mber of friends. And many of those friends were wilder and more
extravagant, in their views on religion and politics, than myself; and
instead of helping me to quiet reflection, did much to render such a
thing impossible. They were mostly Garrisonian Abolitionists, with whom
I had become acquainted while in England, or through the medium of
anti-slavery publications. Many of them had had an experience a good
deal like my own. They had been members and ministers of churches, and
had got into trouble in consequence of their reforming tendencies, and
had at length been cast out, or obliged to withdraw. They had waged a
long and bitter war against the churches and ministers of their land,
and had become skeptics and unbelievers of a somewhat extravagant kind.
Henry C. Wright was an Atheist. So were some others of the party. My own
descent to skepticism was attributable in some measure to my intercourse
with them, and to a perusal of their works, while in England. The first
deadly blow was struck at my belief in the supernatural inspiration of
the Scriptures by Henry C. Wright. It was in conversation with him too
that my belief in the necessity of church organization was undermined,
and that the way was smoothed to that state of utter lawlessness which
so naturally tends to infidelity and all ungodliness. My respect for the
talents of the abolitionists, and the interest I felt in the cause to
which they had devoted their lives, and the sympathy arising from the
similar way in which we had all been treated by the churches and
priesthoods with which we had come in contact, disposed me, first, to
regard their skeptical views with favor, and then to accept them as
true.

And now they welcomed me to their native land, and embraced the earliest
opportunity of visiting me in my new home. And all that passed between
us tended to confirm us in our common unbelief. I afterwards found that
in some of the abolitionists, in nearly all, I fear, anti-christian
views had led to immoral habits, which rendered their antipathy to
Christianity all the more bitter. In almost all of them infidelity had
produced a lawlessness of speculation on moral matters, which could
hardly fail to produce in the end, if it had not already produced, great
licentiousness of life.

I had no sooner got things comfortably fixed at home, than I received
an invitation from the American Anti-slavery Society, to attend their
Annual Meeting, which was to be held in Roc