# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 Preface.

And so it is. The question here is by no means one that is politically neutral for the Christian as such; it is not a question of whether it might, under the circumstances, be more advantageous for a state, a country, a people to abolish slavery where it exists, by lawful means, of course. Rather, the question here is: whether the law of love and justice requires that all men have equal outward, civil liberties and rights; whether it is right or wrong, accordingly, to make use of the rights which, by virtue of existing civil laws, belong to one person over another person — right or wrong, that is, to acknowledge such rights or not to acknowledge them. The question is whether the old canon, Evangelium non abolet politias — that is, the Gospel does not abolish political institutions — is a lie, and whether the Gospel, on the contrary, demands civil equality as well; whether Christian liberty, that is, the liberty with which Christ has set us free, makes us free in body and in civil standing; whether, accordingly, Christ was a Messiah such as the Jews expected, a liberator of his people from earthly oppression; whether, in short, the Gospel carries within itself a revolutionary element that overturns the outward institutions of the world. It is a question of whether the apostle's word holds true in every relation: "The powers that be are ordained of God"; for since, according to the old logical principle Non variant speciem plusve minusve suam — that is, since more or less does not change the essence of a thing — it would follow that along with servitude, every involuntary relation of subjects, especially in a monarchical state where the people do not themselves determine their government by election, would likewise stand condemned as contrary to equal human rights. It is further a question of whether it is a sin to be rich while one's neighbor is poor, or whether it is not rather what love and the "innate equal right of man" demand, that the rich man, by his surplus possessions, not leave the poor in the slavery of poverty, but free him from it as well through an equal division of goods. *) It is a question of whether he is a thief who has indeed lawfully acquired his own property,

*) These latter consequences our own radical subverters, too, see clearly enough; the same spirit that has driven them in Europe to thrust the princes from their thrones, as a disgrace to this enlightened century, wherever possible, and to introduce the rule of the people as the sole rightful form of civil order, drives them here as well to curse civil servitude as a degradation of the freeborn human being, indeed, to work toward communism, women's emancipation and community of women (they see quite well that woman, by God's own ordinance, does indeed stand in a certain bondage), and all Christians who lend a helping hand to their agitation on the point of civil servitude stand in the service of this radical-revolutionary spirit. To their horror they will yet see that the revolutionaries of this latest age will not stand still, but, having attained the one goal, will consistently storm on toward the next as well. But then the regret over the coalition entered into with the free men of radical progress will come too late.