Elijah Parish Lovejoy Quotations

Nothing but a miracle of sovereign mercy could have arrested and saved me from eternal perdition. How I could have so long resisted the entreaties, the prayers, and the tears of my dear parents, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, is, to me, a wonder entirely incomprehensible.

My honored father will permit the observation that, though I have not heretofore always appreciated, as I ought, the motives and the feelings of a father, I hope I have learned wisdom in that respect; and my highest earthly gratification would be to make easy the downhill of life of those parents to whom I owe all that I am and most that I have.

It seems to me scarcely possible that one who has so long lived in sin, who has resisted so much light and has so often grieved away the Holy Spirit, as I have, should again be visited with its heavenly influences. But I hope it is so.

It is the easiest thing in the world to become a Christian - ten thousand times easier than it is to hold out unrepenting against the motives which God presents to the mind, to induce it to forsake its evil thoughts and turn unto Him.

It is not possible that one man can convert another into a piece of property, thus at once annihilating all his personal rights, without the most flagrant injustice and usurpation.

If I know my own heart, I do now feel the necessity of resigning myself into the hands of my God, to mould and guide me at His will; tho I dare not say that I am, at present, willing to do it.

If I have been guilty of no violation of law, why am I hunted up and down continually like a partridge upon the mountains? Why am I threatened with the tar barrel? Why am I waylaid every day, and from night to night, and my life in jeopardy every hour?

I was, by divine grace, enabled to bring all my sins and all my sorrows and lay them at the feet of Jesus, and to receive the blessed assurance that He had accepted me, all sinful and polluted as I was.

I have concluded, after consultation with my friends and earnestly seeking counsel of God, to remain at Alton, and here to insist on protection in the exercise of my rights.

I have been beset night and day at Alton. And now, if I leave here and go elsewhere, violence may overtake me in my retreat, and I have no more claim upon the protection of any other community than I have upon this.