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plish his purposes only by appealing to our purest and holiest instincts, and making us believe and feel, that, while we are serving him with our whole hearts, we are really not serving him, but God. He must contrive to usurp the place of the Almighty, and to make himself believed to be God, and worshipped as God. He must then chime in with our sentiments, our instincts, even stimulate our devotion to liberty, and defeat liberty by compelling us to seek it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or by improper means.

The error of the Abolitionists is not, that they love liberty, or that with heart and soul they seek to realize it, and for the black man as well as the white man. The religion of Jesus knows no distinctions of caste or of color. All are children of one common Father, have one common Saviour, and one and the same moral destiny. The end they seek - we mean the sincere and honest among them-is praiseworthy, is a strictly lawful end; but they forget that they are never to seek even a lawful end by unlawful means. Here is their error. In seeking to abolish slavery at the South, they have found both the Church and the State in their way; that is, they have found both the Chuch and the State in the way of their doing it in the time and manner they propose. But is man made for the State and the Church or are the Church and the State made for man? Is not liberty the very end for which man was made? Has not every man a right to be free? Can any State, or any Church, which opposes freedom, which prohibits me from rushing to the rescue of the captive, from breaking the fetters of the bound, of bidding the slave go free, be of God, or in any sense worthy of my support? No. Then down with the Church! Down with a corrupt ministry! Down with the State! Down, as we heard an Abolition leader exclaim in a public meeting, Down with the star-spangled banner! Down with the army and navy! Down with the Executive! Down with the Judiciary! Down with the Legislature! Down with all your governmental and ecclesiastical establishments! And up with the Rights of Man!

Now, we are perfectly willing to admit that the State and the Church exist for man, and that the true freedom of man is paramount to either. We are perfectly willing to admit, that, in case either should become really hostile to human freedom, it would cease to be worthy of our support. But who has the right to decide the question? Here is manifest the Satanic spirit of Come-outerism. It assumes that the individual is his own judge; that, when I have decided for myself that a certain end is, in itself considered, good and holy, I have a right to seek it against all established authority. The Constitution is in my way, and I get up, as actually did, some time since, a leading Abolition orator, in Faneuil Hall, and exclaim, "My curse on the Constitution!" Here, I set up my own individual conviction, or my own individual crotchet, and assume that I have a right to follow it, let it lead where it will. I recognize no authority but that of my own conviction, and claim the right to do whatever I please. I am wiser than Church and State; I am above Church and State; and there is no law to which I owe obedience, but the law which I am to myself. This is the Satanic element of Come-outerism. The Come-outer can justify himself only by making good his claims to a divine commission, and to immediate and plenary inspiration. No authority but that of God can absolve a man from his obligation to obey the existing order; and he must show that he has that authority, or be convicted of the Satanic spirit. Have our modern Abolitionists a warrant from the Almighty to set aside Church and State?

But this is not all. Suppose the Come-outers, for instance, could get rid of the State, could trample the star-spangled banner in the dust, abolish the Constitution, abolish all forms of law, wipe out all traces of outward government, and proclaim universally the rights of man, what would they gain? What protection would they have for the rights of man? What would prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, the cunning from overreaching the simple? Even the Come-outers themselves cannot in their own affairs get on without or

ganization, and must have their committees, and their moderators. But is there nothing in the way of freedom but human government? Is it government that causes all the slavery there is? And, if the restraints of government were taken off, and all men left to their individual passions, instincts, convictions, and crotchets, would each man stand up a true freeman, in the glorious image of his Maker? Would no one seek to gain any advantage over another? Who will pretend it? It is government and law that protect these very men themselves, even while reviling government and law,— and us also from Come-outer vengeance, while defending law and order.

Suppose, again, the Come-outers could succeed in destroying the Christian ministry, in demolishing the Church, and resolving all into a perfect moral and religious chaos, what would they gain? Is there no sin in the human heart but is caused by the Church and the clergy? Do the Church and the clergy plant all these vindictive passions in our breasts, cause all our selfishness, our worldly-mindedness, our wrongs and outrages one upon another? It were madness to pretend so. Abolish, then, the Church and the clergy, and the cause of the evil would remain untouched. We should have all the indwelling sin, the inbred corruption, all the lusts, which now cause all the evils of which man complains, or to which he is subject. So, even, if the individual had a right to set aside the State and the Church on his own responsibility, he would gain nothing, and would, to say the least, find himself in no better condition than he was before.

It is always lawful to seek to redress wrong, to labor to remove evil, whatever or wherever it is, but only by lawful means; and what are lawful means, the individual is not his own judge. 'We all of us, from the highest to the lowest, owe obedience to authority, to the State in civil matters, and to the Church, authorized to speak in the name of Christ, in spiritual matters; and I have no right to use any methods or means of redres48

VOL. I. NO. III.

sing wrongs, to labor for any ameliorations, but in submission to these.

From this conclusion, however, many, who are by no means reckoned among Come-outers, will dissent. The truth is, and there is no use in seeking to disguise it, Come-outerism is only the common faith of the country pushed to its last consequences. Thousands and thousands of those who condemn, in no measured terms, Garrison, Rogers, Foster, Abby Folsom, and their immediate friends and associates, adopt and defend premises, of which the wild notions of these are but the logical conclusions. In politics, the great majority of our countrymen assert the sacred right of revolution, and hold that government derives its just powers from the assent of the governed; in religion, nearly all of us hold to the right of private judgment, that the individual is morally as well as politically free to choose his own religion. Doubtless, in practice we deny these principles, doubtless we resist their practical application, but they are the deliberately, the solemnly proclaimed faith of the country, and no man can maintain his standing in our community who calls in question their theoretic soundness. Assuming individualism in religion, and no government without the assent of the governed, and the right of revolution in politics, we defy any man, who can reason logically, to escape the conclusions of our Come-outers. We may say there is no occasion for the extremes to which they carry matters, we may dispute about this or that practical point, but we cannot object to their doctrines. They are consistent; we who oppose them are inconsistent. They have the courage to be true to their principles. We cowardly shrink from the legitimate consequences of our own faith.

Here is the danger. If there was nothing in the national faith to serve as the basis, the logical data, of Come-outerism, we should have no fears. But every people, in its collective life, tends to carry out, in their logical order, the great, fundamental principles on which

that life is founded; and though practical good sense may for a time arrest the tendency, it can never prevent it from ultimately reaching its end. We are the children of revolution in the State, and of dissent in religion. We see nothing sacred in government, we feel nothing binding in ecclesiastical establishments. Our youth are early imbued with a sense of the supremacy of the individual; and all of us, who think seriously at all, grow up with the conviction, that our own judgment is in all cases to be our rule of action. When we step forth, in the glow and enthusiasm of youth, to write or speak to our countrymen, it is with this conviction. burning in our souls. We would stand on our own two feet. What is antiquity to us? What is it to us what others have believed, or do believe? What to us the voice of the Church, a mere association of individuals, and of individuals no wiser or better than ourselves? What to us the State, also a mere association of individuals? and what the laws, made by our servants, and in nine cases out of ten by men who know not half so much as we? Here is the tone, the feeling, with which we enter upon life; and this tone, this feeling, is in perfect consonance with the settled faith of the country. What wonder, then, that men engaged in what they believe a good cause should, on finding themselves resisted or not aided by Church or State, assume the right to set Church or State aside, and to proclaim the absolute freedom of the individual in regard to either?

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Our countrymen, if they would but stop a moment and consider, would read their own condemnation in this very horror or contempt of Come-outerism, which they feel when disclosing itself in its real character, and standing forth before them in its nakedness. Doubtless, there are sounder elements in our national faith than these which we have pointed out; doubtless, there are sound religious principles, and the foundations for a deep and genuine respect for law and order; but still, Come-outerism, in its principle, is-seek to disguise or to palliate the matter as we will the active, dominant

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