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

Chapter 4: The Ministry of Visitation to Individuals (1757–1759)

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on His perfections, consider that He is perfect wisdom and goodness, and that to afflict His creatures to no purpose would be utterly averse to His nature, we shall hear and understand His language both in His gentle and more heavy chastisements, and shall take heed that we do not, in the wisdom of this world, endeavor to escape His hand by means too powerful for us. Had he endowed men with understanding to prevent this disease (the smallpox) by means which had never proved hurtful nor mortal, such a discovery might be considered as the period of chastisement by this distemper, where that knowledge extended. But as life and health are His gifts, and are not to be disposed of in our own wills, to take upon us by inoculation when in health a disorder of which some die, requires great clearness of knowledge that it is our duty to do so. Fourth Month, 1760.—Having for some time past felt a sympathy in my mind with Friends eastward, I opened my concern* in our Monthly Meeting, and, obtaining a certificate, set forward on the seventeenth of this month, in company with my beloved friend Samuel Eastburn. We had meetings at Woodbridge, Rahway, and Plainfield, and were at their Monthly Meeting of ministers and elders in Rahway. We labored under some discouragement, but through the invisible power of truth* our visit was made reviving to the lowly-minded,* with whom I felt a near unity of spirit, being much reduced in my mind. We passed on and visited most of the meetings on Long Second Journey to New England and Long Island; Letter to His Wife