Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman (SRSC 12)

124

Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman

simplicity, may give no just cause of offense to any creature, but that they may walk as He walked!

Journey on Foot into Delaware and Maryland (1766) Having had a concern* at times for several years to pay a religious visit to Friends on the eastern shore of Maryland, and to travel on foot among them, that by so traveling I might have a more lively feeling of the condition of the oppressed slaves, set an example of lowliness* before the eyes of their masters, and be more out of the way of temptation to unprofitable converse; and the time drawing near in which I believed it my duty to lay my concern* before our Monthly Meeting, I perceived, in conversation with my beloved friend John Sleeper, that he also was under similar concern* to travel on foot in the form of a servant among them, as he expressed it. This he told me before he knew anything of my exercise.* Being thus drawn the same way, we laid our exercise* and the nature of it before Friends; and, obtaining certificates, we set off the sixth of Fifth Month, 1766, and were at meetings with Friends at Wilmington, Duck Creek, Little Creek, and Motherkill. My heart was often tendered under the divine influence, and enlarged in love toward the people among whom we traveled. From Motherkill we crossed the country about thirty-five miles to Tuckahoe, in Maryland, and had a meeting there, and also at Marshy Creek. At the last three meetings there were a considerable number of the followers of one Joseph Nichols, a preacher, who, I understand, is not in outward fellowship with any religious Society,* but professes nearly the same principles as those of our Society,* and often travels up and down, appointing