Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

“ [270] the great sun of the moral world.” Out upon you, said Garrison, the Lord God is the great sun of the moral world, not the Sabbath. It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and which men should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not regard for the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to righteousness. What is the command, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” but one of ten commandments? Is the violation of the fourth any worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it so taught in the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?

Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more special character touching the observance of the day thus: “These remarks are made not to encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious and superstitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its sanctity.” This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave instant offence to the orthodox readers of the Liberator. For it was enough in those days to convict