Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Europe -- Description and travel
They expunge even from their European books every passage of this kind,
and excuse themselves by the law and the public sentiment. So are the
people taught. There has been a great deal said on the subject of
influence from abroad; but those who talk in that way interfered with
the persecution of the Madiai, and remonstrated with the Tuscan
government. We have had large meetings on the subject in New York, and
those who refuse the Bible to the slave took part in that meeting, and
did not seem to think there was any inconsistency in their conduct.
"The Christian church knows no distinction of nations. In that church
there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but
all are one in Christ; and whatever affects one part of the body affects
the other, and the whole Christian church every where is bound to help,
and encourage, and rebuke, as the case may require. The Christian church
is every where bound to its corresponding branch in every other country;
and thus you have, not only a right, but it is your duty, to consider
the case of the American slave with just the same interest with which
you consider the cause of the native Hindoo, when you send out your
missionaries there, or with which you consider Madagascar; and to
express yourselves in a Christian spirit, and in a Christian way
continually, till you see that your admonitions have had a suitable
influence. I do not doubt what you say, that you will receive with great
pleasure men who come from the United States to promote the cause of
temperance, and you may have the opportunity of showing your sincerity
before long; and the manner in which you receive them will have a very
important bearing on the subject of slavery. [Cheers.] I have not the
least doubt you will hail with joy those who will come across the
Atlantic to advance and promote still more earnestly those noble
institutions, the ragged schools and the ragged churches. [Cheers.] The
men who want to do good at home are the men who do good abroad; and the
same spirit of Christian liberality that leads you to feel for the
American slave will lead you to care for your own poor, and those in
adverse circumstances in your own land, I would ask, Is it possible,
then, that admonition and reproof given in a Christian spirit, and by a
Christian heart, can fail to produce a right influence on a Christian
spirit and a Christian heart? I think the thing is utterly impossible;
and that if such admonitions as are contained in the resolution,
conceived in such a spirit, and so kindly expressed--if they are not
received in a Christian spirit, it is because the Christian spirit has
unhappily fled. I can answer for myself, at least, and many of my
brethren, that it will be so; and, so far from desiring you to withhold
your expressions on account of any bad feeling that they might excite, I
wish you to reiterate them, and reiterate them in the same spirit in
which they are given in this resolution; for I believe that these
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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