Two Orations Against Taking Away Human Life, Under Any Circumstances; And in Explanation and Defence of the Misrepresented Doctrine of Non-Resistance

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 Excerpt: ... my brother, you are not to take that flattering unction to your soul, that since you have avowed your conviction that blood-shedding and violence are wrong; and since you have virtuously cried, ' I stand at ease ' when the weapon of blood was offered, or attempted to be forced into your hands, or when an act of violence was proposed: remember, I say, that you are not to take that flattering unction to your soul--that you have fully done your part as a man, that you have wholly discharged your duty as a member of the human family. No you may not sit down, tonguestricken and nerveless, and sinewless, and let the unenlightened and the mistaught be trepanned into the league for evil, and so let wrong wax strong. You are to cry out against wrong, until the wrong-doer be paralysed with the shout. You are to stand in the gap, and morally oppose yourself to the enemies of right, and urge and entreat others to unite with you. Dream not, I say again, that you have done your part by refusing to participate in the doing of one wrong in order to put down another. Think not that there is, thenceforth, nothing left for you to do. You are to ' gird up the loins of your mind, ' like a true man, for the better fight, --for the moral death-struggle. Not a day of your life, not an hour of your existence, but must be devoted, in thought or wish, in intent or resolve, in speech or act, to the grand moral warfare against wrong. Who has done what he might, in moral or intellectual effort, for the enterprise of seeking to make Right triumphant? Who has tried all his powers of suasion, who hath fully essayed his gift of head-and-heart logic to convince, and to win towards the phalanx of Right, his friend, or his neighbour--not to speak of the greater moral glory of winning over an e...