RandallUncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe
But to quote Bible to a fellow in my circumstances, is enough to make him give it up altogether
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The apostle says, ‘Let everyone abide in the condition in which he is called.’ We must all submit to the indications of Providence, George,--don’t you see?
“I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a prisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you’d think it your duty to abide in the condition in which you were called. I rather think that you’d think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence--shouldn’t you?”
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“Going to break the laws of your country!” “My country again! Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don’t make them,--we don’t consent to them,--we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down.
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I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
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Is there a God to trust in?” said George, in such a tone of bitter despair as arrested the old gentleman’s words. “O, I’ve seen things all my life that have made me feel that there can’t be a God. You Christians don’t know how these things look to us. There’s a God for you, but is there any for us?”
“There’s a God, George,--believe it; trust in Him, and I’m sure He’ll help you. Everything will be set right,--if not in this life, in another.”
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But what needs tell the story, told too oft,--every day told,--of heart-strings rent and broken,--the weak broken and torn for the profit and convenience of the strong! It needs not to be told;--every day is telling it,--telling it, too, in the ear of One who is not deaf, though he be long silent.
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God before stood with folded arms, looking on this scene.
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There was no speech nor language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from that distant sky.
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Bear thou, like him, in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, “the year of his redeemed shall come.”
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“I’ve always had a prejudice against negroes,’ said Miss Ophelia, “and it’s a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I don’t think she knew it.” “Trust any child to find that out,” said St. Clare; “there’s no keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance remains in the heart;--it’s queer kind of a fact,--but so it is.”
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“’In the midst of life we are in death,’” said Miss Ophelia.
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“We are the more obvious oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally severe.”
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