# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1864_S56
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

56 How and Why Dr. Seyffarth Is So Angry.

—cal periodicals; but the spirit that moves in them, be it the devil's spirit or God's spirit, is quite properly the very subject that churchly papers should grasp and expose. Professor Walther has now done this in his preface of 1863; he has also clearly pointed out this distinction and held to it throughout. He says: “If we now speak out on the currently agitated slavery question, we again declare from the outset that we are not here dealing with an emancipation of the slaves sought by the authorities themselves for political reasons and by legal means; for this is not only a subject that does not belong to the domain of theology, but here, too, as Christians, the word of God simply applies to us: ‘Be subject to the authority that has power over you.’ What concerns us here is the question whether slavery — specifically, whether the relation of the master to his slave — is in itself, that is, already by its very nature, sin, or whether sin only attaches to this relation in concreto as an accident, as it does to all relations among naturally, radically corrupted human beings, as for example between rich and poor, between buyer and seller; whether, that is, slavery is to be fought and abolished as a sin under all circumstances, or whether Christians, as Christians, are in every case only to work toward this: that the sinfulness bound up with it be put away, and that the master conduct himself toward his slave, and the slave toward his master, according to God's will and precept, according to the laws of justice, fairness, and love. This status controversiae being presupposed, we hold, then, that abolitionism — which regards slavery as in itself a sinful relation, and thus 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, communism, as well as of the emancipation of woman and the rehabilitation of the flesh.” Further: “But, someone will cry out to us here, what? Does not the Gospel demand a heart for the so often dreadful lot of the poor slaves? Does the Gospel demand that one remain unfeeling toward the tears and sighs that are wrung from those unfortunates by inhuman masters? Does not the Gospel demand that one be as active as possible, that the abominations so evidently often bound up with slavery be abolished? Or does the Gospel throw a halo over all these heaven-crying atrocities of utter spiritual neglect, utter lawlessness, the tearing apart of marriages, cruelty, and so forth? — 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; Ephes.