Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.
To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult
of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by
obscure and uneventful lives. Some great reform which lifts the world to
a higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in
anxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace
it back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in
the chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the
divine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood
by his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself. The little one
has become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon. "The
kingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of the
mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality
Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the
human one.
The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout
the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.
A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil
work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to
the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose
very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his
religious society.
It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and
ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to
which they are manifestly entitled. In one of my last interviews with
William Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they
were so little known. He had himself just read the book for the first
time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he
pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in
the language. He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes
of readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.
Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard
Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his
letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation. Edward
Irving pronounced it a godsend. Some idea of the lively interest which
the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the
beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of
Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and
varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a
sermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than
promote belief:
"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at
the same time! A perfect gem! His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful
soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite
purity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.
Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better
book; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which
he was a great actor. His religion was love. His whole existence and
all his passions were love. If one could venture to impute to his creed,
and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he
exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His Christianity is
most inviting, it is fascinating! One of the leading British reviews a
few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man
who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to
the Divine pattern. The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority
in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's
gift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural
heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,
even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. Every now and then, in
the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of
Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth
that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over
the whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of
Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His
creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,
and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In this pure,
universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that
comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep
and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very
overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'"
After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
events in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort this
deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
paper.
It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of
individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to
watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the
command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as
its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to
the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its
hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it
moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening
our present humanity. To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as
possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of
slave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of
that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout
the world.
At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it
emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.
The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.
consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,
temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a
blessing. Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some
of the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily
described their condition:--
What shall we do but sing His praise
Who led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;
He gives us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps, in a green night,
And doth in the pomegranate close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
. . . . . . . . .
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
Oh! let our voice His praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then, perhaps rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
"So sang they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time."
Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the
colonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system had
then been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates nor
expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it. Few
colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and
conduct. Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its
practice. Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the
pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing
ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's
exhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited
upon by negro slaves. Everywhere men were contending with each other
upon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,
denying the ethics of Christianity itself.
Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
Wisdom. He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
intuitive sense of right condemned it. He solemnly admonished those who
held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
in the fear of God. "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was
probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of
the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That
meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and
power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could
be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
caution, and not censure."
In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the
Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adopted
prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
Society of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
(Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their
quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman
was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted,
but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest
hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
great themes of life and duty.
When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very
"humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had
ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at
Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John
Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more
remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"
asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward
all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
intends for them under our government.")
On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in
his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of
His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer,
but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to
the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The
circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony
against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It
appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the
land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was
published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the
Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he
was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who
were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could
not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift
food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a
poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed
the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had
opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally
in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness,
and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
dominion."
(The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in
America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much
that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That
this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But
the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
them.")
In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to
convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy
for the enslaved.
At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took
up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the
Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some
extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West
Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.
His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the
anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came
to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same
evil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his
abode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural
cave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was the
spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. He
persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the
expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave
labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance
to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for
worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their
disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street
Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. A
burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
that he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me here
raise me up. It is their business, not mine."
His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with
projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes
and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible
prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like
a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You
slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
and show yourselves as you are?" Casting off as he spoke his outer
garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a
large book, he drew his sword with the other. "In the sight of God," he
cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which
he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood
those who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of this
circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it
must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violence
and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with
the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except
the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.
(Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.
Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three
witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been
an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
other.)
Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony
Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and
speak against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the
example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found
in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the
slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis de
Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a
small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in
works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.
Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.
The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova
Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and
religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and
sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their
fellow-exiles in other colonies.
The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must
ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in
the history of the Christian church. The labors of Woolman and his few
but earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interest
had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied
feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had come
for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
the Valley of Decision. John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man
humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed
homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of
the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-
stocked plantations of the country. Bowed down by the weight of his
concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the
Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were
under discussion. "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with
inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and
drink, day and night.' The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor
did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before
the meeting." When the important subject came up for consideration, many
faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one openly
justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the
meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many
members of the Society. It was also urged that Friends should wait
patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the
deliverance of the slave. This was replied to by John Woolman. "My
mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and
the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with
awfulness. I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not
been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most
lamentable. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries
have entered into the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and
certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor. In
infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one
time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a
time for delay. Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and
through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a
regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable
foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still
waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,
God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."
This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding members
expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
adopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it was
answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
such as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed. In that
meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the
"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of
their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good." In the city of
Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found
occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a
watchful guard over their feelings. In his Journal for this important
period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services. How
arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood. The number of
slaves held by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, in
his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly
Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred
slaves. From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the
difficulties which presented themselves. One elderly man says he has
well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain
him." Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his
tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal. A
third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear
out of it. "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision." A
fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings." "Old Jos. Richison has
forty, and is determined to keep them." Another man has fifty, and
"means to keep them." Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his
wife and daughters hold back." Another "owns it is wrong, but says he
will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives." The far
greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take
measures for freeing their slaves.
(An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which
impressed him deeply. On the last evening, just as he was about to
turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had
not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.
It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care
of itself. Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind
quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more
exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host
eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.
The proposal was gladly accepted. On introducing the object of
their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness
should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form
of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no
difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.
At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before
them. His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on
his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,
restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on
his master. At length he was informed of what had been done; that
he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past
services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived. The old
man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on
his breast. After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then
spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently
exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on
his knees. Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the
solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too
much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a
slave, and now I shall die a free man!"
It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are
sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to
duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived
in the mind of Isaac Jackson. At that supreme moment, when all
other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of
solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted
him as with the blessing of God.)
An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
in which he accomplished it:--
"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some,
whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often saw
the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
world."
"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
city. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
found peace."
These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and
oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the
practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly
Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were
directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding
their fellow-men as property.
A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
services rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is an
extract from an epistle on this subject:
"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
openings of duty.
"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many
who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously
considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people
have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring
is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious
and deep attention."
Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly
appointed in the various Monthly Meetings. Many former owners of slaves
faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award
and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.
So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of
Friends!
John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself
especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At
the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among
the foundations of society. Yet he seems never to have doubted for a
moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated
as to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson in
the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of
the temple of Dagon. "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his
path lay clear and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodness
of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness
for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom
and every barrier of pride and selfishness. No one could have a more
humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy
he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had
known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which
the Lord speaks." The event justified his confidence; wherever he went
hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion
gave way before his testimony of love.
The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
Rhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
religious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw the
horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
thronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
shame and wickedness. "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
the importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The London
Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,
and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and
the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate
meetings:--
"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;
and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or
otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"
At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
or holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost upon
his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the
Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,
and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were
implicated in the practice. The next year this committee reported that
they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to
be kindly accepted. Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at
liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of
such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to
comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take
it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them
in continued bondage."
It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,
that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others
"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not
complying with the advice of this meeting."
In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that
truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise
the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,
among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,
that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the
brutes that perish."
In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly
Meeting. The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to
appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the
manumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services. In
1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder
who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after
due care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society. This was
effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction
of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.
In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the
middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those
who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In
1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon
any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of
the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate
meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past
services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their
masters in all save three cases.
In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Its
members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I have
already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757
the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764
it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,
of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing
any more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate
manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached
eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was
advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of
instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and
religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
many among us are enjoying."
In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise
number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost
all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
truth.
So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of a
century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated
intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony
against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a
slave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there
is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,
urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the
way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,
entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied
with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.
The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be
traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the
noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
whole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. To
his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
government. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, the
influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country
evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In
1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
before the first Congress of the United States. Not content with
clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, Elisha
Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One of
the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
so faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop at
Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of
slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the
many to support the luxury of the few. The argument running through them
is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love
for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all. They aim to
convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and
passion. To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the
voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day. One feels,
in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from
all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,
and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by
drawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a man
unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,
the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt
at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple
unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have
been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual
prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that
his work was done in the clear radiance of
"The light which never was on land or sea."
It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence." Very
wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
world. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
"The haunt
Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
The wild to love tranquillity,"--
a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
or activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have,
but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
sweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
his words."
Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
epigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
Task-master's eye." With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
bear rule."
I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
longer a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together a
few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
unrighteousness."
"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
the whole."
"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
true happiness."
"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
of men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
little suffices."
"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
of His benefits."
"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,
instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the
outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we
should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure
reason."
"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more
refined appearances remains to be oppression. To labor for a perfect
redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole
family of Jesus Christ in this world."
"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being 'hid
with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
of life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life which
proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,
and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of
religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
brethren."
"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind. In
true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,
save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in
outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to
us. In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a
perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all
things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light
shines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this
world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of
truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,
the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised
therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in
the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at
times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that
forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do
something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.
"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our
wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and
acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us. But when our minds
entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the
opening of the last of the seals. In this silence we learn to abide in
the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except
that alone in which the light of life directs us."
Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense
interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate
elevation, as in the following extract:--
"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
laying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast of
Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
negroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dying
men which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
children which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny is
encouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened.
"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
deeply affected with sorrow!"
"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of
heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the
hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to
think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in
fixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensive
customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?
"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own
conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might
be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were
he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to
be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find
the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.' Divine Love imposeth no
rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit
of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is
necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.
"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a
prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
the business of our lives."
His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
are manifest in the following passages:--
"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. The
knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
known to be due only to the true God.
"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
these essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
of luxury and oppression:--
"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate
labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at
present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to
evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause others to do so,
that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer
discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,
is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."
"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
their proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the true
proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
justly chargeable with usurpation."
It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They might
have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology. The
underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
soul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One may
easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly
sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret that
he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
form of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter and
proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we venture
to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
threatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at the
purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
mistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Without
the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
good. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
efficacious word within would be but an empty sound." "Thou Lord," says
Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
sounds."
"However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within
us, and that is the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale
and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for
truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any
light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's
Religio Medici.
Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
sin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
upon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discord
which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The first
inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How far
am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of my
fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
in a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law of
Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
strengthening them in error." He constantly recurs to the importance of
a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
righteousness." His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
evil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that every
sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
all. "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide
wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
and made thin through hard dealing.
"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that
we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed
which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven
against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony
restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will
be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"
It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must
have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,
anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presence
of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and
pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil
hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the
irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual
discernment,
"Bearing a touchstone in his hand
And testing all things in the land
By his unerring spell.
"Quick births of transmutation smote
The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
Purple nor ermine did he spare,
Nor scorn the dusty coat."
In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to
me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the
appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing
to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual
symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words. I have
been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit
redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful
for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him. I leave
the book with its readers. They may possibly make large deductions from
my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his
self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and
smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all
agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.
AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.