Dr. Channing was a gentle, pure-hearted, and humane sort of a man. He dreaded controversy, and shunned the agitation and agitators of anti-slavery. The lesser lights followed the example of these bright stars in the churches. But all could not keep silent,--for slavery needed apologists in the North. Stewart, of Andover; Alexander, of Princeton; Fisk, of Wilberham, and many other leading ministers endeavored to prove the _Divine Origin and Biblical Authority of Slavery_. The silence of the pulpit drove out many anti-slavery men who, up to this time, had been hoping for aid from this quarter. Many went out of the Church temporarily, hoping that the scales would drop from the eyes of the preachers ere long; but others never returned-were driven to infidelity and bitter hatred of the Christian Church. Dr. Albert Barnes said: "That there was no power out of the Church that would sustain slavery an hour if it were not sustained in it." Among the leaders of the HETERODOX ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY--those who attacked the reticency, silent acquiescence, or act of support the Church gave slavery,--were Parker Pillsbury, James G. Birney, Stephen S. Foster, and Samuel Brooke. The platform of this party was clearly defined by Mr. Pillsbury:-- "That slavery finds its surest and sternest defence in the prevailing religion of the country, is no longer questionable. Let it be driven from the Church, with the burning seal of its reprobation and execration stamped on its iron brow, and its fate is fixed forever. Only while its horrors are baptized and sanctified in the name of Christianity, can it maintain an existence. "The Anti-Slavery movement has unmasked the character of the American Church. _Our religion has been found at war with the interests of humanity and the laws of God._ And it is more than time the world was awakened to its unhallowed influence on the hopes and happiness of man, while it makes itself the palladium of the foulest iniquity ever perpetrated in the sight of heaven."[18] This was a bold movement, but it was doubtless a sword that was as dangerous to those who essayed to handle it, as to the Church whose destruction it was intended to effect. The doctrine that was to sustain and inspire this party can be briefly stated in a sentence: THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.