the members of the church became avowed abolitionists.  They showed their faith by their works, contributing liberally to the funds of the Anti-slavery Society.  Many a seasonable donation has our Pennsylvania organization received from that quarter.  For though their anti-slavery minister had left and had been followed by others of different sentiments and though he had withdrawn from the church with which they were in common connected, and that on grounds which subjected him to the imputation and penalties af heresy, these good people did not feel called upon to change their relations of personal friendship, nor did they make it a pretext, as others have done, for abandoning the cause.”

In October, 1836, he accepted a lecturing agency under the American Anti-slavery Society, as one of the “seventy,” gathered from all professions, whom Theodore D. Weld had by his eloquence inspired to spread the gospel of emancipation.  Mr. McKim had long before this had his attention drawn to the subject of slavery, in the summer of 1832; and the reading of Garrison’s “Thoughts on Colonization,” at once made him an abolitionist.  He was an appointed delegate to the Convention which formed the American Anti-slavery Society, and enjoyed the distinction of being the youngest member of that body.[A] Henceforth the object of the society, and of his ministry became inseparable in his mind.

[Footnote A:  It may be a matter of some interest to state that the original draft of the Declaration of Sentiments adopted at this meeting, together with the autographs of the signers, is now in the keeping of the New York Historical Society.]

In the following summer, 1834, he delivered in Carlisle two addresses in favor of immediate emancipation, which excited much discussion and bitter feeling in that border community, and gained him no little obloquy, which was of course increased when, as a lecturer, on the regular stipend of eight dollars a week and travelling expenses, ("pocket lined with British gold” was the current charge), he traversed his native state, among a people in the closest geographical, commercial, and social contact with the system of slavery.  His fate was not different from that of his colleagues, in respect of interruptions of his meetings by mob violence, personal assaults with stale eggs and other more dangerous missiles, and a public sentiment which everywhere encouraged and protected the rioters.

Meantime, a radical change of opinion on theological questions, led Mr. McKim formally to sever his connection with the Presbyterian Church, and ministry.  Being now free to act without sectarian constraint, he was, in the beginning of 1840, made Publishing Agent of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society, which caused him to settle in Philadelphia, where he was married, in October, to Sarah A. Speakman, of Chester county.  The chief duties of his office at first, were the publication and management of the Pennsylvania