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Wheaton's
Blanchard on Social Reform
Excerpts from from Jonathan Blanchard,
A Debate on Slavery, Cincinnati, Wm. H. Moore, 1846
Blanchard pastored a Cincinnati
church when he debated Rev. N. L. Rice for six days in the City of
Cincinnati in October 1845. He later became the first President of Wheaton
College. For more information on Blanchard, see order information at end of
this page.
wages
P 304 – "the Bible says, ‘the
laborer is worthy of HIS HIRE,’ The daughter of Pharaoh did not dare compel
a Hebrew servant to nurse Moses for her without promising her wages. This
common, house-hold equity; this simple justice to the laboring poor, blazes
on every on every page of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, yet he
vaunts his eagerness to bring this discussion to the words of Holy
Scripture, as if that blesses book contained no justice for men compelled
to work without hire!"
Oppression
p. 429 – "Robbery is forcibly taking
a man’s earnings; theft is stealing them; and swindling is taking them by
fraud. Neither of these is, strictly, ‘oppression’ – which is putting your
hand through a man’s earnings, and taking out of the man himself the right
to acquire; … And the Word of God is one blazing wall of fiery wrath
against this oppression, from Genesis to Revelation. ‘Thou shalt not
oppress the stranger, nor vex him.’ ‘ Woe unto him that useth his
neighbor’s service without wages.; … ‘Do justly, love mercy, and walk
humbly with thy God.’"
Human rights
p. 43-44 – "There are three sorts of
human rights. Political, social and Natural. Voting is a political right. …
Abolitionists take their stand upon the New Testament doctrine of the
natural equality of man. The one-bloodism of human kind: - and upon those
great principles of human rights, drawn from the New Testament, and
announced in the American Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men
have natural and inalienable right to person, property and the pursuit of
happiness. They only carry out the admitted truth that all are equal."
Social action
p. 411 – "Now if you wish to abolish
slavery in Kentucky, what have you to do? Nothing, but to strike the
chattel principle from the code, and then give the emancipated free access
to the courts. Repealing the chattel principle turns the slaves into men,
and giving them access to the courts, secures to them the rights of men. …
The Mosaic law did not strike out the chattel principle, for it never was
there. … no such thing as slavery did or could exist in Judea. Give the
Jewish law of bond service to Kentucky, and the thousands who lie down
slaves to-night, will rise in the morning free men. Establish he Hebrew
code throughout the States, and there will not be a slave left to wet the
soil with the tears, and the sweat of his unpaid labor, in the whole
country."
Higher law
p. 468 – "saying that the rights of
lave-owners still remained in them by the civil law is subjecting the
Christian church to the heathen State. But if the law of Christ was
superior to that civil law which gave them their slave-holding rights, then
they ceased to be slave-holders when they joined the church."
Advocacy
p. 418 – "I stand in the Gospel of
Christ, to plead for my clients, three millions of human beings, who cannot
plead for themselves, and I beg, in the name of God, who pities them, and
us all, that you will hear me with patience and candor.
Feminism
p. 433 – "The first alteration which
Christianity made in the polity of Judaism, was to abrogate this oppressive
distinction of sexes; declaring that, while the husband is the head of the
wife, yet in ‘Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.’ The degrading
serfdom of the woman to the man, was abolished. Christ declared the husband
and wife to be ‘one flesh,’ and set the woman in the family, by the side of
her husband … and not his menial dependent."
Economy
p. 11 – "there are right and wrong
business relations. The relation of partners in a legitimate trade is a
just and useful relation – founded on a right principle, that of the mutual
dependence of men. … But there is also a false relation in business – such
as that between smugglers, or that of the anti-social conspiracy, formed by
men who are banded together to burn our cities, and, by general
disorganization, to bring down society to their own level."
Slavery
p. 292 – "I now call your attention
to what I call the direct argument (and all my arguments are from the Bible,
or are intended to be) to show that the relation of master and slave is a
sinful relation. I have showed (I think) slave-holding to be ‘in itself
sinful,’ which was the first part of the question. I wish therefore, to
show that the relation, - not the practice, only, of slave-holding, but the
relation of master and slave is sinful. I have duly advertised the audience
of my one and a half hours’ speech in the Old Testament servitude and a
speech of similar length on the New Testament view of slavery."
Social sin
p. 208, 210 – "But I argue further,
that slave-holding is sin, because it is going with a multitude to do evil.
... Slave-holding is not a solitary, but a
social sin. It requires conspiracy and combination to perpetuate it. …
The whole United States’ power is but the
hand-vice into which the slave-holder screws his slave, and y which the
slave ‘if held to service or labor,’ and the United State statute, a tether
to bind the hands and feet of those whom the rapacity and violence of our
ancestors have enslaved and placed in our power. Slave-holding, is
therefore explicitly forbidden by God in the words: ‘Thou shalt not follow
a multitude to do evil.’"
From Discovering An Evangelical Heritage by Donald W. Dayton,
Harper and Row, 1976l
"These men are Jonathan Blanchard
and Charles A. Blanchard, father and son, the first and second presidents
of Wheaton. These two men held the office for over twenty and forty years,
respectively. Together they guided Wheaton College through its first
sixty-five years. ...Blanchard's position on reform can best be understood
through an examination of the Cincinnati debate."
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