by the power of the word, simply let themselves be guided by the word, until suddenly the abolitionist spirit gains the upper hand, and then not only the spirit [of the word] but also common sense seems to have departed from the writers. Hereafter follow some passages from the commentaries of more recent times; the above will be confirmed by them.
The Rev. Thomas Scott, whose Commentary, republished in Philadelphia in 1862 from the London edition of 1822, writes under the unmistakable influence of his time, soon after the great movement for the abolition of slavery under Wilberforce, in his notes on Exodus 21: “Slavery was almost universal in the world, and though, like war, it always proceeded of evil, and was generally evil in itself, yet the wisdom of God deemed it better to regulate, than to prohibit it. We should not, however, judge of the practice itself by these judicial regulations, but by the law of love. Slavery, like war, may in some cases in the present state of things be lawful; for the crime which forfeits life no doubt forfeits liberty; and it is not inconsistent even with the moral law for a criminal to be sold and treated as a slave, during a term of time proportioned to his offense. In most other cases, if not in all, it must be inconsistent with the law of love.”[15][16] Concerning Eph. 6:5: “Servants, be obedient to your masters,” etc., Scott says: “The Apostle next exhorts servants who had embraced Christianity to be obedient to their masters, according to the flesh, that is, to whom they were subjected in temporal matters. In general, the servants at that time were slaves, the property of their masters, and were often treated with great severity, though seldom with that systematic cruelty which commonly attends slavery in these days.”[17] (“Where,” asks our author, “did Dr. Scott find his authority for this statement? The testimony of history is altogether against him.”) “But the apostles were ministers of religion,” continues Dr. Scott, “not politicians; they had not that influence among rulers and legislators which would have been necessary for the abolition of slavery. Indeed, in that state of society as to other things, this [Lehre und Wehre interjects: “the influence on the legislators for the abolition of slavery”] would not have been expedient: God did not please miraculously to interpose in the case, and they were not required to exasperate their persecutors by expressly contending against the lawfulness of slavery. Yet both the law of love and the Gospel of grace tend to its abolition as far as they are known and regarded; and the universal prevalence of Christianity must annihilate slavery, with many other evils, which, in the present state of things, can not wholly be avoided. In the wisdom of God the apostles were left to take such matters as they found them, and to teach servants and masters their respective duties, in the performance of which the evil would be mitigated, till in due time it should be extirpated by Christian legislators.”[18]
But even more clearly than Dr. Scott in the shared excerpts, Dr. Adam Clarke, a Methodist, shows us the conflict between the spirit of God and the spirit of abolitionism. For instance: “1 Tim. 6:1: Let as many servants as are under the yoke, etc. “The word δουλος here,” saith Dr. Clarke, “means slaves converted to the Christian faith, and the ζυγον or yoke, is the state of slavery. Even these, in such circumstances, and under such domination, are commanded to treat their masters with all honor and respect, that the name of God, by which they were called, and the doctrine of God, Christianity, which they had professed, might not be blasphemed, might not be evil spoken of, in consequence of their improper conduct. Civil rights are never abolished by any communications from God’s Spirit. The civil state in which man was before his conversion is not altered by that conversion, nor does the grace of God absolve him from any claims which either the state or his neighbor may have upon him. All these outward things continue unaltered.”[19] This is, of course, quite healthy fare that Dr. Clarke is presenting to his readers here. The same Dr. Clarke, however, who lets the Holy Spirit speak to his readers from 1 Tim. 6:1, allows another spirit to speak concerning Eph. 6:5, and says: “Although in heathen countries slavery was in some sort excusable, yet among Christians it is an enormity and a crime, for which perdition has scarcely an adequate state of punishment.”[20] Thus he (or the spirit of ultra-abolitionism) speaks of Eph. 6:5. But the words “with good will” in the 7th verse of the same chapter he explains, “Do not take up your service as a cross, or bear it as a burden, but take it as coming in the order of God’s Providence, and a thing that is pleasing to him!”[21]
From a commentary which has found the widest circulation among the “Orthodox Congregationalists,” a note by Dr. Jenks, on 1 Cor. 7:21, “Art thou called being a servant, etc.,” is transcribed, which thus reads: “The sense is not clear. Chrysostom and all the old commentators understand, ‘You need care so little, that even if you can gain your freedom, prefer your servitude as a greater trial of Christian patience!’ (So a religion of despotism counsels, contrary to the precept, ‘Do not evil that good may come,’ and to the prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ By what right can any man imbrute God’s image, which Christ atoned for, to a mindless, will-less, soulless, rightless chattel! Yet) so Camer, Schmidt, Sparck, Estius, De Dieu, and the Syr. And this sense, they think, is confirmed by the following consolatory words, ‘For he,’ etc. It is also ably defended by De Dieu and Wolf. But there is a certain harshness about it to which necessity alone would reconcile me. What is detrimental to human happiness can not be promotive of virtue. The true intent seems that of Beza, Grot., Ham., and most recent commentators. ‘Do not feel a too great trouble on that account, as if it could materially affect your acceptance with God, and as if that were a condition unworthy of a Christian.’ ‘Grace knows no distinctions of freedom or servitude, therefore bear it patiently.’ Grotius adds: ‘And above all, let it not drive you to seek your freedom by unjustifiable means.’ And he remarks that a misunderstanding of the nature of Christian liberty had made many Christian slaves not only murmur at their situation, but seek to throw off all bondage. O just yet merciful God! enlighten the slave and his master in these United States, at once and always to do Thy will!”[22]
Our author calls the excerpt just given a “fair specimen of the rhetoric that has been so common, of late years, on the subject of slavery,” and he continues, “taking it for granted that the slave must be made a brute, without mind, soul, will or right, a mere chattel; although these gentlemen must know that among the ancients the slaves were often highly educated to be instructors of youth, that Esop was a slave, and Terence was a slave, and Epictetus was a slave, while amongst the slave population of the South, enough of their negroes have been taught and emancipated to plant the new State of Liberia, and of those who still remain with their masters, nearly five hundred thousand are reported as members of Christian societies, in good standing. These facts being perfectly notorious, one can hardly read such a display of our commentator’s anti-slavery prejudice without desiring that he might study the Ninth [Eighth] Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,’ with a wholesome regard to personal application.”[23]
The reader should not tire if a few more excerpts are given from two chapters of our book. Headings of the further chapters are: Man-Stealing; The Golden Rule; Personal Fitness; St. Domingo; Wilberforce; Results of Emancipation; Gradual Cessation of Slavery; Gibbon; Robertson; Motley; Margrave; Public Opinion; The English Poor; Treatment of Slaves; Mrs. Kemble; Theodore Parker; Emerson. Let us take the chapter on “Man-Stealing” first. On this topic a pamphlet directed against the author says: “In the year 1562, Sir John Hawkins set fire to a city in Africa and carried off two hundred and fifty slaves. And the king of Dahomey captured, quite lately, a town in which he slew one third of the population and took the remainder into captivity.”[24] To which our author replies:[25], [26] “This is assumed to be the mode in which all the slaves at the South were originally reduced to bondage; and as their masters can have no better title than those who sold them, therefore they are all involved in the sin of man-stealing!” “Now, really, this sort of absurdity strikes me as a most extraordinary example of sophistical perverseness. If these facts were brought forward against the slave-trade, they might be deemed appropriate.” [….] “But what has that to do with their domestic slavery? Have they attacked the African towns, and slaughtered the inhabitants, and taken away the captives?” In former times, Old England and New England carried on the trade, but the southerners brought the Africans into their possession through proper purchase. Now, of course, ‘the receiver is as bad as the thief,’ but only if the receiver knows that the property is stolen. Now, with respect to the original stock of Africans, from which the southern Negroes have descended, can it be proved 1. that they were stolen, and 2. that the buyers knew about this crime? Not at all. “We are told, by Malte Brun, that in Africa two thirds of the population are slaves, which, as the whole is estimated at ninety millions, would give sixty millions for the present number of the native slaves.” Now, “No one can be farther than I from justifying the barbarity of the African slave-trade.” But if the slave traders received their sad cargo of human beings from the King of Dahomey out of the number of Negroes who were already slaves, can they therefore be called man-stealers? The Negroes were sold at certain prices, and if the slave traders had inquired into the origin of their sad cargo of human beings, the barbarian despot would simply have replied: That’s none of your business! So even the traders themselves cannot be convicted that they have stolen the slaves. Now, how could the southern planters have known that the slaves were stolen in the time when the slave trade was still permitted? And if they did not know, since they could not have known, how could they be accused of participating in man-stealing? But even if those planters had learned that the first slaves were really stolen, it would be neither right nor reasonable to call their heirs and descendants, who came into the possession of the slaves in a right and legal way, accomplices of men-stealers. For consider by what right you or anyone here is in possession of land and house! The land belonged to the Indians; England based its legal claim to it on the discovery of it. But can the discovery of the property of another make it my property? But according to the old European maxim, ‘All land inhabited by savage, heathen tribes belongs to us,’ this land was taken, just as the natives were taken and made slaves of them. Thus: “the ultra-abolitionist holds his property by the same title precisely, that the Southern planter claims in his slaves.” By force or fraud the land has been taken away from the real owners, the Indians. “When our ultra-abolitionist talks of the negro, he tells us that all men are brothers, and is pathetically eloquent upon the Christian rule of doing to others as we would that they should unto us. But when his subject is the Indian, he has no idea that the rule is applicable.”[27]
The author then makes a comparison between the Indians of today and the slaves of the South, which is entirely to the advantage of the latter, and says in conclusion: “Can a Christian believer in the providence of God fail to see that a blessing to the African has followed in the train of Southern slavery, while a blight has rested on the system adopted for the Indian? Is it possible to doubt that if the Indians could have been successfully subjected to the white man, it would have been infinitely better for them at the present day?”[28]
The author introduces the 42nd chapter, “The English Poor,” by speaking of the treatment of the slaves, and making a comparison between the evils which the slaves have to endure at the hands of their masters, and those to which the laboring free classes are subjected. He already remarked that he is truly hostile to all cruel treatment and oppression of the Negroes, and that he rejects it everywhere; but this kind of treatment is so little the general one in the South that in the majority of cases there is evidence of such a pleasant relationship as can only exist between slaves and masters. If, on the other hand, one looks at the misery in which, for example, a large part of the poor in England find themselves, then it can be rightly asserted that the slaves are generally much better off than those unfortunates. For proof of this he quotes a recent work by Joseph Kay, Esq. on the social condition of the people of England.[29] There we read, among other things: “In the civilized world there are few sadder spectacles than the present contrast in Great Britain of unbounded wealth and luxury, with the starvation of thousands and tens of thousands, crowded into cellars and dens, without ventilation or light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian is a palace. Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the neighborhood of stately mansions which ring with gayety and dazzle with pomp and unbounded profusion, shock us as no other wretchedness does.”[30]—Thus is the situation in England.
The misery of thousands of children in London and other cities of England is truly terrible. They grow up in the greatest filth of body and soul without instruction, discipline and care. “It has been calculated that there are at the present day in England and Wales nearly eight millions of persons who can not read and write…. Of all the children in England and Wales, between the ages of five and fourteen, more than the half are not attending any school.”[31] Thousands upon thousands of vagrants of both sexes, who roam the highways and byways by day, congregate by night in the most miserable dens, called “vagrant lodging houses”; men old and young, women old and young, and children of all ages pass the nights there in ghastly confusion. “The scenes which take place are horrible.” Abominations of all kinds take place.[32]
Among the poor of England, the use they make of ‘burial clubs’ is also terrible. In order to get the money for the burial of their children (a sum that of course exceeds the real costs), they not infrequently cause the death of their children by starvation, other bad treatment, or poison.[33] Sins against the 6th commandment are the norm among these poor in the most horrible way, and that in the rural districts not less than in the big cities. In certain districts it is reported not only that the women are not ashamed of fornication, but also that this sin garners no attention among the other inhabitants.[34] Even incest is no longer rare.[35] The pen refuses to copy verbatim even the mildest reports about this vice. Read this chapter in the book itself, and compare the conditions described therein with the worst that has been said of slave life, and you will be able to call it a good life compared to the misery among the poor of England, which mocks all description.
At the end of our book we find a serious and dignified admonition to the bishop Potter mentioned at the beginning. In an appendix we also have the Latin text of many of the excerpts given. The whole work is, as said, worthy of the most detailed study; one will have rich profit from it. And even if it is very regrettable that the Venerable Bishop Hopkins (now the oldest bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States) does not stand in the one true position from which one may argue with earnestness and strength against chiliasm, which is merely “ultra-abolitionism” in the spiritual sphere, as he has against the abolitionism of the humanists, we do not want to let ourselves be hindered by this from heartily thanking him for the mass of good and instructive things presented in his book, and urgently recommending the work to all readers. W. St.
[1] Even now, when the end of slavery in our new fatherland is obviously approaching, we gladly accept the present submission, not, of course, for the purpose of stopping that end, for we, as native Germans, have never been able to acquire a taste for this peculiarly republican institution of the “glorious Union” and are therefore far from weeping a tear for this dying institution. The reason for our joy is much rather this, that thereby a testimony is given that, even if everything else becomes prey to transitoriness, nevertheless the truth concerning it remains unchanged, namely in our case, the doctrine of the Scriptures on slavery, whether the thing itself continues to exist or perishes. In the same way, the doctrine of the obedience of subjects remains true for absolute monarchies also, even if all kingdoms should one day become free republics. In addition to this, every doctrine of Scripture is of the highest importance not only with regard to its primary subject, but also in a thousand other respects, and spreads the clearest light over other areas as well. We are also happy about it, when again and again that glittering spirit of fraud, which wants to make the world happy, is opposed, which wants to put the humanistic lie in place of the biblical truth by temperance agitations, by women’s emancipation agitations, by slavery agitations, and by who knows what other agitations. Also, it will certainly please the readers of “Lehre und Wehre” to see that there are still some among the American theologians who have the courage not to give Christianity away to the fashionable American sentimentality which passes for religion. B. [Original footnote]
In Lehre und Wehre V. 8 pp. 105-110 (April 1862) a short article appeared by Craemer entitled “Dr. Hengstenberg über die Sclavenfrage.” This reproduced what Dr. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg had written earlier in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung [Evangelical Church Paper], the conservative German church paper.
In the foreword to this year’s volume of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, Dr. Hengstenberg also discusses our sad situation here and thus, naturally, also the slavery issue that is causing it. We are pleased to see from this that this theologian, who, although in the midst of the union church, possesses in many respects more light and a more correct judgment than hundreds of so-called Lutheran theologians, and also agrees with our highly enlightened, sober, pious fathers in the matter of slavery, and has the courage to express his conviction freely and unambiguously, in spite of all the scornful looks of the spirit of the age. He also sees where this agitation actually leads, and to which anti-Christian current of the time it belongs, which unfortunately so many here, even those who bear the Lutheran name, do not recognize. For their shame and instruction, but for the sake of the truth, we cannot do otherwise here than to allow Hengstenberg’s sound pronunciation to be produced verbatim, as it is found in the third number of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung:
In the United States of America, the division between the slave-holding South and the slave-free North has progressed to formal and bitter civil war. Christian conviction has often taken it for granted that it must necessarily take sides with the North. At the Geneva meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, Dr. Kerr from America said that among the people of the great West the conviction had spread that it was a religious duty to take part in the present war, and expressed the hope that God would not permit the perpetuation of slavery. His view of the situation was adopted by a resolution of the assembly. The well-known American theologian Beecher, the brother of the woman who authored Uncle Tom’s Cabin, declared the present war to be a crusade, a holy war, that the trumpet of war should not rest until the last slave had been freed, that it was sad to shed brotherly blood, but that the continuance of slavery was even more atrocious. We cannot agree with this view of the situation, but are rather convinced that in the slavery question, no less than in Romans 13, a significant and alarming alteration of Christian views has taken place among Christians of English-speaking tongue, a transposition of these views with principles that sprang from a completely different soil, and that the American War is a sad consequence of this transposition and a judgment on the same.
Restless agitation against slavery, incitement of the slaves to disobedience, promotion of their escape, violent measures for their liberation, blowing the trumpet of a holy war to bring it about, a war in which a Methodist preacher has gained the fame of being able to cut off heads with one blow better than all the others, all this has Holy Scripture and also history, the practice of the entire older Christian church, against it. It has its ultimate purpose in a view that has sprung from completely un-Christian circles, which dreams of a common human dignity, because it ignores the Fall and the ghastly devastation caused by it in its manifold gradations down to animal dullness and stupidity; which ignores the mysterious counsel of God after on the Fall, whereby, as Agobard says, “He exalts some by all kinds of distinctions, and subjects others to the yoke of slavery;” which, in the psychological superficiality peculiar to the natural man, lumps all men together and fails to recognize that the relationship of rulers and servants has its basis in the peculiarities of peoples; which overestimates the importance of external freedom, because it has not itself become partaker of the great good of internal freedom and does not know how to appreciate it, and falls under the judgment of the apostle: “they promise them liberty, while they themselves are servants of destruction;” which, finally, does not know the eternal possessions and the existence hereafter, and therefore attaches an excessive importance to the goods of this world, and has lost all sense of the understanding of the apostle’s word: “Art thou called being a servant? care not for it.” [1 Cor. 7:21]
Already by an event in the earliest days, Gen. 9:25-27, we are instructed to raise our eyes above human arbitrariness and injustice in the matter of slavery and to direct them to divine fate, to God’s well-deserved judgments, which, if one does not violently evade them, but humbly submits to them and uses them for the purpose for which they are sent, are always at the same time means of salvation. We must enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations. Slavery, too, is a gateway to the same, and all that matters is to open this gateway, and grace will break out from behind the judgment.
In the New Testament, slavery is placed under the fourth commandment, no less than the relationship of wives to husbands and children to parents, Eph. 5, 21-23, 6, 1-4, 5 ff. Col. 3. The relationship can therefore not be an immoral one in itself, as is now preached. Otherwise Holy Scripture would not have recognized it as a divine order. Slaves are instructed to see behind the earthly lords another Lord who has imposed such a status on them and to serve this Lord willingly and joyfully in the earthly lords, however much the earthly lords may make it difficult for them to see in their rule a manifestation of His. As Paul says in Col. 3:22-25, “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.” And as proof that even within the church the relationship of master and slave is not a purely inadmissible one, the same apostle says in 1 Tim. 6:2: “And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.” Peter exhorts: “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” (1 Peter 2:18-19)
How far one has departed from the foundation of the Holy Scriptures in America is particularly clear if one compares the practice common there with the procedure of the apostle Paul in this question. The slave Onesimus ran away from his master and found the gospel as a freedman. Paul, who brought it to him, does not leave him in the state of freedom in which he found him, which he could have taken for granted, but sends him back to his master Philemon, inwardly reborn, and only asks that he lovingly accept him again and treat him as a brother in Christ. If Philemon wants to do more than the apostle says, then he should follow the course of his heart, but the general Christian duty is only what the apostle expressly demands of him.
Holy Scripture knows no other way to remove the ungodly nature of slavery than the inward one, that of teaching the masters that they have a Lord in heaven and filling their hearts with humility and love. And this way has proved more effective than any other. “In the Christian Church,” says Chrysostom, “there is no slavery in the old sense of the word; it is only in name among the Lord’s disciples; the thing has ceased.” Where this path does not lead to the goal, Scripture leaves the relationship in place, because any forcible change in it can only make matters worse.
“Before the slaves were on a higher level of moral education,” says Möhler,1 “any external liberation could only have a corrupting effect, and certainly if Christianity had preached the liberation of the slaves as such, and had succeeded in enforcing it without first loosening the inner bonds, it would have brought about a desolation similar to that which would have resulted if hell itself had sent forth all its inhabitants at once and given them a free hand on earth; in the general destruction caused by Christianity it would itself have found its downfall.” Whoever wants to see vividly what will become of the hastily emancipated slaves, especially the lowest of all, the Negro slaves, who can hardly be compared with the slaves of the old world, should read the descriptions which Count Goertz has sketched in his fascinating and instructive Journey Around the World2 on the basis of his own observations in Haiti.
If we turn from Holy Scripture to history, we will also find there a striking contrast to the restless activity of the abolitionists in North America, which has finally made the saying true: whoever strikes the nose hard, forces blood out. The Council of Gangra pronounces a ban on anyone who, under religious pretext, teaches slaves to despise their masters, to leave their service, and not to serve with benevolence and all reverence. The Council of Chalcedon forbids the monasteries to accept slaves who have not received permission from their masters, and threatens them with excommunication, lest the name of God be dishonored, i.e., lest Christianity be accused of causing disobedience. With reference to the Middle Ages, Möhler says: “The Christian spirit created for itself the form that corresponded to it, and threw off the foreign one without revolution, indeed without any external and compelling law; for such a law was only applied here and there against the last remnants of slavery.”
Shall the great work, which was begun in the Christian Church in spirit and carried on for many centuries, be completed in the flesh? Do we want to ignore the word: the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds? (2 Cor. 10:4) We do not fail to recognize that in the southern slave states there is damage which must deeply grieve the heart of the Christian philanthropist. But one should not have been driven by such distress to ranting and raving, which can only bring about greater evils, but to redoubled zeal in the preaching of the Gospel in general, and especially of the truths which it preaches in view of slavery, that all men, masters and slaves, have one Lord, Creator and Redeemer, with whom no respect of person is valid, who does not know the rich more than the lowly, because they are all the work of his hands, who is a judge of all harshness and injustice of the rulers against the servants, who loves all with equal love, before whom there is no slave and no free, Gal. 3, 28. Philm. 16, who has wrapped the holy bond of love around all. The preaching of the gospel is the only means by which the serious wounds of these conditions can be healed. Where this remedy does not work, one must, even if with a bleeding heart, leave the matter to God for the time being and wait until His hour comes, and in the meantime work all the more earnestly for the removal of the intolerable conditions in one’s own heart, one’s own home and one’s immediate surroundings, which, of course, is more difficult than to get worked up over the removal of slavery in the Southern States and to agitate for it in the Northern States.
As Dr. von Harleß aptly says, “The gospel does not abrogate the outward consequences and punishments for sin, so that it only then looks to see whether anything good can still be made out of the now unfettered perverse heart; yes, even to the Christian who is a slave it does not say: break your chains, but it breaks the chains by taking away the hardness of the masters in the fear of a higher Lord, by erasing the reluctance of the servant in the willing obedience to Him who is Master of masters and of slaves.”3 We have good reason to wait and hope that the gospel will accomplish its work, albeit slowly, if only it is preached faithfully and diligently and not–to the gravest accountability before God for the agitators–made ineffective for the poor slaves and for their masters by a false admixture, a bad leaven of ranting and raving. It has worked wonders in this very area and has shown itself to be a force from on high. Wherever Christianity has penetrated, slavery has not been able to assert itself; it has been abolished in substance and gradually also in form, to the same extent that the slaves have proved themselves capable and worthy of freedom.
As we read in a report on the Geneva meeting of the Evangelical Confederation; The brethren from North America were deeply bowed by the grave misfortune affecting their fatherland, and more deeply still by the vivid and undoubted consciousness that this misfortune was only too much their own fault and nothing other than a judgment of God upon their people’s arrogance, greed for gold, and materialism. Such an approach, which led to the observation of a Day of Repentance and Prayer in North America on September 26th of last year, is certainly a very heartening one, an encouragement for us to the same humility. We should be mindful of the earnest word in Luke 13, 3. But besides the more distant causes, we should not have forgotten the proximate ones. It seems, however, that the “earnest insistence on the release of the Negroes in the slave states” was only counted as a merit and that there was no realization that there could be fault here as well.
The following appeared in Lehre und Wehre V. 20 (1874) p. 150.
The “Declaration of Independence”. Just now we have read the following judgment about the same, that is to say, about the expressed introductory principles therein, in a local political newspaper, proficiently edited by an unbeliever in his own way: “The statement of the Declaration of Independence, according to which ‘all men are created free and equal’ (as indeed the entire theory of the American Declaration of Independence), stems out of Rousseau’s so-called social contract theory, or actually out of the natural-right doctrine of the old Roman lawyers, and, in the vein of his usual outlook, is mindless nonsense. Men are not born in the state of freedom, but in that of greatest helplessness and dependency; and from the beginning of their lives—whether we consider the individual or the race—we do not find equality, but inequality.” So writes Judge Stallo in Cincinnati. We see from this, even the light of bare reason leads to this knowledge, when one simply follows it, which unfortunately the idolaters of reason usually do least of all.
Lehre und Wehre, Vol. 12, October 1866, pp. 297-308
(Note: This position was presented at a preacher conference held in Chester, Illinois. The following article is the substance of this presentation.)
The history of entire peoples, as well as of individual people, teaches that a man who does not find his highest good in God seeks it in himself and in the visible world, and that whoever does not recognize heaven as his true homeland makes this pitiful earth his homeland. “Away with the afterlife, if only we have a happy life here!”— that is the watchword of unbelief, which has reached its apex in materialism. While the man who is sunken in coarse sensuality lives by the popular saying: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” likewise the cultivated and imaginative man endowed with higher intellectual gifts makes himself an ideal of earthly bliss, whether he stops at bare ideas or attempts to bring these ideas into actual life. Whoever does not know the true freedom won by Christ regards political and civil freedom as the highest goal of human endeavors and happiness. Thus unbelief in its various forms has become the fruitful ground out of which the strangest theories of human freedom, human equality, human happiness, and inalienable human rights have come forth.
According to some strange dreams of the heathen philosopher Plato of an ideal state life, and according to some sporadic doctrines and efforts partly of individual persons and partly of individual sects in the early Christian centuries, it was especially reserved for the eighteenth century to systematically develop the ideas of inherent freedom and equality of men and of inalienable human rights, and not only that, but also to bring them practically into political and social life. It was the Englishmen Thomas Hobbes and John Locke with some like-minded men who propagated and sought to establish the theory of an inherent freedom and equality, and the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau transplanted them to the European continent. This doctrine of Rousseau spread itself across the entire civilized world with unbelievable speed; no wonder, because it found the minds there well prepared for it; even men like Kaiser Joseph II set themselves at this man’s feet. One fruit of this doctrine was the French Revolution, after it already had had its forerunner a few decades before in the American Revolution. That the American Revolution is a child of this doctrine, is proven by the Declaration of Independence of 1776, at the beginning of which the following sentences stand:
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 to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
In France by the proposal of Lafayette who had returned from America and had been an enthusiast for the Revolution that was just completed there, the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen[1] was raised up as a decree and incorporated into the Constitution of 1791. These ideas, after they had made way for the political revolutions of the old and new world, also finally began as an unavoidable consequence to exert their influence on social life in the socialism and communism of recent times. We confine ourselves here to the political sphere and will attempt to show how the theory of the inherent inalienable human rights contradicts the word of God and is damned by the same.
We are not afraid to receive the objection that we, as theologians are involving ourselves in political matters. Were that which we are here dealing with only a political question, then we wouldn’t say a word about it. But it is not precisely that. These days politics is all too often misused in order to spread manifestly irreligious, immoral, and above all revolutionary ideas. Then because some take up these ideas in politics, the theologians are compelled to step up against this politics. Or may we be silent when one brings manifest errors among the people in the name of politics? It is our holy duty to bear earnest witness against it so that the ignorant may be instructed and the wavering made firm. Where sin is found, the office of the theologian is also found; where sin stops, there this office also stops. When sin impudently raises its head in the realm of politics, it is the duty of the theologian to stand against it. Of course we cannot put an end to the seed of corruption, but the greater the danger becomes, all the more earnestly must we testify against it, and not just we theologians, but all Christians in general. Christians should be a light of the world because they testify to the truth; but if the Christians cease to testify to the truth against error, how can the world be enlightened? If this witness ceases, then the world can no longer remain preserved against this rot and decay. Without this witness a people will come to ruin. It depends on the right conduct of the theologians whether the blessing of God prevails in a land. If they are silent, then the weeds will gain so much ground in the field of the church that it will not be that the ideas of unbelief are swallowed up by those of Christianity, but those of Christianity by unbelief.
If we stick with our adopted fatherland, then we cannot deny that the ideas of inalienable human rights, of the inherent equality and freedom of all men have deeply permeated the spirit of the American people and bear their wicked fruits in a characteristic arrogance, in an overweening self-opinion, and a tendency to disobedience and license not merely in the adults, but also already in the youth. They also threaten the Lutheran Christians who have made this country their homeland with peculiar temptations, because the political newspapers— with hardly any exception— are the heralds of these ideas and carry them into their homes and hearts. Preachers of the gospel must not only be armed against this for themselves, so that they are not carried away by this Zeitgeist, but they also have the necessity to instruct those entrusted to them about it.
Now before we come to the matter itself we want to give notice that when we, according to the word of God, deny man these inherent inalienable human rights, we do not mean the rights of the soul and of the conscience, the right to do right, to avoid sin, and to serve God; these are undeniably given by God to man as a rational creature intended for eternal life; man can neither surrender nor allow these to be taken from himself. We also do not mean the rights which a man acquires as soon as he enters into an ordered organic political relationship, but we speak only of political and civil rights which we maintain are neither inherent nor inalienable. As Lutheran Christians, our concern may be less about investigating how those ideas comport with sound reason, and much more about becoming acutely aware of how they militate against the divine word.
1. The first reason why the doctrine of inalienable human rights of inherent equality and freedom of all men must be rejected is that it contradicts the teaching of Holy Scripture about the Fall and original sin and denies it, as if there were no difference between man before and after the Fall or as if there were no Fall. Such inequality as now exists among men, would, however, not have existed before the Fall. Other than the distinction between man and wife, parents and children, such equality would have prevailed that knew no rich and poor, no lords and servants. Love, that diamond in the crown of the image of God, which man originally bore on his head, would not have allowed that others be set back and to exalt itself over them. None had desired more for himself than he needed, and no one would have begrudged him this. There was the most perfect commonwealth, because the most perfect love animated man. It would have occurred to no one to gather riches, everyone would have had enough.
But after the fall it is different. The image of God consisting in holiness and righteousness is not only entirely lost, but also the natural, spiritual and physical powers of man are weakened, corrupted, and brought into disorder, but in different levels and degrees all the way down to bodily deformity and idiocy. Indeed the fall has made all men alike in sin and death, but it is also the reason for which the devil has attained power over men, to harm him under God’s permission in the greatest variety of ways and in the most diverse degrees in soul and body, whereby fallen men naturally became highly different among themselves in strength, health, property and honor. As sin begins with birth, likewise this inequality also begins already at birth, and even if all men were equal at their entrance into the world, inequality would still become more and more apparent in the course of a man’s development. Suppose two persons of different bodily and intellectual abilities possessed each the same sum of money, the more capable would soon gain more with this sum than the less capable, one would become richer, the other poorer.
What a truly ridiculous undertaking is that of today’s humanitarians! If they wanted to establish even some level of equality among men, then they would need to be without sin and have body and soul, life and death, health and sickness, fortune and misfortune in their hands— they would have to be God himself. Who does not see what insanity this idea of equality is? Yea, one could hardly believe that there would be men who presume to propose and realize these ideas if God’s word did not tell us that God punishes those who transgress his commands with a confused heart. The Fall has ultimately brought about such a state among men that resembles a war of all against all. The consequence of the Fall is selfishness, out of which arises ambition, wrath, hatred, envy, lies, deception, greed, theft, robbery, murder, and the subjugation of the weak by the strong. For the correction of this evil, God instituted the government. This is so obvious that even the deist Hobbes could not deny it and from this realization deduced the necessity of the state, which he, of course, only based on a social contract, while Holy Scripture calls it an ordinance of God. Therefore Luther says: politia est necessarium remedium corruptae naturae, “government is a necessary remedy of corrupt nature.” But where there is government, there must also be a reduction of individual freedom and a diversity of status. Where is the inherent freedom and equality of all men here? It was lost through the fall. To insist on it anyway is to deny the Fall and original sin. All humanitarians do this at least indirectly, and when Christians let themselves be fooled into agreeing with them, they are obviously pulling a foreign yoke with the unbelievers.
2. The theory of human rights also militates against the teaching of Holy Scripture concerning the providence of God. On the basis of the fall, Holy Scripture teaches that God appoints different stations to people in social life according to his unsearchable wisdom, justice, and free power partly passively, partly actively, through bodily birth, through different distribution of intellectual gifts and bodily goods, through the linking of countless external circumstances, and although the wickedness of other men is often the proximate cause for one being poor the other rich, one despised the other in high honor, God nevertheless avails himself of the very same as his instruments to carry about the counsel of His providence. If God let his strict justice alone reign, we would of course be equally naked, equally miserable, equally poor, the sentence of death would already be executed for us all in the womb— yea, the entire world, which was originally created for the service of man, would be destroyed and turned into nothing; but according to his mercy and patience and in view of the reconciliation of the world through Christ, God upholds and preserves this world with its population, until the last man who will be saved is born, and he distributes his gifts variously, in order to make known that he is the Lord who owes no one anything— yea, this various distribution of his goods he uses partly as a means through goodness and earnestness to provoke fallen men to repentance and partly as a means of instruction whereby he is wont to exercise his chosen children in faith and in love; for if all had the same fullness of heart, how could faith in God’s fatherly care, how could patience, how could love, which applies itself to the need of the neighbor as its own, be exercised?
An image of the inequality of men is found in the entire visible nature of things, which would lose all charm and beauty if it were nothing but a vast plain without mountain or valley. And to show that this view is no mere human thought, we will point to the following places in Holy Scripture: “For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor,” writes Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4:14; in which he describes the wonderful governance of God. “The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all” (Proverbs 22:2). “He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:51, 52). “He hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).
What do the enlightened humanitarians do with their theory of equality? They dare to meddle in God’s governance and to censure him for making everything unequal. They level the world to an inhospitable wasteland. They are far too blind to see God’s counsels in the fates of men. They want to cast God from his throne and set themselves in his place.
3. Further it militates against the fourth, sixth, and seventh commandments, which have established diversity of rank and distinction of property. If the Ten Commandments are nothing other than a summary of the law that was originally written on man’s heart, then it follows that according to the fourth and sixth commandments, even in the state of innocence, despite general equality, a distinction between parents and children, man and wife, would have existed even if we admit that this distinction has received a peculiar character through the Fall. Seemingly bodily life is vindicated as an inalienable right to man by the fifth commandment, but even if it is also true that with the fifth commandment God has protected life from harm by other men as well as from suicide, it is still not to be considered an inalienable possession since through the command of love, which is derived from the fifth commandment, man is obligated to offer up his life in service to his neighbor or his government, or insofar as God has given the punishment of death to evildoers. The execution of a murderer would be a murder and unlawful if a man had an inalienable right to life.
With regards to the seventh commandment, God has expressly sanctioned the right to property and with it the inequality of property. Johannes Brenz writes in his catechism:
This commandment: thou shalt not steal, shows us clearly that a difference in possessions and property rights among men is a Godly ordinance. For there would hardly be room for theft if, by God’s ordinance, everything were possessed in common.
The humanitarians by contrast declare all distinction of pof property to be theft, as they cannot do otherwise, driven by their terrible logic. The most extreme practical consequence comes to light in communism, and if this theory has usually confined itself to the political sphere, as in the origins of the United States, then it has only been a felicitous inconsistency.
4. It further strives against the teaching of Holy Scripture concerning the divine ordering of government. Without going deeper into the derivation of government from the fourth commandment, in which it of course has its root and foundation, it will suffice to recall the passage in Romans 13 in which the government is expressly called an ordinance of God. The apostle Peter appears to contradict this when he calls government an ordinance of man in 1 Peter 2:13; but far from conceding to the humanitarians and declaring government to be a pure human invention or a social contract, he merely wishes to say four things thereby:
that men are commonly the tools whereby governments are set in order,
that it is men who rule in the governmental office,
that governments are set in order for the benefit of men and
that they are occupied with purely human things which serve the preservation of the earthly life of men, and not with spiritual things concerning the kingdom of God.
Reason left to itself can and must of course come to the conclusion that governmental order is necessary among men; but when it bases the government solely on a social contract and not on a divine foundation, we should not be surprised that it speaks in the manner and extent to which it understands. Luther speaks very pertinently about this in the following way:
This passage, therefore, solves the problem that engaged the attention of Plato and all the sages. They come to the conclusion that it is impossible to carry on government without injustice. Their reason for this is that among themselves human beings are of the same rank and station. Why does the emperor rule in the world? Why do others obey him, when he is a human being just like the others, no better, no braver, and no more permanent? He is subject to all human circumstances, just as others are. Hence it seems to be despotism when he usurps the rule over men, even though he is like other men. For if he is like other men, it is the height of wrong and injustice for him not to want to be like others but to place himself at the head of others through despotism. This is how reason argues. It is incapable of coming up with a counterargument. But we who have the word are aware that the counterargument must be the command of God, who regulates and establishes affairs in this manner. Hence it is our duty to obey the divine regulation and to submit to it. Otherwise, in addition to the rest of our sins, we shall become guilty of disobeying God’s will, [which is, as we can see so beneficial to this life of ours]. (Commentary to Genesis 9[:6] [AE vol. 2 p. 142])
From this, the question is easily answered, what is to be thought of the now so highly exalted sovereignty of the people. Even if it is rational, it is not biblical. If it is the case, as we have shown in the above, that there is nothing to the inherent freedom and equality, then there is also nothing to the inherent sovereignty of the people, according to which all power [Gewalt] is supposed to lie in the hands of the people. Holy Scripture knows nothing of this. It declares no existing form of government to be the exclusively right and godly one; on the contrary, it requires the submission of a Christian to any existing form of government. It is a recognized axiom: the gospel does not abolish governments, but affirms them. There can only be talk of a sovereignty of the people, where either there is as yet no government at all or where it is sanctioned by a special state law as in pure republican states. But where there is a non-republican constitution of state, there the people have either never had sovereignty or have entirely or partially lost it, and cannot seize it again without militating against God’s ordinance. To rebel against existing governments, to do away with them and make new ones under the pretext of the sovereignty of the people, is nothing other than a revolt condemned by the word of God.
5. The theory of inalienable human rights further strives against the teaching of Holy Scripture concerning bondservanthood [Leibeigenschaft]. Even if the entire present cultured world should shudder and tremble with utmost horror at the name of bondservanthood, or slavery as it is called here, the fundamental law stands nevertheless firm for Christians: what Holy Scripture does not call a sin, that must not be called a sin by them, even if the entire world called it so. The Apostles who were inspired by the Holy Ghost never made it a sin for Christians to possess servants or slaves, although they admonish them to treat them in a Christian manner, and furthermore, they never permit the servants or slaves to emancipate themselves by their own power, but admonish them, if they are Christians, to remain in their unfree condition, to show obedience and patience, and thereby to adorn the gospel.
If there were really inalienable human rights, and if political and civil freedom were among them, then it would be robbery to possess slaves, and every slave would have the right and the duty to assert his rights and to emancipate himself. But where is there anything of the sort in Holy Scripture? Abolitionism, the child of that doctrine of the rights of man, must of necessity strike out at the face of Holy Scripture, as it does in its fanatical representatives and dares to throw away Holy Scripture merely on the basis that it does not stand on its side, or it seizes upon hypocritical ways to twist the places in scripture that deal with slavery and declares that when scripture teaches differently than it imagines, it is permitted to ignore it. Proof enough what spirit’s child abolitionism is.
6. It is the aping and disfiguring of the evangelical teaching of freedom and equality in Christ. Whence the manifest unbelievers, deists, and materialists may have borrowed their ideas of freedom and equality, whether from biblical reminiscences or from Plato, or from their own mind, we are little interested to discover; but it is a fact that many who confess the Christian name have taken up these ideas for themselves, in the delusion of finding harmony between them and the teaching of the gospel regarding freedom and equality in Christ. It is known that in the year 1525 the peasants in Thuringia demanded freedom from serfdom [Leibeigenschaft], supposedly because they had been made free through Christ, and the puritanical zealots [Schwärmer] in the Old and New World repeat this abolitionist reference to Christian freedom to the point of disgust; even Germany’s well-known Lutheran theologians know of no more striking reason to oppose American slavery than Christian freedom. Such an uncouth mistaking of Christian and civil freedom would be inexplicable if we did not know that the natural man does not accept what is of the spirit of God. Just as the Jews made the kingdom of their messiah into a worldly kingdom from which they expected nothing other than bodily relief from the yoke of the Romans, these enthusiasts [Schwärmer] likewise drag the evangelical freedom and equality in Christ down into earthly political things and show that they have no idea of the spirituality and splendor of the kingdom of Christ.
It is a precious, comforting truth that whomsoever the son makes free, is free indeed [John 8:36] and that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female [Gal. 3:28]; but this freedom and equality in Christ in no way implies an equally free position in civil and political life, just as the poverty of the latter in no way removes or diminishes the former. The freest man in the world, if he is no Christian, is the most miserable slave to himself and to sin, to say nothing of the devil, and the least free slave, if he believes in Christ, is a freedman of the Lord and possesses a freedom which infinitely outshines all civil freedom and bondage. Luther expresses this very beautifully:
Christians are all alike in Christ. Before the world inequality must remain, that the father is more than the son, the lord more than the servant, that the king and prince are more than their subjects. God will have it so, who has prescribed and ordered the estates in this way. Whosoever would make equality here, that the servant should be worth as much as his master, he will set up a very praiseworthy rule, as was seen under the riotous peasants. Even if things in the world were as unequal as they possibly could be, we should nevertheless take comfort that, however high or low our estate is, that we all together have one Christ, one baptism, one gospel, one Spirit, that nobody has a better gospel, a better baptism, another Christ, than the lowest servant and the lowest maid. (Hauspostil for the Sunday of Septuagesima)
And to the rebellious peasants claiming Christian freedom, he replies:
There should be no serfs [Leibeignen] because Christ has made all free? What is this? That would be to make Christian freedom entirely carnal. Did not Abraham and other Patriarchs and Prophets also have bondservants [Leibeignen]? Read St. Paul, what he teaches about the servants [Knechten], who were all bondservants [Leibeigne] at that time. Therefore this article is directly against the Gospel and it is robbery, that everyone takes away his body, which has become property, away from his master. A bondman can very well be a Christian and have Christian freedom, just as a prisoner or sick person is a Christian, and yet is not free. This article would make all men free, and make a worldly external kingdom out of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, which is impossible. For a worldly kingdom cannot exist unless there is inequality in persons, that some are free, some imprisoned, some are masters, and some are subjects. (Refutation of the 12 Articles of the Peasantry)
From this last piece it is as clear as daylight how unjust and absurd is the accusation by the Romanists and by some Romanizing Protestants, which even Leo in his textbook of universal history gives, that the development of revolutionary civil rights theories has been the entirely necessary and inevitable consequence of the Reformation. Nobody has taught to respect the estate of government higher than Luther himself. The cause of revolutionary theories and movements is to be sought not in the Reformation, but in the apostasy from it.
7. It is the offspring of unbelief and of human reason tearing itself away from God’s word. It will suffice to point to the biographies of those who invented, developed, defended, and disseminated this theory. To say nothing of the worldly-wise philosopher Plato, who is to be regarded as the forefather of this theory, although he wanted rather to give a fantasy painting of the state rather than an seriously intended doctrine of state, but just with this he proved how far human reason left to itself can go; but it was especially the deists, atheists, and materialists of the last three centuries, who have hatched this basilisk egg and raised the spawn to maturity. The English deist Thomas Hobbes, who died in 1679, who declared the gospel of Christ to be an oriental fantasy and a mere tool of politics was the one who, in his famous Leviathan, laid down the statement out of which he deduced the origin of the state: Nature gave everything to everyone. From this principle— already in itself false— he reasoned further: there are two undeniable postulates of human nature, one is natural greed according to which everyone seeks to make his own that which is for all in common, the other is natural reason, according to which everyone seeks to avoid a violent death as the greatest evil of nature. Thus the original state of men is a war of all against all. In order to end this war, the head of the state exists, whose will must be held to be the will of the men themselves on account of the contract of several men so that the powers and abilities of individuals may be used for peace and common defense. It is remarkable that Hobbes was a defender of absolute monarchy and also wanted to have the church subject to the will of the head of state.
John Locke, who died in 1704, the author of the piece: The Reasonableness of Christianity, with which he paved the way for deism, was the one who, in his Two Treatises on Government which appeared in 1690, laid down the statement: all power has its source in the people; but by the people he understood the individuals in their atomistic state as a numerical mass. It has been said, not without reason, that the Koran has not spread greater misfortune over the earth than this work of Locke’s. Anthony Collins, who died in 1729, the English Freethinker, who was occupied with refuting the proof of the truth of the Christian religion from the prophecies, was Locke’s friend and successor in his theory of the state.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, who died in 1778, the nature-idolizing hater of all positive religion, who praised himself happily at his end, that he was aware of no sin, was the one who in his writing: The Social Contract, which first appeared in 1772, further developed Locke’s lie, and became the father of modern humanitarianism and thus giving life to a host of theories of human dignity, human rights, human freedom, human equality, human brotherhood, and human happiness.
We could enumerate a long list of such men; but it suffices to say that the very fact that it has become the creed and watchword of all contemporary unbelievers of all shades and gradations, from rationalists down to materialists and atheists, must arouse the most serious prejudice against this doctrine of human rights. So closely are unbelief and this doctrine connected with each other. Proof enough of what esteem it deserves. Given a bad tree, the fruit will also be bad, says the Lord (Matt. 12:23).
8. Finally, this theory, when put into practice, is the fruitful mother of uprisings and revolutions, as is taught by the history of the English Revolution in the seventeenth century, of the American and French Revolutions of the eighteenth century and the German Revolution of 1848; for, that these upheavals were not mere outbreaks of the wrath of the people against an unbearable tyranny on the part of the aristocracy, but primarily fruits of the seed of revolutionary humanitarian ideas of revolution sown among the people, is easy to prove from the history of those times. In direct contradiction to its own promises of happiness, it destroys precisely the happiness of humanity. If the happiness and life of only one person or one family would suffer as a result of revolution, then the harm caused would already be disproportionately greater than the supposed advantage that it would bring, which is really just an empty fantasy; how much more so, when thousands and millions lose their property, happiness, and lives by it?
That great advantages for the land and especially for the later generations have grown up out of the American Revolution, cannot in itself justify the Revolution. God has not sanctioned the revolution thereby, but has only proven that according to his wonderful goodness and wisdom he can create something good out of something evil. And what bitter fruits the ever-growing unchristian ideas which lie at the root of the American Revolution are yet to bring forth according to God’s righteous judgment, perhaps only the future will teach.
