The intelligent Swedenborgian can hardly doubt the plausibility of the hypothesis advanced in the two preceding chapters, viz., that barbarians in general, and our imported Africans especially, are descendants of some degraded portion of the most ancient church.  They have celestial “remains,” and are capable of the celestial life, when elevated above the sensual-corporeal sphere into which they are at present immersed.

That celestial life is unlike our rational-scientific life, of which in our ignorance and vanity we boast so much.  It needs no book-learning, no colleges, no arts and sciences for its development.  We can not impose our peculiarly natural civilization on the Negro, save to his detriment.  No possible cultivation, after the methods suited to our specific genius, can evoke into life and vigor the dormant seeds of the celestial nature slumbering in the African bosom.  The course of his influx is from within outward, from centre to circumference.  What he wants first of all is a proper basis, an orderly and well-regulated sensual-corporeal sphere, to serve as a recipient vessel for the down-flowing powers within him.  He will procure spiritual truths just as fast as he can ultimate his celestial affections.

Now the Negro has a perfect and inalienable right to whatever will develop and make active his true organic spiritual nature.  If intercourse with the superior races, commercial relations, trade and treaties, missionary efforts, and educational enterprises can civilize the African, rouse his dormant energies, cultivate his mind, Christianize his heart, and enable him to live an orderly, useful, and genuine life, then African slavery would have no excuse.  But if all this had been possible under the operations of Divine Providence, African slavery would never have had an existence.  Let all the world know, that the Christians of the Southern States are ready to turn abolitionists, whenever it can be proven that the material and spiritual interests of the slave will be promoted by a state of freedom similar to ours.

The Dutch and English have had flourishing settlements for 200 years in Africa, but in ten miles of their borders the native is an irreclaimable savage.  The Portuguese have founded flourishing colonies, and their priests have baptized whole tribes into the Catholic Church, but the Africans under their influence are wretched barbarians.  The little colonies of Liberia and Sierra Leone, fostered by white protection and counsels, have shed no ray of light into the darkness surrounding them.  Missionaries have patiently and zealously labored, but in vain.  Dr.  Livingstone, after years of enthusiastic effort, has declared that commerce and civilization must precede religion.  The free Negroes of Hayti are fast relapsing into barbarism and idolatry.  Those of Jamaica, although under the strong military and civil surveillance of Great Britain, have sunk into idleness and pauperism, and disappointed the hopes of philanthropy.  The free Negroes of the North are generally pests to their neighborhoods, and enjoy the name without the blessings of freedom.  In Canada it is even worse.  The Negro has no conception of the “dignity of labor,” or of the meaning of independence.  Mr. Wilson says that the Negroes of the Guinea Coast have no higher ambition than to be taken into the service of the white man.  And our free Negroes are mere appendages to our civilization, not partakers of it.  They are lackies, waiters, hangers-on, body servants, etc., and nothing more.  The few who pretend to preach, lecture, edit, etc., are mere samples of childish precocity, not types of national character.  How many Negroes have hewed their homes and fortunes out of the rich and free western wilds, in the sturdy spirit of the New England pioneer?  None.

The African race has attained its highest present point of development in the Southern States, and in the condition of slavery.  It is more prolific there than anywhere else in the world, or than any other nation in the world.  It may therefore be safely presumed that the checks to population, viz., deficient food, clothing, and shelter, excessive labor, care, crime, misery, and want, do not exist in those States to any notable degree.  In physical, intellectual, and moral character the American slave is far superior to his African progenitor.  And this improvement is progressive.  Amelioration of his condition is constantly going on, and he is constantly also evincing more rationality and virtue, more tact and taste, more mechanical genius and mental power.  He has no vices but those he inherited from Africa, and he has superadded virtues and graces entirely unknown to that continent.  His religious character is capable of the most beautiful cultivation, and if our Lord this day were to gather up his jewels, how many would be found among the faithful, humble, affectionate slaves of America!

This change has been mainly effected by the firm but humane government exercised by the white man over the Negro.  It is unlike every system of slavery which has heretofore existed, in this, that it is the subordination of an inferior to a superior race, and not a domination of one part over another part of the same race, or of one race over an equal race.  The New Churchman should weigh well this distinction.  Things or persons on the same plane or in the same series are to be co-ordinated, while of things or persons in different series or planes, the inferior are to be subordinated to the superior.  This is the law of divine order which prevails in the heavens and in all worlds where sin has not entered.  Woe to that theology or philosophy which fails to appreciate its deep signification!

Note well, however, that in this system the celestial man is not brought into bondage to the natural, but that the sensual-corporeal sphere of the African, which in its barbaric state prevents the evolution of his celestial “remains,” is so subordinated to the rational-scientific sphere of the white man, that his celestial nature obtains for the first time the means of ultimating itself.  The Negro thus acquires a sound natural basis, somewhat similar to that of the white race, into which his descending celestial can be inserted.  It is the duty of the white man to give him this basis in a wise and gentle manner; and it is the duty of the Negro to submit to the disciplinary ordeal which may be requisite in attaining it.

To understand this subject more fully, let us examine the nature of government in general, not in a dry political form, but in the glowing light of the New Church.  Let us first refresh our memories with the essential principle of government in the heavens, according to which all our earthly institutions should be moulded.

After asserting that the forms of government in heaven are infinitely various, Swedenborg goes on to say of the governors or rulers:

“They are such as are distinguished beyond others for love and wisdom, consequently such as from a principle of love desire the good of all, and from the wisdom by which also they are distinguished, know how to provide that the good they desire may be realized.  Persons of this character do not domineer and command imperiously, but minister and serve.  Neither do they account themselves greater than others, but less; for they put the good of society and of their neighbor in the first place, and their own in the last.  They, nevertheless, are in the enjoyment of honor and glory, they dwell in the centre of the society in a more elevated place than others, and inhabit magnificent palaces.  They also accept this glory and that honor, not however for their own sake, but for the sake of securing obedience; for all in heaven know that honor and glory are conferred on them by the Lord, and that therefore they are to be obeyed.” (Heaven and Hell, 218.)

“A similar government in miniature obtains also in every house.  There is in each house a master, and there are domestics.  The master loves the domestics, and the domestics love the master; the consequence of which is that out of love they mutually serve each other.  The master teaches how they should live and prescribes what they should do, and the domestics obey and perform their duties.  To be of use is the delight of life among all.  Hence it is evident that the Lord's kingdom is a kingdom of uses.” (Heaven and Hell, 219.)

What a beautiful moral picture is here presented!  Will the heavens ever truly open and descend upon us in this manner?  Think of it!  No ambition, no lust of power, no pride of place, no contempt of others, no misery of the poor, no folly of the rich, no envy, no jealousy, no deceit, no corruption, no vanity, no dissatisfaction, no inalienable rights to claim—but simple duties to perform, while mutual love and humility reign supreme, and order, peace, and happiness ensue!  This shining Utopia surely beckons us in the shadowy distance.  Come it will, whoever may doubt!  It will be effected by the Divine Humanity descending through the Word and through angelic spheres, and operating into the remotest bounds of nature.  On the political or civil plane of life, two great agencies are at work to promote this glorious revolution, viz., the doctrine of political equality, soon to be restricted to those of equal race, and the patriarchal institution of slavery, that curious modern approach to the end which was in the beginning.

Swedenborg says, that the antediluvians lived in families under a patriarchal head, who represented the Lord, and was at the same time priest and law-giver, being actuated by the purest paternal love.  There was no political organization whatever, in our sense of the term.  Wife, children, and their wives and children, and all the men-servants and maid-servants, and their increase, constituted the family or tribe, and looked up to a common head.  This happy state of life, typical of heavenly order, began to perish when self-love arose, and with it a disposition to appropriate the property of others.  The military spirit was then engendered, and families and tribes coalesced and consolidated for mutual defence or attack.  The pure African has never liberated himself from this miserable political thraldom into which his ante-diluvian ancestors fell.  By continued perversions and the ever-accumulating pressure of hereditary impulse, his whole nature has become thoroughly servile on one hand and thoroughly despotic on the other.  His fetichism, his conjuring and witchcraft, his serpent-worship, his dirt-eating, and his thousand peculiarities of manner and custom, declare his awful and thorough degradation.

Notice now in this connection, that, the African mind, properly speaking, has never had a political existence.  Its sole political life has been found in the perversions and inversions of the patriarchal system.  If it could this day be miraculously restored to its original stand-point, whence it could work out its interior organic life, it would neither know nor learn anything of political rights, privileges or principles.  That whole sphere of thought, so natural and delightful to other races, is entirely foreign to its nature.  Negro attempts at political organization, outside of the controlling or modifying sphere of the white race, must necessarily be failures and farces.  When we refuse the Negro political equality, we deny him no right which he ever possessed, or could ever of himself obtain, and we withhold from him the means of inflicting great injury upon himself and others.

With the opening of the spiritual degree of the human mind, came the establishment of priesthoods and kingdoms and empires, with their complex theological and political forms and mysteries.  There are similar forms of society now existing in the spiritual heavens.  The divine right of kings and priests in the first part of this era was unquestionable, simply because the priests and kings acted and thought divinely.  But all that was changed.  Evil became predominant in its two hateful forms—love of self and love of the world.  Asia and Europe have been deluged with blood, over and over again, by the priests and kings struggling for power and ascendency.  All the religions of the earth have become corrupted and perverted, and all the governments have degenerated into instruments of oppression and tyranny.  For every one of them, the condemnatory handwriting has appeared on the wall.  They are breaking up and dissolving, either by interior disintegration or by exterior violence; and the field of the world is being made ready for the descent of the New Jerusalem.

One of the greatest agencies in achieving this desirable result is the dogma of political equality.  This doctrine has transferred to the people that divine right which had become the opprobrium of kings.  That “all men are created free and equal,” and that government should exist only by consent of the governed, are now the most popular and progressive doctrines in the world.  Whatever doubts may be suggested as to their philosophical truth, and whatever difficulties may oppose their practical operation, it is certain that they are destined to revolutionize modern society.  They will be powerful at least in destroying and effacing the old order of things, and for that they will deserve the gratitude of the world.  It is clear, however, to reflecting minds that these doctrines have no reconstructive power,—and that they would ultimate a perfect anarchy, if we were not assured that new and true principles were descending from heaven, which will finally govern the social and all other spheres of human life.

Now we affirm, without fear of contradiction from any intelligent New Churchman, that African slavery is an institution which is to play an important part in the reconstruction of society upon true and heavenly principles.  African slaver}' provides, as we have clearly shown, a channel for the descent of celestial influences into the world, such as have never before been known or experienced.  Influx, we know, is quiet and imperceptible, like the action of sunlight upon flowers, so that we could know nothing of its operations but for the revealed doctrines of the church.  But influx from heaven through regenerating African slaves, as proper mediums, is at this moment the interior force which is co-operating with the dogma of political equality in the external sphere for the reconstruction of society and the regeneration of mankind.  We may separate; we may fight; but the North and the South are interiorly and indissolubly united.  The North is furnishing the true external basis into which the interior life of the South is to flow for the salvation of the race.  Oh, New Churchmen!  how can ye fail to see the sublime and glorious truth?  The North and South should be related to each other like man and woman, like faith and charity, like external and internal.  Who has sown the seeds of discord in our midst?  That old dragon, that hell within the church, which preaches faith alone and aspires to spiritual dominion over the souls of men.  He musters strongly for his last battle.

The first beneficent effect of the institution of African slavery toward the regeneration of the Negro, is that it withholds him from evils.  The first step toward the regeneration of the white man, in whom the rational-scientific plane is developed, and whose mind can therefore be elevated into heavenly light, is to abstain from evils.  The Negro can not abstain, because he is not receptive of spiritual truth, being in bondage to sensual-corporeal cupidities and phantasies.  He must therefore be withheld like a child, and in this respect the white race is commissioned to hold provisionally a parental relation toward him.  The master must prevent intemperance in eating and drinking; he must prohibit polygamy and curb licentiousness; he must punish lying and theft; he must guard against quarreling and fighting, and withhold each from encroaching upon the rights of others.  Punishment may be requisite to effect all this good, and to that precise degree it is righteous and proper.  Those who can not be actuated by love or persuaded by reason must be controlled by fear.  This principle rules in our government of our own children and in our own police regulations, and it is the principle upon which our Lord through ministering angels reduces the hells to order, and contributes to the comfort and peace of their inhabitants.  It is unquestionably true that even severe corporeal punishment, administered in a spirit of justice and for good ends, is serviceable in dissipating the thick sphere of cupidities and phantasies which surrounds and spiritually suffocates the undisciplined barbarian.

The next step for the African's good (we need not here consider the motives of the master) is to compel him to do uses.  The hereditary devil which has possessed him for centuries has imposed on his constitution an almost ineradicable torpor.  Swedenborg, in several places, speaks of the sphere of the ante-diluvians as dreadfully oppressive and paralyzing, —taking away from its subjects almost all faculty of thought and action.  It is this sphere which we have to dissipate from the barbarous African, and nothing but the strong power of slavery, compelling him to do uses, can effect it.  Swedenborg tells of wicked spirits who are confined to hard labor for their food and clothes until they see and acknowledge their falsities and evils.  Paupers and vagrants are compelled to labor in all civilized countries.  Experience proves that when the African is thus withheld from evil and compelled to do uses, his voluntary principle is developed, a new nature flows out, and he is the most teachable, willing, good-natured, light-hearted, affectionate, and happy creature in the world.

We hold it to be self-evident, that God has created every man with a specific genius and given him definite faculties for its ultimation.  It is not only his right, but his duty to exercise these faculties, for rights and duties go always together.  No man can lawfully push another from his appointed place, and it should be the aim of government to secure to each and all the proper sphere for the natural and perfect development of character.  Rights should be respected and their corresponding duties enforced.  The end in view in the institution of slavery is the preparation of a natural basis for the outflowing of a beautiful celestial nature.  Whatever is necessary for this, the African has a right to claim and the white man is bound to give.  If social equality, competitive labor, political privileges, philosophical culture will bring the celestial “remains” to light out of the primitive darkness of the barbarian’s soul, let him have them!  The North believes this, and charges the South with barbarism and despotism for not coinciding in the opinion.  We think very differently, and the New Churchman who knows what the celestial is, can not long be deceived by the sophistries which have been arrayed against us.

The celestial is best developed in the family sphere, and in the exercise of domestic and agricultural uses.  The house represents celestial good, while the street, typical of commercial and political life, refers only truths.  The town or city corresponds to the spiritual, while the country corresponds to the celestial.  It is the pre-eminent mark of the celestial to be willing to serve.  To serve, therefore, in domestic and agricultural life is characteristic of the celestial genius.  The celestial genius needs no books, no political organizations, no philosophizing for its evolution.  It needs an orderly external, in which the inferior is subordinated to the superior;—it needs an atmosphere of cheerful duty and use, of simple tastes, of sympathy and fidelity, of reverence and gentleness, of justice and mercy and love.  In a well-regulated, cultivated Christian family, the southern slave is bountifully supplied with the means of calling forth his peculiar and remarkable genius.

How long the institution is to last, what modifications it is to receive, and how it is to disappear in the final and perfect order of things, we can not clearly foresee.  Providence has permitted it, so far, for the good of all parties, and has even made use of our very evils for its benefit.  Selfishness brought the Negro from Africa; selfishness reduced him to order and made him capable of uses; selfishness feeds and clothes and protects him.  If the Negro could not have been made subservient to our interests, we should long ago have turned him adrift, driven him before us and exterminated him, as we have done the Indian.  Such would be the issue of abolition.  This is melancholy', but it is true.  What we need now, is not new conduct, but new motives.  The natural man leads an orderly, useful life, from the hope of gain or power or reputation.  The spiritual man leads the very same life, from love to the Lord and the neighbor.  Spiritualize the motives of the slaveholder and he becomes a regenerate man, who, while prudently caring for his own interests and for those about him, is rendering incalculable service to the church and the world.

In view of the organic constitution of the Negro—of the facts and necessities of the case, of the inexorable march of history and progress, according to universal laws of Divine Providence not yet fully discovered, and of the glorious ends to be attained,—is slaveholding a sin?  How can a New Churchman of enlarged views entertain the thought for a moment!

There is no need to recount the Biblical argument for and against slavery.  One party contends, and with great force, that the Bible recognizes its existence as one great means and agency of human development; and if it does not plainly sanction it, at least nowhere condemns it.  The other side affirms that the spiritual principles of the Christian religion demand its overthrow.  We, who interpret the word spiritually, ought to attain a high theological and philosophical stand-point, whence to discover the genuine truth, apart from all appearances of the letter or ratiocination of the understanding.

It is said upon abstract grounds that there can be no such thing as the right of property in man.  That one man can own another in the same sense as that in which he owns a thing, is of course a wicked absurdity.  Slaves are not chattels, but “chattels personal,” that is, property possessed of human rights, of which nothing can divest it.  These rights are food, clothing, discipline, religious instruction, regulated labor, protection, sympathy, etc.  We have no property either in the souls or bodies of our slaves.  We simply have a right to their labor and obedience, in consideration of the immense benefits we confer upon them.  We have simply a right to hold them to an apprenticeship for life, both for their own and the public good.  The apprenticeship is for life, and not for a term of years, because they are organically children or minors, and can never take such care of themselves as we can take of them.  Spiritually speaking, man has no property.  Our proprium, or that which is truly our own, is wholly evil and false.  What we possess is given by the Lord, and it is given only for use.  If the Lord has seen fit to adjoin the sensual-corporeal sphere of the African, as a servant to ours, in order that we may infuse a new and true life into it, and if we discharge our stewardship faithfully and well, it matters not by what names, opprobrious or otherwise, men may designate the relationship which exists between the two races.

But, says the abstractionist, you violate the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.”  This beautiful precept of charity has been grossly misunderstood and perverted to party purposes.  Its true meaning evidently is, that we should be in the continual desire of doing good to all men, and should treat others as it would be wise and just for us to he treated if we were in their places.  It has been tortured to signify, that we should grant every man his wishes, provided we imagine that we would wish the same on a change of conditions.  The judge, then, must pardon the murderer; the magistrate must release the vagrant; the creditor must absolve his debtor; the rich must give all to the poor; the employer must change places with the employed!  Upon this principle, which would destroy all order and all society, it is demanded that the master shall liberate his slave.  Now, in the light of heaven, the African ought to wish to go through the disciplinary ordeal he is now experiencing for his own good and the good of others; and we ought to endeavor, by salutary measures suggested by our superior wisdom, to cultivate his spiritual faculties, until, as to goodness and truth, he attains our own stand-point.  Such is the true law of charity as applied to the Negro, and there is nothing in the institution of slavery to retard, but very many things to foster its operation.  We speak from much observation and living experience.

When we descend from universals to particulars, or from the general to the special, slaveholding is sinful or otherwise, according to the animus or spirit with which it is practised.  If the master gives his servant as little as possible, stints him of food and clothing, works him hardly, treats him with indifference or severity, and cares little or nothing for him except as a valuable beast of burden, he commits the odious sin of the capitalist or employer, who reduces the wages of labor to the lowest possible standard, and pursues his business with the utmost selfishness and unchristian disregard of the rights, feelings, and happiness of others.  If the master imposes unreasonable tasks, exacts improper services, inflicts undue punishments, or violates any principle of charity and justice toward his slave, he commits grievous sins, which are by no means limited to slaveholding countries.  If he is imperious and implacable, domineering and tyrannical, miserly and cruel,—as many men are, independently of local institutions,—his whole moral nature is tainted, and he is sinful in all the relations of life.  Such men have domineered over wives and children and dependents in all ages and countries.  Slavery did not bring them into existence. 

If the slaveholder assumes his responsibilities wit a solemn sense of their sacred character; if he regards bis slave with kindness and forbearance and sympathy; if he provides, to the best of his ability and belief, for his physical comfort and his moral and religious instruction; if he administers discipline with justice, and tempers justice with mercy; if he protects and guides and regulates with a generous hand and a loving heart, in infancy and sickness and old age; not only is his slaveholding not a sin, but it is a blessing to all around him, and comes back to himself, as all blessings finally do, in the cultivation of his religious life and the development of his spiritual nature.  The unfoldings of the spiritual world may possibly reveal the fact, that this Christian slaveholder, misunderstood and reviled as he now is by his brethren in other countries, had attained the sublimest point of human civilization.