US 5 263.763.2 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by GILBERT HAVEN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Electrotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, Presswork by John Wilson and Son. TO The Reverend Fathers and Brethren OF THE NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, The first organized body in America that accepted and proclaimed the duty of the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery, after its announcement by William Lloyd Garrison; and that adhered faithfully to this cause, through evil report and good report, until God gave it the victory: This Volume, Devoted to the consideration of this reform, in its past, present, and future relations to the Church, the Nation, and Mankind, Is Cordially Inscribed, In gratitude for their fatherly guidance, in memory of their fraternal cooperation, and in hope of the early obliteration of the unchristian prejudice, growing out of the abolished iniquity, that still afflicts the American people, and for whose extirpation this Conference has so long and so ardently labored and prayed. HE New England ministry, like the Jewish, from its origin, has been faithful in setting forth the relations of the Gospel to the laws and customs of man. From the times of John Cotton until now, twice every year, and oftener if events demanded, have their words proclaimed the alarm or the exultation, as national sin or national virtue gave the occasion. So great was the clerical influence in these matters, that in the earliest days it was well nigh a clerical supremacy; and the election sermon was not unfrequently a more important document than the Governor's message. In the exercise of this prerogative occurred the natural division of the human mind on every topic submitted to its consideration, and radical and conservative were developed, at the start, with a violence never surpassed in later controversies. The history of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, even in the days of Governor Winthrop, discloses this furious pulpit war upon questions of civil and social import. But with this natural divergence, its main drift was ever toward political righteousness. It fostered the spirit of independence in the colonies, long before the people gained strength to assert it. It was the supporter of Congress and the army through all that war, so long, so wasting, so often seemingly lost. Rev. Jonas Clark, of Lexington, was the chief cause why the untrained militia of that hamlet dared to confront the armed and disciplined troops of their own government. A sermon of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of the West Church, Boston, on the Higher Law, by the confession of John Adams, was the opening gun of the Revolution. President Langdon, of Harvard College, blessed, on that June night, the troops that marched from College Green to Bunker Hill. President Styles, of Yale, was a most ardent advocate of the national cause, as was his eminent successor, President Dwight, who had also served as a chaplain in the Revolutionary army. The later and greater struggle through which America has passed, was equally honored and upheld by the pulpit of New England. It found its earliest martyrs among this class. Torrey and Lovejoy, the first two witnesses who laid down their lives for the abolition of slavery, were New England ministers. Channing sprang to this conflict in the maturity of his powers and his fame. The New England Methodist clergy very early identified themselves with this cause. June 4, 1835, the New England Conference, sitting in Lynn, organized an anti-slavery society on the basis of the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery, and invited George Thompson to address them. He preached a very powerful sermon from Ezekiel xxviii. 14-16. Thou |