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diff --git a/57726-0.txt b/57726-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5548a69 --- /dev/null +++ b/57726-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1857 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57726 *** + + + + + + + + + + THE QUAKERS + PAST AND PRESENT + + + + + THE QUAKERS + PAST AND PRESENT + + + BY + DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON + + + "The Quaker religion ... is something which + it is impossible to overpraise." + + WILLIAM JAMES: + + _The Varieties of Religious + Experience_ + + + NEW YORK + DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY + 214-220 EAST 23RD STREET + + + + + FOREWORD + + +The following chapters are primarily an attempt at showing the position +of the Quakers in the family to which they belong--the family of the +mystics. + +In the second place comes a consideration of the method of worship and +of corporate living laid down by the founder of Quakerism, as best +calculated to foster mystical gifts and to strengthen in the community +as a whole that sense of the Divine, indwelling and accessible, to which +some few of his followers had already attained, and of which all those +he had gathered round him had a dawning apprehension. + +The famous "peculiarities" of the Quakers fall into place as following +inevitably from their central belief. + +The ebb and flow of that belief, as it is found embodied in the history +of the Society of Friends, has been dealt with as fully as space has +allowed. + +My thanks are due to Mr. Norman Penney, F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S., Librarian +of the Friends' Reference Library, for a helpful revision of my +manuscript. + + D. M. R. + + LONDON, + 1914. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + I. THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM 1 + II. THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 16 + III. THE QUAKER CHURCH 33 + IV. THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM 52 + V. QUAKERISM IN AMERICA 61 + VI. QUAKERISM AND WOMEN 71 + VII. THE PRESENT POSITION 81 + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 94 + BIBLIOGRAPHY 94 + NOTE 96 + + + + + THE QUAKERS PAST AND PRESENT + + + + + CHAPTER I + THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM + + +The Quakers appeared about a hundred years after the decentralization of +authority in theological science. The Reformers' dream of a remade +church had ended in a Europe where, over against an alienated parent, +four young Protestant communions disputed together as to the doctrinal +interpretation of the scriptures. Within these communions the goal +towards which the breaking away from the Roman centre had been an +unconscious step was already well in view. It was obvious that the +separated churches were helpless against the demands arising in their +midst for the right of individual interpretation where they themselves +drew such widely differing conclusions. The Bible, abroad amongst the +people for the first time, helped on the loosening of the hold of +stereotyped beliefs. Independent groups appeared in every direction. + +In England, the first movement towards the goal of "religious liberty" +was made by a body of believers who declared that a national church was +against the will of God. Catholic in ideal, democratic in form, they set +their hope upon a world-wide Christendom of self-governing +congregations. They increased with great rapidity, suffered persecution, +martyrdom, and temporary dispersal.[1] + +Following on this first challenge came the earliest stirring of a more +conservative catholicism. Fed by such minds as that of Nicholas Farrer, +grieving in scholarly seclusion over the ravages of the Protestantisms, +it found expression in Laud's effort to restore the broken continuity of +tradition in the English church, to reintroduce beauty into her +services, and, while preserving her identity as a developing national +body, to keep open a rearward window to the light of accumulated +experience and teaching. But hardly-won freedom saw popery in his every +act, and his final absolutism, his demand for executive power +independent of Parliament, wrecked the effort and cost him his life. + +[Footnote 1: The Brownists; now represented in the Congregational +Union.] + +These characteristic neo-Protestantisms were obscured at the moment of +the appearance of the Quakers by the opening in this country of the full +blossom of the Genevan theology. The fate of the Presbyterian system, +which covered England like a network, and had threatened during the +shifting policies of Charles's long struggle for absolute monarchy to +become the established church of England, was sealed, it is true, when +Cromwell's Independent army checked the proceedings of a Presbyterian +House of Commons; but the Calvinian reading of the scriptures had +prevailed over the popular imagination, and in the Protectorate Church +where Baptists, Independents, and Presbyterians held livings side by +side with the clergy of the Protestant Establishment, where the use of +the Prayer-Book was forbidden and the scriptures were at last supreme, +the predominant type of religious culture was what we have since learned +to call Puritanism. In 1648 Puritanism had reached its great moment. Its +poet[2] was growing to manhood, tortured by the uncertainty of election, +half-maddened by his vision of the doom hanging over a sin-stained +world. + +But far away beneath the institutional confusions and doctrinal dilemmas +of this post-Reformation century fresh life was welling up. The +unsatisfied religious energy of the maturing Germanic peoples, groping +its own way home, had produced Boehme and his followers, and filled the +by-ways of Europe with mystical sects. Outwards from free Holland--whose +republic on a basis of religious toleration had been founded in +1579--spread the Anabaptists, Mennonites, and others. Coming to England, +they reinforced the native groups--the Baptists, Familists, and +Seekers--who were preaching personal religion up and down the country +under the protection of Cromwell's indulgence for "tender" consciences, +and found their characteristically English epitome and spokesman in +George Fox. + +[Footnote 2: Bunyan was born in 1628, four years later than Fox.] + +Born in an English village[3] of homely pious parents,[4] who were both +in sympathy with their thoughtful boy, his genius developed harmoniously +and early. + +Until his twentieth year he worked with a shoemaker, who was also a +dealer in cattle and wool, and proved his capacity for business life. +Then a crisis came, brought about by an incident meeting him as he went +about his master's affairs. He had been sent on business to a fair, and +had come upon two friends, one of them a relative, who tried to draw him +into a bout of health-drinking. George, who had had his one glass, laid +down a groat and went home in a state of great disturbance, for he knew +both these men to be professors of religion. He grappled with the +difficulty at once. He spent the hours of that night in pacing up and +down his room, in prayer and crying out, in sitting still and +reflecting. In the light of the afternoon's incidents he saw and felt +for the first time the average daily life of the world about him, "how +young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth," +all that gave meaning to life for him had no existence in their lives, +even in the lives of professing Christians. He was thrown in on himself. +If God was not with those who professed him, where was He? + +[Footnote 3: In 1624, at Drayton-in-the-Clay, in Leicestershire.] + +[Footnote 4: His father, a weaver by trade, and known as "Righteous +Christer," is described by Fox as a man "with a seed of God in him"; his +mother, Mary Lago, as being "of the stock of the martyrs."] + +The labours and gropings of the night simplified before the dawn came to +the single conviction that he must "forsake all, both young and old, and +keep out of all, and be a stranger unto all." There was no hesitating. +He went forth at once and wandered for four years up and down the +Midland counties seeking for light, for truth, for firm ground in the +quicksands of disintegrating faiths, for a common principle where men +seemed to pull every way at once. He sought all the "professors" of +every shade and listened to all, but would associate with none, shunning +those who sought him out: "I was afraid of them, for I was sensible they +did not possess what they professed." He went to hear the great +preachers of the day in London and elsewhere, but found no light in +them. Now and again amongst obscure groups to which hope drew him one +and another were struck by his sayings, and responded to him, but he +shrank from their approval. The clergy of different denominations in the +neighbourhood of his home, where he returned for a while in response to +the disquietude of his parents, could not understand his difficulties. +How should they? He was perfectly sound in every detail of the Calvinian +doctrine. They could make nothing of a distress so unlike that of other +pious young Puritans. Orthodox as he was, there is no sign in his +outpourings of any concern for his soul, not a word of fear, nor any +sense of sin, though he heartily acknowledges temptations, a divided +nature, "two thirsts." He begs the priests to tell him the meaning of +his troubled state--not as one doubting, but rather with the restiveness +of one under a bondage, keeping him from that which he knows to be +accessible. + +One minister advised tobacco and psalm-singing, another physic and +bleeding. His family urged him to marry. + +His distress grew, amounting sometimes to acute agony of mind: "As I +cannot declare the great misery I was in, it was so great and heavy upon +me, so neither can I set forth the mercies of God unto me in all my +misery." Brief intermissions there were when he was "brought into such a +joy that I thought I had been in Abraham's bosom." + +But on the whole his wretchedness steadily increased. None could help. +The written word had ceased to comfort him. He wandered days and nights +in solitary places taking no food. + +Illumination came at last--a series of convictions dawning in the mind +that truth cannot be found in outward things, and, finally, the moment +of release--the sense of which he tries to convey to us under the +symbolism of a voice making his heart leap for joy--leaving him remade +in a new world. + +Two striking passages from his Journal may serve to illustrate this +period of his experience: "The Lord did gently lead me along, and did +let me see His love, which was endless and eternal, and surpasseth all +the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history +or books ... and I was afraid of all company, for I saw them perfectly +where they were, through the love of God which let me see myself"; and, +again, as he struggles to express the change that had taken place for +him: "Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the +paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave another +smell unto me than before beyond what words can utter." + +Two years of intense life followed. He came back to the world with his +message for all men, all churches, with no new creed to preach, but to +call all men to see their creeds in the light of the living experience +which had first produced them, to live themselves in that light shining +pure and original within each one of them, the light which wrote the +scriptures and founded the churches; to refuse to be put off any longer +with "notions," mere doctrines, derivative testimonies obscuring the +immediate communication of life to the man himself. + +This message--the message of the inner light of immediate inspiration, +of the existence in every man of some measure of the Spirit of God--the +Quakers laid, as it were, side by side with the doctrines of the +Puritanism amidst which they were born. They did not escape the absolute +dualism of the thought of their day. They believed man to be shut up in +sin, altogether evil, and they declared at the same time that there is +in every man that which will, if he yields to its guidance, lift him +above sin, is able to make him here and now free and sinless. The +essential irreconcilability of the two positions does not appear to have +troubled them. + +This belief in the divine light within the individual soul was, of +course, nothing new. The Roman Church had taught it. Instruction as to +the conditions whereby it may have its way with a man was the end of her +less worldly labours. + +The Protestants taught it; the acceptance of salvation, the birth of the +light in the darkness of the individual soul was the message of the +Book. But George Fox and his followers claimed that the measure of +divine life, nesting, as it were, within the life of each man, was +universal, was before churches and scriptures, and had always led +mankind. Yet it was not to be confused with the natural light of reason +of the Socinians and Deists, for the first step towards union with it +was a control of all creaturely activities, a total abandonment of each +and every claim of the surface intelligence--"notions," as the Quakers +called them--a process of retirement into the innermost region of being, +into "the light," "the seed," "the ground of the soul," "that which hath +convinced you." + +The God of the Quakers, then, was no literary obsession coming to meet +them along the pages of history; no traditional immensity visiting man +once, and silent ever since, to be momentarily invoked from infinite +spatial distance by external means of grace; no "notion," no mere +metaphysical absolute, but a living process, a changing, changeless +absolute, a breath controlling all things, an amazing birth within the +soul. Tradition they valued as a record of God's dealings with man. The +Bible held for them no enfeebling spell. Their controversial writings +have, indeed, anticipated, as has recently been pointed out,[5] the +methods of the higher criticism; they touch on the synoptic problems; +they ask their biblicist opponents whether they are talking of original +autographs, transcribed copies, or translations. They rally them: "Who +was it that said to the Spirit of God, O Spirit, blow no more, inspire +no more men, make no more prophets from Ezra's days downward till +Christ, and from John's days downward for ever? But cease, be silent, +and subject thyself, as well as all evil spirits, to be tried by the +standard that's made up of some of the writings of some of those men +thou hast moved to write already; and let such and such of them as are +bound up in the bibles now used in England be the only means of +measuring all truth for ever." + +[Footnote 5: William C. Braithwaite: _The Beginnings of Quakerism._ +(Macmillan, 1912.)] + +The Incarnation was to them the one instance of a perfect shining of the +light, a perfect realization of the fusion of human and divine, the full +indwelling of the Godhead, which was their goal. The incidents of that +life shone clear to them in the light of what went forward in themselves +in proportion as they struggled to live in the spirit. + +But neither was this claim, the assertion of an immediate pathway to +reality within the man himself, anything new in the world. Each nation, +each great period of civilization, has produced individuals, or groups +separated by time and creed, but unanimous in their testimony as to its +existence. + +The giants among them stand upon the highest peaks of human +civilization. Their art or method in debased or arrested forms is to be +found in every valley. They have been called "mystics," and it is to the +classical century of European mysticism, to the group (of which Tauler +was the mainstay) calling themselves the "Friends of God," that we must +go for an outbreak of mystical genius akin to that which took place in +seventeenth-century England. Both groups made war on the official +Christianity of their day, and strove to relate Christendom afresh to +its true source of vitality, to re-form the church on a spiritual basis. +The testimony, the end, and the means for the attainment of the end were +the same in both. The immense distinction between them arose from the +difference in the conditions under which the two ventures were made. The +fourteenth-century mystics opened their eyes in a congenial environment, +in a church whose symbolism, teaching, and ordinances, were a coherent +reflection of their own experiences, stood justified by their personal +knowledge of the "law" of spiritual development, the conditions of +advance in the way on which their feet were set. + +They owed much to tradition, to their theological studies, to their +familiarity with the recorded experiences of holy men; they recognized +their church as the transmitter of this tradition, as the guardian of +saintly testimony on the subject of their art. They recognized her, not +as an end but as a means, not as a prison, but as a home for all the +human family, keeping open her doors, on the one hand, to the +unconverted, providing, on the other, a suitable medium, the right +atmosphere and opportunities, whereby pilgrims in the spiritual life +might develop, to their full, possibilities in advance of the common +measure of the group. They chid her, they exposed abuses, and called for +reforms; they challenged the "carnal conception" of the sacraments, and +denounced the loose lives of her dignitaries; but they remained in the +church. + +The Quakers, on the contrary, appeared when few of those who were in +authority were able to understand what had arisen in their midst. Fox +brought his challenge by the wayside; untrammelled by tradition, +fearless in inexperience, he endowed all men with his own genius, and +called upon the whole world to join him in the venture of faith. + + + + + CHAPTER II + THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS + + + I + +When Fox came back to the world from his lonely wanderings, he had no +thought of setting up a church in opposition to, or in any sort of +competition with, existing churches. His message was for all, +worshipping under whatever name or form; his sole concern to reveal to +men their own wealth, to wean them to turn from words and ceremonials, +from all merely outward things, to seek first the inner reality. Many of +the Puritan leaders were brought by their contact with Fox to a more +vital attitude with regard to the faith in which they had been brought +up. Several of the magistrates before whom he and his followers were +continually being haled, unable after hours of examination and +discussion not only to find any cause of offence in these men, but +unable, also, to resist the appeal of their strength and sincerity, +espoused their cause with every degree of warmth, from whole-hearted +adherence to lifelong, unflagging interest and sympathy. But the general +attitude, from the panic-stricken behaviour of those who regarded the +Quakers as black magicians, incarnations of the Evil One, or Jesuits in +disguise, to the grave concern of the Calvinist divines, who saw in the +Quaker movement a profane attack upon the foundation-rock of Holy +Scripture, was one of fear--fear based, as is usual, upon +misunderstanding. A concise reasoned formulation of the Quaker +standpoint, though it may be picked out from the writings of Fox and the +early apologists, was to come, and then only imperfectly, when the +scholarly Robert Barclay joined the group; meanwhile, the sometimes +rather amorphous enthusiasm, the "mysterious meetings," the apocalyptic +claims and denunciations--meaningless to those who had no key--stood as +a barrier between the "children of the light" and the religious +fellowship of the Commonwealth church. Fear is clearly visible at the +root of the instant and savage persecution of the Quakers, not only by +the mob, but by official Calvinism, throughout the chapter of its power. +The keynote was struck by the local authorities at Nottingham, who +responded to Fox's plea for the Inner Light during a Sunday morning's +service in the parish church by putting him in prison. It is usually +maintained that his offence was brawling, but it is difficult to +reconcile this reading with the facts of the case. Theological +disputations were the most popular diversions of the day. There were no +newspapers, nor, in the modern sense of the word, either "politics" or +books; popular literature consisted largely of religious pamphlets; +amateur theologians abounded; the public meetings arousing the maximum +of enthusiasm were those gathered for the duels of well-known +controversialists; while speaking in church after the minister had +finished was not only recognized, but far from unusual. In this instance +the minister had preached from the text, "We have also a more sure word +of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light +that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise +in your hearts," and had developed his theme in the sense that the sure +word of prophecy was the record of the Scripture. Fox--whom we may +imagine already much the man William Penn later on described for us as +"no busybody or self-seeker, neither touchy nor critical ... so meek, +contented, modest, easy, steady, tender, it was a pleasure to be in his +company.... I never saw him out of his place or not a match for every +service and occasion; for in all things he acquitted himself like a +man--yea, a strong man, a new and heavenly-minded man--civil beyond all +forms of breeding in his behaviour"--rose with his challenge, threw down +the gauntlet to biblicism, and declared that the Light was not the +Scriptures, but the Spirit of God.... + +But, as we have seen, religious England was not wholly Puritan. Fox's +world was waiting for him. From every denomination and every rank of +society the Children of the Light came forth. Very many--notably the +nuclear members of small independent groups--had reached the Quaker +experience before he came. The beliefs and customs which have since been +identified with the Society of Friends were already in existence in the +group of Separated Baptists at Mansfield in Nottingham, which formed in +face of the closed doors of official religion the centre of the little +Quaker church. The singleness of type, moreover, in the missionary work +of the early Quakers, extending, as it did, over the whole of +Christendom, carried on independently by widely differing +natures--"narrow" nonconformist ministers, prosperous business men, army +officers and privates, shepherds, cloth-makers, gentlewomen and domestic +servants, under every variety of circumstance, would be enough in itself +to reveal Fox as the child of his time. But as we watch the movement, as +we see it assailed by those dangers arising wherever systems and +doctrines are left behind and reason gets to work upon the facts of a +man's own experience; as we find the fresh life threatening here to +crystallize into formal idealism, there to flow away into pantheism or +antinomianism, again to pour into a dead sea of placid illumination; as +we see the little church surviving these dangers and continually +reviving, we recognize that Fox was more than the liberator of mystical +activity. He was its steersman. His constructive genius cast the mould +which has enabled this experiment to escape the fate overtaking similar +efforts. Seventeenth-century mysticism in France[6] and Spain was +succumbing to Quietism. Molinos, the Spanish monk, a contemporary of +Fox, popularized a debased form of Teresian mysticism, formulating it as +a state "where the soul loses itself in the soft and savoury sleep of +nothingness, and enjoys it knows not what"; while in France the practice +of passive contemplation had gained in the religious life of the time a +popularity which even the mystical genius of Madame Guyon--who herself, +it is true, lays in her writings over-much stress upon this, the first +step of the mystic way--failed to disturb. + +[Footnote 6: If we except the doomed Port Royalists.] + +For Fox, we cannot keep too clearly in mind, the relationship of the +soul to the Light was a life-process; the "inner" was not in +contradistinction to the outer. For him, the great adventure, the +abstraction from all externality, the purging of the self, the Godward +energizing of the lonely soul, was in the end, as it has been in all the +great "actives" among the mystics, the most practical thing in the +world, and ultimately fruitful in life-ends. He surprises us by the +intensity of his objective vision, by the number of modern movements he +anticipates: popular education; the abolition of slavery; the +substitution of arbitration for warfare amongst nations, and for +litigation between individuals; prison reform, and the revising of +accepted notions as to the status of women. He delights us with the +strong balance of his godliness, his instant suspicion of religiosity +and emotionalism, his dealing with those extremes of physical and mental +disturbance which are apt in unstable natures to accompany any sudden +flooding of the field of consciousness; his discouragement of ranting +and "eloquence," of self-assertion and infallibility--of anything +indicating lack of control, or militating against the full operation of +the light. + +But, enormously powerful as was the influence of Fox upon the movement +which he liberated and steered, it was at the same time exceptionally +free--even in relation to the comparatively imitative mass of the Quaker +church--from that limitation which justifies the famous description of +an institution as the lengthened shadow of a man. The partial escape of +the Quaker church from this almost universal fate of institutions +becomes clear when we fix our attention on the essential nature of Fox's +"discovery" and what was involved in his offering it to the laity, when +we note that within the Quaker borders there arose that insistence on +the "originality" of life on all levels that has, at last, in our own +day, made its appearance in official philosophy. + + + II + +The history of the Quaker experiment reveals in England three main +movements: the first corresponding roughly to the life of Fox, and +covering the period of expansion, persecution,[7] and establishment; the +second, which may be called the retreat of Quakerism, the quiet +cultivation of Quaker method; and the third, the modern evangelistic +revival. + +The first rapid spreading in the North of England was materially helped +by the establishment, in 1652, of a centre at Swarthmoor Hall, near +Ulverston in Lancashire, the property of Judge Fell and his wife +Margaret, good churchpeople, much given to religious exercises, and +holding open house for travelling ministers of all denominations. The +capture of this stronghold gave the movement a northern headquarters, +and a post-office. Margaret Fell, converted by Fox at the age of +thirty-eight, built the rest of her life into the movement; seventeen +years later--more than ten years after the death of her husband--she +became Fox's wife. Her voluminous and carefully preserved correspondence +with the leading missionaries of the group alone forms almost a journal +of the early years of the Society.[8] + +[Footnote 7: Toleration Act passed 1689. Fox died two years later.] + +The whole of the countryside at Swarthmoor, whose minister Fox had +repudiated, finding him filled with a ranting spirit, high words and +"notions"--"full of filth," as he tersely notes in his Journal--came out +against him. + +He was given up to justice, ordered to be whipped, and then handed over +to the mercy of the mob, who beat him until he fell senseless. +Presently, rising up, he bade them strike again. A mason numbed his arm +with a blow from a staff; the arm recovered instantly under the power of +his outgoing love for his persecutors. Incidents of this kind--of +beatings, stonings, and assaults of a more disgusting nature--are +typical of the treatment received with unvarying sweetness by the Quaker +missionaries, both in England and in America. On several occasions Fox's +life was attempted. + +[Footnote 8: The bulk of the "Fell" correspondence is preserved at the +headquarters of the Society of Friends, Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, +E.C.] + +Persecutions of all kinds, moreover, fell far more heavily upon the +Quakers than upon other nonconformists, owing to their persistence in +holding their meetings openly--meeting in the street if their premises +were burned down, the children meeting together when the parents were +imprisoned. Fines, flogging, pillory, the loathsomeness of damp and +uncleansed dungeons, the brutality of gaolers, left their serenity +unmoved; the exposure of women in the stocks for seventeen hours on a +November night confirmed their faith. In the Restoration period +particularly, when the strong influence of the religious soldiers of the +Commonwealth--many of whom, including Cromwell, were able to grasp the +tendency of Fox's conception--was removed, persecution became +methodical. Some three thousand odd had suffered before the King came +back, twenty-one dying as a result of cruel treatment. Three hundred +died during the Restoration period, and they were in prison thousands at +a time, for although Charles II., once the leaders had made clear their +lack of political ambition, promised them full freedom from disturbance, +the panic of fear of sectaries of all kinds which followed the Fifth +Monarchy outbreak in London opened an era of persecution and +imprisonment. Enormous sums of money were extracted from them under +various pretexts; the Quaker and Conventicle Acts were used against them +with ingenious brutality, an inducement in the shape of the fine imposed +being held out to informers. The Militia Act was, of course, a +convenient weapon, and their refusal to pay tithes meant a perpetual +series of heavy distraints. It was a common trick with judges and +magistrates when they could find no legitimate ground of complaint, to +tender to Quakers the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and turn them +into law-breakers on the ground of their refusal to swear. Wales offered +the most ferocious persecution suffered by them in these islands, but +the Welsh converts furnished Pennsylvania with a fine group of vigorous, +industrious colonists. + +In 1654 the "new doctrine" was brought to the South by some sixty +travelling missionaries. The Universities, inflamed, no doubt, in +advance by the report of the Quaker scorn of wisdom and high +"notions"--having already revenged themselves upon four Quaker girls who +were the first to "publish truth" in the colleges and churches, +Cambridge following up the savagery of the students by public flogging, +Oxford by ducking--had little but rage and evil treatment for the +missionaries. Amongst the few converts made in Oxford, however, was the +man who, in his turn, brought William Penn into the Quaker fold. In +pious London, sunk in theological strife, the obscure Waiters, Ranters, +and Seekers were the most favourable soil. + +The Quakers, however, worked everywhere, ploughing up the land, calling +men to cease the strife of words, and to wait before the Lord for living +experience. + +They had come down in June, and in August were so far settled as to +undertake expansion east and west. The east, a stronghold of Puritanism, +was less receptive than the western country, where Seekers abounded and +convincements took place by hundreds. + +Ireland was broken into by William Edmondson, an ex-Cromwellian soldier. +The country was in process of being "settled" by English colonists, who, +most of them being either Baptists or Independents, were already a +sufficient source of irritation, and the progress of the new message was +slow, and met with a persecution, borrowing much of its bitterness from +the state of nervous fear prevailing amongst the civil and military +authorities. For a time there was an attempt systematically to exclude +Friends from the country, but it gave way before the zeal and simplicity +of the preachers, and Quakerism, gaining most of its early converts from +the army, became in the end a rapidly expanding force. + +In Scotland Quaker teaching progressed slowly. By 1656 the Continent had +been attacked, Holland and Germany, Austria and Hungary, Adrianople, +where a young girl who had gone out alone reasoned with the Sultan, and +was told that she spoke truth, and asked to remain in the country; +Rome--where John Love was given up by the Jesuits to the Inquisition, +examined by the Pope, and hanged--the Morea, and Smyrna, and Alexandria +were visited. Many attempts were made to land at the Levantine ports, +most of which were, however, frustrated by English consuls and +merchants; George Robinson reached Jerusalem, and came near to meeting +his death at the hands of the Turks; and the first isolated attempt had +been made in the West Indies and America. These activities and +expansions were helped forward and confirmed by Fox during the intervals +between his many imprisonments. He spent altogether some six years in +prison. For the rest, his life was one long missionary enterprise, and +during his detentions he worked unceasingly. + +He early recognized the need of a definite church organization, and +matured a system whose final acceptance by the society as a whole was +helped on by an incident occurring during his eight months' confinement +in Launceston gaol.[9] James Nayler, one of the sweetest and ablest of +Quaker writers and preachers, of an acutely "suggestible" temperament, +and less stable than his followers, unsettled by the success attending +his work both in the north and the south and by the adulations of some +of the more excitable of his fellow-workers, permitted on the occasion +of his entry into Bristol a triumphant procession, the singing of +hosannas, and Messianic worship. It is noteworthy that of the thousand +odd Quakers in Bristol at the time not one took any part in the +outbreak. The matter was taken up by Parliament, a committee was +appointed, and Nayler came near being put to death for blasphemy. He +suffered in the pillory, was whipped through London and Bristol, his +tongue was bored, his forehead branded, and he was kept in prison for +three years. He made full public recantation of his errors, and enjoyed +full communion with the society which had never repudiated him, +recognizing even in his time of aberration the fine spiritual character +of the man. This incident, loaded with publicity, brought much +discouragement to Friends; but it also showed them their need of the +organization and discipline insisted upon by Fox. And so the Quaker +church--the most flexible of all religious organizations--came into +being. + +[Footnote 9: Part of which was spent in a dungeon reserved for witches +and murderers, and left uncleansed year after year.] + + + + + CHAPTER III + THE QUAKER CHURCH + + +At the heart of the Quaker church is "meeting"--the silent Quaker +meeting so long a source of misunderstanding to those outside the body, +so clearly illuminated now for all who care to glance that way, by the +light of modern psychology. We have now at our disposal, marked out with +all the wealth of spatial terminology characteristic of that science, a +rough sketch of what takes place in our minds in moments of silent +attention. We are told, for instance, that when in everyday life our +attention is arrested by something standing out from the cinematograph +show of our accustomed surroundings, we fix upon this one point, and +everything else fades away to the "margin" of consciousness. The "thing" +which has had the power of so arresting us, of making a breach in the +normal, unnoticed rhythm of the senses, allows our "real self"--our +larger and deeper being, to which so many names have been given--to flow +up and flood the whole field of the surface intelligence. The typical +instances of this phenomenon are, of course, the effect upon the +individual of beauty on all its levels--the experience known as falling +in love and the experience of "conversion." + +With most of us, beyond these more or less universal experiences, the +times of illumination are intermittent, fluctuating, imperfectly +accountable, and uncontrollable. The "artist" lives to a greater or less +degree in a perpetual state of illumination, in perpetual communication +with his larger self. But he remains within the universe constructed for +him by his senses, whose rhythm he never fully transcends. His thoughts +are those which the veil of sense calls into being, and though that veil +for him is woven far thinner above the mystery of life than it is for +most of us, it is there. Imprisoned in beauty, he is content to dwell, +reporting to his fellows the glory that he sees. + +The religious genius, as represented pre-eminently by the great +mystics--those in whom the sense of an ultimate and essential goodness, +beauty, and truth, is the dominant characteristic--have consciously bent +all their energies to breaking through the veil of sense, to making a +journey to the heart of reality, to winning the freedom of the very +citadel of Life itself. Their method has invariably included what--again +borrowing from psychology--we must call the deliberate control of all +external stimuli, a swimming, so to say, against the whole tide of the +surface intelligence, and this in no negative sense, no mere sinking +into a state of undifferentiated consciousness, but rather, as we have +seen with Fox, a setting forth to seek something already +found--something whose presence is in some way independent of the normal +thinking and acting creature, something which has already proclaimed +itself in moments of heightened consciousness--in the case of the +religious temperament at "conversion." + +Silence, bodily and mental, is necessarily the first step in this +direction. There is no other way of entering upon the difficult +enterprise of transcending the rhythms of sense, and this, and nothing +else, has been invariably the first step taken by the mystic upon his +pilgrimage. Skirting chasms of metaphor, abysses of negation and fear, +he has held along this narrowest of narrow ways. + +But the early Quakers and the old-time mystics knew nothing of +scientific psychology. They arrived "naturally" at their method of +seeking in silence what modern thought is calling "the intuitive +principle of action"--"the independent spiritual life fulfilling itself +within humanity"--"the unformulated motive which is the greater part of +mind." Like every seeker, on whatever level, they were led by feeling. +Feeling passed into action. Thought followed in due course, and was +deposited as doctrine. They spoke, groping for symbols, of "the seed," +"the light," "the true birth." In other words--lest we go too far with +psychology's trinity of thought, feeling, and will as separable +activities "doing the will"--they "knew the doctrine." + +From this standpoint of obedience to the "inner light" they found +within, they "understood" what they saw around them, and brought a fresh +revelation to the world. "I was afraid of all company," says Fox during +his early trials, "for I saw them perfectly where they were, through the +love of God which let me see myself." For them the keynote of life is +what an independent uninstructed French mystic, Brother Lawrence,[10] +has called "the practice of the Presence of God," and the man to whom +the practical spade-work of the mystics, the art of introversion and +contemplation, the practice (very variously interpreted) of purgation, +the pathway that leads to "unknowing" and to union with what men have +called God, has not been entered on as a matter of living experience, is +no Quaker, no matter how pious, how philanthropically orthodox, how +"religious" he may be. In a meeting for worship he is a foreign body, an +unconverted person. + +Side by side with the meeting for worship is the business meeting--a +monthly meeting which is the executive unit of the society. It is held +under the superintendence of a clerk, whose duty it is to embody the +results of discussions in a series of minutes (voting and applause are +unknown), and to send these up to the larger quarterly meeting of the +district--a group of monthly meetings--delegates being appointed by each +monthly meeting to secure representation. The meetings are open to all +members and to outsiders on application. Most local questions are +settled by the quarterly meetings, whose deliberations are on the same +plan as those of the monthly meetings. Questions affecting the society +as a whole, and matters otherwise of wide importance, go up to Yearly +Meeting--the General Assembly of the Society--where, as in the +subordinate meetings, decisions are reached by means of a taking by the +clerk of the general "sense" of the gathering after free discussion. The +decisions of Yearly Meeting are final. It issues periodically a Book of +Discipline, in which are embodied, in the form of epistles and other +documents, the general attitude of the society as a whole in matters of +belief and conduct. A number of sub-committees are perpetually at work +for special ends--social, philanthropic, etc.--and there is attached to +Yearly Meeting a standing committee known as the Meeting for Sufferings, +established in 1675 in the interest of the victims of persecution. It is +composed of representatives of quarterly meetings and of certain +officers. It is always engaged in the interest, not only of members of +the Quaker body in difficult circumstances, but of sufferers all over +the world. It does an enormous amount of unpublished work. Notorious, of +course, is the history of the party of Quakers who arrived in Paris on +the raising of the siege[11] with food and funds for the famine-stricken +town; less known is the constant quiet assistance, such as that rendered +to famine and plague districts and at the seat of war in various parts +of the world. There are two offices in the Quaker body: that of Elder, +whose duty it is to use discretion in acting as a restraining or +encouraging influence with younger members in their ministry; and that +of Overseer, exercising a general supervision over members of their +meeting, admonishing them, if it should be necessary, as to the payment +of just debts; the friendly settlement of "differences" about outward +things; the discouraging and, as far as possible, restraining legal +proceedings between members; "dealing" with any who may be conducting +themselves, either in business or in private life, in a way such as to +bring discredit upon their profession; caring for the poor, securing +maintenance for them where necessary, and assisting them to educate +their children. When any person has been found to be specially helpful +in a meeting, and his or her ministry is recognized over a considerable +period of time as being a true ministry, exercised "in the spirit," such +a one is, after due deliberation, "acknowledged" or "recorded" as a +"minister." This acknowledgment, however, confers no special status upon +the individual, and implies no kind of appointment to preach or +otherwise to exercise any special function in the society. There is, +apparently, to-day a growing feeling against even this slight +recognition of ministry as also against the custom hitherto prevailing +of the special "bench" for Elders, which is usually on a raised dais, +and facing the meeting. Men and women work, both in government and in +ministry, side by side. Until the year 1907 they held their Yearly +Meeting separately,[12] with occasional joint sittings. Since then all +Yearly Meetings are held jointly, though the women's meetings are still +held for certain purposes. + +[Footnote 10: Nicholas Hermann.] + +[Footnote 11: 1870.] + +The superficial structure of the society has existed, together with its +founder's system of the methodical recording of births, marriages, and +deaths, much as we know it to-day from the beginning. + +The distinctive Quaker teaching--with its two main points, the direct +communication of truth to a man's own soul: the presence, in other +words, of a "seed of God" in every man; and the possibility here and now +of complete freedom from sin, together with the many subsidiary +testimonies, such as that against war, oaths, the exclusion of women +from the ministry, etc., depending from these points--has also survived +through many crises, and, in spite of the perpetual danger of being +overwhelmed by the Calvinism amidst which it was born, and which to this +day takes large toll of the society, and perpetually threatens the whole +group, is still represented in its original purity. + +[Footnote 12: See chapter on Quakerism and Women.] + +The Quakers have never, in spite of their deprecation of the written +word and their insistence on the secondariness of even the highest +"notions" and doctrines, been backward in defending their faith. They +sat at the feet of no man, nor did they desire that any man should sit +at theirs; but when they met, not merely at the hands of the wilder +sectaries, but from sober, godly people, with accusations of blasphemy, +when they were told that they denied Christ and the Scriptures, they +rose up and justified themselves. They were fully equal to those who +attacked them in the savoury vernacular of the period, in apocalyptic +metaphor, in trouncings and denunciations. Bunyan, their relentless +opponent throughout, is thus apostrophized by Burrough: "Alas for thee, +John Bunion! thy several months' travail in grief and pain is a +fruitless birth, and perishes as an untimely fig, and its praise is +blotted out among men, and it's passed away as smoke." But throughout +the vehemence of the Friends' controversial writings runs the sense of +fair play--the fearlessness of truth; the spirit, so to say, of +tolerance of every belief in the midst of their intolerance of an +"unvital" attitude in the believer. Their positive attitude to life, +their grand affirmation, redeems much that on other grounds seems +regrettable. + +By the time the classical apologist of Quakerism--Robert Barclay, a +member of an ancient Scottish family, liberally educated at Aberdeen +College and in Paris, who had on his conversion forced himself to ride +through the streets of his city in sackcloth and ashes--had published +his book,[13] any justification of Quakerism had, from the point of view +of the laity at large, ceased to be necessary. They had had some thirty +years' experience of the fruits of the doctrine; they knew the Quakers +as neighbours; had scented something of the sweet fragrance of their +austerity; had wondered at their independence of happenings, their +freedom from fear, their centralized strength, their picking their way, +so to say, amongst the externalities of life with the calm assurance of +those who hold a clue where most men blunder, driven by fear or selfish +desire. They knew them, moreover, as untiringly available outside their +own circle on behalf of every sort of distress. The custodians, amateur +and official, of theology still preyed upon them, though many of these +were, no doubt, disarmed by the Puritan orthodoxy of the background upon +which Barclay's rationale of the Quaker's attitude is wrought. + +[Footnote 13: _An Apology for the True Christian Divinity._ 1678.] + +There is ample evidence that he was widely read, both in England and +abroad, and the fact that no one took up the challenge, though Baxter +and Bunyan were still living and working, may perhaps be accounted for +by the absence in the _Apology_ of any clear statement of the real +irreconcilability between Quakerism and attitudes that are primarily +doctrinal or institutional. + +He accepts the scriptures as a secondary light, saying that they may not +be esteemed the "principal ground of all Truth and Knowledge, nor yet +the adequate primary rule of faith and manners," that they cannot go +before the teaching of the very spirit that makes them intelligible. He +maintains that the closing adjuration in the Book of Revelation refers +only to that particular prophecy, and is not intended to suggest that +prophecy is at an end. The ground of knowledge is immediate revelation, +which may not be "subjected to the examination either of the outward +Testimony of the Scripture or of the Natural Reason of Man as to a more +noble or certain Rule or Touchstone." + +He considers that Augustine's doctrine of original sin was called out by +his zeal against the Pelagian exaltation of the natural light of reason. +He admits that man in sin--the natural man--can know no right; that, +therefore, the Socinians and Pelagians are convicted in exalting a +"natural light," but that, nevertheless, God in love gives universal +light, convicting of sin, and teaching if not resisted. He qualifies the +Quaker claim to the possibility of absolute present salvation from sin +by adding that there may be a falling off. + +The whole of his argument displays the impossibility of rationalizing +the position to which the Quakers had felt their way in terms of the +absolute dualism of seventeenth-century philosophy. He places the +doctrines of natural sinfulness and of universal light side by side, and +so leaves them. + +The logical instability of Quaker formulas due to the limitations of the +scientific philosophy of the day (not until the dawn of our own century +has a claim analogous to theirs been put forward on the intellectual +plane)--due, in other words, to the characteristic lagging of thought +behind life, while comparatively immaterial in the founders and leaders +of the Quaker movement, who were all mystics or mystically minded +persons, a variation of humanity, peculiar people gathered together, +with all their differences, by a common characteristic, seeing their +universe in the same terms urged towards unanimous activity--began to +bear fruit in the second generation. Mystical genius is not hereditary, +and to the comparatively imitative mass making up the later generations +the Inward Light becomes a doctrine, a conception as mechanical and +static as is the infallible Scripture to the imitative mass of the +Protestants. + +We may not, of course, apply the term "imitative" in too absolute a +sense. All have the light. We are all mystics. We all live our lives on +our various levels, at first hand. But a full recognition of this fact +need not blind us to the further fact that, while those who have +mystical genius need no chart upon their journey, most of us need a +plain way traced out for us through the desert. Most of us follow the +gleam of doctrine thrown out by first-hand experience, and cling to that +as our guide. But if the Quaker message failed as theology, and the +later generations swung back to the simpler doctrine of Protestantism +and re-enthroned an infallible Scripture, something, nevertheless, had +been done. Within the precincts of Quakerism certain paths backwards +were, so to say, permanently blocked. A fresh type of conduct was +assured. The world, the environment in which the new lives of the group +were to arise, had been changed for ever. + +The working out of the logical insecurity of the Quaker position is +interestingly shown in the person of George Keith, intellectually the +richest of the early Quakers, a man whose writings have been +acknowledged by his fellows, and would still stand if he had not left +the group, as amongst the best expositions of the Quaker attitude. + +He was a Scotch Presbyterian, and seems to have joined the Quakers while +still a student at Aberdeen University. For nearly thirty years he was +under the spell of the Quaker reading of life, and lived during this +time well in the forefront of public discussion and persecution. We find +him writing books and pamphlets in and out of prison, full of the ardour +and the joy of his discovery that there are to-day immediate +revelations, speaking with delight of the meaning and use of silence, +defending his new faith before Presbyterian divines and University +students, declaring that he found Friends "wiser than all the teachers I +ever formerly had been under." + +It was not until after the death of Fox, when the first generation of +"born Friends" was growing up, that he began to express his sense of the +danger he saw ahead. Then we find him accusing Friends of neglecting the +historic evidences of their faith, of sacrificing the outer to the +inner. His main doctrinal divergence from them was his assertion that +salvation is impossible without the knowledge of and belief in the +historic Jesus. But doctrine was not his only difficulty. He went to the +very heart of the situation. He saw that the Quakers could never become +in the world what they hoped to be--a mystical church, a body of men +swayed without let or hindrance by the Divine Spirit, pioneers for the +world upon the upward way--unless they were willing to pay the price of +the saintly office. He begged for the abolition of birthright +membership, for an open confession of faith for incoming members, that +the children of Friends should come and offer themselves as strangers, +their spiritual claims weighed and considered; that marriage should not +be celebrated according to the Quaker rites between those who were not +faithful Friends; that a sort of register should be kept of those who, +in and out of meeting, were live and consistent Christians. His view of +the situation, though put forward with a violence and bitterness which +prejudiced it with his hearers, and brought his own spiritual life under +suspicion, is largely justified by the subsequent experience of the +society. His challenge attracted a large following in America, whither +he had gone as headmaster of a Friends' school. The other leaders of the +society, both in London and Pennsylvania, denied his assertion of the +neglect by Friends of the historical Christ, while protesting that we +must believe that the light of Christ reaches every man, whether he have +heard of him or no. + +In 1692 the matter came before the Yearly Meeting, and Keith and his +large body of followers were condemned in writing of the "spirit of +reviling, railing, lying, slandering," and of mischievous and hurtful +separation. So the schism was formed, and a new sect arose, which +established many meetings amidst controversy and bitterness. The +following year London Yearly Meeting, considering his case in sittings +that sometimes lasted for days, finally declared him to have separated +himself from the holy fellowship of the Church of Christ, and disowned +him. His following gradually disappeared. For some years he travelled +about in America, visiting meetings and protesting against his +disownment. Later on he became an Independent, then an Episcopalian. He +died as a minister of the Church of England. There is a story, which +most authorities consider to be well authenticated, representing him as +saying before he died that if God had taken him while he was a Quaker, +it would have been well with him. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM + + +But the swing-back for the imitative mass to the easily grasped dogma of +an infallible Scripture did not take place at once. It appears as a +clearly accomplished fact at the time of the mid-eighteenth-century +departure of Quakerism on its second missionary effort. Meanwhile, we +must consider the intervening hundred years--the second period of +Quakerism--generally known as the century of Quietism. + +The first generation of Quakers had passed away. The great mission--the +going forth to win mankind to live by the Inner Light--had failed. +Better fitted, apparently, than any since the early Christians to +evangelize the world, catholic to the limit of the term, knowing nothing +of "heathen" nor of any "living in darkness"; a body of devotees culled +from all existing groups, hampered by no official church, unhindered by +luxury, undaunted by distance and difficulty, working in the open under +storms of persecution that had driven their companion groups to hiding +or dissolution, the Friends of Truth had failed to bring even the +churches to the acknowledgment of that on which they all ultimately +rested. Passing through European Christendom and beyond, they gathered +in their fellows, retreated to camp, gave up their original enterprise, +and became a separatist sect. The greater number of them were +flourishing tradespeople, owing their success in business largely to the +fact that, whereas trade as a whole was still subject to those passions +which had called forth in old times the law forbidding any transaction +beyond the sum of twenty pennies to be made without the presence of the +port-reeve or other responsible third person, here were men who required +neither bond nor agreement, who were as good as their word, asking one +price for their goods, and refusing to bargain. Their social life at the +beginning of the second period has been described for us by one of the +last of the earlier generation, coming late in life to English Quaker +circles after twenty years of absence. William Bromfield was a medical +man who had followed James II. to Ireland because of his goodness to the +Quakers, had served him for years in Paris as his secretary, and had +suffered imprisonment in the Bastille for conscience' sake. At one +moment we see him visiting a Trappist monastery, explaining to the +Fathers the Quaker faith and manner of living--the Trappists +acknowledging the Quakers as ripe for sainthood--and then we read of his +bitter disillusionment. He finds[14] "riches, pride, arrogancy, and +falling into parties." He notes with grief that onlookers are saying +"that the Quakers, who might have converted the world had they kept +their first faith, are now become apostates and hypocrites, as vain in +their Conversation, Habits, and Dresses, as any other people." Even the +poor tradesmen and mechanics amongst them wore periwigs: "a wicked +covering of Horse-hair and Goats'-hair." Men were "trick'd out in cock'd +Hats, their fine Cloathes with their Cuts _à la mode_ and long cravats." +Women went about with "bare neck, Hoop'd Petticoats, Lac'd Shoes, +Clock't Hose, Gold-chains, Lockets, Jewels, and fine Silks." Seeing in +these characteristics of the main mass of the second generation nothing +but the ravages of laxity, the faithful nucleus of the society +determined on a measure of reform. A missionary party, with full powers +to this end, went forth in 1760 from London Yearly Meeting. In every +separate meeting throughout the country wayward members were dealt with. +Many were reclaimed; those who showed themselves either stubborn or +indifferent were expelled from the society. Disownment for marriage +outside the group dates from this time, and it has been estimated that +by this means alone the membership was reduced by one-third. + +[Footnote 14: W. Bromfield: _The Faith of the True Christian and the +Primitive Quaker's Faith._ 1725.] + +Amongst the remnant the Quaker testimonies against extravagance in +dress, unprofitable occupations and amusements, and advices as to +simplicity in manners, were stereotyped into a code, and became matters +of strict observance. It is from this middle period that the popular +picture of Quakerism is borrowed. The Quakers went forward from their +great purgation--a strictly closed sect, carefully guarded from outside +influence, the younger generations forced either to conform to the +traditional pattern or to suffer banishment--depleted and decreasing +until the time of the modern revival taking place about the middle of +the nineteenth century. + +The deductions made by modern commentators from these data fall into two +groups. + +There is the view held generally by those standing outside the body, +whether enemies or friends, that Quakerism comes to an end with its +heroic period. The first recognize its initial catholicity, rejoice in +its successful tilting with Puritan Protestantism, but see it foredoomed +by its heresies, by its neglect of the outward symbols of the +sanctification of human life, and by the deleterious effect of the +admission of women into the ministry. The sympathizers see the early +Quakers either as the glory of seventeenth-century Christianity or the +left wing of a widespread effort to democratize formal religion--a +shifting of the centre of authority from the official custodian to the +man himself. They come regretfully upon the undisciplined ranks of the +second generation. They have no faith in the movement for reform; for +them the little church of the Spirit dwindles, lit with a faint sunset +glow of romance down towards extinction. All, both enemies and friends, +who see Quakerism end with the seventeenth century, dispose of the +modern revival by placing it within the general movement of Protestant +evangelicalism. + +The second group of deductions appears to be shared by the Quakers +themselves in so far as their present literary output is representative +of the feelings and opinions of the body. They appear to attribute their +failure to capture the world, on the one hand, to their exclusion from +the main stream of thought and culture, and, on the other, to the +inability of the early protagonists to present a formulation of their +central doctrine free from contradictions, to their subjection to the +dualistic philosophy of the day, which saddles their teaching of the +Inner Light with a tendency to neglect all external means of +enlightenment. + +Beyond these two most usual readings of the early history of Quakerism, +we find the more recent apologists of Christian mysticism, while freely +admitting the Quakers into the fellowship of the mystics, dispose +inferentially of the possibility of the "free" mystical church of which +Friends dreamed on the ground of the rarity of the religious--the still +greater rarity of the mystical temperament. In their opinion the art and +science of religion will always be carried on by specialists; the +torch-bearers will be few, though their light illumine the pathway of +the world. A world-church, therefore--a church which must cast her wings +over all in her striving to turn all towards the light--must organize +primarily in the interest of conduct as an end. In this view the Quaker +system, in so far as it invites every man to be his own church, must +always fail. + +We may, perhaps, accept something of all these readings; we may +recognize the unsuitability for the daily need of the world at large of +a church neither primarily institutional nor primarily doctrinal. We may +admit, for many minds in a Christendom generally ignorant of its own +history of an episcopally ordained and invested female clergy, the +handicap of recognized feminine ministry; we may see the full unreason +of birthright membership, and the change of base in the modern revival, +without, perhaps, being driven to conclude that England's attempt to +introduce into field and market-place the hitherto cloistered mystical +faith and practice has entirely failed. + +For amidst the stereotyped Puritanism of this middle period, with its +fear of beauty, its suspicion of all pursuits not directly utilitarian +or devotional, saints were born. The century which produced John Woolman +and the men and women who initiated and took the lion's share in the +movement for the abolition of slavery; which supplied to the cause of +science and to the medical profession, in spite of exclusion from the +main streams of learning, eminent men[15] in numbers quite out of +proportion to the size of the group; which saw the blossoming of public +education in the form of the fine Quaker schools where girls and boys +were educated side by side,[16] must have been rich in inarticulate and +unrecorded saintly lives. + +[Footnote 15: The biographies of Quakers and ex-Quakers amount to about +3 per cent. of the whole of the entries in the _Dictionary of National +Biography_ (1885-1904), reckoning from 1675.] + +There must have been in the sober Quaker homes, where affection ruled +without softness, where love was heroic rather than sentimental, many +who followed, not as imitators, but with all the strength of an original +impulse the pathway chosen by those who have been willing to pay the +price of an enhanced spiritual life; the withdrawal, in varying measure, +from the values and standards accepted by the world at large. They kept +watch. They worked amongst their fellows in a dusk between memory and +anticipation. They felt to the uttermost and fought to the uttermost the +weakness of the self. They were faithful, and in due time the society as +a whole felt the breath of revival. + +[Footnote 16: Ackworth was founded in 1779, Sidcot remodelled on Quaker +lines in 1808, the present Saffron Walden School opened in Islington in +1811, and several others since both in England and Ireland, all now open +to the general public.] + + + + + CHAPTER V + QUAKERISM IN AMERICA + + +The American colonies seemed to the early leaders of the Quaker movement +to offer at once a field for the free development of their faith and a +base whence they might spread to the ends of the earth. The possibility +of buying land from the Indians was being discussed in the society as +early as 1660. But though, it is true, Quaker influence was decisive in +establishing religious toleration in America, though the relationship +between the native tribes and the colonists was transformed through +their substitution of unarmed treaty parties for the existing methods of +intimidation and of strictly fair dealing for dishonesty and +contract-breaking, though they initiated and took the lion's share in +the abolition of slavery,[17] and established the precedent of a State +founded on brotherly love, although they did more than any other group +of refugees or body of colonists to settle the foundations of the +religious and civil life of the country; yet the texture of the +religious life of the American people is to-day largely Puritan +Protestantism, and of the Quaker influence in government there remains +not a trace. + +[Footnote 17: As early as 1657, and before he had come in contact with +slavery, Fox addressed a letter of advice from England to all +slave-holding Friends. In 1671, seeing for himself the system at work in +Barbadoes, he recommended that the holders should free their slaves +after a term of service, and should arrange for their welfare when +freed. The first documentary protest against slavery put forward by any +religious body came from the German Quakers in Philadelphia +(Germantown); they had come as settlers from Kirchheim in Germany, where +Penn's teaching had met with an ardent response. John Woolman spent +twenty years in ceaseless labour on behalf of the slaves. Throughout the +society the work went on; meetings were held, individual protests were +made, slave-holding Friends were visited. By 1755 it was generally +agreed that negroes should be neither bought nor imported by Friends, +and less than thirty years later the society, with the exception of a +few isolated and difficult cases, was free of slavery. Many Friends paid +their slaves for past services, and in all cases provision was made for +their welfare.] + +For more than half a century after the savage persecution[18] by the +Puritans--reaching its fullest fury in Boston under Governor +Endicott--had come to an end, Quakerism was a steadily growing power in +America. + +The Quakers flourished in Rhode Island, to whom they supplied many +Governors, and where at one time they were continually in office; they +made fair headway in Connecticut. In Long Island their establishment was +finally secured by the advice of the Dutch home Government on the ground +of their excellence as citizens. They achieved a foothold in Virginia in +face of the indignant persecutions of the Episcopalians. Their history +in Maryland is an excellent illustration of the nature of their work on +behalf of religious toleration. When, in 1691, an Act was framed to +secure the establishment of the Protestant church, the Quakers, who were +by this time both numerous and influential in the colony, laboured in +opposition to it until they brought the bill to nought. They supported +the Catholics in their struggle for emancipation, and were largely +instrumental in securing the repeal, in 1695, of the Act against them. +They also joined with Rome to prevent the Episcopalian Church from being +established by law, but in this they were only partially successful. In +the Carolinas they appear to have fared well. For years, though in a +minority, they controlled the government. New Jersey was thrown open to +them by a large purchase of land. William Penn's share in this +transaction was the beginning of his practical interest in America, +finally to express itself in the foundation of the Quaker State of +Pennsylvania,[19] which was very largely his own work. His labours as a +religious apologist, filling some five volumes, and representing in his +graceful, polished style the application to social life of the Puritan +morality upon which the Quakers had grafted their beliefs, are +secondary to his work in America, for which he gave up all he +possessed--influence, the prospect of a brilliant career at home, +friends, fortune, and health. + +[Footnote 18: The first Quakers to reach America were two women, Anne +Austin and Mary Fisher. When they arrived at Boston, their luggage was +searched, their books were burned in the market-place by the hangman; +they were stripped and examined for signs of witchcraft, and after five +weeks' imprisonment and cruelty were shipped back to Barbadoes. Then +followed a series of persecutions too horrible to be detailed, +increasing in severity from fines--fireless, bedless, and almost +foodless--imprisonment in chains in the Boston winter, floggings (one +part alone of the punishment of the aged William Brand consisted of 117 +blows on his bare back with a barred rope, while two women were stripped +to the waist in the mid-winter snow and lashed at the cart-tail through +eleven towns), ear-croppings, and tongue-borings, to the death penalty +suffered by three men and one woman. The intervention of Charles II. +referred only to the death penalty. Whippings continued until 1677, and +imprisonment for tithes until 1724.] + +This colony, bought strip by strip in honest treaty with the Indians, +developed more quickly than any other. It was a home for refugees of +every shade of opinion. Friends at no time formed more than half the +population, but their influence was supreme. + +[Footnote 19: It is interesting that Penn did his utmost--even to +attempting to bribe the secretaries when the charter was drawn up--to +abolish the _Penn_ prefixed by James II. to his own original +_Sylvania_.] + +Two years after the settlement of the State[20] Penn writes that two +general assemblies had been held with such concord and despatch that +they sat but three weeks, and at least seventy laws were passed without +one dissent in any material thing. + +For thirty years there was peace, liberty, and refuge for all, and an +unrivalled prosperity. We may picture Penn, in the days of witch crazes, +holding his one trial of a witch, and establishing the precedent of +finding the woman guilty of the common fame of being a witch, but not +guilty as indicted; and in another characteristically Friendly moment +refusing, when greatly in need of funds, six thousand pounds for a trade +monopoly which would have violated his principle of fairness to the +Indians. Free thought was encouraged, and a little group of +distinguished men appeared in Philadelphia. The final downfall of +Friendly administration in Pennsylvania was the result of the refusal on +the part of the majority of the Quakers to adjust their principles to +the demand sent to the Quaker legislature for means to proceed against +the French and the Indians. + +[Footnote 20: In 1683.] + +Up to the time of this occurrence it had seemed as if America were on +the way to becoming an autonomous province of the British Empire, +steered by Quaker principles. Privilege after privilege had been quietly +secured by Penn from the home government, and it is not difficult to +believe that if on the eve of the Revolution negotiations had been left +in Friendly hands, the war of separation need not have taken place. When +it broke out, the Quakers retired decisively from legislative and +municipal positions. A Quakerized liberty party carried on the +traditions of civil liberty up to the last moment. The Scotch-Irish +Presbyterians, who despised the Quakers, and treated the Indians as +heathen to be exterminated, formed the main body of the Pennsylvanian +revolutionary party. + +Friends suffered under English taxation, and their principles prevented +them from smuggling, yet they opposed not merely warfare, but +revolution, disowning those who supported it, and reiterated their +loyalty to England. They were arrested and imprisoned as friends of the +British, their goodly farms and their meeting-houses were placed at the +mercy of troopers and foragers, whose pay they would not accept. Their +decent streets were demoralized. They went quietly about their business +as best they might, pursuing, even while the war was in progress, their +labours in the aid of drunkards and slaves, their succour of the +uneducated. + +They built schools for the negroes, and when, after the revolution was +at an end (whereupon they duly suffered at the hands of the rejoicing +multitude), there came the scandal of the "walking purchase" of land +from the Indians and the fear of a serious outbreak, they formed a +private association and pacified the Indians, preventing warfare at the +cost to themselves of weeks of negotiation and the sum of five thousand +pounds paid by them. Incidents of this type occur again and again in +Quaker history, and are practical proof of the fact that their avoidance +of the spirit of strife, so often present in political life, was no kind +of timidity, of passive resistance, or comfortable retirement from the +business of the world. Least of all was it indifference to what went +forward in the public affairs of the nation. + +Apart from its temporary dominion of "affairs," American Quakerism +follows much the same line of development as does the movement at home. +The original impulse tends to be superseded for the imitative mass by a +doctrine embodied in an institution; the dogma of the Inner Light +becomes dangerously absolutist. There is a corresponding return to the +steadying refuge of an infallible scripture, and the modern church, +while still united and distinguishable by the marks of Quaker culture, +of faith and practice, kindling here and there to the older insight and +vision, shows a divided front. + +In 1827 a large group--now known as Hicksites--separated under Elias +Hicks, whose repudiation of doctrines and creeds, and insistence on +right living, resulted, in the opinion of "orthodox" Friends, in a wrong +attitude towards Christ and the scriptures. The evangelical reaction in +England, which was, in part, a result of the Hicksite controversy, +brought about a further division in America under John Wilbur, who +protested against Evangelical biblicism, and reasserted the doctrine of +the Inner Light, insisted on plainness of speech and dress, and looked +with suspicion upon "art." The orthodox group, deeply tinged with +Protestant evangelicalism, have largely adopted the pastoral system. +There are now at least four distinct groups in America.[21] + +[Footnote 21: "According to recent statistics, the membership of the +fourteen orthodox bodies is upward of 90,000; of Philadelphia Yearly +Meeting, 4,400; of the Conservative Yearly Meeting, about 4,000; and of +seven Hicksite Yearly Meetings, under 19,000--say, 27,500 Friends +belonging to Yearly Meetings in America with which we do not correspond" +(_Facts about Friends._ Headley Bros. 1912).] + + + + + CHAPTER VI + QUAKERISM AND WOMEN + + +Watching pilgrims who pass one by one along the mystic way, we see both +women and men. Teresa, Catharine, Elizabeth, Mechthild, no less than +Francis, Tauler, Boehme, stand as high peaks of human achievement in +entering into direct relationship with the transcendental life. But when +we reach the humbler levels of institution and doctrine, the religious +genius of womanhood tends to be pushed, so to say, into an oblique +relationship. Under organized Christianity, and particularly under +Protestantism, has this been so. Amongst the first Christians, it is +true, women preached and prophesied. There is, moreover, in the history +of the early centuries sound evidence of an ordained and invested female +clergy. Taking that history as a whole, however, women have been, and +are still, excluded from the councils of the churches and from the +responsibilities and privileges of priesthood. Devout churchwomen, and, +in particular, devout Protestants, are nourished on literal +interpretation of records, which assure them of an essential inferiority +to their male companions, and enjoin subjection in all things. At +marriage, they sacramentally renounce individuality. Quakerism stands as +the first form of Christian belief, which has, even in reaching its +doctrinized and institutionized levels, escaped regarding woman as +primarily an appendage to be controlled, guided, and managed by man. +This escape was the result, not of any kind of feminism, any sort of +special solicitude for or belief in women as a class. Nor was it the +result of a protest against any definitely recognized existing attitude. +Such unstable and fluctuating emotions could not have carried through +the Quaker reformation of the relations of the sexes. The recognition of +the public ministry of women was an act of faith. It was a step that +followed from a central belief in the universality of the inner light. +It was taken in the face of difficulties. It hampered the Quakers +enormously in relation to the outside world. It was the occasion of +profound disturbance within the body. Heart-searching and hesitation +rose here and there to an opposition so convinced as to form part of the +programme of the first schismatics.[22] Fox had to fight valiantly. His +central belief once clear, he cut clean through the Pauline tangle of +irreconcilable propositions, and forged from the depths of his +conviction phrases that would, were they but known, do yeoman service in +the present agitation for the release of the artificially inhibited +responsibilities of women. He is never tired of reminding those who +cling to the story of the Fall that the restoration of humanity in the +appearance of Christ took the reproach from woman. He rallies men, often +with delicious humour, on their desire to rule over women, and exhorts +those who despise "the spirit of prophecy in the daughters" to be +"ashamed for ever." But although faith won, it is probable that the +majority took the step only under the urgency of deep-seated +consciousness, the surface intelligence still loudly asserting the +necessary pre-eminence of masculine standards. Even amongst the most +determined advocates of the recognition of a woman's spiritual identity, +amongst those who condemned its suppression as blasphemous, we meet the +suggestion that this recognition need not in any way interfere with her +proper subjection to her husband. Nevertheless, Fox succeeded in +equalizing the marriage covenant. + +[Footnote 22: The Perrot Schism, 1661.] + +The government of the society, therefore, was for many years carried on +by men alone, a women's meeting coming into existence, as we have seen, +only when obviously imperative--in relation to the care of the women and +children suffering under persecution--and persisting only for special +purposes quite apart from the business of the society as a whole. Men +and women, however, occasionally visited each other's meetings, and +joint sittings were sometimes held. + +It was the experience coming to the support of dawning theory, of the +superior working of these joint meetings, that finally enfranchised +Quaker womanhood. + +It is interesting to note that one of the most striking features of the +technique of Quaker meetings, whether for business or worship, is the +working out of the distinctive characteristics of the sexes. Their +contradiction, and the tendency psychology has roughly summarized of +women, as a class, to control thought by feeling, and of men, as a +class, to allow "reason" the first place, is here at its height. + +The two rival and ever-competing definitions of reality both find +expression. Each must tolerate the other. Reaction takes place without +bitterness. Again and again there is revealed the fruitfulness of that +spirit which believes in and seeks goodness, beauty, and truth--these +alone, and these in all. Recent statistics have shown[23] that women, +though always numerically superior in the society, have supplied a +comparatively small number of both officers and ministers, and of clerks +relatively none, and that, moreover, this deficit is gradually +increasing, and is not made good by any sufficiently compensating output +of public work outside the society. + +[Footnote 23: _The Friend_, March, 1912: "Woman in the Church."] + +It has been suggested that we may presume, in consideration of these +facts, that women Friends have by this time availed themselves of their +opportunity to the full extent of their capacities, and that the result, +as far as government is concerned, is that the conduct of large public +meetings is almost entirely entrusted to men. + +In the correspondence that followed the publication of the statistics +certain modifying statements were made. It was suggested that of late +years the increasing membership had brought in women who were without +the Quaker tradition--a fact which would account for the growing deficit +of feminine activities. Attention was also drawn to the unseen mass of +feminine initiative, the result of which is credited to men. + +It is, of course, evident that if we begin by assuming that equality of +opportunity shall result in identity of function, if we believe, +moreover, that government is merely a matter of machinery, and ministry +can be estimated by the counting of heads and of syllables, we shall be +led to the conclusion that, while the more obvious results of the Quaker +experiment may do something towards disarming haunting fears as to the +safety of acknowledging the full spiritual and temporal fellowship of +women, it does comparatively little to justify the claims and +expectations of the feminists in general. + +But whatever standard we apply, however we may choose to approach the +question of the public ministry of women; however, further, we may +estimate the value of the fact that all the practical business of the +society is talked out in their hearing, that measures are sometimes +initiated, sometimes abolished, invariably commented on, modified and +steered by them, we cannot form any idea of what Quakerism has done for +women or women for Quakerism without some consideration of an aspect of +the matter hitherto almost entirely neglected by historians and +commentators, which yet, in the opinion of the present writer, may be +claimed not only as giving some part of the explanation of the relative +inactivity of women in the more obvious transactions of the society, but +as being a very substantial part of the clue to the rapid development +and the healthy persistence of Quaker culture--and that is the profound +reaction upon women of the changed conditions of home-life; for amongst +the Quakers the particularized home, with its isolated woman cut off +from any responsible share in the life of "the world" and associating +mainly with other equally isolated women, is unknown. A woman born into +a Quaker family inherits the tradition of a faith which is of the heart +rather than of the head, of intuition rather than intellectation, of +life primarily rather than of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem +particularly suited to the development of her religious consciousness; +and she comes, moreover, into an atmosphere where her natural sense of +direct relationship to life, her instinctive individual aspiration and +sense of responsibility, instead of being either cancelled or left +dormant, or thwarted and trained to run, so to say, indirectly, is +immediately confirmed and fostered. + +She is in touch with, has, as we have seen, her stake and her +responsibility in regard to every single activity of the meeting of +which she is a member. Through every meeting and through every home, +moreover, there is the cleansing and ventilating ebb and flow of the +life of the whole society, and this not merely by means of the +circulation of matter relating to the deliberations and the work of the +society, but also in the form of personal contact. Beyond the exchange +of hospitality in connection with monthly and quarterly meetings for +worship and for business, there is a constant flow of itinerating +ministers and others of both sexes between meetings either on special +individual concerns or in the interest of some single branch of the +society's work. + +Simple easy intercourse between family and family, meeting and meeting, +is part of the fabric of Quaker home-life. Perhaps for this reason, +perhaps just because amongst the Quakers, in a very true and deep sense, +the world is home and home is the world, because, in other words, the +inner is able without obstruction to flow out and realize itself in the +outer, the sense of family-life, of home, and fireside, is particularly +sweet and strong. The breaking of family ties is rare. The failure that +leads to the divorce court is practically unknown. + +We may look with wonder and admiration at the great figures amongst +Quaker women, upon those who built their lives into the first spreadings +of the message; upon those who went, under the urgency of their faith, +alone into strange lands, where means of communication were the +scantiest; upon the persecuted and martyred women, the women of +initiative and organizing genius; upon Anne Knight of Chelmsford +pioneering female suffrage in England, founding the first political +association for women; upon Elizabeth Fry, after a full career as +house-keeper, mother, and social worker, turning, late in life, to the +prisons of England, and transforming them, so to say, with her own +hands. But, perhaps, it is in the daily home-life of the society that +the distinctively feminine side of doctrinized and organized Quakerism +reaches its fairest development. + + + + + CHAPTER VII + THE PRESENT POSITION + + +The counter-agitation[24] brought forth in England by the American +Hicksite movement, ended, after prolonged discussion and stress, in a +decisive readjustment of the Society of Friends. There were numerous +secessions into the Evangelical church and the Plymouth Brotherhood. +There were separations of those who followed Elias Hicks in his +repudiation of doctrines and creeds, and of those who favoured Wilbur in +protesting against "book religion," reasserting the doctrines of the +Quaker fathers, and insisting on simplicity of life; but the society as +a whole was swept forward, under the leadership of Joseph John Gurney +(brother of Elizabeth Fry), by the invading wave of Protestant +evangelicalism. Gurney, coming of old Quaker stock, though religious and +pious and full of zeal for the salvation of the world, never grasped the +essentials of Quakerism. He had no touch of the intuitive genius which +makes the mystic. Every line he has written betrays the Protestant +biblicist, the man who puts the verbal revelation before any other +whatsoever. He did not repudiate the Fathers, but he denied that they +had ever questioned the supreme authority of the scriptures as the guide +of mankind. + +[Footnote 24: The Beacon Controversy, so named from Isaac Crewdson's +publication in 1835, expressing Evangelical views of an advanced type.] + +His strong persuasive personality revived the enthusiasm of the +imitative mass of the society, and once more the Quakers faced the +world. It was a new world. The religious liberty Friends had prophesied +and worked towards had come at last. The Test Act had been repealed. +Nonconformists were admitted to Parliament and to the Universities of +Oxford and Cambridge. The London University had been established. The +emerging Quakers, on their side, began to break down the barriers they +had erected between themselves and the world by their peculiarities of +speech and of dress, and showed a tendency to relax their hostility +towards "art." + +They were a little band, tempered and disciplined by their century of +quiet cultivation of the Quaker faith and method, and they were at once +available for a share, strikingly disproportionate to their numbers, in +the evangelical work of an awakening Christendom. From the time of their +emergence their missionary labours have been unremitting. They engaged +in prison reform and the reform of the penal code. They initiated the +reform of the lunacy laws, working for the substitution of kindly +treatment in special institutions[25] for the orthodox method of chains +and imprisonment. They began to educate the poor. The foundation of +their Foreign Missions dates from this period of revival. + +They have widening centres of missionary work in India, Madagascar, +Syria, China, and Ceylon. They have been the main movers in the work of +abolishing the opium traffic, and are engaged, both at home and abroad, +in all the many well-known efforts towards social amelioration, amongst +which, perhaps, the leading part they have taken in experimental +philanthropy, in educational method (their co-education schools +scattered over the country are models of method, standing for common +sense, humanity, and a wise use of modern resources), in the housing and +betterment of the lot of the working classes, and in the establishment +of garden suburbs, are particularly worthy of mention. + +[Footnote 25: The Friends' Retreat at York, established in 1796, was the +beginning of humane treatment of the insane in this country.] + +From their Sunday-school work, begun in Bristol in 1810, and gradually +spreading over the country, has arisen what is perhaps the most widely +influential of the present activities in which Friends are interested on +behalf of the working classes--the Adult School Movement. Originally +initiated[26] in the interest of loafers at street corners, it has now +become a national movement, with a complete organization, upwards of a +thousand schools, and a membership in its ninetieth thousand. It is +spreading on the Continent and in America. At the meetings of its weekly +classes, which are open to all who care to attend (the men's and women's +classes are held independently), led by an elected president, who may be +an adherent of any creed or of none, part of the time is devoted to the +consideration of religious questions and part to lecturettes, debates, +readings, and so on. Each school develops secondary interests and +engages in special work. + +[Footnote 26: In 1845 by Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham.] + +Within the society from which this perpetual stream of evangelical work +flows forth we must distinguish two distinct types of religious culture. +There is, first of all, the main mass, differing only in its method of +worship from the main body of Protestant nonconformity--taking, as we +have said, its stand first and foremost upon the scriptures. In most +Quaker meetings to-day this typically "Protestant" attitude predominates +numerically. But while we recognize this state of affairs as one of the +inevitable consequences of any endeavour to found an "open" church upon +a mystical basis, it is, nevertheless, amongst the Quakers, modified, to +a certain extent, in two ways: first, by its subjection to its +environment, the framework of the old Quaker culture, the training +implied in Fox's method both of private and public worship, in the +expectation of unmediated Divine leadership in all the circumstances of +life, the training in freedom from the domination of formulæ and +deductions, the insistence on the important meaning of the individual +soul. + +It is modified, in the second place, by the nucleus of genuine mystical +endowment, which has persisted through the centuries at the heart of the +Quaker church, both handed down in the direct line and coming in from +without; the remnant whose influence has so often made this little +church the sorting-house, so to say, amongst the sects for mystically +minded persons. And during the last ten years--the years which have seen +such a striking revival of the interest in mysticism, have felt a +clearing and a growth of the recognition of the importance to the race +as a whole of mystical genius, have produced a mass of seriously +undertaken studies of this phenomenon from every point of approach--the +Quaker church has continued increasingly to fulfil this function. Not +only from the sects, but from the older establishments, and from the +ranks of religiously unclassified "philosophy" and "culture," there is a +steady migration towards the Quaker fold. + +The vitality of this modern Quaker group is expressing itself at the +present time in a twofold activity over and above the home and foreign +missionary work we have already noted. This activity is visible +throughout the society, both in England and in America. There is, on the +one hand, an effort emanating from the more intellectual section of the +group, to express Quakerism in terms of modern thought, to reach, as far +as may be, with the help of modern psychology, a philosophical +"description" of the doctrine of the "inner light"--a description which +is thought to be much more possible to-day than it was at the time of +George Fox. This effort, which includes the rewriting in detail and from +original documents of the history of the Society of Friends, is embodied +in the work of a little group of Quaker writers, prominent amongst whom +are the late John Wilhelm Rowntree, the late Miss Caroline E. Stephen, +Dr. Rufus M. Jones, Mr. William C. Braithwaite, Mr. Edward Grubb, and +Miss Joan M. Fry. Mr. Edward Grubb,[27] perhaps one of the most +illuminating of the Quaker writers upon the doctrine of the Inner Light, +realizes with perfect clearness that the dogma of the Infallible Spirit +presents at least as many difficulties as that of an infallible Church +or Bible; that in the case of either of these infallibilities the +question immediately arises as to "_who_" is the infallible interpreter? +Fox, he points out, trusted urgency and unaccountability by mere thought +processes for the sign of the higher source. He adds to this that "the +spirit in one man must be tested by the spirit in many men. The +individual must read his inward state in the light of the social +spiritual group," ... and thus reaches a sort of spiritual democracy. On +the whole, however, his appeal is to idealism as the supplanter of +materialism; he claims thought as the _prius_ of knowledge, and +identifies consciousness with thought. He leaves us with the "notional" +God of transcendental idealism, who is just as far off as the +corresponding matter-and-force God of consistent materialism. + +[Footnote 27: _Authority and the Light Within._] + +Mr. William C. Braithwaite is, perhaps, happier. "The consciousness," he +says in _Spiritual Guidance in Quaker Experience_,[28] "that our +subjective impression of guidance needs correction to allow for the +personal factor, and the sense that truth of all kinds and in all ages +is harmoniously related, naturally point to the great advantage of +co-ordinating the light that has come to our souls with the light that +has come to others in our own day or in past ages. This is not the same +thing as merely relying on tradition or accepting an experience +second-hand; nor does it mean that we refuse to accept any guidance +which goes beyond the experience of others--it means simply that over +the country we have to traverse there are many paths already trodden +along which we may have safe and speedy passage." + +[Footnote 28: Swarthmoor Lecture. Headley Bros., 1909.] + +Professor Rufus Jones, who has done much in relation to the psychology +of Quakerism, also voices the corporate idea in declaring that the +Friend must test his light by the larger revelation of his co-believers, +and they, again, by the larger revelation which has come to prophets and +apostles, saints and martyrs; but here, again, we seem to find ourselves +within a circle of ideas. In place of the simple homely imagery of Fox, +"the seed," "the light," the "new birth," "that which hath convinced +you," we have in these modern descriptions, it is true, all the rich and +intricate spatial terminology of modern science; but, so far, the most +successful efforts in the direction of "description" of mystical +religion in modern terms have not come from the society, where the +belief in, and the attempt to live in sole dependence upon, the +indwelling spirit is still, for very many of its members, the single +aim, where there are still many with whom "knowing" is more important +than "knowing about." + +The boldest and clearest sighted, the most comprehensive and lucid +descriptions of the mystic type, of his distinctive genius, his aim and +method, his kinship with his fellows throughout the ages, the world-old +record of his search and its justification, are to be found +elsewhere.[29] + +Side by side with the attempt to rationalize and restate in terms of +modern thought the faith that is in them is a movement enrolling growing +numbers, particularly of younger Friends, in both continents, in the +direction of expressing Quakerism in terms of modern life. + +Home life, social life, business life, every modern development, is +brought to the test of Quaker principles. There is a spirit abroad +declaring that Quakerism has become devitalized; that the religious life +is stereotyped and perfunctory; that the joyous, all-conquering zeal of +the early Friends was the outcome of a secret unknown to their +followers; that the way to the fount at which they were sustained is +lost--that it may be found again if the daily life is brought under +Divine control. A call has gone forth to sacrifice, to scale the heights +of right living in that purer air, that the sight may grow clear. + +[Footnote 29: In the work, for example, of Miss Evelyn Underhill, author +of _Mysticism_ (Macmillan, 1911), _The Mystic Way_ (Macmillan, 1913).] + +Everywhere in Quakerdom we meet this question as to the secret of the +early Quakers. Do we read in this outcry an admission of the failure of +group mysticism as it has so far been attempted by the Society of +Friends? The little church of the spirit seems to be at the turning of +the ways. + +All barriers are down. The rationale of primitive Quakerism is fully +established. The Quakers no longer stand facing an outraged or +indifferent Christendom. The principles "discovered" by their founder +are conceded in theory by the religious world as a whole. + +Will they remain in their present position, which may be described as +that of a Protestant Ethical Society, with mystical traditions and +methods, part of an organized and nationalized world-church, suffering +the necessary limitations of a body thrown open to all, converted and +unconverted, committed to the necessity of teaching doctrinal +"half-truths," organizing necessarily in the interest of conduct as an +end? or will they constitute themselves an order within, and +co-operating with, the church--an order of lay mystics, held together +externally by the sane and simple discipline laid down by Fox, and +guarded thus from the dangers to which mysticism is perennially open; an +order of men and women willing corporately to fulfil, while living in +the daily life of the world, the conditions of revelation, and admitting +to membership only those similarly willing; a "free" group of mystics +ready to pay the price, ready to travel along the way trodden by all +their predecessors, by all who have truly yearned for the uncreated +Light? + + + + + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + + 1624. Birth of George Fox. + 1647. Fox's public ministry begins. + 1650. Friends nicknamed Quakers by a Derby magistrate. + 1652. Acquisition of headquarters at Swarthmoor Hall. + 1654. Missions to the South and East. + 1656. First Quakers in America. + 1657. Fox appeals to Friends on behalf of their slaves. + 1678. Barclay's apology published in English. + 1681. Pennsylvania founded. + 1689. Toleration Act passed. + 1691. Death of George Fox. + 1760. Reform of Society of Friends. + 1835. Modern Evangelical Revival. + + + + + BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +GEORGE FOX: Journal. Edited by Norman Penney. Cambridge University +Press, 1911. + +GEORGE FOX: Journal. Bi-centenary edition in two volumes. Headley. + +GEORGE FOX: Works. Eight volumes. Philadelphia, 1831. + +ROBERT BARCLAY: An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. In English, +1678. + +WILLIAM PENN: No Cross, No Crown. + +JOHN WOOLMAN: Journal. + +CAROLINE E. STEPHEN: Quaker Strongholds. Headley, 1907. + +JOHN WILHELM ROWNTREE: Essays and Addresses. Headley, 1905. + +T. EDMUND HARVEY: The Rise of the Quakers. Headley, 1905. + +ELIZABETH B. EMMOTT: The Story of Quakerism. Headley, 1908. + +ALLEN C. THOMAS: The History of the Society of Friends in America. + +RUFUS M. JONES: The Quakers in the American Colonies. Macmillan, 1912. + +RUFUS M. JONES: Social Law in the Spiritual World. Headley, 1905. + +RUFUS M. JONES: Studies in Mystical Religion. Macmillan, 1909. + +RUFUS M. JONES: Children of the Light (Anthology of Quaker Mystics). +Headley, 1909. + +EVELYN UNDERHILL: Mysticism. Macmillan, 1911. + +WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE: The Beginnings of Quakerism. Macmillan, 1912. + +WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE: Spiritual Guidance in Quaker Experience. +Headley, 1909. + +EDWARD GRUBB: Authority and the Light Within. Clarke, 1908. + +The Book of Discipline. Successive editions from 1783. + +The Society of Friends. Encyclopædia Britannica. Eleventh edition. + + + + + NOTE + + +The bulk of Quaker literature falls into two main groups: (1) The +voluminous writings of the early Quakers--journals, epistles, doctrinal +works, and controversial matter--most of which were issued under the +censorship of a body of Friends meeting in London, while a large mass of +unprinted manuscripts and transcripts of manuscripts, admirably +classified and indexed, is available at the headquarters of the Society, +Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, whose library contains also the largest +collection of books relating to the Society; (2) the modern output of +history, commentary, expository, apology, and evangelistic writing. + +Most of the printed works of George Fox have been collected in the eight +volumes of the Philadelphia edition. A considerable quantity is still in +manuscript. The Cambridge edition of his Journal is particularly +interesting in having been printed unaltered from the original +manuscript. It is incomplete, and is best supplemented by the +bi-centenary edition (see Bibliography). + + + BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD + + + + + Transcriber's Notes + + +The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. A few +obvious typographical and formatting errors were silently corrected. +Further corrections are listed here (before/after): + + [p. 54]: + ... that the Quakers, who might have converted ... + ... "that the Quakers, who might have converted ... + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quakers, Past and Present, by +Dorothy M. Richardson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57726 *** |