Such a faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it always has for the heart that forms it!  It tells not of a persuasion, but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into an attitude of positive vital faith.  Its process is the only one that gives real right to ultimate peace.  In comparison with the method and measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form?  Self-truth is the point,—­the fact for starting, the line for guiding; and as for result, this lonely and solemn rally on the deepest within us, as it is continuously unfolded, must lead to a glad and solemn union with the Highest without us.  Who can know unfailing inward energy except through this new birth?  It proved an ever-fresh spring of vigor to my father, and because of it he was chosen, in 1839, president of “The Philadelphia Bible Society.”  What changes were wrought in the policy of the Society, what numerous plans were devised and executed for multiplying its operations, how it was made a cordial alliance of all denominations, will presently appear.  This is now to be said:  that, after filling his office for five years, he found that his Anti-slavery testimony had engendered in the managers a bitterness that would seize the address of 1844 for pretext, and make retaliation in his sacrifice.  Thankful, for the thousandth time, to be a sacrifice for the cause he loved, he sent in his resignation in a letter full of Christian kindness and sorrow.  A short extract will show its tone: 

“One whose great heart wishes the best for humanity calls to us from the West:  ’When your Society propose to put a Bible into every family, and yet omit all reference to the slaves; and when, giving an account of the destitution of the land, they make no mention of two and a half millions of people perishing in our midst without the Scriptures, can we help feeling that something is dreadfully wrong?’ This, brethren, is a most solemn question.  It is a question which I verily believe the American Bible Society, so far as they may have yielded, directly or indirectly, openly or silently, to a corrupt public sentiment on this subject, will have to answer at the bar of Him who has declared, that, ‘If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,’ and that ’Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.’  The spirit of Christianity is a spirit of universal love and philanthropy.  She looks down with pity, and, if she could, she would look with scorn upon all the petty distinctions that exist among men.  She casts her benignant eye abroad over the earth, and, wherever she sees man, she sees him as man, as a being made in the image of God, whether an Indian, an African, or a Caucasian sun may shine upon him.  She stoops from heaven to raise the fallen, to bind up the broken-hearted, to release the oppressed, to give liberty to the captive,