Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1861-01-24
S SERMON.

Sc r MON.
ABoL1TIoNIsM HAS NO FOUNDATION
IN SCRIPTURE.
THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF
ABOLITIONISM.
4 Sermon Jy Rer. Henry j. Nan Dyke, Preach
e1 IN the First Presbyterian Church, Bfook-
Ign, New York.
CONCLUDED. 4
THE PRINCIPLES OF ABoLITIoNIsM HAVE BEEN
PRopAaATED CHIEFLY BY MIsREpREsENTA-
TION AND ABUSE
Having no foundation in Scripture, it
does not carry on its warfare by Scripture
weapons. Its prevailing spirit is fierce and
proud, and its language if full of wrath and
bitterness. Let me prove this, by testimony
from its own lips. quote DR.. Claiming,
of Boston, whose name is a tower ofstrength
to the abolition cause, he whose memory
is their continual boast. In a work publish
cd in 1886, I find the following words:
"The abolitionists have done wrong, believe;
nor is their wrong to be wnked at because done
fanatcally or with good intentions, for how
much mischief may be wrought with good de-
signs! They have fallen into the common error
of enthusiasts, that of exaggerating their object,
of feeling as if no evil existed but that which
they opposed, and as if no guilt could be COM
pared with that of countenancing and upholtllng
it. The tone of their newspapers, 50 far rs
have seen them, has often been fierce, bitter and
abusive. They have sent forth their orators,
some of them transported with fiery zeal, to
sound the alarm against slavery through the
land, to gather together young and old, pupils
1f0u1 sCiIooIs, Iettffy stsIfacTi t.
of discretion, the ignorant, the excitable, the
impetuous, and to organize these into associa
tions for the battle against oppression. Very
unhappily they preached their doctrine to the
colored people, and collected them into societies.
TO this mixed and excitable multitude, minute
heart-rending descriptions of slavery were given
in piercing tones Of passion, and shareholders
were held up as monsters of cruelty and crime.
The abotionst, indeed proposed to convert
shareholders, and for this end he aiyproached
them with vituperation and exhausted on them
the vocabulary of abuse. And he has reapel as
he sowed"
Such is the testimony Of Dr. Claiming,
given in the year 1886 What would he
have thought and said if he had lived until
the year 1860, and seen this little stream
over whose infant violence he lamented
swelling into torrent and flooding the land?
Abolitionism is abusive in it's persistent mis-
representation of the legal principles invol-
we'd in the relation between master and slave.
They reiterate in a thousand exciting forms
the assertion that the idea of property in
man blots out his manhood and degrades
him to the level of brute or stone.
domestic slavery" says DR.. 'Vayland,
in his work On Moral Science, s'supposes at
best that the relation between master and
slave is not that which exists between man
and man, but is a modification at least of
that which exists between man and the
brutes." Do not these abolitionist philoso-
piers know that according to the laws OF
every civilized country on earth man has
property in his children and a woman has
property in her husband? The statutes OF
the State of New York and Of every other
Northern State, recognize and protect this
property, and our courts of justice have re-
peatedly assessed its value. If man is
killed on railroad, his wife may bring suit
and recover damages for the pecuniary loss
she has suffered.
another, and marry her while she is still
under age, the father may bring civil suit
for damages for the loss of that chld's SER
vices, and the pecuniary compensation is
the only redress the law provides. Thus
the common law of Christendom and the
statutes of our own State recognise property
in man. In what does that property con-
sist? Simply in such services as man or
a child may properly be required to render.
This is all that the Levitical law, or any
other law, means when it says, 'Your bond
men shall be your possession of property
and an inheritance for your children" The
property consists not in the right to treat
the slave like brute, but simply in legal
claim for such services as man in that po-
sition may properly be required to render
And yet abolitionists, in the face of the di-
vine law, persist in denouncing the very re-
lation between master and slave, ''as modi-
cation, at least, of that which exists, between
man and the brutes."
This, however, is not the worst or most
prevalent form which their abusive spirit
assumes. Their mode of arguing the ques-
ton of slaveholding, by pretended appeal
to facts, is tissue of Misrepresentation from
beginning to end. Let me illustrate nv
meaning by parallel case Suppose un-
dertake to prove the wickcdncss of marriage
as it exists in the city Of New York. In
this discussion suppose the Bible is excluded