But I
would ask you, Would you consider it a fair representation of the
Christian church in this country to say that it is pro-intemperance,
pro-Sabbath-breaking, and pro everything that it might put down if it
were in a higher state of moral feeling? If you should make a list of
all the abolitionists of the country, I think that you would find a
majority of them in the church--certainly some of the most influential
and efficient ones are ministers.
I am a minister's daughter, and a minister's wife, and I have had six
brothers in the ministry (one is in heaven); I certainly ought to know
something of the feelings of ministers on this subject. I was a child
in 1820 when the Missouri question was agitated, and one of the
strongest and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my
father's sermons and prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor
slave at that time. I remember his preaching drawing tears down the
hardest faces of the old farmers in his congregation.
I well remember his prayers morning and evening in the family for
"poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa," that the time of her deliverance
might come; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, and which
indelibly impressed my heart and made me what I am from my very soul,
the enemy of all slavery. Every brother I have has been in his sphere
a leading anti-slavery man. One of them was to the last the bosom
friend and counselor of Lovejoy.
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