Rev. Mr. McCormick Suspended

 
At the late session of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of this State, the Rev. S. B. McCormick, one of the ministers of that Church, was tried and suspended from ministerial duty, on account of the following charge and specifications:
 
Charge - Unchristian conduct.
 
First Specification - For associating himself with an association known as the Underground Railroad, whose avowed business is to assist slaves from slave States to escape to free territory.
 
Second Specification - For actually engaging in the business of assisting slaves in making their escape from slave to free territory, which is contrary to the laws of the State of Indiana.
 
Several of the witness stated that Mr. McCormick had boasted to them the number of slaves he had aided to escape, giving the names and places in Kentucky from which they had escaped, and one of them testified that he had heard him say that he had never denied belonging to the Underground Railroad, and that he had said, in April last, in speaking of the relative number taken to Liberia by colonization, and to Canada by underground railroad, that then thousand had gone to Liberia, and thirty-five thousand to Canada by underground railroads.  One of their papers states that he visited on of his ministerial brethren in Kentucky, partook of his hospitalities, prayed with his family, and in the meantime arranged matters with his servants to make their escape.
 
We copy the above with sincere pleasure.  It is a lesson worthy of the Presbyterian Church, and of the State of Indiana, whose citizens, to her and their own disgrace, have been for some years engaged in the dirty work of negro stealing.  The Rev. Mr. McCormick, we presume, is one of those zealous philanthropists, who think they have done God's and humanity's service, when they rob the Southerner of his slave, and turn him loose to starve and freeze, amid the horrors of a Northern Winter.  Well would it have been for Massachusetts, and the sixty Clergymen who assisted to heap upon her the indelible shame of the Hiss Legislature - well for New England and her three-thousand anti Nebraska Clergymen- well for the North, and well for the Union, had these lessons been more frequent.
 
But that is the most desperate form of fanaticism, which teaches that its buildings are the voice of God, and his ministers its chosen instruments.  So long as anti-slavery was merely a political card - so long as it was the expression simply of sectional ambition - it realized but half its power; but when it prostituted religion, the Bible, and the catechism, to its purposes, and reared its altars in the temples and upon the hearthstones, it touched the subtlest and most powerful chords in man's nature, and became henceforward the people's faith.  It is in this view therefore, that we hold the abolition clergy of the North as peculiarly responsible for its past aggressions, and coming evils.  Who but they have made each Sabbath day to ring with denunciations from thousands of pulpits, of the South and slave owners?  Who but they have abused the ear of Heaven with mingled professions of love to all mankind, and relentless hatred to us, their brethren?  Who but they have made abolition the test of church orthodoxy?  And, therefore, it is with a hearty satisfaction that wee see an example made like the present.
 
It is too late, however, to accomplish much practical good.  The likelihood is, that the fanaticism of the flock will resent the punishment of the pastor, and surround him with a sympathy which will only reinvigorate him in the cause.