Religion

XVIII. GOD’S WAY WITH SLAVERY

Selection from Armstrong’s Christian Doctrine of Slavery

"Where God has appointed a work for his Church, he has generally appointed the way also in which that work is to be done. And where this is the case, the Church is as much bound to respect the one appointment as the other. . .

In the case of a race of men in slavery, the work which God has appointed his Church—as we learn it, both from the example and the precepts of inspired men—is to labor to secure in them a Christian life on earth and meetness for his heavenly kingdom. . .

In what way is this work to be done? We answer, By preaching the same Gospel of God’s grace alike to the master and the slave; and when there is credible evidence given that this Gospel has been received in faith, to admit them, master and slave, into the same Church—the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, in which ’there is neither bond nor free’—and to seat them at the same table of the Lord, that drinking of the same cup, and eating of the same loaf, they may witness to the world their communion in the body and blood of the same Savior. And having received them into the same Church, to teach them the duties belonging to their several ’callings’ out of the same Bible, and subject them to the discipline prescribed by the same law, the law of Christ. And this, the teaching of the Church, is to be addressed not to her members only, but to the world at large; and her discipline of her members is to be exercised not in secret, but before the world, that the light which God has given her may appear unto all men. This is just the way in which Christ and his Apostles dealt with slavery. The instructions they have given us in their life and in their writings prohibit any other.

In this way must the Church labor to make ’good masters and good slaves,’ just as she labors to make ’good husbands, good wives, good parents, good children, good rulers, good subjects’. With the ultimate effect of this upon the civil and political condition of the slave the Church has nothing directly to do. If the ultimate effect of it be the emancipation of the slave—we say— in God’s name, ’let it come.’ ’If it be of God, we cannot’—and we would not if we could—’overthrow it, lest haply we be found even to fight against God.’ If the ultimate effect be the perpetuation of slavery divested of its incidental evils—a slavery in which the master shall be required, by the laws of man as well as that of God, ’to give unto the slave that which is just and equal,’ and the slave to render to the master a cheerful obedience and hearty service—we say, let slavery continue. It may be, that such a slavery, regulating the relations of capital and labor, though implying some deprivation of personal liberty, will prove a better defense of the poor against the oppression of the rich, than the too great freedom in which capital is placed in many of the free States of Europe at the present day. . .

To this way of dealing with slavery, thus clearly pointed out in God’s word, does God in his providence ’shut us up,’ for years to come. None but the sciolist in political philosophy can regard the problem of emancipation—even granting that this were the aim which the Christian citizen should have immediately in view—as a problem of easy solution. . .

Is slavery to continue? We want the best of Christian masters and the best of Christian slaves, that it may prove a blessing to both the one and the other. Is ultimate emancipation before us? We want the best of Christian masters to devise and carry out the scheme by which it shall be effected, and the best of Christian slaves, that their emancipation may be an enfranchisement indeed. And this is just what the Bible plan of dealing with slavery aims at. The future may be hidden from view in ’the clouds and darkness’ with which God oft veils his purposes; but there is light—heaven’s light—upon the present. And it is with the present alone we have immediately to do."

Text—Armstrong: The Christian Doctrine of Slavery, pp. 131–136.