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the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, slavery which had been cut down and thinned out, but not extirpated, began to sprout again, and in the seventeenth century it was fostered by European sovereigns, in the interest of colonies and of commerce.

For a time the Reformers had so much to do in the way of conflict and of suffering, to win for Protestantism a recognized position and field of action in Europe, that they could give but little time to philanthropic reform, and, indeed, could have but little influence toward social and legal reformations. But there stood the gospel, declaring all men made of one blood, children of one father, redeemed by one Saviour; there stood the sermon on the Mount, the parable of the good Samaritan, the golden rule of equal justice and fraternal love; there stood the teachings of the Apostles and the practice of the early church; and this gospel testimony must be heard again. By degrees it found a voice, first through individual Christians, then by combined Christian action, and through the reformation of laws. Of this more recent anti-slavery agitation, I need not speak in detail. Bishop Warburton and Bishop Porteus, Bishop Horsley, and Archdeacon Paley, Bishop Butler and John Wesley, and many other illustrious names of England, are enrolled in the list of witnesses against the crime of slavery. I need barely refer to the testimony of Hopkins of Newport, and Edwards of New Haven; to the consistent antislavery testimony of the Society of Friends; of the somewhat fluctuating and inconsistent, and yet in the main,

the emphatic and earnest protests of other Christian bodies in this land, against our monster iniquity. Whatever the delinquencies of individual ministers and churches in this regard, in proportion to the vitality of religion in the land has been its effect in toning the public conscience against slavery.

The abolition of the slave trade and of slavery in the British Parliament, was led by Christian men on Christian grounds. After his first failure, Wilberforce wrote: "I never felt so on any Parliamentary occasion. I could not sleep. The poor blacks rushed into my mind, and the guilt of our wicked land. I do not deserve the signal honour of being an instrument of putting an end to this atrocious and unparalleled wickedness. But, O Lord, let me earnestly pray thee to pity these children of affliction, and to terminate their unequal wrongs. That is the spirit of the Christian. Having witnessed the abolition of the slave-trade, in later life Wilberforce urges Buxton to enter upon the blessed service of abolishing slavery. Buxton's motion in Parliament was "that the state of slavery is repugnant to the British constitution and to the Christian religion." Slavery was abolished in European Christendom by the prayers and faith of Christian men.

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We do not claim the whole of this work for Christianity by its direct and positive influence upon society. Slavery is so clearly against the will of God in the constitution of mankind, that natural religion is opposed to

* Anti-Slavery in Modern Times.

it in proportion to the enlightenment of reason and conscience. Even Aristotle, after all his special pleading for slavery as a state of nature, makes this concession: "As other men became worse when they get nothing for being better, and when no rewards are given for virtuous or vicious actions, so it is with slaves. . . . It is necessary also that in everything some end should be defined; it is therefore right and expedient that freedom should be proposed to them [the slaves] as a reward; for they will be willing to labor when a prize and a definite space of time is laid down. It is right also to bind them as hostages by their families."*

Hence, with the progress of civilization, and the development of a public conscience and of the spirit of personal freedom, came an intenser antagonism to slavery. But to ascribe this, as do Laurent and Salvador to the philosophy and the political theories of the French Revolution, is to mistake an effect for the cause. The doctrine of political liberty and fraternity was itself an offshoot of Christianity-the Christianity of the New Testament as distinguished from the ecclesiasticism of the middle. ages. The leaven of Christ's teachings produced the political fermentations of the eighteenth century as truly as the religious fermentations of the sixteenth. Whenever Christianity has had its legitimate expression, it has told against slavery. As Macaulay states it, "the forms in which Christianity has been at different times disguised, have been often hostile to liberty. But wherever

Aristotle Economics, B. I., c. v.

the spirit has surmounted the forms-in France, during the wars of the Huguenots; in Holland, during the reign of Philip II.; in Scotland, at the time of the Reformation; in England, through the whole contest against the Stuarts, from their accession to their expulsion; in New England, through its whole history-in every place-in every age-it has inspired a hatred of oppression, and a love of freedom."* Before the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, it was made a charge against a Wesleyan missionary that he had read an inflammatory chapter of the Bible to his congregation!

XI.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.

THE slave trade was abolished in 1808 by the United States; in 1811, by Denmark, Portugal, and Chili; in 1813, by Sweden; in 1814 and 1815 by Holland; in 1815 by France; the Congress of Vienne sought to obtain the entire and final abolition of a traffic so odious and so loudly reproved by the laws of religion and nature. In 1822, Spain abolished the slave trade, and in the same year Wilberforce attacked slavery, after the slave trade, and won over public opinion by appeals and repeated meetings, while his friend, Mr. Buxton, proposed emancipation in parliament. The Emancipation Bill was pre

* Works, Vol. VI., p. 312.

sented in 1833. On the 1st of August, 1834, slavery ceased to sully the soil of the English colonies. In 1846, Sweden, in 1847, Denmark, Uruguay, Wallachia and Tunis obeyed the same impulse, which France followed in 1848, Portugal in 1856, and which Holland has lately imitated.

Lastly, in 1861, the last form of servitude disappeared in Russia; and Spain, in retaking a part of the island of St. Domingo, promised never to reëstablish slavery there.

As Cochin, whom we here follow, well puts it, “in a century, the initiative of Wilberforce has put slavery to rout, or at least called it in question over the whole surface of Christendom ;" leaving only Spain and Brazil, and the Southern United States as the accomplices of this iniquity. "The destinies of servitude and liberty," he continues, "are both at stake in the crisis which is shaking the new world. This combat is the rudest of all, but it will be the last. Instead of suffering one's self to be overwhelmed by the inconceivable slowness of moral progress, it is precisely because the last effort is difficult that it is necessary to enter into it with all one's might, full of faith in the sure triumph of the Christian religion, justice, and perseverance over the conspiracy of interests, the obstinacy of prejudices, the despotic torpor of habits."

Already Missouri leads the way to this bright and blessed consummation ;-Missouri, that, in 1820, led us into the fatal demoralization of slave compromises. Missouri, that inaugurated civil war in Kansas in order

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