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nor Duncan had been able to effect an incarnation of the doctrine, without which the good which it aimed at could not be achieved.
What they failed to effect, it is the glory of Garrison that he achieved in his own person.
He was “total and immediate Abolition” personified.
“Truth is mighty and will prevail,” is a wise saying and worthy of acceptation.
But this ultimate prevailing of truth depends mainly upon individual effort, applied not intermittently, but steadily to a particular segment of the circle of conduct.
It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug upon the wheels of conduct, which marks the great reformer.
He finds his age or country stuck in some Serbonian bog of iniquity.
He prays, but he prays with his shoulders braced strenuously against the body of society, and he does not cease his endeavors until a revolution in conduct places his age or country on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming of such a man is no accident.
When the Hour.
is ready and the Man comes, a new epoch in the life of a people arises from the conjunction.
Of such vast consequence verily was the coming into American history of William Lloyd Garrison.
Funk and Wagnall's Company. New York and London. 1889.
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