Adin Ballou

“ If an assassin should threaten your life? If a mob should break forth upon you? If a tribe of savages should beset your dwelling? If a foreign army should come against your land? If lawless soldiers should deal death and rapine about your neighborhood?" What would I do? If I did right - if I acted the Christian part - the wise and noble part, I should adhere to my non-resistance principles, and ten to one experience the most signal deliverances, and achieve the most glorious of all victories, in the conquest of my own passions and those of my assailants! ”

“ Injurious force not essential to government I shall now be told by the opposer, that I am a Utopian, a dreamer, a chimerist, to imagine any such thing as a government without a war-power in the last resort - without the power of deadly compulsion to suppress individual crime and mobocratic violence. That such a government would be a body without a soul - a house without a foundation - a powerless non-resistant abstraction; a something which can never have existence on earth, at least so long as human imperfection remains. ”

“ Great is the sword, the halter, the salutary power to kill or injure sinners at discretion! What would become of human society, if war, capital, and other injurious punishments should be abolished!
On this altar they have sacrificed human beings enough to people twenty such planets as the earth, with no other success than to confirm and systematize violence throughout the whole habitable globe. And yet INJURY is their god, and at his gory altar of revenge and cruelty they are resolved for ever to worship, amid the clangor of deadly weapons, and the groans of a bleeding world. ”

“ Shall the good wait till the bad cease from aggression, before they leave off inflicting injury in self-defense? Christianity says no. It bids them be "the salt of the earth," and "the light of the world," to suffer wrong rather than do wrong, "to overcome evil with good." Is this possible? Or is there some irresistible necessity in the laws of nature, compelling mankind to maintain an endless conflict of aggression and resistance? ”

“ It is the destroying spirit - the angel of injury, the old serpent of violence. This is the grand controlling power underneath the throne, the dernier resort, the ultimate indispensable reliance of all mere worldly authority. And he is accounted a fool who supposes there can be any such thing as government among mankind without it. Consequently its solemn acknowledgment is now, as ever, the condition on which men must take the scepter, or assume the seals of office. He who would rule, must first worship this genius of violence must swear to support his authority with sword and penal vengeance. ”

“ If you will neither hold office, vote, nor bring actions at law under the government, how do you expect these evils are to be eradicated! You ought to take part in the government, if for nothing else, to effect the necessary amendments in our constitutions. Who is to remove these evils, if you, who see and feel them, refuse to lift a finger to dislodge them? Stay in the government and reform it. You frustrate your own aims by non-participation.
Answer. War, capital punishment, slavery and many penal injuries have prevailed in the United States. They still prevail. ”

“ Is it good for an insane or delirious sick adult to have his own will, even to the commission of murder and self-destruction? Is it good for a man to have unlimited freedom, when he will almost certainly make it a curse to himself and others, by gross involuntary outrage, or uncontrollable passion? Is it good for a wicked man, under specious hypocritical disguises, to perpetrate the most atrocious mischief, unexposed and unreproved? These things are not good for mankind. ”

“ It is only in the spirit of human forgiveness that we can receive and enjoy the divine forgiveness. Such is the doctrine of Jesus. How blessed a doctrine is it to the broken-hearted, merciful and meek! How terrible a one to the iron-hearted, who delight in rigorous human punishment! Here the whole superstructure of piety and religion is baptized in the waters of non-resistance. We cannot even pray in a punishing spirit, without insulting a forgiving Father, and imprecating on our heads all the deserts of our own transgression. ”

“ Who is to be the judge of what is possible - God, or man? Who is to judge what and how much shall be required - Jesus Christ, or his disciples? Are we to set at nought a duty because it seems to us difficult of performance? Are we to doubt that God's grace is sufficient for the weakest of his trusting children, to enable them to perform any duty HE may lay upon them? Are we to accommodate divine truth and duty to the convenience of our fellow men, in order to multiply superficial disciples? ”

“ Take the worst possible view; resolve all the assailed and injured into the most passive non-resistants imaginable, and let the offenders have unlimited scope to commit all the robberies, cruelties and murders they pleased; would as many lives have been sacrificed, or as much real misery have been experienced by the human race, as have actually resulted from the general method of self-preservation by personal conflict, and resistance of injury with injury? He must be a bold man who affirms it. The truth is, man has stood in his own light. ”

“ The earth has been rendered a vast slaughter-field - a theatre of reciprocal cruelty and vengeance - strewn with human skulls, reeking with human blood, resounding with human groans, and steeped with human tears. Men have become drunk with mutual revenge; and they who could inflict the greatest amount of injury, in pretended defense of life, honor, rights, property, institutions and laws, have been idolized as the heroes and rightful sovereigns of the world. ”

“ How then is it to be accounted for, on the supposition that political action is so adapted to moral reform and wholesome order in society? The facts contradict the theory. The good men in political parties are not the leaders, but the led. They do not use political action to a noble end, but are themselves the dupes and fools of immoral managers - put up or put upon, foremost or rearmost, in the center or on the flank, just as they will show and count to the best advantage. All they are wanted for is to show and count against the same class in the other party. ”

“ If risen with Christ, ought they not to seek the things of Christ, inhale the perfumes of his Spirit, follow in his footsteps, and make it their supreme satisfaction to do the will of the Father? Is it for them to fly from the dangers of Gethsemane, to look with despair from afar on the non-resistant cross, and to make themselves one with a mutually defiant and destructive world? ”

“ The truly Christian individual could not devise, execute, or abet any injury against an offending fellow man. What then would a truly Christian family, neighborhood, community, state or nation do? Could they act any other than the non-resistant part toward their foes and injurers? If they loved, blessed, benefited, and prayed for the worst of aggressors and offenders, what a spectacle would be presented! What a conquest would be achieved over all evil-doers! ”

“ Human government in this sense would be an organization of society constitutionally deferential to the highest known law of God. It would disclaim and denounce all assumption of power to set up and enforce any law, regulation, or usage in violation of the natural equality and brotherhood of mankind. It would inscribe on its main pillars, No resistance of injury with injury - no rendering of evil for evil - evil can be overcome only with good! ”

“ It is equally plain that nature necessitates aggression as certainly as it does injurious resistance to aggression; that in fact it necessitates neither; and that non-resistance, as I have defined it, is no more contrary to nature than non-aggression. Both aggressive and resistant injury can be unlearned, abandoned, and forever eschewed, without annihilating or perverting any essential constituent, element, property, quality or capability of human beings. More than this, men brought up to that moral excellency will be more thoroughly and perfectly men than in any inferior state. ”

“ These are sublime virtues which you are to practice, not now, when there are so many occasions for them, and when they might exert such a powerful influence in favor of my religion as contrasted with the spirit of this world - not now; for they are impracticable; the unbelieving world is too wicked for such an exemplification of righteousness; but in the millennium, then practice them, when you find no occasion for them, and when it will be absolutely impossible to fulfill them for want of an opportunity. ”

“ Besides this, intemperance and licentiousness are permitted to allure millions through their licensed portals to the chambers of hell; and slavery shakes her whips and chains over a sixth portion of a professedly free people, under the protection of our star-spangled banner! Is it any wonder that such a state of things, such a religion, such a morality, such unbridled acquisitiveness, such selfishness, and such oppression of the governing portion, should breed, foster and perpetuate all manner of vice and crime in the under classes of society? ”

“ But if, while we sue for mercy, we exercise none towards the guilty; if while we pray for forgiveness, we meditate vengeance against our offenders; if while we ask to be treated infinitely better than we deserve, we hold those who have trespassed against us punishable at our hands according to their deserts, we at once betray our own insincerity, offer mockery to God, and present an impassable bar of hardheartedness to his love and mercy. He is essentially a forgiving Father, but he will not, indeed cannot communicate his forgiveness to us. Our spirit is in opposition to his spirit ”

“ But let the true Christian receive this storm of envenomed words, and they strike his shield of self-composure only to rattle for a moment like hailstones on its surface, and then fall harmlessly about his feet. A second and a third discharge succeed, but he still remains calm. The assailant is half vexed, quite confounded, and soon grows ashamed of himself. He either quits the field, or listens to reason, and perhaps is constrained to beg pardon for his rudeness. At all events, he never remembers his abuse of a calm, kind-hearted, firm-minded man, without peculiar mortification. ”

“ Till then, the law and standard of righteousness must not be relaxed to suit human convenience. Duty must be insisted on without abatement, and whoever exhibits weakness, imperfection, frailty, sin, must bear the shame and condemnation.
It is in these small matters that every virtue suffers its greatest betrayals. A continual dropping wears the hardest stone. A continual unscrupulousness in little things undermines all moral principle. ”

“ I claim the right to offer the utmost moral resistance, not sinful, of which God has made me capable, to every manifestation of evil among mankind. Nay, I hold it my duty to offer such moral resistance. In this sense my very non-resistance becomes the highest kind of resistance to evil.
This is another important qualification of the term. But I do not stop here. There is an uninjurious, benevolent physical force. There are cases in which it would not only be allowable, but in the highest degree commendable, to restrain human beings by this kind of force. ”

“ When a considerable portion of the people have been enlightened and won over to Christian non-resistance, the tide of public sentiment will begin to set with such force against war, and the whole injury-inflicting system, that the less enlightened and less conscientious portion will insensibly yield to the current, add the relicts of barbarism, one after another, be "cast to the moles and bats." Thus, ultimately, government will be christianized, and the most scrupulous disciples of the non-resistant Savior feel at liberty to perform any service in it which the public good may require. ”

“ The defense of our persons and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine, that enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries, and commanded them to invite fresh insults. Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life; nor could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful, on any occasion, to shed the blood of their fellow creatures, either by the sword of justice or that of war, even though their criminal and hostile attempts should threaten the whole community ... ”

“ These familiar workings of this law of nature ought to open the most unwilling eyes to the fact that non-resistance, instead of being contrary to nature, is in strict accordance with it. And if it is confessedly the object of good men to do away with violence, cruelty, murder, and all the great crimes which blast the happiness of humanity, they ought to know that it never can be done by rendering evil for evil - injury for injury. ”

“ It is not man's imaginations, thoughts, and feelings, that determine what is, or is not injurious to him. Love itself may "heap coals of fire on a man's head." Truth may torment his mind. The most benevolent restraint may be painful to his feelings. He may be made, for a while, quite unhappy by crossing his evil will. He may prefer to be smitten and mutilated, rather than be exposed in his secret iniquities, or endure the faithful reproof of the upright. Such persons often prefer an injury to a benefit. ”

“ And shall those who ought to be "the light of the world" and "the salt of the earth," dishonor their high calling, and defile their garments, by engaging in the conflicts of human ambition, violence and revenge? Shall they lust after the dainties of cannibalism, admire the splendors of martial idolatry, and delight themselves in the acts of mortal cruelty! ”

“ This restless activity of the human mind comes from a deep, indefinable, irresistible desire to get rid of contradictions, and reduce things to harmony, to consistency. This is the great desideratum. Contradiction and inconsistency is the infallible indication of falsehood and wrong. For truth and right must be harmonious. They cannot involve contradiction and discord, where they alone exist. Here then is a universal, irresistible law of our nature. It has done much to correct and reform the errors ensuing from human ignorance and depravity. ”

“ What professed Christian can erect the gibbet, or light the faggot, or draw out the rack, or contrive any injurious punishment, or gird on any weapon of war, or give his sanction to any cruelty, by individuals or society, and yet plead that he is in the spirit and practice of this his Lord's commandment? Does that man love his enemies, bless those who curse him, do good to those that hate him and pray for his injurers, who hangs, or shoots, or tortures, or stones them, or holds himself sworn to inflict any such evils? But let us hear the Savior urge his own precepts. ”

“ Is a common highwayman to be held in universal abhorrence, and hung up by the neck on a gibbet, and yet are Christian people to authorize their Congress to grant letters of piracy! And will a man after agreeing that such things shall be perpetrated in his name, presume to go about preaching peace and non-resistance? Does the objector wish me to make myself supremely ridiculous, as well as wicked? ”

“ Plead how difficult it is in everyday life not to lie a little, deceive a little, defraud a little, extort a little, hate your neighbor a little, steal a little, be murderous a little, idolatrous a little, and lascivious a little. Get your indulgence from heaven for all this, and then doubtless an indulgence will not be withheld to resist injury with injury a little, and to render evil for evil a little, in ordinary matters. ”

“ Though the maddened inhabitants of the earth have so long turned a deaf ear to his voice, he shall yet be heard. He declares that good is the only antagonist of evil, which can conquer the deadly foe. Therefore he enjoins on his disciples the duty of resisting evil only with good.
This is the sub-principle of Christian Non-Resistance: "Evil can be overcome only with good." Faith, then, in the inherent superiority of good over evil, truth over error, right over wrong, love over hatred, is the immediate moral basis of our doctrine. ”