As a friend, he was most faithful and sympathizing; and many now living can testify to the value of his friendship. Few, perhaps, have had more friends. Their affection for him was not founded so much upon gratitude for his constantly recurring favors, as upon the warm sympathy and affection with which his heart, was filled toward them and theirs.
As a citizen, his views were comprehensive, and were bounded by no lines of sectional or party feeling. He was most deeply interested in all that concerned the honor and prosperity of his country, and keenly sensitive to the injury inflicted by such measures as tended to depreciate her standing in the estimation of other nations, or of good men among her own citizens. He was a true patriot, and had adopted the views and aims of the best men of the republic in former days, while he viewed with distrust many of the popular movements of more modern times. From his father he had inherited the most profound veneration for Gen. Washington, and faith in his public policy; while the political principles of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were those alone by which he thought the permanent happiness and prosperity of the country could be secured.
As a Christian, he endeavored to walk in the footsteps of his Master. He had no taste for the discussion of those minor points of doctrine upon which good men so often differ, but embraced with all his heart the revealed truths of the Gospel, which the great body of Christians can unite in upholding. He sought those fields of labor where all can meet, rather than those which are hedged in by the dividing lines of sect and party.
He reverenced the Bible, and, from the first chapter of the Old Testament to the last chapter of the New, received it as the inspired Word of God. This was his sheet-anchor; and to doubt was, in his view, to leave a safe and peaceful haven, to embark upon an unknown ocean of danger and uncertainty.
Religion was for him a practical thing for every-day use, consisting not so much in frames and emotions as in the steady and persevering performance of the daily duties of life. His view of duty did not limit him to the common obligations of morality, but included the highest sense of duty towards God; or, as he has expressed it in one of his early letters, "to be a moral man merely, is not to be a Christian." He was an active helper in all that tended to promote the cause of Christianity among nations, as well as to promote spiritual progress among individuals. The Christian banner, in his view, covered many denominations; and, with this belief, his charities were directed to the building up of institutions under the influence of the various sects differing from that under which he himself was classed.
What has been said of John Thornton might be applied to him:
"He was a merchant renowned in his generation for a munificence more than princely. He was one of those rare men in whom the desire to relieve distress assumes the form of a master-passion. Conscious of no aims but such as may invite the scrutiny of God and man, he pursued them after his own fearless fashion, yielding to every honest impulse, choosing his associates in scorn of mere worldly precepts, and worshipping with any fellow-Christian whose heart beat in unison with his own, however inharmonious might be some of the articles of their respective creeds. His benevolence was as unsectarian as his general habits; and he stood ready to assist a beneficent design in every party, but would be the creature of none. He not only gave largely, but he gave wisely. He kept a regular account (not for ostentation, or the gratification of vanity, but for method) of every pound he gave. With him, his givings were made a matter of business, as Cowper says, in an 'Elegy' he wrote upon him,—
'Thou hadst an industry in doing good,
Restless as his who toils and sweats for food'"
Those who were not acquainted with Mr. Lawrence might suppose that his long continued ill-health, extending through a period of twenty-one years, permitted the formation of a character which few could attain who should not be called upon to pass through a similar discipline.
That the isolation from the business-world, and freedom from the cares and struggles of active life, to which most men are subjected, tended to give him a more just and dispassionate view of his relations to God, as well as to his fellow-men, cannot be doubted.