I presume that his religious opinions resembled those of Elias Hicks. But I judged so mainly from incidental remarks; for he regarded doctrines as of small importance, and considered theology an unprofitable topic of conversation. Practical righteousness, manifested in the daily affairs of life, was in his view the sum and substance of religion. The doctrine of the Atonement never commended itself to his reason, and his sense of justice was disturbed by the idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty. He moreover thought it had a pernicious tendency for men to rely on an abstract article of faith, to save them from their sins. With the stern and gloomy sects, who are peculiarly attracted by the character of Deity as delineated in the Old Testament, he had no sympathy. The Infinite One was ever present to his mind, as a loving Father to all his children, whether they happened to call him by the name of Brama, Jehovah, God, or Allah. He was strongly attached to the forms of Quakerism, as well as to the principles. It troubled him, when some of his children changed their mode of dress, and ceased to say _thee_ and _thou_. He groaned when one of his daughters appeared before him with a black velvet bonnet, though it was exceedingly simple in construction, and unornamented by feather or ribbon. She was prepared for this reception, and tried to reconcile him to the innovation by representing that a white or drab-colored silk bonnet showed every stain, and was therefore very uneconomical for a person of active habits. "Thy good mother was a very energetic woman," he replied; "but she found no difficulty in keeping her white bonnet as nice as a new pin." His daughter urged that it required a great deal of trouble to keep it so; and that she did not think dress was worth so much trouble. But his groan was only softened into a sigh. The fashion of the bonnet his Sarah had worn, in that beloved old meeting-house at Woodbury, was consecrated in his memory; and to his mind, the outward type also stood for an inward principle. I used to tell him that I found something truly grand in the original motive for saying _thee_ and _thou_; but it seemed to me that it had degenerated into a mere hereditary habit, since the custom of applying _you_ exclusively to superiors had vanished from the English language. He admitted the force of this argument; but he deprecated a departure from their old forms, because he considered it useful, especially to the young, to carry the cross of being marked and set apart from the world. But though he was thus strict in what he required of those who had been educated as Quakers, he placed no barrier between himself and people of other sects. He loved a righteous man, and sympathized with an unfortunate one, without reference to his denomination. In fact, many of his warmest and dearest friends were not members of his own religious society.