sermons constitute an institution of modern
civilization highly conservative of invested interests, fixed social
notions, relationships, and prejudices. Who advances a new idea, a
reformatory movement, disturbs the _status quo_, stirs up the human bees
in that great hive called society, and that lesser one called the
church, and he must needs expect to have the swarm about his head.

This was precisely what happened in the case of the anti-slavery
movement. It threatened the then _status quo_ of property rights, it
attacked the fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices of the
South and of the North alike. The revolution which this new idea
involved in the slave States, was of the most radical character, going
down to a complete reconstruction of their entire social system. At once
the human hornets were aroused, and in these circumstances, the innocent
and the guilty were furiously beset. Because the new idea which
disturbed the South had originated in the North, the wrath of the South
rose hot against not the authors of the new idea alone but against the
people of that section as well. But this sectional unpleasantness
endangered the stability of the Union, and menaced with obstructions and
diversions the golden stream of Northern traffic, dollars, and
dividends. This was intolerable, and forthwith the Apiarian brotherhood
of the free States put together their heads with those of the slave
States to attack, sting, and utterly abolish the new idea, and the new
idea's supporters. The Northern churches were, of course, in the
Northern brotherhood. And when the new fanaticism threatened the
financial stability of the pews, the pulpits instead of exerting
themselves in behalf of the suffering and dumb slaves, exerted
themselves to preserve the prosperity of the pews by frowning down the
friends of the slaves. They were among the first to stone the new idea
and its fiery prophets. "Away with them!" shouted in chorus pulpit and
pews. Sad? yes, but alas! natural, too. These men were not better nor
worse than the average man. They were the average men of their
generation, selfish, narrow, material, encrusted in their prejudices
like snails in their shells, struggling upward at a snail's pace to the
larger life, with its added sweetness and humanities, but experiencing
many a discomfiture by the way from those foul and triple fiends, the
World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

Nowhere in the churches was their opposition to