RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES.
The _St. Cloud Democrat_ found in orthodoxy a foe almost as powerful and
persistent as slavery itself. In a local controversy about dancing, I
recommended that amusement as the only substitute for lascivious plays,
and this was eagerly seized upon by those who saw nothing wrong in
wholesale concubinage of the South. A fierce attack was made on _The
Democrat_ by a zealous Baptist minister; to which I replied, when it was
announced and proclaimed that on a certain Sabbath, at 10 A.M., this
minister would answer _The Democrat_. At the appointed hour the house
overflowed, and people crowded around the doors and windows, while Gen.
Lowrie occupied a prominent seat in the audience.
It surely was an odd sight to see that preacher mount the stand,
carrying an open copy of _The Democrat_, lay it down beside the Bible,
and read verse about from the two documents. The sermon was as odd as
the text. It disposed of me by the summary mode of denunciation, but
also disposed of David, Solomon and Miriam at the same time. When I gave
the discourse a careful Scriptural criticism, I carried the community,
and was strengthened by the controversy. But another, more serious and
general dispute was at hand.
When Theodore Parker died, the orthodox press from Maine to Georgia,
handed him over to Satan to be tormented; and then my reputation for
heresy reached its flood-tide.
Rev. John Renwick, one of our Covenanter martyrs, was my ideal of a
Christian, and when he lay in the Edinburg prison under sentence of
death, his weeping friends begged him to conform and save his life. They
said to him:
"Dinna ye think that we, who ha' conformit may be saved?"
"Aye, aye. God forbid that I should limit his grace."
"An' dinna ye think, ye too could be saved and conform?"
"Oh, aye aye. The blood of Christ cleanseth fra all sin."
"Weel, what mair do ye want, than the salvation o' yer saul?"
"Mair, mickle mair! I want to honor my Master, and bear witness to the
truth."
To satisfy this want, he died a felon's death. The central idea of that
old hero-making Westminster theology was, that man's chief end is to
glorify God first, and enjoy him forever when that is done. In all the
religious training of my youth, I had never heard the term "seek
salvation." We were to seek the privilege of serving God; yet I was
willing to be dead-headed into heaven, with the rest of the
Presbyterians.
A Protestant Episcopal convention had pointedly refused to advise
members of that church to respect the marriage relation among their
slaves, and so had dimmed the Elizabethian glory of a church which once
stood for freedom so nobly that the winds and waves became her allies,
and crowned her with victory. The General Assembly had laid the honor of
its martyrs in the dust by endorsing human slavery; and I must be false
to every conviction if I did not protest against calling that
Christianity which held out crowns of glory to man-thieves and their
abettors, and everlasting torments to those who had spent their lives
glorifying God and bearing witness to the truth. My defense of Parker
and unwillingness to have all Unitarians sent to the other side of the
Great Gulf, won for me a prominent place among those whom the churches
pronounced "Infidels."
But there came a time when "Providence" seemed to be on the side of the
slave.
Rev. J. Calhoun was a highly-cultured gentleman, a Presbyterian
clergyman, and one of those urbane men who add force and dignity to any
opinion. His wife was Gen. Lowrie's only sister. He preached
gratuitously in St. Cloud, and Border Ruffianism and Slavery gained
respectability through their connection, when he and his wife made that
fatal plunge off the bridge in St. Cloud--a plunge which sent a thrill
of horror through the land. I accompanied my sympathetic, respectful
obituary notice, with the statement that the costly cutter wrecked, and
the valuable horse instantly killed, were both purchased with money
obtained by the sale of a woman and her child, who had been held as
slaves in Minnesota, in defiance of her law, and been taken by this
popular divine to a Tennessee auction block.
The accident was entirely owing to the unprecedented and unaccountable
behavior of that horse, and people shuddered with a new horror on being
reminded of the price which had been paid for him--bodies and souls of
two citizens and the honor of that free State.