REPORT, ON THE RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY TO SLAVERY. The attitude in which any one of our great National Benevolent Associations may stand toward our great national sin and shame, is a topic of deep interest to every Christian mind. And by as much as any one of these benevolent agencies has risen to a sphere of extensive influence and operation, and has gathered to itself ample resources, and a large place in the affections of the good and benevolent, by so much the more is it important that it both hold, and be seen and known of all men to hold, a position blameless and pure in relation to a wrong so flagrant as that of American slavery. Else the power it has won, the breadth of operation and influence it has attained, and the hold we have suffered it to win upon our hearts, do but give it power to seduce and mislead us into acquiescence, while it criminally sustains a system of sin. It is the point of special need, and should be the point of special vigilance, in our country at the present crisis, that all that is efficiently enterprising and progressive in our Christianity and in the benevolent activity of the Church be clearly scen and felt to have utterly no fellowship with slavery, but stand rather in relations of manifest antagonism to it. If these benevolent agencies, which are our most operative forms of Christianity, and which best represent our obedience toward God and our love toward man-if these are turned to the service of evil, then even the light that is in us has become darkness, and that darkness how great! It is to the perception of this truth we are to ascribe the solicitude which is widely exhibited, touching the posture in which our great benevolent Boards are standing towards American slavery. All that is most earnest and reliable in the piety of our country demands, and will not cease to demand, that the American Home Missionary Society, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the American Tract Society, these as most precious and exposed to trial, shall stand altogether clear in this matter of slavery. So deeply is it now felt that the gospel condemns such a system of bondage as prevails in our country, that we may confidently anticipate an increasing vigilance and anxiety in the churches, to guard against the guilt of directly or indirectly supporting slavery through these benevolent Boards. It is matter for joy and hope that this vigilance is now awakened. It is better that there be excess than defect in this solicitude of the churches for the purity of these Boards. We may well pardon an over-sensitiveness where so great a danger presses, and where apathy is so great a crime. The hearts of many thousands in our churches are now wrung with a painful fear of wrong in the attitude and operations of the societies just named. This apprehension, whether it have foundation or not, deserves regard, and should be anxiously removed if it may be, by a truthful exposition of facts. No one of these societies can afford to part with the approval, the prayers, sympathies, and benefactions of any portion of the Church, on the ground of its apparent connivance at slavery. And any Board which shall presume on its present position of power and usefulness to sustain it in defying this fear in the churches, and actually striking hands with slavery, dooms itself to go down, as surely as the gospel shall rise. And whether our Boards be faulty or not in this behalf, the diversion of favor and funds into other channels for a little time past contains a great and significant admonition. If the wrong that is feared be found to exist, and be not put away with due haste of repentance, then shall the offending organization be put away more and more from the favor and use of the churches, and no plea of past or present success, or of correctness in other respects, will long avail to save it from rejection. A doubtful position can no longer be tolerated in any great agency of Christian benevolence. Not even neutrality or silence will now meet the demands of the case. Each of these great National Boards must have to do with our great National iniquity. It stands in the path of each to resist it. Slavery thrusts itself within the sphere of each of these great Societies, and will not suffer itself to be let alone by any National Christian operation. And so it comes to pass that now every such Board is compelled to have a character in relation to slavery—a character of compliant allowance and support, or of guilty silence, which is nearly equivalent to that-or of quite obvious opposition to it. No one of our great societies has now for some years attempted or desired to keep silent on the sin of Intemperance, when God had drawn it forth into the field of their operation. So now in our land, Slavery is thrust into the forefront of the evangelical battle, and the agency of whatever sort that spares it, or strikes not heartily at this prime foe of God and man, is not true, but is working the work of the Lord deceitfully. There is one of these societies, which, along with others, has recently come into doubt in this relation, which seems especially to demand at our hands an immediate investigation, and either an intelligent and unhesitating approval and support, or total condemnation and rejection. That one is the American Home Missionary Society. We seem doubly impelled in respect to this Society to seek an immediate removal of every doubt, and to demand of ourselves an intelligent confidence either of its innocence or guilt. For in our twofold relation of patrons and beneficiaries, we are doubly implicated in whatever of wrong we suffer to remain upon it. And the danger is great, and to be carefully avoided by every honorable mind, lest our reliance in these many dependent churches upon the help of this Society may even have in it the nature and guilt of bribery—lest we be tempted to receive aid from a source stained in our apprehension with the sin of connivance at the great crime of our country. He is condemned who doubteth the integrity of the H. M. Society, and yet consents to receive its aid. And we know not on what grounds of common honor or christian decency those churches among us can justify their deed, who receive help from this Society, and yet refuse it their aid, and turn aside their contributions to another agency, because they deem it wickedly implicated in slavery! These cases are few, for the dishonor is very plain. But is there really any less of dishonor involved in the course of those individual members of very many churches, who silently allow their church to receive aid from this Society, and themselves share in the benefaction, while still they condemn its course as favorable to slavery, and give to what they deem a purer organization! There is need of a better conscience in this matter. It is very mean to hold slaves, as mean as it is wicked; but they seem to emulate that meanness who condemn the H. M. Society as an abettor of slavery, yet receive its aid— who hear the gospel for themselves, from a source which they count unfit to preach it to slaveholders! Whatever may be the issue of our inquiry, we trust that such inconsistency will be shamed from among us. Let us gain an intelligent conviction one way or the other; and if this Society be innocent, as we believe it is—if it stand on ground perfectly defensible in theory and practice, then let us give it an ardent and honorable confidence and support, such, in some measure, as it deserves for its great labor of love in our behalf. And if, on the other hand, it shall be found guilty of sympathizing with inhumanity, or of holding its peace prepensely in the presence of slavery or any other sin, then let us put it swiftly away from us, and make haste to sacrifice whatever aid it may proffer us as the price of our acquiescence in its wrong. For this very reason, it is fitting that the inquiry we propose should come from a body like this, indebted to this society for aid granted to nearly every one of its churches. The more intimate our relation of this kind, the more needful that we have comfort in the assurance that the source of this bounty is not |