Lydia Maria Child, Isaac T. Hopper: a true life

[397] and friendship; but his own conscience would have sustained him without such aid. He had long felt a deep sadness whenever he was reminded of the spiritual separation between him and the religious Society, whose preachers had exerted such salutary influence on his youthful character; but the external separation was of no consequence. He attended meeting constantly, as he had ever done, and took his seat on the bench under the preachers' gallery, facing the audience, where he had always been accustomed to sit, when he was an honored member of the Society. Charles Marriott, who was by temperament a much meeker man, said to him one day, ‘The overseers have called upon me, to represent the propriety of my taking another seat, under existing circumstances. I expect they will call upon thee, to give the same advice.’

‘I expect they won't,’ was Isaac's laconic reply; and they never did.

His daughter, Abby H. Gibbons, soon after resigned membership in the Monthly Meeting of New-York for herself and her children; and his sons Josiah and John did the same. The grounds stated were that ‘the meeting had manifestly departed from the original principles and testimonies of the Society of Friends; that the plainest principles of civil and religious freedom had been violated in the whole proceedings in relation to their father; and ’