Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1846-02-06

VI NiNNSPFf uo W III w StOl b1
the report of the Committee of Arrangements.
The results of our labor in this department
excite our gratitude, and encourage us to
greatly increased ~exertion in preparation for
our next Fair. And not only in this depart
ment do we meet such encouragement. All
around us are delightful evidences that the la
Dor of abolitionists has not been in vain, du-
ring the last twelve years. Enough TO in
spire us with cheerful hope and burning zeal
in the continuation of arduous toll, and strong
faith for endurance to the end.
From the dangers and snlres which heset
the path of reformers, aholitionists have not
been exempted. That restless Impotence for
immediate success, which begets distrust of
the potency of truth to vanquish error, and
which, too often, tempts the reformer to bor-
row weapons from another armory than that
of heaven, the friends of freedom have not
wholly escaped. Disastrous as its effects
have been, its occurrence is neither new nor
strange. The same evil has befallcn almost
every moral reform, since the Christian era.
When the Prince Of reformers, He who
"knew what was in man," and how he might
best be won to truth and righteousness, sought
to overthrow time-honored institutions, and
destroy systems of error which had been the
growth Of ages, and build upon their ruins a
pure religion, destined to be universal, He
chose for His weapons the utterance and the
practice Of the truth, the preaching of the lip
and the life. In the ear, and on the house
top; by the way side, and in the social circle;
in the synagogue and on the mountain side,
did He speak, day by day, the lofty words
of that truth which it was his mission to teach,
and there came up a response from the inner
most depths of human hearts, testifying that
L. t-,r Cnpt 80 Gal NJ, haul H.
lieve, and believed to obey His teachings;
and when he left the world,
His name afAr, His wandering followers
bore,
And fixed triumphantfe feet on every shore"
They were triumphant while they fourht with
their Masters weapons, while they sought
none other than,
"Those mild arms of truth and love,
Made mighty through the living God"
The rapid progress of Christianity, in its
earliest ages, taught the world a lesson, re-
specting the agencies whereby moral reform
can best be promoted, which men have been
very slow in learning. And not less monito-
ry was the long eclipse which obscured its
rising glories. AS its adherents became nu-
merous and powerful, the inclinations, so
strong in the human heart, to compel others
to conform to our sense OF right, grew within
them, and they brought, as they supposed, to
the aid of the new religion, the power of the
state, and invested it with political import
ance. 1t was Il sad day for Chris .ianity,
when it was crowned and thrOned, and robed
in the imperial purple, and it has been a sad
day for every moral reform, when it has grasp
ed the sceptre of temporal power, and formed
political alliances. Evidences of this fact
may be traced all through the history of the
past, from that day down to the present time.
A mournlul one has recently been furnished
us, in the decline Of the Anti-Masonic reform
in this country, which nourished so vigorous
" for a time, and was crushed TO death in the
embrace of a political party. BY this expe-
rience of the past, it were wise in us to prof
it. If these considerations were not sufficient
to induce the friends of emancipation to abb
iure political alliances, to trust in moral pow
er for the destruction of moral evil, to be con-
tent with those agencies which God ordain-
ed, and which Jesus Christ used for the pro
motion Of the greatest Of all reforms, anoth-
or reason might be assigned in the fact that
the first step in the formation of such allan
ces, under this government, must be an oath
of allegiance to a document which contains a
compact with the STAKEHOLDER, to sustain him in
the exercise of his oppression, as longas his
own statutes shall permit him to rob his BROTH
er of his birthright. Who can consent to
such a contract, and be guiltlessl
1t is sometimes urged, as an objection to
our principles or policy, or perhaps both, that
our numbers are still few, that Anti-Slavery
Societies do not now rapidly increase, and
that especially since our PRONUNCIATION of the
doctrine that men ought not to sustain slave
very by voting under the Constitution of the
United States, there are few who rally around
our standard. 1t may be so. The progress
of Anti-Slavery principles is not now, as ii
was once, evi ced by the formation of Anti
Slavery Societies, or the rapidly increasing
number of their members. At the beginning
of cur enterprise, it was natural that it should
be so. Evidences of progress are to be seen,
now, in the changes wrought in other organ
iz%ations, by the influence of our principles
Who can contrast, without surprise, the state
of feeling which existed in the community,
twelve years ago, with that of the present
timel Then, what church or ecclesiastical
assembly, discussed the evils and the sin Of
| slavery; what legislative body at the North,
was agitated with the subject, what lyceum,
what literary or political conclave, entertain.
ed it, Now, where is it not a topic of dis,
c~ussion, where is it not a source of agitation!
What Legislature, in all the North, has moi
thought and talked of it? And do we not sec
one church after another, Withdrawing itsel.
from the denomination to which it belonged
because it is no longer willing to extend re