In bearing what he believed to be his testimony against this system of oppression, he adopted sometimes a singularity of manner, by which, as conveying demonstration of a certain eccentricity of character, he diminished in some degree his usefulness to the cause which he had undertaken; as far, indeed, as this eccentricity might have the effect of preventing others from joining him in his pursuit, lest they should be thought singular also, so far it must be allowed that he ceased to become beneficial.

But there can be no question, on the other hand, that his warm and enthusiastic manners awakened the attention of many to the cause, and gave them first impressions concerning it, which they never afterwards forgot, and which rendered them useful to it in the subsequent part of their lives.
[Footnote A: Benjamin Lay attended the meetings for worship, or associated himself with the religious society of the Quakers.

His wife, too, was an approved minister of the Gospel in that society; but I believe he was not long an acknowledged member of it himself.] The person who laboured next in the society, in behalf of the oppressed Africans, was John Woolman.
John Woolman was born at Northampton, in the county of Burlington and province of Western New Jersey, in the year 1720.

In his very early youth he attended, in an extraordinary manner, to the religious impressions which he perceived upon his mind, and began to have an earnest solicitude about treading in the right path.

"From what I had read and heard," says he, in his Journal[A], "I believed there had been in past ages, people who walked in uprightness before God in a degree exceeding any, that I knew or heard of, now living.