Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

These, however, were the first and foremost to abandon the cross for the corselet, love for hatred, the peace cry for the war cry; and in their mad haste to invoke the war spirit, call forth the angry defiance, demand the challenge of battle, and light up the flames of civil discord, which have broken out in deluges of blood, these men called their church members together on Fast days and Feast days, and resolved that henceforth their gospel, creed, and ten commandments be made up of Greek fire, violence, and blood. At a church meeting presided over by the Rev. Henry T. Cheever on the last Fast day, called by the late President Buchannan, the following resolutions were adopted and endorsed :

"Resolved that it was held to be manifestly and imperatively the duty of the President of the United States promptly to enforce the laws, and to put down rebellion and treason, now upheld and perpetuated in South Carolina, by all the disposable force of the army and navy of the United States.

"Resolved, that we declare our deliberate opinion, that all the Christian people of the country should, and that an overwhelming majority of them will, sustain the President in such a decisive suppression of the rankest treason and rebellion.

"Resolved, that if he should not do this as being due both to the safety and dignity of such a people, that he be further impeached at the bar of the Senate of the United States."

What a function for a church! And what an ob

servance of a Fast day! How the arch adversary must have smiled, and his infernal imps have been filled with joy with such a presage of the approaching carnival of death! Not only were Fast days turned to account by these backsliding sinners, but, also, Thanksgiving or Feast days! Hence we find the Rev. George B. Cheever before he sits down to feast on turkey, preaches a sermon on Thanksgiving day, Nov. 24, 1859, in which he avowed, "If you or I possessed the power by tossing a horn of powder, a torch of Greek fire, a percussion cap, an explosive biscuit into the heart of the South to set the whole slave population into a sudden revolt for the assertion of their own freedom, would it not be beyond question, your duty and mine?" Whatever satisfaction he and his people felt in eating their thanksgiving turkey after the enunciation of this policy, to be pursued in such a mad outburst of fiery enthusiasm and zeal in the Church of the Puritans, there can be little doubt of its being succeeded by a jubilee in Pandemonium. The above, however, was only the key-note of what was to follow amongst our evangelicals! Meanwhile, no first shot had as yet been fired at Fort Sumpter? If such be the philanthropic evangelicals in the New World, what are the non-evangelicals? In a letter signed William White, in the Gazette of July 7th, Frederick Douglas is ushered into our notice with a flourish of trumpets "as a man whose intelligence, attainments, oratoric and literary ability, and moral worth, constituted him the foremost advocate of the

race from which he derives the darker hues of his countenance, while they enable him in their cause, to face undauntedly, the white people with whom he is equally in blood relationship." The reader will perceive that we place Douglas under the head of nonevangelicals. How is that, inquires one? Did he not break bread and sing psalms with the evangelicals on his last visit in this country? Yes, and also fling his Theodore Parkerite heresies in their faces ir America, and brandished them like daggers over their heads! Being acquainted with his sad history, we tried to elicit the necessary information, expecting to be filled with thrilling emotions of joy in the recital of the particular incidents detailing the recovery of this lost sheep to the evangelical fold from which he had strayed, but was rewarded for my trouble with a daub from the tar and brushes of Douglas and Mrs. Julia Croft, and also designated "as a man who had a slate off his roof!" Not deeming the above proof positive that Douglas was an evangelical, we must have farther revelations before we make a new classification. This non-evangelical Douglas, used to be a disciple of Garrison's peace school of abolition; but, being a refractory pupil, he soon quarrelled with his teacher; and, also, with that great master of elocution, Wendel Phillips Esq., until at length he became unmanageable, when strong words passed between them. After throwing off all restraint, Douglas soon became a champion in his advocacy of brute force, but now and then received some terribly hard knocks. One of

these was given him by an aged coloured female. On stretching out his strong brawny arms at a public meeting, with the fire of indignation flashing in her eyes, she looked him defiantly in the face, while with the deepest earnestness she demanded, "is God dead, Fred?" Such a terrific thump from so unexpected a quarter, brought down the house in thunders of applause, and entwined the laurels of victory around her brow. After being thrashed by this old woman, he received a withering exposure for his cowardice in the Harper's Ferry affair which made terrible work of his chivalry. On that eventful Monday, when the honoured and illustrious John Brown was taken prisoner, he was to have arrived at the school house with a large reinforcement of his friends on the morning of that day, but Cook, one of Brown's party, said, "I conveyed the arms to the school house for him, and waited until nearly night, but the coward did'nt come." Now, if he could not undauntedly face the aged female whose features wore a darker hue on her countenance than his own; we do not wonder that he should have "skedaddled" when sterner work was required of him in the presence of the white people, "his blood relation equals!" Such being the "foremost" advocate of the negro race in America, let us turn to the founder of the school of abolitionism in that country, namely, William Loyd Garrison, who also is a non-evangelical, although he has often been whitewashed by others, and by some who ought to have known better. On glancing down the brief his

tory of abolitionism, we find Garrison commenced his work of emancipation on the following basis, or declaration of principles, which he submitted for the approval of emancipationists to be subscribed to as a solemn bond and covenant to shew to the world that they were pledged and sealed for the work before them. In this bond and covenant they solemnly engaged "to reject themselves, and entreat the oppressed to reject the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage," admitted the "sovereignty of the States over the subject of slavery within their limits," and avowed that they were "under high moral obligations to use for the promotion of their cause, moral, and political action as prescribed in the Constitution of the United States." Such was the basis on which Garrison planted his feet thirty years ago, in the presence of assembled delegates, convened in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. But where does he stand now? And what has been the character of his labours during the last thirty years? If it is right and proper for Mr Garrison now to use forceable means on behalf of the slaves it was right and proper then. Alas for Mr. Garrison when he has to grope his way through broken bonds and covenants to the councils of men of violence and blood; and to unite with them in seeking to re-elect our modern Pharaoh Lincoln for the Presidency, who has thrown the whole country into a state of the wildest anarchy, and the most frightful despotism, compared with which the horrors of the French revolution sink into insignificance,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »