I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions the infamous crime of human slavery.

“Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you; of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever” (Lev. xx. v, 44–46).

In certain cases they were even permitted to enslave the members of their own race.

“If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out by himself” (Ex. xxi, 2–4).

If he desires his liberty he must desert his wife and little ones. To become a freeman he must become an exile.

“And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ears through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever” (5, 6).

“And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

“And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

“God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant” (Gen. ix, 25–27).

Nor is it the Jewish Scriptures alone which sanction slavery. The Christian Scriptures are not less emphatic in their indorsement of it.

“Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor” (1 Tim. vi, 1).

“Exhort servants to be obedient unto their masters” (Titus ii, 9).

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling” (Eph. vi, 5).

“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward” (1 Pet. ii, 18).

It may be urged that the term “servant” here refers to a hired servant. Not so; wherever the word “servant” occurs in the New Testament, it means slave in its worst sense.

The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers, derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had established a precedent by returning a fugitive slave to his master.

Referring to this act of Paul, the Rev. Dr. Stringfellow of Virginia wrote:

“Oh, how immeasurably different Paul’s conduct to this slave and master, from the conduct of our abolition brethren! This is sufficient to teach any man that slavery is not, in the sight of God, what it is in the sight of the abolitionists” (Scriptural View of Slavery).

The Rev. Moses Stuart of Massachusetts wrote:

“What, now, have we here? Paul sending back a Christian servant, who had run away from his Christian master.... Paul’s conscience sent back the fugitive slave. Paul’s conscience, then, like his doctrines, was very different from that of the abolitionists.”

It was no easy task to convince the Bible moralist that slavery was wrong. When the French Revolutionists rejected the Bible, they abolished slavery in the colonies. When the church regained control of the government, the Bible came back, and with it slavery. When Clarkson’s bill for the abolition of slavery was before Parliament, Lord Chancellor Thurlow characterized it as a “miserable and contemptible bill,” and “contrary to the Word of God.”

Charles Bradlaugh, in the North American Review, writing of his own Christian England, says:

“George III., a most Christian king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and the Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting freedom to the slave. When Christian missionaries, some sixty years ago, preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges, holding commission from Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of England, signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as 1824.”

The most zealous defenders of slavery in this country were Bible moralists. The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: “There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral.”

The Rev. E. D. Simms, professor in Randolph-Macon College, wrote: “These extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves.”

The Rev. R. Furman, D. D., Baptist, of South Carolina, said: “The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.”

Rev. Thomas Witherspoon, Presbyterian, of Alabama, said: “I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to hold the slave in bondage.”

Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia: “Slavery is not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible, but it was positively instituted by God himself.”

You say that this is the testimony of interested parties, that the South was interested in perpetuating slavery. True, but where did your Northern theologians stand?

Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, President of Wesleyan University, thus wrote: “The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority.”

The Rev. Dr. Nathan Lord, President of Dartmouth College, wrote: “Slavery was incorporated into the civil institutions of Moses; it was recognized accordingly by Christ and his apostles. They regulated it by the just and benevolent principles of the New Testament. They condemned all intermeddlers with it.”

Professor Hodge, of Princeton, said: “The Savior found it around him, the Apostles met with it in Asia, Greece, and Italy. How did they treat it? Not by denunciation of slave-holding as necessarily sinful.”

Said the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Principal of the Theological Department of Yale College: “I have no doubt that if Jesus Christ were now on earth, he would, under certain circumstances, become a slaveholder.”

It is now half-forgotten that the North as well as the South once practiced slavery—that New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all held slaves. Christian New England, which made the Bible both its legal and moral code, for more than one hundred years, held Negroes and Indians in slavery, and even sold Quaker children into bondage. “Parish ministers all over New England,” says the Rev. William Goodell, “owned slaves” (American Slave Code, p. 106).

Clerical slaveholders in the South trampled under foot the relations of wife and mother; and clerical slaveholders in the North did the same. Mr. Goodell says:

“Even in Puritan New England, seventy years ago, female slaves, in ministers’ and magistrates’ families, bore children, black or yellow, without marriage. No one inquired who their fathers were, and nothing more was thought of it than of the breeding of sheep or swine” (Ibid., p. 111).

“A Congregational minister at Hampton, Conn. (Rev. Mr. Mosely), separated by sale a husband and wife who were both of them members of his own church, and who had been, by his own officiating act as a minister, united in marriage” (Ibid., p. 114).

Let me cite one of the laws of the Bible relative to the treatment of slaves—a law which demons would blush to indorse, but which a merciful (?) God enacted for the guidance of his children:

“If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Ex. xxi, 20, 21).

Here a master may brutally beat his slave, and if that slave linger in the agonies of death a day or two before dying, he shall not be punished, because the slave “is his money.”

Goodell’s “American Slave Code,” a work written by a Christian clergyman, and which I have already quoted, contains four hundred pages of outrages, like the following, committed by men who accepted the Bible as their moral guide:

“A minister in South Carolina, a native of the North, had a stated Sabbath appointment to preach, about eight miles from his residence. He was in the habit of riding thither in his gig. Behind him ran his negro slave on foot, who was required to be at the place of appointment as soon as his master, to take care of his horse. Sometimes he fell behind, and kept his master waiting for him a few minutes, for which he always received a reprimand, and was sometimes punished. On one occasion of this kind, after sermon, the master told the slave that he would take care to have him keep up with him, going home. So he tied him by the wrists, with a halter, to his gig behind, and drove rapidly home. The result was that, about two or three miles from home, the poor fellow’s feet and legs failed him, and he was dragged on the ground all the rest of the way by the wrists! On alighting and looking round, the master exclaimed, ‘Well; I thought you would keep up with me this time!’ So saying, he coolly walked into the house. The servants came out and took up the poor sufferer for dead. After a time he revived a little, lingered for a day or two, and died!”

Was this brutal minister punished? He was not. “If he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.” Was he silenced from preaching? was he even reprimanded by the church? No. Without punishment, without censure, he continued to preach Bible morals and abuse his slaves.

Frederick Douglass, the greatest of his race and a slave, says: “My master found religious sanctity for his cruelty.... I have seen him tie up a lame young woman and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture: ‘He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.’”

Slavery flourished on this continent because the Bible taught that it was lawful and just. To oppose slavery was to oppose the plainest teachings of this book. The Abolition movement was an Infidel movement. The Emancipation Proclamation was a nullification of “God’s law.” The great Rebellion was a contest between Bible morality and natural morality. The latter triumphed, but the conflict filled half a million graves, brought grief to many million hearts, and covered the land with desolation.

And this advocate of slavery is the idol Protestants worship; this is the book they wish to become the law of our land; this is the moral guide they wish to place in our public schools! In the name of those who died for the freedom of their fellow-men; in the name of those made childless, fatherless, and companionless by this cruel strife; in the name of those whose backs still bear the scars of the master’s lash; in the name of human liberty, I protest against this retrogressive movement!

I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions that other twin relic of barbarism, polygamy.

The Mosaic law provides that “if a man have two wives, one beloved and another hated,” he shall not ignore the legal rights of the hated wife’s children (Deut. xxi, 15–17). This statute recognizes both the existence and the validity of the institution.

Another statute (Deut. xxv, 5) provides that if a man die, his surviving brother shall become the husband of his widow, and this regardless as to whether the brother be married or single.

The first eighteen verses of the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus are devoted to what is termed “unlawful marriages.” Here polygamy is recognized and regulated to the extent of prohibiting a man from marrying the sister of a living wife.

But there is one statute which places the validity of this institution, so far as the Bible is concerned, beyond all controversy. Deuteronomy (xxiii, 2) declares that no illegitimate child shall enter into the congregation of the Lord, even up to the tenth generation. Now, polygamy was either lawful or unlawful. If unlawful, then the children of polygamists were illegitimate children, and disqualified for the sanctuary. But the children of polygamists were not thus disqualified. The founders of the twelve tribes of Israel were all children of a polygamist.

The most renowned Bible characters were polygamists. Abraham had two wives, and when he died the Lord said, “Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Gen. xxvi, 6).

Jacob was a polygamist, and after he had secured four wives and concubines, God blessed him and said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. xxxv, 11).

Gideon had “many wives” (Jud. viii, 30), and it was to him an angel came and said, “The Lord is with thee” (Jud. vi, 12).

David had a score of wives and concubines, and “David was a man after God’s own heart;” “David did right in the eyes of the Lord.” God himself said to David, “I delivered thee out of the hands of Saul; and I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives” (2 Sam. xii, 7, 8).

“And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart”—sufficient to hold a thousand wives and concubines.

Many years ago the Mormon, Orson Pratt, wrote a defense of polygamy, based upon the Bible. A noted lawyer of New York sent a copy of it to the Rev. Dr. W. B. Sprague with the interrogation, “Can you answer this?” Back came the frank reply, “No; can you?”

It is claimed that the New Testament is opposed to polygamy. It is not. William Ellery Channing says:

“There is no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament. It is an indisputable fact that although Christianity was first preached in Asia, which had been from the earliest ages the seat of polygamy, the Apostles never denounced it as a crime, and never required their converts to put away all wives but one.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton says: “It was at a Jewish polygamous wedding that Jesus performed his first miracle, and polygamy was practiced by Christians for centuries.”

It is true that many primitive Christians did not practice polygamy. And why? Because Pagan Greece and Rome had taught them better. It was to them, and not to their Scriptures, that they were indebted for the monogamic system of marriage. The Roman Catholic church did not generally sustain polygamy; but it did sustain a system of concubinage which was certainly as bad. For centuries the keeping of concubines was almost universal among the Catholic clergy, one abbot keeping no less than seventy.

The founders of the Protestant church, however, accepting the Bible as their guide, attaching to it a degree of authority which had never been attached to it before, were candid and consistent enough to admit the validity of the institution. Referring to this subject, Sir William Hamilton, a Christian and a Protestant, says:

“As to polygamy in particular, which not only Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, the three leaders of the German Reformation, speculatively adopted, but to which above a dozen distinguished divines among the Reformers stood formally committed” (Discussions on Philosophy and Literature).

Speaking of Luther and Melanchthon, Hamilton says:

“They had both promulgated opinions in favor of polygamy, to the extent of vindicating to the spiritual minister a right of private dispensation, and to the temporal magistrate the right of establishing the practice if he chose by public law” (Ibid).

In accordance with these views, John of Leydon, a zealous Protestant, established polygamy at Munster, and murdered or drove from their homes all who dared to oppose the odious custom. Other Protestants followed his example.

On the 19th of December, 1539, at Wittenberg, Luther and Melanchthon drew up the famous “Consilium,” authorizing the landgrave, Philip of Hesse, to have a plurality of wives. This instrument bears the signatures of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, Antony Corvinus, Adam Kraft, Justus Winther, and Balthasar Raida, nine of the leading Protestant divines of Germany.

It is a well-known fact that Luther advised Henry VIII. to adopt polygamy in his case, but by divorcing two wives, and murdering two more, the founder of the English church avoided it.

The advocacy of polygamy by the chief Reformers prevented Ferdinand I. from declaring for the Reformation. The German princes, too, generally opposed it; and this opposition, coupled with the fact that the most licentious sects espoused it, finally caused a reaction in favor of monogamy.

Protestants, it ill became you to point the finger of scorn at the Mormons of Utah. Yet with characteristic consistency you were demanding the suppression of polygamy in the territories, while at the same time you were endeavoring to have the whole country accept as infallible authority a book which sanctions the pernicious custom. Make the Bible the fundamental law of the land, as you demand, and polygamy will become, in theory at least, a national instead of a local institution.