Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Massachusetts in Mourning: A Sermon, Preached in Worcester, on Sunday, June 4, 1854
I am thankful for all this. Words are nothing - we have been surfeited with words for twenty years. I am thankful that this time there was action also ready for Freedom. God gave men bodies, to live and work. In the powers of those bodies are the first things to be consecrated to the Right. He gave us higher powers, also, for weapons, but, in using those, we must not forget to hold the lower ones also ready; else we miss our proper manly life on earth, and lay down our means of usefulness before we have outgrown them Ren der unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's. Our souls and bodies are both God's, and resistance to tyrants is obedience to Him. If you meet men whose souls are contaminated, and have time enough to work on them, you can deal with them by the weapons of the soul alone but if men array brute force against Freedom - pistols, clubs, drilled soldiers, and stone walls - then the body also has its part to do in resistance. You must hold yourself above men, I own, yet not too far above to reach them. I do not like even to think of taking life, only of giving it but physical force that is forcible enough, acts without blood shed. They say that with twenty more men at hand, that Friday night, at the Boston Court House, the Slave might have been rescued without even the death of that one man who was perhaps killed by his frightened companions, then and there. So you see force may not - mean bloodshed} and calm, irresistible force, in a good cause, becomes Sublime. The strokes on the door of that Court House that night for instance - they may perchance have 'disturbed some dreamy saint from his meditations, (if dreamy saints abound in Court Square, ) but I think they went echoing from town to_ town. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
