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.