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532  DOUGLASS MONTHLY.  OCTOBER, 1861

goats.  When ye come to appear  before me, who hath required this aT your hand, to tread my courts?  Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.  Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear : your hands are full of blood.— Wash ye, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."—ISAIAH, i. 10-17.

"Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not ? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge ?  Behold, in the day of your fast, ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors.  Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness : ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.  Is it such a fast that I have chosen ? a day for a man to afflict his soul ? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him ? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord ?  Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ?  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house ? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him ; that that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?  Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily : and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.  Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.  If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity ; and if thou draw out they soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and they darkness be as the noonday : and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones : and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not."—ISAIAH lviii. 3-11.

When America shall engage in such a fast, we shall call upon all the mountains and valleys, all the inhabitants of earth, sea and air, to shout the glad tidings, to sing exultingly, to rejoice greatly, and shake heaven with might hosannahs to the Grat, the Eternal.  But until we have such a fast, our religious ceremonies are a stench, an abomination, a solemn mockery, worth only the contempt and scorn of honest men.
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THE PRESS AND GEN. FREMONT'S PROCLAMATION. — Do not fail to read the various extracts from our exchanges which we publish in our present number concerning this important document.  They will enable all to see that the people are ready and eager to support any well aimed blow at the monster parent of all our national troubles.  The spirit of freedom is just now checked by the paper statue ; but until our Government can bind down the waves of the sea, chain the whirlwind, imprison the lightning, arrest the thunderbolt, and do many other impossible things, they can never extinguish the growing conviction that the one great thing to be done to put down this rebellion, and to restore the country to honorable and permanent peace, is to put down and abolish slavery.  Read what the people say, and rejoice with us in hope.

READERS AND SUBSCRIBERS.

We call upon you reluctantly, but earnestly and hopefully, to come to our aid.  Many of you have stood by us in our anti-slavery efforts from the day we began to publish a paper devoted to the cause of liberty and humanity, fourteen years ago, until now ; and we confidently look for your continued aid until the last chain is broken, and the last slave set free.  No better work was ever offered to human energies than that which looks to the emancipation of the American bondman.  Liberty to the slave is peace, honor and prosperity to the country.  Until that work is done, all peace is false, all repose is transient, and all national glory is tarnished.  The sole condition of safety is the abolition of slavery, the ever pregnant cause of all our national troubles.  Who works for the downfall of slavery, works for the salvation of his country and the advancement of mankind to a higher and truer life.  It is a vocation fit to live by and to die by.

Under a mistaken sense of the demands of the hour, some are relaxing their anti-slavery exertions, substituting a dead faith for living works, and parting with their old moral instrumentalities for enforcing the claims of justice and humanity upon the heart and conscience of the nation.  This is a grievous mistake.  Nothing is done till all is done.  Opposition to slavery, which springs only from national self-love, is but a poor substitute for that which springs from deep-seated conviction of the wrong, injustice and wickedness of slavery ; and such we take your opposition to be.  The latter is all that gives strength and dignity to any form of anti-slavery.  Let this subside, and all the floodgates of corruption and compromise are flung open, and the country is flung back into the darkness of thirty years ago.  True wisdom suggests only one course to the friends of freedom, and that is to stand by now and to the end all their anti-slavery testimonies and instrumentalities.

Our "Monthly," among the humblest, is an anti-slavery agency.  It never has given an uncertain sound to the trump of freedom, and never will.  It stands up in behalf of an enslaved and slandered race, and addresses all that is noble, magnanimous, and just, in the American people.  Like the woman in the parable, its importunate cry is, "avenge me of mine adversary."  We do not mean that cry shall cease.

It is known to you that our national troubles (engrossing the public mind, arresting the wheels of trade, unsettling credit, drawing off the resources of the country) has must abridged the circulation of all reformatory periodicals.  Our paper has been affected thus unfavorably with many others;  still, if those who owe for the paper will promptly pay up, and those who love the principles of liberty and humanity, of which it is an advocate, will make some little effort to extend its circulation, the "Monthly" will continue to live and bear its testimony as long as the necessity which called it into existence shall continue.  Will our friends and readers attend to this our call upon them immediately upon the receipt of this number?  Don't forget us in the midst of the exciting events now rocking the land.  The amount due us from any one individual is exceedingly small, and on that very account is the more apt to be forgotten and neglected.  Bills have been sent to those owing us, and they know just what is due us.  Let our friends remember that all these little sums scattered over the country amount to considerable when brought together.  They constitute the main support of the paper, and hence it is necessary for every man to pay what is due, however small that sum may be.  We want our paper to live to record the death and burial of slavery, and to sing the glad song of jubilee to the sable millions whose cause it has thus far endeavored faithfully and fearlessly to plead.  That great event, unless all signs fail, is near at hand, even at the door.

O ! speed the year of Jubilee
The wide world o'er !
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DEATH OF JOHN M'DOWALL, ESQ.

We much regret to announce the death of our townsman, Mr. John M'Dowall, which took place at Stranraer, of which he was a native, yesterday morning, in the 58th year of his age.  During a period of yearly twenty years, the deceased has taken an active part in the public life of Glasgow, as a Town Councillor, a Magistrate, a director of the Caledonian Railway, and as a laborious and devoted member of many of our charitable and educational institutions.— Though he was deficient in those genial qualities and external graces which go to make up that which is termed a "popular man," no one questioned Mr. M'Dowall's ability, integrity, and kindly nature ; and so highly was he esteemed by those who knew him best, that on the last occasion on which the highest municipal appointment in the city was vacant, an influential party in the Town Council was prepared to put him in nomination for the office of Lord Provost ; but, from the too substantial plea of the failing state of his health, he induced his friends not to press those claims which, whatever might have been the result, would at least have been respectably supported.  A few years ago he rendered very important service to the public in his capacity of chairman of the Barony Parochial Board.  At that time the parish was convulsed by the unequal and inquisitorial system of rating by "means and substance;"  but mainly by the exertions of the deceased this system was overturned, and the rental mode of assessment adopted in its stead ; and since then the affairs of the parish have come round from confusion and semi-bankruptcy to peace and prosperity.  On leaving his native town in early life, Mr. M'Dowall had little to recommend him to the world save his intelligence, his industry, and his pure principles ; but by means of these he attained an honorable position in the community, and realized an independence through his occupation of an iron-founder.— His health had been much broken of late, and he had proceeded to Stranraer only a few days ago, in pursuit of retirement and relaxation, when serious illness supervened, which rapidly ran to a fatal issue.  He died childless, and has left a widow to deplore his loss.—[Glasgow Daily Herald, Sept. 10.

A short acquaintance with the deceased during our late tour to Scotland, was enough to impress us most favorably with his many excellent qualities of mind and heart.  He belonged to the most opulent class of Glasgow, and though deeply interested in the great works of charity in which that city is remarkable, he found time and hear for the cause of the American slave, and never hesitated to give his valuable aid and co-operation in any movement which could, in his judgement, serve that cause.  As one among the many indebted to the deceased for his kind and benevolent efforts to advance the interests of humanity, we freely mingle our sincere regret, with that of others, both in this country and his own native land, at his removal from the world.
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—James B. Clay, a son of the late Henry Clay, and a rebel, has been taken prisoner by our troops in Kentucky.