[THE complicity of the American churches with Slavery, and now with the Slave trade, is shown in the following article, which we copy from the Independent. The reader will remember as he reads, that among the fearful items of great Babylon's merchandise are enumerated "slaves and souls of men." Rev. xviii, 13.—ED.]
There are cases where not to speak is a strong form of assertion—not to condemn is to approve. When a great moral3question is made a test-question before the public mind, or a great evil is threatening to spread in a community, and any body of men professing eminently to be the representative men of Christianity, decline publicly and clearly to express any opinion about it, this want of assertion is immediately received by the powers of evil as the strongest affirmation.
The history of the Slavery question has been such a constant history of such instances, among different religious bodies professing to represent the Christian church, as to give rise to more unbelief in Christianity as a practical working force, than any other one cause. Two marked instances of this kind have lately occurred. The Episcopal Convention of New York, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston, being importuned, have refused to testify against an inhumanity the most loathsome and horrible that ever defaced human history—the Slave trade.
Nor can it be pleaded in excuse that this is a by-gone and obsolete kind of wickedness—since it has come back on us like the demoniac with seven other spirits more wicked than itself. It is computed that a slave-ship leaves the port of New York every week fitted out for this infernal traffic—to say nothing of what is done in other ports. It is known that officers appointed by Government to prevent this horror are constantly bribed into connivance, and that these floating hells, with their living cargoes of horror and despair, are riding the waves with the connivance if not by the money of men who hold seats in our churches and profess to be Christians.
The very refusal to testify, shows how the poisonous roots of the cancer have spread in the so-called Christian church. A few years ago, who was offended with denunciations of the slave-trade? Nobody! That was "given up to Satan"—and the cheap rhetoric of those who defended slavery expended itself in valiant abuse of the slave-trade. It was as lawful a subject of abuse as Nebuchadnezzar, or Amaziah, or Jehoram, or any of the Old Testament sinners whose transgressions afford such splendid targets for those who wish to avoid personalities in their own times. But the same arguments which demoralized the conscience and frittered away the moral sense in regard to bearing testimony against slavery, hold equally good against the slave-trade—and that is beginning to be understood. All evil is logically connected, and will invariably run in its immutable sequences. There is no abomination that can be mentioned or can be conceived which might not be suffered to gain ground in a community by steadily pursuing the same course that the American church has done about slavery.
It has come now to be delicate ground to talk against the slave-trade; and Christian bodies, instead of speaking in thunder, piously shut their eyes and give thanks that so very embarrassing a topic has not been suffered to divide the hearts of brethren, or interrupt the rejoicings of a solemn jubilee to commemorate the triumphs of Christianity.
It is a delicate matter, it appears, for a Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to condemn the setting on fire the villages of the heathen, and seizing the inhabitants—driving them in herds to the seashore, and stowing them, for a long voyage, with only the room allowed by a coffin;—the sweat, the filth, the pantings, the loathsome diseases, the daily throwing overboard of the dead, the after procession of sharks, who complete the work of fear, agony, and despair;—all this, it appears, is in some way such delicate and controverted ground, that to express an opinion about it might be a disturbing element among Christian brethren. What is the use of sending a gospel to Dahomey that does not remonstrate against such horrors in New York? If there is not power enough in what we profess to prevent civilized, Christianized, church-going people from sinking into these abysses of barbarism, what do you expect to make of the Hottentots? If the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?