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APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF THE SOUTH
Angelina Emily Grimke
APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF THE SOUTH
BY A.E. GRIMKE.
"Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not within thyself
that thou shalt escape in the king's house more than all the Jews. For
if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there
enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place:
but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth
whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this. And
Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer:--and so will I go in
unto the king, which is not according to law, and _if I perish, I
perish_." Esther IV. 13-16.
Respected Friends,
It is because I feel a deep and tender interest in your present and
eternal welfare that I am willing thus publicly to address you. Some
of you have loved me as a relative, and some have felt bound to me in
Christian sympathy, and Gospel fellowship; and even when compelled by
a strong sense of duty, to break those outward bonds of union which
bound us together as members of the same community, and members of
the same religious denomination, you were generous enough to give me
credit, for sincerity as a Christian, though you believed I had been
most strangely deceived. I thanked you then for your kindness, and
I ask you _now_, for the sake of former confidence, and former
friendship, to read the following pages in the spirit of calm
investigation and fervent prayer. It is because you have known me,
that I write thus unto you.
But there are other Christian women scattered over the Southern
States, a very large number of whom have never seen me, and never
heard my name, and who feel _no_ interest whatever in _me_. But I feel
an interest in _you_, as branches of the same vine from whose root I
daily draw the principle of spiritual vitality--Yes! Sisters in Christ
I feel an interest in _you_, and often has the secret prayer arisen
on your behalf, Lord "open thou their eyes that they may see wondrous
things out of thy Law"--It is then, because I _do feel_ and _do pray_
for you, that I thus address you upon a subject about which of all
others, perhaps you would rather not hear any thing; but, "would to
God ye could bear with me a little in my folly, and indeed bear with
me, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy." Be not afraid
then to read my appeal; it is _not_ written in the heat of passion
or prejudice, but in that solemn calmness which is the result of
conviction and duty. It is true, I am going to tell you unwelcome
truths, but I mean to speak those _truths in love_, and remember
Solomon says, "faithful are the _wounds_ of a friend." I do not
believe the time has yet come when _Christian women_ "will not endure
sound doctrine," even on the subject of Slavery, if it is spoken to
them in tenderness and love, therefore I now address _you_.
To all of you then, known or unknown, relatives or strangers, (for you
are all _one_ in Christ,) I would speak. I have felt for you at this
time, when unwelcome light is pouring in upon the world on the subject
of slavery; light which even Christians would exclude, if they could,
from our country, or at any rate from the southern portion of it,
saying, as its rays strike the rock bound coasts of New England and
scatter their warmth and radiance over her hills and valleys, and from
thence travel onward over the Palisades of the Hudson, and down the
soft flowing waters of the Delaware and gild the waves of the Potomac,
"hitherto shalt thou come and no further;" I know that even professors
of His name who has been emphatically called the "Light of the world"
would, if they could, build a wall of adamant around the Southern
States whose top might reach unto heaven, in order to shut out the
light which is bounding from mountain to mountain and from the hills
to the plains and valleys beneath, through the vast extent of our
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