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The Journal of John Woolman - Enhanced Version Kindle Edition
by John Woolman (Author)
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The Journal of John Woolman tells the encouraging and powerful story of John Woolman's life. John Woolman was a 17th century Quaker and abolitionist. His Journal focuses on his moral, spiritual, and intellectual development. In particular, it depicts Woolman's deep concern for equality and justice. His concern made him act as an agent of restoration towards those whom he saw as being oppressed in his time. He was an open advocate of abolition, and encouraged many to free their slaves. But his influence extended beyond the Quakers. His letters and journeys have impacted many different people; his Journal alone has been continuously published since 1774--a true testimony to the significance and impact of his life! Reading this powerful work will encourage one to be, following John Woolman's example, a positive force of justice, equality, and restoration in the world.
Tim Perrine
CCEL Staff Writer
This edition features an artistic cover, a new promotional introduction, an index of scripture references, links for scripture references to the appropriate passages, and a hierarchical table of contents which makes it possible to navigate to any part of the book with a minimum of page turns.
Length: 274 pages Word Wise: Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled Language: English
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Product details
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 395 KB
Print Length: 274 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Christian Classics Ethereal Library; 1.1 edition (14 July 2009)
Sold by: Amazon Australia Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B002HMCOH6
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 reviews
Michael Foret
5.0 out of 5 starsAn American Saint's Too Little Recognized Classic14 July 2013 - Published on Amazon.com
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John Woolman is an overlooked voice for justice from the Quaker tradition during the late 1700s in colonial and early national America. In the pages of his journal Woolman tells us few details about his outer life, and those are brief and rather matter-of-fact, omitting a lot of details we would like to know. He does often allude to his inner life, which experienced many highs and lows of the spirit, always keen to know and to follow the promptings of the Spirit that comes from God.
Woolman traveled widely on his own and on God's business, and he had some of his writings published during his lifetime. I wish more people knew about him and his work for several reasons.
First, he was a strong, early voice against slavery. There are some in the Religious Right who have put forward a revisionist view of history--to be polite about what they contend--that Christians were good slaveholders, that is, that they treated their slaves well and that slavery was thereby good for those slaves owned by Christians. Woolman puts forward a very strong personal witness against this blatantly erroneous viewpoint; his was only one of many prophetic voices against this historical canard.)
Second, and for me just as important, Woolman serves us as a model of the inner life, the spiritual life, of a serious, committed Christian. His prayer life clearly was modeled on Jesus' own, and like Jesus he was always concerned to be doing his Father's will. He often agonized over whether he was doing God's will or his own.
Third, John Woolman lived at the end of the age of mercantilism and the beginning of the age of capitalism, in what I have always thought of as pre-capitalism. This is very important, because we can see in his writings a great concern with social and economic justice that can in no way be traced to, imputed to, or connected in any way with Marxism. John Woolman knew enough about the economic system of his day to see it as a system, and he properly saw that his role as a consumer alone made him responsible, in some way, for the operations of those systems. He was as concerned for the rightness and wrongness of the treatment of indentured servants as he was for Africans and their descendents held in chattel slavery. He may not have used the language used by many legal scholar and theologians today, but he clearly saw that how we spend our money in such a system, and our patterns of consumption, are exercises of our value system. I don't think that he said outright that wearing dyed cloth was a sin--read the book to see why this was such a big issue for him--but he clearly struggled with discerning the will of God to know just what he could do in the marketplace without engaging in sin. Clearly, he believed that even participating in the system of chattel slavery as indirectly as writing wills or other instruments for the transfer of slaves from one owner to the next was against God's will and wish, and therefore a sin. He didn't know where other lines were, but he had discernment enough to know that he should be trying to learn where they were that he might live the gospel in his own walk home.
If you haven't read much writing from this period, it may take a while to become accustomed to language and style that is not quite King James English, but is not wholly modern either. Once you do adjust, you may find lots of other voices from this period to really enjoy beyond Woolman's.
I first read this book in a bare-bones PDF format, so I was happy to see this expanded Kindle version. The introductory essay by John Greenleaf Whittier tell us more about Woolman's life and works--that is, temporal and spiritual, so to speak--and his influence on his own day as well as on later generations. And I always appreciate an appendix with scriptural references delineated.
John Woolman's life and writings deserve to be much better known. I highly recommend this book.
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Lawrence
5.0 out of 5 starsA fascinating book about and by a powerfully spiritual and inspirational American and humble Quaker prophet26 August 2013 - Published on Amazon.com
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This is a very interesting and compelling book. John Woolman is an inspiration to anyone who labors with the notions of equality, love of fellow man, right use of resources, humility, grace, faith and any number of other spiritual concerns. His testimony to Quaker principles and beliefs is truly awesome, and his dedication and service remain extremely relevant and impactful to this day, more than two centuries after his passing.
2 people found this helpfulGo to Amazon.com to see all 2 reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars
