h slavery is sometimes
excused, sometimes exalted; I comprehend, that, under the impulse of a
sentiment so justifiable, one may be led on to anathematize preachers
and churches in a mass, that he may even come to the point of
representing to himself the Christian faith as the true obstacle to the
progress of liberty. This is a great perversion of the truth, but we can
easily understand how it has succeeded in gaining the assent of generous
and sincere minds. I myself have read a sermon which was listened to
with sympathy in a certain Presbyterian church in New York, in which
slavery, declares right until the return of Jesus Christ, ceases to be
so, I know not why, during the millennium? I know the nature of that
theology, too truly styled _cottony_, which is displayed in the clerical
columns of the _New York Observer_. Notwithstanding, I hasten to say
that these revolting excesses seldom appear except in seaports, and
especially in New York. The interests of this great city are bound up to
such a degree with those of the cotton States, that, until very lately,
New York might have been considered as a prolongation of the South. We
need not be surprised, therefore, to find some congregations there which
are ruled by the prejudices of the South. Besides, even in New York,
other churches protest with holy zeal, and other journals, among which I
will cite the _Independent_, the organ of the Congregationalists, combat
slavery unceasingly in the name of the Gospel.

Then people persist in seeing only New York, in taking notice only of
what passes in New York; but they forget that New York is ordinarily an
exception in the North, as much by its commercial position as by its
opinions and votes. Let us go ever so short a distance from the city
into the surrounding country, and we will encounter a different
spirit--a spirit thoroughly impregnated with Christian faith, and little
disposed to covenant with slavery. There we begin to see that race of
Puritan farmers, but lately represented by John Brown. Has not the
attempt been made to transform him also into a free thinker, a
philosophic enemy of the Bible, and, from this very cause, an enemy to
slavery? We need nothing more than his last letter to his wife, to show
from what source he had drawn that courage, so misdirected but so
indomitable, which he displayed at Harper's Ferry; the Christian, the
Biblical and orthodox Christian, comes to explain the liberal and the
hero.

That