COMPROMISES AND THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF GEORGIA
Americans are much addicted to settling difficulties by compromises; but these compromises, in State and Church, especially in regard to slavery, have so often been the sacrifice of principle to expediency that the word has come to have a sinister meaning—implying such a sacrifice; and they have so often proved failures as to show them to be unwise, even as a matter of expediency.
A brief sketch of some of these past compromises, with their motives and failures, may throw some light upon the compromise proposed for the Congregational churches in Georgia.
These have usually been made from more than one motive:
1. One strong plea is that the expediency is so urgent that a small sacrifice of right is justifiable. In that celebrated law case of Shylock the Jew versus Antonio the merchant, so ably reported by William Shakespeare, Esq., this reason was plainly stated. The defendant's attorney, Bassanio, in order to avert from his client the dreadful forfeit of a pound of flesh taken nearest his heart, appealed to the judge:
"I beseech you
Wrest once the law to your authority;
To do a great right, do a little wrong."
The "wise young judge" knew the law, human and divine, too well to grant this plea.
But that plea had its influence in securing the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Among other difficulties in the way, a constructive guarantee of slavery seemed necessary to secure the assent of some of the Southern States. How strong the plea! Slavery was wrong to be sure, but the terrible seven years' war was ended, and a great nation was ready to come into existence! The compromise was made and the Union was formed. But did the compromise save it? No! The "pound of flesh" was at last the price. After a struggle of seventy-two years the crisis came, Sumter was fired upon and the compromise was found to be a failure. "A pound of flesh!" Nay, the flesh and blood of a million of men saved the Union.
2. Another motive for a compromise is the expectation that while it is all that can be done now, it will be a step towards the ultimate. This was strongly urged in that first compromise. It was said that the Declaration of Independence, the enthusiasm for liberty, and the world-wide boast of equal rights, must work a universal consent to the abrogation of slavery. Jefferson voiced the general sentiment when he said: "I think a change is already perceptible since the origin of the present revolution. The way I hope is preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation." But slavery grew stronger, instead of weaker, under the compromise, and from time to time required more compromises, and more surrenders. The Missouri Compromise, the Annexation of Texas, and the Fugitive Slave Law, each extorted under threats of the "dissolution of the Union," are examples. But no compromise ever wrenched an inch of territory from the clutch of slavery and gave it to freedom. Freedom held the whole Northwest, by the un-compromising requirement: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" there!
3. Another strong plea for compromise is the hopelessness of gaining anything better. This was the consideration urged so vehemently against the early Abolitionists. It was said: "Slavery is wrong—that we all admit—but it is a fixed fact, invulnerable, backed up by wealth, talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially with those who vaunt themselves as "practical men," who boast that they care nothing for abstractions, but take business views of things. This plea and these men were largely influential in carrying forward some of the most iniquitous compromises preceding the war.
This glance at the compromises in the political history of the nation prepares us to look at those in the Church. Here, too, compromises on the subject of slavery were made as in the State, and generally from the same motives and always with the same disappointing results.
The Churches before and during the revolutionary period were emphatic in their utterances against slavery. Their accredited leaders and official convocations used such terms as these: Methodist, "The sum of all villanies;" Presbyterian, "Man stealers: stealers of men are those who bring off slaves or freemen and keep, sell or buy them;" Baptist, "Slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature;" Congregational, "Slavery is in every instance wrong, unrighteous, oppressive, a great and crying sin, there being nothing equal to it on the face of the earth."
But there were slaveholders in the churches, and as population increased they became more numerous and naturally chafed under such denunciations. But their impatience reached its climax under the modern anti-slavery doctrine that immediate emancipation is the only remedy for the sin of slavery. The South was alarmed and soon became imperious and exacting; the North was timid and yielding. Then began the special era of ecclesiastical compromises. Let me specify:
1. The utterances as to the guilt of slavery were modified, reaching at length the point where some of the most eminent doctors of divinity and the most learned professors in theological seminaries tried to vindicate from the Bible the toleration of slavery.
2. Disclaimers were made as to the right to interfere with slavery. As, for example, a large ecclesiastical assembly by vote disclaimed "any right, wish or intention to interfere with the civil and political relation between master and slave, as it exists in the slaveholding States of this Union." A distinguished bishop is reported to have said: "I have never yet advised the liberation of a slave, and I think I never shall;" and an eminent doctor of divinity declared: "If by one prayer I could liberate every slave in the land I would not dare to offer it."
3. Fine distinctions were drawn in behalf of slaveholders. It was warmly urged in their defense that while slavery was a sin, the individual slaveholder might not in every case be a sinner—a charity that was made to cover a multitude of sinners. One large religious assembly declared that it could not "exclude slaveholders from the table of the Lord;" it would rather "sympathize with and succor them in their embarrassments." An elaborate report was adopted at another large convocation, in which it was suggested that the convert should be admitted into the church while still a slaveholder, an oppressive ruler and a proud Brahmin, in the hope that under proper teaching, "the master may be prepared to break the bonds of the slave, the oppressive ruler to dispense justice to the subject, and the proud Brahmin fraternally to embrace the man of low caste."
The great motive for these concessions was the desire for church enlargement. Slavery was a sin, but the slaveholder might not always be guilty, and if church unity and church extension were to be secured in the South, some concessions must be made. Then, too, there was undoubtedly the hope that concessions and fraternal intercourse in public assemblies and in Christian work would win the confidence of the slaveholders, and perhaps prepare the way for the gradual removal of slavery; and above all there was the cogent plea that compromise or division was the only present choice. The "half-loaf" argument was wielded most effectually, and here, especially, the "practical men" came to the front, while on the heads of the devoted Abolitionists were showered without stint the epithets "fanatics" and "visionaries."
So much zeal for the slaveholders, and so much sacrifice of self-respect, not to say of conscience, surely deserved a better fate; but all was in vain. The slaveholders scorned the compromises, and ruthlessly rent asunder the great national churches and missionary societies. The Congregationalists, never numerous in the South, clung with great tenacity to their few churches, but at length surrendered them.
So ended the first chapter of humiliating and fruitless Church compromises; but a new chapter has begun to be written, and so far promises to read just as the other did, both as to the facts to be recorded and the end that will be reached. Slavery is dead, but the son and heir and legitimate representative,