To the study of Quakerism, Caroline Stephen brought the judgment of an intellectual person who came into contact with the Society of Friends at a mature age, after having closely analyzed her own position in regard to religion and the church. In Quaker Strongholds, as in her other writings, she seems to keep constantly in mind the points of view of those to whom Quakerism is new and strange and of those well-versed in its belief and practice, making a kind of bridge between them. She makes a bridge, also, between the early and the modern in Quaker thought, her candid and fearless analyses seeming in many instances to belong to our own time, rather than to that in which she wrote.
Since this is an abridgement, it has seemed necessary to confine it to Caroline Stephen�s explanation of the particular tenets which she so repeatedly asserts to be �cornerstone and foundation� of Quakerism � the faith which she so triumphantly made her own.
