Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
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Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 05 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
brother beloved, even as the Apostle himself. Thus, with apostolic pen,
wrote Paul to his disciple, Philemon. In these words of gentleness,
benediction, and equal rights, dropping with celestial, soul-awakening
power, there can be no justification for a conspiracy, which, beginning
with the treachery of Iscariot and the temptation of pieces of silver,
seeks, by fraud, brutality, and violence, through officers of the law
armed to the teeth, like pirates, and amidst soldiers who degrade
their uniform, to hurl a fellow-man back into the lash-resounding den
of American Slavery; and when any one thus perverts this beneficent
example, allow me to say that he gives too much occasion to doubt his
intelligence or his sincerity.
Certainly I am right in stripping from Slavery the apology of
Christianity, which it has tenaciously hugged; and here I leave the
first part of my subject, asserting, against every objection, the
Necessity of our Enterprise.
II.
I am now brought, in the _second_ place, to the PRACTICABILITY of the
Enterprise. And here the way is easy. In showing its necessity, I have
already demonstrated its practicability; for the former includes the
latter, as the greater includes the less. Whatever is necessary must be
practicable. By a decree which is a proverb of tyranny, the Israelites
were compelled to make bricks without straw; but it is not according
to the ways of a benevolent Providence that man should be constrained
to do what cannot be done. Besides, the Antislavery Enterprise is
right; and the right is always practicable.
I know well the little faith of the world in the triumph of principles,
and I readily imagine the despair with which our object is regarded;
but not on this account am I disheartened. That exuberant writer,
Sir Thomas Browne, breaks into ecstatic wish for some new difficulty
in Christian belief, that his faith may have a new victory; and an
eminent enthusiast went so far as to say, “I believe because it is
impossible,”--_Credo quia impossibile_. No such exalted faith is now
required. Here is no impossibility; nor is there any difficulty which
will not yield to faithful, well-directed endeavor. If to any timid
soul the Enterprise seems impossible because it is too beautiful, then
do I say at once that it is too beautiful not to be possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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