The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1913-02-28
RELIGIOUS ZEAL

land; New England shifting the re-
sponsibility, pointed to Old England;
Old England shifted the responsibility
on their conquerors, until finally it
was fixed upon the Roman empire,
and Rome justified it upon the ground
of the authority of nations, arguing,
and, perhaps, arguing truly, that in
those early times the conventional
law of nations admitted that captiVes
in war, whose lives, according to the
notions of the times, were at the dis
posal Of the captOrs, might, in the eX-
change for the exemption of death, be
made slaves for life, and that such
servitude might descend to posterity.
The jurists of that early empire
maintained that by the civil law
there might be servitude Or slavery,
personal and hereditary; first, by the
voluntary act of an individual, who
might sell himself into slavery; sec
ondly, by his being reduced into a
state of slavery by his creditors, i'll
satisfaction of debts; and, thirdly, by
being placed in a state OF servitude or
slavery for the commission of crimes.
So the question of slavery was not
always based on the question of ma
tiOnalty. 1t was then as it is now.
For the commission of crimes men OF
all nationalities are held in serYitude.
But we are getting little off the
track.
African slavery in the United States
was the cause OF the enmity between
the north and the south, which finally
eventuated in our great titanic civil
struggle.
The discussion became so intense
and SO embittered that it finally led
to the separation of one at least OF
our great religious bodies. The Meth
odist church, the great pioneer or
ganization, was cut in twain and be-
tween the TWO wings there was great
intolerance and bitterness of feeling
In q. speech delivered in the senate
OF the United States in 1850, Mr.. Dan
iel Webster undertook to tell why
this feeling was so intense. He said:
"a question of this kind seiZes on
the religious sentiments of mankind,
and when it comes TO be discussed in
religious assemblages of the clergy
and laity, there is always to be eX-
pected, or always to be feared, de-
gree of excitement.
at is in the nature of man, mani
tested in his whole history, that relig-
ious disputes are apt to become warm
in proportion to the strength of the
convictions which men entertain Of
the magnitude of the question at is
sue.
I'm all disputes there will some
times be found men with whom every
thing is absolute; absolutely wrong
or absolutely right They see the
right clearly; they think others ought
to see it, and they are disposed to es-
tablish a broad line of distinction be-
tween what is right and what is
wrong. They are not seldom willing
to establish that line upon their own
convictions of truth and justice, and
are ready to mark and guard it by
placing along it a series of dogmas as
lines of boundary on the earth's sur
face are marked by posts and stones.
There are men who, with clear
perceptions, as they think, of their
own duty, do not see how too eager a
pursuit of one duty may involve them
in the violation of others or how too
warm an enforcement of one truth
may lead to a disregard of other
truths equally important. Those per-
sons are disposed to mount upon some
particular duty as upon a war horse,
and drive furiously on and upon and
over all other duties that may stand
| in their way. There are men who, in
reference to disputes of that sort, are
of opinion that their human duties
may be ascertained with the exact
ness of mathematics. They deal with
morals as with mathematics, and they
think that what is right may be dis
tinguished from what is wrong with
the precision of algebraic equation.
They have, therefore, none too much
charity toward others who differ from
them. They are apt, too, to think
that nothing is good but what is per
feet, and that there are no comprom-
Uses or notifications to be made in
consideration of differences of opin-
ion or in Difference to other mems
judgment
If their perspicacious vision ena-
bles them to detect spot on the face
of the sun, they think that a good rea-
son why the sun should be struck