Part 12 (1/2)
And Sarah, writing to Sarah Douglass, says: ”They think to frighten us from the field of duty; but they do not move us God is our shi+eld, and we do not fear what man can do unto us,” A little further on she says: ”It is really aainst tos”
This was before the celebrated ”Pastoral Letter” appeared Sarah's answer to that in her letters to the NE Spectator sho far the clergy had gone beyond a her
There were, of course, many church members of every denomination, and many ministers, in the abolition ranks Indeed, at soht to see clergyether in har, all creeds and doght by the blessed command to do unto others as they would be done by
Soy objected, it is true, to the great freedoenerally in the Conventions, but this was slight coiven to women to take pro froainst this was naturally increased by the earnest eloquence hich Angelina Grimke pointed out the inconsistent attitude of ministers and church ly expressed views concerning a paid clergy; and the indignant protests of both sisters against the sin of prejudice, then as general in the church as out of it
The feeling grew very strong against the public senti to destroy veneration for thecontempt upon the consecrated forms of the Church; andfind decided public expression until the General association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts saw proper to pass a resolution of censure against Sarah and Angelina Griht and freedoarded as a most extraordinary docu sentences show the degree of authority felt and exercised by the clergy at that time It maintained that, as ministers were ordained by God, it was their place and duty to judge what food was best to feed to the flock over which they had been made overseers by the Holy Ghost; and that, if they did not preach on certain topics, as the flock desired, the flock had no right to put strangers in their place to do it; that deference and subordination were necessary to the happiness of every society, and peculiarly so to the relation of a people to their pastor; and that the sacred rights oftheir pulpits opened without their consent to lecturers on various subjects of reforht pass without ainst woman-preachers, aimed at the Grimke sisters especially, which was as narrow as it was shallow The dangers which threatened the female character and the permanent injury likely to result to society, if the exaorously portrayed Women were reminded that their poas in their dependence; that God had given them their weakness for their protection; and that when they assumed the tone and place of man, as public reformers, they made the care and protection of man seem unnecessary ”If the vine,” this letter fancifully said, ”whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis-work, and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assu nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but will fall in shame and dishonor into the dust”
Sarah Griun a series of letters on the ”Province of Woman” for the _NE Spectator_, when this pastoral effusion came out
Her third letter was devoted to it She showed in the clearest manner the unsoundness of its assertions, and the unscriptural and unchristian spirit in which they were norance and the shallowness of its author must have caused him to blush for very shame
Whittier'stheorous, sympathetic utterances The poe histhus:--
”So this is all! the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter, When laymen _think_, omen _preach_, A war of words, a 'Pastoral Letter!'”
Up to this ti had been said by either of the sisters in their lectures concerning their views about women They had carefully confined themselves to the subject of slavery, and the attendant topics of immediate emancipation, abstinence from the use of slave products, the errors of the Colonization Society, and the sin of prejudice on account of color But now that they found their own rights invaded, they began to feel it was tihts of their whole sex
The Rev Amos Phelps, a staunch abolitionist, wrote a private letter to the sisters, re toper done so, with a declaration on their part that they preferred having feelina says to Jane Smith:--
”I wish you could see sister's ad he should publish anything he felt it right to, but that we could not consent to his saying in our name that we preferred fe we should surrender a fundas it was our duty to appeal to all s on this subject, without any distinction of sex He thinks we are throwing a responsibility on the Anti-Slavery Society which will greatly injure it To this we replied that ould write to Elizur Wright, and give the Executive Committee an opportunity to throw off all such responsibility by publishi+ng the facts that we had no commission from them, and were not either responsible to or dependent on them I wrote this letter HB Stanton happened to be here at the tiht, warning hi which would in the least appear to disapprove of ere doing I do not knohat the result will be My only fear is that some of our anti-slavery brethren will cohts and duties_ before they exaret the steps theytopic It must be discussed whether wos, and whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and female duties, etc My opinion is that there is no difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin over the whole field of ht for a nize no rights but huhts; for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female I am persuaded that woent in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with lorious work Hubbard Winslow of Boston has just preached a sermon to set forth the proper sphere of our sex
I alad that men are not ashamed to come out boldly and tell us just what is in their hearts”
In another letter she ave out a notice of one of their s, at the request, he said, of his deacons, but under protest; and he earnestly advised his o and hear the, also, at Pepperell, where they had to speak in a barn, on account of the feeling against the with prayer, but went out i that he would as soon rob a hen-roost as remain there and hear a woman speak in public
This, however, did not prevent the crowding of the barn ”almost to suffocation,” and deep attention on the part of those assembled
In the face of all this censure and ridicule, the two sisters continued in the discharge of a duty to which they increasingly felt they were called froh The difficulties, inconveniences, and discomforts to which they were constantly subjected, and of which the women reformers of the present day know so little, were borne cheerfully, and accepted as reater refinement and purification for the Lord's work They were often obliged to ride six or eight or ten h roads to a , speak two hours, and return the sa-place For s a week, in a different place every tied and poorly fed, especially the latter, as they ate nothing which they did not know to be the product of free labor; taking cold frequently, and speaking when ill enough to be in bed, but sustained through all by faith in the justice of their cause, and by their sihty Father The record of their journeyings, as copied by Angelina from her day-book for the benefit of Jane S how, in spite of continued opposition to the Wendell Phillips says: ”I can never forget the impulse our cause received when those two sisters doubled our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and reat services, equally historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest elina's eloquencemarvellous The sweet, persuasive voice, the fluent speech, and occasionally a flash of the old energy, were all ho knew her in later years were granted, to shohat had been; but it was enough to confiriven by those who had felt the power of her oratory in those early ti after evening listening to eloquence such as never then had been heard from a woman
She swept the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed and rarely equalled”
Mr Lincoln, in whose pulpit she lectured in Gardiner, says: ”Never before or since have I seen an audience so held and so moved by any public speaker, man or woman; and never before or since have I seen a Christian pulpit so well filled, nor in the pews seen such absorbed hearers”
Robert F Walcutt testifies in the saift of eloquence, a calnetic influence over those who listened to her, which carried conviction to hearts that nothing before had reached I shall never forget the wonderful s, in as then called the Odeon It was the old Boston Theatre, which had been converted into aabove the auditorium all croith a silent audience carried aith the calm, simple eloquence which narrated what she and her sister had seen from their earliest days And yet this Odeon scene, the audience so quiet and intensely absorbed, occurred at the most enflaent in this pheno eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers with her”
Another, who often heard her, speaks of the gentle, fir out in clarion tones when speaking in the nao free
Many travelled long distances to hear her Mechanics left their shops, and laborers cahout herimpatience only when the lecture was over and they could hear no h fully as earnest, was not nearly so effective as Angelina's She was never very fluent, and cared little for the flowers of rhetoric She could state a truth in clear and forcible tere was unvarnished, so was often embarrassed
She understood and felt her deficiencies, and preferred to serve the cause through her pen rather than through her voice Writing to Sarah Douglass, in September, 1837, she says:--