Sterling Olmsted, formerly Dean of Faculty at Wilmington College of Ohio, has been active in the Religious Society of Friends for many years. A member of Campus Meeting at Wilmington, which belongs both to Wilmington Yearly Meeting (FUM) and Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting (FGC), he has served on various committees of both Yearly Meetings, and also on committees of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, and the Friends Association for Higher Education.

In this pamphlet Sterling embarks on a lexical and grammatical analysis of the writings of John Woolman in an attempt to explain patterns and characterize the evolution of Woolman's experiences. Subtitled Woolman as Mystic and Activist, material from this pamphlet has been used at Pendle Hill in study groups in "Nonviolence and Social Change."

"John Woolman offers us a detailed and continuing record, over many years, of inner motions and outer actions which connects with our own experience. The inner motions which he reports are much like the inner motions which many of us know and feel, and what he does in response to them is within the range of what we do, or at least consider doing."

"What I see Woolman offering to the spiritual seeker is a detailed report of his own search, which shows a coherent and balanced pattern in which inner and outer are connected in life and practice. He shows us how to carry the motions of love we feel into the workings of the world. He does not withdraw from that world, nor does he become so fixated on results that he tramples over others, and he does what he does by addressing the witness in others."

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