This text is part of:
[316]
which the development of individual fortunes and the history of personal relations are included, but subordinated.
Again, it confuted the oft-repeated calumny, that none but infidels, and lawless, godless people, were abolitionists.
On every page of “Uncle Tom,” there are the breathing of a tender, earnest piety, and the manifestations of an ardent loyalty to the Christian faith.
What wonderful use of the Scriptures is made in it!
Mrs. Stowe's quiver is full of arrows, drawn from the word of God, not one of which fails her. Not only with the facility of perfect acquaintance, but with equal felicity and legitimacy, she quotes and applies the Scriptures to prove, or illustrate, or emphasize her positions.
In Paris, the reading of “Uncle Tom” created a great demand among the people for Bibles; and purchasers eagerly inquired if they were buying the real Bible--Uncle Tom's Bible! The same result was produced in Belgium, and elsewhere.
Could the most eloquent preacher do better than this?
What more triumphant vindication of its Christian character and influence could the book have than these facts furnish?
It was a perfectly natural, thoroughly honest, truly religious story, with nothing unwholesome in its marvellous fascinations, but contrariwise, fairly throbbing in every part with a genuine Christian feeling.
No wonder that ministers, and deacons, and quiet Quakers too, and all the godly folk who had always been accustomed to frown with holy horror upon novels, did unbend themselves to read, and diligently to circulate the words of this woman whom the Lord had so evidently anointed to “preach deliverance unto the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
To search out the causes of this remarkable literary success would take us too far, in several directions, from the main road in which this sketch must travel.
To meet a great popular necessity, to serve the cause f truth and humanity in a
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.