What Will You Infer?

f you should still believe that the patriarchs did hold their fellow men as slaves, in the ordinary sense of the term, which we allow to be possible, but from the evidences before us deem altogether improbable; what inference will you draw? That their example warrants others, warrants you to do the same? Try the same mode of reasoning with reference to some other less doubtful cases of patriarchal example. Abraham, through groundless fears that he might be slain on account of his wife, repeatedly said, and taught her to affirm, that she was his sister; in consequence of which, her chastity was put in the utmost peril in the courts of heathen kings who had become enamored of her beauty; and who, on learning the facts in the case, administered to the patriarch sharp reproof for his deceitful dealing with them. Isaac in similar circumstances pursued a like course of deception with regard to his wife, Rebecca. Abraham at the request of Sarah his wife, received Hager, her maid, in her place; that the wife might have children by her, when she had no prospect of bearing any herself. In after years when Sarah had a son of her own, Abraham, at her own importunity, sent Hagar away, scantily provided, to wander with her and his own son Ishmael, as unprotected and solitary out-casts, in the wilderness of Beersheba. Jacob, by arrant falsehood and fraud, deceived his aged father, and obtained his elder brother's birth right. He also had two wives, and two concubines, at the same time; with whom he lived on terms of the greatest freedom “without,” so far as we are informed, “the least remorse of conscience, or”. . . “from God.”

Will you from these facts infer that men in this Christian country and enlightened age, have a right to treat their female domestics, as Abraham treated Hagar? That they are by Scripture authorized to use deceit and fraud, whenever they may judge it for their worldly interest to do so? That they | by the Bible warranted to practice polygamy and concubinage, to any extent they may deem conducive to their highest gratification? They have patriarchal precedents for all these things; and why may they not plead and follow them? If you insist, as you will, that they have now no right to do any of these things; the example of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, notwithstanding; what becomes of your argument built on their example in defence of slavery?  — provided they practised it; which we do not admit. The fact is, the patriarchs were in the main very good men, but owing to the darkness of the times in which they lived, and their own frailty, did some things which were very wrong, and should be followed by us only so far as their conduct agrees with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Continued from: Reverend Silas McKeen to Thomas C. Stuart, August 20, 1839

SOURCE: Cyrus P. Grosvenor, Slavery vs. The Bible: A Correspondence Between the General Conference of Maine, and the Presbytery of Tombecbee, Mississippi, p. 45-8