William Lloyd Garrison, the AbolitionistGrimké, Archibald Henry
History
William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist
Grimké, Archibald Henry
Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879
the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on
the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul
quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; "the Sabbath,"
quoth he, "is the _great sun of the moral world_." Out upon you, said
Garrison, the LORD GOD is the _great sun of the moral world_, not the
Sabbath. It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and
which men should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not regard for
the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to
righteousness. What is the command, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
holy,' but one of ten commandments? Is the violation of the fourth any
worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it
so taught in the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading
down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and
murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone
of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?
Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more special character
touching the observance of the day thus: "These remarks are made not to
encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious
and superstitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that
extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon
certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost
exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the
prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious
observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must
necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its
sanctity." This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave
instant offence to the orthodox readers of the _Liberator_. For it was
enough in those days to convict the editor of rank heresy. From one and
another of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in upon him. A
young theological student at Yale ordered his paper stopped in
consequence of the anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor. A Unitarian
minister at Harvard, Mass., was greatly cut up by reason thereof, and
suddenly saw what before he did not suspect. "I had supposed you," he
wrote in his new estate, "a very pious person, and that a large
proportion of the Abolitionists were religious persons.... I have
thought of you as another Wilberforce--but would Wilberforce have spoken
thus of the day on which the Son of God rose from the dead?" Garrison's
query in reply--"Would Wilberforce have denied the identity of Christ
with the Father?"--was a palpable hit. But as he himself justly
remarked, "Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies unworthy of a
liberal mind." Nevertheless, so long as men are attached to the leading
strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason, such questions will
possess tremendous destructive force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case,
presently perceived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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