He had just sat down when the pastor of the church, Rev.Howard Malcolm, uprose in wrath and inveighed against any intermeddling of the North with slavery, and brought the meeting with a high hand to a close.

This incident was the first collision with the church of the forlorn hope of the Abolition movement.
Trained as Garrison was in the orthodox creed and sound in that creed almost to bigotry, this behavior of a standard-bearer of the church, together with the apathy displayed by the clergy on a former occasion, caused probably the first "little rift within the lute" of his creed, "that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly silence all." For in religion as in love, "Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all." The Rev.Howard Malcolm's arbitrary proceeding had prevented the organization of an anti-slavery committee.

But this was affected at a second meeting of the friends of the slave.

Garrison was one of the twenty gentlemen who were appointed such a committee.

His zeal and energy far exceeded the zeal and energy of the remaining nineteen.