matter of humanity, and they will claim the originating of it,
because they are the teachers of the people. Now, if we give
credit to the pulpit for establishing public schools, then I
charge them with having a bad influence over those schools; and
if the charge can be rolled off, I want it to be rolled off; but
until it can be done, I hope it will remain there.

Mr. MAHAN: No class of persons had better be drawn into our
discussions to be denounced, unless there is serious occasion for
it. I name the pulpit with solemn awe, and unless there is
necessity for it, charges had better not be made against it. Now,
I say that no practice and no usage in the Church can be found,
by which a criminal man, in reference to the crimes referred to,
may be kept in the Church and a criminal woman cast out. There is
no such custom in any of the churches of God. After twenty years'
acquaintance with the Church, I affirm that the practice does not
exist. Now, in regard to the origin of public sentiment, can a
pulpit be found, will the lady who has just sat down, name a
pulpit in the wide world, where the principle is advocated, that
a criminal woman should be excluded, and the man upheld? Whatever
faults may be in it, that fault is not there.

Mrs. ROSE: Not in theory, but in practice.

Mr. MAHAN: Neither in theory nor in practice. Where a wrong state
of society exists, the pulpit may be in fault for not reprobating
it.

ABBY K. FOSTER: I do not wish to mention names, or I could do so.
I could give many cases where ministers have been charged with
such crimes, and where the evidence of guilt was almost
insurmountable, and yet they were not disciplined. They were
afraid it would injure the Church, I remember one minister who
was brought up for trial, and meantime they suspended him from
office, and paid him only half his salary, but retained him as a
church member; when, if it had been the case of a woman, and had
the slightest shade of suspicion been cast upon her, they would
not have waited even for trial and judgment. They would have cast
her out of the church at once.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON said: I have but a few words to submit to
the meeting at the present time. In regard to the position of the
Church and clergy, on the subject of purity,