Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

As the months of his earnest young life passed him by, they showed him as they went how horrible a thing was faith without works. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” the Master had said, and more and more as he saw how many and great were the social evils to be reformed, and in what dire need stood his country of righteous action, did he come to put increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one thing needful to rid the land of the triple curse of slavery, intemperance, and war. As he mused upon these giant evils, and the desolation which they were singly and together causing in the world, and upon the universal apathy of the churches in respect of them, it seemed to him that the current religion was an offence and an abomination. And in his prophetic rage he denounced it as “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!” This was in the autumn of 1829, but though he was thus violently denunciatory of contemporary religion, the severity of his judgment against the skepticism of the times had not been materially modified. He still regarded the unbeliever with narrow distrust and dislike. When, after his discharge from Baltimore jail, he was engaged in delivering his message on the subject of slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to make