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 the Abolition movement more persistent and illiberal than in the theological seminaries, whence the pulpits drew their supplies of preachers.  Like master, like servant, these institutions were indentured to the public, and reflected as in a mirror the body and pressure of its life and sentiment.  That a stream cannot rise higher than its source, although a theological stream, found remarkable demonstration in the case of Lane Seminary.  Here after the publication of the “Thoughts on Colonization,” and the formation of the National Society, an earnest spirit of inquiry broke out among the students on the subject of slavery.  It was at first encouraged by the President, Lyman Beecher, who offered to go in and discuss the question with his “boys.”  That eminent man did not long remain in this mind.  The discussions which he so lightly allowed swept through the institution with the force of a great