Ballou died in August, 1890, and his obituary was given in an American periodical with a Christian tendency ( Religio-Philosophical Journal , August 23rd).
In this eulogistic obituary it says that Ballou was a spiritual guide of a community, that he delivered between eight and nine thousand sermons, married one thousand pairs, and wrote about five hundred articles, but not a word is said about the aim to which he devoted all his life—the word “nonresistance” is not even used.
Like all that which the Quakers have been preaching for two hundred years, like the activity of Garrison the father, the foundation of his society and periodical, and his declaration, so Ballou’s whole activity does not seem to have existed at all.
A striking example of such an ingloriousness of writings intended to elucidate nonresistance to evil, and to arraign those who do not recognize this commandment, is found in the fate of the book by the Bohemian Chelčický, which has but lately become known and has so far not yet been printed.
Soon after the publication of my book in German, I received a letter from a professor of the Prague University, which informed me of the existence of a still unpublished work by the Bohemian Chelčický, of the fifteenth century, by the name of The Net of Faith . In this work, as the professor wrote me, Chelčický about four centuries ago expressed the same view in regard to the true and the false Christianity, which I had expressed in my work, My Religion . The professor wrote to me that Chelčický’s work was for the first time to be published in Bohemian in the periodical of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. As I was unable to procure the work itself, I tried to become acquainted with what was known of Chelčický, and such information I got from a German book sent me by the same Prague professor, and from Pýpin’s History of Bohemian Literature . This is what Pýpin says: