The carrying of passengers and the mails on the Sabbath provoked his energetic reprobation.

He was in all points of New England Puritanism, orthodox of the orthodox.
Subsequently he began to see things in a different light.

As the area of his experience extended it came to him that living was more than believing, that it was not every one who professed faith in Jesus had love for him in the heart; and that there were many whom his own illiberalism had rated as depraved and wicked on mere points of doctrine, who, nevertheless, shamed by the blamelessness and nobility of their conduct multitudes of ardent Christians of the lip-service sort.
Indeed this contradiction between creed and conduct struck him with considerable force in the midst of his harsh judgments against unbelief and unbelievers.

"There are, in fact," he had remarked a year or two after he had attained his majority, "few _reasoning_ Christians; the majority of them are swayed more by the usages of the world than by any definite perception of what constitutes duty--so far, we mean, as relates to the subjugation of vices which are incorporated, as it were, into the existence of society; else why is it that intemperance, and slavery, and war, have not ere this in a measure been driven from our land ?" As the months of his earnest young life passed him by, they showed him as they went how horrible a thing was faith without works.

"By their fruits ye shall know them," the Master had said, and more and more as he saw how many and great were the social evils to be reformed, and in what dire need stood his country of righteous action, did he come to put increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one thing needful to rid the land of the triple curse of slavery, intemperance, and war.