# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Foreword. 45

who, however, cannot prove whether all those from whom it originally derives had acquired it by legitimate means — whether, then, perhaps every owner in the world is, on account of the origin of his possession, a thief and is to be treated as such. It comes finally to this too: whether the great number of those who are praised as saints in the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, and who were nonetheless slaveholders, were in fact tyrannical man-stealers, and whether Scripture confirms slavery only because it was written either by cunning church politicians, or in a time still lacking enlightenment, civilization, and humanity — in a time of ignorance, coarseness, and barbarism — that is: whether Holy Scripture is God's holy, eternal, unchangeable Word, or a piece of human contrivance for a supposedly divine sealing of oppression and, as the atheists blaspheme, a fabrication of priestly lies and deceit.

But, someone will call out to us here, what? Does the Gospel then demand no heart for the so often dreadful lot of the poor slave? Does the Gospel demand that one remain unfeeling before the tears and sighs wrung from those unfortunate ones by brutalized masters? Does the Gospel not demand that one work, so far as possible, to see that the horrors so evidently and so often bound up with slavery be abolished? Or does the Gospel throw a halo over all these abominations crying to heaven — utter spiritual neglect, utter lawlessness, the tearing apart of marriages, cruelty, and so on? — We answer: Far be it! We have already pointed above to those passages, Gen. 18:19; 17:12; Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14; Exod. 12:44; 21:26–27; Job 31:13; Eph. 6:8–9; Col. 4:1, in which it is shown how masters are to conduct themselves toward their servants. We recall here also the passages in which Holy Scripture speaks of man-stealing, or of selling a free person into slavery, and of the punishment for it: 1 Tim. 1:10; Exod. 21:16; Deut. 24:7. To work by lawful means and with every possible resource toward securing that those divine rules be observed by masters, and that their observance also be overseen by the civil authority — this, we hold, is the true task of every Christian who lives in a state in which slavery is legally recognized. Such endeavors — which would indeed leave bondage itself standing (according to the principle: Abusus non tollit usum, sed confirmat substantiam, that is, abuse does not abolish right use but rather confirms the very nature of the thing, since, were the thing not in itself something not sinful, one could not, after all, abuse it), but which would take care for a Christian, just, and loving shaping of this political and economic relationship — would redound to God's honor and to men's salvation, and would therefore be worthy of the most ardent zeal of a true Christian