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Dr. McFarland asked me one day just after Mr. Packard had visited the Asylum and I had refused to speak to him:

"Mrs. Packard, do you think it would be considered as natural, for a true woman to meet one who had been a lover and a husband, after one year's separation, even if he had abused her, without one gush of affection?"

"Yes sir, I do say it is the dictates of the higher nature of a woman to do so in my case. He has by his own actions annihilated every particle of respect I have ever felt for his manhood, and thus my higher moral nature instinctively abhors him. In doing so I have obeyed the dictates of my conscience.

"Do you feel sure yours is a right conscience?"

"It is one I am willing, to go to God's judgment bar with."

"Do you believe the Bible?"

"Indeed I do, every word of it! It is our sure word of prophecy."

"Does not the Bible require forgiveness?"

"It does, sir, on the ground of repentance, even seventy times seven. But without it, we are not allowed to forgive lest it harden the offender in his sins. Mr. Packard has never by word or deed intimated that he has done one unjust or wrong deed in treating me as he has done, much less that he is sorry for it, and now for me to treat him as my husband, would be saying to him:

"I think you are doing all right in treating me as you do!

"Thus I should be upholding him in his sins, by thus disregarding God's express directions."

He feels that I am the one to ask forgiveness, for not yielding my opinions to his dictation, instead of causing him so much trouble in trying to bring me under subjection to his will, in this particular.

He does not claim that I ever resisted his will in any other particular -- and I have not felt it my duty to do so. I had rather yield than quarrel any time, where conscience is not concerned.

He knows I have done so, for twenty-one years of married life. But to tell a lie, and be false to my honest convictions, by saying I believed what I did not believe, I could not be made to do.

My truth-loving nature could never be subjected to falsify itself -- I must and shall be honest and truthful. And although King David said in his haste, "all men are liars," I rejoice he did not say all women were, for then there would have been no chance for my vindication of myself as a truthful woman!

This one thing is certain, I have been imprisoned three years because I could not tell a lie, and now I think it would be bad business for me to commence at this late hour.

I cannot love oppression, wrong, or injustice under any circumstances. But on the contrary, I do hate it, while at the same time I can love the sinner who thus sins, for I find it in my heart to forgive to any extent the penitent, transgressor.

I am not conscious of feeling one particle of revengeful feeling towards Mr. Packard, while at the same time I feel the deepest kind of indignation at his abuses of me.

And furthermore, I really feel that if any individual ever deserved penitentiary punishment, Mr. Packard does, for his treatment of me.

Still, I would not inflict any punishment upon him -- for this business of punishing my enemies I am perfectly content to leave entirely with my Heavenly Father, as he requires me to do, as I understand his directions. And my heart daily thanks God that it is not my business to punish him. One sinner has no right to punish another sinner. God, our Common Father, is the only being who holds this right to punish any of his great family of human children. All that is required of me is, to do him good, and to protect myself from his abuse as best I can. And it is not doing him good to forgive him before he repents.

It is reversing God's order.

It is not to criminate him that I have laid the truth before the public. Duty demands it as an act of self-defense on my part, and a defense of the rights of that oppressed class of married women which my case represents. Neither do I ask punishment for him at any human tribunal; all I ask is protection for myself, and the class I represent.

God commands us to "do good to our enemies," and if I fully obey this direction, I must not only pray for him, but I must act and labor for his welfare. Judging from my own feelings, I do not see how I can really love an enemy and let him go unreproved and unwarned. But perhaps if I hated a human being I might answer the demands of my conscience by simply praying for him; but since I never knew what that feeling was by experience to hate any one, I may not be qualified to judge one who has.

My nature prompts me to hate the sin and love the sinner, and my love for the sinner is so genuine and so real, that I can leave no means untried to bring him to see his sins and repent, since I know pardon from his Judge can be bestowed on no other condition.

The greatest sin of my life as I now view it, lies in the fact that I have been too ready to forgive the wrong doer, and in my impatience to extend my pardon I have sometimes forgiven before I ought to have done so -- that is, I have forgiven the impenitent instead of the penitent, and thus encouraged the transgressor in his sins.