Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To Mr. Ellis Gray Loring.

Dearest friend,--Blessings on you for your cheering letter. I trust it expresses the general anti-slavery sentiment. I am afraid many will think me not gritty enough. The editing is much more irksome than I supposed. The type is fine, and that large sheet swallows an incredible amount of matter. The cry still is, as C. says, “More! More!” An anti-slavery editor is a sort of black sheep among the fraternity, and I have no courtesies from booksellers. ---assists me by getting books out of club libraries, etc.; but still my range for extracts is very limited. The first familiar face I met here was Mr. B- . He is preaching New Church doctrines with great effect. Is it not strange that I can neither get in nor out of the New Church? Let me go where I will, it keeps an outward hold upon me, more or less weak on one side, while reforms grapple me closely on the other. I feel that they are opposite, nay, discordant. My affections and imagination cling to one with a love that will not be divorced; my reason and conscience keep [44] fast hold of the other, and will not be loosened. Here is the battle of free — will and necessity with a vengeance! What shall I do? The temptation is to quit reforms, but that is of the devil; for there is clearly more work for me to do in that field. I suppose I must go on casting a loving, longing look toward the star-keeping clouds of mysticism, which look down so mysterious and still into my heart, “and make it also great,” while with busy hands I row the boat of practical endeavor. I would I were at one with myself. A Quaker, whose brother has joined the New Church, brings a message to me. That very brother is an admonition ; for he used to be a warm anti-slavery and peace man, and the church influence has made him abjure both..

You are right in supposing that abolition principles and non-resistance seem to me identical; rather that the former is a mere unit of the latter. I never saw any truth more clearly; insomuch that it seems strange to me that any comprehensive mind can embrace one and not the other.