A lesson from Uncle Tom

"And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do - Luke 12.4

I recently read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I had of course heard of it for many years, but never took the time to read it. All I had ever heard about it was that it was a load of abolitionist propaganda that was a waste of time to read.

But I did, I listened to the story until I got enthralled by it and then started reading it on my Kindle. I found myself moved by a very powerful story of the faith of Uncle Tom. His witness pervades the book no matter what kind of situation he faced several owners and slave dealers. Some were decent, some were cruel, and one was very kind. As the story reaches its conclusion he is sold to Simon Legree

Legree is cruel, vicious, and brutal. One of the things he hates most about Tom is his faith in Christ.

If you have access to a copy of the book and don’t want to read the whole thing, let me direct you to Chapter 38 – ‘The Victory’ where the conflict comes to a head. The book is available to search and read free online.

Legree’s cruelty had Tom is total despair. We pick up the story just after a particularly cruel beating. His faith was wavering. He had stopped reading his precious Bible. He was just about to give up.

He was preparing his meagre dinner when he saw His Bible and picked up to read.

Quotes are from Kindle’s free e-book  - Stowe, Harriet Beecher (2006-01-13). Uncle Tom's Cabin. Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

‘There were all the marked passages, which had thrilled his soul so often,--words of patriarchs and seers, poets and sages, who from early time had spoken courage to man,--voices from the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround us in the race of life. Had the word lost its power, or could the failing eye and weary sense no longer answer to the touch of that mighty inspiration? Heavily sighing, he put it in his pocket. A coarse laugh roused him; he looked up,--Legree was standing opposite to him.

 "Well, old boy," he said, "you find your religion don't work, it seems! I thought I should get that through your wool, at last!"

The cruel taunt was more than hunger and cold and nakedness. Tom was silent.

"You were a fool," said Legree; "for I meant to do well by you, when I bought you. You might have been better off than Sambo, or Quimbo either, and had easy times; and, instead of getting cut up and thrashed, every day or two, ye might have had liberty to lord it round, and cut up the other niggers; and ye might have had, now and then, a good warming of whiskey punch. Come, Tom, don't you think you'd better be reasonable?--heave that ar old pack of trash in the fire, and join my church!"

"The Lord forbid!" said Tom, fervently. "You see the Lord an't going to help you; if he had been, he wouldn't have let me get you!

This yer religion is all a mess of lying trumpery, Tom. I know all about it. Ye'd better hold to me; I'm somebody, and can do something!" "No, Mas'r," said Tom; "I'll hold on. The Lord may help me, or not help; but I'll hold to him, and believe him to the last!"

We seem Tom’s faith being restored. He began praying and eventually the Lord began to deal with him and give him confidence in his eternity. Tom’s faith was stirred and he found new strength.

‘From his deepest soul, he that hour loosed and parted from every hope in life that now is, and offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to the Infinite. Tom looked up to the silent, ever-living stars,--types of the angelic hosts who ever look down on man; and the solitude of the night rung with the triumphant words of a hymn, which he had sung often in happier days, but never with such feeling as now:

"The earth shall be dissolved like snow, The sun shall cease to shine; But God, who called me here below, Shall be forever mine.

"And when this mortal life shall fail, And flesh and sense shall cease, I shall possess within the veil A life of joy and peace.

"When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining like the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise Than when we first begun."

We don’t often sing the two verses of Amazing Grace that Tom remembered, but what comfort they give!

Here is how Stowe describes the change in Tom –

When the dim gray of dawn woke the slumberers to go forth to the field, there was among those tattered and shivering wretches one who walked with an exultant tread; for firmer than the ground he trod on was his strong faith in Almighty, eternal love. Ah, Legree, try all your forces now! Utmost agony, woe, degradation, want, and loss of all things, shall only hasten on the process by which he shall be made a king and a priest unto God!

From this time, an inviolable sphere of peace encompassed the lowly heart of the oppressed one,--an ever-present Saviour hallowed it as a temple. Past now the bleeding of earthly regrets; past its fluctuations of hope, and fear, and desire; the human will, bent, and bleeding, and struggling long, was now entirely merged in the Divine. So short now seemed the remaining voyage of life,--so near, so vivid, seemed eternal blessedness,--that life's uttermost woes fell from him unharming.’

Shortly after Tom is gladly singing the words of Isaac Watt’s hymn ‘On My Journey Home’ while working in the field.

"When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I'll bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes "Should earth against my soul engage, And hellish darts be hurled, Then I can smile at Satan's rage, And face a frowning world. "Let cares like a wild deluge come, And storms of sorrow fall, May I but safely reach my home, My god, my Heaven, my All."

Legree heard him and was incensed so he beat Tom more severely than ever before, but now it was different –

‘But the blows fell now only on the outer man, and not, as before, on the heart. Tom stood perfectly submissive; and yet Legree could not hide from himself that his power over his bond thrall was somehow gone.

Tom was free. Simon Legree was no more his master. He knew that all Legree could do was to kill his body, but Legree could not control his soul.

‘What more can they do,’ Jesus asked, ‘once they have killed the body?’

‘Nothing’ is the answer. Uncle Tom knew that and the time he had left was spent in loving witness. Two of the overseers who had viciously beat Tom were saved through his witness.’

We can be as free as Tom found himself when we finally realise that all the enemy can do is take our body. When they do that it just hastens the day till we meet our Saviour.