in abolitionist demonstrations, because they fear (and the sentiments
does them honor) to encourage the impending insurrections?

This said, I wish to prove by some too well-known facts, what has been
this forbearance, or even this pretended hesitation of orthodox
Christianity. On regarding the churches, I see two, and the most
considerable, which have openly declared themselves: the
Congregationalists and the Methodists. About six months since, the
General Conference of Methodists resolutely plunged into the current
without suffering itself to be trammelled by the protests which came to
it from the South. I read in a report presented to one of the great
divisions of this church: "We believe that to sell or to hold in bondage
human beings under the name of chattels, is in contradiction to the
divine laws and to humanity; and that it conflicts with the golden rule
and with the rule of our discipline." Last year, a numerous assemblage
of delegates of the Congregational churches adopted the following
resolution: "Slaveholding is immoral, and slaveholders should not be
admitted as members of Christian churches. We ought to protest against
it without ceasing, in the name of the Gospel, until it shall have
entirely disappeared." And this resolution has not remained a dead
letter: a Congregational church of Ohio has expelled from its bosom one
of its deacons, who had contributed in the capacity of magistrate to the
extradition of a fugitive slave.

Other churches, without taking so decided a position, have at least
manifested by their internal convulsions the profound interest excited
among them by the question of slavery. In this manner a secession has
just rent the Presbyterian church in twain, because the declared
adversaries of slavery were unwilling to remain responsible for a
forbearance which appeared to them criminal. These things are signs of