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I have many things to say to you, but no time now. What anxiety, and distress, and confusion, among bankers, and brokers, and merchants, and speculators at the present time!
1 I pity all those who have not treasures laid up in heaven.
O the emptiness of this sin-stricken world! . . .
N. B. The
Vermont Chronicle, New York
Observer, and
Leonard Bacon in the New Haven
Religious Intelligencer, are out upon certain articles of yours in the
Liberator. They are ‘out’ in a double sense—out in their columns and out of their minds.
Except for the hospitality given to these obnoxious sentiments of
Henry C. Wright's, and the author's
2 defence of them (embracing the un-Darwinian dictum, ‘Man can never originate a moral obligation’), the readers of the
Liberator had little intimation of the editor's speculations on human government until the issue of June 23, or the week following his retirement to
3 Brooklyn, where his thoughts regained their freedom.
A correspondent, in a brief essay on that subject, had argued
4 scripturally that ‘we have no political or moral right to sit in judgment over laws already made,’ and Christians must ‘obey magistrates, not only for truth's but for consciencea sake.’
At some length,
Mr. Garrison contended that human governments ‘are the results of human disobedience to the requirements of heaven; and they are better than anarchy just as a hail-storm is preferable to an earthquake, or the small-pox to the Asiatic cholera.’
From the silence of the
Bible as to the
form of such governments, he inferred not that each might claim a divine sanction, ‘but that the kingdom which
Christ has established on earth is ultimately to swallow up or radically to subvert all other kingdoms.’
The main pillars which support these are—
1st. Unbelief, or a distrust in the providence and promises5 of God, to protect those who will take up the cross and follow Christ.
2nd. Ambition, or a love of distinction, preferment, or power over our fellow-creatures.
3d. Pride, or a refusal to
