The diaries of Edward Pease Author:Edward Pease Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I scarcely know how patiently to bear up or to sustain the possibility of a second bereavement awaiting us. We will pass over the weeks of alternating hopes a... more »nd fears between May and September. In the father's pocket book is the simple entry: gth mo., 27. My beloved son Isaac departed this life with consoling faith that his heavenly father had prepared a blessed mansion for him,— and another on " 1o mo 1 " that he is " laid by the side of his sister, my beloved Mary." These sorrows are necessary to allude to, for in his own words they deepened his " religious life and experience and diminished the estimate and value of all visible created objects." 1832. Though I pass over many years in the life of Edward Pease in this sketch, the picture of the Quakerism in which he lived would not be complete enough without an allusion to the attitude of his own and the Society's to public life. It is almost incomprehensible to us, in our day, how great a commotion the bare idea of a Quaker standing for Parliament caused in the Society of Friends. There is a file of correspondence exhibiting the tremendous opposition that Joseph Pease had to encounter when he first entertained the idea of entering Parliament, the heaviest being from his own nearest relations and his mother-in-law Jane Gurney. The strongest arguments that Edward Pease could use to dissuade his son were used at the outset, but once assured of the absolute purity and sincerity of Joseph Pease's motives, of his loyalty to the principles in which he had been reared, and of his intention to bear witness to them in the face of ridicule and in all events, he did not further interfere. The following passage in a letter from Joseph to his brother John Pease exhibits Edward Pease's views at the outset: 1832 THE FIRST QUAK...« less