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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

of a Rizpah, and gratefully turn to a quiet rural scene, where broad fields stretch out, and herds feed in the shade of oaks, and all is suggestive of peace, strength and happiness. It may well be doubted whether the story of the Crusades has attracted more readers than the Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis; the Life of John Woolman has found its way into the highest walks of literature, while that of Anthony Wayne is yet to be written; and the time may come when the American historian, wearied with the study of the wars with King Philip to the north of us, and the wars with Powhatan to the south of us, will turn his lens upon Pennsylvania, where the principles of the Reformation produced their ultimate fruits, and where the religious sects who were in the advance of thought, driven out of conservative and halting Europe, lived together at peace with the natives and in unity among themselves without wars. The sweetness and purity which filled the soul of the Mennonite, the Dunker, the Schwenkfelder, the Pietist, and the Quaker, was nowhere better exemplified than in Christopher Dock. It is told that once two men were talking together of him, and one said that he had never been known to show the slightest anger. The other replied that perhaps his temper had not been tested, and presently when Dock came along, he reviled him fiercely, bitterly and profanely. The only reply made by Dock was: “Friend, may the Lord have mercy upon thee.” He was a Mennonite who came from Germany to Pennsylvania about 1714. There is a tradition that he had been previously drafted into the army but had been discharged because of his convictions and refusal to bear arms. In 1718, or perhaps four years earlier, he opened a school among the Mennonites on the Skippack. It was an occupation to which he felt that he was divinely