He entered into the life of his community and of his times, anticipating by nearly a century the work of Friends' Philanthropic Committees of the present day. It is related that he was much opposed to an attempt to establish a liquor-selling tavern in the Jericho neighborhood--that when he saw strangers approaching he would invite them to accept his own hospitality, thus making unnecessary the tavern-keeping business in the sparsely settled country town. We would expect that, with his sense of justice and his appreciation of values, Elias Hicks would place men and women side by side, not only in the home, but also in the larger household of faith, and in the affairs of the world. It is remembered that his face was set in this direction--that, strict Society-disciplinarian as he was, he advocated a change in the Discipline to allow women a consulting voice in making and amending the Discipline. It must be borne in mind that he lived through the Revolutionary period of 1776, and through the War of 1812. So true was he to his convictions against war that he would not allow himself to benefit by the advanced prices in foodstuffs; and we are told that the records of his monthly meeting show that he sacrificed much of his property by adherence to his peace principles. Neither can we forget the testing that came to him in the institution of slavery. For, according to the custom of the times, his own father was the owner of slaves. His open mind responded to the labors of a committee of the New York Yearly Meeting; and upon the freeing of his father's slaves, he ever after considered their welfare, making such restitution as he could for past injustice. To his daughter, Martha Hicks, he wrote: "My dear love to thee, to thy dear mother, who next to the Divine Blesser has been the joy of my youth, and who, I trust and hope, will be the comfort of my declining years. O dear child, cherish and help her, for she hath done abundance for thee." These fruits of the religious faith of Elias Hicks are offered as the test given us by the Great Teacher himself, by which to know the life of a man. They mark a life rooted in the life of God. Imperishable as the root whence they grew, may they feed the souls of men from generation to generation, satisfying the hungry, strengthening the weak, and making all glad in the joy of each! Thus it is permitted to be "still praising Him." ELIZABETH POWELL BOND. CHAPTER I. Ancestry and Boyhood. The Hicks family is English in its origin, authentic history tracing it clearly back to the fourteenth century. By a sort of genealogical paradox, a far-away ancestor of the apostle of peace in the eighteenth century was a man of war, for we are told that Sir Ellis Hicks was knighted on the battlefield of Poitiers in 1356, nearly four hundred years before the birth of his distinguished descendant on Long Island, in America.