Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To E. Carpenter.

When I remember what a remarkable testimony the early Friends bore (a testimony which seems to me more and more miraculous, the more I compare it with the spirit of the age in which they lived), I could almost find it in my heart to weep at the too palpable proofs that little now remains of that which was full of life.¹ I was saying this, last winter, to George Ripley, a Unitarian minister of Boston. He replied beautifully, “Mourn not over their lifelessness. Truly the dead form alone remains ; but the spirit that emanated from it is not dead, the word which they spake has gone out silently into everlasting time. What are these Temperance, and Peace, and Anti-Slavery Conventions, but a resuscitation of their principles? To me it is a beautiful illustration of the doctrine of the resurrection, when I thus see the spirit leaving the dead form and embodying itself anew.”

I feel for your trials, for I know by similar experience that at times they will press heavily on the overtaxed and discouraged soul. But we know what awaits those “who endure unto the end.” I cannot say I pity you; for is it not a glorious privilege thus to struggle with the errors and sins of the time? Be not discouraged because the sphere of action seems [23] narrow, and the influence limited; for every word and act that a human being sends forth lives forever. It is a spiritual seed cast into the wide field of opinion. Its results are too infinite for human calculation. It will appear and reappear through all time, always influencing the destiny of the human race for good or for evil. Has not the one idea that rose silently in Elizabeth Heyrick's ² mind spread, until it has almost become a World's idea? Have not the “stern old Calvinists of Charles's time,” despised as they were, given their character to nations? Who can predict the whole effect on habit and opinion in New Rochelle, fifty years hence, of the spiritual warfare now going on in half of a small meeting-house, in that secluded village? To a philosophical mind, nothing that concerns the soul of man can be small or limited. However humble its form, it is linked with infinity. Tell your good father my “prayers” he shall have; but not my “tears.” Could he have wept for Luther when he stood before principalities and powers, at the Diet of Worms, and calmly declared, “It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I. I cannot otherwise, God assist me. Amen.” It is odd enough that while the plain Quakers of New Rochelle are making such a fuss about colored people sitting on the same floor with them, the King of France makes no objection to having sons in the same school with black boys.