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before the wheels of the Idol's car, in the assurance that such self-abandonment will be acceptable to his God. I do not object to the rhetoric, in which Dr. Dewey has seen fit to clothe his conviction that "this law" ought to be obeyed. If a man be fully persuaded that any thing is his duty, I would have him endeavor to do it with his might, though it may require him to cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye, or submit himself to be hanged, or to yield up his wife, his daughter, or his mother torment and pollution. I would have him do his duty at any cost; and in my weakness I will pray that I may have strength given me to do what I believe to be my duty, with all the determination which the Doctor has expressed regarding his own.
O no! O no! it is not his rhetoric that astonishes, that shocks me! But that a man, who is so familiar with the history of the world, and knows so well that all social, as well as religious improvements, have been made under the inspiring influence of individuals, who have dared to disobey the unrighteous mandates of men in power;—that a man so well acquainted with the largest and purest minds that have lived, and with what they left as the best conclusions of human wisdom, regarding the true intention and just powers of civil government;—that a man, who has gone so thoroughly as Dr. D. has, into the study of human nature, done so much to raise his contemporaries from the imbecility of "implicit faith" and "implicit obedience," has contended so nobly for the independency of the individual soul, and has emancipated himself so far from spiritual thraldom;—that a man, who has studied so profoundly, and expounded so wisely the Sacred Scriptures, in which the choicest lessons of wisdom and virtue are given in the sketches they contain of the lives of noble men and women, who, in successive ages have withstood principalities and powers, rather than do what they believed to be contrary to the will of God;—that such a man should for a moment believe, that an enactment of any government on earth, enjoining upon one portion of its subjects, the utter violation of the unalienible rights of another portion, could have the santion of the impartial Father of the whole human family—that God could require, or be well pleased with, his or my obedience to such a law,—this, I confess does astonish me. That Dr. Dewey should believe, that our political fathers could make a compromise, involving this tremendous wickedness, and themselves be bound one hour by such an
