The Rev. Amos A Phelp’s “Lectures on Slavery and Its Remedy;” “the Rev. J.D.  Paxton’s ‘Letters on Slavery’; the Rev. S.J.  May’s letters to Andrew T. Judson, ’The Rights of Colored People to Education Vindicated’; Prof.  Elizur Wright, Jr.’s, ’Sin of Slavery and Its Remedy’; Whittier’s ‘Justice and Expediency’; and, above all, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child’s startling ’Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans’ were the more potent of the new crop of writings betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison’s Propagandism,” says that storehouse of anti-slavery facts the “Life of Garrison” by his children.  Swift poured the flood, widespread the inundation of anti-slavery publications.  Money, although not commensurate with the vast wants of the crusade, came in copious and generous streams.  A marvelous munificence characterized the charity of wealthy Abolitionists.  The poor gave freely of their mite, and the rich as freely of their thousands.  Something of the state of simplicity and community of goods which marked the early disciples of Christianity seemed to have revived in the hearts of this band of American reformers.  A spirit of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, of brotherly kindness, of passionate love of righteousness, of passionate hatred of wrong, of self-consecration to truth and of martyrdom lifted the reform to as high a moral level as had risen any movement for the betterment of mankind in any age of the world.

The resolutions of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiment, to enlist the pulpit in the cause of the suffering and dumb, and to attempt the purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery, encountered determined opposition from the pulpits and the churches themselves.  The Abolitionists were grieved and indignant at the pro-slavery spirit which pulpits and churches displayed.  But what happened was as we now look back at those proceedings, an inevitable occurrence, a foregone conclusion.  The pulpits were only representative of the religion of the pews, and the pews were occupied by the same sort of humanity that toil and spin and haggle over dollars and cents six out of every seven days.  They have their selfish and invested interests, fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices, which an episode like Sunday, churches, and sermons do not seriously affect.  Indeed, Sunday, churches, and 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.