Johnson absolutely subordinated dogma to practice, holding fast to the idea involved in the declaration that he who doeth the will shall know the doctrine. He began with the ethics of the individual, the family, the social circle, seeing every principle incarnated there. How faithful he was in all domestic relations the world will never know, for there are details that cannot be divulged. But in all public affairs his constancy was perfect. Dr. Furness of Philadelphia used to say that the anti-slavery struggle in this country taught him more about the essential nature of the Gospel than he had learned in any other way. Samuel Johnson had the same conviction. In a private letter written in 1857 he says: Everything in this crisis of American growth centres in the great conflict about this gigantic sin of slavery. That is the battle-field on which the questions are all to be fought out, of moral and spiritual and intellectual Freedom against the Absolutism of sect and party; of Love against Mammon; of Conscience against the State; of Man against Majorities; of Truth against Policy; of God against the Devil. It is really astonishing how everything that happens with us works directly into this fermenting conflict. They who remember his addresses during the war will not need any confirmation of this announcement, and they who heard or have read his sermon on the character and services of Charles Sumner will have the fullest assurance of the cordial appreciation with which every phase of the struggle was entered into.