religious Society thought it necessary to do? It is astonishing how
troublesome a living soul proves to be, when they try to shut it up
within the narrow limits of a drowsy sect!

I had a friend in Boston, whose wealthy and aristocratic parents brought
him up according to the most approved model of genteel religion. He
learned the story of the Good Samaritan, and was early accustomed to
hear eulogies pronounced on the holy Jesus, who loved the poor, and
associated with the despised. When the boy became a man he joined the
Anti-Slavery Society, and openly avowed that he regarded Africans as
brethren of the great human family. His relatives were grieved to see
him pursuing such an injudicious and disrespectable course. Whereupon, a
witty reformer remarked, "They took most commendable pains to present
Jesus and the Good Samaritan as models of character, but they were
surprised to find that he had taken them at their word."

The case was somewhat similar with Isaac T. Hopper. He had imbibed
anti-slavery principles in full flood at the fountain of Quakerism.
Their best and greatest men were conspicuous as advocates of those
principles. Children were taught to revere those men, and their
testimonies were laid up in honorable preservation, to be quoted with
solemn formality on safe occasions. Friend Hopper acted as if these
professions were in good earnest; and thereby he disturbed his sect, as
my Boston friend troubled his family, when he made practical use of
their religious teaching.

That many of the modern Quakers should be blinded by bales of cotton,
heaped up between their souls and the divine light, is not remarkable;
for cotton is an impervious material. But it is a strange anomaly in
their history that any one among them should have considered himself
guided by the Spirit to undertake the especial mission of discouraging
sympathy with the enslaved. A minister belonging to that branch of the
Society called "Hicksites," who usually preached in Rose-street Meeting,
New-York, had imbibed very strong prejudices against all modern reforms:
and he manifested his aversion with a degree of excitement, in language,
tone, and gesture, very unusual in that quiet sect. Those who labored
in the cause of temperance, anti-slavery, or non-resistance, he was wont
to stigmatize as "hireling lecturers," "hireling book-agents," and
"emissaries of Satan." Soon after Thomas Hughes consented to return to
the South, in consequence of the f