380 . JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



make is one of saturation with the traditional ethical ideas of 

 New England, curiously combined with that constant reliance 

 on inner inspiration toward the Right which is the fundamental 

 tenet of the Quaker faith. All men are really equal, all ought 

 to be really free ; let them be free, and all they have to do is to 

 follow the inner light. And here these narrative poems touch 

 close, on the other hand, the works which Whittier deemed his 

 best, — his works for reform. A passage like this, which closes 

 "The King's Missive," * might have belonged to either class: 



" The Puritan spirit, perishing not, 



To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, 

 And spoke in the voice of- the cannon-shot 



That severed the chains of a continent. 

 With its gentle message of peace and good-will 

 The thought of the Quaker is living still, 

 And the freedom of soul he prophesied 

 Is gospel and law where the martyrs died." 



From beginning to end, Whittier was an honest champion of 

 human freedom. We have seen enough of the peculiar religious 

 faith from which he never swerved to understand how inevita- 

 ble such a position must have seemed to him. We have seen 

 enough of his own almost childlike simplicity and honesty of 

 temperament to understand the whole-souled, unhesitating vigor 

 with which he threw himself into the task to which he felt him- 

 self called. To every human being God has given the inner 

 light. Leave human beings free to act, then, as God meant 

 them to act, and God's will shall be done. The voice of the 

 people is literally the voice of God; it is the concrete, numerical 

 expression of the whisperings of the still small voice. Whether 

 the human form to which the voice whispers be European, 

 Asiatic, African, or American makes no manner of difference. 

 Difference of race is merely a variety of complexion. A majority 

 of negroes is as divinely true a force as a majority of Puritan 

 farmers. For are not all alike made in God's image, all alike 

 human, all alike accessible to the inner light and the still small 

 voice which can lead only towards the truth? Admit such 

 premises, — and Whittier never doubted them for a moment, — 

 and there is room for only one conclusion : whatever opposes 

 any form of human freedom is against God's will. Not to pro- 



* Poetical Works, Vol. I. p. 386. Written at seventy-two. 



