The Rev. Mr. McDowell, her pastor, visited her, and remonstrated with her in the most feeling manner, assuring her of his profound pity, as she was evidently under a delusion of the arch-adversary.  Members of the congregation made repeated calls upon her, urging every argument they could think of to convince her she was deceived.  Some expressed a fear that her mind was a little unbalanced, and shook their heads over the possible result; others declared that she was committing a great impropriety to shut herself up every Sunday with two old men.  This, Angelina informed them, was a mistake, as the windows and doors were wide open, and the gate also.  Others of her friends assured her with tears in their eyes that they would pray to the Lord to bring her back to the path of duty she had forsaken.

The superintendent of the Sunday-school came also to plead with her, in the name of the children she was abandoning.  Some of the scholars themselves came and implored her not to leave them.

“But,” she writes, “none of these things turn me a hair’s breadth, for I have the witness in myself that I have done as the Master commanded.  Some tell me this is a judgment on me for sin committed; and some say it is a chastisement to Mr. McDowell for going away last summer.”

(During the prevalence of an epidemic the summer before, the Presbyterian pastor had been much blamed for deserting his flock and fleeing to the sea-shore until all danger was past.)

By all this it will be seen that Angelina was regarded as too precious a jewel in the crown of the Church to be relinquished without a struggle.

But satisfied as was her conscience, Angelina’s natural feelings could not be immediately stifled.  Though not so sensitive or so affectionate as Sarah, she was quite as proud, and valued as greatly the good opinion of her family and friends.  She could not feel herself an outcast, an object of pity and derision, without being deeply affected by it.  Her health gave way under the pressure, and a change of scene and climate was recommended.  Sarah at once urged that she join her in Philadelphia; and, this meeting the approbation of her mother, she sailed for the North in July (1828).

In Sarah’s diary, about this time, we find the following entry:—­

“13th.  My beloved Angelina arrived yesterday.  Peace has, I believe, been the covering of our minds; and in thinking of her to-day, and trying to feel whether I should advise her not to adopt immediately the garb of a Quaker, the language presented itself, ’Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.’  So I dared not meddle with her.”

The summer was a peaceful and delightful one to Angelina.  She was the guest of Catherine Morris, and was treated like a daughter by all the kind Quaker circle.  The novelty of her surroundings, the fresh scenes and new ideas constantly presented before her, opened up a field of thought whose boundaries only she had until then touched, but which she soon began eagerly and conscientiously to explore.  Two extracts from letters written by her at that time will show how strict she was in her Quaker principles, and also that the persuasion that she was to be given some great work to do was becoming even more firmly grounded.