A Plea for Captain John Brown | Page 7

This is a seed of
such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.
The momentary charge at Balaclava, in obedience to a blundering
command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly
enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the
most part successful, charge of this man, for some years, against the
legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as
much more memorable than that, as an intelligent and conscientious
man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?
"Served him right,"--"A dangerous man,"--"He is undoubtedly insane."
So they proceed to live their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable
lives, reading their Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at that feat of
Putnam, who was let down into a wolf's den; and in this wise they
nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds some time or other.
The Tract Society could afford to print that story of Putnam. You might
open the district schools with the reading of it, for there is nothing
about Slavery or the Church in it; unless it occurs to the reader that
some pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing. "The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions" even, might dare to protest
against that wolf. I have heard of boards, and of American boards, but
it chances that I never heard of this particular lumber till lately. And yet
I hear of Northern men, and women, and children, by families, buying a
"life membership" in such societies as these. A life-membership in the
grave! You can get buried cheaper than that.
Our foes are in our midst and all about us. There is hardly a house but
is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness
of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect
of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry,
persecution, and slavery of all kinds. We are mere figureheads upon a
hulk, with livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the worship of idols,

which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image himself; and
the New-Englander is just as much an idolater as the Hindoo. This man
was an exception, for he did not set up even a political graven image
between him and his God.
A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while
it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and
tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses.
Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.
The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers
in the liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep
quietly afterward. All his prayers begin with "Now I lay me down to
sleep," and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go
to his "long rest." He has consented to perform certain old-established
charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of any
new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles
added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows the whites
of his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The
evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many,
no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit,
and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives
than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they
know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are
themselves.
We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men,
placing them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant
event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this
distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors.
They are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded
society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the
eye,--a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was that we
never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we
become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are
between a wandering Tartar and a Chinese town. The thoughtful man
becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable

seas suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch
themselves out there. It is the difference of constitution, of intelligence,
and faith, and not streams and mountains, that make the true and
impassable boundaries between individuals