Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/174

Rh The weather is cool, and bathing refreshing. We all enjoy ourselves, are all happy.

Before I left Brooklyn, we heard, one Sunday, a sermon from young Mr. Beecher. He had lately expressed his feelings very strongly on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law in an evangelical newspaper, of which he is a co-editor. Several of his congregation had taken great offence at this, and Beecher now delivered from the pulpit his confession of faith as regarded the duty of a minister with reference to his congregation and his conscience. It was in few, but powerful words, as follows:—“If the law of God and my own conscience bid me to do one thing, and you, the people of the congregation, say that I must not obey it, but you if I would remain quiet among you—in that case, then, I mustgo! And I will go, if I cannot remain quiet among you, with a good conscience.” The chapel was full to overflowing; the congregation as profoundly serious as the minister. It was reality, and no make-believe, with them all. But there is no danger that Beecher will have to go. He is too much esteemed, and beloved, for them not to concede to him, when they know that he is in reality right, at least in intention, if not always in manner.

August 27th.—I now, my beloved child, am preparing to set off to the great West, which stands before me in a kind of mythological nebulosity, half mist, half splendour, and about which I know nothing rightly, excepting that it is great, great, great! How? Why? In what way? Whether it is peopled by gods or giants, giants of frost and hobgoblins, or by all those old mythological gentry together—I have yet to discover. That Thor and Loke yet wrestle vigorously in that fairy-tale-like Utgård, is however, what I quite anticipate, and that the goblins are at home there also, that I know, because of certain “spiritual rappings or knockings,” as they are called, of which I have heard and read some very queer things,