The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1858-07-07

parental authority and marriage were of
Divine ordnance Would police JUS
tice discharge drunkard who pleaded
the patriar, ha precedent of Noah? or
would he not rather give him anoth,r
month in the House of Correction for his
impudence.
The Anti-Slavery question is not one
which the Tract Society can exclude by
triumphant maorities, nor put to shame
by comparison OF responsibilities. Mix
ed though it las been with politics, it is
in no sense political, and sprlnging natu-
rally from the principles OF that religion
which traces its human ped gree to man-
ger, and whose first apostles were twelve
poor men az ainst the whole world, it can
dispense with numbers and earthly resi- eet
The clergyman may ignore it in ths put
pit, but 1t confronts hiin in his study; the
church-rnember, who has suppressed in
parlsh-meetlng, opens it with the pages
OF his New Testament; tue merchant, who
has shut it out of house ana heart, tinds
1t lying in wait for him, a gaunt fugitive,
in the hold of his ship; the lawyer, who
has declared that it is no concern of his,
finds it thrust upon him in the brief ct
the slave-hunter; the historian, who had
cautiously evaded it, stumbles over it at
Bunker Hill. And Why? Because it is
not political, but moral, because it is
not local, but national, because it is not
q test Of party, but of individual honesty
and honor. The wrong which we allow
our nation to perpetrate we cannot To-
calize, if we would; we cannot hem 1t
within the limits Of Washington Or Kan
sas; sooner or later, it will force itself in
to the conscience and SIT by the hearth
stone of every citizen.
1t is not partisanship, it is not fanati-
cism, that has forced this matter of anti
slavery upon the American people; it is
the spirit of Christianity, which appeals
from prejudices and predictions to the
moral consciousness Of the individual man.
That spirit elastic as air, penetrative IS
heat, inyulnerable as sunshine, agains.
which creed after creed and institution
after institution has measured its strength
and been confounded; that restless spirit
which refus; to chrystalize in any sect or
form, but persists, Divinely -commissi-
oned radical and reconstruction, in trying
every generation with new dilemma be-
tween ease and comfort on the one hand,
and duty on the other. Shall it be said
that its kingdom is not of this world g.
In one sense, and that the highest, it GER
tainly is not; but just as certainly Christ
never intended those words to be used as
subterfuge by which to escape our re-
sponsibilites in the life of business and
politics. Let the cross, the sword, and
the arena answer, whether the world, that
then was, SO understood its first preach
crs and apostles. Cesar and Fiamen
both instinctiyely dreaded it, not because
it aimed at riches or power, but because
it strove to conquer that other world in
the moral nature of mankind, where it
could establish throne against which
wealth and force would be weak and con-
temptible. No human device has ever
prevailed against it, no array of ajorl-
ties or responsibilities, but neither Caesar
nor Flamen ever conceived scheme SO
cunningly adapted to neutralize its pow
er as that graceful compromise which ac-
cepts it with the lip and denies it in the
life, which mar les it at the altar and d.
yorces it at the church door.