On the previous Friday, Professor Allen called to request me to preach in his stead at the Second Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning, the 28th of February, as he had to go some twenty miles into the country to “assist at a revival.”  I agreed to do so.  Sunday morning was excessively cold, with a heavy fall of snow.  On arriving at the “church,” I found there was no vestry.  Indeed, a vestry, as a private room for the minister, is seldom found in America.  The places are exceedingly neat and comfortable, but they want that convenience.  I had therefore to go with my hat and top-coat, covered with snow, right into the pulpit.  This church outside is a noble-looking building, with massive pillars in front, and a bell-tower containing a town-clock; but the interior seemed comparatively small.  It had a gallery at one end, which held only the singers and the organ.  The seats below were not more than one-third full.  Dr. Beecher ministered in this place for about ten years.  It was now without a pastor, but was temporarily supplied by Professor Allen.  The congregation was far more decorous and attentive than those in New Orleans.  After the introductory service, and while the hymn before sermon was being sung, a man came trudging down the aisle, bearing an immense scuttle full of coals to supply the stoves.  How easy it would have been before service to place a box of fuel in the vicinity of each stove, and thereby avoid this unseemly bustle!  But in the singing of the hymn, I found something to surprise and offend me even more than the coal-scuttle.  The hymn was—­

  “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness,” &c.

I had selected it myself; but when I got to the second verse, where I had expected to find

  “Let the Indian, let the negro,
   Let the rude barbarian see,” &c.,

lo! “the Indian.” and “the negro” had vanished, and

  “Let the dark benighted pagan”

was substituted.  A wretched alteration,—­as feeble and tautological in effect as it is suspicious in design.  The altered reading, I learned, prevails universally in America, except in the original version used by the Welsh congregations.  Slave-holders, and the abettors of that horrid system which makes it a crime to teach a negro to read the Word of God, felt perhaps that they could not devoutly and consistently sing

  “Let the Indian, let the negro,” &c.

This church, I heard, was more polluted with a pro-slavery feeling than any other in Cincinnati of the same denomination,—­a circumstance which, I believe, had something to do with Dr. Beecher’s resignation of the pastorate.