Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/157

144 political and commercial; such as the New York Tribune and Evening Post.

IV. Then our colleges and schools are corrupted by Slavery. I do not know of five colleges in all the North which publicly appear on the side of Freedom. What the hearts of the presidents and professors are, God knows, not I. The great crime against humanity, practical atheism, found ready support in Northern colleges, in 1850 and 1861. Once, the common reading books of our schools were full of noble words. Bead the school-books now made by Yankee pedlers of literature, and what liberal ideas do you find there? They are meant for the Southern market. Slavery must not be offended!

V. Slavery has corrupted the churches! There are twenty-eight thousand Protestant clergymen in the United States. There are noble hearts, true and just men among them, who have fearlessly borne witness to the truth. I need not mention their names. Alas! they are not very numerous; I should not have to go over my fingers many times to count them all. I honour these exceptional men. Some of them are old, far older than I am; older than my father need have been; some of them are far younger than I; nay, some of them younger than my children might be: and I honour these men for the fearless testimony which they have borne—the old, the middle-aged, and the young. But they are very exceptional men. Is there a minister in the South who preaches against Slavery? How few in all the North!

Look and see the condition of the Sunday schools. In 1853, the Episcopal Methodists had 9,438 Sunday schools; 102,732 Sunday school teachers; 525,008 scholars. There is not an anti-Slavery Sunday school in the compass of the Methodist Episcopal church. Last year, in New York, they issued, on an average, two thousand bound volumes every day in the year, not a line against Slavery in them. They printed also two thousand pamphlets every day; there is not a line in them aU against Slavery; they printed more than two hundred and forty million pages of Sunday school books, not a line against Slavery in them all; not a line showing that it is wicked to buy and sell a man, for