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William Lloyd Garrison and His Times (1879)
William Lloyd Garrison and His Times - 1879 Author:Oliver Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. Mr. Garrison's Early Orthodoxy — No Odor of Heresy abont him until long after the Churches and the Clergy had Rejected his Message — A Christian at the La... more »st no less than at the First — Reluctance of Ministers to Pray in Anti-Slavery Meetings — Rev. Amos A. Phelps and his Book — The A. B. C. F. M. — The Methodist Clmreh — Dr. Whodon's Denial — Testimony of Judge Jay — The Freewill Baptists. So persistent have been the efforts made in certain quarters to excuse the hostility of the ministers and churches to the anti-slavery movement on the ground of Mr. Garrison's alleged infidelity, that it becomes important to set forth the truth on this subject with great clearness. In turning over the leaves of the first volume of "The Liberator," we find the evidences of Mr. Garrison's thorough-going Orthodoxy in great abundance. There was not about him the least odor of heresy of any kind, save in his belief in the perfect humanity of the negro, and in his denunciations of slavery as a sin. We find him pleading for the universal diffusion of the Bible as the chief instrumentality for promoting the cause. "Take away the Bible," he exclaims, "and our warfare with oppression, and infidelity, and intemperance, and impurity, and crime is at an end; our weapons are wrested away, our foundation is removed ; we have no authority to speak, and no courage to act." That in later years he held the views of the Bible common among Quakers and Unitarians is not denied; but this was long after the American clergy and churches had repudiated the anti- slavery movement. Indeed, it was this repudiation on their part that led him to the investigations which resulted in the modification of his inherited views onthis and some other points. But to the very last the Bible was to him " the Book of books," an...« less