ead. I shall not trace it. I am
giving you simply the atmosphere in which he sprang into being and into
power. His career was a career of thirty or forty years of undiminished
eagerness. He never quailed nor flinched, nor did he ever at any time go
back one step or turn in the slightest degree to the right or left. He
gloried in his cause, and in that particular aspect of it which had
selected him; for he was one that was called rather than one that chose.
He stood on this platform. It is a part of the sweet and pleasant
memories of my comparative youth here, that when the mob refused to let
him speak in the Broadway Tabernacle before it moved up-town--the old
Tabernacle--William A. Hall, now dead, a fervent friend and
Abolitionist, had secured the Graham Institute wherein to hold a meeting
where Mr. Phillips should be heard. I had agreed to pray at the opening
of the meeting. On the morning of the day on which it was to have taken
place, I was visited by the committee of that Institute--excellent
gentlemen, whose feelings will not be hurt now, because they are all now
ashamed of it; they are in heaven. They visited me to say that in
consequence of the great peril that attended a meeting at the Institute,
they had withdrawn the liberty to use it, and paid back the money, and
that they called simply to say that it was out of no disrespect to me,
but from fidelity to their supposed trust. Well, it was a bitter thing.

LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT.

If there is any thing on earth that I am sensitive to, it is the
withdrawing of the liberty of speech and thought. Henry C. Bowen, who
certainly has done some good things in his life-time, said to me: "You
can have Plymouth Church if you want it." "How?" "It is the rule of the
church trustees that the church may be let by a majority vote when we
are convened; but if we are not convened, then every trustee must give
his assent in writing. If you choose to make it a personal matter, and
go to every trustee, you can have it." He meanwhile undertook, with Mr.
Hall, to put new placards over the old ones, notifying men quietly that
the meeting was to be held here, and distributed thousands and tens of
thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I
went to the trustees man by man. The majority of the trustees very
cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to
decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship. "Y