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‘ [157] no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and contrarient opinions of the softer sex.’1

He had not yet outgrown sectarian narrowness, and he still denounced Paine and Jefferson for their ‘infidelity,’ and lamented because a fete was given to Lafayette in France on the Sabbath. He could not even express his enthusiastic admiration of Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's genius without saying that he did not like her2 ‘religious notions.’ And yet he protested against the current religion in these terms:

‘With reverence, and in the name of God, we ask, what sort3 of religion is now extant among us? Certainly not such as cheered the prophets through the gloom of the old dispensation, and constrained them to denounce the abominations of the Jews;—not such as Jesus Christ laid down his life to vindicate;—not such as was preached by the Apostles and Martyrs, to their own destruction;—no, not a whit! It is a religion which complacently tolerates open adultery, oppression, robbery, and murder! seldom or never lifting up a warning voice, or note of remonstrance, or propitiatory sacrifice!—a religion which is graduated by the corrupt, defective laws of the State, and not by the pure, perfect laws of God!—a religion which quadrates with the natural depravity of the heart, giving license to sin, restraining no lust, mortifying not the body, engendering selfishness and cruelty!—a religion which walks in “silver slippers,” on a carpeted floor, having thrown off the burden of the cross and changed the garments of humiliation for the splendid vestments of pride!—a religion which has no courage, no faithfulness, no self-denial, deeming it better to give heed unto men than unto God!’

Early in October, Lundy went forth to canvass for subscribers, leaving Garrison in full charge of the Genius. The latter's articles in favor of immediate, instead of gradual emancipation, had speedily evoked letters of expostulation and remonstrance from subscribers, though a few approved and endorsed the doctrine; but, as Garrison

1 Forty years later, his friend Mrs. Abby Kelley Foster, at a Woman Suffrage meeting in Boston, laughingly confronted him with these longforgotten words of his; to which he rejoined, ‘Whereas I was blind, now I see.’

2 G. U. E., Oct. 30, 1829, p. 60.

3 Ibid., Oct. 23, 1829, p. 50.

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