ke 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