ice to plead for those helpless to
plead for themselves. So good a man and so faithful an anti-slavery
worker as Samuel J. May confesses that his sense of propriety was a
little disturbed at first. Letters of reproval, admonition, and
persuasion, some anonymous, some signed by good conscientious people,
came to the sisters frequently. Clergymen denounced them from their
pulpits, especially warning their women members against them. Municipal
corporations refused the use of halls for their meetings, and threats
of personal violence came from various quarters. Friends especially
felt outraged. The New England Yearly Meeting went so far as to advise
the closing of meeting-house doors to all anti-slavery lecturers and
the disownment the sisters had long expected now became imminent.

We can well imagine how terrible all this must have been to their
shrinking, sensitive, and proud spirits. But their courage never
failed, nor was their mighty work for humanity stayed one instant by
this storm of indignation and wrath. Angelina, writing to her dear Jane
an account of some of the opposition to them, says:

"And now, thou wilt want to know how we feel about all these things.
Well, dear, poor enough in ourselves, and defenceless; but rich and
strong in the help which our Master is pleased to give from time to
time, making perfect his strength in our weakness. This is a truly
humbling dispensation, but when I am speaking I am favored to forget
little _I_ entirely, and to feel altogether hidden behind the great
cause I am pleading. Were it not for this, I do not know how I could
face such audiences and such opposition. O Jane, how good it is that we
can cast all our burdens upon the Lord."

And Sarah, writing to Sarah Douglass, says: "They think to frighten us
from the field of duty; but they do not move us. God is our shield, and
we do not fear what man can do unto us," A little further on she says:
"It is really amusing to see how the clergy are arrayed against two
women who are telling the story of the slave's wrongs."

This was before the celebrated "Pastoral Letter" appeared. Sarah's
answer to that in her letters to the N.E. Spectator shows how far the
clergy had gone beyond amusing her.

There were, of course, many church members of every denomination, and
many ministers, in the abolition ranks. Indeed, at some of the
Anti-Slavery Conventions, it was a most edifying sight to see clergymen
of different churches sitting tog