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Mary Anne Rawson's The Bow in the Cloud (1834): A Scholarly Edition

Best, Thomas

Name ID:

Born: 1787

Died: 1865

Note: The Rev. Thomas Best, 'father of the Sheffield clergy', was for forty-eight years the Incumbent of St. James's Church, long the fashionable church of the town. He was also a rare 'conformist' in the Bow in the Cloud, having moved from the Congregationalist to the Anglican Church before he moved to Sheffield. He was also known as a critic of the theatre, believing that actors and theater-goers would go to hell. He delivered his first sermon against the theater in 1817. He continued to deliver annual sermons on the subject from the pulpit of St. James's for 47 years, except for one year when he was ill (see Richard Foulkes's Church and Stage in Victorian England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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The True Freedman, by Thomas Best

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"He is the freeman, whom the Truth makes free,
"And all are slaves beside."

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In whatever state of outward condition any man may be, the grace of God, which is by Jesus Christ, can make him therewith content. It can diffuse peace and joy through the soul of the captive, and cause him "at midnight" to sing praises unto God, although "thrust into the inner prison," and having "his feet made fast in the stocks;" and it can set at rest the heart of the slave, even under the rigours of the hardest bondage.

But while the principles and power of true religion can inspire and maintain contentment under the heaviest yoke of servitude, it is no where enjoined upon the Christian to manifest a disregard of civil rights and privileges; nor does any precept of the Bible require from him an unnatural and unattainable indifference with respect to --

"The thousand charms which Freedom has to shew,
Which slaves, howe'er contented, never know."

The direction of the Inspired Volume must commend itself to every man's reason and right feeling, -- "Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." And it will be a subject of thankful and heartfelt rejoicing to every true friend of his country and of his kind, that the blessing of liberty is placed within the reach of those whom England has hitherto held fast in hard and cruel bondage; and that Britain's senate has at length decreed that the jubilee-trumpet shall sound through all her coasts and colonies, proclaiming that Slavery's chain is loosed, that the rod of the oppressor is broken, and that the fetter-galled victims of wrong and robbery shall go free. And were there no other yoke than that by which the slave is subjected to the will and caprice of a fellow-mortal, and no other chains than those which bind the body, the friends of the Negro might now rest from their labours in gratitude and peace, and in the enjoyment of that glorious triumph of humanity, which, through God's good hand upon them, they have achieved.

There is, however, a liberty which human legislators cannot enact, -- which man's bounty cannot buy, -- for which an adequate compensation cannot be calculated; but which is given to every man who will come and take it, "without money and without price." "Grace makes the slave a free-man;" or, to express it in the better words of Him, who came to heal "the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bound," -- "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." And such is the surpassing worth of this freedom, that it would be infinitely better to continue, till death, the most oppressed slave of the most absolute and iron-hearted tyrant, and to be the Lord's freeman, than to be a partaker of all the civil privileges which a gracious God has granted to a British isle, if a stranger to spiritual liberty; for --

"What other miseries
May from this same unhappy source have risen,
Are earthly, temporal, . . . . .
But if a soul be lost . . . . that were eternal evil."

True benevolence flows from "fellowship with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ." It is a stream from the eternal fountain of love. It is derived and drawn from the source of all good, by those who "know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent;" and who, by faith, are made "partakers of the Divine nature." It is the communication of the mind of Christ to those who are "in Him." If we really love one another, it is because we have known and believed the love which God hath manifested to us in sending his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and the Saviour of the world; and because we dwell in God, and God in us, and He hath given us of His Spirit. And whenever such "good-will to man" resides and reigns in the heart, its exercise will be steady and consistent. Such men will habitually act like persons who have "the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them." They will be "followers of God as dear children." As He is, so are they in this world. They will walk, even as Christ walked. As they have opportunity, they will do good to all. They will dispense, with large and liberal hand, the bounties and blessings of Providence which have been committed to their trust. But while they are promoting, according to their power, the present well-being of their fellow-creatures, they will be moved with the deepest commiseration for those who are as sheep without a shepherd; -- who are wretched wanderers from God, but have none to search after them, or to care for their souls. They will partake of the mind of Him who came to seek and to save the lost; and who sent forth His Apostles not only to heal the sick and to relieve the suffering, but also, and at the same time, to publish abroad the glad tidings of peace and salvation.

Such men will, indeed, greatly rejoice in the breaking up of a system of cruelty and injustice, which has inflicted so many and grievous evils upon the negro population of our Slave-colonies; but they will feel that the main part of their work and labour of love yet remains to be done. The consideration will affect their hearts as painfully as before, that --

"Stronger and heavier chains than those which bind
The captive's limbs, enthralled his abject mind:
The yoke of man his neck indignant bore,
The yoke of sin his willing spirit wore."

Such men will chiefly regard the abolition of West-Indian Slavery as a means to an infinitely higher end; and having rejoiced to see the oppressed go free, and the suffering slave rescued from a temporal evil which he both feared and felt, they will be the more anxious for his redemption from an eternal evil which he neither feels nor fears.

In the ground already gained, such men will discover the means and the motives for renewed and redoubled exertions. They will see in their present measure of success, the barriers to the progress of moral and religious instruction and improvement broken down; -- the negro-mind softened, conciliated, and better disposed; hindrances, against which they had long struggled, done away; -- facilities once denied, now freely granted; -- opportunities often and earnestly desired, fully afforded; -- doors of usefulness widely opened; -- and these favouring circumstances, and better days, and brighter prospects, will give to their efforts the impulse of a more lively hope, and animate and urge them onwards in the pursuit of their final aim -- the emancipation of the soul.

The philanthropy of such men will not rest contented when the objects of their benevolent regard have been admitted to a participation in the blessings of civil liberty and personal freedom; but, having themselves experienced a far greater deliverance, -- having come at the Saviour's call, and laid down their burden of guilt and fear at the foot of the cross, and found peace in believing; -- having exchanged the bondage of Satan and the servitude of sin, for that yoke whose service is freedom and whose labour is rest; -- having felt the power of divine grace in breaking the chains with which they were once tied and bound; -- having found by happy experience that the truth can make them free; and that their disenthralled spirit can exult in hope, and soar aloft, as with the wings of a dove, and flee away, and anticipate its eternal rest in that city where not a link of spiritual bondage will remain, but where the ransomed of the Lord shall rejoice for ever and for evermore in the glorious liberty of the children of God; -- such men can never contentedly stop short of their high and holy purpose of adding to the privilege which has already been obtained for the objects of their compassion, the further inestimable blessing of spiritual freedom, -- that liberty wherewith Christ can make them free. They will pursue this purpose with the same immoveable resolution, -- patient perseverance, and union of hearts and hands which, through grace, have thus far crowned their efforts with success. They will take God at his word; they will believe Him when He says, that, "He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;" and that "He will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth;" and going forth in His strength, they will not stagger at the difficulties which lie in the way; but, "stedfast in faith, and joyful through hope, and rooted in charity," they will not cease their labours or their prayers till they have done all that lieth in them, to bring these untaught victims of oppression and neglect to the knowledge and obedience of the faith of Jesus; and, through God's grace and blessing, to transform these degraded and wretched idolaters into enlightened, holy, happy Christians. The true Abolitionist is the man, who does not break the fetters which bind the body, and then leave the soul enthralled, -- who will not be satisfied with the admission of the slaves to civil rights and privileges, or even with their elevation to the rank of a free and well-conditioned peasantry; but whose heart's desire and prayer to God for these injured children of Africa is, that they may receive a rich recompense of inestimable and eternal benefits for their past sufferings; that they may have cause to bless God through the future and endless duration of their being, for that bitter bondage which brought them within sound of the words of life; and to rejoice that they were made man's slaves, since thereby they became the Lord's freemen. That society alone deserves the name of "Anti-Slavery," whose members account their glorious task undone, so long as the objects of their benevolence remain strangers to spiritual liberty; and who nobly determine that nothing shall be wanting on their part till, through the blessing of Heaven upon their stedfast and strenuous efforts, these slaves are emancipated from the yoke of guilt and sin, -- till the Son has made them free, and they are "free indeed."

Thomas Best.

Sheffield.

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Anglican