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 Christians in general condemned the enterprise of John Brown, while sympathizing with him, I hasten to acknowledge; and I am far from blaming them.  That many have committed the real wrong of recoiling before the consequences of an open and decided conduct, I am forced to admit.  Yes, without even mentioning the South, where, as every one knows, the reign of terror prevails, there are numerous Protestant and Catholic churches in the remainder of the Confederation, which have refused to declare themselves, as they should have done, in opposition to the crime of slavery.  Let us not hasten, however, to cry out against falsehood and hypocrisy; most honorable and sincere men have believed that they would do more harm than good by bringing on a rupture with the South.  Let us not forget that political rupture is complicated here with religious rupture.  Now, all the churches extend over both North and South; all the charitable societies number committees and subscribers in both North and South.  The point in question then, (let us weigh the immensity of the sacrifice,) the point in question is to rend in twain all the churches, to break in pieces all the societies, to expose to perilous risks all the great works that do honor to the United States.