In 1861, on the first Sunday after the news of the fall of Fort Sumter reached England, the author, in company with a friend from Pennsylvania, who was an anti-slavery man, attended services in Mr. Spurgeon's chapel in London. The great city was wrapped in the deepest gloom. The war storm in America was expected to ruin manufactures and trade throughout Great Britain. Mr. Spurgeon and his people seemed bowed down with sorrow. On returning to our hotel my Northern friend remarked that he knew I didn't approve of Spurgeon's prayer about slavery. I said to him, "R----, just there you are mistaken. Some of my people in Alabama some time ago burned Spurgeon's books because of some of his abolition views, but when I go home and tell them how this great Christian prayed to-day they will respect his honesty and sincerity. We blame nobody for being anti-slavery, but we do abominate fanatical abolitionism. Spurgeon is no fanatic. Listen to this Englishman: 'O God, our people are in the ashes of woe. A dreadful war beyond the ocean has cut off our commerce and closed our factories, and thousands of our poor must sadly suffer. The people of the American States are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. O Lord, pity them, and pity us. O God, they and we have sinned in enslaving our fellow men. England put slavery on her colonies against the protest of those Southern people, and England must suffer Thy judgments for her part. Forgive the North, forgive the South, and forgive England. O pity especially the people of that section where the war will bear so heavily and pity the poor everywhere.'