His letters from
the prison were many and widely circulated. All he has to say
of himself is that he knows no degradation. 'I can trust God
with the time and manner of my death, believing that for me now
to seal my testimony with my life will do vastly more for the
Cause than all I have done before. Dear wife and children, do
not feel degraded on my account.' Humorously he remarks, 'I am
worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose.'
'Say to my poor boys never to grieve for one moment on my
account; and should many of you live to see the time when you
will not blush to own your relation to old John Brown, it will
not be more strange than many things that have happened.' '" He
shall BEGIN to deliver Israel out of the hand of the
Philistines." This,' said he, 'I think is true of my commission
from God and my work.' The scaffold had no terrors for him.
His trust, he averred, was firm in that Redeemer who, to
European and Ethiopian, bond and free alike, had brought a year
of Jubilee and a great salvation. But though he asked no pity
for himself, he pleaded in every letter for those who, as he
said, were on the 'under-hill' side. 'Weep not for me,' he
wrote home, 'but for the crushed millions who have no
comforter.
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