THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY.
By C. C. Foote
It is no less true of the American church than of "the American women," that "they are responsible for the existence of American slavery." Had the pulpits of the land thundered and lightened with denunciations of slavery as they should, and had the church seconded this testimony, slavery would have fled, ere this, to hide its hideous head in everlasting darkness. But this has not been done. Hence all the blood and all the woes of slavery since the world began, rests on the church of this age. The guilt involved in every tear, every pang, and every drop of blood, forced from the swollen veins by the knotted scourge, all is in her skirts. Do you ask why? Because there never was so much light abroad on this subject, as now; all the history of slavery is before the church, its wrongs, its cruelties, its darkness, its all—and yet these are all connived at, or treated with indifference. This is a principle clearly evolved from Luke xi, 47–51. "Woe to you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them." "From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the temple; verily I say to you, It shall be required of this generation." O that they understood this in their day!—C. C. Foote.