# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Preface.

the word of God, but by manifestation of the truth commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Corinthians 4:2), were not capable — out of policy, out of fear of men, or to please them — of calling darkness light and evil good. Had they known, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that slavery was an immoral, ungodly relation incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel and with faith and love, they would have attacked and condemned it with the same courage of faith, and would have demanded its abolition, without any compromise, from all who wished to be saved — just as they freely and publicly attacked and condemned every other ungodly practice of heathenism and Judaism, and demanded conversion from it on pain of the loss of salvation. Did they not have the command: "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops"? Matthew 10:27. Did they not also have the promise: "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth"? John 16:13. And did they not know that Christ had not "come to send peace on earth, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34), and "to send fire on the earth" (Luke 12:49), a fire that would consume them too? And behold, not shrinking from this sword and fire, they fearlessly "kept back nothing, but declared unto you all the counsel of God." Acts 20:27. Far be it, then, from any Christian heart to suppose of these "chosen vessels of God" (Acts 9:15) that they, shrinking from the fearful struggle with the whole world of that day, especially with the rich, accommodated themselves on the point of slavery to the views of their time. —

Had the apostles only exhorted servants to obedience and fidelity toward their heathen masters, one might well think that slavery, though perhaps a cross which the Christian must bear in patience, was nonetheless incompatible with Christianity for one to be the master of a slave — just as, for instance, a Christian must submit in patience and humility to the tyranny of a despot, yet may not for that reason practice tyranny himself. But, as we have already heard, the apostles of the Lord set forth duties not only for servants, but also for their masters, and show the latter not how to set their servants free, but how they were to treat them — so much so that they even send back escaped slaves, though these had been converted in the course of their flight, to their former masters, requiring of these only that they receive them in the spirit as their brothers. Philemon 10-19. That the holy apostles, then, in their exhortations, had in view not only heathen or Jewish masters, but Christian masters as well, is accordingly self-evident; and this is also borne out, quite unanswerably, by a passage in St. Paul's letter to Timothy, in which believing masters are expressly mentioned. For it says there, namely, of the servants: "And they that have superstitious masters,