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volume connected with the history of his sect.
He had a wonderful fondness and reverence for many of those books.
They seemed to stand to him in the place of old religious friends, who had parted from his side in the journey of life.
There, at least, he found Quakerism that had not degenerated; that breathed the same spirit as of yore.
I presume that his religious opinions resembled those of Elias Hicks.
But I judged so mainly from incidental remarks; for he regarded doctrines as of small importance, and considered theology an unprofitable topic of conversation.
Practical righteousness, manifested in the daily affairs of life, was in his view the sum and substance of religion.
The doctrine of the Atonement never commended itself to his reason, and his sense of justice was disturbed by the idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty.
He moreover thought it had a pernicious tendency for men to rely on an abstract article of faith, to save them from their sins.
With the stern and gloomy sects, who are peculiarly attracted by the character of Deity as delineated in the Old Testament, he had no sympathy.
The Infinite One was ever present to his mind, as a loving Father to all his children, whether they happened to call him by the name of Brama, Jehovah, God, or Allah.
He was strongly attached to the forms of Quakerism,
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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