the idea arises from a fundamental Quaker doctrine, announced at
the middle of the seventeenth century, to the erect that God
reveals Himself to mankind, not through any priesthood or
specially chosen agents; not through any ordinance, form, or
ceremony; not through any church or institution; not through any
book or written record of any sort; but directly, through His
Spirit, to each person. This direct enlightening agency they
deemed coextensive with humanity; no race and no individual is
left without the ever-present illuminating Spirit. If men of old
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, what they spoke or
wrote can furnish no reliable guidance to the men of a later
generation, except as their minds also are enlightened by the
same Spirit in the same way. "The letter killeth; it is the
Spirit that giveth life."

This doctrine in its purity and simplicity places all men and all
races on an equality; all are alike ignorant and imperfect; all
are alike in their need of the more perfect revelation yet to be
made. Master and slave are equal before God; there can be no such
relation, therefore, except by doing violence to a personality,
to a spiritual being. In harmony with this fundamental principle,
the Society of Friends early rid itself of all connection with
slavery. The Friends' Meeting became a refuge for those who were
moved by the Spirit to testify against slavery.

Born in 1789 in a State which was then undergoing the process of
emancipating its slaves, Benjamin Lundy moved at the age of
nineteen to Wheeling, West Virginia, which had already become the
center of an active domestic slave-trade. The pious young Quaker,
now apprenticed to a saddler, was brought into personal contact