Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Reform and Repeal: A Sermon Preached on Fast-Day, April 6, 1854
In the presence of God, and in the act of worship, we forbear to indulge in any imputation of bad motives, or in personal indignation levelled against persons. We observe results, we deal with principles, we contrast the effects of associated action with the eternal sentiments of the Gos pel. And if we find a principle of Divine equity, or a rule of common morals and decency, violated, we proclaim it because we reverence what is just, we confess it because we know that we are implicated in all the public manifes tations which create government and carry on the life of a country. We dare not enter into the question of motives; we can only expose a corrupt level of sentiment. Men may live on such a level unconsciously, and may share its immoral actions in mechanical obedience to legal requi sitions, out of gregarious instincts, and from lack of the highest enlightenment. Among other public evils, we find this coarse and oppressive one of assumption of criminal intent; and it is no better when combined with vindica tion of principles than when it is used against principle to eke out a defence of wrong. Moreover, the amount of character to be defamed may be great or little, but the sin of defamation is equally great in all cases, because impar tial and unerring judgment is not within the capacity of man, even when all the lights of knowledge guide him, and his passions sleep; least of all when he is thinking and speaking in the dust of a con?ict, stimulated by pressing.
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