Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Harriet Beecher StoweЧитать онлайн книгу.
fathers signed that Covenant, in an hour when Scotland's cause was equally poor and depressed—here, by the spot where holy martyrs sealed it with their blood, it will neither seem extravagance nor enthusiasm to say to the children of such parents, that for the support of this cause, we look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are not seen; to that God, who, in the face of all worldly power, gave liberty to Scotland, in answer to your fathers' prayers. Our trust is in Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, and in the promise that he shall reign till he hath put all things under his feet. There are those faithless ones, who, standing at the grave of a buried humanity, tell us that it is vain to hope for our brother, because he hath lain in the grave three days already. We turn from them to the face of Him who has said, 'Thy brother shall rise again.' There was a time when our great High Priest, our Brother, yet our Lord, lay in the grave three days; and the governors and powers of the earth made it as sure as they could, seeding the stone and setting a watch. But a third day came, and an earthquake, and an angel. So shall it be to the cause of the oppressed; though now small and despised, we are watchers at the sepulchre, like Mary and the trusting women; we can sit through the hours of darkness. We are watching the sky for the golden streaks of dawning, and we believe that the third day will surely come. For Christ our Lord, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; and he has pledged his word that he shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment on the earth. He shall deliver the poor when He crieth, the needy, and him that hath no helper. The night is far spent—the day is at hand. The universal sighing of humanity in all countries, the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together—the earnest expectation of the creature waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God—show that the day is not distant when he will break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. And whatever we are able to do for this sacred cause, let us cast it where the innumerable multitude of heaven cast their crowns, at the feet of the Lamb, saying, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessings.'"
The Rev. Professor then continued. "My Lord Provost, Ladies and Gentlemen: This cause, to be successful, must be carried on in a religious spirit, with a deep sense of our dependence on God, and with that love for our fellow-men which the gospel requires. It is because I think I have met this spirit since I reached the shores of Great Britain, in those who have taken an interest in the cause, that I feel encouraged to hope that the expression of your feeling will be effective on the hearts of Christians on the other side of the Atlantic. There are Christians there as sincere, as hearty, and as earnest, as any on the face of the earth. They have looked at this subject, and been troubled; they have hardly known what to do, and their hearts have been discouraged. They have almost turned away their eyes from it, because they have scarcely dared encounter it, the difficulties appeared to them so great. Wrong cannot always receive the support of Christians; wrong must be done away with; and what must be—what God requires to be—that certainly will be. Now, in this age, man is every where beginning to regard the sufferings of his fellow-man as his own. There is an interest felt in man, as man, which was not felt in preceding ages. The facilities of communication are bringing all nations in contact, and whatever wrong exists in any part of the world, is every where felt. There are wrongs and sufferings every where; but those to which we are accustomed, we look upon with most indifference, because being accustomed to them, we do not feel their enormity. You feel the enormity of slavery more than we do, because you are not immediately interested, and regard it at a distance. We regard some of the wrongs that exist in the old world with more sensibility than you can regard them, because we are not accustomed to them, and you are. Therefore, in the spirit of Christian love, it belongs to Christian men to speak to each other with great fidelity. It has been said that you know little or nothing about slavery. O, happy men, that you are ignorant of its enormities. [Hear, hear!] But you do know something about it. You know as much about it as you know of the widow-burning in India, or the cannibalism in the Fejee Islands, or any of those crimes and sorrows of paganism, that induced you to send forth your missionaries. You know it is a great wrong, and a terrible obstacle to the progress of the gospel; and that is enough for you to know to induce you to act. You have as much knowledge as ever induced a Christian community in any part of the world to exert an influence in any other part of the world. Slavery is a relic of paganism, of barbarism; it must be removed by Christianity; and if the light of Christianity shines on it clearly, it certainly will remove it. There are thousands of hearts in the United States that rejoice in your help. Whatever expressions of impatience and petulance you may hear, be assured that these expressions are not the heart of the great body of the people. [Cheers.] A large proportion of that country is free from slavery. There is an area of freedom ten times larger than Great Britain in territory.3 [Cheers.] But all the power over the slave is in the hands of the slaveholder. You had a power over the slaveholder by your national legislature; our national legislature has no power over the slaveholder. All the legislation that can in that country be brought to bear for the slave, is legislation by the slaveholders themselves. There is where the difficulty lies. It is altogether by persuasion, Christian counsel, Christian sympathy, Christian earnestness, that any good can be effected for the slave. The conscience of the people is against the system—the conscience of the people, even in the slaveholding states; and if we can but get at the conscience without exciting prejudice, it will tend greatly towards the desired effect. But this appeal to the conscience must be unintermittent, constant. Your hands must not be weary, your prayers must not be discontinued; but every day and every hour should we be doing something towards the object. It is sometimes said, Americans who resist slavery are traitors to their country. No; those who would support freedom are the only true friends of their country. Our fathers never intended slavery to be identified with the government of the United States; but in the temptations of commerce the evil was overlooked; and how changed for the worse has become the public sentiment even within the last thirty or forty years! The enormous increase in the consumption of cotton has raised enormously the market value of slaves, and arrayed both avarice and political ambition in defence of slavery. Instruct the conscience, and produce free cotton, and this will be like Cromwell's exhortation to his soldiers, 'Trust in God, and keep your powder dry.'" [Continued cheers.]
The Rev. Dr. R. Lee then said: "I am quite sure that every individual here responds cordially to those sentiments of respect and gratitude towards our honored guest which have been so well expressed by the Lord Provost and the other gentlemen who have addressed us. We think that this lady has not only laid us under a great obligation by giving us one of the most delightful books in the English language, but that she has improved us as men and as Christians, that she has taught us the value of our privileges, and made us more sensible than we were before of the obligation which lies upon us to promote every good work. I have been requested to say a few words on the degradation of American slavery; but I feel, in the presence of the gentleman who last addressed you, and of those who are still to address you, that it would be almost presumption in me to enter on such a subject. It is impossible to speak or to think of the subject of slavery without feeling that there is a double degradation in the matter; for, in the first place, the slave is a man made in the image of God—God's image cut in ebony, as old Thomas Fuller quaintly but beautifully said; and what right have we to reduce him to the image of a brute, and make property of him? We esteem drunkenness as a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it reduces that which was made in the image of God to the image of a brute. We say to the drunkard, 'You are guilty of a sacrilege, because you reduce that which God made in his own image "into the image of an irrational creature."' Slavery does the very same. But there is not only a degradation committed as regards the slave—there is a degradation also committed against himself by him who makes him a slave, and who retains him in the position of a slave; for is it not one of the most commonplace of truths that we cannot do a wrong to a neighbor without doing a greater wrong to ourselves?—that we cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a total mistake—that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of America. And what is more than that—there is no nation towards which we