s fellowship in leading denominations. The Episcopalians, the
Methodists, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians of two schools, are
severally but one body, all over the Union, and as a matter of course,
all are tainted with slavery, and for consistency's sake, make common
cause against abolition. The pamphlet of James G. Birney, entitled "The
American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,"[A] offers the
amplest proof that the Methodist Episcopal, the Baptist, the
Presbyterian, and the Anglican Episcopal Churches are committed, both in
the persons of their eminent ministers, and by resolutions passed in a
church capacity, to the monstrous assertion that slavery, so far from
being a moral evil, which it is the duty of the church to seek to
remove, is a Christian institution resting on a scriptural basis; this
assertion is repeated in the numerous quotations of the pamphlet, in a
variety and force of expression that show the utterers were resolved not
to leave their meaning in the smallest doubt. Indeed, it might be
supposed, from the perusal of this pamphlet, that the suppression of
abolitionism, if not the maintenance of slavery, was one of the first
duties of the Christian churches in America.

[Footnote A: Published by Ward & Co., Paternoster-row, London.]

The following extracts are offered in illustration:--

THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.--"Resolved, That it is the sense
of the Georgia Annual Conference, that slavery, as it exists in
the United States, _is not a moral evil_."

"The Rev. Wilbur Fisk, D.D., late President of the (Methodist)
Wesleyan University in Connecticut--'The New Testament enjoins
obedience upon the slave as an obligation _due_ to a present
_rightful_ authority.'"

"Rev. E.D. Simms, Professor in Randolph Macon College, a
Methodist Institution--'Thus we see, that the slavery which
exists in America, _was founded in right_.'"

"The Rev. William Winans, of Mississippi, in the General
Conference, in 1836--'Yes, sir, Presbyterians, Baptists,
Methodists, should be slaveholders,--yes, he repeated it
boldly--there should be members, and _deacons_, and ELDERS and
BISHOPS, too, who were slave-holders.'"

"The Rev. J.H. Thornwell, at a public meeting, held in South
Carolina, supported the following resolution--'That slavery, as
it exists in the South, is no evil, and is consistent with the
principles of revealed religi