unity to
make what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was forced, after
vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house in which to give his
three lectures, to accept the offer of Abner Kneeland's Society of
Infidels of the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of these
people, branded by the community as blasphemers, and by himself, too, in
all probability, Garrison saw to be as admirable as the spirit displayed
by the churches of the city toward him and his cause was unworthy and
sinful. But, grateful as he was for the hospitality of the infidels, he,
nevertheless, rather bluntly informed them that he had no sympathy with
their religious notions, and that he looked for the abolition of slavery
to evangelicism, and to it alone.

A few years in the university of experience, where he learned that
conduct is better than creeds, and living more than believing, served to
emancipate him from illiberal prejudices and narrow sectarianism. He
came to see, "that in Christ Jesus all stated observances are so many
self-imposed and unnecessary yokes; and that prayer and worship are all
embodied in that pure, meek, child-like state of heart which
affectionately and reverently breathes but one petition--'Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.' Religion ... is nothing but
love--perfect love toward God and toward man--without formality, without
hypocrisy, without partiality--depending upon no outward form to
preserve its vitality or prove its existence."

This important change in Mr. Garrison's religious convictions became
widely known in the summer of 1836 through certain editorial strictures
of his upon a speech of Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Pittsburgh, on the subject
of the Sabbath. The good doctor was cold enough on the question of
slavery, which involved not only the desecration of the Sabbath, but of
the souls and bodies of millions of human beings. If Christianity was
truly of divine origin, and Garrison devoutly believed that it was, it
would approve its divinity by its manner of dealing with the vices and
evils which were dragging and chaining the feet of men to the gates of
hell. If it parleyed with iniquity, if it passed its victims by on the
other side, if it did not war incessantly and energetically to put down
sin, to destroy wickedness, it was of the earth, earthy, and its
expounders were dumb dogs where they should bark the loudest and bite
the hardest; and Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb