CONCLUSION.
We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws,
To which the triumph of all good is given,
High sacrifice, and labor without pause,
Even to the death:—else wherefore should the eye
Of man converse with immortality?
WORDSWORTH.
Friends and co-laborers for freedom! We have now a new and indispensable, though painful duty to perform. Our foes have hitherto been without the pale of the associations: we have now found the most deadly within. It misbecomes us to talk of “dissensions among brethren”—of “quarrels among ourselves,”—of “dreading the strife of tongues,”—of “hiding ourselves till this calamity be overpast.” Without our most strenuous exertions, it will never pass, but as the remorseless sea passes over the sinking vessel. If we would free the slave, we must meet and conquer a tyrannous influence and spirit, in the shape that it has now taken, as we have done in all its transformations in the times that are past. We must disabuse our minds of the idea that all are brethren in the cause, who call themselves such.
“Do you love freedom?” is the question we have startled our age withal; and we have begun to judge men—of all classes and conditions,—by the reply their lives make to it. Class after class have thus been tried and condemned. In earlier times, we have bound ourselves steadfastly to the truth which condemned them. Its might made riches a reproach, and “gentlemen of property and standing” a by-word. All our band joined their voices to the oracular one of truth, when these sinners were tried by their own principles of action, and found wanting. Why is it that some now cast aside the inspired maxim, “by their fruits ye shall know them”—when another class of men—the ministry, are found recreant to the cause of humanity? It is because they have become like unto them.
We are not without experience of the facility with which men add hypocrisy to wrong. Let the professions of such be to us, from henceforth, as though they were not uttered; their past good deeds, registered with those of Lucifer before his fall. This and this only, in this emergency, is allegiance to the God “whose word is truth—whose will is love—whose law is freedom.”
When, in earlier days in the cause, some of us foresaw the present state of things, we submitted our souls to the prospect of its painfulness. We said, “thy will be done,” in thus keeping our instrumentality effectual and pure.
“May the numerous unpopular questions with which the anti-slavery cause is connected” (thus ran our prayer) “continually come up with it as it is borne onward. So that, up to the final triumph, the act of joining an anti-slavery association may be, as it has hitherto proved,—a test-act.”[9]
And so we pray still; for still and forever, TRUTH is one and indivisible. All moral questions are by their nature inseparable, in any other than a mechanical sense, and while we sedulously keep them thus mechanically separate, because to do otherwise would be a sin against the freedom of others, and a betrayal of their confidence, we feel it to be no less a sin against freedom for others to impede any man’s course with reproach, on account of this eternal decree of God’s providence.
We have all preached emancipation by peaceful means; and now some are amazed that the attainment of all right, in like manner, should have suggested itself to men’s minds! We have all denied that might makes right, and asserted the supremacy of moral power; and yet some are standing in terror-stricken astonishment that the “woman question” is stirred in every heart; and “other some” are persecuting and forsaking their brethren, because the examination and application of principles, though limited in the anti-slavery society by the terms of association, cannot be stayed in men’s minds or individual lives. The time has come for men to look their terrors for the future in the face. A little thought will show them thus much at least;—that it is no sin against an anti-slavery society, to apply, in another association, the peaceful principles by which it is proposed to abolish slavery, to the sins involved in existing governments or sacerdocies. If institutions, religious or political, are unable to stand the test of such an application, that, in the opinion of some, is the fault of the institutions. With this opinion, anti-slavery societies have no more to do than with the question sometimes started, of the duty of urging prayer upon the unconverted, whose prayers God pronounces an abomination. Discussion of collateral subjects is often salutary and necessary in our associations; but to a decision upon them, by which new tests of membership are introduced, no anti-slavery society is competent. It ceases to be an anti-slavery society from the moment it assumes to decide upon opinions respecting governments or churches.
No man is required, as an abolitionist, to endorse or oppose governments or church establishments. But every thoughtful and honest mind, whether its anchor have “entered into that which is within the veil” or not, feels called by its allegiance to freedom, instantly to resist any attempt to make one man accountable to another for the progress of his mind. This same allegiance to the foundation principle of inalienable human rights, warns a man against laboring to prevent woman from standing upon it, if such should be her determination. She may, in his opinion, be sinning against propriety—sinning against Paul, by acting in anti-slavery societies: but he himself sins against freedom in striving for her exclusion; and any act against freedom, is treason to the slave.
Men whose principles, thus imperfectly developed, are at war with each other, will, in all probability, become worse in their last state than in their first, especially if they are yielding not so much to their own convictions as to the pretexts in which a public abstractly opposed to slavery, is fain to clothe its hatred to a real opposition. If they are striving to pacify the foes of freedom by these outrages upon her principles and her advocates, their case is a desperate one, and affords but little probability of repentance.
Surrounded as we are by the smoke and dust of the hottest conflict, we must keep all these considerations in mind, if we would avoid perplexity and doubt. Let us, from time to time, survey the field from a higher point of view, and take careful note of the divisions of the battle, and the nature of the ground on which the hosts are encamped. What do we discern, as we ascend the mount of vision and of difficulty? We perceive hatred and malignant opposition occupying the same post as when we first roused them from their apathy. We are ever contending with our old opponents, under new names, and with every change of name and pretext, some whom we have loved and trusted, are “carried away by their dissimulation.”[10]
At the beginning, they were “as much Anti-Slavery as any one, but hated Mr. Garrison.” What are they now? Even “more Anti-Slavery than any one, but hate Mr. Garrison.” Through all their various phases of Colonizationists, American Unionists, Clerical Appellants, new organizationists, their moving spirit is the same;—hatred of the freedom that defies their control. Even while professing to be laboring for emancipation, they have always been careful to express their hatred of the free spirit in which abolitionists carry on the enterprize. It must needs be so. There is eternal enmity between the spirit which prompts a man to strive for the mastery, and the spirit which calls no man master. It is an eternal truth, that he who wishes to rule, is unfit to serve.
From this point of observation, we may notice not only the timidity and treachery of some, but the touching fidelity of others. A single individual was once exalted by our opponents into a symbol of faithfulness to liberty and humanity. Now, the whole associated host of a State are assailed with slander and contempt for a like fidelity.
In this symbolic sense, an association is endowed by the enemies of truth and freedom with a notoriety and importance not its own. In every such case, we have a finger of Providence, pointing out to us the course we should pursue with respect to it. Identifying ourselves with it, we listen for the voices that have been wont to cheer the onset. The soul that is now silent is self-condemned.
Let us enlarge our horizon by ascending still higher, so that we can at a glance command the present and the past; for so come many instructive lessons to the mind. We behold far back in the distance, days like those of Wat Tyler, of Wycliffe, of Knox, and Luther and Washington. On closely observing any such era of accelerated progress, we perceive great bodies of men, unaccountably to us, giving back at a critical instant—thrown into confusion by circumstances which we, at this distance of time, discern to have been of but the smallest moment; and, seeing how the speedy and triumphant success of the right is thereby prevented, we suffer a sort of pain that we are unable to cast upon their path the light of our knowledge. “Had they but known what we so readily discern,” we exclaim, “how different would have been their course!” and we marvel that they were unable to break the spell that bound them, and which one added glance of foresight or of faith would have shivered.
We forget that, besides the natural obscurity of the hour unilluminated by the future, there is ever a shrinking terror on men’s minds, which forbids them boldly to face the phantoms of their own times:—a spurious charity for wrong, which, prompted by a vision of oneself in a similar condemnation, is not forgiveness, but treachery to Right. We overlook the obvious consideration that those transition periods were, like our own, infested with the treacherous and the selfish, whose fancied interest it was to suppress facts, circulate falsehoods, make up false issues, apologise for wrong, palliate crime, veil baseness under “decent pretexts,” exalt profession into performance, and by any and every means delay impending change.
This reflection should remind us that such light as we are fain to cast upon past times in our impatience of their blindness, is the same as duty binds us to communicate to our own. When we observe the importance of small things in the world’s history; it should point us to the cheerful discharge of so lowly a duty as to record those in which we have been engaged. Let us not deem any of them so unimportant as to refuse to draw from them lessons of wisdom, nor strive to persuade ourselves that aught can be trifling, which is wrought into the great page of the past. “To serve the nineteenth century we must know the nineteenth century:” therefore, nothing is without consequence which helps to illustrate our times. Facts, warnings, rebuke, encouragement, consolation, advice, labor,—whatever the times demand, let us give as we have power and opportunity, and we shall soon be made to know what it was that kept so great a distance between the words of lonely warning that have risen prophet-like upon the past; and why, at some periods, there could be no “open vision” or corresponding energy, but only the feebleness and incertitude of ignorance and fear. Custom is never, by her nature, the handmaid of freedom; and therefore in a struggle for the extinction of slavery, if we speak only according to custom, we shall lose the unhesitating distinctness which the occasions of the cause demand. The occasion now demands, in an especial manner, the plain directness of the very palace of truth.
Let us, however, avoid the mistake of supposing that we can find in the past, the exact parallel of the present, in any other than a spiritual sense. Truth—Love—Freedom—are ever the same; but the outward signs of their presence, and the manner of their workings upon society, will, at different times, be far unlike. The problems they present, may be wrought out by different processes, though the results are the same. This reflection will enlighten us as to the causes of the convulsive terror now manifested by the body of the ministry and their dupes—the clerical politicians. We shall learn how it came to pass that the latter were desirous of disjoining themselves from the abolition host, while they yet claimed the name of abolitionists. We shall see on what temptations they have
“fallen away
Like water from us, never found again,
But where they mean to sink us.”
At the outset, they were encouraged by the comparatively quiet progress of abolition in England, to believe that our own would necessarily follow the same course. Strong as was the agitation there, it effected its work, without shaking the ponderous establishments, civil and ecclesiastical, which bore down upon the land with their “weight of calm.” Here, on the contrary, the lighter yokes of church and state are so shaken by the contest, as to convulse those hearts with terror for their existence which lack the honesty to acknowledge the worse than uselessness of a church or a government which sustains slavery, and the humble faith in God to say,
“Whatever fall—whate’er endure,
I know thy word shall still stand sure.”
When such lose their confidence in the identity of the principles of freedom, with those of order and Christianity, they are disunited in soul from those who are pressing forward with undiminished confidence; and to disguise their change of feeling they sacrifice their integrity.[11]
In our grief at their conduct, we undergo strong temptations to palliate and conceal, when we ought to expose and condemn. The greater need, therefore, that we often ascend the mount of communion with the HIGHEST, there to strengthen our vision and our hearts.
“Weak eyes on darkness dare not gaze:
It dazzles like the noontide blaze,
But he who sees GOD’S face, may brook
On the true face of sin to look.”
“Some natural tears we shed” over those who have turned back from the van, and are trampling down the ranks they once cheered onward; but thus strengthened and enlightened, we shall not long indulge a useless sorrow. We shall cease to be impatient when those whom we yet believe true, are slow to see and to act, in an emergency requiring promptitude. We shall but redouble our own laborious vigilance;—we shall but make more intense our own fervent endeavor. We are laying the foundations of many generations; and need not to be disturbed by the discomposure of such as comprehend us not. What though, to our human weakness, the end to be attained seem farther off, as faithfulness rouses indifference into opposition, or converts spiritual terror into treachery? yet is the day of redemption nearer than when we believed. What though, in future and severer perils which we KNOW beset the path we must go, we should, for a season, be deserted of all in whom we trusted for aid in this work of redemption? even our Savior was left to “watch alone one bitter hour,” before any comforting angel was sent of heaven to strengthen him.
Truth—Love—Freedom! evermore must their victories for humanity be won through suffering—but they shall be WON. “Forever, Oh Lord! thy word is settled in heaven.”