"That slavery finds its surest and sternest defence in the
prevailing religion of the country, is no longer questionable.
Let it be driven from the Church, with the burning seal of its
reprobation and execration stamped on its iron brow, and its fate
is fixed forever. Only while its horrors are baptized and
sanctified in the name of Christianity, can it maintain an
existence.

"The Anti-Slavery movement has unmasked the character of the
American Church. _Our religion has been found at war with the
interests of humanity and the laws of God._ And it is more than
time the world was awakened to its unhallowed influence on the
hopes and happiness of man, while it makes itself the palladium
of the foulest iniquity ever perpetrated in the sight of
heaven."[18]

This was a bold movement, but it was doubtless a sword that was as
dangerous to those who essayed to handle it, as to the Church whose
destruction it was intended to effect. The doctrine that was to
sustain and inspire this party can be briefly stated in a sentence:
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.

Once outside the orthodox church, Theodore Parker gave himself wholly
to this idea. He preached the "_Gospel of Humanity_"; and, standing
upon a broad platform, preaching a broad doctrine, bound by no
ecclesiastical law, his claims to a place in the history of his
county, and in the gratitude of his countrymen can be fairly audited
when his work for the emancipation of evangelical churches from the
thraldom of slavery is considered. He did more in his day to rupture
the organic and sympathetic relation existing between the Northern and
Southern churches, and, thereby, hasten the struggle between the
sections for the extension or extinction of domestic slavery, than any
other man in America. The men who found themselves on the outside of
the Church gathered about Parker, and applauded his invective and
endorsed his arraignment of the churches that had placed their hands
upon their mouths, and their mouths in the dust, before the slave
power. He touched a chord in the human heart, and it yielded rich
music. He educated the pew until an occasional voice broke the long
silence respecting the bondman of the land. First, the ministers were
not so urgent in their invitations to Southern ministers to occupy
their pulpits. This coldness was followed by feeble prayer and
moderate speech on