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 TWO SERMONS 
 
 SLAVERY AND ITS HEEO-VICTIM. 
 
THE INIQUITY 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER, 
 
 On Sunday, Dec. 11, 1859. 
 
 BY NATHANIEL HALL. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON & SON, 
 22, School Street. 
 
 1859. 
 

 \ . a- 
 
 ^f 7?' 
 
^ 
 
 Dorchester, Dec. 13, 1859. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Rev. Nathaniel Hall. 
 
 Dear Sik, — We are desirous of having your very acceptable discourses of 
 last Sunday preserved in a permanent form, that they may thereby reach many 
 who have not had an opportunity of hearing them ; and we feel sure that we ex- 
 press the wishes of a large number of your parishioners and friends in asking 
 copies of them for publication. 
 
 Very respectfully and truly yours, 
 
 Thos. C. Wales. 
 Thomas Groom. 
 Wm. E. Coffin. 
 William Pope, Jr. 
 Franklin King. 
 
 Jno. H. Robinson. 
 Elisha T. Loring. 
 Daniel Denny. 
 Fred. W. G. May. 
 Henry G. Denny. 
 
 Dorchester, Dec. 15, 1859. 
 Gentlemen, — 
 
 In deference to your expressed judgment of them, I place the Sermons you 
 request for publication, in your hands, for that purpose, — though written with no 
 such thought. 
 
 Very respectfully. 
 
 NATHANIEL HALL. 
 
 To Thos. C. Wales and others. 
 
SERMON 
 
 Luke X. 27: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 John xiii. 34 : "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one 
 
 ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU." 
 
 Tj^OR reasons which the past week has furnished, I 
 take for my subject, this morning, that always, 
 to so many, distasteful one, — now, to some of you, I 
 fear, more especially so, — the subject of American 
 Slavery. 
 
 I am happy in the belief that I possess your con- 
 fidence in the worthiness of my motive in presenting 
 this subject in the past, so far at least as to lead you 
 to bear with me now, in the persuasion that only a 
 feeling of bounden allegiance to a great and holy 
 cause impels me, and my desire, in the present excited 
 condition of the public mind, the conflict of opinion 
 and feeling among equally wise, and, I doubt not, 
 equally conscientious men, to throw my contribution 
 of light, though it be but a single ray, on the path of 
 duty respecting it. I feel that it is the pulpit's time 
 to speak ; that, instead of withholding itself because 
 
of this excitement around it, all the more for this 
 should it speak. It is ahvays its time to speak on 
 this suhject. It is a subject bound upon it by 
 most solemn obligations. And had it, the pulpit 
 of the Free States, been true to those obligations in 
 the past ; had it not been faithless to the great moral 
 question of the age in this country; had it not, as 
 a general fact (I say not from what motives ; God 
 knows), had it not practically ignored it, and given 
 it over to the politician, and to those outside the 
 church, who have taken it up because the church 
 would not; had the pulpit lent itself with heart 
 and might to the antislavery movement, — I believe, 
 before God, this most unhappy and fearfully threaten- 
 ing condition of things now upon us would never have 
 existed. And, in saying this, the assumption is not 
 that preachers have an especial competency to discuss 
 the subject, in all its relations ; that there is more 
 wisdom and intelligence in the pulpit for this than in 
 the hall of legislation, the forum, the editorial chair. 
 Let it be granted that there is far less. The subject 
 has other than political and economic relations, which 
 are likely in the places named to be the only ones 
 discussed, and not without partisan and unworthy bias. 
 The subject has relations also to morality and reli- 
 gion, — most intimate, most direct ; and, supposing 
 these relations to get a fair consideration in the 
 places spoken of, how could it supersede the neces- 
 
sity of the pulpit's discussing them, or excuse its 
 silence upon them 1 But we well know they do not 
 get such discussion there ; . that these relations are 
 very generally put out of sight, as if they did not 
 exist ; or are recognized but to be scoffed at. The 
 preacher should — his calling presumes it of him — 
 see more clearly than other men what the claims of 
 morality and religion are with regard to this ques- 
 tion, as to others. Freed by his position from an 
 active participation in the dizzying pursuit of life's 
 meaner good; dealing by profession with absolute 
 and unchanging verities, — he occupies, surely, a van- 
 tage-ground above other men for such clearer vision. 
 Should he not tell what he sees'? The theori/ of 
 the pulpit is, that it stands amidst the eddying tides 
 and blinding mists of the mortal shores, a lighthouse, 
 flamed by the Eternal Truth, to warn and guide 
 the endangered voyager ; to remind and keep him in 
 sight of interests higher than earth's, and more last- 
 ing than time's ; that it stands a present Christ, a 
 perpetually vocalized Gospel, with its pointings to 
 duty, with its afiirmations of the higher law, with its 
 rebukes of sin, alike private and public, no less than 
 with its consoling assurances, its cheering hopes, and 
 heavenly promises. 
 
 Will men never choose to discriminate between the 
 treatment of this stibject politically and the treatment 
 of it ethically ? which latter is all the pulpit claims a 
 
right to do. AVill they never cease to assume, that, 
 because it has become involved with party politics, it 
 has therefore passed from the province of the reli- 
 gious teacher ; and that all treatment of it by him, 
 however strictly on his own ground, is entitled to 
 the epithet of " political preaching " "? I undertake 
 to say that there never was a more senseless assump- 
 tion put forth in all Christendom, — one more to be 
 resisted, if need were, to the very death, — than that 
 the pulpit, standing as the visible exponent of God's 
 truth and law, should have nothing to say in reference 
 to the fact that millions of human beings, in the na- 
 tion in which it stands, are forcefully deprived of their 
 natural rights, and crushed beneath the heel of a law- 
 less oppression ; should have no words of pity for the 
 helpless victims of the wrong, none of rebuke for 
 the authors and abettors of it ; that the pulpit should 
 have none ! — standing in the name of Him whose 
 commandment is, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself," expanded from its Hebrew limitations into 
 '' Love one another as I have loved you," — made 
 thus, as well he called it, " a new commandment," 
 alike in the breadth and depth of its meaning. 
 
 Consider its meaning, — the breadth of it, — " that 
 ye love one another." The Jew loved his own, — 
 those of his own lineage, people, brotherhood, church. 
 The Gentiles were " dogs : " the Samaritans, though 
 included in the same national boundaries, were hated 
 
9 
 
 and despised. The Jew was not so different in this 
 from men of other lands and later days. The world 
 still loves "its own." What barriers do differences 
 of nationality, caste, condition, color, interpose to the 
 outflow of our love ! Did Christ mean it so 1 He 
 has answered that question in the parable of the Sa- 
 maritan. He has answered it on the cross. Fraternity, 
 with him, was more than consanguinity. Neighbor- 
 hood was more than juxtaposition. " The neighbor 
 was the suffering man, though at the farthest pole." 
 Humanity he loved. "He died for alV 
 
 Consider, again, its meaning, — the depth of it, — 
 " that ye love one another." Did he mean by " love " 
 a barren sentiment, — a feeling whose only fruit is 
 verbal, unpractical, deedless? Happily, we are not 
 left to question what he meant. " As I have loved 
 you " decides it. His love was heartfelt sympathy ; 
 it was helpful service ; it was life-giving devotedness. 
 " He died for all." 
 
 And now let us take this " new commandment " of 
 the world's Teacher and Exemplar, at whose tribunal 
 we all must stand, — are standing now, — by whose 
 law are judged ; this " new commandment," and yet 
 which is but a fulfilling of that thundered from Sinai, 
 but an illumined transcript of that whispered in the 
 universal heart ; let us take it, and confront with it 
 the fact before us, — that dark, dread fact, growing 
 darker and more dreadful with every year and month. 
 
10 
 
 — tliosc millions of the enslaved on our soil to-day, 
 helpless victims of human passion, greed, avarice, lust ; 
 made so, kept so, by a nation's power, and an acquies- 
 cent public opinion ; decreed by a nation's judiciary to 
 have " no rights which white men are bound to re- 
 spect ; " millions, with us in all the attributes of an 
 intellectual, moral, social, religious nature ; for whom, 
 as much as for us, God meant his choicest gifts, and, 
 among them, that which makes so many of his other 
 gifts alone of worth, alone of access, — freedom ; for 
 whom, as much as for us, Christ came and died ; whom, 
 as much as us, he loves ; yea, with whom he chose to 
 identify himself, saying, " Inasmuch as ye do it or do 
 it not " (the needed favors in your power to do) " to 
 such as these, ye do it, or not, unto me." 
 
 Tell me, can you gather here as Christian believ- 
 ers, can )ou accept this volume as containing the 
 will and law of Heaven, and say that these have no 
 claim on you for the action, sympathy, consideration, 
 speech, whereby you may possibly serve them; no 
 claim on you to do whatever you may, consistently 
 with other claims, to lift the yoke of their oppression, 
 to return them their stolen " birthright," — if that 
 can be called .sfoh'n which they never had, — and 
 allow them to feel the dignity of self-ownership, 
 the dignity, and the incentives, and the privileges, 
 and the chances I Can you say, in this religious light, 
 in hearing of the Christian call, in sight of the 
 
11 
 
 Christian guide, in hearing of the advent song of 
 Bethlehem, soon again to be sung in all our churches, 
 — " good-will to men ; " in sight of the closing act 
 on Calvary, where good-will to men could no further 
 go ; can you say that the case of these hapless bond- 
 men is no concern of yours ; is not for you to act for, 
 or consider, or be troubled about "? 
 
 I know not how it is, kind friends. I do not claim, 
 God knows, to have a warmer heart than others, or a 
 truer. I do not believe I have. I see those around 
 me now to whom I look up, in respect and love, for 
 their kindliness of heart and generosity of deed, and 
 yet who do not feel as I do on this subject. I have, 
 probably, touched no chord within their breasts by 
 my appeal. There are women, the kindest of mo- 
 thers, who, when they sing their babes to sleep, and 
 put their hearts into that " good-night " kiss, and 
 turn away in the unfearing security that no hand but 
 God's can take them from their arms, have no thought 
 for her, who, with heart no less tender than their own 
 in its maternal instincts, with sensibilities no less 
 attuned to love's sweet music, stands within the slave- 
 mart, in the agony that only a mother's heart can 
 know, and looks for the last time on those whom God 
 has given her, not because death has taken them, — 
 she could feel almost happy if that were all, — but 
 because she must witness their living burial in the pit 
 of slavery, with not even the satisfaction of knowing 
 
12 
 
 how dark and deep their descent shall be ; — takes 
 her parting look ; feels, for the last time, their warm 
 breath against her cheek ; and then gazes after them, 
 as, with reverted faces and sobbing wail, they go, 
 until sight and hearing have lost their hold of them, 
 and she sinks in a despair which finds no sympathy 
 but with God, no restorative but time. 
 
 There are mothers, fathers, who are touched to tears 
 in the knowledge of a bereavement come to others, 
 by death, of a beloved daughter, measuring the sor- 
 row of those parental hearts by what their fond 
 affections tell them would be their own, should she, 
 sitting beside them in the sweet charm of opening 
 womanhood, be taken thus ; who are touched by 
 the mere recital of such a loss, though the parties 
 were strangers to them, ay, though the case were 
 known as fiction ; and who yet have no tears and no 
 thought for those who see, in the growing beauty 
 which God has stamped on form and feature of their 
 maiden child, but the signet of her doom, — a doom 
 darker than death, and against which they cannot lift 
 an opposing finger ; they dare not lift a protesting 
 appeal. 
 
 There are those, we well know, in all our commu- 
 nities, who wilfully shut out the whole subject of 
 slavery from their minds ; who will not give it a fair 
 hearing, nor any hearing, if they can help it. There 
 are those, we know, who defend it, — on the ground 
 
13 
 
 of the alleged inherent inferiority of the African race ; 
 of the averred condition of the slave, as physically 
 comfortable ; of the precedents for slavery which the 
 Bible furnishes ; of the benefits, in point of civiliza- 
 tion and Christianization, which slavery confers on 
 its benighted victims. There are these ! Let them 
 be. Of course, the appeal of slavery's victims and 
 slavery's wrongs would be of no avail with such. It 
 is of others that I ask why it should so greatly be so, in 
 my utter inability to understand it. The commercial 
 consideration, I know, is strong, very strong, in and 
 about our cities; which says "Hush!" — for business' 
 sake. The prejudice against color is strong, making 
 the same circumstances less affecting as attaching to 
 a negro than to a white man. The fear of disunion 
 is strong; which says, "At all costs, that must be 
 prevented." Respect for constitutional obligations is 
 strong ; which says, " It is in the hond that slavery 
 shall be tolerated : it should be." The inertia of con- 
 servatism is strong ; which says, " Let alone ; things 
 will work themselves right : in trying to hasten mat- 
 ters, you may only make bad worse." The prejudice 
 against abolitionism is strong, allowing the attention 
 to be turned aside, by what are called its exaggerations 
 and fanaticisms, from a fair consideration of the sub- 
 ject. I know all this, and more. But it does not 
 explain to me the failure, to the extent to which it is 
 apparently true, of the antislavcry appeal. I can un- 
 
u 
 
 derstand that considerations like these should serve 
 to deaden, in some degree, its force ; but not that, at 
 times, in view of the simple facts on which that appeal 
 is based, the native sentiments of the soul should not 
 heave the superincumbent mass, and flame out and 
 up, forgetful of every thing but justice and mercy. 
 
 And I confess that I am forced at times, in view of 
 the public apathy before the facts of slavery's inhu- 
 manity and wrong, the seemingly utter obliviousness 
 to the claims of its victims to a consideration and 
 regard, to ask, " Is all humanity gone from us in this 
 direction 1 Is the milk of human kindness dried up 
 within us 1 the sentiment of justice paralyzed?" 
 Where shall Ave find any marked public recognition 
 — any that is not shamefully inadequate — of the 
 cruelty and crime of slavery, — our own slavery, the 
 pet child of this American republic, — where, away 
 from the abolition platform % Bless God it is there ; 
 though more is there which I wish were not. But 
 this is there, — an open-mouthed plea for the slave, 
 an open-mouthed condemnation of the wrong that 
 makes him such. And none can tell how broad and 
 deep — broadening and deepening — the influence 
 for right and freedom and humanity which has gone 
 forth from those earnest and devoted men and 
 women. 
 
 Not, indeed, that such pica and condemnation are, 
 literallv, unheard elsewhere. But from liow few 
 
 \ 
 
15 
 
 among the many pulpits of the land, from how few 
 among its presses, from how few among its public 
 men, is heard a bold, earnest, whole-souled expression 
 of tlie Christian view and the Christian feeling, — the 
 humane view, — in relation to this subject ! One 
 might reasonably suppose, that in a community like 
 this, beneath the full blaze of gospel light from its be- 
 ginnings; with such a history, revolutionary, puritanic, 
 — its souls would be all aflame at the near presence, 
 within the confederacy of which it forms a part, of 
 four millions of human beings bound in the most 
 abject form of bondage the world has known. 
 How sadly far from it ! I looked in vain in the 
 applauded speech of a distinguished individual in 
 Faneuil Hall, on Thursday last (I name it as an indi- 
 cation, and not as a personality), for the slightest 
 evidence of a single heart-throb for the slave, of a 
 single throe of righteous indignation at the crime of 
 slavery. There were eloquent invocations of sympa- 
 thy for the imperilled slave-owner, — imperilled as a 
 consequence of a Heaven-defying sin against hu- 
 manity; but none, no word of sympathy, no verbal 
 remembrance, of those millions so sinned against. 
 There were most earnest deprecations of bloodshed by 
 servile insurrection ; but no allusion to the blood 
 daily shed by the wearing, wasting over-toil in cane- 
 field and rice-swamp. None, of course, would object to 
 the invocation of sympathy for the South. God knows, 
 
16 
 
 as itself knows, how large its claim for it. They are 
 our brethren there, our "neighbors." We are to 
 show them the love both of sympathy and of service ; 
 but not, I protest, not to the forgetfulness of the 
 victims of their oppression. Thei/ are no less our bre- 
 thren, no less our neighbors ; 7nore entitled to our 
 sympathy and service for their very ignorance and 
 weakness and long-endured abuses. Which would 
 Christ, think you, have soonest remembered'? We 
 should sympathize with the South; but as we do 
 with those who are reaping the natural and inevitable 
 fruits of their transgression. It has sown the wind to 
 reap the whirlwind. It has seeded its soil with vio- 
 lence ; and what but violence, unless hindered by a 
 repentant righteousness, can spring upon it ? Are 
 the laws of the moral universe abrogated or sus- 
 pended in favor of this republic ? We should sympa- 
 thize with the South ; not, indeed, in Pharasaic 
 assumption, as if we were the unsinning and the true, 
 
 — God forbid ! our own self-convicted hearts forbid ! 
 
 — but as those who verily are not guiltless of our bro- 
 thers' blood, in so far as, by act or influence, wilfully 
 or thoughtlessly, individually or collectively, we may 
 have aided or consented to the inhumanity and the 
 wrong; as those who are sharing, and are yet to 
 share more largely, of its bitter fruits ; and who are 
 ready, in the spirit of a fraternal good-will, to unite 
 in any efl'ort, which conscience can approve, for its 
 
17 
 
 abolishment. But let us not mock the Eternal Jus- 
 tice by consenting to palter with it, to palliate it ; to 
 be, for friendship's sake, or interest's sake, or safety's 
 sake, any longer, however indirectly, its willing and 
 unprotesting upholders. The chief ground of fear for 
 the North at this juncture — what is it "? That by 
 its honest-hearted sympathy with an heroic man, who, 
 in the name of God, assailed their institution, it may 
 provoke the South to disunion 1 Is it not rather, far 
 rather, that for the sake of the Union, in self-interest 
 or timidity, it will consent to farther concessions of 
 its principles and its manhood ; increasing thus, how 
 surely, the real evil ; debauching yet more the public 
 conscience ; delaying a reckoning which must needs 
 come, only to make it the more overwhelming at 
 last] 
 
 The word, I feel, which God is speaking to the 
 slaveholders of this land and their abettors, through 
 that most remarkable event which has so startled 
 them, from that scaffold in whose blood they seek in 
 vain to stifle their alarm, — that word is " Eepent, 
 reform." And that word — as God's, not its own ; 
 not in arrogancy, not in passion — should the North 
 take up, as the burden and spirit of its appeal. It is 
 the kind word, the friendly word, the saving word. 
 But, heeded or unheeded by the South, with the 
 North should be the unalterable decision, We will no 
 longer be partners in the upholding and cherishing of 
 
 3 
 
 r^ 
 
18 
 
 this accursed barbarism. We will no longer be tied 
 up to a complicity in this intolerable outrage and 
 affront to Christianity and the age. 
 
 Let us remember, friends, that this impersonality, 
 " the North," is composed of individuals ; that we 
 are among them ; that, as such, we have duties in 
 relation to this matter of slavery, which it becomes 
 us religiously to fulfil. And, first, we should acquaint 
 ourselves — it is the bounden duty of every one of 
 us, man and woman — with the facts of slavery, to 
 the extent practicable. How many never read a pub- 
 lication, never hear a lecture, touching this subject ! 
 They are without the true feeling about it, because 
 Avithout knowledge. We should cherish the feeling 
 which knowledge would beget, not morbidly, not 
 fanatically, but in natural, healthy, Christ-like sym- 
 pathies for the wronged, and in holy detestation of 
 the wrong. It is the very spirit of God. Quench it 
 not. We should give action to the heart's promptings 
 in doing whatever and all we may, in and through tlie 
 spirit of Christ, for slavery's downfall and extinction. 
 And, withal, we should give ourselves to prayer, — 
 for the oppressed, for the oppressor, for light, strength, 
 compassion, patience, as our own need with regard to 
 them ; the prayer of fliith and trust in Him, who, 
 amid clouds and darkness, has justice and judgment 
 as the habitation of his throne ; all whose attributes 
 are one in their opposition to oppression ; and who, 
 
 V 
 
19 
 
 sooner or later, will show himself to have been on 
 the side of truth and freedom and right, in the ever- 
 waging conflict of these with falsehood and despotism 
 and iniquity. 
 
 The work is God's. We can be but his instru- 
 ments : we can be such. " Wherefore, put on the 
 whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand in 
 the evil day, and, having done all, to stand." 
 
THE MAN. — THE DEED. — THE EVENT 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER 
 
 0\ Sunday, Dec. 4, and repeated Dec. 11, 1859. 
 
 BY NATHANIEL HALL. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 '2.1, School Stkeet. 
 
 1859. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 John xi. 50: "It is expedient for us that one man shoulp die for the 
 
 PEOPLE." 
 
 ^HE American Pulpit can have but one theme 
 to-day. To decline, for any other, that given in 
 the public tragedy whose shadow is yet upon us, 
 would be to turn away from the very call of God, 
 as heard in his providence, — heard in the awakened 
 minds and quickened sensibilities of a people. So, at 
 least, do I feel it, and must do accordingly. I have 
 forborne to speak hitherto of the aifair thus consum- 
 mated, not because it has not had for me an absorbing 
 interest, but because I wished to wait until that con- 
 summation should have passed, until it should wear 
 its death-crown, and be given over in its wholeness, as 
 now it is, to the keeping of history. I have forborne 
 too, let me add, because I have stood in awe — as I 
 do still — before an event so full of significance, so 
 full of teaching, so full of God, lest I might not in- 
 terpret it aright; lest in a human weakness, through 
 
24 
 
 sympathy with the cause in whose interest it befell, 
 I might be led to see in it more, or beneath the influ- 
 ence of contagious opinion, in a human weakness still, 
 which suffers others' judgments to becloud the moral 
 vision, I might see less, than in truth was there. 
 I would simply see what is there, and tell what I 
 see. 
 
 On Friday last, the 2d of December, a man, ac- 
 cused and convicted of capital offences against the 
 laws of Virginia, was publicly executed therefor under 
 those laws. AVhat is there here to quicken the pulses 
 of a nation ? What is there in this, that the eyes of 
 twenty millions of people should have been turned, 
 on that day, to that scaff'old, — some in tearful sym- 
 pathy, some in exulting scorn, some in depressing 
 fears, but all with a commanding interest; an interest 
 which, for weeks before, had waited, as for nothing 
 else, for the words spoken in his imprisonment, as the 
 million-voiced press reported them, in every dwelling 
 in the land ? What is there in this, that the sudden 
 death-knell of the patriarch-prince of American letters, 
 laurelled with the purest admiration of three genera- 
 tions, should have been comparatively unnoticed, in 
 anticipation of that of this sentenced felon % Let 
 us expand that statement of tlie occurrence by its 
 interconnected facts, and we shall see. 
 
 A man of threescore years, of New-England birth, 
 of Puritan descent, and marked in youth and manhood 
 
25 
 
 by the characteristic virtues of that noble stock; a man 
 nurtured upon the Bible ; a man of prayer ; a man in 
 whom the religious element was the ruling and incit- 
 ing one ; a man, the uncompromising sternness of 
 whose integrity was in union with a childlike sim- 
 plicity and a self-denying benevolence, — this man, 
 for following out the impulse cf that benevolence, in 
 a certain way, towards a certain class ; for putting his 
 religion into forceful deeds; for obeying the inward 
 call, as doubly heard in conscience and in heart ; for 
 seeking to give freedom to an outcast race, whose 
 oppressions he had borne, through a score of years, as 
 if they were his own ; for " remembering," in the only 
 way that seemed to him effective, — in the way, as he 
 felt, which Heaven ordered him, — "them that are 
 in bonds, as bound with them ; " for striking a sacri- 
 legious blow at the Dagon of a nation's worship, 
 whereto government, society, religion, commerce, law, 
 obsequiously bow down, — this man, for this, on 
 the day and place aforesaid, was hung as a malefac- 
 tor ; and hence, in these added facts of the case, 
 hence essentially, that wide-spread interest and deep 
 sensation the event produced. It was the man, it was 
 the motive, it was the object ; it was the deed, not in 
 itself, but in its revelations ; in its results manifest, 
 and those, far more, of which it is the prophecy and 
 the harbinger, at once the seed and the germinating 
 influence. 
 
26 
 
 The man and the event, — they offer themselves as 
 distinct sources of instruction and impression. There 
 are differences of opinion respecting the man ; though 
 only, I helieve, — which is most remarkable, — in this 
 particular manifestation of himself. But, let these 
 differences be what they may, while they will affect 
 the moral teaching of their related point, — the man 
 in his deed, — making it more or less, or not at all, 
 impressive, it need not affect, in the least, the lessons 
 from the event, — the event as such, and in its attend- 
 ant revelations and practical suggestiveness. 
 
 First, the man and the deed ; the man in his deed. 
 I see in him — as may already have been inferred — 
 an heroic nobleness ; a moral intrepidity ; an unflinch- 
 ing conscientiousness ; a religious self-devotion ; a 
 resolute pursuance, for years, of a purpose to which 
 his soul was wedded by holiest ties ; which he had 
 espoused, before Heaven, as divine ; had sworn to be 
 faithful to, through all hazards, at any cost, unto 
 death ; and for which, at last, in a lofty disregard of 
 personal consequences, in an unquestioning confidence 
 in a righteous God, he hazarded and gave his life. It 
 is the motive stamps the deed; it is the pui'pose makes 
 the man, morally regarded. Call him, if you will, 
 mistaken, foolish, — mistaken as to the justifiableness 
 of the means employed, foolish in his estimate of tlie 
 efficiency of those means in relation to his end, AA'hat 
 has it to do with the moral rightness and wisdom of 
 
27 
 
 the man 1 If you deny him the attribute of a pru- 
 dential rationality, you must accord him the virtues, 
 in glorious measure, of courage, magnanimity, hu- 
 maneness, truth. If you deny him a perfect appre- 
 hension of the Christian law, you must accord to him 
 a Avhola-souled allegiance to what he did apprehend 
 as such. If you call him, in disparagement, an Old- 
 Testament Christian, you must allow him to have 
 been that : ay, and more than that he was ; combin- 
 ing with a holy valor a philanthropy, which, in the 
 choice of its objects and the disinterestedness of its 
 aim, only Christianity could inspire. If you say he 
 believed in a " God of battles," he believed, at any rate, 
 in a God who battled for ri(j/ht as against wrong, for 
 the oppressed as against the oppressor, and who puts 
 swords into his servants' hands, to do, if need be, 
 likewise. 
 
 This, at least, we knoiv of John Brown, — that he 
 allied himself, head and heart and hand, with the 
 legally oppressed class in this country ; that he saw, 
 that he felt, as if they were his own, the wrongs they 
 suffer, and gave his all, himself, for their deliverance. 
 Whatever we may deny about him, of whatever we 
 may be doubtful, so much we know. His veracity is 
 unimpeachable ; even his enemies confess, and stood 
 in awe before it ; and this he asserts of himself His 
 wife also, widow now, of noble worth, testifies to this 
 feeling and purpose as among the deepest and dearest 
 
28 
 
 of his heart. " He has borne," she says, "the yoke of 
 the oppressed, as if upon his neck, for thirty years." 
 Every thing known of him, every thing said of him, 
 by rchable witnesses ; his whole past ; the interval, 
 above all, of his imprisonment, and his sublimely-met 
 end, — all force us to the belief, that in the sjArit of a 
 compassionating benevolence, joined with a fervid love 
 of justice and of right, he had made it, by prayer and 
 vow, the one leading object of his life, to emancipate, as 
 best he might, the enslaved. Nor is there any thing 
 to show that personal motives of any sort, of a 
 character sordid or ambitious or revengeful, mingled 
 at all with the highest — no, not even the latter — 
 marvellous height of moral attainment, in view of 
 his own heart-rending experience of the bereaving 
 cruelties of the slave-power. See him thus, in this 
 light alone, as one who, in the consciousness of a 
 righteous cause, and in pity for an outcast and de- 
 spised race, in a sublime recklessness opposed himself 
 to a nation's prostituted power,— a recklessness which 
 had in it, it may be, a higher wisdom, a truer sanity, 
 seen from its providential point, than we yet can 
 know ; — see him thus, and how can we but honor 
 him % If we honor those in all the ages who have 
 dared and died for the oppressed ; if we honor the 
 martyrs for liberty on our own soil ; nay, I speak it 
 reverently, if we honor Christ, who identified himself 
 with the poor and forsaken, and calls upon his follow- 
 
29 
 
 ers to do so, in sacrificing service, — how can we but 
 honor the memory of this executed maul See the 
 man in his motive, and tell me why. Separate the 
 circumstances which involve not the moral charncter 
 of his enterprise from those which express it, and tell 
 me why^ God save us from that inability to discrimi- 
 nate between the mere form, providential or mistaken, 
 of the manifestation of a principle, and its essential 
 being and activity ; from that prejudiced and per- 
 verted vision, which shall let any of his true heroes 
 pass unmarked by us as such, whether in public or 
 private life, seated in power or dangling from a gal- 
 lows, crowned with success or crushed by failure ! 
 For myself, I rejoice that He has raised up such a 
 one in the person of this humble man. I rejoice that 
 He has startled a nation, given to selfish toils and 
 demeaning indulgences and base expediences, by the 
 uuAvonted apparition of a man ; a man heroically ear- 
 nest for rio-hteousness' sake ; a man darinii^ to follow 
 a principle, wheresoever it may lead ; to put his reli- 
 gion into act, and take the consequences, though one 
 be death. Some call this fanaticism ; some call it 
 madness. Would to God there were more of it in the 
 world, call it what they may ; more vital faith in 
 principles, in God, in a God of righteousness, a pre- 
 sent God, a helping God ; a faith that would keep 
 men from everlastingly calculating the probable and 
 the expedient, as if there was no Being wiser and 
 
30 
 
 stronger than they; as if right was not always the 
 expedient, to abide by it the only success ! 
 
 I hope to be understood, as one speaking on this 
 subject is very likely not to be. I have spoken ap- 
 provingly of the principles and motives of the man, 
 as apart from the course he was led by these to adopt. 
 That that course had the approval of his own con- 
 science, that it seemed right to him, there can be no 
 doubt; and while, in our judgment of it, we are alle- 
 giant to our truer view, as we deem it, of the Chris- 
 tian law, let us not do his memory the injustice to 
 ascribe to him what he did not design. How does 
 it appear, though so generally assumed, that he de- 
 signed to employ force, aggressively and destructively, 
 in the accomplishment of his purpose, or to incite the 
 slaves to insurrection? On the contrary, he says of 
 himself, in his speech before the court, — this man 
 whose word was truth, — "I never did intend murder 
 or treason, or the destruction of property, or to incite 
 slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection : I never 
 encouraged men to do so, but always discouraged any 
 idea of the kind." He had given freedom to slaves 
 elsewhere, " without," as he says, " the snap of a gun." 
 He meant to do it here on a larger scale, but, if 
 possible, at the same bloodless cost ; though, I confess, 
 it seems to me the fanaticism of credulity to suppose it 
 could be so. He would have confronted with his 
 mustering forces, Moses-like, this later Pharaoh, with 
 
31 
 
 a " Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go ; " an 
 unresisting- obedience to which mandate would doubt- 
 
 o 
 
 less, so far as he was concerned, have been followed by 
 a peaceable retreat. That he would have employed 
 or countenanced force, in recklessness or revenge, for 
 aught but self-defence in humanity's cause, is, as the 
 man has shown himself to us, a moral impossibility. 
 
 I believe in truth and love as the overcoming power 
 of moral evil. 1 would not compromise my adhe- 
 sion to this, as eminently the Christian rule, through 
 my admiration of those, who, though from highest 
 motives, for noblest ends, make use of aggressive 
 force. But let us be consistent, and not condemn 
 it in John Brown at Virginia, while we applaud it, 
 as employed by great historic names, in other lands 
 and our own, for ends no more worthy, that lifted to 
 Heaven a far less beseeching appeal. Is it success 
 gives merit to undertakings for human freedom ? or 
 the theatre whereon enacted? or the race in whose 
 behalf? And let those, who are so ready to make use 
 of Christ's teaching as ground for condemnation in 
 the instance before us, remember that his precept of 
 non-resistance is not his only one ; that he had some- 
 thing to say about love and duty to one's neighbor ; 
 that he commended especially to our imitation him 
 who found his " neighbor " in the man who had 
 ''fallen among thieves,'' and staid to bless him, though 
 priest and Levite passed. 
 
32 
 
 I pass from the man and the deed to the event, as 
 a distinct source of instruction and impression. 
 
 And, first, it yields new and more convincing proofs 
 of the diabolicahiess of that " institution," which de- 
 mands, in order to its safety, its existence, the death 
 of the bravely true, the morally heroic ; which dares 
 not pardon such, dares not imprison merely, dares 
 not delay the fatal end, but must straightway kill: 
 or, to put it in another form, that system which de- 
 mands for its support laws against which the natural 
 conscience, the religious sense, rebels ; which makes 
 that treason which God makes duty, and counts 
 those felons whom the universal heart calls heroes. 
 Here is a man distinguished for his moral nobility, 
 his love of truth, honor, justice, benevolence, — for 
 his unshrinking fealty to these, — and Virginia hangs 
 him. " Pie broke her laws." Yes, but only because 
 the law of Eternal Justice was broken in their enact- 
 ment ; because they stood between prostrate millions 
 and the uplifting boon and birthright which the God 
 within him yearned to give them. Slavery hung him. 
 Of course it would. It can do nothing better with a 
 true man, for its own interest's sake. What a con- 
 dition of things has this affair caused a revelation 
 of in the Slaveholding States ! What a condition of 
 things to exist in one-half of a Christian republic ! 
 Such fears of truth ; such suppression of honest 
 speech ; where peace and safety can only be secured 
 
33 
 
 by stifling — ay, below a whisper — the noblest sen- 
 timents of the soul ; where the Bible is regarded, and 
 dealt with, as offensively incendiary, and can only be 
 tolerated by covering up its golden rule, its parable 
 of the good Samaritan, and its other humanities ! 
 What a state of society, when a score of men, enter- 
 ing it at its borders, and asserting God's claim upon 
 his stolen children, and going to work to enforce it, 
 cause a panic of terror through an entire population, 
 which every light upon the horizon, the most insig- 
 nificant occurrence, renews and heightens, — a terror 
 for what the}/ may do, who, we are told, are so con- 
 tented and happy, and gratefully attached! Truly, 
 one may well divide his pity between the slaveholder 
 and the slave. 
 
 Again : the event gives new and startling proof of 
 the instability of the social system built on slavery, 
 
 — of slavery itself as an instituted power. Above 
 what volcanic possibilities is the South seen to stand, 
 
 — does it see itself to stand, — which may flame at 
 any moment into dire realities ; the igniting sparks of 
 truth flying in all the winds of heaven without, and 
 vainly striven against lest they should light within ! 
 The danger most fearful to the South, and most 
 imminent, is not from abroad. Left to itself, — so 
 fiir as the all-pervading spirit of the age can leave it, 
 so far as any direct interference is concerned, — 
 it is left with its worst enemy, in the elements self- 
 
 5 
 
84 
 
 engendered in its own bosom. What may not be, 
 when once those fettered millions know their might ; 
 when they know, as this event will help them to, 
 the fact of an existing sympathy for them beyond 
 their borders, but only just beyond, may be within, 
 — a sympathy willing to peril life for their deliver- 
 ance ■? What may not be, when that other element 
 of danger (the non-slaveholders), seething in secret, 
 none may know how hotly, — for it has no organ of 
 expression to the world nor to itself, — when this 
 element shall find vent in voice and deed, and know 
 and use its now arrogantly despised power'? It is 
 idle to deny the fact of this insecurity and peril. It 
 is seen by this occurrence as it had not been before. 
 And was it not to be looked for, in the very nature of 
 things, by the very ordinance of the Almighty % A 
 system, social or civil, founded in injustice, — must 
 it not bear within it the elements of rottenness and 
 evil 1 Well may it be that the event under considera- 
 tion has drawn attention anew to so grave a fact, has 
 furnished new testimony to it ; well for the South, — 
 God grant it ! — in its insane clinging to slavery as a 
 good ; well for the North, in its wicked complicity 
 and irresolute paltering with so great a wrong. 
 
 Again: this event has shown the South, what it 
 has seemed unable to conceive, that the opposition to 
 slavery at the North is not the offspring of sectional 
 hate or sentimental heat, of self-interest or passion, 
 
35 
 
 but of a constraining principle, of a religiously-felt 
 obligation. John Brown represents to them and to 
 the world, in the inciting and pervading motive of his 
 enterprise, the true grounds of that opposition, deep 
 and abiding as the principles of rectitude and mercy. 
 He had nothing to gain by it of an earthly sort, if he 
 succeeded ; every thing to lose, if he failed. There 
 was no feeling of retaliation or revenge to be grati- 
 fied. He was willing to sacrifice his all for those of 
 whom he knew no more than that they were enslaved, 
 towards whom he had no other relation than the 
 human, whose claim on him was that alone of suffer- 
 ing and helplessness. The antislavery reform is a 
 moral and religious one. The abolitionists have 
 stood, from the beginning, — and it is this which has 
 given a moral dignity and glory to their enterprise, 
 lifting it far above all political movements, — they 
 have stood on the essential and eternal right, and 
 based their appeals on that to the conscience and the 
 heart. Hence their success. Hence, whatever they 
 have gained they have gained for ever. There is, 
 there can be, no ebb to the on-sweeping tide of anti- 
 slavery sentiment. How preposterous to think to 
 stay it by politic deprecations, to think to bind it by 
 constitutional compacts and judicial decisions ! I 
 tell you they shall be as stubble before its majestic 
 swell. 
 
 Again : the event yields new illustration of the 
 
36 
 
 vast superiority, in potential influence, of deeds to 
 words. There have been torrents of speech — decla- 
 mation, argument, persuasion, invective — levelled for 
 years, in the Free States, against the slave-power. 
 Nor has it been in vain. It was needed. It has 
 wrought incalculable good. But here is one so terri- 
 bly in earnest, so meaning what he says, that he 7nust 
 act; that, throwing himself unreservedly upon his 
 principles, he does act ; and does thus, whatever he 
 fails to do, a work for freedom — so it would seem, 
 viewed in its higher bearings — which years of 
 words alone had fiiiled to do. The lesson is not that 
 such like deeds are to be repeated, or are in them- 
 selves right. By no means. But this^ that deeds, 
 some deeds, such as our avowed principles authorize 
 and demand of us, should back our words, should 
 prove our earnestness, would w^e be efficient instru- 
 ments against the instituted iniquity of our land. 
 This faithful servant of God put his life-swaying idea 
 and feeling into that embodiment which seemed to and 
 for him worthy and right and best ; and has gained 
 by it a success different from, but far beyond, all 
 that he proposed to himself or hoped for. Obedience 
 to a conviction, — self-sacrificing, ///e-sacrificing obe- 
 dience, — it can shake even the citadel of American 
 Slavery. I///e-sacrificing, I say. What a power there 
 is in blood, freely given and poured forth for a 
 righteous end ! They little knew, who heard it, the 
 
37 
 
 profound significance, prophetically hidden, of that 
 saying uttered in the Jewish Sanhedrim, with refer- 
 ence to him, the divine Emancipator, at whom it so 
 blindly aimed, — " It is expedient for us that one man 
 die for the people, and that the whole nation perish 
 not." We little know what sacred expediency may be 
 yet shown to be involved in this recent dying ; how 
 much it may do, in the workings of a spiritual Provi- 
 dence, to save a nation's perishing. 
 
 Friends, who can doubt that a crisis is approaching 
 in the conflict, truly called " irrepressible," between 
 freedom and slavery, in our country 1 Let us feel that 
 we each have an influence — however small, not unim- 
 portant — in the great decision ; and let us employ it, 
 as God may give the opportunities, in the true spirit 
 of his Christ, for freedom, humanity, himself; putting 
 a cheerful and untrembling faith in the overruling and 
 righteous Providence. 
 
 " All is best ; though we oft doubt 
 What the unsearchable dispose 
 Of hi<];hest Wisdom brings about, 
 And ever best found in the close. 
 Oft he seems to hide his face, 
 But unexpectedly returns, 
 And to his faithful champions, soon or late, 
 Bears witness gloriously." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRP<:c 
 
 niiiii 
 
 '"^i 899 149 7.^