His fellow Friends, incited by selfish motives, had become unmindful
of the basic elements of their religion. In their attempt to condone
slavery and embrace the religion of brotherhood, they had made
Christianity appear farcical. John Woolman's task, then, was not to
propagate a new religion, but to make fashionable the Christian
religion in which all professed a belief. He succeeded because he was
allied to the right. He succeeded because he fought courageously
against the wrong. He succeeded because he was a true disciple of the
Christian religion. Although his laudable achievement is somewhat
overlooked in these days, and his name does not command a conspicuous
place on the pages of anthologies, the true lovers of freedom and the
sincere exponents of the Christian religion will always remember with
reverence the wonderful service of John Woolman, the pious Quaker of
New Jersey.

G. DAVID HOUSTON

FOOTNOTES:

[167] The Act of Banishment enforced by Charles II against all
dissenters.

[168] This opinion was held and supported by Richard Nisbit, in his
"Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West-India
Planters." See "Slave-Trade Tracts," Vol. 1, Tract 3. The same opinion
was given by John Millar, LL.D., of the University of Glasgow, in his
treatise on the "Ranks of Society."

[169] Whittier, "The Journal of John Woolman," 7.

[170] _Ibid._, 7.

[171] _Pa. Mag._, IV, 28.

[172] Whittier, "The Journal of John Woolman," 8-9.

[173] Woolman relates this experience in the first chapter of his
"Journal," as follows: "My employer, having a Negro woman, sold her,
and desired me to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who
bought her. The thing was sudden; and though I felt uneasiness at the
thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow
creatures, yet I remembered that I was hired by the year, that it was
my master who directed me to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a
member of our Society, who bought her; so through weakness I gave way
and wrote it; but at the executing of it I was so afflicted in mind,
that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed
slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian
religion. This, in some degree, abated my uneasiness; yet as often as
I reflected seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if
I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against my conscienc