art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou walkest upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire." North Bennett Street Methodist Episcopal Church, in Boston, was opened to him. that year, on Fast Day, for a sermon, and received these words of commendation for their courage from the pen of Mr. Garrison : In these days of slavish servility and malignant prejudices, we are presented, occasionally, with some beautiful specimens of Christian obedience and courage. One of these is seen in the opening of the North Bennett Street Methodist Meeting-House, in Boston, to the advocates for the honor of God, the salvation of our country, and the freedom of enslaved millions in our midst. He, however, declares that every other church was closed to him at that time, in this strong, possibly too strong, assertion: As the pen of the historian, in after years, shall trace the rise, progress, and glorious triumph of the abolition cause, he will delight to record, and posterity will delight to read, the fact that when all other pulpits were dumb, all other churches closed, on the subject of slavery, in Boston, the boasted "CRADle of Liberty," there was one pulpit that would speak out, one church that would throw open its doors in behalf of the down-trodden victims of American tyranny, and that was the pulpit and the church above alluded to. The primitive spirit of Methodism is beginning to revive, with all its holy zeal and courage, and it will not falter until the Methodist churches are purged from the pollution of slavery, and the last slave in the land stands forth a redeemed and regenerated being. When Mr. Thompson, persecuted for this righteousness' sake, was compelled to hide himself from his enemies, he took sh lter with Rev. S. W. Wilson, at Andover, a member of the same Conference, from whose house he went to the ship that bore him from the country. Rev. Orange Scott, also of this Conference, commenced writing against slavery in "Zion's Herald," in 1834, and during the same year sent "The Liberator free, for six months, to all the ministers of his Conference.* This faithful culture brought forth early fruit, and the very next year, when the society was formed, delegates were elected to the General Conference, who had the honor of initiating this conflict at Cincinnati, and of arousing a large church to the controversy, before their associates had widely extended their growing influence. Two of the members from New Hampshire were censured for attending an anti-slavery prayer meeting, censure which remained a blot upon the church until 1868, when, on petition of members from Maryland, it was expunged, and the church relieved from the blame which she had for so many years fastened upon herself in their condemnation. a Equally zealous were other, New England ministers: A. A. Phelps, Joshua Leavitt, Dr. Osgood of Springfield, James Porter, Dr. Ide of Medway, George Storrs, John Pierpont, Nathaniel Colver, Samuel J. May, J. D. Bridge, Daniel Wise, Phineas Crandall-everywhere began to spring up this good seed in this good soil. True, the churches and clergy were not all, or instantly converted, and many severe and just scourgings both received from those who devoted themselves exclusively to the great reform. Yet they made *For these facts we are indebted to Rev. R. W. Allen, of Newton, one of the original members of this New England Conference AntiSlavery Society. greater progress than was sometimes conceded, and before twenty years had elapsed, so universal had become their adhesion to this cause, that in the conflict over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, more than three thousand ministers of New England protested, "in the name of Almighty God, and in His presence," against that measure, and Charles Sumner, then fresh in the seat he has so long and so highly honored, gave them this just and noble tribute : From the first settlement of these shores, from those early days of struggle and privation, through the trials of the Revolution, the clergy have been associated, not only with the piety and the learning, but with the liberties of the country. For a long time New England was governed by their prayers more than by any acts of the legislature; and, at a later day, their voices aided even the Declaration of Independence. The clergy of our time may speak, then, not only from their own virtues, but from the echoes which yet live in the pulpits of their fathers. For myself, I desire to thank them for their generous interposition. They have already done much good in moving the country. They will not be idle. In the days of the Revolution, John Adams, yearning for independence, said, "Let the pulpits thunder against oppression!" and the pulpits thundered. The time has come for them to thunder again. These discourses have, therefore, a natural origin. They are of the root of the fathers, alike of the oldest and the youngest of the churches of New England. They were delivered on the days appointed by the State or National gov. ernment, for the consideration of State and National duties, except in a very few instances, when the occurrence of remarkable events demanded the solemn consideration of the will of God in respect to a sinning nation. They are upon nearly all the salient events in the controversy, from the hour when the nation, through her government, avowed herself the propagandist of slavery, to that when she declared that the last vestige of the iniquity should be swept from the land. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was the beginning of her active coöperation with slavery, after the revival of the refon, Before this, she had only sought to stay the progress of that movement. In this act she cast herself earnestly into tle support and extension of slavery. With rapid steps she plunged downward, till all the departments of State, executive, judicial, and legislative, were leagued together in its baleful service. She descended to the utmost possible degree of degradation. Another step would have been annihilation, and even that, her executive and supreme judiciary essayed to take. Only the mighty uprising of the people, under the inspiration of God, saved her from being blotted out from among the nations. From the hour of that return, her steps have been equally rapid in the right direction. Eighteen hundred and sixty beheld her President and Chief Justice prostrate at the feet of the power that had seized half the land, and proclaimed its independence of the United States. Eighteen hundred and sixty-eight saw that power destroyed, its foundation abolished, its rulers fugitives, its slaves rulers, and one, at the hour of her downfall, unknown of men, put by the popular voice at the head of the government, while all the world acknowledged him the first general of his age. Great and mighty are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! These religious orations, as they should properly be called, cover this field of the long controversy. They rise and fall with the tide of national feeling, and thus the more faithfully photograph their times. Being delivered at different places, and upon one general theme, they may contain some repetitions, though such passages have been omitted as far as possible consistent with the symmetry of the discourse. The range of topics is not confined to narrow, local, or momentary limits, but embraces nearly every field into which the controversy legitimately entered. Objection may not be improperly offered, in this colder period of quiet and victory, to occasional expressions. But the rifle and the cannon grow hot in the battle, and the cool words of careful rhetoric are unsuited to the fearful crises when everlasting ruin or renown wait on the decree of the moment. If faithful to the hour of their utterance, they should still burn, like lava, long ejected from the blazing volcano. A More than half the contents of the volume have been published in other forms, -in pamphlet and book, in the daily and weekly newspaper, in the monthly and quarterly. They are printed in the order of the national events. few speeches and letters, that have a unity of substance with the discourses, are inserted in their appropriate place. The work thus presents what may be a novelty in printed, yet is far from being one in spoken literature, - a series of speeches that shows the sympathy and oneness of the pulpit with the events, political and military, of the mightiest movements of God in this generation. But it would be unjust to the main purpose of this volume to declare that it was chiefly a recollection. It looks before as well as after; before more than after. Its object is not to gather up memorials of the past, but to enforce the duties of the future. History, that simply describes vanished events, is as purposeless and profitless as a moralless tale. All history, like the Bible, should describe the past only to sanctify the present and perfect the future. This would fail of its object if it left the reader indifferent |