Does the Bible condone slavery? Indeed so, according to a Virginia school teacher who assailed Chaplain Alonzo H. Quint on the subject on more than one occasion. "It was a great comfort to her that I had voted against father Abraham," Quint recalled, "but she concluded I had 'fallen from grace.'" Why? Because the Bible specifically authorized the South to hold slaves, and if Quint was against slavery, he was against the Bible. Quint stood patiently while the lady flipped through her Bible, promising to give up all of his objections to slavery if she could prove her case.

The lady immediately turned to Leviticus XXV, 46 and read triumphantly, "They shall be your bondmen forever." Did that not settle the question?

"Well, not quite," Quint replied. "First of all, who are 'they'?"

"The heathen."

That was all well and good. But what of the converted slaves, Quint countered. "You don't think it right, according to scripture, to keep them as slaves?"

The lady had to concede this point, but did so reluctantly. "Well, those not Christian we have a right to hold."

"Why so?"

"They shall be your bondmen forever," she repeated with more insistence.

The Chaplain shook his head ruefully. "You remind me of the old schoolboy way of proving the duty of hanging one's self by quoting, 'Judas went and hanged himself,' with 'Go thou and do likewise.'"

Growing increasingly agitated, the woman persisted in her belief that the Bible proved it was right to hold slaves. Quint tried a different approach. "Right for whom to hold slaves?"

"Why, for anybody."

"Not at all, madam. If it proves anything, it proves it was the privilege of the Jews. Are you a Jew?"

If it was permissble for the Jews to hold slaves, the lady insisted, it was certainly permissable for Virginians to do the same.

Quint disagreed. "I admit that God could authorize certain parties to hold slaves; but it does not follow that others not so authorized have a right to do it. The privilege is limited by the special permission, because contrary to natural right. Show me a provision anywhere from God authorizing the South to do it, and I will submit; but I want the documents."

The woman was beginning to think that the Massachusetts minister was an infidel, and stuck to the principle that what was right for the Jews was right for anyone.

"Very well," Quint said, dropping the issues, but the wily preacher did not let his adversary off the hook so easily. "Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his only son. Do you believe it is everybody's duty or privilege now?"

Certainly not! came the indignant reply. Quint was citing a very singular case. It wasn't a fair argument, she charged.

Then, take a general case, Quint answered. "Jewish men had several wives apiece. Am I to understand that you advocate that arrangement now? Or, is it your idea of slavery is called a 'patriarchal system' because it comes as near to this arrangement as possible, if I may judge from the color of the slaves hereabouts?"

The woman's reply was so filled with wrath that Quint dared not to cross her path again.

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