Wide Difference Between the State Laws of the Hebrews and the Moral Law Which Was Given Them.

There is a most important difference between the state laws, or judicial statutes of the Hebrew nation, and the moral law as expressed in the decalogue. Both these systems of legislation, emanated indeed from the same Divine author, but they were given for different purposes. The state laws had respect to the particular circumstances of that nation in distinction from all others, and were evidently designed to be superseded, as they have been, by the Christian dispensation, to which many of them were preparatory, and at whose introduction the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles was entirely broken down. Whereas the moral law is founded on principles of immutable rectitude, equally applicable to all men in all circumstances and ages; and was designed to be neither abrogated nor modified by the introduction of Christianity, but to be interpreted and confirmed by the Author of both. The apostolic substitution of the first for the last day of the week for a sabbath constitutes no exception, as the very letter and spirit of the original command may and should be as fully regarded under the change, as before its occurrence. It is still every seventh day which is to be hallowed. The state laws in view of the established usages of those to whom they were given, the prejudices of their minds and hardness of their hearts, suffered and regulated certain evils, because by the enaction and enforcemcnt of judicial statutes they could not be removed, without producing consequences still more deplorable. On this point we have testimony which will not be contradicted. When the Pharisees captiously inquired of our Lord, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” He, evidently designing to condemn polygamy, and divorces as commonly practised together, reminded them that at the beginning, the Creator made but one man and one woman and joined them together as one flesh. Others similarly united in marriage, he said were no more twain but one flesh. And impressively added, “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” They said, “Why did Moses then command to give her a writing of divorcement and send her away?” His remarkable reply was, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, MOSES suffered you to put away your wives: but in the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and whoso marrieth her that is put away, committeth adultery.” Even the disciples were startled at this decision of the Lord and remarked, “If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.” So greatly prejudiced were they in consequence of their Jewish education, against the original purity and binding nature of this sacred institution. Now if Moses suffered the Jews to put away their wives for every cause, not because it was right for them to do so, but on account of the hardness of their hearts and the evils which this obduracy might have led them to inflict on their helpless companions with whom they were not pleased; it is obvious that they might have been suffered, by the same code of laws, to do other things which they had no right to perform. So it is in regard to the laws of all nations. God, in the dispensations of his providence, is continualy suffering men to do what they ought not. But the Moral Law lays the axe at the root of all moral evil, it strictly, without regard to persons or circumstances, forbids the least deviation from the path of absolute rectitude, and binds transgressors to answer for their conduct not to earthly tribunals but to the Supreme Lawgiver himself, in the day of final judgment. The laws of the state not merely suffered the Hebrews to do things, but in some cases, required them to do things, which without such authority from God, they would have had no right to perform; and might not without great criminality attempt. As instances of this sort we must reckon the stoning of children to death for such immoralities as have been mentioned, and a man for gathering sticks for his fire on the Sabbath day, and especially the destruction of the Canaanites, who by their great sins had forfeited to divine justice not only their earthly possessions, but their lives. God had a right to cut off these transgressors by pestilence or earthquakes, or fire from heaven, or the agency of his angelic hosts, or by the hands of their fellow men, as he saw fit. The wonderful miracles which attended the march of the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan, while they were passing the Jordan, and besieging Jericho, gave indubitable testimony that they were indeed divinely commissioned to cut off the guilty nations, inhabiting the land which God had promised to give them for their possession. But to plead that since it was right for the Jews to do these things when expressly commanded, it must be so for others to do such things when not commanded, seems as egregiously absurd as for every man in this country to claim the right of acting as a public executioner at his own discretion, because some men have been authorized by law to inflict sentence of death on others, and were in justice bound to do it. On the contrary, the moral law enjoins duties which are common to all. Our Savior has taught us, that the substance and scope of it all is this, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself.” These are things right in themselves, and which all men would have been bound to do, even if no express law to this effect had been given.

Wide indeed, then, is the difference between the judicial statutes of the Hebrew commonwealth and that moral law, contained in the decalogue which binds all men to obedience, and with which the great principles of christian morality laid down in the New Testament perfectly harmonize. The former was given to an individual nation, in peculiar circumstances, for special purposes; and are at present no further a rule of conduct than they in particular instances, inculcate duties which are confirmed by the latter, as expounded or enforced by Christ or his apostles. Without this sanction, you have no more authority from the political laws of the Jews to practice slaveholding; even in the sense and manner in which they practised it, than you have to practise polygamy.— And we have seen that the system of servitude which prevailed among them was so mild that it cannot according to the correct meaning of the term in this country, be denominated slavery at all. It is as plain then as the sun at noon day, that the laws of the Hebrew nation, do not, and cannot afford your cherished institution any support or cover.

If slavery can be justified from the Bible a tall, it must be on the ground of the great principles of universal benevolence and perfect rectitude, which constitute the foundation of christian morality. We therefore agree with you to refer the great question to Christ and his apostles for ultimate decision.

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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. 76-82

Three Things to be Considered.

Before leaving the subject of Jewish servitude, there are three considerations of chief importance on which we wish you may fix your candid attention.

The first is, There is no sufficient proof to warrant belief, that the Hebrew laws ever authorized, or in any way recognized slavery in the American sense of that term. The assertion that they did, is gratuitous, and altogether incapable of establishment. The general tenor of these laws, fully acknowledging and vigilantly guarding several of the most important rights of humanity in the case of those in bondage, shows that they were not considered things, or mere property possession, like cattle; but men, who had sacred rights with which even those who had purchased them for permanent servants, might not, in any circumstances, interfere. Full evidence of this, we think, has already been exhibited; and in the course of our argument confirmatory facts will be incidentally accumulated.

Secondly, Those who claim authority, in virtue of the Hebrew laws, to hold slaves, have no right to violate their charter, by neglecting any thing which it requires, or doing any thing which it prohibits. In regard to a point so plain, let common sense speak out. Suppose you are all elected trustees of a college, duly chartered and of long standing: Are you at liberty, without regard to the original acts of incorporation, to remodel every thing, and make what disposition of the funds you please ? Is it enough that the mere name of the institution is preserved, while the original design of its founders, and of the government in its incorporation, is wholly defeated? Surely you would feel the necessity either of keeping strictly within your chartered limits, or of resigning your offices, if you did not approve of the duties they imposed. Or, suppose the government gives a daring commander letters of marque and reprisal to go forth on the high seas to capture and plunder the vessels of a nation with whom they are at war. He and his crew are legally authorized. But when this commander has been slain, and another has succeeded to his place, and the crew have undergone so many changes that none of the original number remain, have the successors authority under the original license to take more liberty, and proceed to capture and plunder the vessels of other nations, and to destroy their unoffending crews? The things done would indeed bear close resemblance to those which the original commission warranted, but would still be as completely unauthorized and outrageous as if no such commission had ever been given, and must expose the perpetrators of them to be executed as pirates. Provided then you claim the right of holding slaves under the authority of the Levitical laws, consistency requires that you manage the whole business in strict accordance with them.

The regulation of Hebrew servitude, was a business too delicate, involving interests too sacred, to be committed to the discretion of interested masters. Moses of himself was not competent to such legislation. The sovereign Lawgiver, through him as the interpreter of his will, prescribed the rules by which both masters and servants were to be governed, and required all the people to say Amen, to the imprecation, “Cursed be he who confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them.” And when in a certain case the masters ventured to act at their own discretion, and through covetousness refused to release their servants, when the law required them to be set free, they were most pointedly condemned by the Almighty for their unhallowed temerity. “Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbor: behold I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. Jer. 34:17. Does God give you greater power over the bodies and souls of your fellow men, than he gives to Moses and his peculiar people? license even to make void by your own enactments or customs his laws, while at the same time pleading their authority in vindication of your slaveholding? If you hold under the Jewish charter, you are bound to govern yourselves strictly by its provisions and limitations.

Instead of imprisoning colored people who come among you, and on their failure to substantiate the fact of their freedom or to pay their jail fees, selling them into hopeless bondage; you must suffer even such as you may know to be runaway slaves from other countries to enjoy liberty and to dwell in whatever part of your country they choose. You must in no case restore them again to their masters. Deut. 23; 15, 16.

Instead of marking your refractory slaves by knocking out teeth, chopping off fingers, or otherwise maiming them, and then unblushingly describe them by these marks in your advertisements when they run away, you must know that all such maimings are to the sufferers irrefragable evidence of their legal title to the liberty which they have taken. Exod. 21:27.

Southern slaveholders must not under any pretence hold in involuntary bondage, over six years, any whose complexion proves them to be of white paternity, especially when they have reason to believe that they may be very nearly related to themselves. Deut. 15:12–14,

All your slaves must be consecrated to God; be required to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, and to rest from their secular labors one whole year in every seven; and to share fully with you in all other religious privileges.— Exod. 12:49. Exod. 20:10. Lev. 25:4–6.

On every fiftieth year from the commencement of the practice of slaveholding in this country, the enslaved should all have been, and should all hereafter be, set free. As slavery was introduced in the year 1620, there should have been three Jubilees already. The next should occur in thirty one years. Then must liberty be proclaimed throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof, and all the millions of your down trodden servants, stand erect in the complete enjoyment of civil and religious freedom. Lev. 25:10.

In the meanwhile, there must be equal laws, in the execution of which the rights of servants, as well as those of masters, shall be duly protected, and impartial justice weighed out in the same balances. “He that killeth a man, he shall be put to death. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country.”— Lev. 2:21, 22. Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great: ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s.” Deut. 1:17. See also, Exod. 22:21–24.

Do you object to slavery under such regulations as these? Then do not refer to Jewish laws, as the foundation of your claim. Either obey their laws, or do not seek protection under them.

3. Another point of importance is this, That in as much as the political laws of the Hebrews both permitted and required them to do various things, which others, undeniably, have no right to do, without similar express authority, it follows, that even if those laws did authorize the modified form of slaveholding in that nation which has been described, it is no proof that you have a right to practice it in this. If the assumed right can be maintained on the ground of divine authority at all, entirely different evidence of the fact must be adduced.

The civil laws of the Hebrews permitted and regulated Polygamy. Exod. 21:10, 11. Deut. 17:17. This license the Jews Understood as giving countenance to concubinage also, or taking without ceremony secondary wives, who had no authority in the family and whose children could not inherit any portion of the father's estate. David, Solomon, and Rehoboam, all had many wives and concubines; and do not seem to have considered themselves as acting illegally, or as setting a bad example while so doing. These statutes also permitted any man without reference to any tribunal whatever, to divorce his wife, and send her away, whenever he became displeased with her. Deut. 21:14, 24:1. And they required the father and mother who had a rebellious son, who would not submit to parental discipline, to bring him forth to the elders of the city, at whose order all the people should stone him to death. Deut. 21:18–21. A married daughter, whose husband should convict her of having been unchaste in any instance before marriage must be publicly executed in the same terrible manner. Deut. 22:21. When the people made war upon any city, if it did not immediately open its gates and submit, the Hebrews on taking it by seige, were required by the laws of their country to “smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword.”— Deut. 20:13. They were commanded in general, respecting the inhabitants of Canaan, whom they were sent to dispossess, “Thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shalt deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them.” And having slain a people who had done them no previous injury, they were to possess their country and enjoy the fruit of their labors. Deut. 7:16. 8:7, 8.

Will you from these facts infer that men in this country have scriptural warrant for practising polygamy and concubinage, and to put away their wives whenever they dislike them?—That American fathers and mothers must bring forth their rebellious sons and seduced daughters to be stoned to death? Or that we as a nation are authorized to carry a war of extermination into the territories of our neighbors who have done us no injury and to take possession of their houses and lands for ourselves and posterity? You certainly will not maintain that the judicial statutes of Moses authorized us to do any of these things. But why not? Because these laws permitted and required the Hebrews to do things which we undeniably have no right to do without a warrant from God equally plain. Not the state laws of the Hebrew commonwealth, though given by divine authority, but those principles and precepts of the Bible which are evidently designed for men of all nations, are to be received by us as the proper rules of our conduct. Our ultimate appeal must be to the moral law written by the finger of God upon the tables of stone, to the gospel of our Lord Jesus, and those other portions of divine revelation which agree with them in having not a peculiar but general application. This is as true respecting slavery as it is in regard to polygamy, divorce or exterminating wars. We are no more bound or authorized by the mere political laws of the Hebrew commonwealth, excepting so far as by divine interpretation they are shewn to be of general application, than the people of Maine are bound b the laws of Mississippi. Whoever will maintain the contrary sentiment, must, to be consistent, receive circumcision, abstain from eating swine's flesh, perform the ablutions and offer the sacrifices required by the Levitical law, and take without opposition, the yoke of Judaism upon his neck, however heavy it may be for him to bear.

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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. 65-75

Polygamy

In the progress of the war, and the general interest with which all classes regard its prosecution, the proceedings of Congress, though of unusual importance, excite but little attention.  The action of that body in respect of the passage of a General Bankrupt Law, and the establishment of a National Armory in the West, except to a few immediately interested, seems to have lost interest; more, perhaps, from the fact that the public had settled down in the conclusion that nothing would be done with either of these measures at the resent session.

A bill has recently been passed by the House of Representatives that is calculated to produce great excitement in one portion of our Republic, and perhaps lead to sedition.  We allude to Mr. Ashley’s bill for the punishment of polygamy.  This is the corner-stone of the proposed State of Deseret, just as slavery is that of the projected Southern Confederacy and the Mormons intend to demand immediate admission into the Union with a State government based upon this principle, so revolting to enlightened humanity.  As congress “declares their fundamental system a crime, which morals and justice alike forbid,” and will not for a moment listen to the admission of a new State into the Union on such grounds, and the Mormon leaders are all in earnest in their demand, and emeute may be expected among the Priams of the far West that may require a few brigades to be kept in the field, after the little affair down South has been settled to the satisfaction of all loyal citizens.

As the Western troops have so distinguished themselves in fighting the rebels against our Government, we suggest that a sufficient number be detailed from them to whip the rebels against decency back into the path of virtue and morality.  The ties of a common Westernhood will not unnerve our brave boys; though they love the beautiful West, its broad prairies and invigorating atmosphere, they love more the Government that protects them in their rights, and they wish to enjoy those rights uncontaminated by sin and shame.

The great lights of Mormondom have recently been reflecting their rays on the obtuse faculties of their followers, in a series of set speeches on this libidinous feature of their corrupt system. – Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and other “apostolic” dignitaries in Utah, who mould the deluded followers of the Mormon heresy at their will, we see it stated, boldly avow their purpose to make a direct issue with the Government.  In effect, they say, “that they have suffered unjust persecution until forbearance is no longer a virtue, and that they now insist upon a full recognition of their rights, on an equal footing with the States.”  Brigham recently expressed the views of the priesthood in a violent philippic; a single passage of which will reflect the whole:–

“We are not going to be satisfied with a mere pre-emption right on the soil in this territory.  Should the Government grant to every head of a family six hundred and forty acres of land, and to each wife and child their portion, as was done in Oregon territory, that would give me and to my sons and daughters quite a scope of country, and the whole people would swallow up all the land in this territory.  But shall we be satisfied with that?  No, I am going to have a larger pre-emption that the territory of Utah.  In a few years this territory will contain my own posterity.  In twenty years from now this spacious hall will not hold them, and in twenty years more they will more than fill this territory.  I cannot put up with this small possession.”

In a few years according to Brigham’s constructive tree of genealogy, Mormon offspring will be more numerous than the locusts of Egypt, and, like them, will devour the fat of the land. – Slavery and polygamy, “twin relics of barbarism,” must be wiped out from the fair record of our country, then our nation will march on to true greatness.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, May 10, 1862, p. 2