On August 30, 1841, Henry C. Wright wrote to Edmund Quincy: "I once met the president of Brown University, in the presence of several friends, to converse on the subject of slavery. The conversation turned on the question: Can a slaveholder be a Christian? To bring it to a point, addressing myself to the doctor, I asked him, 'Can a man be a Christian and claim a right to sunder husbands and wives, parents and children, to compel men to work without wages, to forbid them to read the Bible, and buy and sell them, and who habitually does these things?' 'Yes,' answered the reverend doctor and president, 'provided he has the spirit of Christ.' 'Is it possible for a man to be governed by the spirit of Christ and claim a right to commit these atrocious deeds, and habitually commit them?' After some turning he answered, 'Yes, I believe he can.' 'Is there, then, one crime in all the catalogue of crimes which of itself would be evidence to you that a man had not the spirit of Christ?' I asked. 'Yes, thousands,' said the doctor. 'What?' I asked. 'Stealing,' said he. 'Stealing what, a sheep or a _man_?' I asked. The doctor took his hat and left the room, and appeared no more."[540] The Sunday following a special service was held in the churches throughout the country in behalf of further help in "the new educational crisis." Many eulogistic sermons were preached that day by the leading clergymen of the denomination. "And so," one of them is reported to have said, "when a crisis came God had a man ready to meet it.... An institution was bound to come, and unless a God-fearing man established it it was likely to be materialistic, agnostic.... In this emergency, and in God's providence, society raised up a man with a colossal fortune, and a heart as large as his fortune." "God," said the Chicago _Standard_, a religious weekly, "has guided us and provided us a leader and a giver, and so brought us out into a large place." Another of the trustees has poured into a Southern State hundreds of thousands of dollars for churches of various denominations, and millions for hotels of a more than Oriental magnificence. "There is no philanthropist," says an editor of that State, commenting on these expenditures, "who renders the world greater service than the man of enterprise." But "Western Pennsylvania," said the Pittsburg _Post_, "looks more with awe than pride at the liberal diffusion of its wealth in Florida improvements and Baptist universities." A daily paper of Richmond, Virginia, in an editorial commenting on a report that the hostlery glories of St. Augustine were to be repeated in Richmond, said: "We have naught to remark on the tyrant monopoly if some of its profits are to come in such a direction. We could forgive much that monopoly visits on the down-trodden, horny-handed son of toil if it would come with open pockets proclaiming the era of luxuriant accommodations for all those other millionaires whose money we want to see invested in Richmond."