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Show 168 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. difficult to cope with that from its C"!>rcss precepts and injunctions. Servants, obey your masters, is one of the most explicit precepts of the New Testament. This precept just as certainly exists therein as does the great principle of love itself. "The obedience thus enjoined is placed," says Dr. Wayland," not on the gt·ound of duty to man, but on the ground of duty to God." We accept the interpretation. It cannot for one moment disturb the line of our argument. It is merely the shadow of an attempt at an evasion. All the obligations of the New Testament are, indeed, placed on the same high ground. The obligation of the slave to obey his master could be placed upon no higher, no more sacred, no more impregnable, ground. Rights and obligations are correlative. That is, every right implies a corresponding obligation, and every obligation implies a corresponding right. lienee, as the slave is under an obligation to obey the master, so the master has a right to his obedience. Nor is this obligation weakened, or this right disturbed, by the fact that the first is imposed by the word of God, and rests on the immutable ground of duty to him. If, by the divine Jaw, the obedience of the slave is due to the master, then, by the AROUMENl' l'ROM TllB SCRIPTURES. 169 same Jaw, the master has a right to his obedience. Most assuredly, the master is neither "a robber," nor "a murderer," nor "a mnnstealcr," merely because he claims of the sla,-e that which God himself commanus the slave to render. All these epithets may be, as they have been, hurled at us by the abolitionist. liis anathemas may thunder. But it is some consolation to reflect, that, as he was not consulted in the construction of the moral code of the universe, so, it is to be hoped, he will not be called upon to take part in il• execution. The most enlightened abolitionists arc sadly puzzled by the precept in question; and, from the manner in which they sometimes speak of it, we have reason to fear it holds no very high place in their respect. Thus, says the lion. Charles Sumner, "Seeking to be brief, I shall not undertake to reconcile texts of the Old Testament, which, whatever may be tbeit· import, are all absorbed in the New; nor shall I stop to consider the precise interpretation of the oft-quoted phmsc, Servants, obey yo•.r ma•· ters; nor seek to weigh any such imperfect injunction in !be sca;;s against those gmnd |