Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[147] certainty, it ceases to be authoritative. Nor is it of vast consequence, in the eye of reason, whether they to whom the Bible is ascribed wrote it or not; whether Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or of any other Epistle which is attributed to him; whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or Joshua the history of his own exploits, or David the Psalms, or Solomon the Proverbs; or whether the real authors were some unknown persons. “What is writ, is writ,” and it must stand or fall by the test of just criticism, by its reasonableness and utility, by the probabilities of the case, by historical confirmation, by human experience and observation, by the facts of science, by the intuition of the spirit. Truth is older than any parchment, and would still exist though a universal conflagration should consume all the books in the world. To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.

Towards midsummer the art of phonography alighted in Boston, with Andrews and Boyle for its apostles and¹ teachers. It found a cordial welcome in the Liberator. Mr. Garrison recalled his first visit to England in 1833,² and his regret that his ignorance of any language but his own overruled his desire to cross to the Continent; how, on his second visit, in 1840, the need of a universal language for mankind was again impressed upon him at Bowring's table, when he could hold no conversation³ directly with Isambert and the other French delegates to the World's Convention, so that at the Crown and Anchor⁴ soiree he had to ‘testify against the existing diversity of tongues among mankind,’ to him so ‘unnatural, fraudulent, afflictive, insupportable.’ Phonography seemed a long stride towards the desideratum, as promising to ‘render each national dialect simple and exact,’ and make easy ‘the transition from many rectified languages to one pure language.’ With millennial hopefulness, he repeated his belief that some then living would witness a world's convention ‘either to devise a common language, or to provide ways and means for the universal propagation of such a language.’