Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

[131] to any institution without any implied approval of it. He showed by the vitality of his own influence that the true life of a community is independent and outside of its governmental forms. God is not in the court or the legislature, but in the human soul, and courts and legislatures are the last places in which to find that vital spark. Take our national political system as it is centered in Washington, and the one crowning condemnation of it is that it is not the Real Thing. It is an empty illusion. Like the church of Sardis, it has a name that it lives, and is dead. There is a question that lies deeper than the one of good and evil, and right and wrong. It is the question of vitality. The Real Thing may be good or bad, but it must be alive. God is the Real Thing and the devil is the Real Thing, and in between all are the shams and make-believes and hypocrisies that make up such a large part of existence. And the indictment of Washington is that it is a sham. There is something great in the idea of ruling. Even with all the cruelties of Cortez and Genghis Khan, governing is a great thing — a crime, a sin, an evil, if you will-but still great. But Washington does not rule. It has a name that it rules, and is a slave. Once it was ruled by the oligarchy of Southern landholders and slave-holders. To-day it is ruled