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zeal for the Sabbath is simply personal hostility—it has reference exclusively to my overthrow and the suppression of the Liberator. . . . With gospel simplicity and plainness I charge you with being a deceitful and bigoted man.’
He had dragged in an issue not pertinent to the anti-slavery cause.
‘No man who has not consecrated all his time to the service of God has ever consecrated a seventh part of it. . . . No man who reverently regards all days as holy unto the Lord will desecrate either the first or the seventh day of the week. . . . “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” . . . You are nothing but a legalist!
You are endeavoring to obtain righteousness by the law, and therefore are carnally minded. . . . You seem to be ignorant that “now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”
’
Mr. Garrison denied that he neglected the house of God—mere brick and mortar: a legal imposture.
‘There is no such holy locality, or holy building, on earth.’
But who spies William Lloyd Garrison and keeps tally of his church-going?
He refuses to plead guilty to the charge, which is pharisaical impertinence; or to the charge of reading, writing and visiting on Sunday.
‘The overthrow of Satan's empire, and the triumphant establishment of the Redeemers kingdom on earth, constitute the “ruling passion” of my soul. . . . Few men in the world have less to do with profession than myself; nay, my crime is, that I have not made1 what is called “a public profession of religion.”
But of what value are professions where fruits are wanting?
or what need of professions where fruits abound?’
As for his colored brethren, they had been grossly misrepresented.
Very few of them knew his sabbatical views.
He had never spoken to them of the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, or endeavored to lessen their reverence for it as a holy day. With regard to apostates, the
1 Ante, p. 173.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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