Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the
South--but I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems
good in you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle to your brother
slave-holder Philemon, in that epistle in which he sends back the slave
Onesimus,--a very trying epistle to us at the North, though on the
whole, many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration notwithstanding
this epistle, especially as it is explained to us by some at the North
who know most of Southern slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is
insisted by some of our best scholars, should control even our
interpretation of the word of God. Paul speaks to this slave-holder,
Philemon, of "the acknowledging of every good thing which is in
you,"--which we think was exceedingly charitable, considering that it
was said to a holder of slaves; and perhaps quite too much so; for the
truth is not to be spoken at all times, and especially not of those who
hold their fellow-men in bondage. I am often constrained to think that
it was an inconsiderate, unwise thing in the Apostle to take this
favorable view of that slave-holder; he may, however, have written by
permission, not by commandment; that would save his inspiration from
reproach; for had he been inspired in writing this epistle, I ask
myself, Would he not have foreseen our great Northern conflict with the
mightiest injustice upon which the sun ever shone? and would he not have
foreseen how much aid and comfort that epistle would give the friends of
oppression on this continent? One first truth in the minds of the most
eminent "friends of freedom" is this: "Slavery is the sum of all
villanies." Other truths follow in their natural order; among them the
question of the inspiration of the Bible has a place; but slavery leads
some of them to think lightly, and to speak disparagingly, of the Bible,
because it comes in conflict with their theories regarding
slave-holding, which is certainly not always referred to in Scripture in
the tone which we prefer. There was the Apostle James, too, writing