Burlington free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1827-1865, 1861-03-15

! PRoF. TAYLOR LEWIS has published in the
New York World, several able letters on
American Slavery. They were occasioned by
shallow sermon of Rev. Mr.. Van Dyke, oi
Brooklyn, which, defending Slavery for o
divinely authorized and commendable insti-
tuition, was distributed broadcast over the
land, by those of like sentiment. An extract
from one of Prof Lewis letters will indicate
their profound christian spirit
"Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill
and said God who made the world and all
things that are therein: He who is Lord Of
Heaven and earth He hath made of one
blood all nations to dwell upon the face of
the earth. having determined their appointed
times and the boundaries OF their dwellings.
lie who admits OF any inspiration at all in
the Bible must acknowledge it here. If
any where we recognize the divine voice
speaking through man to man, We must see
the evidence of it in this majestic utterance
from MaIs hill. The time and the place give
it peculiar significance. The Athenians,
1t is well known, prided themselves extrava-
gantly on race. They claimed to be the
Autochthones, the native born, the pure Attic.
No other blood mingled with theirs, or was
allowed to mingle. The barbarans, the ma
tlons, or heathen, as the Jews would have
expressed it, were their interiors. On this
very ground Of inferiorlty of blood. the great
est Greek philosophers had made an argu-
ment to prove the right of slavery. Their
poets, their orators, had all fed the same
idea. No humiliation had weakened it. 1t
kept its strength under the Spartan subiuga-
tion-under the Roman rule.
But now here comes strange man from
the barbarian land he stands on that ancient
hill, the seat of their most holy and consery-
ative court; in the face of their strongest
prejudice, in defiance of their Attic pride
he says, ''God, the High Ruler of US all. our
Sovereign Lord and King, He hath made of
one blood all nations TO dwell on all the face
of the earth" He left this new and mighty
truth to sink down into their astonshed souls.
Its application to slavery was obvious enough;
no one who chose to look that way could fail
to see it; but the apostle wished to give it
still wider bearing. His object was not to
preach merely political jubilee, but to give
the truth, in its earthly aspect, higher
ground and a higher effect, by showing it's
connection with the heavenly and divine. 1t
was to lead the soul TO that eternal basis of
all philanthropy, Of all true love to man
that all EN- bracing article, that men, all men.
tie lowest men, are the "off,pring Of Cod
by life originally inbreathed by
him, made in his image, having in this
sight of truths surprising sense, q vision
dim though it be, Of the immortal ideas,
and thus, in the lowest and most animal
forms of fallen, sunken humanity, still al
lied to the eternal, the uncreated, the divine
1t is summed up in that, which, if it had
not been said by Paul, some would not have
hesitated to call Pantheism-''for in God we
hre, and more, and are" This was " the
law and testimony" he proclaimed. then
went his way. "G0d hath made" not of
similar blood. nor even of the same blood,
but "of one blood" of one life, "all nations
t0 dwell on all the face OF the Garth.
Is this sublime declaration consistent with
slavery in its mercenary sense, in its claims of
ownership? Can one such being Own ano-
ther such being as his roperty, for his gam ?
Can he say OF him as he would Of horse, or
an OF, he is mine lie, his children, and hischil-
dren's children are my property. They live |
''not for themselver' but for me. They |
live mot for God, not to serve God in their own
free Will and self hood, but Tor me, for my |
gain, my worldly profit, for that thing call |
my pleasure, my happiness, or my good. If
there is something that cannot be got out OF |
him, something too interior for me to reach,
be may have it, or he who made him may |
have it bat for all the use that can be thus
obtained, for all earthly gain-producing uses
they are my property, and he is
mine.