and opposition from
his hearers, but was agreeably surprised to find that in most cases his
sermon only excited astonishment in their minds that they themselves had
never before looked at the subject in the light in which he presented it.
Steadily and faithfully pursuing the matter, he had the satisfaction to
carry with him his church, and obtain from it, in the midst of a
slaveholding and slavetrading community, a resolution every way worthy of
note in this day of cowardly compromise with the evil on the part of our
leading ecclesiastical bodies:--

"Resolved, That the slave-trade and the slavery of the Africans, as it
has existed among us, is a gross violation of the righteousness and
benevolence which are so much inculcated in the Gospel, and therefore we
will not tolerate it in this church."

There are few instances on record of moral heroism superior to that of
Samuel Hopkins, in thus rebuking slavery in the time and place of its
power. Honor to the true man ever, who takes his life in his hands, and,
at all hazards, speaks the word which is given him to utter, whether men
will hear or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise or censure,
gratitude or hatred. It well may be doubted whether on that Sabbath day
the angels of God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked upon a
nobler spectacle than that of the minister of Newport, rising up before
his slaveholding congregation, and demanding, in the name of the Highest,
the "deliverance of the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them
that were bound."

Dr. Hopkins did not confine his attention solely to slaveholding in his
own church and congregation. He entered into correspondence with the
early Abolitionists of Europe as well as his own country. He labored
with his brethren in the ministry to bring then to his own view of the
great wrong of holding men as slaves. In a visit to his early friend,
Dr. Bellamy, at Bethlehem, who was the owner of a slave, he pressed the
subject kindly but earnestly upon his attention. Dr. Bellamy urged the
usual arguments in favor of slavery. Dr. Hopkins refuted them in the
most successful manner, and called upon his friend to do an act of simple
justice, in giving immediate freedom to his slave. Dr. Bellamy, thus
hardly pressed, said that the slave was a most judicious and faithful
fellow; that, in the management of his farm, he could trust everything to
his discretion; that he treated him well, and he was