So Many Lessons from one Quaker Meeting
Who would think that with my "reformed" background I would be so blessed and challenged by the simple writings of an unassuming Quaker? While my last post, the one about reviling, was still echoing in the ears of my heart I continued my reading in The Journal of John Woolman . (By the way, Woolman was an approximate contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, who was 17 years older. Both lived in Colonial America. Both died in their fifties, of smallpox, before the Revolutionary War.) I found myself with Woolman at the 1760 Newport, Rhode Island Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends (Quakers), feeling his desire to glorify Christ, along with his deep trepidation, as he contemplated how to broach the subject of the slavery in their midst. He agonized over the great evil of the African slave trade, and also over his love for these brothers and sisters in Christ, his fellow Quakers. It was in his heart to suggest, if he could find his way clear, that the assembly present a petition ag...