We can briefly say, summarily, that his whole life was
a long religious missionary life of method, practicality, sincerity,
earnestness, and pure piety--as near to his time here, as one in
Judea, far back--or in any life, any age. The reader who feels
interested must get--with all its dryness and mere dates, absence of
emotionality or literary quality, and whatever abstract attraction
(with even a suspicion of cant, sniffling,) the "Journal of the Life
and Religious Labours of Elias Hicks, written by himself," at some
Quaker book-store. (It is from this headquarters I have extracted the
preceding quotations.) During E. H.'s matured life, continued from
fifty to sixty years--while working steadily, earning his living
and paying his way without intermission--he makes, as previously
memorandized, several hundred preaching visits, not only through Long
Island, but some of them away into the Middle or Southern States, or
north into Canada, or the then far West--extending to thousands of
miles, or filling several weeks and sometimes months. These religious
journeys--scrupulously accepting in payment only his transportation
from place to place, with his own food and shelter, and never
receiving a dollar of money for "salary" or preaching--Elias, through
good bodily health and strength, continues till quite the age of
eighty. It was thus at one of his latest jaunts in Brooklyn city I saw
and heard him. This sight and hearing shall now be described.
Elias Hicks was at this period in the latter part (November or
December) of 1829.
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