The responsibility of Christians will be great in America; they can do
much for the favorable solution of a problem which menaces the future of
their country, and overshadows that of humanity. The mode of
pacification here is, to declare themselves; the pretensions of the
South, its fatal progress, the extreme peril to which but lately it
exposed the Confederation, are due much more than is imagined to the
deplorable hesitation of the religious societies and the churches. If it
had long since been brought face to face with a determined evangelical
doctrine, the South, which knows also, though in a less degree, the
influence of the Gospel, would have avoided falling into the excesses to
which it is now abandoned. The faults of the past are irreparable, but
it is possible to ward off their return. Let all Northern churches, let
all societies, let all eminent Christians take henceforth with firmness
the position which they ought to have taken from the first; let them
present to their Southern brethren a solid rallying point, and the
effects of this faithful conduct will not be slow in making themselves
felt. There is, in the slave States, especially in those occupying an
intermediate position, more disturbance of thought, and more conflicts
of feeling, than we generally suppose. Let the banner of the Christian
faith be openly displayed, and many good men will rally round it: this
is certain.

And let no one put forward the shameful pretext: there are sceptics,
rationalists, free thinkers in the ranks of Abolitionism! Why not?
Questions of this sort, thanks to the Gospel, have entered in the domain
of common morality; shall I desert these questions in order to avoid
contact with men who reject the essential doctrines of Christianity? I
confess that the orthodoxy which should draw such conclusions would
appear suspicious to me. Voltaire pleading for the Calas will not make
me turn my back on religious liberty; Channing writing pages against
slavery, revealing a heart more Christian than his doctrine; Parker,
blending his noble efforts in favor of the negroes with his assaults
against the Bible, will not alienate me from a cause which was mine
before it was theirs.

I say, besides, that the objections of these men against Christianity
force me to ask whether our conduct as Christians be not one of the
principal causes of their scepticism. Is it quite certain that Voltaire
himself would have been the adversary that we kno