face of much opposition, the right publicly to preach and propagate their sentaments upon this subject.
One of these missionaries says, speaking of slavery, "We are determined to remove this great difficulty in our way, or die in the attempt. As Christians and as freemen, we will suffer this libel on our religion and institutions to exist no longer."
This is noble ground.
And, while we are recording the protesting power, let us not forget the Scotch seceders and covenanters, who, with a pertinacity and decision worthy of the children of the old covenant, have kept themselves clear from the sin of slavery, and have uniformly protested against it. Let us remember, also, that the Quakers did pursue a course which actually freed all their body from the sin of slave-holding, thus showing to all other denominations that what has been done once can be done again. Also, in all denominations, individual ministers and Christians, in hours that have tried men's souls, have stood up to bear their testimony. Albert Barnes, in Philadelphia, standing in the midst of a great, rich church, on the borders of a slave state, and with all those temptations to complicity which have silenced so many, has stood up, in calm fidelity, and declared the whole counsel of God upon this subject. Nay, more: he recorded his solemn protest, that "no influences out of the church could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it;" and, in the last session of the General Assembly, which met at Washington, disregarding all suggestions of policy, he boldly held the Presbyterian Church up to the strength of her past declarations, and declared it her duty to attempt the entire abolition of slavery throughout the world. So, in darkest hour, Dr. Channing bore a noble testimony in Boston, for which his name shall ever live. So, in Illinois, E. P. Lovejoy and Edward Beecher, with their associates, formed the Illinois Anti-slavery Society, amid mobs and at the hazard of their lives; and, a few hours after, Lovejoy was shot down in attempting to defend the twice-destroyed anti-slavery press. In the Old-school Presbyterian Church, William and Robert Breckenridge, President Young, and others, have preached in favor of emancipation in Kentucky. Le Roy Sunderland, in the Methodist Church, kept up his newspaper under ban of his superiors, and with a bribe on his life of fifty thousand dollars. Torrey, meekly patient, died in a prison, saying: If I am a guilty man I am a very guilty one for I have helped four hundred slaves to freedom, who but for me would have died slaves." Dr. Nelson was expelled by mobs from Missouri for the courageous declaration of the truth on slave soil. All these were in the ministry. Nor are these all. Jesus Christ has not wholly deserted us yet. There have been those who have learned how joyful it is to suffer shame and brave death in a good cause.
Also there have been private Christians who have counted nothing too dear for this sacred cause. Witness Richard Dillingham, and John Garrett, and a host of others, who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. Bat yet, notwithstanding this, the awful truth remains, that the whole of what has been done by the church has not, as yet, perceptibly abated the evil. The great system is stronger than ever. It is confessedly the dominant power of the nation. The whole power of the government, and the whole power of the wealth, and the whole power of the fashion, and the practical organic workings of the large bodies of the church, are all gone one way. The church is familiarly quoted as being on the side of slavery. Statesmen on both sides of the question have laid that down as a settled fact. Infidels point to it with triumph; and America, too, is beholding another class of infidels,—a class that could have grown up only under such an influence. Men, whose whole life is one study and practice of benevolence, are now ranked as infidels, because the position of church organizations misrepresents Christianity, and they separate themselves from the church. We would offer no excuse for any infidels who take for their religion mere anti-slavery zeal, and, under this guise, gratify a malignant hatred of real Christianity. But such defences of slavery from the Bible as some of the American clergy have made are exactly fitted to make infidels of all honorable and high-minded men. The infidels of olden times were not much to be dreaded, but such infidels as these are not to be despised. Woe to the church when the moral standard of the infidel is higher than the standard of the professed Christian! for the only armor that ever proved invincible to infidelity is the armor of righteousness.
Let us see how the church organizations work now, practically. What do Bruin & Hill, Pulliam & Davis, Bolton, Dickins & Co., and Matthews, Branton & Co., depend upon to keep their slave-factories and slave-barracoons full, and their business brisk? Is
