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

[426] Mr. May, too, felt obliged to oppose him, and,¹ when it was voted to adjourn the Convention to the last² Tuesday in March, 1841, thought that another such meeting would do no good, and strove to have the vote ³ reconsidered. The adjournment to a day fixed, however, was reaffirmed, and there was unanimous acceptance of Mr. Garrison's proposal to take up, as the next subject, the Ministry.

Edmund Quincy thus sketches, for the information of⁴ the absent Collins, the Convention, which ‘went off grandly’:

It was the most singular collection of strange specimens of humanity that was ever assembled. Groton was but a type of⁵ it⁶ Dr. Osgood, of Springfield, Phelps, Colver, &c., took the affirmative of the Sabbath question; Garrison, T. Parker, and⁷ others the negative. Phelps was ingenious though sophistical,⁸ and I suppose gave the best argument that could be made on that side. But if the Father has made a law binding on all his children, the breach of which he will punish with eternal damnation, and leaves it to be inferred and logicised from separate sentences of books written thousands of years ago and hundreds of years apart, it seems to me that we have been mistaken in his character. Although, perhaps, our Orthodox friends may reconcile it as ingeniously as Dr. Osgood accounted for the mitigation of the penalty of Sabbath-breaking. His hypothesis was, substantially, that the Almighty had grown better-natured than he used to be, and had left off stoning people to death. “Did you ever,” said a sly young law student to me after this hint,— “did you ever see a fellow pitch into his Maker in that style before?” Sylvanus Brown and Alcott were⁹ for emancipating themselves from the trammels of a moderator; and it was some time before we could get organized. There was less boring, on the whole, than we had a right to expect. Abigail Folsom¹⁰ read us a few chapters from St. Paul à propos des bottes.