Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[109] degraded in this country. He professed to have blushed (though alone) while reading the socialistic tracts of Robert Owen and Fanny Wright; but when had he done so, in public or in private, at the practical and legal annihilation of the marriage institution among the slaves by Christians of all denominations?

Mr. Garrison returned to the subject, strictly in its relations to slavery, in the next two numbers of the Liberator, accompanying his last article on Dr. Beecher¹ with a long one maintaining the sinfulness of all war, and the Christian character of non-resistance; and a shorter one (inspired by a current news item) on Sabbath-breaking, ridiculing the customary religious moralizing on fatalities overtaking those engaged in secular pursuits on Sunday. The conclusion ran thus:

These remarks are made, not to encourage men to do² 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.

Supposing the Fourth Commandment to be, not a Jewish provision merely, but obligatory upon all mankind, we are nowhere taught in the Bible that its violation is worse than that of the third, or fifth, or sixth, or seventh. But it is seldom pretended, even by the most credulous, that special judgments, “speaking the divine disapprobation,” are visited upon the heads of those who commit adultery, or kill, or covet, or will not honor their father and mother. No—a monopoly of punishment is given to the Sabbath, to ensure its strict outward observance!

From friends and foes of the Liberator protestations³ were quickly heard against this heterodox doctrine. On August 11, Mr. Garrison writes from Brooklyn to Henry Benson: ‘My review of Dr. Beechers speech seems to⁴ ’