The Liberator

From the Pennsylvania Freeman.

BRITISH FELLOWSHIP FOR PRO-SLAVERY
CLERGYMEN.
Knowing the eagerness of our pro-slavery and
lower law clergy to cover their sin and shame, under
the fellowship of British churches and pulpits,
we offer our hearty thanks to the London Morning
Advertiser, the Anti-Slavery Advocate, and all equally
faithful journals, for their vigilance and honesty
in warning the British public of all such attempts
upon their good will. But, notwithstanding this
fidelity, we regret to see that the pulpits of well-
known Anti-Slavery ministers are in some instances
opened to the most jesuitical and dangerous enemies
of the Anti-Slavery cause. One such instance,
which we confess to have read with surprise, is the
reception of the Rev. E. N. Kirk, of Boston, to the
pulpit of Surrey Chapel, the pastor of which, Rev.
J. Sherman, has won a wide Anti-Slavery reputation,
and rendered important service to our cause,
by his excellent introduction to an English edition of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in other ways.
Mr. Kirk, like Dr. Cox, is a renegade abolitionist,
and very naturally has all the animosity of the
deserter and traitor toward the cause and the men
he abandoned. We believe that no Northern clergyman
has since been more bitter in his denunciations of
Anti-Slavery measures and men, or more
servile in his prostrations to the Fugitive Slave
Law, the rigid execution of which he publicly enjoins
as a Christian duty. No American clergyman deserves
a more direct and severe rebuke from
the Christians of Great Britain. They owe it as a
solemn obligation to the American slaves, and the
American abolitionist, to the pure and undefiled
religion they profess, and to him who has said:
'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness, but rather reprove them,' that they deny
to such clergymen the name of Christian. Such a
course on the part of all the churches of Great
Britain would deal a blow upon the slave system,
from which it never could recover, and which
would be invaluable to themselves and the world
as a testimony to the purity and integrity of
Christianity.
Without exception, the question should be put
to American clergymen seeking the fellowship of
British pulpits, (if they are not publicly known as
abolitionists,) What have you done at home to
abolish slavery, or to purify the church from its
unholy connection with that sin?' Facts should be
required as an answer, not vague and empty professions.
Such a test would rarely fail of showing
who were on the side of the slave, and who were
striking hands with his oppressors.