ening to
the nature and enormity of sin and the duty of immediate repentance.

The anti-slavery enterprise was at the time of the controversy between
the New York and the Boston Boards in this first stage of its growth. It
had not yet progressed naturally out of it into its next phase of
political agitation. True there were tendencies more or less strong to
enter the second stage of its development, but they seem irregular,
personal, and forced. The time had not come for the adoption of the
principle of associated political action against slavery. But the deep
underlying motive of the advocates of the third-party idea was none the
less a grand one, viz., "to have a free Northern nucleus," as Elizur
Wright put it, "a standard flung to the breeze--something around which
to rally." Garrison probed to the quick the question in a passage of an
address to the Abolitionists, which is here given: "Abolitionists! you
are now feared and respected by all political parties, not because of
the number of votes you can throw, so much as in view of the moral
integrity and sacred regard to principle which you have exhibited to the
country. It is the religious aspect of your enterprise which impresses
and overawes men of every sect and party. Hitherto you have seemed to be
actuated by no hope of preferment or love of power, and therefore have
established, even in the minds of your enemies, confidence in your
disinterestedness. If you shall now array yourselves as a political
party, and hold out mercenary rewards to induce men to rally under your
standard, there is reason to fear that you will be regarded as those who
have made the anti-slavery cause a hobby to ride into office, however
plausible or sound may be your pretexts for such a course. You cannot,
you ought not, to expect that the political action of the State will
move faster than the religious action of the Church, in favor of the
abolition of slavery; and it is a fact not less encouraging than
undeniable, that both the Whig and Democratic parties have consulted the
wishes of Abolitionists even beyond the measure of their real political
strength. More you cannot expect under any circumstances."

Hotly around this point raged the strife among brethren. Actuated by the
noblest motives were both sides in the main, yet, both sides displayed
in the maintenance of their respective positions an amount of weak human
nature, which proves that perfection is not attainable even by the mos