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FOOTNOTES:

[A] An extended passage containing the extract may be found conveniently in Chambers’ Cyclopaedia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.

[B] Genesis, 10th Chapter. Vide, Kitto’s Cyclopaedia, for views in this connection.

[C] Col. 4:1; “Ye masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.” That is, act towards them on the principles of justice and equity. Justice requires that all their rights, as men, as husbands, and as parents, should be regarded. And these rights are not to be determined by the civil law, but by the law of God…. But God concedes nothing to the master beyond what the law of love allows. Paul requires for servants not only what is strictly just, but [Greek: ten isoteta]. What is that? Literally, it is equality. This is not only its signification, but its meaning. Servants are to be treated by their masters on the principles of equality. Not that they are to be equal with their masters in authority or station or circumstances; but that they are to be treated as having, as men, as husbands, and as parents, equal rights with their masters. It is just as great a sin to deprive a servant of the just recompense for his labor, or to keep him in ignorance, or to take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free man. This is the equality which the law of God demands, and on this principle the final judgment is to be administered. Christ will punish the master for defrauding the servant as severely as he will punish the servant for robbing his master. The same penalty will be inflicted for the violation of the conjugal or parental rights of the one as of the other. For, as the apostle adds, there is no respect of persons with him. At his bar the question will be, “What was done?” not “Who did it?” Paul carries this so far as to apply the principle not only to the acts, but to the temper of masters. They are not only to act towards their servants on the principles of justice and equity, but are to avoid threatening. This includes all manifestation of contempt and ill temper, or undue severity. All this is enforced by the consideration that masters have a Master in heaven, to whom they are responsible for their treatment of their servants…. Believers will act in conformity with the Gospel in this. And the result of such obedience, if it could become general, would be, that first the evils of slavery, and then slavery itself, would pass away naturally, and as healthfully as children cease to be minors.

Prof. Hodge’s Commentary.

[D] See 2 Brevard’s Digest, 229; Prince’s Digest, 446.

[E] Civil Code, Art. 35.

[F] Job ch. 32, v. 17-20, Barnes’s translation.

[G] It is sometimes said that the crime of adultery is neither perpetrated nor encouraged by the breaking up of slave-families, because, generally, the connections formed are not truly marriage, not being solemnized according to forms of law, and hence the marriage obligation cannot be violated.

It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it is not so. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly “no more twain but one flesh” as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons.

[H] Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D.

[I] Mehemet Ali.

[J] The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of them without wages,–the withholding that which is just and equal,–should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that emancipation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar circumstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation.