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“the truth is not in him.”
We regret, indeed, that the principles of abolitionists seem to be quite unsettled upon a question of such vast importance, and so vitally connected with the bloodless overthrow of slavery.
It is time for all our friends to know where they stand.
If those whose yokes they are endeavoring to break by the fire and hammer of God's word, would not, in their opinion, be justified in appealing to physical force, how can they justify others of a different complexion in doing the same thing?
And if they conscientiously believe that the slaves would be guiltless in shedding the blood of their merciless oppressors, let them say so unequivocally—for there is no neutral ground in this matter, and the time is near when they will be compelled to take sides.
As our object is universal emancipation,—to redeem woman as well as man from a servile to an equal condition,—we shall go for the rights of woman to their utmost extent.
Such was the first outcome of
Mr. Garrison's ‘Perfectionism,’ whose agreement, be it more or less—or not at all—with
Noyes's, it is needless to discuss here.
‘Perfectionism’ is a dark subject, and attempts to throw light upon it may easily end in leaving it more obscure than ever.
Mrs. Child, for example, wrote to her brother, December 22, 1838:
Something is coming toward us (I know not what), with1 a glory round its head, and its long luminous rays are even now glancing on the desert and the rock.
The Unitarian, busily at work pulling down old structures, suddenly sees it gild some ancient pillar, or shed its soft light on some mossgrown altar; and he stops with a troubled doubt whether all is to be destroyed; and if destroyed, wherewith shall he build anew?
He looks upward for the coming dawn, and calls it Transcendentalism.
The Calvinist, at work with strong arm and sincere heart at his fiery forge, fashioning the melted metal in time-honored moulds, sees a light before which his fires grow dim, and the moulded forms seem rigid and uncouth.
Perplexed, he asks if the martyred fathers did die for a faith that must be thrown aside like a useless stove of last year's patent.
His grim iron forms return no answer, for there is not in them that which can answer the earnest questionings of the human soul.
He too looks upward, sees the light, and calls it Perfectionism.
