God and the Conscience (V. 2); Love and Marriage

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 187? edition. Excerpt: ...and Jackson's action appears to Brown to be equally so. In fact, they are crossing bayonets in a civil war; but they are both men of prayer, men of confirmed religious habits, and we have reason to believe that they are endeavouring to be conscientious. I do not believe Stonewall Jackson followed all the light he had; nor do I believe John Brown did. But suppose that Jackson did follow all the light he had or could get, and suppose that John Brown did, and that each is convinced of this fact as to the other, then, although they are ready, in the settlement of practical measures, to cross bayonets, you cannot help their coming together, when the measures are settled, and shaking hands with each other as respectable men. You know that to be the fact. External acts differ to the degree of crossing bayonets; but as each doss the best he knows how, each respects the other, and absolutely cannot help doing so. This is a singular fact in the soul; but this is the way we are made. We find that Governor Wise, when he looked into the eyes of John Brown, saw honesty there, and that others who noticed his mood in his last hours, were thrown into a kind of awe by that border warrior. He meant right; and respect for that man's soul is not confined to the circle of the mountains between which he lies in my native county in Northern New York. I have heard the summer wind sighing over the grave of John Brown, and have stood there and gazed upon Mount Marcy and Whiteface and Lake Placid; but because I believed that this man's conscience was a Lake Placid, and his resolution to follow it firm as Marcy, firm as Whiteface, firm as any of those gigantic peaks in my native Switzerland, I felt sure that his soul was marching on, and that when his spirit smote slavery, ...