The position of these men and of others who thought and acted with them can best be understood by recognizing the fact that they were opposed to sectarian methods in promoting reforms as in advancing the interests of religion. It is probable that in these heated times neither party did full justice to the spirit and purposes of the other. Even so gentle and charitable a man as Rev. Samuel J. May speaks of the "discreditable pro-slavery conduct of the Unitarian denomination." "The Unitarians as a body," he says again, "dealt with the question of slavery in anything but an impartial, courageous, and Christian way. Continually in their public meetings the question was staved off and driven out because of technical, formal, verbal difficulties which were of no real importance, and ought not to have caused a moment's hesitation. Avowing among their distinctive doctrines the fatherly character of God and the brotherhood of man, we had a right to expect from the Unitarians a steadfast and unqualified protest against so unjust, tyrannical, and cruel a system as that of American slavery. And considering their position as a body, not entangled with any pro-slavery alliances, not hampered with any ecclesiastical organization, it does seem to me that they were pre-eminently guilty in reference to the enslavement of the millions in our land with its attendant wrongs, cruelties, horrors. They refused to speak as a body, and censured, condemned, execrated their members who did speak faithfully for the down-trodden, and who co-operated with him whom a merciful Providence sent as the prophet of the reform."[29] The testimony of Rev. O.B. Frothingham is fully as condemnatory of Unitarian timidity and conservatism, even of the moral cowardice betrayed by many of the leaders. He says the Unitarians, as such, "were indifferent or lukewarm; the leading classes were opposed to the agitation. Dr. Channing was almost alone in lending countenance to the reform, though his hesitation between the dictates of natural feeling and Christian charity towards the masters hampered his action, and rendered him obnoxious to both parties,--the radicals finding fault with him for not going further, the conservatives blaming him because he went so far."[30] Mr. Frothingham finds, however, that the transcendentalists were quite "universally abolitionists, their faith in the natural powers of man making them zealous promoters of the cause of the slave." He insists that as a class "the Unitarians were not ardent disciples of any moral cause, and took pride in being reasoners, believers in education and in general social influence, in the progress of knowledge and the uplifting of humanity by means of ideas," but that they permitted these qualities to cool their ardor for reform and to mitigate their love of humanity.[31]