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A TALK WITH MR. WHITTIER.
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HIS VIEWS ON RELIGION AND WOMAN SUFFRAGE
frm The Inter-Ocean.

"You youg men will have your trials, too"
said Mr Whittier, "and your contests will be with subtler difficulties than ours."
" Is Professor Goldwin Smith's 'Moral Interregnum' probable?" we asked.
" I think there is some prospect of it," said he. " The breaking up of old forms has begun. We have passed the time when respect for things because they are old will hinder a reform. I have no fears for the result. Nothing like the French Revolution is possible among us. Our people have too much good sense, and besides, they can obtain what they wish too easilty to make it necessary to resort to any such violent means. Communism is too unreasoning to commend itself to any large body of our people. Property is a necessarything. If I cannot have a home of my own I might just as well not have a soul of my own. The most successful form of communism," said he humorously, "is the Shaker Community. They have broken down the family, and have common property, but they also have industry, frugality, purity and temperance. They have the spirit of thrift and cleanliness. But even in this form Communism is not a good thing. It would extinguish the race in time.
" The Shakers have always been very careful about running after strange notions, but they publish a paper now, called the Shaker Manifesto--a rather smart title--in which they give their views of things in general. They send it to me, and I take some interest in looking at it, and seeing what they are thinking about. They have a column of poetry in it that is interesting reading. They ahve a machine for making poetry as well as everything else; and they compose tunes of their own for their songs. I do not think the world will steal their music. It is the most singular music I have ever heard.
" I have known a few Shakers who were Spiritualists in a way. They did not attach themselves to any Spiritualist body, nor make any statement of belief, but claimed that they enjoyed the definite influence of departed friends on their lives. I have had other friends who made the same statements who were not Spiritualists. They said that it was a matter of consciousness, admitting of no more doubt to them individually than their relations with people in everyday life.
" With regard to all this," continued Mr. Whittier, " I believe that humanity will, by and by, come into more definite relations with the future life than those we have now. The blank uncertainty about all the dead is a great burden to human souls, and it would be a great relief to them to have a trustworthy assurance from one of the dead as to the condition of the dead. But I believe that the silence of the grave is well ordered, and that God gives men all the spiritual influence and companionship they need and will accept. I believe in absolute religion above all written revelations. All revelations presuppose and appeal to it, and absolute religion rests on absolute truth. I do not think that truth is wholly a relative matter, but that there is an absolute basis of truth in all minds, which is the same, and that in all difficulties growing out of the relations of old religious ideas to new facts we shall have enough of absolute truth to carry us through. In these periods of transition all remedies must prove their adaptation to our needs by satisfying the cravings our reason and ur spiritual wants.
" Theodore Parker touched one side of a great truth when he subjected all relgious ideas to the ' reasonable' test. William H. Channing got at this when he said that everything valuable to the soul has its corresponding need in the soul. Authority as a ground and element of religion must wholly disappear. Almost universally heretofore religion has rested on authority. The law has been proclaimed as the Thou shalt and Thou shalt not of a Being who would permit no inquiry by men into the reason of the law. This has already begun to change.
" The teaching of Christianity will be founded on the needs of man, and the claims for Christ will be based on the perfect character of His life and teachings, and not on His authority. Divine authority is the conclusion to which His perfection leads us, and not perfection the conclusion to which His authority leads us. I think that spiritual forces and ethical laws will be more prominent in future society. Human laws are not enough. The sensibilities must be brought more into cultivation and active influence. I think that the principal mistake of our present civilization is the dwarfing of the sensibilities. After early childhood the cultivation of the sensibilities begins to give place to intellectual training, and soon ceases entirely, and the young mind is left to train its own sensibilities. It is also taught to smother and conceal the impressions and sensibilities, and eventually hardens into a spirit of indifference. Metal acuteness is the great good; insensibility to feeling the proper condition. But it is necessary to any high spiritual attainment that the sensibilities be pure and delicate.
" Women are more finely adapted to the development of such influences than men, because, for one thing, they are less exposed to hardening from without. So the society of the future must be acted on more directly by women that that of the past. In the bringing out of the sensibilities they must take a leading part. Woman suffrage I regard as an inevitable thing and a good thing. Women in public life will bring it up more than it will bring them down. There will be considerable floundering before society would become completely adapted to the change, but after it shall be fairly accomplished and in working order, the work of society will go on without any deterioration, and with a gain in purity of motives and unselfishness of law-makers and administrators. I fears its effects in large cities, where bad women will come forward. Women are so intense that bad women will be worse in public life than bad men. But the difficulty is in the nature of the city.
" But I do not believe that women's work will be done mainly by voting. Disinterested lives are the things needed in society, and women will do most in showing the practicability and value of such lives in all forms of work."

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