The Tract Society by N. Y. Tribune

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 15, 1857

The Tract Society.

By N. Y. Tribune

The American Tract Society—as represented by its standing committees—has succumbed to the slaveholders. Placing its hand on its mouth and its mouth in the dust, it has eaten its timid and apologetic resolve of last Spring and returned to the policy of absolute silence with regard not only to slaveholding per se, but even to the evils and sins which—as the Society itself resolved last Spring—are connected with or deducible therefrom. And the reason given is simply the unwillingness of the slaveholders to receive, listen to, or read anything that the Society may see fit to offer on the subject.

This is certainly very extraordinary ground. We cannot remember that Noah, or Lot, or Isaiah, or John the Baptist, ever planted himself upon it. If it is to be settled that prophets and evangelists are only to reprove those sins which the sinners already condemn and are ready to repudiate, we can imagine no cause for which an apostle should be stoned or beheaded hereafter. It might be prudent, perhaps, for a preacher of righteousness, in entering upon a new field of labor, to make proclamation to this effect: "Good people! I come to you with a message from God, commanding you to repent and forsake your sins; but, as indiscreet and headlong denunciations of iniquity might give personal offense, and subject me to unpleasant odium and peril, I will thank you to make out a list of the sins which you are unwilling to give up, so that I may take care to omit them in my diatribes against sin in general and other people's sins in particular." We can see how this precaution might be convenient for the Rev. Cream Cheese; but how is it likely to be relished by his Divine Master—supposing him to have one?

The Tract Society, at its last Annual Meeting, decided to publish a tract or tracts on the moral evils connected with or resulting from Human Slavery—the "acknowledged evils," we believe the phrase was. The standing committees say that this was to be done "without trenching on the political relations of slavery," so as only to set forth "certain moral duties growing out of its existence, or moral evils and practical immoralities deplored by all evangelical Christians." The direction of the Society was unconditional—the standing committees were not instructed to enter upon this field of labor if they should think proper, nor to consider the propriety of doing it, but to do it. The publishing committee, it seems, had already in preparation a tract on the "duties of masters," made up of articles written by Southern Christians of various evangelical denominations. But the South remonstrated—the South revolted—the South exclaimed like the demons of old, "Let us alone!" and the committees' hearts became like water. The work which the Society unqualifiedly directed them to do, they have not only intermitted—they have deliberately determined not to do it. Their apology for this lapse we print in another column. Can it be possible that the clerical gentlemen who mainly compose these committees have never pondered the book of Jonah? What right have they to retain the stations conferred on them by the Society for the purpose of obstructing the work which the Society ordered them to do, instead of doing it?

The committees say that the South will only receive or listen to their publications on condition of their refraining from putting forth anything with respect to Slavery. It is not enough that they expressly ignore any consideration of "the political relations of Slavery"—that they propose to consider only the duties of masters as masters, without discussing their duty to cease being masters—it is not enough that they proposed to quote only from Southern divines the gentle rebukes of the shortcomings of masters which they had decided to publish—the South will permit no publication whatever relative to Slavery by this eminently "National" Society. It refuses not merely to hear the Tract Society on this subject. If the subject be discussed in any of the Society's publications, the South will not hear the Society on any subject whatever. And it is to such menaces that men like the Rev. Dr. Williams would seem to have succumbed! We regret it, and think they will live to share this sentiment. It seems to us that it would be unfair for these committees to distribute tracts against rum-selling in Cherry Street, or those condemning harlotry at the Five Points, after this decision.

The committees tell us in conclusion that they are "seeking the things that make for peace," and "aiming to secure the fruit of righteousness sown in peace," by the course they have resolved on. It seems to us that the Bible estimate of peace, and the Bible method of obtaining peace, are antagonist to the committees'. "First pure, THEN peaceable," is the well-known scriptural rule. To seek peace through subserviency to wrong seems the last way to secure that peace which the world can neither give nor take away.

Slavery is either one of the very greatest wrongs, and the fruitful parent of other wrongs, with all manner of vices and evils, or it is a just and proper relation which Christians may blamelessly maintain and uphold. Its rightfulness is evidently a question of ethics, of morals, and of Christian theology. Good men may be honestly mistaken with regard to its true character; but woe to them who, perceiving the right, conceal or dissemble it. How can they read without a twinge of conscience the great Apostle's declaration, "I have not shunned to declare the whole counsel of God."—N. Y. Tribune.