stice done to the Bible by
those who make it the shelter and apologist for all the wrong,
vileness, and sneaking meanness that the world bears up; and
closed with a testimony against the cowardice of those
time-serving ministers who allow their manhood to be suffocated
by a white cravat, and who never publicly take sides with what
they see to be a good cause, until "popular noises" indicate that
the time has come for speaking out their opinions.

The President then introduced to the audience WENDELL PHILLIPS,
Esq., of Boston:

MADAM PRESIDENT:--I am exceedingly happy to see that this
question calls together so large an audience; and perhaps that
circumstance will make me take exception to some representations
of the previous speakers as to the unpopularity of this movement.
The gentleman who occupied this place before me thought that
perhaps he might count the numbers of those that occupied this
platform as the real advocates of that question. Oh, no! The
number of those who sympathize with us must not be counted so.
Our idea penetrates the whole life of the people. The shifting
hues of public opinion show like the colors on a dove's neck; you
can not tell where one ends, or the other begins. [Cheers].
Everybody that holds to raising human beings above the popular
ideas, and not caring for artificial distinctions, is on our
side; I think I can show my friend that. Whenever a new reform is
started, men seem to think that the world is going to take at
once a great stride. The world never takes strides. The moral
world is exactly like the natural. The sun comes up minute by
minute, ray by ray, till the twilight deepens into dawn, and dawn
spreads into noon. So it is with this question. Those who look at
our little island of time do not see it; but, a hundred years
later, everybody will recognize it.

No one need be at all afraid; there is no disruption, no breaking
away from old anchorage--not at all. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, there were two movements--first, the
peasants in the town were striving to fortify each man his own
house--to set up the towns against the kings; then, in the
colleges, the great philosophers were striving each to fortify
his own soul to make a revolution against Rome. The peasants
branded th