Aunt Philliss Cabin | Page 3

the Scriptures evidently permit slavery, even to the present time.
The curse on the serpent, ("And the Lord God said unto the serpent,

Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above
every beast of the field,") uttered more than sixteen hundred years
before the curse of Noah upon Ham and his race, has lost nothing of its
force and true meaning. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow
shalt thou eat of it, all the days of thy life," said the Supreme Being.
Has this curse failed or been removed?
Remember the threatened curses of God upon the whole Jewish tribe if
they forsook his worship. Have not they been fulfilled?
However inexplicable may be the fact that God would appoint the curse
of continual servitude on a portion of his creatures, will any one dare,
with the Bible open in his hands, to say the fact does not exist? It is not
ours to decide why the Supreme Being acts! We may observe his
dealings with man, but we may not ask, until he reveals it, Why hast
thou thus done?
"Cursed is every one who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ." Are not all
these curses recorded, and will they not all be fulfilled? God has
permitted slavery to exist in every age and in almost every nation of the
earth. It was only commanded to the Jews, and it was with them
restricted to the heathen, ("referring entirely to the race of Ham, who
had been judicially condemned to a condition of servitude more than
eighteen hundred years before the giving of the law, by the mouth of
Noah, the medium of the Holy Ghost.") No others, at least, were to be
enslaved "forever." Every book of the Old Testament records a history
in which slaves and God's laws concerning them are spoken of, while,
as far as profane history goes back, we cannot fail to see proofs of the
existence of slavery. "No legislator of history," says Voltaire,
"attempted to abrogate slavery. Society was so accustomed to this
degradation of the species, that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth
more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his being a slave."
Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Carthage, and Rome had their thousands of
slaves. In the Bible, the best and chosen servants of God owned slaves,
while in profane history the purest and greatest men did the same. In
the very nation over whose devoted head hung the curse of God,
slavery, vindictive, lawless, and cruel slavery, has prevailed. It is said

no nation of the earth has equalled the Jewish in the enslaving of
negroes, except the negroes themselves; and examination will prove
that the descendants of Ham and Canaan have, as God foresaw,
justified by their conduct the doom which he pronounced against them.
But it has been contended that the people of God sinned in holding
their fellow-creatures in bondage! Open your Bible, Christian, and read
the commands of God as regards slavery--the laws that he made to
govern the conduct of the master and the slave!
But again--we live under the glorious and new dispensation of Christ;
and He came to establish God's will, and to confirm such laws as were
to continue in existence, to destroy such rules as were not to govern our
lives!
When there was but one family upon the earth, a portion of the family
was devoted to be slaves to others. God made a covenant with Abraham:
he included in it his slaves. "He that is born in thy house, and he that is
bought with thy money," are the words of Scripture. A servant of
Abraham says, "And the Lord has blessed my master greatly, and he is
become great, and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and
gold, and men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and asses."
The Lord has called himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
These holy men were slaveholders!
The existence of slavery then, and the sanction of God on his own
institution, is palpable from the time of the pronouncing of the curse,
until the glorious advent of the Son of God. When he came, slavery
existed in every part of the world.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven and dwelt upon the
earth: his mission to proclaim the will of God to a world sunk in the
lowest depths of iniquity. Even the dear and chosen people of God had
departed from him--had forsaken his worship, and turned aside from his
commands.
He was born of a virgin. He was called Emmanuel. He was God with

us.
Wise men traveled from afar to behold the Child-God--they knelt
before him--they opened their treasures--they presented to them gifts.
Angels of God