Authority
[From The Herald of
Freedom of Dec. 4, 1844; Miscellaneous Writings, 280]
It is high time this old
Incubus were in the sepulchre. It has long enough been the great bug-bear to
frighten the spirit of Reform - the giant scare-crow, looming by the road-side
of human advancement. And it has long enough flapped ir bat-looking in the eyes
of the anti-slavery movement. It has stood across our our path-way in every
Protean variety of alarming shape. It has towered before us in the form of
"Glorious Constitutions, and "Happy and inviolable Unions;" of
"Compromises," and "guarantees," and "Revolutionary
Fathers." The creatures of slavery, all of them, in all that makes them
important to the question. The people are getting accustomed to these rights, and can almost look these forms of authority
steadily in the face. But authority has showed itself in the more awful
apparition of the church,
with her dreadful array of Sabbaths and Sanctuaries and Sacraments and
Priesthood. With these she has reared herself up across our anti-slavery path,
and with hollow admonitions warned us to go back. Her Priesthood have had a
Book, now getting into the hands of the people under the requirements of the
age - out of which they read the warrant of man to enslave his brother, and
God's express command as well as permission for the damnable deed. The Book was
handed down from God out of a cloud, on some mountain top half hid in thunder -
to some of "the world's gray fathers" - and so far back in time, that
the age itself when it occurred, has become clothed with a kind of prescriptive
divinity. Religion pictures the awful tradition - even at this period of the
world - respecting the half-seen hand of the Almighty, as the hand of a man,
reaching down the terrible trust out of a black cloud, to the implicit and
awe-struck receiver, who is honored as the messenger of God to the trembling
race. With such pictures as this, does doctorated and learned divinity play
upon the apprehensions of the people, and mould their worship. The Book is at
length in the hands People - but not to be read. They may open it and perform
out of it their religious services - but it can be read by the priests
alone. For an ordained and learned
Priesthood are held necessary to the interpretation of the Book to the people,
and to their being instructed in its doctrines. The people can read - and the
Bible is amply in their hands. Yet it abates not at all the necessity of
interpreting Priesthood. Two-and-twenty thousand Clergy at least, are ordained
over this land, to open the Book, and declare to the staring people the
interpretation thereof. Set apart by - one another, they are, for the
expounding of the Scriptures, and the unveiling of so much of their mysteries,
as the eye of the age can bear and live. True, the mass of these interpreters
are at mortal odds with each other, and the Church, under their infallible
guidance, is wandering in hostile sects. But the Book is the standard, and the
infallible authority of God, and his revealed
will to man.
The priest reads out
of it that man may enslave and butcher his brother - and the Church receives
and inculcates his teachings - and the abolitionist or friend of peace who
gainsays the frightful inculcation, is silenced by being branded as an infidel
and fanatic.
I do not stop here to
vindicate the Bible from these imputations cast upon it by its worshipers. Nor
to vindicate myself from the charge of infidelity, for demanding the immediate
abolition of slavery, independently of authority, and in the face of authority,
it may be. I deny the
competency of Scripture, or of any other authority, to sanction slavery.
Without disputing with the worshippers of the Book, whether or not it sustains
these abominations, I demand their abolition in the name of suffering and
outraged humanity. If they meet me with a text, and say they got it from the
word of God - I reply, I cannot inquire where you got it. I, of course, might
say it could not be the
word of God, from its very nature - and that whatever Book contained it, was
not God's word. But I have a shorter, and I think, safer answer. It is, that my
demand is right, and your defence is false - self-evidently and palpably. I
cannot examine your text - for meanwhile humanity suffers in chains. My eye is
on its deliverance, and I cannot suffer it to be averted for a moment. It is
more important that humanity be disenthralled, than that the Book should be
vindicated - or its contents correctly ascertained. Abolish Slavery first, and
examine your book afterwards. If your Book, or its defenders, demur tot his, I
fear it is an enemy of human welfare. If it is friendly to liberty, it will not
make its own claims paramount. Its friends would say, save humanity first -
"how much more is a man, better than a" - book. I might quote
abundance of anti-slavery passages from every page of sacred authority - but I
will not do it now. I deny now that it is an authority, however Anti-Slavery and however true and
glorious its contents may be. To be useful, it must address itself to human
understanding - not as an authority to control the will, or move upon the
feelings - but to undergo inquiry and satisfy the understanding.
Is this right? May Anti-Slavery
take this absolute ground? Has the human mind the power of discerning the right
- and is there any such thing in human economy as right and wrong.? If there
be, then it must be discernible by us - and not only so, but plainly and
palpably discernible. The impartial eye cannot fail to discern it. And to be
impartial is our absolute duty. It must be our voluntary movement - made upon adequate reason. We are not at
liberty to ask God to do our work, or to work transmutation in us, in order
that we may become involuntarily willing to do it ourselves. The duty is ours - therefore the performance
of it must be. We are competent to do it - or it is not our duty. And to know
it also. And when we have done, it is done, and not till then. So long as we do
not do it, it remains undone - and perhaps we undone also.
But if you deny the authority of scripture, you are an infidel. Perhaps I
am, and perhaps I am not - but what then? What if I am? Is it an answer to my
truth, to make me out an infidel? I claim to be an abolitionist. I demand the
abolition of slavery - Bible or no Bible. I demand it, even if the Bible
sanctions it. Am I right in demanding its abolition? That is the question for
you to answer. Meet it upon its merits. I demand it of those who may never have
seen the Bible, or heard of it. Let those who attach authority to the text, use
it for the overthrow of slavery, as an argument. They may use it as an
authority, if they can go no higher - if they cannot comprehend the power of
truth, or the rights of a soul. But I demand for the slaveholder the right to
ask a reason, when you call on him to let his brother go free. He is under no
obligation to regard your authority. He is entitled to a reason. He has a
reason, I grant - always in his own bosom, and is never without one - why he
should instantly ceasse slaveholding. It is for the reason I ask him to do it -
and denounce his refusal.
Anti-Slavery has been
attacked with the Bible - and it has endeavored to defend itself with the same
weapon. The attempt may have been successful, or it may not - but the attack
has still been renewed. The pro-slavery text is still quoted, and all the
counter quotation - and all the interpretation, and the argument based upon it,
have failed to oust the biblical slaveholder of his refuge. Grant him that the
Bible is God's word - that all within its lids is inspiration and infallibility
- that its writers, compilers and translators were all infallible, so that you
have now a revelation of the will and doctrines of God - and so long as he can
find one out of the hundred texts he will quote you, he will take refuge under
it, - and you cannot reach him. You have appealed to his fears - and he can
answer you by authority, which settled every thing in the eye of fear. You have
not reached his convictions - for you have not allowed him any. Or if when you
appealed to his heart - he replied by a text - you admitted the validity of his
reply, by joining issue with him upon the text. Should you not have declined
all consideration of his text, and held on upon his convictions of the
intrinsic iniquity and wrong of slavery?
I denounce
slaveholding, because it is hurtful and degrading to man. Not because it is
written that God hath made of one blood, &c. I do not care if there are
twenty kinds of blood in the veins of mankind. It isn't a question of blood. It
injures the negro to enslave him, and the white man to be his master. This can
easily be shown and enforced, and cannot be gainsaid. But "Abraham held
slaves." I) care not if he did. "What Abraham did, was approved of
God." I care not for that. Is it right for you now, to enslave a man? Give
me single reason for it. Is it not inhuman and barbarous? No man can deny it..
"But did not Paul send Onesimus back?" If he did, I must send Paul
back. That is all I can say to that. I will not go into that matter. "But
you are an infidel." I will not go into that neither. "But I will
call you so, and destroy your character with the people, and frighten them away
from your enterprise." No doubt. But I will appeal to the people on the
self-evident nature of slaveholding - and will tell the people that this is
what the man defends who calls me infidel - that this is what he says his Book
defends, and that he calls me infidel, for denying the competency of the Book
to sustain a system like that. I will ask the people to abolish slavery and
then to examine that Book and see what is its real character and claims to the
consideration of mankind. And I need not say to them, after they have abolished
slavery, that if they find the Book countenances it - or any other iniquity,
they ought to spurn not its authority only - but its teachings and its spirit.
Meanwhile, I let the Book stand on the shelf, and address myself to the
overthrow of Slavery - on every principle that has power in the human breast.