# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S228
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Slavery and the Bible. 228

From the general extent of slavery people have wished to infer either a naturalness, or a necessary need, or at least a moral indifference regarding it. But this is plainly too bold a leap, and such an inference proves nothing, because it proves too much. So long as the word of the Lord, spoken to Adam and afterward repeated to Noah, guarantees to man — indeed to every individual man — his personal freedom, so long will slavery, whether it arose through man-stealing or through the violence of war, through purchase or through inheritance, stand in open contradiction to the divine natural law, which has impressed upon man's brow the seal of personal freedom. Only that servitude is to be recognized as a just one — that is, one in which no wrong is done by the master and no wrong is suffered by the servant — which has been entered into by voluntary contract, whether for a time or for life; whoever voluntarily places himself under the dominion of another may not complain of injustice, according to the maxim: volenti non fit injuria [no injury is done to one who consents]. But in this case it may not be regarded as hereditary upon the children, still less if it arose through an act of violence. Positive human laws may indeed legalize the enslavement of human beings, but they can never abrogate an eternal divine law; certain privileges granted by men may lapse through the force of time and custom, but privileges granted by God can never lapse. This view of ours, just now set forth, we could, did we not wish to strive for the utmost brevity, reinforce with the pronouncements of respected Christian moralists.

A threefold objection of no small weight might be raised against our view, taken partly from the examples of holy persons who have received the testimony that they pleased God, and yet possessed bondmen and bondwomen in numbers; partly from the Mosaic ordinances concerning the relation of masters to menservants and maidservants; and partly from those passages of the New Testament, especially of St. Paul, who does not make the possessing of menservants and maidservants by believing masters a sin, but only exhorts them to a Christian treatment of the same.

These three objections are of considerable weight, and we grant at the outset, without further ado, that those cannot possibly be right who, in accordance with their motto — Fiat libertas et pereat mundus! [Let liberty be done, though the world perish!] — demand the immediate emancipation of all who are bound, and wish to exclude slaveholders altogether from the kingdom of God. For in that case not only would holy men be condemned, but God's Word itself, which permits slavery, would be accused of injustice. Far be it! Now as regards the examples of Abraham and other saints, who, without prejudice to their faith and state of grace, possessed servants, these will, as has been said, warn us against the zealotic conduct of so-called abolitionists, and us