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INTRODUCTORY.

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 éxultation, 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

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.

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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 ar 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 government, 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.