Humility or Humiliation?

 

 

It was Saturday morning; and with my professional habits, I naturally thought of the many divines in that very city, who were at that moment shut up in their studies, preparing their discourses for the morrow. I wished I had them all before me. I could have given every one of them a text to preach upon. I would have said, "Gentlemen, see there! and blush for your fellow-citizens. See there! and never again talk of American liberty. See there! and lift up your voices like so many trumpets against this enormity. See there! and in the face of persecution, poverty, imprisonment, and (if needs be) even death itself, bear your faithful testimony, and cease not until this foul stain be wiped away from your national escutcheon. Dr. S——, to-morrow morning let this be your text,—' Where is Abel, thy brother?' Dr. II——, let your discourse be founded on Exod. xxi. 16: 'And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.'...

 

 

Yet the inquisitor was frequently baffled in this intellectual digladiation by the innocence or astuteness of the accused. His resources, however, were by no means exhausted, and here we approach one of the darkest and most repulsive aspects of our theme. Human inconsistency, in its manifold development, has never exhibited itself in more deplorable fashion than in the instructions on this subject transmitted to their younger brethren by the veterans of the Holy Office— instructions intended for none but official eyes, and therefore framed with the utmost unreserve...Yet through all this there shines the evident conviction that they are doing the work of God. No labor is too great if they can win a soul from perdition; no toil too repulsive if they can bring a fellow-creature to an acknowledgment of his wrong-doing and a genuine repentance that will wipe out his sins; no patience too prolonged if it will avoid the unjust conviction of the innocent. All the cunning fence between judge a...