Antislavery movements -- United States; Swisshelm, Jane Grey Cannon, 1815-1884; Women's rights -- United States
"Again pardon, but I am not your sister. Doctor Jaynes uses a large part
of his column to persuade us that it is good to have good hair. No one
disputes that, and he should prove that his tonic will bring good hair.
So you talk of the importance of religion. No one disputes this, and it
is your business to prove that the nostrum you peddle is religion. I say
it is not. It is a system of will worship. Religion is obedience to
God's law. You teach people that they can, and do, obey this law
perfectly, while they do not know it. Your church has no bibles in her
pews, few in her families, and these unread. Preachers and all, not one
in twenty can repeat the ten commandments. You are blind leaders of the
blind, and must all fall into the ditch, destroyed for lack of
knowledge!"
That week he proposed to abandon the Swissvale meeting-house, and build
one in Wilkinsburg, giving as a reason the impossibility of keeping up
a congregation with me on the farm.
Next Conference sent Rev. Henderson as presiding elder, who brought in a
new era. He slept in the "prophet's chamber," admired my pretty rooms,
and said nothing about my getting religion. The circuit preacher was of
the same mind, an earnest, modest, young man, wrestling with English
grammar, who on his first visit sought my help about adverbs, while my
mother-in-law looked on in evident displeasure.
To her this was the dawn of that new day, in which the Methodist church
rivals all others in her institutions of learning. The good time of
inspiration was slipping away. What wonder that she clutched it as Jacob
did his angel? There in that house she had for long years been an oracle
to inspired men, and now to see God's Spirit displaced by Kirkham's
grammar was rank infidelity. The Wilkinsburg meeting-house was being
built, and that one which had been to her all that the temple ever was
to Solomon, would be left to the owls and bats--her Zion desolate. Those
walls, made sacred by visions of glory and shouts of triumph, would
crumble to ruin in the clinging silence. How could she but think that
the influence was evil which could bring such result?
The new building was consecrated with much ceremony. The two Hendersons
staid with, us, and on Sabbath morning consulted me as to the best way
of taking up subscriptions. Mother-in-law looked on till she could bear
it no longer, and said:
"Brother Henderson, if you mean to be in time for love feast, you must
not stay fooling there."
Both men sprang to their feet, hurried away and never returned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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