# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Foreword.

Given this status controversiae, we hold, then, that abolitionism — which regards slavery as a relation sinful in itself and consequently holds and declares every master of a slave to be a criminal, and therefore wants the former abolished under all circumstances — is a child of unbelief and its unfoldings: of rationalism, of deistic philanthropism, of pantheism, materialism, atheism, and a brother of modern socialism, Jacobinism, and communism, as well as of the emancipation of women and the rehabilitation of the flesh. As proof of this blood-kinship it should already suffice to point not only to its history, but also to the intimate fellowship into which the local representatives of Christianity of abolitionist bent have entered, in their abolitionist tendencies, with the enemies of Christ and with the radical subverters of church, state, and household — men who, the more their irreligiosity mounts toward theoretical atheism and moral indifferentism, become all the more fanatical, and that not from material interests alone — indeed, not seldom even against such interests — but who zealously pursue slave emancipation out of principle. Hence an abolitionist Christian, finding himself in such company in his endeavors, ought for that very reason to become convinced of the wrongness of the path he has taken. For how would it be possible that precisely all the enemies of Christianity and of religion in general, that all who are bent on overturning the church's, the state's, and the economy's hitherto existing order of things in order to realize their humanistic utopia — how would it be possible that these very people should be so enthusiastic for something good and holy, for a "final end purpose of Christianity," and should make such great exertions? Can a Christian well suppose that at last, in the nineteenth century, through the progress of so-called enlightenment and civilization, Christ's word has been put to shame: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit"? We can only pity those Christians who, forgetting this, and thinking to work for a noble Christian-humane purpose, have allied themselves with the enemies of Christianity, thereby placing themselves under the banner of an anti-Christian humanism and philanthropism, and have given themselves up to be instruments of the spirit of the last times.

Yet we do not demand that our erring fellow Christians content themselves with this a priori proof. Christians, when their conviction touches something religious or moral, are not at ease until they have found, in the matter, an answer to the question, "How is it written?" There rings in their ears again and again the word of the prophet: "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8:20. The Christian thinks with Solomon: "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD (namely, through his word and his Spirit) pondereth the hearts."