And to this day the Christian marriage ceremony demands of woman that she promise to love, honor, and obey her husband.
What driveling idiots we mortals have been to suppose for a moment that a good being, a heavenly father, would let one part of his family hold the other in slavery!
Moreover of the children of the strangers, that do sojourn, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession.
And ye shall take as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever, but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor. (Lev. 25 : 45, 46.)
If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him; if his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go out by himself. (Ex. 21 : 2-4.)
Servants, obey in all things your master according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. (Col. 3 : 22.)
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (1 Peter 2 : 18.)
In addition to these positive indorsements of slaveholding, it should be remembered that Jesus never condemned it, and it was not difficult, therefore, for the church also to indorse and support it.
The American Church was the Bulwark of American Slavery.
The slave system in this country always received the support of the church. In the early history of the country it was occasionally condemned by some of the bravest ministers, but as the nation grew powerful, so also did this sum of all villainies. Not only the ministers of the slave states, but ministers of the free states lent their support to this despotism. The Rev. N. Bangs, D.D., of New York, said:
It appears evident that however much the apostles might have deprecated slavery as it then existed throughout the Roman empire, he did not feel it his duty as an embassador of Christ, to disturb those relations which subsisted between master and servants, by denouncing slavery as such a mortal sin that they could not be the servants of Christ in such a relation.