“Do you love freedom?” is the question we have startled our age withal; and we have begun to judge men—of all classes and conditions,—by the reply their lives make to it. Class after class have thus been tried and condemned. In earlier times, we have bound ourselves steadfastly to the truth which condemned them. Its might made riches a reproach, and “gentlemen of property and standing” a by-word. All our band joined their voices to the oracular one of truth, when these sinners were tried by their own principles of action, and found wanting. Why is it that some now cast aside the inspired maxim, “by their fruits ye shall know them”—when another class of men—the ministry, are found recreant to the cause of humanity? It is because they have become like unto them.
We are not without experience of the facility with which men add hypocrisy to wrong. Let the professions of such be to us, from henceforth, as though they were not uttered; their past good deeds, registered with those of Lucifer before his fall. This and this only, in this emergency, is allegiance to the God “whose word is truth—whose will is love—whose law is freedom.”
When, in earlier days in the cause, some of us foresaw the present state of things, we submitted our souls to the prospect of its painfulness. We said, “thy will be done,” in thus keeping our instrumentality effectual and pure.
“May the numerous unpopular questions with which the anti-slavery cause is connected” (thus ran our prayer) “continually come up with it as it is borne onward. So that, up to the final triumph, the act of joining an anti-slavery association may be, as it has hitherto proved,—a test-act.”[9]
And so we pray still; for still and forever, Truth is one and indivisible. All moral questions are by their nature inseparable, in any other than a mechanical sense, and while we sedulously keep them thus mechanically separate, because to do otherwise would be a sin against the freedom of others, and a betrayal of their confidence, we feel it to be no less a sin against freedom for others to impede any man’s course with reproach, on account of this eternal decree of God’s providence.
We have all preached emancipation by peaceful means; and now some are amazed that the attainment of all right, in like manner, should have suggested itself to men’s minds! We have all denied that might makes right, and asserted the supremacy of moral power; and yet some are standing in terror-stricken astonishment that the “woman question” is stirred in every heart; and “other some” are persecuting and forsaking their brethren, because the examination and application of principles, though limited in the anti-slavery society by the terms of association, cannot be stayed in men’s minds or individual lives. The time has come for men to look their terrors for the future in the face. A little thought will show them thus much at least;—that it is no sin against an anti-slavery society, to apply, in another association, the peaceful principles by which it is proposed to abolish slavery, to the sins involved in existing governments or sacerdocies. If institutions, religious or political, are unable to stand the test of such an application, that, in the opinion of some, is the fault of the institutions. With this opinion, anti-slavery societies have no more to do than with the question sometimes started, of the duty of urging prayer upon the unconverted, whose prayers God pronounces an abomination. Discussion of collateral subjects is often salutary and necessary in our associations; but to a decision upon them, by which new tests of membership are introduced, no anti-slavery society is competent. It ceases to be an anti-slavery society from the moment it assumes to decide upon opinions respecting governments or churches.
No man is required, as an abolitionist, to endorse or oppose governments or church establishments. But every thoughtful and honest mind, whether its anchor have “entered into that which is within the veil” or not, feels called by its allegiance to freedom, instantly to resist any attempt to make one man accountable to another for the progress of his mind. This same allegiance to the foundation principle of inalienable human rights, warns a man against laboring to prevent woman from standing upon it, if such should be her determination. She may, in his opinion, be sinning against propriety—sinning against Paul, by acting in anti-slavery societies: but he himself sins against freedom in striving for her exclusion; and any act against freedom, is treason to the slave.
Men whose principles, thus imperfectly developed, are at war with each other, will, in all probability, become worse in their last state than in their first, especially if they are yielding not so much to their own convictions as to the pretexts in which a public abstractly opposed to slavery, is fain to clothe its hatred to a real opposition. If they are striving to pacify the foes of freedom by these outrages upon her principles and her advocates, their case is a desperate one, and affords but little probability of repentance.
Surrounded as we are by the smoke and dust of the hottest conflict, we must keep all these considerations in mind, if we would avoid perplexity and doubt. Let us, from time to time, survey the field from a higher point of view, and take careful note of the divisions of the battle, and the nature of the ground on which the hosts are encamped. What do we discern, as we ascend the mount of vision and of difficulty? We perceive hatred and malignant opposition occupying the same post as when we first roused them from their apathy. We are ever contending with our old opponents, under new names, and with every change of name and pretext, some whom we have loved and trusted, are “carried away by their dissimulation.”[10]