and to which he was devoting himself so energetically.
To Elizabeth Pease, one of the noblest of the English
Abolitionists, and one of his stanchest transatlantic
friends, he defended himself against the false and
cruel statements touching his religious beliefs.
“I esteem the Holy Scriptures,” he wrote
her, “above all other books in the universe,
and always appeal to ’the law and the testimony’
to prove all my peculiar doctrines.” His
religious sentiments and Sabbatical views are almost
if not quite identical with those held by the Quakers.
“I believe in an indwelling Christ,” he
goes on to furnish a summary of his confession of
faith, “and in His righteousness alone; I glory
in nothing here below, save in Christ and in Him crucified;
I believe all the works of the devil are to be destroyed,
and Our Lord is to reign from sea to sea, even to
the ends of the earth; and I profess to have passed
from death unto life, and know by happy experience,
that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
spirit.” These were the pioneer’s
articles of faith. Their extreme simplicity and
theological conservatism it would seem ought to have
satisfied the evangelicals of all denominations.
They were in essentials thoroughly orthodox.
But in the composition of the shibboleths of beliefs
non-essentials as well as essentials enter, the former
to the latter in the proportion of two to one.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Garrison’s
essentials proved unequal to the test set up by sectarianism,
inasmuch as his spiritual life dropped the aspirate
of the non-essentials of religious forms and observances.
But the good man had his compensation as well as his
trials. Such of a very noble kind was the great
Irish address brought over from Ireland by Remond
in December 1841. It was signed by Daniel O’Connell,
Father Mathew, and sixty thousand Roman Catholics
of Ireland, who called upon the Irish Roman Catholics
of America to make the cause of the slaves of the
United States their cause. Large expectations
of Irish assistance in the anti-slavery agitation
were excited in the bosoms of Abolitionists by this
imposing appeal. Garrison shared the high hopes
of its beneficent influence upon the Ireland of America,
with many others. Alas! for the “best laid
schemes of mice and men,” for the new Ireland
was not populated with saints, but a fiercely human
race who had come to their new home to better their
own condition, not that of the negro. Hardly
had they touched these shores before they were Americanized
in the colorphobia sense, out-Heroded Herod in hatred
of the colored people and their anti-slavery friends.
Indeed, it was quite one thing to preach Abolitionism
with three thousand miles of sea-wall between one and
his audience, and quite another to rise and do the
preaching with no sea-wall to guard the preacher from
the popular consequences of his preaching, as Father
Mathew quickly perceived and reduced to practice eight