Such was the voice that began to attract attention throughout the whole land. It was as truthful and earnest as that of the old Abolitionists, but took in a broader range of subjects and was inspired by a higher spirit than theirs; it was as politic in its utterances as that of the prince of politicians, Martin Van Buren, but it was the policy of right and justice; it had in it the strength of Webster’s, but argued from truer premises than he; it was as popular as Henry Clay’s, but its sympathy was broader than his; it was the voice of Henry Ward Beecher as he stood in the early maturity of his powers, aflame with Christian love and patriotism, preaching the Gospel of the Son of God, the Deliverer and Saviour for slave and master, for North and South, for commerce and manufactures, for our whole land from shame and thraldom. The need of such a voice will appear if we consider the state of things at this time, as he himself described it: “‘An Abolitionist’ was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was enough to expel a man from church communion if he insisted on praying in the prayer-meeting for the liberation of the slaves. I am speaking the words of truth and soberness. The Church was dumb in the North, but not in the West. A marked distinction exists between the history of the New School of Presbyterian churches in the West and the Congregational churches, the Episcopal churches, the Methodist and Baptist churches in the North and East. The great publishing societies that were sustained by the contributions of the churches were absolutely dumb. Great controversies raged round about the doors of the Bible Society, of the Tract Society, and of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The managers of these societies resorted to every shift except that of sending the Gospel to the slaves. They would not send the Bible to the South; for, they said, ‘it is a punishable offence in most of the Southern States to teach a slave to read; and are we to go in the face of this State legislation and send the Bible South?’ The Tract Society said: ‘We are set up to preach the Gospel, not to meddle with political and industrial institutions.’ And so they went on printing tracts against tobacco and its uses, tracts against dancing and its abuses, and refusing to print a tract that had a shadow of criticism on slavery!