The Liberator

[For the Liberator.]
THE CHRISTIAN MIRROR.

Jacques. What for a counter would I do but good?
Duke. Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin.
As You Like it.

The last New-York Emancipator contains the following paragraph:

The editor of the Portland Christian Mirror praises the kind spirit of Mr. Birney's letter, and says it is strong in arguments and facts, and will effect more than all that has been written by abolitionists.

It is something new to institute comparisons betwixt abolitionists as to the relative merit of their respective writings. Such a thing is foreign from their principles and habits; and would, as I hope and believe, be more painful to the earnest, able, and disinterested individuals engaged in the holy cause, than the marks of infamy and contempt which have been heaped upon them. If they were pursuing a selfish and popular object, some of them might be delighted, and others in a corresponding degree depressed by this style of praise and reproach. But we have renounced the pursuit of popularity, or we should not have been abolitionists. The 'golden opinion' which the editor vouchsafes in favor of Mr. Birney will not prove an apple of discord among us.

If abolitionists had not long possessed some other standard of truth and duty than praises or censures of the press, whether political or religious, Mr. Birney's letter or Mr. Birney's emancipated slaves would never have been heard of!

But in speaking of 'a kind spirit,' what sort of spirit does the Editor of the Mirror show? He is pleased to disparage, at one stroke, all that abolitionists have said and written previously to Mr. Birney's letter. Was there any need of this in doing justice to that gentleman? Was it a motive of doing good to any one that induced Mr. Cummings to make use of this sort of tartness towards the whole list of the earlier abolition writers? The only possible effect which it could have, would be to mortify those persons to whom the sincere among the new enemies of slavery, and repudiators of 'property in man' cannot fail to feel the greatest gratitude; for by them the people have been awakened, when sleeping in trespasses and sins. How many months or days is it since the Editor of the Mirror has manifested his uncompromising hostility to the principle of property in man, and how many of his late associates concur with him in the declaration which he has made on that subject?

Mr. Birney's letter is excellent. The sentiments admirable in themselves, are enforced by the circumstances of his education, habits, relations, and the emancipation of his own slaves.

But why this 'immediate' approval of the letter? Can there be heartier abolitionism than is contained in it? Can there be a more earnest deprecation of Colonizationism?

As to facts, it contains not a tenth part as many as any one of a dozen abolition books, which I could name. As to arguments, it is 'strong' but not new. The Editor of the Mirror is requested to point out in it, an argument, which has not been used before. If he will name one which I cannot produce from a previous publication, I will retire before his victorious pen. I undertake to affirm that it would be exceedingly difficult at this day for any one to do more than reproduce the arguments, which may be found in the writings of Garrison, Lundy, Rankin, Paxton, Mrs. Child, Phelps, Bourne, the Liberator the Abolitionist, The Emancipator, the Evangelist, the Reporter, and the old American Anti-Slavery writers, Franklin, Rush, Edwards, &c. to say nothing of the vast and minute researches, innumerable tracts and massive volumes of the British Abolitionists and Parliamentary Committees.

It seems to be supposed that the Editor of the Mirror is 'almost persuaded to be a Christian.' and the able and indefatigable Editor of the Emancipator tries to toll him within the Anti-Slavery pale. I am satisfied that he would not be an acquisition, bringing with him the spirit which the above paragraph indicates. That paragraph could not originate from the mind of an abolitionist, or of one at all prepared to become such. The arguments (with all of which he must have been familiar, or he would not have pronounced so confidently the condemnation of works in which they are all contained) cannot have wrought the change in him, whatever it is, which inspires our brother Goodell with so lively a hope. No, it is the man and the manner which fascinate the faith of the inflexible servant of Christ, who holds up the Mirror of the gospel in Maine. It is not the arguments, for they are not new; it is not the facts, for the writer does not pretend to illustrate by facts (what many others have done) the cruelty, the impiety, the lubricity of slavery in all its branches.

If the Editor of the Mirror had lived in the primitive times of christianity, he would probably have been so scandalized at such terms as 'sinners,' 'vipers,' 'liars,' 'hypocrites,' 'adulterers,' and 'children of the devil,' used of old by certain lowbred men called the twelve apostles'— that he would not have been able to bring his mind to embrace the truths which they promulgated, until Constantine the Great had done so, or the doctrines had been rendered smooth and pleasing by the 'kind spirit' of Theophilus of Alexandria. But before these things had come to pass, the Editor would have gone to his account.

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.