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Slavery Ordained of God

R >> Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D. >> Slavery Ordained of God




The Chinese must come. God will bring them. He will fulfil Benton's noble
thought. The railroad must complete the voyage of Columbus. The statue of
the Genoese, on some peak of the Rocky Mountains, high above the flying
cars, must point to the West, saying, "There is the East! There is India
and Cathay."

Let us, then, North and South, bring our minds to comprehend _two ideas_,
and submit to their irresistible power. Let the Northern philanthropist
learn from the Bible that the relation of master and slave is not sin
_per se_. Let him learn that God nowhere says it is sin. Let him learn
that sin is the transgression of the law; and where there is no law,
there is no sin; and that _the golden rule_ may exist in the relations of
slavery. Let him learn that slavery is simply an evil _in certain
circumstances_. Let him learn that _equality_ is only the highest form of
social life; that _subjection_ to authority, even _slavery_, may, in
_given conditions_, be _for a time_ better than freedom to the slave, of
any complexion. Let him learn that _slavery_, like _all evils_, has its
_corresponding_ and _greater good_; that the Southern slave, though
degraded _compared with his master_, is _elevated_ and _ennobled compared
with his brethren in Africa_. Let the Northern man learn these things,
and be wise to cultivate the spirit that will harmonize with his brethren
of the South, who are lovers of liberty as truly as himself. And let the
Southern Christian--nay, the Southern man of every grade--comprehend that
_God never intended the relation of master and slave to be perpetual_.
Let him give up the theory of Voltaire, that the negro is of a different
species. Let him yield the semi-infidelity of Agassiz, that God created
different races of the same species--in swarms, like bees--for Asia,
Europe, America, Africa, and the islands of the sea. Let him believe that
slavery, although not a sin, is a degraded condition,--the evil, the
curse on the South,--yet having blessings in its time to the South and to
the Union. Let him know that slavery is to pass away, in the fulness of
Providence. Let the South believe this, and prepare to obey the hand that
moves their destiny.

Ham will be ever lower than Shem; Shem will be ever lower than Japheth.
All will rise in the Christian grandeur to be revealed. Ham will be lower
than Shem, because he was sent to Central Africa. Man south of the
Equator--in Asia, Australia, Oceanica, America, especially Africa--is
inferior to his Northern brother. The _blessing_ was upon Shem in his
magnificent Asia. The _greater blessing_ was upon Japheth in his
man-developing Europe. _Both blessings_ will be combined, in America,
_north of the Zone_, in commingled light and life. I see it all in the
first symbolical altar of Noah on that mound at the base of Ararat. The
father of all living men bows before the incense of sacrifice, streaming
up and mingling with the rays of the rising sun. His noble family, and all
flesh saved, are grouped round about him. There is Ham, at the foot of
the green hillock, standing, in his antediluvian, rakish recklessness,
near the long-necked giraffe, type of his _Africa_,--his magnificent wife,
seated on the grass, her little feet nestling in the tame lion's mane, her
long black hair flowing over crimson drapery and covered with gems from
mines before the flood. Higher up is Shem, leaning his arm over that
mouse-colored horse,--his _Arab_ steed. His wife, in pure white linen,
feeds the elephant, and plays with his lithe proboscis,--the mother of
Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and Christ. And yet she looks
up, and bows in mild humility, to _her_ of Japheth, seated amid plumed
birds, in robes like the sky. Her noble lord, meanwhile, high above all,
stands, with folded arms, following that eagle which wheels up towards
Ararat, displaying his breast glittering with stars and stripes of scarlet
and silver,--radiant heraldry, traced by the hand of God. Now he purifies
his eye in the sun, and now he spreads his broad wings in symbolic flight
to the _West_, until lost to the prophetic eye of Japheth, under the bow
of splendors set that day in the cloud. God's covenant with man,--oh, may
the bow of covenant between us be here to-day, that the waters of _this
flood_ shall never again threaten our beloved land!




Speech Delivered in the General Assembly
New York, 1856.



The circumstances, under which this speech was delivered, are sufficiently
shown in the statement below.

It was not a hasty production. After being spoken, it was prepared for the
"Journal of Commerce," with the greatest care I could give to it: most of
it was written again and again. Unlike Pascal, who said, as to his longest
and inferior sixteenth letter, that he had not had time to make it
shorter, I had time; and I did condense in that one speech the matured
reflections of my whole life. I am calmly satisfied I am right. I am sure
God has said, and does say, "Well done."

The speech brings to view a wide range of thought, all belonging to the
subject of slavery, of immense importance. As introductory,--there is the
question of the abolition agitation the last thirty years; then, what is
right and wrong, and the foundation of moral obligation; then, the
definition of sin; next, the origin of human government, and the
relations, in which God has placed men under his rule of subjection;
finally, the word of God is brought to sustain all the positions taken.

The challenge to argue the question of slavery from the Bible was thrown
down on the floor of the Assembly, as stated. Presently I took up the
gauntlet, and made this argument. The challenger never claimed his glove,
then nor since; nor has anybody, so far as I know, attempted to refute
this speech. Nothing has come to my ears (save as to two points, to be
noticed hereafter) but reckless, bold denial of God's truth, infidel
affirmation without attempt at proof, and denunciations of myself.

_Dr. Wisner_ having said that he would argue the question on the Bible at
a following time, Dr. Ross rose, when he took his seat, and, taking his
position on the platform near the Moderator's chair, said,--

"I accept the challenge given by Dr. Wisner, to argue the question of
slavery from the Scriptures."

_Dr. Wisner_.--Does the brother propose to go into it here?

_Dr. Ross_.--Yes, sir.

_Dr. Wisner_.--Well, I did not propose to go into it here.

_Dr. Ross_.--You gave the challenge, and I accept it.

_Dr. Wisner_.--I said I would argue it at a proper time; but it is no
matter. Go ahead.

_Dr. Beman_ hoped the discussion would be ruled out. He did not think it a
legitimate subject to go into,--Moses and the prophets, Christ and his
apostles, and all intermediate authorities, on the subject of what the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America had done.

_Judge Jessup_ considered the question had been opened by this report of
the majority: after which _Dr. Beman_ withdrew his objection, and _Dr.
Ross_ proceeded.

I am not a slave-holder. Nay, I have shown some self-denial in that
matter. I emancipated slaves whose money-value would now be $40,000. In
the providence of God, my riches have entirely passed from me. I do not
mean that, like the widow, I gave all the living I had. My estate was then
greater than that slave-property. I merely wish to show I have no selfish
motive in giving, as I shall, the true Southern defence of slavery.
(Applause.) I speak from Huntsville, Alabama, my present home. That gem of
the South, that beautiful city where the mountain softens into the
vale,--where the water gushes, a great fountain, from the rock,--where
around that living stream there are streets of roses, and houses of
intelligence and gracefulness and gentlest hospitality,--and, withal,
where so high honor is ever given to the ministers of God.

Speaking then from that region where "_Cotton is king_," I affirm,
contrary as my opinion is to that most common in the South, that the
slavery agitation has accomplished and will do great good. I said so, to
ministerial and political friends, twenty-five years ago. I have always
favored the agitation,--just as I have always countenanced discussion
upon all subjects. I felt that the slavery question needed examination.
I believed it was not understood in its relations to the Bible and human
liberty. Sir, the light is spreading North and South. 'Tis said, I know,
this agitation has increased the severity of slavery. True, but for a
moment only, in the days of the years of the life of this noble problem.
Farmers tell us that deep ploughing in poor ground will, for a year or
two, give you a worse crop than before you went so deep; but that that
deep ploughing will turn up the under-soil, and sun and air and rain will
give you harvests increasingly rich. So, this moral soil, North and
South, was unproductive. It needed deep ploughing. For a time the harvest
was worse. Now it is becoming more and more abundant. The political
controversy, however fierce and threatening, is only for power. But the
moral agitation is for the harmony of the Northern and Southern mind, in
the right interpretations of Scripture on this great subject, and, of
course, for the ultimate union of the hearts of all sensible people, to
fulfil God's intention,--to bless the white man and the black man in
America. I am sure of this. I take a wide view of the progress of the
destiny of this vast empire. I see God in America. I see him in the North
and in the South. I see him more honored in the South to-day than he was
twenty-five years ago; and that that higher regard is due, mainly, to the
agitation of the slavery question. Do you ask how? Why, sir, this is the
how. Twenty-five years ago the religious mind of the South was leavened
by wrong Northern training, on the great point of the right and wrong of
slavery. Meanwhile, powerful intellects in the South, following the mere
light of a healthy good sense, guided by the common grace of God, reached
the very truth of this great matter,--namely, that the relation of the
master and slave is not sin; and that, notwithstanding its admitted
evils, it is a connection between the highest and the lowest races of
man, revealing influences which may be, and will be, most benevolent for
the ultimate good of the master and the slave,--conservative on the
Union, by preserving the South from all forms of Northern fanaticism, and
thereby being a great balance-wheel in the working of the tremendous
machinery of our experiment of self-government. This seen result of
slavery was found to be in absolute harmony with the word of God. These
men, then, of highest grade of thought, who had turned in scorn from
Northern notions, now see, in the Bible, that these notions are false
and silly. They now read the Bible, never examined before, with growing
respect. God is honored, and his glory will be more and more in their
salvation. These are some of the moral consummations of this agitation in
the South. The development has been twofold in the North. On the one
hand, some anti-slavery men have left the light of the Bible, and
wandered into the darkness until they have reached the blackness of the
darkness of infidelity. Other some are following hard after, and are
throwing the Bible into the furnace,--are melting it into iron, and
forging it, and welding it, and twisting it, and grooving it into the
shape and significance and goodness and gospel of Sharpe's rifles. Sir,
are you not afraid that some of your once best men will soon have no
better Bible than that?

But, on the other hand, many of your brightest minds are looking intensely
at the subject, in the same light in which it is studied by the highest
Southern reason. Ay, sir, mother-England, old fogy as she is, begins to
open her eyes. What, then, is our gain? Sir, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in many of
its conceptions, could not have been written twenty-five years ago. That
book of genius,--over which I and hundreds in the world have freely
wept,--true in all its facts, false in all its impressions,--yea, as false
in the prejudice it creates to Southern social life as if Webster, the
murderer of Parkman, may be believed to be a personification of the
_elite_ of honor in Cambridge, Boston, and New England. Nevertheless,
Uncle Tom's Cabin could not have been written twenty-five years ago. Dr.
Nehemiah Adams's "_South-Side View_" could not have been written
twenty-five years ago. Nor Dr. Nathan Lord's "_Letter of Inquiry_." Nor
Miss Murray's book. Nor "_Cotton is King_". Nor Bledsoe's "_Liberty and
Slavery"_. These books, written in the midst of this agitation, are all of
high, some the highest, reach of talent and noblest piety; all give, with
increasing confidence, the present Southern Bible reading on Slavery. May
the agitation, then, go on! I know the New School Presbyterian church has
sustained some temporary injury. But God is honored in his word. The
reaction, when the first abolition-movement commenced, has been succeeded
by the sober second thought of the South. The sun, stayed, is again
travelling in the greatness of his strength, and will shine brighter and
brighter to the perfect day.

My only fear, Mr. Moderator, is that, as you Northern people are so prone
to go to extremes in your zeal and run every thing into the ground, you
may, perhaps, become _too pro-slavery;_ and that we may have to take
measures against your coveting, over much, our daughters, if not our
wives, our men-servants, our maid-servants, our houses, and our lands.
(Laughter.)

Sir, I come now to the Bible argument. I begin at the beginning of
eternity! (Laughter.) WHAT is RIGHT AND WRONG? _That's the question of
questions_.

Two theories have obtained in the world. The one is, that right and wrong
are eternal facts; that they exist _per se_ in the nature of things; that
they are ultimate truths above God; that he must study, and does study, to
know them, as really as man. And that he comprehends them more clearly
than man, only because he is a better student than man. Now, sir, _this
theory is atheism_. For if right and wrong are like mathematical
truths--fixed facts--then I may find them out, as I find out mathematical
truths, without instruction from God. I do not ask God to tell me that one
and one make two. I do not ask him to reveal to me the demonstrations of
Euclid. I thank him for the mind to perceive. But I perceive mathematical
relations without his telling me, because they exist independent of his
will. If, then, moral truths, if right and wrong, if rectitude and sin,
are, in like manner, fixed, eternal facts,--if they are out from and above
God, like mathematical entities,--then I may find them for myself. I may
condescend, perhaps, to regard the Bible as a hornbook, in which God, an
older student than I, tells _me_ how to _begin_ to learn what he had to
study; or I may decline to be taught, through the Bible, how to learn
right and wrong. I may think the Bible was good enough, may be, for the
Israelite in Egypt and in Canaan; good enough for the Christian in
Jerusalem and Antioch and Rome, but not good enough, even as a hornbook,
for me,--the man of the nineteenth century,--the man of Boston, New York,
and Brooklyn! Oh, no. I may think I need it not at all. What next? Why,
sir, if I may think I need not God to teach me moral truth, I may think I
need him not to teach me any thing. What next? The irresistible conclusion
is, I may think I can live without God; that Jehovah is a myth,--a name; I
may bid him stand aside, or die. Oh, sir, _I will be_ the fool to say
there is no God. This is the result of the notion that right and wrong
exist in the nature of things.

The other theory is, that right and wrong are results brought into being,
mere contingencies, means to good, made to exist solely by the will of
God, expressed through his word; or, when his will is not thus known, he
shows it in the human reason by which he rules the natural heart. This is
so; because God, in making all things, saw that in the relations he would
constitute between himself and intelligent creatures, and among
themselves, NATURAL GOOD AND EVIL would come to pass. In his benevolent
wisdom, he then _willed_ LAW, to control this _natural good and evil_. And
he thereby made _conformity_ to that law to be _right_, and
_non-conformity_ to be _wrong_. Why? Simply because he saw it to be good,
and made it to be right; not because _he saw it to be right_, but because
he _made it to be right_.

Hence, the ten specific commandments of the one moral law of love are just
ten rules which God made to regulate the natural good and evil which he
knew would be in the ten relations, which he himself constituted between
himself and man, and between man and his neighbor. The Bible settles the
question:--_sin is the transgression of the law, and where there is no law
there is no sin_.

I must-advance one step further. _What is sin_, as a mental state? Is
it some quality--some concentrated essence--some elementary moral
particle in the nature of things--something black, or red, like
crimson, in the constitution of the soul, or the soul and body as
amalgamated? No. Is it self-love? No. Is it selfishness? No. What is
it? Just exactly, _self-will._ Just that. I, the creature, WILL _not
submit_ to _thy_ WILL, God, the Creator. It is the I AM, _created_, who
dares to defy and dishonor the I AM, not created,--the Lord God, the
Almighty, Holy, Eternal.

_That_ IS SIN, _per se_. And that is all of it,--so help me God! Your
child there--John--says to his father, "I WILL _not to submit_ to your
will." "Why not, John?" And he answers and says, "Because I WILL _not_."
There, sir, John has revealed _all of sin_, on earth or in hell. Satan has
never said--can never say--more. "I, Satan, WILL NOT, because I WILL _not
to submit_ to thee, God; MY WILL, not thine, shall be."

This beautiful theory is the ray of light which leads us from night, and
twilight, and fog, and mist, and mystification, on this subject, to clear
day. I will illustrate it by the law which has controlled and now
regulates the most delicate of all the relations of life,--viz.: that of
the intercourse between the sexes. I take this, because it presents the
strongest apparent objections to my argument.

Cain and Abel married their sisters. Was it wrong in the nature of things?
[Here Dr. Wisner spoke out, and said, "Certainly."] I deny it. What an
absurdity, to suppose that God could not provide for the propagation of
the human race from one pair, without _requiring them to sin!_ Adam's sons
and daughters must have married, had they remained in innocence. They must
then have sinned in Eden, from the very necessity of the command upon the
race:--"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." (Gen. i. 28).
What pure nonsense! There, sir!--_that_, my one question, Dr. Wisner's
reply, and my rejoinder, bring out, perfectly, the two theories of right
and wrong. Sir, Abraham married his half-sister. And there is not a word
forbidding such marriage, until God gave the law (Lev. xviii.) prohibiting
marriage in certain degrees of consanguinity. That law made, then, such
marriage _sin_. But God gave no such law in the family of Adam; because he
made, himself, the marriage of brother and sister the way, and the only
way, for the increase of the human race. _He commanded them thus to marry.
They would have sinned had they not thus married_; for they would have
transgressed his law. Such marriage was not even a natural evil, in the
then family of man. But when, in the increase of numbers, it became a
natural evil, physical and social, God placed man on a higher platform for
the development of civilization, morals, and religion, and then made the
law regulating marriages in the particulars of blood. But he still left
polygamy untouched. [Here Dr. Wisner again asked if Dr. R. regarded the
Bible as sustaining the polygamy of the Old Testament.] Dr. R.--Yes, sir;
yes, sir; yes, sir. Let the reporters mark _that_ question, and my answer.
(Laughter.) My principle vindicates God from unintelligible abstractions.
I fearlessly tell what the Bible says. In its strength, I am not afraid of
earth or hell. I fear only God. God made no law against polygamy, in the
beginning. Therefore it was no sin for a man to have more wives than one.
God sanctioned it, and made laws in regard to it. Abraham had more wives
than one; Jacob had, David had, Solomon had. God told David, by the mouth
of Nathan, when he upbraided him with his ingratitude for the blessings
he had given him, and said, "And I gave thee thy master's house, and _thy
master's wives_ into thy bosom." (2 Sam. xvii. 8.)

God, in the gospel, places man on another platform, for the revelation of
a nobler social and spiritual life. He now forbids polygamy. _Polygamy now
is sin_--not because it is in itself sin. No; but because God forbids
it,--to restrain the natural and social evil, and to bring out a higher
humanity. And see, sir, how gently in the gospel the transition from the
lower to the higher table-land of our progress upward is made. Christ and
his apostles do not declare polygamy to be sin. The new law is so wisely
given that nothing existing is rudely disturbed. The minister of God,
unmarried, must have only one wife at the same time. This law, silently
and gradually, by inevitable and fair inference of its meaning, and from
the example of the apostles, passed over the Christian world. God, in the
gospel, places us in this higher and holier ground and air of love. We
sin, then, if we marry the sister, and other near of kin; and we sin if we
marry, at the same time, more wives than one, not because there is sin in
the thing itself, whatever of natural evil there might be, but because in
so doing we transgress God's law, given to secure and advance the good of
man. I might comment in the same way on every one of the ten commandments,
but I pass on.

The subject of slavery, in this view of _right and wrong_, is seen in the
very light of heaven. And you, Mr. Moderator, know that, if the view I
have presented be true, I have got you. (Great laughter.)

[The Moderator said, very pleasantly--Yes--_if_--but it is a _long if_.]
(Continued laughter.)

Dr. R. touched the Moderator on the shoulder, and said, Yes, _if_--it is a
_long if_; for it is this:--_if_ there is a God, he is not Jupiter, bowing
to the Fates, but God, the sovereign over the universe he has created, in
which he makes right, by making law to be known and obeyed by angels and
men, in their varied conditions.

He gave Adam _that_ command,--sublime in its simplicity, and intended to
vindicate the principle I am affirming,--that there is no right and wrong
in the nature of things. There was no right or wrong, _per se_, in eating
or willing to eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But God made the law,--_Thou shall not eat of that tree_. As if he had
said,--I seek to _test_ the submission of your will, freely, to my will.
And, that your test may be perfect, I will let your temptation be
nothing more than your natural desire for that fruit. Adam sinned. What
was the sin?

Adam said, in heart, MY WILL, _not thine_, SHALL BE. _That_ was the
sin,--_the simple transgression of God's law_, when there was neither sin
nor evil in the _thing_ which God forbade to be done.

Man fell and was cursed. The law of the control of the superior over the
inferior is now to begin, and is to go on in the depraved conditions of
the fallen and cursed race. And, FIRST, God said to the woman, "_Thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." There,_ in
that law, is _the beginning of government ordained of God. There_ is the
beginning of the rule of the superior over the inferior, bound to obey.
_There_, in the family of Adam, is the germ of the rule in the tribe,--the
state. Adam, in his right, from God, to rule over his wife and his
children, had _all the authority_ afterwards expanded in the patriarch and
the king. This simple, beautiful fact, there, on the first leaf of the
Bible, solves the problem, whence and how has man right to rule over man.
In that great fact God gives his denial to the idea that government over
man is the result of a social compact, in which each individual man living
in a state of natural liberty, yielded some of that liberty to secure the
greater good of government. Such a thing never was; such a thing never
could have been. _Government was ordained and established before the first
child was born:_--"HE SHALL RULE OVER THEE." Cain and Abel were born in a
_state_ as perfect as the empire of Britain or the rule of these United
States. All that Blackstone, and Paley, and Hobbs, or anybody else, says
about the social compact, is flatly and fully denied and upset by the
Bible, history, and common sense. Let any New York lawyer--or even a
Philadelphia lawyer--deny this if he dares. _Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness_ never were the _inalienable_ right of the
_individual_ man.

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