Pages from an Old Volume of Life; a collection of essays, 1857-1881 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 182 pages of information about Pages from an Old Volume of Life; a collection of essays, 1857-1881.

Pages from an Old Volume of Life; a collection of essays, 1857-1881 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 182 pages of information about Pages from an Old Volume of Life; a collection of essays, 1857-1881.
members implies the recognition or the denial of a sentiment.  It is true that men often forget them or act against their bidding in the keen competition of business and politics.  But God has not left the hard intellect of man to work out its devices without the constant presence of beings with gentler and purer instincts.  The breast of woman is the ever-rocking cradle of the pure and holy sentiments which will sooner or later steal their way into the mind of her sterner companion; which will by and by emerge in the thoughts of the world’s teachers, and at last thunder forth in the edicts of its law-givers and masters.  Woman herself borrows half her tenderness from the sweet influences of maternity; and childhood, that weeps at the story of suffering, that shudders at the picture of wrong, brings down its inspiration “from God, who is our home.”  To quarrel, then, with the class of minds that instinctively attack abuses, is not only profitless but senseless; to sneer at the sentiments which are the springs of all just and virtuous actions, is merely a display of unthinking levity, or of want of the natural sensibilities.

With the hereditary character of the Southern people moving in one direction, and the awakened conscience of the North stirring in the other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable, and equally inevitable its appearance in the field of national politics.  For what is meant by self-government is, that a man shall make his convictions of what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his fractional share of the government extends.  If one has come to the conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institution or statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and who will in their wider sphere do all they legitimately can to get rid of the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents involved.  To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political forms may be very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or practice of self-government.  And if at last organized opinions become arrayed in hostile shape against each other, we shall find that a just war is only the last inevitable link in a chain of closely connected impulses of which the original source is in Him who gave to tender and humble and uncorrupted souls the sense of right and wrong, which, after passing through various forms, has found its final expression in the use of material force.  Behind the bayonet is the law-giver’s statute, behind the statute the thinker’s argument, behind the argument is the tender conscientiousness of woman, woman, the wife, the mother,—­who looks upon the face of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of infancy.  “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies.”

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Pages from an Old Volume of Life; a collection of essays, 1857-1881 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.