[438] which its importance merited. It was an extraordinary sacrifice which he was invited to make, . . . and what but the love of Christ constraining him could have induced him finally to1 take up so heavy a cross as this? How many plausible objections might have been started to the mission, if he had been disposed to shrink from its perils, or evade its mortifications! He was a foreigner; the experiment was a novel one; it might needlessly jeopard the happiness and safety of his family; his advocacy might do more harm than good; there were many important moral enterprises in England which needed his efforts; there was no lack of talent or zeal enlisted in the antislavery cause in the United States, &c., &c. Minds of little faith and of great timorousness might start such difficulties in favor of themselves or of others; but George Thompson never once thought of sheltering himself behind such coverts. . . . Was the cause which he was invited to espouse of greater2 moment than any other which presented itself? Could he hope to be more useful in it than in a subordinate enterprise? Would such a mission be in accordance with the spirit of the gospel of Christ? Was he qualified to sustain it? These were the great questions which occupied the thoughts of Mr. Thompson, and which, in his view, included all other considerations.The first of them he answered for himself; as to the last, taking counsel of his anti-slavery friends and colleagues, with the result of accepting the personal and official invitation to ‘come over and help’ the American abolitionists. In the interval before starting out he set himself to reorganize British anti-slavery sentiment on a world-wide basis. At last Mr. Garrison's English mission was fullflowered. He had met on the spot and crushed the attempt of the Colonizationists to enlist British sympathy and anti-slavery authority in behalf of their Society and to recruit their funds abroad; he had secured that sympathy and authority and pecuniary assistance for his own movement; and he was now to bring English opinion to bear directly on the United States by introducing a champion of the victorious cause of Wilberforce and Clarkson. The last step was undoubtedly the most venturesome of the three, but the candid historian
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1 Lectures of Geo. Thompson, p. XVI.
2 Ibid., p. XVII.
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