The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[137] humanity. He prepared a sermon for the purpose, and for the first time from a pulpit of New England was heard an emphatic testimony against the sin of slavery. In contrast with the unselfish and disinterested benevolence which formed in his mind the essential element of Christian holiness, he held up the act of reducing human beings to the condition of brutes, to minister to the convenience, the luxury, and lusts of the owner. He had expected bitter complaint 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