While intellect and reason may concur in giving to Browning and Dante a prominent place in the long line of the world's great poets, the heart pleads for the Quaker Bard, of our own time and land. Word-pictures may awe and thrill us, rhetoric and grace of diction may charm the ear; but the keynote of harmony, running through Whittier's rhymes, has its chord in the human affections. When faith in man wanes, and thick clouds of doubt seem to obscure the light of God's face, new hope and courage steal into the thought from reading his verses, where shines the steady light of an abiding consciousness of an ever-present Love.
What poet have we, who carries with him a more fixed conviction of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of Jesus? Peace-maker by birth and persuasion, his religious hymns pour oil upon the troubled waters of mortal strife, hatred, and warfare. But let us not forget that this innate love of peace has never led him into making peace with sin. We remember where he was found in those awful days of riot and bloodshed, during our Civil War. We know how his verses rang out a scathing rebuke of oppression; how he hurled the thunderbolts of Divine Justice upon all who upheld slavery; and how he stood, shoulder to shoulder with Garrison, in that time which might bring —to each and all who spoke for human liberty—death at the hand of an assassin or a mob. It was given to Whittier and to Garrison to see, what few reformers or patriots have seen, the triumph of that cause, to advance which they had held their lives but in God's keeping.
The abolition of bodily slavery was one of the greatest, grandest works ever accomplished, and it was a fitting predecessor to the abolition and destruction of mental slavery. Let us, who have enrolled our names in this high service of Almighty God, keep ever, in fond remembrance and emulation, these watch-cries which Garrison made immortal:—
