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QUAKER STRONGHOLDS 
 
QUAKER STRONGHOLDS 
 
 BY 
 
 CAROLINE EMELIA STEPHEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE SERVICE OF THE POOR" 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Lt d . 
 
 1890 
 
{The rights of translation and of rept oduction are reserved.') 
 
g/7 731 
 S2 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction ... ... ... ... ... i 
 
 I. Organization ... ... ... ... 6 
 
 II. The Inner Light ... ... ... ... 20 
 
 III. Worship ... ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 IV. Free Ministry ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 V. Special Testimonies ... ... ... 118 
 
 VI. Our Calling ... ... ... ... ... 157 
 
 Appendix ... ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 MS37787 
 
QUAKER STRONGHOLDS 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Whether Quakerism be, as some Friends believe, 
 destined to any considerable revival or not, it 
 seems at least certain that any important revival 
 of religion must be the result of a fresh recogni- 
 tion and acceptance of the very principles upon 
 which the Society of Friends is built. What these 
 principles and the practices resulting from them 
 really are, is a subject on which there is a sur- 
 prising amount of ignorance amongst us, consider- 
 ing how widely spread is the connection with 
 and interest about Friends amongst the members 
 of other persuasions. One seldom meets any one 
 who has not some link with the Society, and yet 
 it is rare to find any one not belonging to it at 
 all accurately informed as to its point of view or 
 its organization. The notorious disinclination of 
 Friends to any attempts at proselytizing, and 
 perhaps some lingering effects of persecution, prob- 
 
 •*- B 
 
2 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 ably account for the very common impression 
 that Friends' meetings are essentially private — 
 mysterious gatherings into which it would be 
 intrusive to seek admission. Many people, indeed, 
 probably suppose (if they think about it at all) 
 that such meetings are no longer held ; that the 
 Society is fast dying out, and the " silent worship " 
 of tradition a thing of the past — impracticable, and 
 hardly to be seriously mentioned in these days of 
 talk and of breathless activity. 
 
 Some such vague impression floated, I believe, 
 over my own mind, when, some seventeen years 
 ago, I first found myself within reach of a Friends' 
 meeting, and, somewhat to my surprise, cordially 
 made welcome to attend it. The invitation came 
 at a moment of need, for I was beginning to feel 
 with dismay that I might not much longer be able 
 conscientiously to continue to join in the Church 
 of England service ; not for want of appreciation 
 of its unrivalled richness and beauty, but from 
 doubts of the truth of its doctrines, combined with 
 a growing recognition that to me it was as the 
 armour of Saul in its elaboration and in the sus- 
 tained pitch of religious fervour for which it was 
 meant to provide an utterance. Whether true or 
 not in its speculative and theoretical assumptions, 
 it was clear to me that it was far from true as a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 periodical expression of my own experience, belief, 
 or aspiration. The more vividly one feels the 
 force of its eloquence, the more, it seems to me, 
 one must hesitate to adopt it as the language of 
 one's own soul, and the more unlikely is it that 
 such heights and depths of feeling as it demands 
 should be ready to fill its magnificent channels 
 every Sunday morning at a given hour. The 
 questionings with which at that period I was 
 painfully struggling were stirred into redoubled 
 activity by the dogmatic statements and assump- 
 tions with which the Liturgy abounds, and its un- 
 broken flow left no loophole for the utterance of 
 my own less disciplined, but to myself far more 
 urgent, cries for help. Thus the hour of public 
 worship, which should have been a time of spiritual 
 strengthening and calming, became to me a time 
 of renewed conflict, and of occasional exaltation 
 and excitement of emotion, leading but too surely 
 to reaction and apathy. 
 
 I do not attempt to pass any judgment on this 
 mental condition. I have described it at some 
 length because I cannot believe it to be altogether 
 exceptional, or without significance. At any rate, 
 it was fast leading me to dread the moment when 
 I should be unable either to find the help I needed, 
 or to offer my tribute of devotion in any place of 
 
4 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 worship amongst my fellow-Christians. When lo, 
 on one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning, I 
 found myself one of a small company of silent wor- 
 shippers, who were content to sit down together 
 without words, that each one might feel after and 
 draw near to the Divine Presence, unhindered at 
 least, if not helped, by any human utterance. 
 Utterance I knew was free, should the words be 
 given ; and before the meeting was over, a sentence 
 or two were uttered in great simplicity by an old 
 and apparently untaught man, rising in his place 
 amongst the rest of us. I did not pay much atten- 
 tion to the words he spoke, and I have no recollec- 
 tion of their purport. My whole soul was filled with 
 the unutterable peace of the undisturbed opportunity 
 for communion with God, with the sense that at last 
 I had found a place where I might, without the 
 faintest suspicion of insincerity, join with others 
 in simply seeking His presence. To sit down in 
 silence could at the least pledge me to nothing ; it 
 might open to me (as it did that morning) the 
 very gate of heaven. And since that day, now 
 more than seventeen years ago, Friends' meetings 
 have indeed been to me the greatest of outward 
 helps to a fuller and fuller entrance into the spirit 
 from which they have sprung ; the place of the 
 most soul-subduing, faith-restoring, strengthening, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 and peaceful communion, in feeding upon the bread 
 of life, that I have ever known. I cannot but 
 believe that what has helped me so unspeakably 
 might be helpful to multitudes in this day of 
 shaking of all that can be shaken, and of restless 
 inquiry after spiritual good. It is in the hope of 
 making more widely known the true source and 
 nature of such spiritual help that I am about to 
 attempt to describe what I have called our strong- 
 holds — those principles which cannot fail, whatever 
 may be the future of the Society which for more 
 than two hundred years has taken its stand upon 
 them. I wish to trace, as far as my experience 
 as a " convinced Friend " enables me to do so, 
 what is the true life and strength of our Society ; 
 and the manner in which its principles, as actually 
 embodied in its practice, its organization, and, 
 'above all, its manner of worship, are fitted to 
 meet the special needs of an important class in 
 our own day. 
 
 Mount Pleasant, 
 
 West Malvern, 1890. 
 
QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 The actual organization of the Society of Friends 
 is, I believe, by no means familiarly known outside 
 its own borders, and a slight sketch of it may be 
 neither uninteresting in itself, nor out of place as 
 a preliminary to the endeavour to explain our 
 general position. I propose, therefore, to give such 
 an outline of our constitution as a Society, so far 
 as I have become acquainted with it. The fullest 
 details respecting it are to be found in the " Book 
 of Discipline," which is the authorized exponent of 
 all such matters. 
 
 This book has been recently revised, and the 
 edition of 1883* (a large octavo volume) contains 
 the latest regulations on all points of internal 
 
 * " Book of Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of 
 Friends in Great Britain ; consisting of Extracts on Doctrine, 
 Practice, and Church Government, from the Epistles and other 
 Documents issued under the sanction of the Yearly Meeting held in 
 London from its first institution in 1672 to 1883." London : 
 Samuel Harris and Co., 5, Bishopsgate Street Without. 1883. 
 
ORGANIZATION. 7 
 
 government. The Yearly Meeting also publishes 
 annually a volume of Extracts from its proceed- 
 ings, a full statement of accounts and statistics, 
 and a summary of the reports received from the 
 subordinate meetings all over the country. 
 
 Every " particular meeting," that is, every con- 
 gregation meeting habitually for worship on the 
 first (and generally also on one other) day of the 
 week, is one of a group of meetings for worship 
 (usually about five or six), which meet together 
 once a month, for the transaction of business and 
 of discipline, and which together form what is 
 therefore called a Monthly Meeting. Each Monthly 
 Meeting, again, is one of a group of probably four 
 or five Monthly Meetings, which in like manner 
 unite to form a Quarterly Meeting, at whose 
 quarterly sittings matters of larger importance are 
 considered, and the eighteen Quarterly Meetings 
 of Great Britain form in their turn the London 
 Yearly Meeting, which is the supreme authority in 
 the Society. It may in a certain sense be said, 
 indeed, that it is the Society of Friends of Great 
 Britain, for every Friend is a member of the 
 Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings to which 
 he or she belongs, and is entitled to a voice in all 
 their deliberations. The Yearly Meeting assembles 
 in May, and its sittings, which are held, as they 
 
8 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 have been from the first, in Devonshire House, 
 Bishopsgate Street, last generally about a fort- 
 night. The actual attendance is, of course, small 
 in comparison with the number of members. At 
 the present time the Society in Great Britain 
 consists of about fifteen thousand members, and 
 the annual gatherings in Bishopgate Street num- 
 ber perhaps from twelve to fifteen hundred. 
 
 The men and women sit separately, or it would 
 perhaps be more correct to say that the men and 
 the women Friends have each a separate Yearly 
 Meeting ; the women's Yearly Meeting being of 
 considerably later date than the men's. It was 
 established in 1790, and it deals in general with 
 matters of less importance, or at any rate of more 
 restricted scope, than the men's meeting. It is, 
 however, not unusual for men Friends, " under 
 religious concern," to visit the women's meeting, 
 nor for women Friends on a similar ground to visit 
 that of the men. 
 
 " Joint sittings " — meetings, that is, of men and 
 women Friends in one body — are also held oc- 
 casionally, when any question of special interest 
 to all the members is to be considered, and on 
 these occasions the women are free to take their 
 full share in the discussions. These occasional 
 combinations are the more easily practicable, be- 
 
OR GAN1ZA TION. 9 
 
 cause, strange as it may seem to most people, no 
 question is ever put to the vote. From the earliest 
 times, all decisions have been arrived at by 
 what may be called a practical unanimity. The 
 Yearly Meeting, like every other meeting for 
 " business " or " discipline," has its clerk, who, with 
 one or more assistants, performs the combined 
 functions of chairman and secretary. When any 
 question has been fully considered, it is the duty 
 of the clerk to interpret the sense of the meeting, 
 and to prepare a minute accordingly; which minute, 
 being read to the meeting, often receives a certain 
 amount of verbal, or even of substantial modifica- 
 tion, in accordance with the suggestions of individual 
 Friends ; but, when entered upon the books, is 
 accepted as embodying the decision of the meet- 
 ing. Should there be any considerable division 
 of judgment upon any important question, it is 
 usually, if possible, adjourned till the next Yearly 
 Meeting ; and this plan has, I believe, been almost 
 invariably found sufficient to bring about the 
 practical unanimity required for a final settlement 
 of the question. It is certainly a very remarkable 
 fact that so large a body should transact all its 
 affairs without ever voting, to the full satisfaction 
 of the great majority of those concerned. 
 
 The Quarterly and Monthly Meetings are, in 
 
io QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 most respects, repetitions on a smaller scale of 
 the Yearly Meeting. The business of all these 
 subordinate meetings is transacted, like that of 
 the Yearly Meeting, without voting, and settled 
 similarly through the action of the clerk when a 
 practical unanimity is arrived at. Each Monthly 
 Meeting appoints "representatives" to the next 
 Quarterly Meeting, and the Quarterly Meetings in 
 like manner appoint "representatives" to the Yearly 
 Meeting. These Friends have no very definite 
 function to perform, but their names are called 
 over, and their presence or absence noted at the 
 opening of each meeting to which they are sent ; 
 and they are expected to serve in a general way 
 as a special medium of communication between the 
 larger and the smaller meetings to which they belong. 
 In like manner, upon any subject affecting the 
 Society at large, the Yearly Meeting communicates 
 with the Quarterly Meetings, who in their turn 
 diffuse the impulse through their own Monthly and 
 particular meetings, till it reaches every individual 
 member ; and, in return, information respecting 
 every meeting for worship is from time to time given 
 to the Monthly Meetings, to be by them in a con- 
 densed form reported to the Quarterly Meetings, 
 and so eventually presented to the Yearly Meeting 
 in London. All these ascending and descending 
 
ORGANIZATION. n 
 
 processes are carried on with minute accuracy and 
 regularity, and are duly recorded at every stage in 
 the books of each meeting. There is thus a com- 
 plete system of circulation, as of veins and arteries, 
 by which every individual member is brought 
 within reach of the Society at large, and through 
 which information, influence, and discipline are 
 carried to and from the centre and the extremities. 
 The "discipline" of the Society is a matter of 
 extreme interest, as to which I cannot venture to 
 say with any confidence how far our recognized 
 ideal is actually carried out in practice. There is 
 no doubt that of late years considerable changes 
 have taken place, mainly in the direction of a 
 relaxation of discipline with regard to compara- 
 tively trivial matters. Certain "queries" have 
 from the earliest times been appointed by the 
 authority of the Yearly Meeting, to be read and 
 considered at certain seasons in the subordinate 
 meetings, and to most of these queries (some 
 relating to various branches of Christian morality, 
 and some to regularity in attendance at meetings 
 and conformity to established standards of sim- 
 plicity in dress and language) it was formerly the 
 practice to require detailed answers from each 
 particular meeting, to be in due course transmitted 
 in a summarized form to the Yearly Meeting itself. 
 
12 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 In 1861, however, the Yearly Meeting issued direc- 
 tions that a certain number of these queries should 
 be merely " considered," but not answered. In 
 1875 this method was adopted with regard to 
 nearly all the queries, and at present those only 
 which relate to the regularity of attendance at 
 meetings for worship and business are answered.* 
 This change has a very obvious significance, and 
 I believe that its effect is even more marked than 
 would be understood by any one not accustomed 
 to the extreme care and gravity with which these 
 matters were formerly pondered and reported upon 
 in each "preparative meeting" {i.e. each particular 
 meeting sitting specially with a view to preparing 
 the business to be transacted at any approaching 
 Monthly Meeting), and again at each stage of the 
 progress of the report towards its final presenta- 
 tion by the Quarterly to the Yearly Meeting. 
 Dress and language and other external matters 
 are now practically left entirely to the individual 
 conscience, as is surely wisest. With regard to 
 weightier matters, such as strict integrity in busi- 
 ness, sobriety, and correctness of moral conduct, 
 etc., there is still, I hope and believe, a consider- 
 able reality of watchful care exercised through 
 
 * The queries now in use are given at length in the Appendix, 
 Note A. 
 
organization: 13 
 
 specially appointed members. In every Monthly 
 Meeting there are Friends holding the offices of 
 elder and overseer. The business of the elders 
 is to watch over the ministers in the exercise of 
 their gift ; that of the overseers to see to the relief 
 of the poorer members, the care of the sick, and 
 other such matters ; to watch over the members 
 generally with regard to their Christian conduct, 
 to warn privately any who may be giving cause of 
 offence or scandal, and in case of need to bring 
 the matter before the Monthly Meeting, to be 
 dealt with as it may require. Should the Monthly 
 Meeting think it necessary to disown a member 
 for persisting in conduct not consistent with our 
 Christian profession, or for any other reason, the 
 member in question may appeal to the Quarterly 
 Meeting, and from its decision to that of the Yearly 
 Meeting, which is in all cases final. 
 
 The London Yearly Meeting has two standing 
 committees for the transaction of such of its affairs 
 as need attention more frequently than once a 
 year. One of these represents the Yearly Meeting 
 at large, and has charge of its money matters and 
 other general business ; it bears the curious and 
 suggestive title of the "Meeting for Sufferings," 
 from having been originally occupied mainly in 
 relieving Friends under persecution. The other is a 
 
14 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 committee of the Yearly Meeting on Ministry and 
 Oversight, and is called the " Morning Meeting." 
 
 Meetings on Ministry and Oversight are held in 
 every Quarterly and Monthly Meeting as well as 
 at the Yearly Meeting. They are composed of all 
 the recorded ministers, the elders and overseers of 
 each meeting, together with (in some Quarterly 
 Meetings) some Friends described as associate 
 members, who attend them as it were not officially, 
 but by a standing invitation. These meetings are 
 concerned, of course, with questions relating to the 
 special offices exercised by their members. 
 
 The ministers are, as is well known, not ap- 
 pointed or set apart by any human ordination, 
 nor are any of them ever paid, or liable to be 
 called upon by any human authority, for any 
 ministerial services. By the word " ministers " we 
 mean simply those, be they men or women, who 
 have received a gift and call to minister, that 
 is to offer vocal service, in meetings for worship. 
 When any Friend has exercised such a gift for a 
 considerable time, in a manner which is recog- 
 nized by the other members as evincing a true 
 vocation, the Monthly Meeting proceeds to record 
 the fact on the books of the meeting. This 
 acknowledgment is made merely for the sake of 
 " good order," and is not supposed to confer any 
 
ORGANIZATION. 15 
 
 additional power or authority on the minister 
 "recorded." The ministers are perfectly free to 
 continue their ordinary occupations, and many of 
 them are, in fact, engaged in earning their own 
 living in trades, business, or professions. 
 
 When a minister, in the exercise of his or her 
 gift, feels called to travel to any distant place, it 
 is thought right that the " concern " should be laid 
 before the Monthly Meeting, and, should it be an 
 important or distant concern, before the Quarterly 
 and, in some cases, even the Yearly Meeting also ; 
 when the meetings in question will, if they feel 
 "unity" with it, give the minister a minute or 
 certificate to that effect, which serves as an intro- 
 duction and guarantee in whatever meetings the 
 minister may visit during that " service." In such 
 cases the ministers' travelling expenses are paid 
 from one Monthly or Quarterly Meeting to another, 
 and it is usual for them to be welcomed into the 
 houses of some of the Friends belonging to the 
 meetings visited. The extent to which Friends do 
 thus travel, both in England and abroad, " in the 
 service of Truth," is something of which few 
 people outside the Society have any idea. Be- 
 tween England and America there is a continual 
 interchange of such visits, and the very copious 
 biographical literature of the Society teems with 
 
16 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the records of journeys undertaken "under an 
 impression of religious duty," and lasting some- 
 times for months, or even years, before the Friend 
 could " feel clear " of the work. No limit is ever 
 set beforehand to such work. It is felt to be work 
 in which the daily unfolding of the Divine ordering 
 must be watched and waited for. 
 
 Such is a general outline of what may be called 
 the machinery of the Society. It remains to state 
 briefly its distinguishing tenets before proceeding 
 to consider the spirit and inner spring from which 
 these outward developments have arisen, and from 
 whence they derive all their significance and value. 
 
 I have already referred to the peculiarity which 
 lies at the root of all the rest ; namely, our views 
 as to the nature of the true gospel ministry, as 
 a call bestowed on men and women, on old and 
 young, learned and unlearned ; bestowed directly 
 from above, and not to be conferred by any human 
 authority, or hired for money ; to be exercised 
 under the sole and immediate direction of the one 
 Master, the only Head of the Church, Christ the 
 Lord. As a consequence of this view, Friends 
 have, as is well known, refused as a matter of con- 
 science to pay tithes, or in any way to contribute 
 to the maintenance of a paid ministry, and of the 
 services prescribed by the Established Church. 
 
. ORGANIZA TION. 1 7 
 
 Closely connected with these views on ministry, 
 is our testimony against the observance of any 
 religious rites or ceremonies whatever. Neither 
 baptizing with water, nor the breaking of bread and 
 drinking of wine, are recognized by us as Divinely 
 ordained institutions of permanent obligation, and 
 neither of these ceremonies is practised by us. 
 We believe that the coming of Christ put an end 
 to the old dispensation of outward observances, 
 and that the whole drift of His teaching was against 
 the attaching of importance to such things. The 
 passages relating to His last supper with His 
 disciples, and those in which He speaks of His 
 permanent influence upon them under the images 
 of bread, blood, etc., seem to us much more intel- 
 ligible and impressive when understood without 
 reference to the sacramental theories which have 
 been engrafted upon them. The one baptism 
 u with the Holy Ghost and with fire," and the con- 
 tinual spiritual communion to be enjoyed in feed- 
 ing on the bread of life, are felt by us to be of the 
 very essence of true and spiritual worship ; but we 
 believe them to be entirely independent of any 
 outward observances. We therefore feel that no 
 other condition is needed for the highest acts of 
 worship than the presence and the right spiritual 
 disposition of the worshippers. 
 
 C 
 
18 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 The rejection of any separate priesthood, and of 
 all outward observances, is the main divergence 
 between us and other Christians. We have always 
 maintained a testimony against war as inconsistent 
 with the full acceptance of the spirit of Christ, and 
 against oaths as distinctly forbidden by Him. We 
 have also been led to abandon the pursuit of 
 changing fashions, and to cherish a plainness in 
 dress and language of a marked character, now 
 fast changing its type, but not, we trust, really dis- 
 appearing. These minor testimonies are probably 
 more widely known than the more fundamental 
 ones ; and though concerned with comparatively 
 trivial matters, they also spring from a deep root 
 of principle. It is a remarkable fact that from 
 time to time religious bodies have sprung up in 
 various parts of the world who, without any com- 
 munication with us, have adopted similar views on 
 many, if not all, of these points. This fact, as well 
 as the continuance and the widely spread influence 
 of our own Society, seems to show that its roots 
 lie deep in some fundamental principles of truth. 
 
 I am now about to attempt to deal with those 
 principles, not in the way of analysis or with any 
 attempt at precision of language, but as a record 
 of their practical working, as gathered mainly from 
 personal experience. It is not, I confess, without 
 
0RGAN1ZA TION. 19 
 
 some anxiety that I, as a new-comer, enter upon 
 this task. In the preceding sketch of matters of 
 fact, it has of course been easy to guard against 
 any serious misstatements ; but in the following 
 chapters I must deal with matters less easily veri- 
 fiable. It seems to me in some respects hardly 
 possible that any one not born and bred in the 
 Society should be fully qualified to unfold its 
 principles and practices. There is, on the other 
 hand, in the very fact of having entered it from 
 without, a special qualification for the office of 
 interpreting them to outsiders. It will, I hope, be 
 remembered that I have no kind of claim to speak 
 in any sense in the name of the Society. My 
 object is to explain (so far as the experience of 
 ten years' membership may enable me) the secret 
 of its strength and of its attraction for others ; and 
 for this attempt one brought up outside its pale, 
 and speaking in a purely individual capacity, may 
 well feel a special freedom. If I cannot pretend 
 to possess the entirely correct accent of a born 
 Friend, I may be none the less intelligible to those 
 amongst whom my own Christian principles were 
 imbibed and nourished until the years of maturity. 
 
20 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE INNER LIGHT. 
 
 THE one corner-stone of belief upon which the 
 Society of Friends is built is the conviction that 
 God does indeed communicate with each one of 
 the spirits He has made, in a direct and living 
 inbreathing of some measure of the breath of His 
 own life; that He never leaves Himself without a 
 witness in the heart as well as in the surroundings 
 of man ; and that in order clearly to hear the 
 Divine voice thus speaking to us we need to be 
 still ; to be alone with Him in the secret place of 
 His Presence ; that all flesh should keep silence 
 before Him. 
 
 This belief may be more precisely stated, ex- 
 plained, and as we think justified, by those who 
 are competent to deal with it in a philosophical 
 manner. The founders of our Society were not 
 philosophers, but spoke of these things from an 
 intense and abundant personal experience, which 
 led them with confidence to appeal to the experi- 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 21 
 
 ence of all sorts and conditions of men for con- 
 firmation of their doctrine as to the light within. 
 And they were not disappointed. The history of 
 the sudden gathering of the Society, of its rapid 
 formation into a strongly organized body, and of 
 the extraordinary constancy, zeal, and integrity 
 displayed by its original members, is a most" im- 
 pressive proof of the trueness of their aim.* 
 
 I have no ambition to clothe the fundamental 
 doctrine of our Society in any less popular lan- 
 guage than that in which it was originally preached. 
 I would rather, even did necessity not compel me, 
 be content to appeal, as did the early Friends, to 
 common experience. My aim is to explain for 
 practical purposes, and in modern as well as 
 simple language, the way in which our whole con- 
 stitution as a Society, and our various special 
 testimonies, have resulted from this one main 
 principle. 
 
 When questioned as to the reality and nature 
 of the inner light, the early Friends were accus- 
 
 * It is estimated that in 1680 (or thirty-two years from the 
 beginning of George Fox's ministry) the number of Friends was 
 about 40,000. " In 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom 
 less than 1000 in prison ; and it has been asserted that, between 
 1661 and 1697, 13,562 Quakers were imprisoned, 152 were trans- 
 ported, and 338 died in prison or of their wounds" (" Encycl. 
 Brit.," 9th edit., art. " Quakers "). 
 
22 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 tomed in return to ask the questioners whether 
 they did not sometimes feel something within 
 them that showed them their sins ; and to assure 
 them that this same power, which made manifest, 
 and therefore was truly light, would also, if 
 yielded to, lead them out of sin. This assur- 
 ance, that the light which revealed was also the 
 power which would heal sin, was George Fox's 
 gospel. The power itself was described by him in 
 many ways. Christ within, the hope of glory ; 
 the light, life, Spirit, and grace of Christ ; the 
 seed, the new birth, the power of God unto salva- 
 tion, and many other such expressions, flow forth 
 in abundant streams of heartfelt eloquence. To 
 "turn people to the light within," to "direct them 
 to Christ, their free Teacher," was his daily 
 business. 
 
 For this purpose he and his friends travelled 
 continually up and down the country, holding 
 meetings everywhere, and finding a never-failing 
 response to their appeal, as is proved by the bare 
 numbers of those who, within a very few years, 
 were ready to encounter persecution, and to main- 
 tain their testimony through long years of im- 
 prisonment and sufferings. In the earlier days of 
 the Society the doctrine of the inner light was 
 clearly one readily understood and accepted by 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 23 
 
 the ordinary English mind. In our own day it is 
 usually spoken of as a mysterious tenet, springing 
 up now and again in the minds of isolated enthu- 
 siasts, but indigenous only in Oriental countries, 
 and naturally abhorrent to the practical common 
 sense of our own people. 
 
 The difference arises, I think, from the fact that 
 there are circles within circles, or spheres within 
 spheres, and that the light to which the early 
 Friends bore witness was not confined to that 
 innermost sanctuary of whose very existence, per- 
 haps, none but a few " mystics " are conscious ; 
 but that, while proceeding from those deepest 
 depths, it was recognized as also lighting up con- 
 science, and conduct, and all the tangible outer 
 framework of life ; and that it was called " within " 
 not alone in the sense of lying nearer the centre 
 of our being than anything else, but also in the 
 (to ordinary minds) more intelligible sense of 
 beginning at home — of being the reward of each 
 man's own faithfulness, of being independent of 
 priests and ordinances. The religion they preached 
 was one which enforced the individual responsi- 
 bility of each one for his own soul ; it was a 
 portable and verifiable religion — a religion which 
 required truth in word and deed, plain dealing 
 and kindness and self-control, and which did not 
 
24 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 require ceremonial observances or priestly guaran- 
 tees ; a religion in which practice went for more 
 than theory, and all were expected to take their 
 stand on one level, and their share in the worship 
 and the business of "the Church." It is easy to 
 see how such preaching as this would commend 
 itself to English independence. It surely com- 
 mends itself to the unchanging sense of truth in 
 the human heart, and will be welcomed whenever it 
 is preached from first-hand experience of its power. 
 
 " That which you seek without you have already 
 within you/' The words which changed the life of 
 Madame Guyon will never lose their power while 
 human nature is occupied with the struggle for a 
 state of stable equilibrium. The perennial justifi- 
 cation of Quakerism lies in its energetic assertion 
 that the kingdom of heaven is within us; that we 
 are not made dependent upon any outward organi- 
 zation for our spiritual welfare. Its perennial diffi- 
 culty lies in the inveterate disposition of human 
 beings to look to each other for spiritual help, in 
 the feebleness of their perception of that Divine 
 Voice which speaks to each one in a language no 
 other ear can hear, and in the apathy which is 
 content to go through life without the attempt at 
 any true individual communion with God. 
 
 "The kingdom of heaven is within us." No 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 2$ 
 
 Christian, surely, can dispute the truth of this deep 
 word of Christ Himself. But its interpretation has 
 a wide range. In His own lips it was used in 
 opposition to the " Lo here ! and lo there ! " for 
 which He was preparing His disciples. They 
 were not to be hurried away into a search for 
 Christ in all directions, but were to remember that 
 His kingdom (surely implying His living presence) 
 is in the hearts of His people. He Himself makes 
 none of those abstruse distinctions between con- 
 sciousness and being, accident and essence, subject 
 and object, or even superficial and profound, and 
 so forth, which it has been the delight of many 
 of His most devoted followers to interweave with 
 this simple expression " within you." 
 
 I think it is inevitable that the more deeply we 
 penetrate into the recesses of the human mind, the 
 more we should have a sense of approaching an 
 inner sanctuary, and that there is a very real and 
 deep sense in which this word " within you " may 
 be understood as meaning "above all in your 
 inmost depths." But this is not its original or its 
 obvious meaning. In the teaching of our Lord there 
 is a frequent reference to the distinction of inward 
 or outward, but the distinction is drawn in a broad 
 and simple manner. It is oftenest a demand upon 
 our sincerity and thoroughness, not upon our 
 
26 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 powers of introspection — an appeal on behalf of 
 the weightier matters of the Law as compared with 
 trivial and ceremonial observances. It would 
 scarcely, I think, be true to say that the doctrine 
 of an "inner light," as we understand it, is ex- 
 plicitly laid down in the Gospels, although, to my 
 own mind, that doctrine appears to be an almost 
 inevitable inference from their teaching. I am 
 not, however, attempting to deal with the question 
 on its merits. I only wish to draw attention to the 
 wide range of meaning covered by such expres- 
 sions as " the light within," and " the inner light." 
 
 Both by our Master Himself, and by the Friends 
 who originally preached Him as the Light, the 
 figure of light was used in a broad and popular 
 sense. Light is the most obvious and the most 
 eternally satisfying figure for Divine truth. It is, 
 however, hardly more obvious or more satisfying 
 than the other figure so commonly, and almost 
 interchangeably, used by the same teachers, of 
 breath — inspiration. I scarcely know whether it 
 would convey most truth to say that the corner- 
 stone of our Society was a belief in "the light 
 within," or in "immediate inspiration." I doubt 
 whether the two ideas are in all respects altogether 
 distinguishable. Belief in the fact to which they 
 both refer, of an actual Divine influence com- 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 27 
 
 municated to every human spirit, is our real corner- 
 stone.* 
 
 The fact of inspiration is denied by no Christian 
 — the full recognition of its present and constant 
 operation is in some degree a peculiarity of Friends. 
 It is not uncommon outside the Society to hear 
 expressions implying that Divine inspiration is a 
 thing of the past ; a quite exceptional gift, familiar 
 only in apostolic times. It seems to me that this 
 limitation of its range amounts almost to a denial 
 of its reality. I can hardly understand the idea 
 that God did occasionally long ago speak to 
 human beings, but that He never does so now. 
 It seems, at any rate, inconsistent with any worthy 
 sense of His unchangeableness. 
 
 Many of us have come to believe that one of the 
 
 * I may, perhaps, here be allowed to point out the ambiguity of 
 the expression "immediate inspiration." The word "immediate" 
 may be understood to mean direct, and in this sense it is, I think, 
 superfluous ; for it is surely impossible to conceive of inspiration as 
 indirect, although revelation may easily be so. But it may also, in 
 reference to any particular thought communicated, be understood 
 as meaning " instantaneous ; " and in this sense a special impor- 
 tance has been attached to it by some Friends, which is, I believe, 
 deprecated by others, as restricting " ministry " to the utterance of 
 words believed to be at the moment given for utterance, under what 
 is called a "fresh anointing" from above. I would, therefore, 
 rather avoid at present the use of the expression "immediate 
 inspiration," when speaking of our belief that there is in every 
 heart a witness for the truth, which is, so to speak, radiated from 
 the central truth. The "light " seems, on the whole, to b^theJigure 
 least open to any possible misinterpretation. 
 
V 
 
 28 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 greatest hindrances to a real belief in or recogni- 
 tion of inspiration has been the exceedingly crude 
 and mechanical conception of it as attributed to 
 the letter of Scripture. From this hard and shallow 
 way of thinking about inspiration, Friends have 
 generally been preserved in proportion as they 
 have held firmly the old Quaker doctrine of the 
 inner light. Some, no doubt, have gone too far 
 in the direction of transferring the idea of infalli- 
 bility from the Bible to themselves. But, on the 
 whole, I believe the doctrine of Fox and Barclay 
 (*.*., briefly, that the "Word of God" is Christ, 
 not the Bible, and that the Scriptures are profit- 
 able in proportion as they are read in the same 
 spirit which gave them forth) to have been a most 
 valuable equipoise to the tendency of other Pro- 
 testant sects to transfer the idea of infallibility 
 from the Church to the Bible. Nothing, I be- 
 lieve, can really teach us the nature and meaning 
 of inspiration but personal experience of it. That 
 we may all have such experience if we will but 
 attend to the Divine influences in our own hearts-; 
 is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism. Whether 
 this belief, honestly acted on, will manifest itself 
 in the homespun and solid, but only too sober 
 morality of the typical everyday Quaker, or 
 whether it will land us in the mystical fervours of 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 29 
 
 an Isaac Penington, or the apostolic labours of a 
 John Woolman or a Stephen Grellet, must depend 
 chiefly upon our natural temperament and special 
 gifts. The range of the different forms taken by 
 the doctrine is as wide as the range of human 
 endowment and experience. A belief which is the 
 common property of the prophet and the babe will, 
 of course, yield every variety of practical result. 
 
 It is a belief which it is hardly possible to incul- 
 cate by anything more or less than a direct appeal 
 to experience, to the witness within ; and there is 
 the further difficulty, that the experience to which 
 we can appeal only as sharers in it, must be ex- 
 pressed in language very often and very naturally 
 misunderstood. The assertion, however guarded, 
 that one has actual experience of Divine inspiration 
 in one's own person, is very apt to sound like a 
 claim to personal infallibility. Yet in reality 
 nothing can be further from the mark. The first 
 effect of the shining of light within is to show 
 what is amiss — to "convince of sin." It is not 
 claiming any superiority to ordinary human con- 
 ditions to say, in response to such an appeal as 
 that of the Friends just referred to, " Yes, I have 
 indeed been conscious of a power within making 
 manifest to me my sins and errors, and I have 
 indeed experienced its healing and emancipating 
 
30 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 power as well as its fiery purgings and bitter 
 condemnations. That which has shown me my 
 fault has healed me ; the light has led and is 
 leading me onwards and upwards out of the abyss, 
 nearer and nearer to its own eternal Source ; and I 
 know that, in so far as I am obedient to it, I am 
 safe." What is such a reply but an acknowledg- 
 ment that "the light, the Spirit, and grace of 
 Christ " have indeed been an indwelling, inbreath- 
 ing power in one's own heart? If it be a claim 
 to inspiration, it is a claim which implies no merit 
 and no eminence in him who makes it j it is made 
 on ground common to the publican, the prodigal, 
 and the sinner, to Magdalen and to Paul. It is 
 the history of every child returning to the Father's 
 house. 
 
 But it is not every one to whom it would be 
 natural to describe this experience in language so 
 mystical as this, nor would the mystic's experience 
 be likely to stop short at anything so simple and 
 elementary as the process just described. And 
 here we are confronted with the real " peculiarity " 
 of Quakerism — its relation to mysticism. There 
 is no doubt that George Fox himself and the other 
 fathers of the Society were of a strongly mystical 
 turn of mind, though not in the sense in which the 
 word is often used by the worshippers of "common 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 31 
 
 sense," as a mild term of reproach, to convey a 
 general vague dreaminess. Nothing, certainly, could 
 be less applicable to the early Friends than any 
 such reproach as this. They were fiery, dogmatic, 
 pugnacious, and intensely practical and sober- 
 minded. But they were assuredly mystics in what 
 I take to be the more accurate sense of that word 
 — people, that is, with a vivid consciousness of the 
 inwardness of the light of truth. 
 
 Mysticism in this sense is a well-known phe- 
 nomenon, of which a multitude of examples 
 may be found in all religions. It is, indeed, 
 rather a personal peculiarity than a form of be- 
 lief; and therefore, although from time to time 
 associations (our own, for one) have been based 
 upon what are called mystical tenets, there can 
 scarcely be anything like a real school of mys- 
 ticism — at any rate, in Europe. Mysticism J _ as 
 we know it, is essentially individual. It refuses to 
 be formulated or summed up. In one sense it is 
 common to all religious persuasions ; in another, 
 it equally eludes them all. We can easily under- 
 stand what constitutes a mystic, but the peculiarity 
 itself is incommunicable. Their belief is an open 
 secret. They themselves have ever desired to 
 communicate it, though continually feeling the 
 impossibility of doing so by words alone. It is 
 
32 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the secret of light — an inward light clothing itself 
 in life, and living to bring all things to the light. 
 
 Mystics, as I understand the matter, are those 
 whose minds, to their own consciousness, are lighted 
 from within ; who feel themselves to be in immediate 
 communication with the central Fountain of light 
 and life. They have naturally a vivid sense both 
 of the distinction and of the harmony between the 
 inward and the outward — a sense so vivid that it 
 is impossible for them to believe it to be unshared 
 by others. A true mystic believes that all men 
 have, as he himself is conscious of having, an 
 inward life, into which, as into a secret chamber, 
 he can retreat at will.* In this inner chamber he 
 finds a refuge from the ever-changing aspects of 
 outward existence ; from the multitude of cares 
 and pleasures and agitations which belong to the 
 life of the senses and the affections ; from human 
 judgments ; from all change, and chance, and 
 turmoil, and distraction. He finds there, first 
 repose, then an awful guidance ; a light which 
 burns and purifies ; a voice which subdues ; he 
 
 * Let me not be understood to mean that the process of "keep- 
 ing the mind" (in Quaker phrase) "retired to the Lord" is an 
 easy one. On the contrary, it may need strenuous effort. But 
 the effort can be made at will, and even the mere effort thus to 
 retire from the surface to the depths of life is sure to bring help 
 and strengthening — is in itself a strengthening, steadying process. 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 33 
 
 finds himself in the presence of his God. It is 
 here, in this holy of holies, that "deep calleth 
 unto deep ; " here that the imperishable, unfathom- 
 able, unchanging elements of humanity meet and 
 are one with the Divine Fountain of life from 
 whence they flow ; here that the well of living 
 waters springeth up unto eternal life. 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is within you." 
 Personal religion is a real and a living thing only 
 in proportion as it springs from this deep inward 
 root. The root itself is common to all true be- 
 lievers. The consciousness of its " inwardness " 
 is that which distinguishes the mystic. How it 
 should be that to some minds the words " inward 
 and outward " express the most vivid and con- 
 tinuous fact of consciousness, while to others they 
 appear to have no meaning at all ; how it comes 
 that some are born mystics, while to others the 
 report of the mystic concerning the inner life is a 
 thing impossible to be believed and hardly to be 
 understood ; — these are psychological problems I 
 cannot attempt to unravel. If, however, a certain 
 correspondence between the inward and the out- 
 ward do really exist (and this, I suppose, will 
 hardly be denied, whatever may be the most philo- 
 sophically accurate way of expressing it), the faculty 
 of discerning it must needs be a gift. I believe, 
 
 D 
 
 / 
 
'</ 
 
 34 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 indeed, that the power in this direction which dis- 
 tinguishes such mystics as, e.g., Thomas a Kempis, 
 Jacob Boehme, Tauler, Fenelon, Madame Guyon, 
 George Fox, William Law, St. Theresa, Molinos, 
 and others, is essentially the same gift which in a 
 different form, or in combination with a different 
 temperament and gifts of another order, makes 
 poets. It is the gift of seeing truth at first-hand, 
 the faculty of receiving a direct revelation. To 
 have it is to be assured that it is the common 
 inheritance, the "light which lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world." Preachers like those 
 I have just mentioned always appeal to it with 
 confidence as to a witness to be found in every 
 heart. And surely experience confirms this con- 
 viction of theirs. It is in degree only that their 
 gift is exceptional. They may have the sight of 
 the eagle, but they see by the same light as the bat. 
 Now, the obvious tendency of a vivid first-hand 
 perception of truth, or light, is to render the 
 possessor of it so far independent of external 
 teachers. And we all know that in point of fact 
 such illuminati always have shown a disposition 
 to go their own way, and to disregard, if not to 
 denounce, traditional teaching, which has brought 
 them into frequent collisions with ecclesiastical and 
 other authorities. Those of the Church of Rome 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 35 
 
 have, with their wonted sagacity, as much as possible 
 sought to turn this strange power to account, while 
 providing safety-valves for the unmanageable 
 residue. ^ 
 
 It is the easier to do this because of the two 
 marked characteristics of mystics — quietness and 
 independence. Mystics are naturally independent, 
 aot only of ecclesiastical authority, but of each 
 other. This is necessarily implied in the very idea 
 of first-hand reception of light. While it must 
 always constitute a strong bond of sympathy 
 between those who recognize it in themselves and 
 in each other, it naturally indisposes them to 
 discipleship. They sit habitually at no man's feet, 
 and do not as a rule greatly care to have any one 
 sit at theirs. Mysticism in this sense seems 
 naturally opposed to tradition. No true mystic 
 would hold himself bound by the thoughts of 
 others. He does not feel the need of them, being 
 assured of , the sufficiency and conscious of the 
 possession of that inward guidance, whether called 
 light, or voice, or inspiration, which must be seen, 
 heard, felt, by each one in his own heart, or not at 
 all. But the duty of looking for and of obeying 
 this guidance is a principle which may be inculcated 
 and transmitted from generation to generation like 
 any other principle. Its hereditary influence is 
 
36 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 very perceptible in old Quaker families, where a 
 unique type of Christian character resulting from 
 it is still to be met with. 
 
 Quietness naturally accompanies the belief in 
 this inward guidance, not only because in the 
 Divine presence all that is merely human neces- 
 sarily sinks into silent insignificance, but also 
 because it is instinctively felt that it is only in 
 stillness that any perfect reflection from above can 
 be formed in the mirror of the human spirit. The 
 natural fruit of mysticism is quietism. 
 
 I have no means of estimating the actual pre- 
 valence of mystical and quietist principles in the 
 Society of Friends at the present time. But I am 
 sure that our Society is the natural home for the 
 spirits of all those who hold them, for it is the one 
 successful embodiment of these principles in a 
 system of " Church government." Every arrange- 
 ment is made to favour and to maintain the 
 practice of looking for individual inward guidance, 
 and to give the freest scope to its results. Every- 
 thing which tends to hinder obedience to it is 
 abandoned and discouraged. I shall endeavour to 
 trace the working of this aim in various special 
 directions hereafter. I must now endeavour to 
 explain as well as I can what it is precisely that 
 I understand by that inward light, voice, or Divine 
 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 37 
 
 guidance which we Friends believe it our duty and 
 our highest privilege in all things to watch for. 
 
 I do not, indeed, claim that my own share in this 
 deepest region of human experience amounts to 
 more than a faint and intermittent glimmering of 
 what I know to be possible. I earnestly desire to 
 explain to others what to myself has been especially 
 blessed and helpful in the deepest unfoldings, 
 whether by word or in life, of Quaker principles ; 
 but I feel that the task would demand for its full 
 accomplishment not only greater powers than 
 mine, but also the assistance which can be given 
 only by something more than candour in the reader 
 — by a real desire to help out the stammering 
 utterance, and to supply the gaps left by individual 
 shortcomings. To such a helpful auditor, therefore, 
 I will in imagination address myself. 
 
 Faithfulness to the light is the watchword of all 
 who hunger and thirst after righteousness — of all 
 seekers after the kingdom of heaven. Is this merely 
 an equivalent for the more commonplace expression, 
 "obedience to conscience"? Surely not. Conscience, 
 as we all know, is liable to perversion, to morbid 
 exaggerations, to partial insensibility, to twists and 
 crotchets of all sorts, and itself needs correction by 
 various external standards. Conscience, therefore, 
 can never be our supreme and absolute guide. 
 
38 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 Whether it can ever be right to disobey it, must 
 depend on the precise meaning we attach to the 
 words " conscience " and " right," and into this 
 puzzle I have no intention of entering. In a broad 
 and practical sense, we all know that if there 
 were nothing above conscience, conscience would 
 assuredly lead many of us into the ditch ; nay, that, 
 for want of enlightenment from above, it actually 
 has led many there. The light by which our 
 consciences must be enlightened, the light in 
 obedience to which is our supreme good, must be 
 something purer than this fallible faculty itself. 
 It must be that power within us, if any such power 
 there be, which is one with all the wisdom, all the 
 goodness, all the order and harmony, without us ; 
 one with " the power, not ourselves, which makes 
 for righteousness ; " one with " the eternal will 
 towards all goodness." It must be a power as all- 
 pervading and immanent in the spirit of man as 
 is the power of gravity (or whatever yet more 
 elementary force gravity may be resolved into) in 
 the outer world he inhabits. It must be the power 
 in which we live and move and have our being — 
 the power and the presence of God. 
 
 I do not attempt — idle indeed would be the 
 attempt in such hands as mine — to contribute 
 anything towards the arguments in favour of 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 39 
 
 Theism. To those who do not believe in the 
 existence of the living God, the whole subject upon 
 which I am engaged must be without interest or 
 significance. And I leave it to others to reconcile, 
 or to show that we need not attempt to reconcile, 
 the existence of evil with the omnipotence of God. 
 The mystery in which all our searchings after a 
 complete theory concerning the Author of our 
 being must needs lose themselves need not perplex, 
 though it may overshadow, those practical ques- 
 tions as to our own right attitude towards Him 
 with which alone I am concerned. I assume faith 
 in Him and allegiance to Him as the very ground 
 under our feet ; if this be not granted, it is idle to 
 go further. My reason for going so far even as I 
 have done in this direction (the direction, I mean, 
 of inquiring into our fundamental assumptions) is 
 that I cannot help thinking that our Quaker faith 
 respecting immediate Divine guidance rests upon 
 a wider basis of common conviction than is usually 
 supposed. I believe it to be the legitimate, though 
 by no means the frequent, result of any sincere 
 belief in God, however attained — not merely an 
 outgrowth from one peculiar form of Christianity. 
 The coldest and most cautious Theist can say 
 no less than that God does in some sense direct 
 the course of this world and of all that is in 
 
4Q QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 it. The most ecstatic mystic can bear witness to 
 nothing beyond the fact that God does in deed 
 and in truth pervade and sway the inmost recesses 
 of his own being. Is not this the very same truth, 
 seen under the magnifying and amplifying power 
 of first-hand experience ? 
 
 To me it seems idle to attempt to find any 
 resting-place between convinced atheism on the 
 one hand, and absolute self-surrender to the in- 
 dwelling influence of the Divine Spirit on the 
 other ; the barrier, if there be any barrier, is surely 
 not so much a logical as a moral hindrance. 
 Believing in God, and worshipping Him with one's 
 whole heart, trusting Him absolutely and loving 
 Him supremely, seem to me to be but various 
 stages in the growth of one seed. I know, alas ! 
 but too well, that this growth is slow, and that it 
 meets with obstacles and checks at every moment. 
 I know that our faith has not only to struggle, but 
 to struggle through the darkness, and that it may 
 be challenged at every step by difficulties which it 
 cannot solve. But I cannot admit that there is 
 any consistency or reason in treading the path of 
 faith half-way. I cannot admit that it is reason- 
 able to believe in God as the Supreme Being, and 
 unreasonable to seek His living presence and direc- 
 tion in the minutest details of our everyday life. 
 
. THE INNER LIGHT, 41 
 
 With Him, surely, our distinctions of great and 
 small disappear, and " the darkness is no darkness 
 at all." " Whither shall I go then from Thy pre- 
 sence ? If I go down into hell, and remain in the 
 uttermost parts of the earth, even there shall Thy 
 hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me." 
 
 But many will say, This may all be quite true, 
 but how are we to distinguish between the voice 
 of God and the many other voices which distract 
 our attention from it ? How, if God is everywhere, 
 does the practical result differ from His being 
 nowhere? To the full extent of my ability I 
 recognize this great difficulty. It seems to throw 
 us back for guidance upon those very powers 
 whose insufficiency we have just recognized. If 
 I reply, God is to be recognized in "whatsoever 
 things are true, whatsoever things are pure, and 
 lovely, and of good report," you may well retort, 
 And how, except through our fallible consciences, 
 shall we discern truth, purity, loveliness ? 
 
 I believe that the difficulty of distinguishing 
 between the will, or the voice, or the light of 
 God, and the wills and voices and lights of a lower 
 kind from which it is to be distinguished, is not 
 only not to be ignored, but that the very first step 
 towards learning the lesson is to recognize that it 
 is a lesson, and a hard one — nay, a lifelong dis- 
 
42 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 cipline. But just as the child trusts instinctively, 
 absolutely, helplessly, before it has even begun to 
 attempt to understand its parents, so, surely, we 
 may and must trust God first and unreservedly, 
 before we begin slowly and feebly, yet persever- 
 ingly, to acquaint ourselves with Him. And as 
 the trust of the full-grown son or daughter is a 
 nobler thing than the trust of the infant, so the 
 experience of wisdom and prudence has doubtless 
 a revelation of its own — a precious addition to that 
 essential revelation which is made in the first place 
 to babes, and to the wise only in so far as they too 
 have childlike hearts. To have our senses exer- 
 cised to discern between truth and falsehood, light 
 and darkness, order and disorder, the will of God 
 and the will of the flesh, is, I believe, the end and 
 object of our training in this world. There is no 
 royal road to it. Yet can we honestly say that it 
 is impossible ? 
 
 If, then, it is only by a slow and gradual process 
 that we can rise to anything like a true knowledge 
 (even according to our human measure) of God, 
 must it not be by a slow and gradual process alone 
 that He can make His voice and His guiding 
 touch distinguishable by us and intelligible to us ? 
 Is it any wonder if those who do not attribute to 
 Him so much as the broad obvious laws by which 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 43 
 
 we are all hedged in from gross wrong-doing and 
 error, should fail to recognize the reality or the 
 significance of those delicate restraining touches 
 by which the spirits which yield themselves to His 
 care are moulded into some faint likeness to the 
 Son of His love ? Must not the first step towards 
 entering into the meaning of that which is personal 
 and individual be the acceptance of what is equally 
 applicable to all ? * 
 
 That individual and immediate guidance, in 
 which we recognize that "the finger of God is 
 come unto us," seems to come in, as it were, to 
 complete and perfect the work rough-hewn by 
 morality and conscience. We may liken the laws 
 of our country to the cliffs of our island, over which 
 we rarely feel ourselves in any danger of falling ; 
 the moral standard of our social circle to the 
 beaten highway road which we can hardly miss. 
 Our own conscience would then be represented by 
 a fence, by which some parts of the country are 
 enclosed for each one, the road itself at times 
 barred or narrowed. And that Divine guidance of 
 which I am speaking could be typified only by 
 the pressure of a hand upon ours, leading us gently 
 to step to the right or the left, to pause or to go 
 
 * "If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, 
 who shall give you that which is your own ? " (Luke xvi. 12). 
 
44 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 forward, in a manner intended for and understood 
 by ourselves alone.* 
 
 When I say I have been "rightly guided" to 
 this or that step, I mean that, being well within the 
 limits prescribed by morality, by personal claims, 
 hy the closest attention to the voice of conscience, 
 I have yet felt that there was still a choice to be 
 made as between things equally innocent but prob- 
 ably not equally excellent — a choice, perhaps, 
 between different levels almost infinitely remote 
 from each other — and that in making that choice 
 I have acted under an impelling or restraining 
 power not of my own exerting. I generally mean, 
 further, that in making the choice I have looked, and 
 
 * I do not, of course, forget that, owing to the imperfection of 
 liuman laws and human faculties, cases may and do occur in which 
 Divine guidance must lead us in ways which run counter to them. 
 The figure used above is intended only to illustrate the general 
 correspondence between the map, as it were, which can be laid 
 down by the reason of man, and that individual and immediate 
 guidance which alone can show us a higher and a narrower, but yet 
 freer, pathway — the pathway of that highest service which is perfect 
 freedom. When, in exceptional cases, any contrariety really 
 emerges between the human and the Divine guiding lines, we may 
 surely still, without too much straining of our figure, say that it is 
 a living power only which can free any human spirit from the too 
 narrow fencing in of a morbid or unenlightened conscience, and 
 guide it by paths running counter to the beaten track of conven- 
 tional morality, or even in some rare instances authorize and enable 
 and require it to overleap even the cliffs of actual law, trusting that 
 in such cases, as experience has already taught us, the blood of the 
 martyrs will still be the seed of the Church. 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 45 
 
 probably asked, for light from above, and that the 
 results of such choice have tended to confirm the 
 belief that my action has been prompted by One 
 who could see the end from the beginning, who 
 knew things hidden from myself, and " understood 
 my path long before ; " in short, that I have been 
 led as the blind by a way I knew not. Is not such 
 experience as this witnessed to by multitudes of 
 Christians, especially as they advance in life ? For 
 it may take long years of patience before the last 
 pieces are fitted into the puzzle, so as to enable us 
 to judge of the intention of the whole. 
 
 I am well aware that I am speaking of a region 
 of experience in which there' is abundant room for 
 self-deception. I know that those who, out of the 
 abundance of the heart, speak very freely of these 
 things with their lips are apt not only to shock 
 one's sense of reverence, but to betray a deplorable 
 want of logic in the inferences they draw from 
 trifling facts — facts whose significance to them- 
 selves cannot possibly be conveyed to others, and 
 may indeed very likely be in large measure fanciful 
 or even distorted. I think that we are wrong 
 when we attempt to found any sort of proof or 
 argument in favour of what is called " a particular 
 providence" exclusively upon the occurrences of 
 our own lives. People forget that what is most 
 
46 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 y convincing to themselves, because it was within 
 the four walls of their own experience that it 
 happened, is for that very reason least convincing 
 to others — that is, in the way of argument, though 
 the impression may, of course, be sympathetically 
 shared, and may rightly have special weight with 
 those who have reason to trust the speaker. But, 
 as a general rule, I believe that reverence and 
 reason combine to demand that the personal and 
 intimate dealings of Divine Providence with each 
 one should be mainly reserved for personal and 
 intimate use and edification. Proof or argument 
 as to the general truth that God does guide His 
 people individually must be founded upon a wider 
 basis than is afforded by any one person's experi- 
 ence. I believe that there are abundant reasons, 
 of a far-reaching and deep kind, to justify each one 
 in looking for the minutest individual guidance. 
 I cannot, indeed, as I have already said, under- 
 stand how those who believe in a providential 
 order at all can limit it to the larger outlines, or, 
 as is so often done in practice, to the pleasing 
 results of the Divine government. If we believe, 
 in any real and honest sense, that the ordering of 
 all human affairs is in the hands of one supreme 
 Ruler, how can we stop short of believing that the 
 minutest trifle affecting any one of us is under the 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 47 
 
 same all-pervading care ? It would, I think, be 
 as reasonable to say that God created animals, 
 but left it to each one to develop its own fur or 
 feathers. And, again, if we attribute our preserva- 
 tion from danger to Him, how can we flinch from 
 the parallel belief that by His ordinance also we 
 were exposed to it ; yes, and in some cases doomed 
 to suffer the worst it can wreak upon us, " without 
 reprieve M ? 
 
 Therefore I believe that, before we can hope to 
 enter into that intimate and blessed communion 
 with God which transfigures all life, two great 
 conditions must be fulfilled. We must have 
 settled it in our hearts that everything, from the 
 least to the greatest, is to be taken as His language 
 — language which it is our main business here to 
 learn to interpret — and we must be willing to face 
 all pain as His discipline. 
 
 I know, of course, that these two conditions can 
 be perfectly fulfilled only as the result of much 
 discipline and much experience of the very guid- 
 ance in question. But their roots — docility and 
 courage — are in some measure implanted in us 
 long before we begin to think about such questions 
 as the government of the world or the ordering of 
 our lives. 
 
 It is, I believe, in the last of these two demands 
 
48 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 of logic, the demand upon our courage, that the 
 moral hindrance to a full belief in Divine guidance 
 mainly lies. People cannot bring themselves to 
 feel that the infliction of pain can be the act of 
 One whom they desire to know as Love. Yet this 
 is the very central demand of Christianity. What 
 is courage but the willingness to encounter suffer- 
 ing, the readiness to take up the cross ? 
 
 In the strength of the Spirit of Christ, the ever- 
 lasting Son of the Father, we can rise to this 
 victory of trust; we can meet life without flinching, 
 and read its darkest riddles in the light of the 
 revelation of Divine love which He has won for 
 us by His own suffering and death. Seen in that 
 light, it is, according to the universal testimony of 
 the saints, a gentle, though often most severe, 
 unfolding of depth within depth of heavenly 
 wisdom — gentle beyond words in its methods, yet 
 inexorable in its conditions. At every step the 
 fiery baptism must be encountered. The deep 
 things of God cannot be reached except through 
 the very destruction of the perishing flesh. It is 
 through death that we enter into life. But as 
 we do enter into it, we can truly look back and 
 say that His ordering has been better than our 
 planning — that His thoughts are high above our 
 thoughts, as the heaven is above the earth. 
 
THE INNER LIGHT. 49 
 
 Our goal must be a heavenly one if we are to 
 judge truly of His guidance. The home to which, 
 if we trust Him, He will assuredly lead us, is no 
 earthly home ; but Zion — the heavenly Jerusalem ; 
 the beautiful city of peace, which can be entered 
 only through much tribulation. Those who are 
 looking for smooth roads and luxurious resting^ 
 places may well say they perceive no sign of 
 guidance at all. The Divine guidance is away 
 from self-indulgence, often away from outward 
 success ; through humiliation and failure, and many 
 snares and temptations ; over rough roads and 
 against opposing forces — always uphill. Its 
 evidence of success is in the inmost, deepest, most 
 spiritual part of our experience. It is idle indeed 
 to talk of it to those whose faces are not set Zion- 
 wards. It will bring them none of the results in 
 which they have their reward. Those who know 
 the voice of the Divine Guide, and those who deny 
 that it can be heard, are not so much contradicting 
 each other as speaking different languages — or 
 rather speaking in reference to different states of 
 existence. 
 
 I have been speaking of " light," " voice," " guid- 
 ance," as almost equivalent and interchangeable 
 expressions for our consciousness of the presence of 
 God with us and in us. In the expression " inspira- 
 
 E 
 
So QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 tion" we have further the symbol of His power — of 
 the upbearing, purifying, energizing gift of His own 
 Spirit Here words almost fail ; and fresh care is 
 needed, whether in speaking or in hearing, as 
 we draw near to those depths which " cannot be 
 uttered." I pause on the threshold of the inner 
 chamber of the heart, the holy place of true 
 worship. 
 
( 5i ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 OUR manner of worship is the natural (as it seems 
 
 to me even the inevitable) result of the full 
 
 recognition of the reality of Divine inspiration — of 
 
 the actual living present sufficient fulness of 
 
 intercourse between the human spirit and Him 
 
 who is the Father of spirits. Who that truly 
 
 expects to hear the voice of God can do otherwise 
 
 than bow in silence before Him ? 
 
 "Devotion," says Bishop Butler in one of his 
 
 -sermons,* "is retirement from the world He has 
 
 made, to Him alone ; it is to withdraw from the 
 
 avocations of sense, to yield ourselves up to the 
 
 influences of the Divine presence, and to give 
 
 full scope to the affections of gratitude, love, 
 
 reverence, trust, and dependence ; of which infinite 
 
 * Sermon XIV., "On the Love of God," Butler's " Sermons," 
 p. 278 (London, 1726). And in his charge to the clergy of Durham, 
 published with the "Analogy" (London, 1802), he repeats the 
 words which I have printed above in italics, and speaks of public 
 worship as "a time of devotion, when we are assembled to yield 
 -ourselves up to the full influence of the Divine presence." 
 
52 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 Power, Wisdom, and Goodness is the natural and 
 only Object." No words could more fully or 
 worthily express the intention of a Friends' meet- 
 ing — of one of those "meetings for worship" 
 which are, as is well known, "held on a basis 
 of silence," but in which free course is allowed 
 to whatever Divine influence may prompt of 
 vocal prayer, preaching, testimony, or prophecy ;. 
 those meetings in which each one, it is felt,, 
 should in the first place enter into the inmost 
 sanctuary of his own heart, and be alone with God - T 
 being still, that His voice may be clearly heard 
 within, before the lips can rightly be opened to 
 show forth His praise or His counsels to others. 
 From the depths of that stillness words do from 
 time to time arise — words uttered in simple 
 obedience to the upspringing of the fountain from 
 within. This is what we mean by being " moved 
 by the Spirit," and I do not see how a worthier or 
 a truer expression could be found for the perfect 
 ideal of spiritual worship. 
 
 That mysterious diversity which is interwoven 
 with all our likeness, and belongs to the very 
 nature common to us all, makes it impossible for 
 one to judge for another as to the manner of 
 worship most likely to be vitally helpful to him. 
 I cannot tell how far my own feeling about 
 
WORSHIP. 53 
 
 FrienoV meetings may arise from an idiosyncrasy. 
 I do not pretend to feel, as did some of the early 
 Friends, that all pre-arrangement is in itself un- 
 lawful or sinful. I can well understand the point 
 of view of those who believe that the majestic and 
 time-hallowed words of such a Liturgy as the 
 Anglican afford the nearest possible approach to 
 a worthy manner of public worship. I can even 
 understand, though with less of sympathy, the feel- 
 ings of those who dread lest the utterances of their 
 untutored fellow-worshippers should disturb their 
 own endeavours to attain to a devotional frame 
 of mind. But though, for these and other reasons, 
 I am prepared to admit that the extreme of sim- 
 plicity and freedom maintained in our own meet- 
 ings might not prove helpful to every one, and 
 though I have no desire to conceal the too obvious 
 fact that we continually fall very far short of 
 our ideal, I yet must avow my own conviction 
 that that ideal of public worship is the purest 
 which has ever been recognized, and also that it 
 is practically identical with that which seems to 
 have been recognized in the days of the apostles. 
 I further believe that there are many, in these 
 days especially, to whom it is the one manner of 
 worship which is still practically possible, as being 
 absolutely free from anything entangling to the 
 
54 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 conscience, or open to controversy. I have 
 already * spoken of the indescribable relief which 
 it afforded to my own mind at a time when 
 I was sorely harassed by difficulties — common to 
 how many in these days ! — as to the sincerity of 
 appropriating for my own use forms which, how- 
 ever beautiful, are open to so much and such 
 serious question. What I felt I wanted in a place 
 of worship was a refuge, or at least the opening of 
 a doorway towards the refuge, from doubts and 
 controversies — not a fresh encounter with them. 
 Yet it seems to me impossible that any one 
 harassed by the conflicting views of truth with 
 which just now the air is thick, should be able to 
 forget controversy while listening to such language 
 as that of the Book of Common Prayer. It seems 
 to me that nothing but silence can heal the wounds 
 made by disputations in the region of the unseen. 
 No external help, at any rate, has ever in my own 
 experience proved so penetratingly efficacious as 
 the habit of joining in a public worship based upon 
 silence. Its primary attraction for me was in the 
 fact that it pledged me to nothing, and left me 
 altogether undisturbed to seek for help in my own 
 way. But before long I began to be aware that 
 the united and prolonged silences had a far more 
 
 * See Introduction. 
 
WORSHIP. 55 
 
 direct and powerful effect than this. They soon 
 began to exercise a strangely subduing and soften- 
 ing effect upon my mind. There used, after a 
 while, to come upon me a deep sense of awe, as 
 we sat together and waited — for what? In my 
 heart of hearts I knew in whose Name we were 
 met together, and who was truly in the midst of us. 
 Never before had His influence revealed itself to me 
 with so much power as in those quiet assemblies. 
 
 And another result of the practice of silent 
 waiting for the unseen Presence proved to be a 
 singularly effectual preparation of mind for the 
 willing reception of any words which might be 
 offered " in the name of a disciple." The words 
 spoken were indeed often feeble, and always in- 
 adequate (as all words must be in relation to 
 Divine things), sometimes even entirely irrelevant 
 to my own individual needs, though at other times 
 profoundly impressive and helpful ; but, coming 
 as they did after the long silences which had fallen 
 like dew upon the thirsty soil, they went far deeper, 
 and were received into a much less thorny region 
 than had ever been the case with the words I had 
 listened to from the pulpit. 
 
 In Friends' meetings also, from the fact that 
 every one is free to speak, one hears harmonies 
 and correspondences between very various utter- 
 
56 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 ances such as are scarcely to be met with elsewhere. 
 It is sometimes as part-singing compared with 
 unison. The free admission of the ministry of 
 •women, of course, greatly enriches this harmony. 
 I have often wondered whether some of the 
 motherly counsels I have listened to in our meet- 
 ing would not reach some hearts that might be 
 closed to the masculine preacher. 
 
 But it is not only the momentary effect of 
 silence as a help in public worship that consti- 
 tutes its importance in Quaker estimation. The 
 silence we value is not the mere outward silence of 
 the lips. It is a deep quietness of heart and mind, 
 a laying aside of all preoccupation with passing 
 things — yes, even with the workings of our own 
 minds ; a resolute fixing of the heart upon that 
 which is unchangeable and eternal This " silence 
 of all flesh" appears to us to be the essential 
 preparation for any act of true worship. It is 
 also, we believe, the essential condition at all 
 times of inward illumination. " Stand still in the 
 light," says George Fox again and again, and then 
 strength comes — and peace and victory and de- 
 liverance, and all other good things. " Be still, 
 and know that I am God." It is the experience, 
 I believe, of all those who have been most deeply 
 conscious of His revelations of Himself, that they 
 
WORSHIP. 57 
 
 are made emphatically to the " waiting " soul — to 
 the spirit which is most fully conscious of its own 
 inability to do more than wait in silence before 
 Him. The possibilities of inward silence can be 
 but distantly referred to in words. The clearness 
 of inward vision which sometimes results from it 
 must be experienced to be fully understood ; the 
 things revealed to that vision are rather to be lived 
 in than uttered. But the fact that a strenuous 
 endeavour to lay aside all disturbing influences, 
 and to allow all external vibrations to subside, is 
 an important, if not an essential, preparation for 
 the reception of eternal truth, seems to be indis- 
 putable. To be quiet must surely always be a 
 gain. To rule one's own spirit, and to acquire the 
 power of proclaiming at least a truce within, must 
 surely be recognized by the least " mystical " as a 
 rational and wholesome exercise of self-control. 
 
 It is, to my own mind, a singular confirmation 
 of the depth of truth in the Quaker ideal, that it 
 embraces in its application such widely varying 
 degrees of spirituality. The " inward silence " 
 which to the mystic means the gateway of the 
 unspeakable, the limpid calmness of the mirror in 
 which heaven's glory is to be reflected, commends 
 itself also to the sternest rationalist as the be- 
 ginning of fortitude. And the experience of some 
 
58 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 of us (whom I may, perhaps, venture to describe 
 as rational mystics) proves the exceeding value of 
 the habit of seeking after inward silence as a real 
 life-discipline. Not only at the times set apart 
 for definite acts of worship — though, whether in 
 public or in private, it is from the heart of this 
 stillness that the voice of deepest prayer and praise 
 springs up — but also in all the daily warfare of 
 the Christian life, in encountering joy or sorrow, 
 temptation or perplexity, the first condition and 
 the highest reward of victory is equanimity. " Be 
 not thou greatly moved ; " " Fret not thyself, else 
 shalt thou be moved to do evil." There is no need 
 \ to multiply the words of the wise on this head. 
 We all surely have gone through times when " he 
 opened not his lips " expresses the only possible 
 attitude in which we can hope to win through. 
 Silence and resolution, indeed, seem almost like 
 different aspects of the same thing. And silence 
 is assuredly an art to be acquired, a discipline to 
 be steadily practised, before it can become the 
 instinctive habit and unfailing resource of the soul. 
 The wise Roman Catholic teachers all enjoin this 
 discipline upon those who desire to learn " perfec- 
 tion." Friends inculcate it rather by example than 
 by precept, though abundant recognition of its 
 importance is to be found in Quaker writings. 
 
WORSHIP. 59 
 
 But I am specially concerned with the practical 
 results of our manner of worship ; and I am bound 
 to say that, to myself, the practice of quietness in 
 life is markedly facilitated by the habit of joining" 
 in a worship " based on silence." 
 
 The connection between our practice of silence 
 and our belief in inspiration is, I think, obvious. 
 How can we listen if we do not cease to speak > 
 How can we receive while we maintain an incessant 
 activity ? It is obvious that " a wise passiveness " 
 is essential to the possibility of serving as chan- 
 nels for any Divinely given utterance. On this 
 subject of being " moved by the Spirit," there 
 seems often to be the strangest difficulty in 
 people's minds. They imagine that Friends claim 
 the possession of something like a miraculous gift 
 — something as baffling to ordinary reason as the 
 speaking in unknown tongues of the Irvingites. 
 Speaking under correction, and with a sense that 
 the matter reaches to unknown depths, I should 
 say that this was quite a mistake. What Friends 
 undoubtedly believe and maintain is that to the 
 listening heart God does speak intelligibly ; and 
 further, that some amongst His worshippers are. 
 gifted with a special openness to receive, and power 
 to transmit in words, actual messages from Himself. 
 Is this more than is necessarily implied in the 
 
to QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 belief that real communion with Him is not only 
 possible, but is freely open to all ? 
 
 We do not regard those who have the gift of 
 "" ministry " as infallible, or even as necessarily 
 closer to God than many of the silent worshippers 
 who form the great majority in every congregation. 
 We feel that the gift is from above, and that on all 
 of us lies the responsibility of being open to it, 
 willing to receive it, should it be bestowed, and to 
 use it faithfully while entrusted with it. But we 
 fully recognize that to do this perfectly requires a 
 continual submission of the will, and an unceasing 
 watchfulness. We know that to "keep close to 
 the gift " is not an easy thing. We know that the 
 singleness of eye which alone can enable any one 
 always to discern between the immediate guidance 
 of the Divine Spirit and the mere promptings of 
 our own hearts, is not attained without much 
 patience, and a diligent and persevering use of all 
 the means of instruction provided for us. We 
 recognize the value of such corrections even as 
 may come through the minds of others ; for, 
 although the servant is responsible only to his own 
 Master, and we desire earnestly to beware of any 
 dependence on each other in such matters, yet it 
 has (as I have already mentioned) been thought 
 right that some Friends should be specially ap- 
 
WORSHIP. 6 b 
 
 pointed to watch over the ministers in the exercise 
 of their gift. The "elders," to whom this task 
 is entrusted, do in fact often offer not only en- 
 couragement or counsel, but at times admoni- 
 tion and even rebuke, when they believe it to 
 be needed. It is thus clear that the Society has 
 always held with the Apostle Paul that " the spirits, 
 of the prophets are subject to the prophets." The 
 great care and caution shown in all the arrange- 
 ments of the Society with respect to ministry bear 
 witness to its recognition of the deep truth, that,, 
 the more precious the treasure, the more serious 
 the risks to which the earthen vessels enclosing 
 it are exposed. 
 
 The question is often asked, How can you dis- 
 tinguish between a message from above and the 
 suggestions of your own imagination ? * The only 
 
 * It is, I think, in this connection important to distinguish be- 
 tween the question, How do you in practice distinguish between a 
 true and a false message? and the quite separate inquiry, How do 
 you in theory distinguish between the human faculty of imagination 
 and the Divine action signified by the word "inspiration"? It is 
 with the first question only that I have been concerned in the text, as. 
 it is, I believe, the only question with which honesty requires us to 
 grapple. Any attempt to give a full answer to the second question 
 would require a degree of psychological skill to which I have no 
 claim ; and I doubt whether the very terms of the question do not 
 lead us beyond the province even of psychology. But, speaking in 
 a popular and trustful way, I should reply that we are not con- 
 cerned to discern the precise limits of the Divine and the human ; 
 only to throw open the deepest human powers to the purest Divine 
 
62 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 answer which can be given to this question is, that 
 to do so for practical purposes does indeed require 
 all the heavenly wisdom and all the humble 
 sincerity of heart of which we are capable. Wor- 
 ship, to those who believe that God is, and is 
 indeed to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, is 
 surely the highest function of the human spirit 
 To attain to such a transparency of heart and 
 mind as shall admit of our serving as channels for 
 the worship of others, and for the Divine response 
 to such worship — ladders, as it were, on which the 
 angels of God may ascend and descend in the 
 place of worship — is, indeed, an aim which must 
 transcend all merely human power. We need 
 for it the continual renovation of Him who is 
 Light—" the Way, the Truth, and the Life." But 
 dare any, who call themselves believers on Him, 
 doubt that such renovation is open to us ? 
 
 I can understand those who think all worship 
 idle, or worse than idle ; I cannot understand those 
 who think it can be acceptably performed without 
 the help of the Spirit Himself making intercession 
 for us, and with us, and in us, or that this help 
 will fail any true worshipper. Yet, if we do believe 
 
 influences ; that the result we look for is the fruit of a devout in- 
 telligence, first purified, and then swayed, by the immediate action 
 of Divine power. It surely involves something like a contradiction 
 in terms to inquire at what precise line a distinction is obliterated ? 
 
WORSHIP. 63 
 
 this help is given, are we not looking to be " moved 
 by the Spirit " ? Is the expectation peculiar to 
 any one body of Christians? Surely not. What 
 is peculiar to us Friends is the dread of limiting 
 or interfering with the immediate influences of the 
 Divine Spirit by the use of fixed forms of words, 
 and by outward observances or pressure of any kind. 
 
 As I have already said, I do not feel that ours 
 is the only lawful manner of worship ; I do not 
 even think it at all clear that it would be for all 
 people and at all times the most helpful. But I 
 <lo believe it to be the purest conceivable. I am 
 jealous for its preservation from any admixture of 
 adventitious "aids to devotion." I believe that 
 its absolute freedom and flexibility, its unrivalled 
 simplicity and gravity, make it a vessel of honour 
 prepared in an especial manner for the conveyance 
 of the pure water of life to many in these days 
 who are hindered from satisfying their souls' thirst 
 by questionable additions to the essence of Divine 
 worship. 
 
 I know that, in Friends' meetings as elsewhere, 
 one must be prepared to meet with much human 
 weakness and imperfection ; many things may 
 be heard in them which are trying to the flesh 
 — yes, and perhaps to the spirit also. Certainly 
 many things may be heard which are open to 
 
64 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 criticism, from an intellectual and literary point 
 of view. Let no one go to Friends' meetings 
 with the expectation of finding everything to his 
 taste. Yet even mere taste, if duly cultivated, 
 must recognize the value of a certain weight and 
 simplicity, arising, no doubt, from the habitual 
 practice of inward silence, by which they are often 
 distinguished. This is, however, a point upon 
 which no one who is alive to the real significance 
 of such meetings as ours would care to dwell. 
 Criticism fades away abashed in the presence of 
 what is felt to be a real, however faltering, endea- 
 vour to open actual communication with the Father 
 of spirits, and with each other as in His presence 
 and in His name. To my own mind, any living 
 utterance of a human voice pleading for itself and 
 for the objects of its love in words fresh from the 
 heart, has a power and a pathos infinitely beyond 
 that of the most perfect expression of devotion 
 read or recited according to an appointed order.* 
 
 * People have said to me again and again, If you want to be 
 silent, why cannot you be silent at home ? Such an objection seems 
 hardly intended to be seriously answered, yet I have heard it so 
 often that I cannot but notice it. Surely it need hardly be pointed 
 out that it applies at least equally strongly to the practice of 
 meeting together to join in prayers, which, being already in print 
 and chosen according to the calendar, each of us might read at 
 home. But the worthier answer is that, whether our utterance be 
 prearranged or spontaneous, we meet in order to kindle in each 
 other the flame of true worship, and also to show forth our allegiance 
 
WORSHIP. 65 
 
 It is an important peculiarity of our meetings 
 that the responsibility for their character is felt 
 to be shared by all. I do not mean that all our 
 members are in fact alive to their own share of 
 this responsibility. The service is, no doubt, often 
 far too much left to one or more willing speakers. 
 But I do not believe that it would be possible 
 amongst Friends for anything like the sense of 
 dependence on one individual to arise which seems 
 naturally to result from the idea of a priestly 
 order. And, at any rate, the ideal is kept continu- 
 ally before us of a company coming together on 
 one level, each of whom is free and encouraged to 
 bring his individual offering of praise and prayer, 
 whether silent or vocal. It is a familiar thought 
 amongst Friends that no one should expect in a 
 meeting for worship " to eat the bread of idleness." 
 And the practice which is so frequent amongst us 
 of ministering Friends travelling from meeting to 
 meeting in the exercise of their gift, causes a 
 stirring of the waters, and keeps up the sense of 
 the freedom of all to take their part whenever and 
 wherever a word may be given them. 
 
 There is one other result of the absence of pre- 
 arrangement in our meetings which I cannot 
 
 to the Master, in whom we are so united'as to feel our need of each 
 other's sympathy in drawing near to Him. 
 
 F 
 
66 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 altogether pass over. It is that no shelter is' 
 provided under cover of which one can remain 
 in doubt whether one is or is not actually engaged 
 in worship on one's own account. A liturgy or a 
 hymn may bear along in its current many a vague 
 half-formed tendency towards worship ; and I dare 
 not say that it may not thus sometimes fan the 
 spark into a flame, or save the smoking flax from 
 being altogether quenched. But it does seem to 
 me that it also often prevents our recognizing our 
 own poverty, and stifles many an individual cry 
 for help which the sense of that poverty would 
 tend to awaken. At any rate, the worst that can 
 very well happen, if a silent meeting fails to help, 
 is that it is nothing. It would scarcely seem 
 possible that it should delude any one into a 
 hollow sense of having been engaged in a religious 
 service. But here I am aware of being near the 
 treacherous ground of idiosyncrasy, and I do not 
 wish to press the point. 
 
 Hitherto I have been speaking of our meetings 
 for public worship. But, as Friends love to say, 
 our worship does not begin when we sit down 
 together in our public assemblies, nor end when 
 we leave them. The worship in spirit and in truth 
 is in no way limited by time and place. The 
 same idea of a waiting " in the silence of all flesh " 
 
WORSHIP. 67 
 
 to hear the voice of the Lord speaking within us, 
 characterizes the Friends' private times of worship ; 
 or, as the more cautious expression is, of " religious 
 retirement." Friends are so possessed with the 
 sense of our inability to offer acceptable prayer in 
 our own time and will, that where others speak of 
 family prayers, and hours of prayer or devotion, 
 Friends prefer the expressions " family reading " 
 and " religious retirement" 
 
 And not only in name, but in method, are these 
 times marked with the same peculiar character as 
 our public meetings. In Friends' families of the 
 old-fashioned type (which are more numerous still, 
 I fancy, than many people suspect) the family 
 meeting consists simply of the reading of a portion 
 of Scripture, and then a pause of silence, which 
 may or may not be broken by words of prayer or 
 of testimony. Many Friends formerly (and some, 
 I believe, still feel the same) objected on conscien- 
 tious grounds to their children's learning to use 
 any form of prayer, even the Lord's Prayer. The 
 children shared from the first in the united silence 
 of the family, and could not fail to know what it 
 meant ; but in some families it was rarely or never 
 broken by vocal prayer. A silent pause before meals 
 is the Friends' equivalent for "saying grace" — a 
 practice which I own I think has much to recom- 
 
68 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 mend it. Here, again, there is, of course, the oppor- 
 tunity for words, should words spontaneously rise 
 to the lips of any of those present. 
 
 When we penetrate into the inmost chamber 
 of private worship differences of method can no 
 longer be traced by human eye. It is not possible 
 for any one to judge of the practice of others in 
 this respect ; nay, there seems an impropriety in 
 following individuals into this sacred region, even 
 in thought. Sectarian differences must here be 
 left behind. But for that very reason I may here 
 appeal with the greater fulness of confidence to 
 the sympathy of all who pray, in the attempt, 
 from which I feel it impossible to refrain, to 
 explain the way in which a belief in present 
 inspiration is, as I think, inseparable from belief 
 in the reality and the Tightness of prayer. 
 
 I trust that I shall not be thought presumptuous 
 for entering upon this subject. There are many 
 qualifications for it which I do not possess. But 
 on matters of common and urgent interest the very 
 absence of distinguishing power or knowledge may 
 give a certain value to the results of actual personal 
 experience, as lessening the distance across which 
 the helping hand has to reach out. 
 
 I believe that the permanent effect for good or 
 for evil of the present shaking and upheaval of 
 
WORSHIP. 69 
 
 thought amongst us must be mainly determined 
 by its relation to prayer. No immediate result of 
 the outbreak of free discussion of all things in 
 heaven and earth during the last thirty years has 
 been so agonizing to devout persons, nor so gravely 
 threatens spiritual health, as the paralysis which in 
 many cases it has seemed to bring upon the spirit 
 of prayer. We meet daily with open denials of 
 the reasonableness of prayer — of the possibility of 
 entering into any real communication with the 
 Divine Being. Few amongst us can have alto- 
 gether escaped the paralyzing influence of the flood 
 of unsolved, and apparently insoluble, moral pro- 
 blems, and at the same time of new and absorbingly 
 interesting views of material things, into which this 
 generation has been plunged. The mere demand 
 on the attention is powerful enough to drain away 
 great part of the mental power formerly employed 
 in seeking after God. 
 
 u It seems His newer will, 
 We should not think of Him at all, but trudge it ; 
 And of the world He has assigned us make 
 "What best we can," 
 
 says A. H. Clough ; and he utters, I am sure, a 
 widely spread feeling. People's very love of truth 
 seems to themselves to be enlisted in pursuing the 
 streams which lead them away from the Fountain 
 of truth. And the pursuit of scientific truth is 
 
70 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 assuredly in its place a contribution to our know- 
 ledge of God, though made by workers who may 
 but too easily themselves lose sight of Him in 
 their engrossing preoccupation with His works. 
 
 But the tendency to put prayer to silence is not 
 merely thus indirect. The one idea which seems 
 at present most forcibly to have grasped the 
 popular imagination, is that of the universal and 
 inexorable dominion of unchanging law. And the 
 inference is not unnatural, " Then it is useless to 
 pray." The result is an awful silence — not of the 
 flesh, indeed, but of the spirit. Men and women 
 have come to feel themselves alone in a new and 
 fearful sense — alone as in the valley of dry bones, 
 with no expectation of any Divine breath to cause 
 them to stand up upon their feet, a united host of 
 living servants of the living God. 
 
 I trust that I shall not be suspected of any 
 intention of grappling with the problem of free-will 
 and necessity. I know, at least, enough to be 
 aware that there is at the end of every avenue of 
 human thought an impenetrable mystery. But I 
 also know that the region in which philosophers 
 join issue upon the question of necessity lies far 
 beyond the range of any such practical questions 
 as I am engaged with. I know that the controversy 
 is not decided, and, so far as we can see, does not 
 
WORSHIP. 71 
 
 visibly approach towards a decision ; I know also 
 that no conceivable agreement of philosophers as 
 to the most accurate way of stating facts can alter 
 the facts themselves with which we have to do. I 
 do not hope to express myself with philosophical 
 accuracy ; but I can, and will, speak plainly and 
 truly of my own experience in this matter of 
 prayer. 
 
 There was a time when I myself was silenced by 
 the paralyzing influences of which I have spoken — 
 when the heavens seemed as brass, and to ask for 
 anything seemed like flying in the face of one vast 
 foregone conclusion ; as though a moth should 
 dash itself against an iceberg. But I have come to 
 believe that the truth against which I had thus, so 
 to speak, stumbled in the dark, was not that prayer 
 is unreasonable, but that my ideas of prayer were 
 unworthy. 
 
 That the will of God is unchangeable, is assuredly 
 the very foundation of all reasonable trust in Him, 
 and is recognized by saints and philosophers alike. 
 But does not the imagination easily confound 
 unchangeableness with immovableness ? Are not 
 the laws of motion as fixed as those of space ? 
 What can be more full of movement than the flames 
 of fire ? Yet are they less unchangeable in their 
 nature than a bar of iron ? Is it not through a 
 
72 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 'reliance upon the unchangeable properties of 
 material things that we are able to change the 
 whole face of the earth ? And should we not 
 remember that the unchangeable order which all 
 things, visible and invisible, obey, includes the 
 mystery of perpetual "variation," and even of life 
 itself? 
 
 It seems to me that when our imagination smites 
 everything with rigidity, it is really playing us a 
 trick. Those who are at all competent to expound 
 the theory of necessity are earnest to show that it 
 in no way contradicts the efficacy of effort in any 
 possible direction. They have need to be earnest 
 about it, for the imagination is but too ready for a 
 pretext to hoist the flag of despair, and the will to 
 throw up the game of life, and to sink into the 
 sleep of apathy. 
 
 If we are right in thinking of God as the 
 Fountain of life and thought, the Father of spirits 
 — and to those who deny this it is idle for me to 
 address myself — it can surely not be unreasonable 
 for the spirits He has made to seek to hold 
 communion with Him. What Soften unreasonable 
 is the nature of our requests, and our idea of the 
 possibility of their being granted. Here it is that 
 I have had to recognize the unworthiness of many 
 of my own thoughts and expressions about prayer, 
 
WORSHIP. 73 
 
 and that I continually meet with what seems to 
 me unfit and inadequate in the language of others. 
 It cannot be an unimportant thing that we should 
 endeavour to sift out what is untenable and un- 
 becoming from our thoughts and words on this 
 subject. 
 
 Two things have, as I believe, mainly tended to 
 lower our idea of prayer, until, in minds where it 
 is but a theory, it has been shattered against the 
 hard facts of science. We have narrowed it to the 
 idea of asking for things, and we have thought of 
 it chiefly as a means of getting them. 
 
 This is surely a degradation of the idea of prayer, 
 even though the things asked for be what are called 
 " spiritual blessings." The word " prayer " may, it 
 is true, be used in the restricted sense of making 
 requests ; but in that case let it be distinctly 
 understood and kept in mind that it is but a part 
 — the lowest and least essential part — of worship 
 or communion with God. It is of prayer in the 
 larger sense — not request, but communion — that 
 we may rightly and wisely speak as the very breath 
 of our spiritual life ; as the power by which life is 
 transfigured ; as that to which all things are 
 possible. But this distinction between request and 
 communion is not habitually kept in mind by those 
 who write and speak of prayer, nor even by all 
 
74 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 those who practise it. It seems to me as \i many 
 even deeply experienced Christians were using all 
 their energy to encourage and stimulate above all 
 that part of prayer which has surely the most of 
 the merely human and carnal in it, rather than to 
 show forth that nobler part to which this should be 
 but the innocent and natural prelude. If we fall 
 back, as we must perpetually do, upon our Lord's 
 own leading principle of using the human relation of 
 parent and child as the highest and most instructive 
 type of the relation between God and the human 
 spirit, we shall surely feel that the child, in learning 
 to speak to its father and to understand his voice, 
 has far other and larger hopes and purposes than 
 that of getting things from him. The human 
 parent may use the child's innocent and natural 
 wishes as one means of attracting its attention, but 
 would surely be grievously disappointed if the child 
 never looked beyond the advantages to be reaped 
 by the power of speaking to its father — never rose 
 to the perception that intercourse with him was in 
 itself the greatest of human joys, not a mere means 
 to an end. 
 
 And in the same sort of sense I feel that, when 
 people insist upon " the efficacy of prayer," they 
 are insisting upon its very lowest use ; and that the 
 concentration of attention upon this lowest use 
 
WORSHIP. 75 
 
 creates a serious stumbling-block, which hinders 
 faith in two ways. 
 
 1. It suggests a test which is not and cannot 
 be uniformly favourable. Whatever the power of 
 prayer may be — and words, I believe, must wholly 
 fail to express it — particular requests are certainly 
 not always granted. Our Lord explicitly prepares 
 us for the refusal of blind requests, and our own 
 good sense and our daily experience combine to 
 make it abundantly clear that many requests are, 
 and must always be, refused. 
 
 2. And more than this, there is, I believe, nobility 
 enough in every heart capable of real prayer to 
 cause a recoil from the idea of using it only for the 
 purpose of obtaining advantages, be they of what 
 kind they may. I believe, that is, that the modern 
 perplexity about prayer arises not only from a 
 difficulty in imagining God as One who can be 
 influenced by our desires, but largely also from a 
 latent sense that, even if true in fact, this is a very 
 inadequate conception of Him to whom our worship 
 should be addressed, and who must assuredly know 
 better than we do what things we have need of — 
 from a recoil, in short, against the low and coarse 
 and unworthy tone of much that is urged on the 
 other side. 
 
 Therefore I think that in the long-run an immea- 
 
76 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 surable gain will result to faith from modern out- 
 spokenness in recognizing the difficulties of this 
 subject. Prayer, if regarded as an attempt to 
 wrest favours from our heavenly Father by dint 
 of mere importunity, is doomed to many dis- 
 appointments, and stands sorely in need of their 
 purifying discipline. Prayer is not really prayer — 
 that is, it is not true communion with God — till it 
 rises above the region in which wilfulness is possible, 
 to the height of " Not my will, but Thine, be done." 
 
 Importunity may, indeed, prevail to win atten- 
 tion from a reluctant or drowsy human ear. Our 
 Lord Himself reminds us of this fact to reprove 
 the faint-heartedness which would allow itself to 
 be discouraged by delay. But the ear of the 
 Father is ever open to our prayers. We cannot 
 think that importunity is needed to rouse His 
 attention. The hindrance when He refuses, or 
 delays to grant, our requests must be of a very 
 different kind. If once we recognize that He hears 
 us always, and that in everything that happens we 
 may hear His voice answering us, we are forced 
 also to recognize that severe discipline is as truly a 
 part of His answer as tender indulgence. Both are 
 welcomed by the childlike heart ; both are part of 
 the language we have patiently to learn to interpret. 
 
 But then comes the question, What is there to 
 
WORSHIP. 77 
 
 convince us that we are listened to at all, if the 
 answer is everything equally ? If it is in the whole 
 course of events that we are to look for the answer, 
 and that course is as often as not contrary to our 
 prayer, how are we justified in saying that prayer 
 is ever answered ? 
 
 It is the answer to this question, What is it that 
 does, in fact, produce a reasonable conviction that 
 we are listened to? which, I think, involves that 
 theory of inspiration which Friends, more markedly 
 than any other body of Christians, have always 
 avowed and acted upon. But, in trying to reply 
 to it, I wish it to be distinctly borne in mind that 
 I am giving, for what it is worth, the result of my 
 own personal exercises of mind, not undertaking 
 to state recognized Quaker doctrine.* Difficulties, 
 
 * In what follows there is, indeed, no " doctrine " of any kind ; 
 no attempt, I mean, to offer formulated or authorized teaching. I 
 have endeavoured to show how in my own experience the intellectual 
 difficulties with which the subject is surrounded did, when honestly 
 and patiently faced, prove in due time the means of purifying, not of 
 quenching, that true spirit of prayer which is indeed the very breath 
 of our inner life. I trust that none will misunderstand my out- 
 spokenness in stating those difficulties. They are, and in these 
 days must be, freely recognized. Unless we who have a witness to 
 bear for the Author of spiritual worship are willing to face them, 
 our witness will fail to reach those who most sorely need it. I am 
 driven once more to appeal to " something more than candour " in 
 my readers for a right interpretation of my struggle to unfold 
 thoughts which tax my powers of utterance to the uttermost, and 
 which yet I dare not withhold. 
 
78 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 though probably in essence the same from genera- 
 tion to generation, come before each generation 
 in a fresh form, and need to be freshly met by 
 individual experience. 
 
 That which produces a reasonable conviction 
 that prayer is answered must, surely, be the sense 
 of Divine guidance of which I have already spoken 
 in the last chapter. The general grounds for our 
 common belief in God as the Father of spirits are 
 too deep and too wide for me to set forth. As 
 I have already said, I assume such a belief as the 
 groundwork of all that I am attempting to unfold. 
 That which enables each one of us who believe in 
 Him to discern His voice is, as already suggested, a 
 touch as of a hand upon our arm — a dealing with 
 our own spirit and life of so personal and indivi- 
 dual and significant a nature as that we cannot 
 help feeling that "the finger of God is come 
 unto us." 
 
 If this be, indeed, the right direction in which 
 to look for answers to prayer, then the whole 
 subject is withdrawn from the region in which 
 positive proof or disproof are possible. Our inter- 
 pretation of such individual experiences is that 
 upon which the whole controversy turns, and this 
 must of necessity result from the nature of our 
 previous belief repecting much more general truths. 
 
WORSHIP. 79 
 
 It will always be open to those who disbelieve in 
 God to call His signs "mere coincidences." It is 
 surely not therefore the less reasonable for those 
 who do believe in Him to be on the watch for 
 every possible faintest indication of His pleasure. 
 There must be in this, as in all other matters, a 
 preparation of heart and mind before any sign, 
 however eloquent, can take effect upon us. In 
 point of fact, we know that the sense of receiving 
 a personal communication from above is not always 
 excited by the granting of a petition. After we 
 have asked and received, no less than when we have 
 asked and not received, we are sometimes inclined 
 to say, " After all, does my prayer make any differ- 
 ence ? would not things have happened just in the 
 same way if I had not prayed ? " This is a question 
 to which, in truth, I believe that we must be content 
 (so far, at least, as regards any particular instance) 
 to remain without an answer. We can never really 
 know what would have happened if we had not 
 prayed/ 
 
 To say this is, of course, by no means to deny 
 that our prayer has made a real though unknown 
 difference. It is, on the contrary, almost positively 
 to assert the action of unmeasured and unfathom- 
 able influences. We cannot measure the whole 
 results of any action, however insignificant ; but 
 
80 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the whole tendency of modern " scientific " thought, 
 and of belief in " necessity," at any rate, goes to 
 show that all things are so interdependent that an 
 action without results is almost inconceivable. 
 Necessitarians, of all people, are bound to admit 
 this. The action of prayer cannot, however, be 
 traced by human eyes, and the longing to know 
 precisely what difference our prayer makes to the 
 course of events is, I believe, a longing which can 
 never be gratified in this world. 
 
 Yet a power which we cannot precisely measure 
 may make itself continually felt, and the power of 
 prayer is in some lives a matter of perpetually 
 renewed if incommunicable experience. The testi- 
 mony of those who can thankfully and reverently 
 say that their prayers are answered in a manner 
 that is wonderful in their own eyes, is too familiar 
 and too sacred to all of us to need insisting upon. 
 Its weight is, I believe, strictly speaking, immea- 
 surable. But it is in a manner naturally veiled 
 from hasty or external observation, and is, there- 
 fore, easily disregarded. When fully considered, it 
 will be found to consist mainly in combinations of 
 circumstances by no means incredible in them- 
 selves. It is not the accuracy of the facts recorded 
 by those to whom prayer is a reality, but the ex- 
 planation of their combination, which is generally 
 
WORSHIP, 81 
 
 in question. If I am right in supposing that we 
 can never trace the precise relation of cause and 
 effect between prayer and the answer, this difficulty 
 < — the difficulty, I mean, of exhaustively explaining 
 significant combinations of circumstances — is not 
 surprising. It is the natural result of our being 
 out of our depth. 
 
 But although the whole region into which we 
 plunge when we begin to speak of the answer to 
 our prayers is of necessity unfathomable by us, 
 we may with advantage remember that there are 
 some special difficulties besetting any attempt to 
 share with others the experiences which have 
 naturally and rightly most weight with ourselves ; 
 and that by disregarding these difficulties we 
 convert them into stumbling-blocks. 
 
 One main difficulty of this kind lies in the fact 
 that the outward events of which we can speak 
 most freely, which we can, as it were, without 
 impropriety call others to witness, must be more 
 or less public in their nature ; such as, e.g. y the pre- 
 servation of lives dear to us, political or national 
 events, favourable changes of weather, and so on 
 — things as to which it is not upon any theory 
 reasonable to suppose that they can be determined 
 with reference only to the wishes or the prayers of 
 any one individual. Even if they went according 
 
 G 
 
82 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 to my personal wishes and prayers, there would be 
 a manifest impropriety in claiming them as having 
 been thereby brought about. If I pray that the 
 sun may rise to-morrow morning, it does not need 
 much faith to feel sure I shall not be refused, but 
 it would be grossly improper to claim that the 
 event had occurred "in answer to my prayers." 
 When the Prince of Wales recovered from his 
 fever, there were many who would have thought it 
 impious to doubt that his recovery was actually 
 caused by the many prayers which were undoubtedly 
 offered on his behalf. Other people were and will 
 remain convinced that he would equally have re- 
 covered in any case. Who can attempt to decide 
 between these opinions with any show of authority ? 
 Indeed, it appears to. me that both are presump- 
 tuous. Surely it is enough for children to know 
 that their desire is fulfilled, without inquiring into 
 the motives (if, indeed, we should dare to attribute 
 motives to God) by which the parents' fulfilment 
 of it was prompted. 
 
 In the case of many events (such as battles, 
 weather, and so on) which must necessarily be un- 
 favourable to the wishes of one side and favourable 
 to the other, we know that some prayers must be 
 granted while some are refused. Who will attempt 
 to trace the proportion between request and 
 
WORSHIP. 83 
 
 result ? or to treat the influence of prayer in such 
 matters as admitting of either proof or disproof? 
 
 But when we come to the circumstances of each 
 individual life, the case is very different. We do 
 not get rid of mystery even here. Our knowledge, 
 even of our own lives, is altogether imperfect and 
 fragmentary ; but to pretend to know no more 
 about the ordering of them than we do about the 
 universe would be mere dishonesty. We can trace 
 a correspondence between our desires and their 
 accomplishment when it occurs in our own lives, 
 such as it would be mere impertinence to try to 
 trace between, e.g., our desires and the history of 
 a nation. You may call it superstition to say, " I 
 prayed for strength and my request was granted, 
 for strength was given me ; " but you cannot accuse 
 me of gross impropriety in thus associating my 
 prayer and the event, as you would if I said, " I 
 prayed that the sun might rise, and my request 
 has been granted." It is within our own personal 
 experience that we must look for the answer which 
 we can rightly appropriate. 
 
 But, then, in proportion as the event is brought 
 within the personal sphere of one individual, it is 
 necessarily removed from that of others. Those parts 
 of our personal and separate experience of which 
 we can speak freely are almost necessarily super- 
 
84 Q UA RER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 ficial. I do not doubt that even trifles are a part of 
 the Divine language to individuals, but trifles cannot 
 with propriety be appealed to for the purpose of 
 convincing others. Those personal experiences, 
 on the other hand, which are at once deep enough 
 and individual enough to be the fittest subjects of 
 prayer (in the sense of special request) and to be 
 met by responsive " providences " of a peculiarly 
 impressive kind, are almost always such as, for 
 a very different reason, we are unable to mention 
 with much freedom. The whole cogency of the 
 reasoning which is rightly conclusive to oneself, 
 in short, generally depends upon facts of personal 
 feeling, and upon minute correspondences of events 
 with intricate chains of previous experience, such 
 as human language would fail to transmit, even 
 did a right instinct of modesty not forbid the 
 attempt. We are, therefore, in this matter very 
 much shut up (and I think there is in the fact 
 a beautiful fitness) to the individual and sepa- 
 rate teaching of life. I believe that we cannot 
 (if it be true) too clearly and unflinchingly make 
 the assertion that our private experience has con- 
 vinced us of the reality of the Divine response to 
 prayer ; but also, that we cannot be too cautious 
 how w r e try to utter such experience itself. Simple- 
 minded people, who live much in the practice of 
 
WORSHIP. 85 
 
 prayer, and whose habitual expectation of a Divine 
 response is continually (and to themselves often 
 wonderfully) fulfilled, are often exposed to the snare 
 of making public what should be sacredly kept for 
 themselves alone, or at least shared only with those 
 who " have ears to hear." Much mischief is, I fear, 
 often done by the too free and ready communication, 
 especially in print, of " remarkable answers to 
 prayer;" of incidents which, overpoweringly eloquent 
 as they may well be to those whom they concern, 
 are but as an idle tale to strangers — a tale the telling 
 of which sometimes lends itself but too easily to 
 the mere love of signs and wonders. They also 
 often lay bare the most painful effects of unconscious 
 self-importance — the most glaring tendency to refer 
 everything to oneself as the centre, and to ignore 
 the legitimate share of others in the events referred 
 to. One is almost inclined to say of such stories 
 that, the more wonderful they are, the less edifying 
 they are likely to be. 
 
 For it is not in such outward and tangible events 
 as these, not in the things which can be passed from 
 hand to hand like coins, that the real power and 
 soul-subduing influence of a Divine communication 
 is most unmistakably felt. It is the still small 
 voice which overcomes ; the gentle combination of 
 perhaps very ordinary circumstances, which, when 
 
86 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 combined, acquire the significance of a distinct 
 message. Just as when we see letters brought 
 together and placed under our eyes, which together 
 form a word replying to our thought, we infer that 
 they have been so arranged by some one who knew 
 what was in our minds ; so, to those of us who 
 habitually not only ask but watch for Divine 
 instruction, there occur again and again combina- 
 tions of events, adjustments even of the minutest 
 details, which produce a quite irresistible sense 
 that the finger of God is pointing the lesson He 
 would have us learn. 
 
 It is idle to ask those who never listen whether 
 and how God answers prayer. The very possibility 
 of discerning the answer implies docility and 
 willingness of heart. The High and Holy One 
 that inhabiteth eternity dwells with Him who is 
 of an humble and contrite spirit, and such only 
 can learn to know His voice. 
 
 To those who in any degree do know His voice, 
 it gradually becomes clear that prayer and its 
 answer are inseparable. The answer is as the 
 answer of the atmosphere to the lungs, of light to 
 the eyes. The humble and contrite heart opens its 
 doors to its Maker, and is filled with His presence. 
 Then, indeed, the light shines within ; then the 
 very breath of our life is breathed into us by the 
 
WORSHIP. 87 
 
 Spirit of God. Inspiration— the inbreathing power 
 from above, by which alone all that is heavenly in 
 us is brought about, — this is the other aspect of 
 worship. 
 
 True worship, therefore, implies inspiration. It 
 is the inspired prayer which transfigures life — 
 which is mighty with the might of the Fountain 
 from whence it flows. While we separate worship 
 and inspiration we can never think worthily of 
 either. I do indeed believe that the very desire of 
 pur heart is often granted to us in reply to our 
 petition. I do not venture to speak confidently 
 as to the precise relation of cause and effect which 
 may exist between any petition and its fulfilment. 
 There must, I believe, be some such real relation ; 
 but to my own mind it often seems more probable 
 and more reverent to suppose, where the corre- 
 spondence is very marked, that the prayer has 
 been in the nature of a prophetic utterance, of a 
 Divine foreshadowing, than that our wish should 
 have been allowed to become the efficient cause 
 of the Divine action. A prayer which has been 
 answered by the perfect fulfilment of its requests 
 shows, I believe, that the offerer of it was so far 
 under Divine influence ; that his will was to that 
 extent at least in harmony with the Divine will. 
 This is a word of blessed encouragement for the 
 
88 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 one. to whom it comes, which it is not always wise 
 or right to proclaim from the housetop. "Upliftings 
 unto prayer" (to quote one more of the deep words 
 of A. H. Clough) are surely among the sacred things 
 of which we should not lightly lift the veil. I do 
 not think that those who have any true and deep 
 experience of what it is to hold communion, how- 
 ever faltering and intermittent, with our God will 
 be forward to attempt to divest it of its mystery, 
 while yet they must earnestly desire to set forth 
 to others what they have learnt of its power and 
 its blessedness. For the sake of the many who 
 honestly desire to know the truth upon this deepest 
 and most urgent of all common interests, I think 
 that we who have some such experience are bound 
 to seek to clothe it in fit and worthy language. 
 
 Let us, therefore, recognize and avow, when 
 occasion serves, that prayer, worship, or communion 
 with God is a larger, deeper, fuller thing than mere 
 asking and having. Let us acknowledge that the 
 simplest and most inarticulate cry for help — the 
 voice of the " infant crying in the night, and with 
 no language but a cry " — is as sure to enter the ear 
 of the Father of spirits as the deepest prayer ever 
 uttered by saint or martyr. Let us remember that, 
 according to the teaching of our Lord Himself, the 
 one voice which is more sure (if degrees of sure- 
 
WORSHIP. 89 
 
 ness there can be) than any other of being listened 
 to by the good Shepherd, is the voice of the one 1 
 who has strayed the furthest from the fold, and is 
 the most deeply conscious of being afar off — the 
 voice of the lost sheep over whose first turning 
 towards home the very angels in heaven rejoice 
 with a special joy. But let us never forget that 
 in the homeward path there are heights beyond 
 heights ; that as any spirit is drawn upwards by 
 the Father's love and care, it becomes more and 
 more filled with the light of His countenance, more 
 interpenetrated by that light which shines clearest 
 in the dark places through which every upward- 
 tending spirit must assuredly pass. Let us not 
 forget that the reward of faithfulness in that which 
 is least is the call to enter into that which is greater 
 — deeper and higher and fuller of Divine signi- 
 ficance ; that those " influences of the Divine 
 presence" to which it is the essence of true 
 worship to " yield ourselves " must penetrate into 
 the inmost recesses of our being, and bring every 
 thought into subjection to the law of Christ — -that- 
 law of the Spirit of life, by which all that is of the 
 flesh is gradually purged away as by a consuming- 
 fire— and that to live in the spirit of prayer is to 
 live more and more continually and intimately in 
 the presence of Him before whom the angels veil 
 
90 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 their faces, and who is of purer eyes than to 
 behold iniquity. So that it may well be, or rather 
 it can only be, in fear and in trembling that 
 this wonderful salvation of entrance into His pre- 
 sence can be worked out. The prayers which 
 are owned by Him are not prayers which can be 
 offered in the will of man, or which can be used as 
 a means of gratifying the desires of the flesh or of 
 the reason ; they are the breathings of the spirit 
 struggling to return to Him who gave it, or rejoic- 
 ing in the light of His countenance. The spirit 
 which is being made free from the law of sin and 
 death cannot look backwards towards the things 
 of earth. Its path is onwards and upwards, ever 
 " into light," and its breathings are the vibrations 
 communicated to it from the Source and Centre of 
 light ; they obey a law as unchangeable as the 
 laws of light itself, and their function is to destroy 
 and to consume away the perishing, worn-out 
 raiment of the spirit, to free it from defilements 
 and hindrances, and to bring it forth in the fulness 
 of time " into the glorious liberty of the children 
 of God," the rightful " inheritance of the saints in 
 light." Surely we may with reverence say that, in 
 a true and a deep sense, God Himself is the Answer 
 to prayer. 
 
( 9i ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FREE MINISTRY. 
 
 OUR ministry may be said to be free in several 
 distinct senses. 
 
 1. It is open to all. 
 
 2. Its exercise is not subject to any pre-arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 3. It is not paid. 
 
 We believe that the one essential qualification 
 for the office of a minister is the* anointing of the 
 Holy Spirit ; and that this anointing is poured out 
 without respect of persons upon men and women, 
 upon old and young, .upon learned and unlearned. 
 The gift is, we believe, a purely spiritual one, as much 
 beyond our control as the rain from heaven ; yet as 
 unfailing, as abundant, as necessary to fertility. 
 
 Our views of this matter differ from those of 
 other Christians, not in the fact that we recognize 
 the free gift of this holy anointing, not even in 
 the fact that we repudiate the idea of its being 
 purchasable by money, but in the fact that our 
 
92 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 idea of ministry refers exclusively to the offering 
 of spontaneous spiritual ministrations. All would 
 surely agree that it is impossible for any one to 
 offer acceptable prayer, or to sow in other hearts 
 the living seed of the kingdom, without a distinct 
 gift from above. It is obvious that we cannot give 
 what we have not received. It is also surely un- 
 deniable that what we have freely received we 
 should freely give ; that the gift of God cannot be 
 bought for money, nor restricted in its exercise to 
 humanly prepared channels. No one who believes 
 in the reality of the gift of " prophecy " — of speak- 
 ing, that is, from the immediate promptings of the 
 Spirit of Truth — would dare to seek either to 
 purchase or to restrain such utterances. " Where 
 the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Our 
 doctrine of a free ministry, of course, supposes a 
 real belief in the continual inbreathing of that 
 Divine Spirit, giving both light and utterance 
 through His own chosen vessels for the help of all. 
 It also goes a step further, and regards such 
 spiritual ministrations as all-sufficient. Here is 
 the real point of divergence between us and our 
 fellow-Christians. The vast majority of them 
 regard something more than these purely spiritual 
 ministrations as essential to a full allegiance to 
 our common Lord. 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 93 
 
 Other Christian bodies have from very early 
 times recognized a distinction between clergy and 
 laity, and have regarded at least two sacraments 
 as having been instituted by Christ Himself, and 
 as being in some sense or other "necessary to 
 salvation ; " and the greater number, or at any 
 rate the largest, of these bodies have habitually 
 adopted the use of liturgical forms of public 
 worship. 
 
 At the root of our abstinence from all these 
 generally accepted practices, there lies the one 
 conviction of the all-sufficiency of individual and 
 immediate communication with the Father of our 
 spirits ; and a profound belief that by His coming 
 in the flesh our Lord Jesus Christ did, in fact, open 
 a new and living way of access to God, which 
 superseded and blotted out the former dispensation 
 of rites and ceremonies, investing all believers with 
 the function of " kings and priests " (calling them 
 that is, both to exercise dominion and to offer 
 acceptable sacrifices in His name), and enabling 
 them to show forth the nature and results of that 
 worship in spirit and in truth, which was no longer 
 to be in any sense confined to temples made with 
 hands, and of that kingdom which is " not meat and 
 drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost." 
 
94 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 It was a bold thing indeed for the early Friends 
 to break loose at once from the whole ecclesiastical 
 system, with its venerable and long-established 
 claim to be the divinely ordained channel of 
 spiritual nutriment. In doing so, they no doubt 
 took up an attitude of hostility towards the " hire- 
 ling priests," and their " steeple-houses " and " so- 
 called ordinances," which, however comparatively 
 intelligible it may have been at the time, was yet 
 not only highly obnoxious, but would even seem 
 to have led them into some degree of injustice. 
 
 After sixty or seventy years of severe persecution, 
 however, borne with extraordinary patience as well 
 as constancy, their right to carry out their own 
 manner of worship was fully allowed ; and by a 
 strange result of changes partly within the Society 
 itself and partly in the surrounding mental atmo- 
 sphere, Friends, from being regarded as peculiarly 
 pestilent heretics, came to be looked on as the most 
 harmless and least obnoxious of Nonconformists. 
 I believe, however, that this can be the case only 
 as long as we are content to acquiesce in a purely 
 passive and dwindling state. Any attempt to 
 promulgate our peculiar views must necessarily give 
 offence. We may, perhaps, no longer think it a duty 
 to denounce the institution of a separate clergy, 
 and the observance of " so-called ordinances," as 
 
FREE MINISTRY, 95 
 
 positively unlawful or sinful. But to say plainly 
 that we consider them as superfluous, requires 
 hardly less boldness, and is scarcely likely to be 
 more palatable. The fact, however, cannot be 
 disguised ; and in spite of the pain which, in these 
 days of free and lively interchange of sympathy, is 
 involved in taking up any clear ground of separa- 
 tion, no true Friend would desire in the slightest 
 degree to disguise or to veil our ancient testimony 
 against outward observances and their accompany- 
 ing institution of a paid ministry. 
 
 It is, however, a great help in doing so to be 
 able to point to the very remarkable fact of the 
 existence during more than two centuries of a 
 body of people whose lives bear abundant witness 
 to the reality of their Christian profession, amongst 
 whom these " ordinances " have been altogether 
 disused. 
 
 For my own part, I would rather leave that fact 
 to speak for itself than attempt to trace all the 
 inferences which may, I think, fairly be drawn 
 from it. Yet the question whether the clerical 
 and sacramental system is indeed an essential part 
 of Christianity, or a human accretion, is too pro- 
 foundly important to the future of Christianity 
 itself to be lightly passed over. Are there not 
 many, in these days especially, who would willingly 
 
96 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 listen to the Christianity of Christ Himself, could 
 •they but find it disentangled from the enor- 
 mously " developed " Christianity of the dominant 
 Churches ? 
 
 I am far from venturing to claim that the 
 Society of Friends does actually exhibit a perfect 
 living instance of what has been called "primitive 
 Christianity revived," but I do believe its ideal 
 to be the true, and the only true one ; that of a 
 Church, or "gathered people," living with the one 
 object of obeying the teaching of Christ Himself to 
 the very uttermost — His own teaching, not that of 
 those who have spoken in His name, even though 
 they be apostles, except in so far as they speak in 
 accordance with it. To live the Sermon on the 
 Mount, and the rest of the gospel teaching, and in 
 all things to listen for the living voice of the good 
 Shepherd, watching constantly that no human 
 tradition divert our attention from it, — this is our 
 acknowledged aim and bond of union as a Society. 
 Our conviction of its sufficiency is the ground of 
 iour existence as a separate body. 
 
 We believe that neither the division of Christian 
 people into clergy and laity, nor the use of sacra- 
 mental ceremonies, were enjoined by Christ Him- 
 self. It is clear that both these practices quickly 
 .arose amongst the early Christians ; but remem- 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 97 
 
 bering that the early Christians were but fallible 
 human beings like ourselves, and that they were 
 undeniably far from clear what rites and cere- 
 monies were to be observed, we do not feel that 
 their practice is to be our guide. 
 
 The institution of a separate clergy and that of 
 the sacraments form, of course, essentially one 
 system. The early Friends went to the root of 
 the matter when they abandoned at once the 
 whole of what they called " mountain and 
 Jerusalem worship," as opposed to the worship 
 in Spirit and in truth, which is not limited to any 
 time or place. 
 
 I have not the slightest intention of taking upon 
 myself the attempt to show that they were right 
 in doing so. The grounds of their action are fully 
 set forth and defended with undeniable vigour and 
 ability by Robert Barclay, in his famous u Apology." 
 My humbler endeavour will be to describe the 
 perplexities which prepared my own mind thank- 
 fully to accept what to myself appears to be a 
 thoroughly satisfactory disentanglement of essential 
 Christianity from whatever can be honestly regarded 
 as unintelligible, and unworthy of its lofty and 
 spiritual character. 
 
 I must own at the outset that I have never been 
 able clearly to understand the grounds upon which 
 
 11 
 
98 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the " ordinances " in question are regarded as 
 essential parts of Christianity, nor have I ever 
 found it possible to arrive at a thoroughly satis- 
 factory explanation of their precise (supposed) 
 effects. I am, of course, not ignorant of the 
 general nature of those grounds or supposed 
 results. But a broad space of obscurity seems to 
 separate the actual transactions out of which the 
 " ordinances " arose from the earliest known records 
 of the institutions themselves ; and it is notorious 
 that theologians differ very widely in their views 
 of the spiritual results produced either by ordi- 
 nation or by a due participation in the sacraments, 
 and also of the conditions necessary to their 
 " validity." 
 
 It is here that the practical pinch of the system 
 is felt. Were the matter one of purely speculative 
 interest, how gladly would I and other unlearned 
 people have left it in the hands of those better 
 qualified to deal with it ! But it is a question of 
 urgent practical importance, which, as regards at 
 least one of the sacraments, no devout person can 
 escape. Every adult member of the Church 
 of England (every one, that is, who is so in 
 a religious sense) is confronted with a solemn 
 challenge to do, or to leave undone at his peril, 
 an act involving vast and mysterious consequences 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 99 
 
 for good or for evil to his spiritual welfare. No 
 middle course is possible, and the Church Prayer- 
 book promises no safety either in its performance 
 or omission. To " partake unworthily " is repre- 
 sented as involving vague and awful dangers — 
 dangers possibly, though not clearly, greater than 
 those which would be incurred by omitting an act 
 " generally necessary to salvation." But how to be 
 sure of partaking worthily? "A true penitent 
 heart and lively faith ... a lively and steadfast 
 faith in Christ our Saviour . . . and perfect charity 
 with all men," — if these are the necessary pre- 
 parations for being " meet partakers of these holy 
 mysteries," failing in which we do but "eat and 
 drink our own damnation " by venturing to par- 
 take of them, is it any wonder if the troubled heart 
 is held in a state of continual uneasiness, and 
 shrinks almost equally from the act and from its 
 omission ? 
 
 Such, at least, was my own painful and long- 
 continued experience. The injunction to " ex- 
 amine one's self" as a safeguard against unworthy 
 participation did but increase the perplexity and 
 distress. For how can self-examination fail to 
 increase the sense of unworthiness ? and how is it 
 possible for any one to imagine himself competent 
 to be judge in his own case ? 
 
ioo QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 I do not forget that the Prayer-book suggests 
 (not to say prescribes) a refuge from such per- 
 plexities in an application to " some discreet and 
 learned minister of God's Word " for " absolution, 
 and ghostly counsel and advice." I quite recog- 
 nize the consistency of this suggestion, which 
 seems to me to confirm the obvious remark 
 already made, that the sacerdotal and sacramental 
 system hangs together, and must be adopted or 
 rejected as a whole. In my own case, Protes- 
 tantism was too strong to allow of my accepting 
 this legitimate corollary of the Church of England 
 doctrine respecting the Lord's Supper. To have 
 recourse to confession and absolution was an im- 
 possibility to me, as I believe it to be even yet to 
 the great majority of Englishwomen, and as it 
 is assuredly likely always to be to Englishmen. 
 But I doubt whether any satisfactory resting-place 
 short of it is to be found for those who fully adopt 
 the Anglican view of sacraments. 
 
 I do not mean to represent the perplexities and 
 scruples I have spoken of as having constituted 
 the whole of my experience in this matter, or to 
 say that I was quite unable to meet them in a 
 manner more or less provisionally satisfactory to 
 myself. It is true that out of perplexities and 
 scruples sprang doubts and questionings (with 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 101 
 
 which, indeed, the very air I breathed was thick), 
 so that during the twenty years in which I was 
 a regular communicant in the Church of England, 
 I was never able to feel that my own practice was 
 based upon thoroughly clear and solid ground of 
 ascertained truth. Yet in spite of, or rather along- 
 side of, all scruples and questionings as to the real 
 intention of our Lord — if, indeed, He had any 
 intention at all — with regard to any special com- 
 memoration of His death by the use of bread and 
 wine, I did earnestly, throughout those years, 
 according to the measure of my ability, endeavour 
 to solve the problem in practice — to make the act 
 of outward " communion " a real occasion of re- 
 newed self-dedication, and of inward and spiritual 
 feeding on the bread of life. Such times were, 
 indeed, often occasions of deep spiritual blessing ; 
 but I never could discern that they were so in any 
 other sense than that in which every real act of 
 prayer, of penitence, of self-dedication, and of 
 thanksgiving must necessarily be so. The whole 
 blessing appeared to me to be of a spiritual kind, 
 and due to spiritual causes. The connection be- 
 tween the use of bread and wine and these spiritual 
 sources of blessing never became clear to me. The 
 more profound the blessedness of communion with 
 Christ and with His people, the less conceivable 
 
102 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 did it seem that it should depend upon the official 
 performance of an elaborate rite. 
 
 The Bible, to which in this Protestant country 
 we are always referred for the solution of the diffi- 
 culties as to which Catholics consult their priests, 
 appeared to me to afford no help whatever in 
 defining the conditions necessary to a right par- 
 ticipation, nor in directing one's choice between 
 the various sacramental theories to be met with in 
 our days. All schools of theology equally appeal 
 to it, and it is obvious that a book cannot decide 
 between rival interpretations of itself. It did, 
 however, distinctly help me towards the conclusion 
 that there might be no need to choose between 
 these various theories at all. To my unassisted 
 reason it appeared that the effect of comparing any, 
 even the mildest, modern eucharistical theory with 
 the accounts to be found in the New Testament 
 of our Lord^s parting supper with His disciples, was 
 chiefly to show that a vast and unexplained addi- 
 tion to, or at the least development of, the original 
 idea had taken place since these accounts were 
 written. The whole form of words used in the 
 Communion Service seems to me to convey mean- 
 ings almost immeasurably different from anything 
 which I could myself have extracted from the one 
 brief expression, " Do this in remembrance of me." 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 103 
 
 Left to myself and to Scripture, the Gospel narra- 
 tives would never have suggested the idea of any 
 intention to institute a ceremony at all, far less to 
 invest its observance with possibilities so awful 
 both for good and for evil, not only in case of 
 omission, but even in case of inadequate observ- 
 ance. To my own mind, the narratives of the 
 Last Supper in Matthew and Mark, which contain 
 no allusion to any possible repetition of the feast, 
 appeared quite as complete, quite as significant, as 
 that of Luke, which gives the addition, " Do this 
 in remembrance of me." The allusions in the 
 Epistle to the Corinthians to some disorderly prac- 
 tices in that Church certainly make it clear that 
 they had adopted a practice of meeting to " show 
 the Lord's death till He come " by eating bread 
 and drinking wine ; and the apostle's reference to 
 a Divine communication to himself of the cir- 
 cumstances of the Last Supper certainly seems 
 to show that he believed them to have sufficient 
 ground for doing so ; but, on the other hand, the 
 words which he there ascribes to Christ, " Do this, 
 as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me," have 
 always seemed to me to be distinctly incompatible 
 with the idea of a command to eat bread and 
 drink wine in order to commemorate His death, 
 and would rather suggest a reverent remembrance 
 
104 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 of Him on all social occasions, and perhaps 
 especially when meeting for the Passover or any 
 other religious feasts. I was thus fully ripe for 
 the view so vigorously put forth in Barclay's 
 " Apology," * as held by Friends. 
 
 I have allowed my thoughts to fall into a some- 
 what autobiographical form, because the appear- 
 ance of egotism seems to me preferable to the real 
 presumption of going beyond one's knowledge, 
 and also because I am anxious to show how 
 unavoidably (and at the same time, I believe, in- 
 nocently) one may become entangled in questions 
 too deep and too perplexing for ordinary minds, in 
 the mere honest endeavour to obey at once the 
 teaching of Jesus Christ and of the Church. 
 
 To myself it was the greatest relief, at a time 
 when I had thus been driven to choose between 
 obedience to my own conscience on the one hand, 
 and outward communion with my fellow-Christians 
 on the other, and when I had for two years, with 
 pain and grief, excommunicated myself accordingly 
 — it was at that moment the greatest relief to find 
 a body of Christians who held the simple, and, to 
 my, mind, the one worthy view of Christianity, as 
 a dispensation entirely spiritual in its nature ; a 
 state of enlightenment and true worship in which 
 
 * " Apology," Prop. xiii. 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 105 
 
 forms and shadows had passed away, and the 
 substance alone was to be laboured for. It was in 
 the quiet meetings already described that I myself 
 first learnt the full meaning of the words, "baptizing 
 into the Name . . . and the communion of the 
 body of Christ" The outward observances by 
 which these " holy mysteries " are typified in the 
 devotions of other bodies had been to me rather 
 a hindrance than a help. I cannot help suspecting 
 that they are so to many. 
 
 For if not a help, they must be a hindrance. It 
 may, to people in some stages of education, or 
 in some countries, be a natural and real way of 
 receiving or expressing truth, to perform ceremonial 
 acts. I cannot think that it is the spontaneous 
 language of intelligent devotion in our own time 
 and country. To my own mind the great crowning 
 lesson imparted by our Divine Master, in the solemn 
 farewell hours of His last evening with His disciples, 
 is lowered and eclipsed when considered as the 
 institution of a ceremony, and shines out again in 
 its fulness of majestic pathos when regarded as 
 an embodied or acted parable. His repeated 
 warnings to His disciples against their inveterate 
 tendency to take His words literally, and to inter- 
 pret them as referring to the meat that perishes 
 instead of as being spirit and life, sound in one's 
 
106 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 ears when one feels oppressed by what (forgive me 
 the irrepressible truth) to some of us seems the 
 unintelligent practice of continually repeating a 
 form used by Christ once for all to show forth the 
 central truth of His life-giving life on earth. 
 
 It is the fear that, in wrapping the "words of 
 eternal life" in a garment of superstitious usage, 
 they are being inevitably buried out of the reach 
 of those who need them the most, which prompts 
 me to speak thus boldly. Whatever lowers our 
 religion to a matter of outward observance, what- 
 ever seems to give to unreasoning participation in 
 outward acts a place on the same level with that 
 inward continuance in the Word of Christ which 
 makes His disciples free, is surely a human and a 
 grievous barrier in the homeward path which He 
 came to open to all. 
 
 Those who feel as we do about the meaning of 
 our Lord on the occasion of His last supper with 
 His disciples, will naturally incline to take a similar 
 view of His meaning in the few references made 
 by Him to the subject of baptism. The word is 
 obviously used in the New Testament in several 
 different senses. If we believe (as is at least 
 suggested by the words of the Apostle Paul) that 
 there is but " one baptism," we must surely suppose 
 it to be that baptism " with the Holy Ghost and 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 107 
 
 with fire " which John foretold as the office of Him 
 for whom he himself, with his "baptism with water," 
 was preparing the way ; — He who was to increase 
 as John decreased, and who said of Himself, after 
 He had " fulfilled all righteousness " by submitting 
 to John's baptism, that He had yet " a baptism to 
 be baptized with" — assuredly not an outward 
 one. 
 
 With the observance of rites and ceremonies, the 
 need for a separate priesthood passes away. It is, 
 I believe, undisputed that the word " priest " is 
 used in the New Testament only with reference to 
 the high calling of all believers ; the calling to offer 
 themselves as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to 
 God. 
 
 It appears to us that this priestly office of all 
 believers is greatly obscured, and the sense of 
 religious responsibility weakened, by the delegation 
 to a separate and official class of persons of the 
 function of conducting the devotions of the congre- 
 gation. The exclusive employment of one man 
 as spokesman for the whole congregation must of 
 necessity quench in others any impulse to offer 
 vocal ministrations, at any rate during the time of 
 public worship ; and in regard to daily life, the idea 
 of a " cure of souls " seems equally inconsistent 
 with the Quaker idea of " watching over one 
 
108 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 another for good," as being a duty resting more or 
 less on all the members of a meeting. 
 
 There are, of course, many other Church offices 
 besides the essentially priestly one of offering the 
 sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving which are 
 fulfilled, and often nobly fulfilled, by the clergy of 
 the Church of England. These other offices, such 
 as teaching, visiting the sick, attending to the 
 relief of the poor, etc., are surely in no way inse- 
 parable, though they are popularly undistinguished, 
 from that claim to the priesthood against which 
 Friends have always protested. It may be an 
 open question whether all the civilizing, softening, 
 philanthropic, and beneficent influences exercised 
 by the clergy could be brought to bear with equal 
 effect upon the population, especially of country 
 districts, if the idea of an essential distinction 
 between them and the laity were suddenly 
 obliterated. The question what would be the 
 practical result of such an obliteration, or, in other 
 words, of the adoption of Friends' principle of a 
 free ministry, is at any rate scarcely within the 
 visible horizon. It would certainly be impossible 
 to any candid person in these days to speak without 
 respect and admiration of the clergy generally, 
 and without deep reverence of many amongst them. 
 The days are long past when such phrases as a 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 109 
 
 " hireling ministry " could have been indiscrimi- 
 nately used concerning a body of men whose lives 
 are in innumerable instances so visibly and nobly 
 disinterested. It is an obvious, though too common 
 mistake, to ponfound the conditions of any service 
 with the motives from which it is undertaken. But 
 it is nevertheless a very grave question what effect 
 the fact that ordination to the clerical office opens 
 to any young man of ordinary abilities and 
 respectability the gates of an honourable profession, 
 by which he may lawfully earn his bread and 
 maintain a family, is likely to have upon the 
 spiritual character of the ministerial office. Surely 
 the Quaker principle that no spiritual ministrations 
 should ever be subject to payment is at least one 
 that must commend itself as ideally the highest. 
 It may, however, very naturally be asked whether 
 in practice it admits of a sufficient provision being 
 made for the instruction and edification of congre- 
 gations. 
 
 And here there is, of course, a deep-seated 
 divergence of feeling and thought at the bottom of 
 the difference in practice between Friends and 
 other Christian bodies. We Friends believe that 
 it is not necessary that each congregation should 
 be placed under the spiritual care of a pastor. We 
 believe that it is the right and the duty of each 
 
no QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 individual Christian to approach the Divine 
 presence in his own way — to sit under the 
 immediate teaching of Christ Himself, and to be 
 ready to take his share, if at any time called upon 
 by the one Head of the Church, in offering prayer, 
 praise, thanksgiving, or exhortation, for the help, 
 comfort, and edification of all. Should no vocal 
 services be offered in any meeting, we do not 
 therefore feel that it has failed of its effect as an 
 occasion of united worship. 
 
 Some small meetings are frequently, if not 
 habitually, held entirely in silence ; in all our 
 meetings there is some space left for that worship 
 which is beyond words. The responsibility for the 
 lively and healthy state of each meeting is, or should 
 be, felt to rest upon all its members, both collec- 
 tively and individually. 
 
 It is obvious that a ministry so jealously guarded 
 as ours from all external pressure can be kept 
 in vigorous exercise only as the result of a deep 
 and widely diffused religious experience. Serious, 
 though by no means insuperable, difficulties do 
 undoubtedly arise in the practical application of 
 this fundamental principle of our Society. Our 
 faithfulness to it is being severely tested by modern 
 conditions ; and upon that faithfulness our very 
 life as a Society must, I believe, depend. There is 
 
FREE MINISTRY. Hi 
 
 in the comparatively aggressive attitude we have 
 assumed of late years, as well as in the great pres- 
 sure upon time and strength exerted by modern 
 activities of all kinds, a constant temptation to 
 adopt methods less pure, less severely disinterested, 
 than those to which we are pledged by all our 
 traditions. Unless we have faith and patience 
 enough to maintain the freedom of our ministry 
 even at the cost of some sacrifice of popularity, I 
 believe that our light must inevitably be extin- 
 guished just when it is most urgently needed.* 
 
 The admission of the ministry of women seems 
 naturally to flow from the disuse of all but 
 spontaneous spiritual ministrations. For such 
 ministrations experience shows women to be often 
 eminently qualified. 
 
 The whole of the Quaker view of ministry 
 depends upon the frank disregard of outward and 
 visible signs in favour of the inward and spiritual 
 grace. To make both essential, or each essential 
 to the other, seems necessarily to land one in 
 impenetrable intricacies, if not in a vicious circle. 
 If one of the two alone is essential, there can of 
 course be no question which it is. ' Whether inward 
 and spiritual graces, in other words, holiness, can 
 
 * See Appendix, Note B, for a short account of the " Home 
 Mission Committee." 
 
112 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 flourish without the use of outward observances, 
 must ultimately be a question of experience and 
 observation. " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 It might perhaps be difficult for one born and bred 
 in the Society to appeal explicitly to this test. 
 But having entered it within the last few years, I 
 may perhaps without impropriety say that Friends 
 need surely not shrink from the inquiry whether 
 the practical standard of holiness amongst their 
 members is on a level with that of other Christians. 
 If it be so — if love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temper- 
 ance be not lacking amongst us — surely we may 
 well ask, Wherein does our free ministry fail of its 
 due effect ? 
 
 " It fails," some would no doubt reply, " not in 
 the quality, but in the quantity of its results. How- 
 ever excellent the results in the life and conversa- 
 tion of Friends individually, they are not a growing 
 body, and therefore not a healthy branch of the 
 Church at large." I shall deal elsewhere with the 
 subject of our long dwindling in former times, 
 and our present slow increase in numbers. I will 
 content myself here with the obvious reply that 
 the numerical increase or decrease of a denomina- 
 tion can never afford a satisfactory test of the 
 spiritual fruitfulness of its ministry; mere numbers 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 113 
 
 being always affected by many other causes, some 
 of which have but little connection with spiritual 
 health. It even gives but a very doubtful measure 
 of the mere numbers to whom the influence of the 
 preaching in question may extend. It must, no 
 doubt, be admitted that the personal and the 
 numerical tests are apt to yield conflicting results ; 
 that the purest form of religion is rarely the most 
 popular, though it is likely to have the most 
 lasting, and, in the end, the most widely spread,, 
 influence. But if purity and popularity are in any 
 sense incompatible, can we hesitate as to the 
 direction towards which we should lean ? * 
 
 * I believe, as I have already said, that few people outside the 
 Society are aware of the extent to which the practice is still con- 
 tinued of Friends who feel themselves called to the ministry 
 travelling, as we say, " in the service of truth," or "under a sense 
 of religious concern," not only from place to place in England, but 
 also all over the world. A remarkable variety of "services" are 
 in this way spontaneously undertaken, and carried out, sometimes 
 quite alone, sometimes with the help of one or more Friends 
 " liberated" to accompany the minister. And those small meetings 
 where there is but little vocal ministry are objects of special care 
 and concern to the larger meetings, of which they form a part ; and 
 many Friends make a practice of visiting them from time to time. 
 
 There was also a special service to which ministering Friends, 
 formerly often felt . themselves called, and which, though much 
 disused of late years, is not altogether extinct — that of paying 
 "religious visits to families" in particular districts; or, in other 
 words, of holding meetings for worship and mutual edification from 
 house to house — generally, but not invariably, amongst our own 
 members only. These visits were occasions specially adapted and 
 felt suitable for the exercise of that peculiar gift of "speaking to 
 
 I 
 
114 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 I have said that our corner-stone and foundation 
 is our belief that God does indeed communicate 
 with each one of the spirits He has made in a 
 direct and living inbreathing of some measure of 
 the breath of His own life. That belief is not 
 peculiar to us. What is peculiar to us is our testi- 
 mony to the freedom and sufficiency of this imme- 
 diate Divine communication to each one. The 
 ground of our existence as a separate body is our 
 witness to the independence of the true gospel 
 ministry of all forms and ceremonies, and of all 
 humanly imposed limitations and conditions. We 
 desire to guard this supreme function of the human 
 spirit from all disturbing influences as jealously as 
 the mariner guards his compass from anything 
 which might deflect the needle from the pole ; and 
 for the same reason — that we believe the direct 
 influence of the Divine Mind upon our own to be 
 our one unerring Guide in the voyage of life, and 
 that the faculty by which we discern it is but too 
 easily drawn aside by human influences. There is, 
 surely, a very deep significance and value in the 
 Protestant instinct of independence in this deepest 
 
 the condition of" individuals which some Friends (especially in 
 former times) seem to have possessed in a remarkable degree. 
 I believe them to have been of deep value when rightly conducted 
 by the few possessing a real qualification for such delicate and at 
 times searching services, but perhaps peculiarly liable to degenerate 
 into what was neither edifying nor acceptable. 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 115 
 
 region. The Quaker tradition of " non-resistance " 
 has attracted a degree of popular attention which 
 is, I think, out of all proportion to that bestowed 
 on the profound and stubborn independence of 
 Quakerism — its resolute vindication of each man's 
 individual responsibility to his Maker, and to Him 
 alone. The supreme value assigned by Friends 
 to consistency of conduct — to strict veracity and 
 integrity, and other plain moral duties — has, I 
 believe, an intimate connection with their abandon- 
 ment of all reliance upon outward observances, or 
 official support and absolution. " The answer of a 
 good conscience " comes into prominence when all 
 extraneous means of purification are discarded. 
 And when outward ordination is seen to be insuffi- 
 cient to enable any one effectually to minister to 
 the deep needs of a troubled spirit, then that 
 ministry which is truly the outcome of the fiery 
 " baptisms " of Divinely appointed discipline 
 assumes its true dignity in our eyes as the only 
 real qualification for reaching the witness in other 
 hearts. 
 
 •I doubt whether any other Protestant sect 
 recognizes the preciousness of the discipline of 
 suffering as it is recognized by Friends. That it 
 is only through deep experience, both of inward 
 ^exercises and of outward sorrows, that any one can 
 
n6 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 become fully qualified to hold forth the Word of 
 life to others, is signified by the familiar Ouaker 
 expression, " a deeply baptized minister." So 
 strongly have some Friends felt this necessity that 
 they have come to distrust, if not to condemn, 
 whatever appears to them " superficial " or easily 
 produced in ministry. A holy awe, deepening at 
 times, I believe, into even too anxious a restraint, 
 has ever surrounded the exercise of our emphati- 
 cally " free " ministry — free from all human and 
 outward moulding, precisely in order that it may 
 be the more sacredly reserved to the Divine and 
 inward moulding and restraining as well as im- 
 pelling power. 
 
 The danger of our profoundly " inward " ideal 
 is, of course, in its liability to generate scruples, and 
 a degree of morbid introspectiveness, especially in 
 the exercise of this particular gift. Recognizing 
 fully the deep truth that many " baptisms " have 
 to be passed through by those to whom the price- 
 less gift of ministry is entrusted, and that peculiar 
 trials are apt to precede every special replenishing 
 of the sacred vessel, Friends have sometimes gone 
 on to hold it almost a profanation to speak in 
 meetings for worship except as the immediate 
 result of some such painful exercises. It is easy 
 to see the danger of any such limitation of the 
 
FREE MINISTRY. 117 
 
 manner in which the Divine pleasure may be 
 intimated to individuals. It seems both probable 
 and agreeable to experience that a truly spiritual 
 ministry should vary greatly both in its form and 
 in its degree of depth, in various minds. There is 
 obviously a childlike as well as a profound utter- 
 ance of prayer and praise, and surely of "testi- 
 mony " or " prophecy " also. But to recognize 
 this diversity is not in the slightest degree to 
 lower our idea of the indispensableness of a 
 Divine warrant for utterance. The scrupulous 
 jealousy which would limit all ministry to one type 
 is a very different thing from that spirit of holy 
 fear which must in this matter, above all, be the 
 beginning of wisdom. I think that those who are 
 the most ready to accept with reverence whatever 
 is offered in simple obedience, the most desirous 
 themselves to learn simply to obey, will also be 
 the first to feel that no one should venture to 
 break the silence in which inward prayer may be 
 arising from other hearts except under the influence 
 (to use the time-honoured Quaker expression) of 
 " a fresh anointing from above." The nearest 
 approach to a description of what we hold to be 
 a right ministry would seem to be — words spoken 
 during, and arising from, actual communion with 
 God. 
 
Ii8 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 
 
 THERE are certain points of Christian practice 
 upon which we have been accustomed to lay a 
 degree of stress amounting to peculiarity, although 
 our " testimony " in regard to them does not in- 
 volve any opposition to the beliefs of other 
 Christian bodies, as does that which we have just 
 been considering respecting the freedom of the 
 ministry and the disuse of ordinances. The idea 
 of "testimony," or practical witness-bearing to a 
 stricter obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ 
 than is thought necessary by the mass of those 
 who are called by His name, has been strongly 
 impressed upon Friends from the very outset, and 
 the persecutions which it brought upon them did 
 but burn it irrevocably into the Quaker mind. 
 
 The preaching of the early Friends was, above 
 all things, a preaching of righteousness. I think I 
 cannot be wrong in saying that a greater value has 
 from the first been attached by Friends to practice, 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 119 
 
 as compared with doctrine, than is the case with 
 most other Christian bodies. Obedience to the 
 light which convinces of sin was the sum and 
 substance of George Fox's preaching, and through 
 his epistles and other writings there runs a 
 vigorously practical tone which seems to have 
 been responded to with equal vigour by those 
 whom he addressed. 
 
 The early Friends certainly did, as a rule, won- 
 derfully practise what they preached ; and their 
 character for integrity was very quickly, and has 
 been permanently, recognized. It seems to my- 
 self inevitable that the appeal to the witness in 
 each heart should reach deeper, and bring forth 
 correspondingly better fruit of obedience, when 
 disentangled from all reliance on external pass- 
 ports to Divine favour. Not only the idea of any 
 possible "efficacy of sacraments" as apart from 
 righteousness of life, but also the idea of "sub- 
 stitution" as distinguished from actual experience 
 of the transforming power of the righteousness 
 of Christ, were vigorously rejected by the early 
 Friends ; and in this insistence upon the identity 
 of righteousness with salvation lay, as I believe, 
 the main secret of their strength. At any rate, 
 there has been a remarkably steady endeavour to 
 maintain a high and definite standard of Christian 
 
a2o QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 morality, partly by means of the discipline of the 
 Society, partly by family tradition, discipline, and 
 •example. Certain " testimonies," i.e. practices con- 
 scientiously adopted, inculcated, and watched over, 
 have been handed down from generation to genera- 
 tion with a jealous care which, though sometimes 
 overshooting its mark and tending to produce 
 reaction, has nevertheless moulded the very in- 
 most springs of action, and produced and main- 
 tained a distinct and somewhat singular type of 
 Christian character. 
 
 The essence of Quaker " testimony " is a practical 
 witness-bearing — a lifting up in practice of the 
 highest possible standard of uncompromising 
 obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ, both 
 as recorded in the Gospels, and as inwardly 
 experienced as the Light — the Spirit of Truth. 
 Friends have, as a matter of fact, felt certain things 
 to be inconsistent with this teaching which, by the 
 great body of those who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians, are not regarded as being so. 
 They have attacked these things not so much in 
 words as by enjoining and observing a strict 
 abstinence from them at any cost, in a spirit not 
 unlike that of the Rechabites of old. The original 
 Quaker idea was before all things to have " clean 
 hands ; " to stand clear of evil in one's own person, 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 121 
 
 but to abstain in silence unless specially called to 
 speak.* 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to abstain on conscien- 
 tious grounds from what is freely practised by 
 others without giving some offence. Any singu- 
 larity of this kind will inevitably be understood as 
 •casting some shade of disapprobation, if not of 
 actual blame, on the common practice. I do 
 not see how we can avoid this offence unless we 
 are content to sink to the level of least enlighten- 
 ment. We must, I believe, nerve ourselves to 
 endure the giving of it, remembering that the dis- 
 ciple is not above his Master, and that there was 
 a time when our Master Himself had "no honour 
 in His own country." If they have heard His word, 
 they will hear ours also. Meanwhile we may take 
 heart from the knowledge that conduct destined to 
 have permanent influence must often displease for 
 a time. 
 
 The early Friends, or "children of light," as 
 they sometimes called themselves, seem to have 
 been drawn together in a kind of spontaneous 
 unanimity on the main points in which their view 
 of Christian duty transcended that of those about 
 
 * For a short account of the manner in which, before the end of 
 the eighteenth century, the Society in America freed itself from all 
 complicity with slavery, as illustrating the working both of our 
 principles and of our organization, see Appendix, Note C. 
 
122 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 them. The Yearly Meeting, which was not con- 
 stituted till 1672 (or twenty-four years from the 
 date of George Fox's beginning to preach), finding 
 the " testimonies " against war, oaths, and super- 
 fluities already in full practice, expressly recognized 
 them as belonging to " our Christian profession/* 
 and directed inquiry as to the faithfulness of 
 Friends in maintaining them to be made in certain 
 queries addressed from time to time to all the 
 subordinate meetings. 
 
 The practice of addressing such queries to the 
 subordinate meetings is maintained to this day, 
 although the queries themselves have from time to 
 time been altered, and of late years the greater 
 number of them are directed to be seriously con- 
 sidered, but not answered. This change in our 
 practice has probably not been without a balance 
 of advantage and disadvantage. The system of 
 requiring answers to the queries was, in truth, a 
 very powerful engine of discipline, for they were 
 considered and answered with scrupulous care and 
 precision, and, in case of an unfavourable report, 
 individuals who were regarded as failing to main- 
 tain the testimonies of the Society were liable to 
 be " put under dealing," and, in case of obduracy, 
 to eventual disownment. This ultimate penalty 
 of disobedience was in former times inflicted for 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 123 
 
 much slighter causes than would at the present 
 day render any one liable to it* 
 
 It seems to me that there is a serious danger 
 inherent in the very nature of collective testimonies,, 
 especially those which imply the lifting up of a 
 standard of exceptional severity and purity, lest 
 that which is in some, perhaps even in the majority, 
 sincere and spontaneous should be adopted at 
 second hand, and without personal warrant, by 
 others, and should thus become a mere hollow pro- 
 fession. For this reason I am thankful that a much 
 greater degree of freedom is now allowed to our 
 members in all matters as to which there is room 
 for a conscientious difference of opinion. Our 
 strength seems to me to depend largely upon our 
 consistency in appealing to the gospel rather than 
 to the law — in trusting to the purifying power of 
 an indwelling, informing Spirit, rather than to any 
 external framework of regulations. To do anything 
 which can stimulate the profession of more or 
 higher enlightenment than is actually possessed, is 
 
 * The expression " put under dealing " describes the prescribed 
 preliminary to disownment. When an overseer, having found 
 private remonstrance unavailing, is obliged to bring a case of wrong- 
 doing before the Monthly Meeting, that Meeting appoints one or 
 two Friends to visit and "deal with " the offender, in the, way of 
 exhortation and counsel, with a view to induce him to acknowledge 
 and condemn or "disown "his own fault, and thus to avert the 
 penalty of the Society's disownment of himself. 
 
124 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 indeed a signal and a grievous departure from our 
 own avowed principles ; and I believe that no 
 surer method could be devised for bringing our 
 Society into disrepute and decay than the attempt 
 to require a pre-arranged uniformity with regard 
 to those special testimonies which imply special 
 enlightenment. 
 
 The loftier and more delicate the ideal, the 
 greater the risk of formulating and attempting to 
 impose it. It seems to me that our wisdom is to 
 insist more and more boldly upon obedience to 
 the broad plain laws of duty which all Christians 
 recognize as laid down for us by those recorded 
 words of our Master Himself, which are our one 
 supreme standard ; and at the same time to leave 
 more and more scope for the working out in 
 detail of all the lovely and harmonious yet 
 varying results of individual faithfulness to the 
 promptings of His Spirit in each heart. Any 
 distinct breach of the moral law, any falling 
 below that standard of "peaceable innocent life" 
 which is acknowledged by all as the test of the 
 reality of light within, may and should surely 
 be made a matter of Church discipline — a matter, 
 that is, in which brethren should watch over one 
 another for good, and obedience to which must 
 be a condition of sound fellowship. But when 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 125 
 
 discipline descends to the regulation of details 
 whose whole significance and value depend upon 
 their being prompted by conscience, under the 
 living and ever-present guidance of the light, then 
 surely the human is intruding upon the province 
 of the Divine, and we are checking and hampering 
 and weakening that very moulding from within 
 which it is our chief object as a Society to watch 
 for and to yield to in all things. 
 
 But while all attempts at collective self-discipline 
 must involve a danger of hollowness, which means 
 weakness, if not actual insincerity, it is to be 
 remembered, on the other hand, that there is in 
 association not only a well-known source of 
 strength, but a very valuable shelter ; a protection 
 to right instincts of modesty. In maintaining any 
 exceptionally high standard of action, especially 
 in matters of detail, there is a real safety as 
 well as comfort in united action. While we are 
 treading in the steps of our honoured predecessors, 
 however freely we may have chosen our path, we 
 are not tempted to claim that we discovered it ; 
 nor need we anxiously vindicate it as though it 
 were but the prompting of some individual scruple 
 or preference. In the practical results of the 
 collective exercises of a considerable body of 
 fellow-disciples, we do, I believe, in fact find, as we 
 
125 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 might reasonably expect to find, a peculiar purity 
 and propriety. It is not difficult to justify the 
 wisdom by which our special testimonies have 
 been worked out, though it is easy also to see the 
 mischief of too rigid an enforcement of them. 
 
 Our Society, like the United Kingdom, enjoys 
 the elasticity resulting from the absence of any 
 written constitution, and the precise working of 
 its discipline is by no means easily traced. Its 
 "testimonies," though clearly recognized and 
 notorious, are not formulated or defended in any 
 authoritative document. The " Book of Discipline " 
 consists, as I have said, of extracts from " Epistles " 
 and "Advices " circulated from time to time by 
 the Yearly Meeting. These are in the nature of 
 brotherly exhortations, which assume our principles 
 as undisputed ; and though carefully worded, they 
 do not deal in definitions or arguments. Our 
 testimonies are, in fact, to a degree which is, I 
 think, hardly understood outside the Society, the 
 result of individual and spontaneous obedience to 
 the bidding of individual conscience, and to the 
 guiding of the Divine light shining in each heart, 
 rather than of conformity to rules enforced or even 
 precisely laid down by any human authority. 
 They are collective, but unformulated ; subjects 
 for discipline, yet not prescribed or regulated; 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 127 
 
 familiar and even notorious peculiarities, yet vary- 
 ing indefinitely in the degree in which they are 
 maintained by individuals. 
 
 The traditional reverence for individual con- 
 science is still so strong that the precise nature of 
 the obstacle felt by Friends to any particular course 
 •of conduct is apt to be shrouded in some degree 
 of mystery. The phraseology of the Society, which 
 is almost a separate language, vividly conveys this 
 sense of an insuperable but (to outsiders) myste- 
 rious restraint. " Truth requires " that certain 
 things should be done or left undone. A Friend 
 " feels a stop in his mind," or " is not easy to pro- 
 ceed with " some undertaking. Such and such a 
 thing " appears " (to John Woolman, for instance) 
 " to be distinguishable from pure wisdom." 
 
 There are, as is well known, individual Friends 
 who have abundantly argued, on general grounds, 
 the moral questions involved in our " testimonies." 
 Friends have never been wanting in pugnacity, 
 whatever their scruples as to the use of " carnal 
 weapons" or of violent language. But yet their 
 practice has in the main been felt out rather than 
 thought out ; their testimonies are instances of 
 problems solved by going forward rather than 
 of theories built up through any speculative 
 process ; and in regard to each one of them every 
 
123 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 true Friend feels that to his own Master he stands 
 or falls, and that there is but one Example to which 
 he ought to look, and one Guide whom he desires 
 to obey. As in regard of our public ministry, so 
 in the lesser matters of everyday life and practice, 
 we jealously guard our individual liberty from 
 human interference in order that it may be the 
 more unreservedly subjected to all Divine in- 
 fluences. 
 
 And not only do we guard our own liberty — we 
 refrain from attempting to limit that of others. 
 If our conscientious abstinence from certain prac- 
 tices is inevitably understood as in some sense 
 casting a shadow of reproach or blame upon those 
 practices, we yet are careful to abstain from con- 
 demning those who are acting in obedience to 
 their own measure of light. I believe we must 
 with boldness and humility acknowledge that such 
 practical witness-bearing as we believe ourselves 
 called to implies that we are as " a city set on a 
 hill." We do not attempt to lay down rules 
 applicable at once and equally to all. The home- 
 ward road cannot be altogether the same for 
 dwellers on the hill and dwellers on the plain ; the 
 goal alone is one.* 
 
 * I hope it will be remembered that my object throughout is to 
 unfold the meaning of our ideal, not at all to estimate the degree 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 129 
 
 The most important and the best known of the 
 special testimonies of which I have now to speak 
 is that which has been steadily borne by our 
 members against all war. Friends have ever 
 maintained and acted upon the belief that war and 
 strife of all kinds are opposed to the spirit and the 
 teaching of Christ, and have felt themselves, as His 
 disciples, precluded from engaging in them. They 
 have steadfastly refused to take up arms at the 
 bidding of any human authority, or in the presence 
 of any danger. This course of conduct has, of 
 course, brought them into frequent collision with 
 the civil power, and needs for its justification, as 
 Friends are the first to acknowledge, the warrant of 
 a higher than any national authority. 
 
 It is, indeed, an awful position which we have 
 thus been bold to take up — the position of those 
 who feel themselves called upon to act as the salt 
 of the earth, as leaders who refuse to be led. I do 
 not hesitate to confess that this attitude of possible 
 resistance to the demands of our country in the 
 presence of a common danger was the one part of 
 the Quaker ideal which I for a time seriously 
 hesitated to accept. So long as I understood it to 
 
 in which we actually live according to it. I am not in a position to 
 form any opinion worth having as to the actual state of the Society, 
 nor if I had any such opinion should I wish to publish it. My 
 desire is to explain the secret of our strength, not of our weakness. 
 
 K 
 
130 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 be accompanied by or based upon any condemna- 
 tion of those who conscientiously believe that their 
 duty to God requires them to yield unqualified 
 obedience to the demands of their country for 
 military service, I was unable to accept it. But 
 when I came to understand that the Quaker 
 testimony against all war did not take the form of 
 any ethical theory of universal application, but was 
 simply the acting out in one's own person and at 
 one's own risk of obedience to that which one's 
 own heart had been taught to recognize as Divine 
 authority, even where its commands transcended and 
 came into collision with those of the nation, I felt at 
 once that the position was not only perfectly tenable, 
 but was the only one worthy of faithful disciples. 
 
 So long as our country is but very imperfectly 
 Christianized, it is impossible not to recognize that 
 an insuperable contradiction may at any time arise 
 between the demands upon our loyalty and 
 obedience which may be made in its name, and 
 those of the spirit of Christ. It would assuredly 
 not be acting in His spirit to make light of dis- 
 obedience to law ; but neither can any Christian 
 hesitate for a moment when called upon to choose 
 which Master he shall obey. It seems to me that 
 if any man be prepared in the true spirit of a 
 martyr to rise above his country's sense of right, 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 131 
 
 and to serve his country in the highest sense by 
 disobeying and withstanding such of its require- 
 ments as in his heart he believes to be wrong and 
 ungodly, it is impossible to withhold from such a 
 man the respect and the admiration which we all 
 feel foi? the martyrs of old. I do not see how the 
 national standard of duty can be raised — how, in 
 other words, the nation can ever be thoroughly 
 Christianized — except through individual faithful- 
 ness, at all costs and at all risks, to a higher view 
 of duty than that held by the nation at large. 
 
 Here, of course, we are confronted with the 
 question, Is our view of duty truly a higher one 
 than that of the nation at large ? Does the teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ really call us to abstain from 
 all warfare ? 
 
 It seems to me that not only Friends' testimony, 
 but the teaching of our Master Himself on this 
 subject have been much, and in a sense inevitably, 
 misunderstood. The subject is profoundly com- 
 plex, and much of what is said and written about 
 it sounds altogether unsubstantial and unpractical, 
 because neither the depth and intricacy of the evil, 
 nor the far-reaching and full significance of the 
 principles opposed to it, are sufficiently felt. " I 
 say unto you, That ye resist not evil : but whosoever 
 shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
 
132 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the other also." Surely this does not point to an 
 abject submission or a tame indifference, but to 
 an undaunted persistence in blessing — a fearless 
 overcoming of evil with good. It is an appeal to 
 an unchanging and fundamental principle, rather 
 than a mere rule of conduct. The whole passage 
 breathes a spirit of ardent confidence in the 
 supremacy of goodness ; in the power of the 
 Perfect One who makes His sun to shine upon the 
 just and the unjust, and sends rain upon the 
 unthankful and the evil ; it is a call to us to be 
 perfect, even as our Father is perfect ; not a 
 suggestion that we should abandon or relax our 
 conflict with evil, but an assurance that we are not 
 at its mercy — that He who is with us is stronger 
 than all they who can be against us, and that in 
 His strength we can and must meet evil with good 
 and overcome it. 
 
 Those who would follow Him who thus spoke, 
 must rise above all personal considerations, and 
 above every temptation to retaliate — not fall below 
 them. This, surely, was the spirit in which 
 William Penn won his victories in the early days 
 of Pennsylvania — the bloodless victories which 
 make his name to this day a word of love and 
 honour amongst the Indians, with whom his treaty 
 of peace was never broken. It was not by lying 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 133 
 
 down like sheep to be slaughtered by them, but by 
 going forward to meet them with open hands and 
 a trusting heart, and by honourably and generously 
 recognizing their rights and paying them a fair 
 price for their lands, that he and his followers 
 turned suspicion and hatred into firm friendship. 
 
 We are called to rise above the level of fighting 
 pagans, not to fall below it. There is, indeed, a 
 lower depth than that of the military spirit — the 
 depth of complacent mammon-worship. To our 
 shame be it confessed that this spirit may clothe 
 itself under the profession of "non-resistance." 
 When the salt so loses its savour, it is truly fit for 
 nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot. 
 But we are concerned here not with the deplorable 
 caricature of that " testimony against all war " 
 which has for two hundred years been at once 
 the boast and the reproach of Quakerism, but 
 with its essence and true significance. These lie 
 in the fact that Friends have, one by one, indi- 
 vidually and unitedly, been led by obedience to the 
 spirit of Christ to abstain from fighting and from 
 all concern, so far as it has been possible to clear 
 themselves from it, in strife of any kind. This is 
 surely clear and solid ground to take, and quite 
 distinct from any attempt or necessity for laying 
 down general and comprehensive formulae of con- 
 
134 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 duct applicable to all cases, to all persons and all 
 bodies. To formulate such general rules is, in 
 truth, foreign to the spirit of Quakerism. To 
 yield one's self unreservedly to Divine guidance ; 
 resolutely, and at whatever cost, to refuse to par- 
 ticipate in that which one's own conscience has 
 been taught to condemn ; — this is the ancient and 
 inestimable Quaker ideal. It is surely the best, 
 the most effectual, the most Christian way of wit- 
 nessing against evil, and of arousing the con- 
 sciences of others. 
 
 There is not, I believe, any possibility of dis- 
 pute, I will not say amongst Christians, but 
 amongst rational beings, as to the enormity of the 
 evil of strife and discord, whether between nations 
 or between individuals. The question upon which 
 we Friends differ from other Christians is not the 
 question whether peace be desirable — whether it be 
 not, in fact, the goal of all political effort — but 
 what are the means by which it is to be attained or 
 maintained. Other Christians do not deny that 
 quarrelling is contrary to the spirit of Christ, and 
 we do not deny that a holy warfare is to be con- 
 tinually maintained against evil in every form. 
 But we regard the opposing of violence by violence 
 as a suicidal and hopeless method of proceeding ; 
 we feel, as Christians, that the weapons of our war- 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 135 
 
 fare are not carnal. We cannot, by taking military- 
 service, place ourselves at the absolute disposal of 
 a power which may at any time employ its soldiers 
 for purposes so questionable and often so un- 
 hallowed. 
 
 To abstain, on these grounds, from all participa- 
 tion in warfare is surely a quite different thing 
 from laying down any general theory as to the 
 " unlawfulness " of war. I own that it does not 
 appear to me to be right or wise to blame those 
 who are acting in obedience to their own views of 
 duty, however much they may differ from our own. 
 I do not think it can serve any good purpose to 
 ignore the force of the considerations by which war 
 appears to many people to be justified. I would 
 even go further, and admit that, under all the com- 
 plicated circumstances of the world (including 
 historical facts and treaty obligations), there are 
 cases in which men may be actually bound to fight 
 in what they believe to be a just cause ; although 
 it does not, I believe, follow that every individual 
 would be justified in taking part in such warfare. 
 Would any one say that at the time of the Indian 
 Mutiny the Governor-General of India ought not 
 to have permitted the use of arms for the protec- 
 tion of the women and children ? I doubt whether 
 any Friend would be found to maintain this. But 
 
i.l6 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 it is equally to be remembered that no true Friend 
 could well have occupied the position of the 
 Governor-General. No nation which had from the 
 beginning of its history been thoroughly Chris- 
 tian could, I suppose, have found itself in the 
 position which we occupied in India in 1857. Were 
 all the world, in the true and full sense of the word, 
 Christian, such events obviously would not occur. 
 Had we been from the first a thoroughly Christian 
 nation, our whole history must have been different, 
 and would (as we Friends believe) have been in- 
 finitely nobler. 
 
 We do not profess to lay down any general rule, 
 by obedience to which war can be instantly dis- 
 pensed with by nations in their unregenerate state, 
 and without a sacrifice. A fully Christian nation 
 has never yet been seen on earth. It may well be 
 that such a nation, could it now come suddenly into 
 existence, would meet with national martyrdom. 
 Meanwhile it is the imperfection of our Christianity 
 and the mixed and complex nature of national 
 affairs which make it so difficult to apply to national 
 action any pure principles of conduct. This is 
 not to deny the existence of such principles. To 
 recognize the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of 
 suddenly or sweepingly applying them to prac- 
 tice, is not to deny their leavening power. When 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 137 
 
 we Friends speak of what is "right," we refer 
 not to any external and rigid rule of conduct, 
 but to that which in each individual case is truly 
 the best and the highest course open to the indi- 
 vidual. To say this is not to say that right is in 
 itself variable. It is only to say what will, I 
 think, be denied by few, that the human ideal 
 of right is progressive, not stationary. 
 
 We do, however, further say, what undoubtedly 
 is denied by many, that the ideal revealed to us 
 in the life and the words of Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 and gradually being worked out in His own people 
 through His ever-present inward influence, is the 
 highest and the purest conceivable ; and that, 
 therefore, all real progress must be an approach to- 
 wards Him. It is this Christian ideal which, as it 
 gains possession of the human mind, must extin- 
 guish the spirit which leads to strife and warfare. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that Friends have 
 some special scruple about the use of physical 
 force in any case. This is, I believe, by no means 
 true of the Society at large, although the popular 
 notion may very likely be founded upon fact as 
 regards individuals. As a body, Friends have 
 always recognized " the just authority of the civil 
 magistracy," and have, I believe, never disputed the 
 lawfulness of the use of " the sword " (whatever 
 
138 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 may be meant by that expression) in maintaining 
 that authority.* George Fox himself repeatedly 
 reminded magistrates that they should not " bear 
 the sword in vain," but that they should use it for 
 the punishment of evil-doers, not of those who did 
 well. 
 
 It is not, as I understand it, the use of physical 
 force, or even the suffering caused by the use of it, 
 which really makes war hateful in Christian eyes ; 
 but the evil passions, the " lusts " from which it 
 springs, and to which, alas ! it so hideously ministers. 
 The dispassionate infliction of punishment by an 
 impartial and a lawful authority surely stands upon 
 a quite different footing from that "biting and 
 devouring one another" which, whether between 
 nations or between individuals, it is the very aim 
 and object of law to suppress. Suffering inflicted 
 for the purpose of maintaing peace cannot, I think, 
 be condemned by the advocates of peace unless 
 it be on the ground of failure. 
 
 * I believe that scarcely any Friend would be found to consider 
 the office of the policeman as an unlawful one, or to entertain 
 scruples about the use of physical force in maintaining order. I am 
 told that Friends have often, and without censure, acted as special 
 constables. 
 
 With regard to the subject of capital punishment, the Yearly 
 Meeting has, indeed, during the last fifty years, expressed very serious 
 doubts of its being justifiable ; but the matter is treated as one 
 " needing prayerful consideration " by those whom it may concern, 
 not as beyond all question clear. 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 139 
 
 I own that I personally cannot but recognize that 
 upon this view certain wars appear to be not only 
 inevitable but justifiable, as partaking of the nature 
 of national police operations. I cannot, there- 
 fore, regard all war as wholly and unmitigatedly 
 blamable, although I can hardly imagine any war 
 which does not both come from evil and lead to evil. 
 
 Again, there are treaty obligations requiring us 
 in certain cases to take up arms for the protec- 
 tion of weaker nations, from which we could not 
 suddenly recede without a breach of national good 
 faith. It surely does not become us, in our zeal 
 for peace, to make light of, or overlook, such 
 considerations as this. They should, I think, in 
 the first place lead us to abstain from sweeping 
 generalizations, and from blaming those who are 
 ready to lay down their lives in obedience to their 
 country's call and in our defence, or the defence 
 of the oppressed in other countries ; while yet we 
 resolutely maintain our own obedience to that 
 higher authority by which we have, as we believe, 
 been taught a better way — a way incompatible with 
 outward strife — of giving our lives for the common 
 weal. We should be very careful how we call that 
 a wicked action which a good man may honestly 
 do in obedience to his own sense of duty ; we 
 should be still more careful lest, while professing 
 
140 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 to take higher ground, we do in fact fall far short 
 of such men in our lives ; but we must, for all that, 
 be faithful to the light we have. 
 
 And, in the second place, it seems to me that 
 the true inference from the consideration of the 
 complicated conditions of international affairs is 
 that the time is not yet ripe for the assumption of 
 all offices of public authority by thorough-going 
 Christians. Our place surely still is mainly to 
 leaven, not to govern, the world. 
 
 The world must become the kingdom of the Lord 
 and of His Christ before wars and fightings will 
 cease from amongst men. And the world is very 
 far as yet from acknowledging that dominion in 
 anything but words. Yet we do " profess and call 
 ourselves Christians " ; we do live in the full light 
 of the everlasting gospel ; and however it may be 
 rejected or discarded, however far even those who 
 profess it may be from entering into its spirit, it 
 has yet, in spite of ourselves, raised us out of the 
 possibility of consistent paganism. We cannot 
 return to the old condition of things, in which 
 nations thought it no shame to strive each for its 
 own petty objects, and to be reckless of each other's 
 interests. There is no satisfactory resting-place 
 for us now on any lower level than that which 
 Christ has brought to light. Under the name of 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 141 
 
 " altruism," this is recognized even by those who 
 think of Christianity as a worn-out superstition. 
 We who believe it to be the power of God unto 
 salvation are surely bound to yield ourselves heart 
 and soul to its emancipating influence — to its 
 indestructible, irresistible appeal to us to " live as 
 brethren." As in the beginning it was felt by some 
 at least to be as clear as daylight that " Christians 
 cannot fight," so now, not only amongst Friends, 
 but in many another Christian body, the same spirit 
 is working, and consciences are awakening to the 
 utter incompatibility of strife and retaliation and 
 reckless self-aggrandizement with the spirit of 
 brotherhood which lies at the very foundation of 
 Christianity. They had need to awake ; now, at 
 the eleventh hour, with all Europe making itself 
 ready for war, it may yet be that the few in whom 
 the fire of Christian zeal is burning in its purity 
 may see their cause and the cause of their Master 
 begin to prevail against overwhelming odds. But 
 whether the nations will hear or whether they will 
 forbear, wherever two or three Christians meet 
 together, there still will be a protest against strife 
 and selfishness. 
 
 A protest against strife and selfishness ; not only 
 against strife, but against " the greedy spirit which 
 leads to strife." If we are willing to go down to 
 
142 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 the root in this matter, if we truly desire to do what 
 in us lies towards ridding the earth not only of 
 wars and fightings, but of all forms of oppression 
 and cruelty, must we not recognize that the very 
 first step is to be ourselves freed from covetousness? 
 For who can doubt that it is mainly about out- 
 ward and material things that nations or indi- 
 viduals are led into quarrels? Who will venture 
 to say that, if none of us desired either to get or to 
 keep more than our share of this world's goods, 
 there would be anything like the amount of 
 fighting, or of preparation for it, which now devas- 
 tates the earth ? We may be sceptical about the 
 possibility of any general acceptance of arbitration 
 or disarmament. To be sceptical about the possi- 
 bility of personal disinterestedness would imply a 
 very different sort of blindness. It seems to me 
 that in struggling to rise and to raise others more 
 and more clearly above the greedy spirit which leads 
 to war, is the best hope for many of us of contributing 
 in any real sense to the cause of peace on earth. 
 
 It was long ago recognized by Friends that (to 
 use the words of John Woolman) " in every degree 
 of luxury are the seeds of war and oppression." 
 The connection between luxury and cruelty is, 
 indeed, almost a truism, but it is one of those 
 truisms of which it is unfortunately easy to lose 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 143 
 
 sight ; and I fear that even amongst Friends the 
 familiar testimonies against all war and against 
 superfluities are apt to be held without any vivid 
 sense of their vital connection. 
 
 No one, surely, will deny that the selfish desire 
 of mere pleasure, when allowed to rule, will feed 
 itself at the expense of suffering and privation to 
 others ; that it does cause that scramble for gain 
 in which the weak are trampled upon, and every 
 furious passion is stimulated.* The difficulty in 
 regard to bearing a practical testimony against 
 superfluities is not that which some of us feel 
 in the case of war — that we do not know where 
 to take hold, that our personal and daily con- 
 duct seems to have no immediate bearing upon 
 questions of international policy, and that the 
 whole problem eludes our grasp by its very vast- 
 ness. It is, rather, that we do not like to put our 
 shoulder to the wheel of simplifying life for our- 
 selves and others ; that we do not see the beauty 
 of severity ; that we love softness, or yield to it for 
 want of any purifying fire of hope. 
 
 But yet, in one form or another, often extrava- 
 
 * It is, I believe, notorious that many of the panics which often 
 actually lead to war, and which tend to keep up the enormous and 
 demoralizing burdens of an " armed peace," are largely brought 
 about by those who have a pecuniary interest in them, either for 
 stock -jobbing or for newspaper-selling interests. 
 
i 4 4 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 gantly, foolishly, even injuriously, an ineradicable 
 instinct has prompted Christians in all times to 
 free themselves from luxurious and self-indulgent 
 ways of living ; to walk as disciples of Him who 
 " had not where to lay His head ; " to lay aside, 
 not only every sin, but every weight, that so they 
 may run the race set before them, not as beating 
 the air, but as those who strive for the victory. 
 
 It is, indeed, not easy to define the precise kind 
 or amount of luxury which is incompatible with 
 Christian simplicity ; or rather it must of necessity 
 vary. But the principle is, I think, clear. In life, 
 as in art, whatever does not help, hinders. All 
 that is superfluous to the main object of life must 
 be cleared away, if that object is to be fully attained. 
 In all kinds of effort whether moral, intellectual, or 
 physical, the essential condition of vigour is a 
 severe pruning away of redundance. Is it likely 
 that the highest life, the life of the Christian body, 
 can be carried on upon easier terms ? 
 
 The higher our ideal of life, the greater, indeed, 
 must' be the sacrifices which it will require from 
 us. As we rise from the lower to the higher 
 objects of life, many things of necessity become 
 superfluous to us — in other words, we become 
 independent of them, or outgrow them. This is 
 a widely different idea from that of ascetic self- 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 145 
 
 discipline or self-mortification ; and it is surely a 
 sounder and a worthier idea. 
 
 The Quaker ideal, as I understand it, requires a 
 continual weighing of one thing against another — 
 a continual preference of the lasting and deep over 
 the transient and superficial. " Weightiness " is 
 one of the Friends' characteristic and emphatic 
 forms of commendation. To sacrifice any deep 
 and substantial advantage to outward show is 
 abhorrent to the Quaker instinct. To "stretch 
 beyond one's compass " grasping at shadows, and 
 encumbering oneself with more than is needed for 
 simple, wholesome living, is at variance with all 
 our best traditions. 
 
 If we bear in mind the essentially relative 
 meaning of the word " superfluous," it is obvious 
 that such a testimony against " superfluities " does 
 not require any rigid or niggardly rule as to out- 
 ward things. To my own mind, indeed, this view 
 of the matter seems to require at least as clearly 
 the liberal use of whatever is truly helpful to " our 
 best life" as the abandonment of obstructing super- 
 fluities. No doubt a testimony against superflui- 
 ties is very liable to degenerate into formality, and 
 to be so misapplied as to cut off much that is in 
 reality wholesome, innocent, and beautiful. Art 
 has to a great extent been banished from many 
 
 L 
 
146 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 Ouaker homes ; and a considerable amount of 
 injury has no doubt been done by such rigid 
 severity, and perhaps still more by the very 
 natural consequent reaction. But it would, I 
 believe, be quite a mistake to suppose that the 
 extreme plainness in dress and other surroundings 
 adopted by the stricter Friends, and formerly 
 made a matter of discipline by the Society, was 
 originally adopted with any intention of self-mor- 
 tification or asceticism.* 
 
 I believe that asceticism is in a very deep sense 
 contrary to the real Quaker spirit, which desires 
 in all things to abstain from any interference 
 " in the will of man " with Divine discipline and 
 guidance, and which would, I believe, regard the 
 idea of self-chosen exercises in mortification of 
 the flesh with the same aversion as it entertains 
 for pre-arranged forms of worship. Friends, no 
 doubt, have often believed themselves required 
 to submit to the adoption of the plain dress 
 "in the cross" to natural inclination, and have 
 felt it a valuable exercise to do so ; but the 
 plainness was not devised for that purpose, but 
 chosen (or rather, as Friends would say, they were 
 
 * I mean by " asceticism " the practice of any humanly devised 
 religious or spiritual discipline, whether self-chosen or prescribed 
 by authority. 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 147 
 
 led into it by Truth) because of its inherent suit- 
 ableness and rightness. It is an outcome of the 
 instinctively felt necessity of subordinating every- 
 thing to principle. Its chief significance is that 
 of a protest against bondage to passing fashions, 
 and for this reason it is a settled costume. It is 
 also felt that our very dress should show forth 
 that inward quietness of spirit which does not 
 naturally tend towards outward adornment, and 
 the Friends' recognized dress is therefore one of 
 extreme sobriety in colour and simplicity in form. 
 
 It is a significant fact that there is really no 
 such thing as a precisely defined Quaker costume. 
 The dress is certainly precise enough in itself, and 
 to the naked eye of the outside observer it may 
 appear to present an undeviating uniformity ; but 
 it is really not a uniform in the sense in which a 
 nun's or a soldier's dress is a uniform. It is in 
 all respects a growth, a tradition, a language ; and 
 it is subject to constant though slow modification. 
 Any perfectly unadorned dress of quiet colour, 
 without ornament or trimming, if habitually worn, 
 is in fact, to all intents and purposes, the Quaker 
 costume, though one or two details have by a sort 
 of accident acquired a traditional meaning as a 
 badge, which one may adopt or not according to 
 one's feeling about badges. Some Friends nowa- 
 
148 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 days object on principle to anything of the kind. 
 Others still see a "hedge" or shelter in them. 
 Others, again, feel that they serve a useful and 
 innocent purpose in enabling Friends readily to 
 recognize one another, and that it is not amiss for 
 them to be easily recognized even by outsiders. 
 But the one important matter of principle which 
 the Society as a body have recognized, is that it 
 is a waste of time and money for which Christian 
 women can hardly fail to find better employment, 
 • to condescend to be perpetually changing the 
 fashion of one's garments in obedience to the 
 caprice or the restlessness of the multitude. "Plain 
 Friends" are those who are resolved to dress 
 according to the settled principles which commend 
 themselves to their own mind, not enslaving them- 
 selves to passing fashions. 
 
 It is easy to say that they do but exchange one 
 bondage for another. That may, indeed, have 
 been the case at times, and may even still be so 
 in some families or meetings. But the crystallizing 
 into rigid formality, though a possible tendency, 
 is no real part of the true Quaker ideal. My own 
 strong feeling is that the adoption of a settled 
 costume, at any rate in mature life and from con- 
 viction, is not only the right and most dignified 
 course on moral grounds, but also that it has in 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 149 
 
 actual experience afforded one more proof of the 
 truth that the lower aims of life can thrive only in 
 proportion as they are kept in subordination to the 
 higher. The freedom from the necessity of per- 
 petual changes, which commends itself to Friends 
 as suitable to the dignity of "women professing 
 godliness," has also the lower advantage of admit- 
 ting a gradual bringing to perfection of the settled 
 costume itself. We all know how exquisite, within 
 its severely limited range, can be the result. The 
 spotless delicacy, the precision and perfection of 
 plain fine needlework, the repose of the soft tints, 
 combine, in the dress of some still lingering repre- 
 sentatives of the old school of Quakerism, to pro- 
 duce a result whose quiet beauty appeals to both the 
 mind and the eye with a peculiar charm. I cannot 
 think that such mute eloquence is to be despised ; 
 or that it is unworthy of Christian women to be 
 careful that their very dress shall speak a language 
 of quietness, gentleness, and purity — that it shall 
 be impressed even with a touch o f eternity. 
 
 This principle of Christian simplicity should, 
 in our view, run through everything— dress, furni- 
 ture, habits of life, and forms of speech ; all should 
 be'^s^evereTy purged from redundance, and frorn^ 
 mere imitation and rnnypntionality. The " plain 
 language," best known as leading to the use of 
 
150 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 tJiee and thou for you in speaking to one person, 
 and of first, second, etc., for the days of the week 
 and the months, instead of the ordinary names 
 "derived from heathen deities," was an instance 
 of this endeavour to winnow away every super- 
 
 fluity and every taint of flattery and superstition 
 from our speech. These — special peculiarities of 
 speech are, as is well known, completely dropped 
 by many of the present generation of Friends. 
 The changes which have taken place in two 
 hundred years in our language and habits have 
 deprived these expressions of much of their original 
 significance, and the tendency of the present time 
 is no doubt towards the effacing of all peculiarities. 
 But some special attention is still paid amongst us 
 to simplicity and guardedness of language in a 
 wider sense, and surely this is an object well 
 worthy of attention on the highest as well as the 
 lowest grounds. 
 
 The idea of a scrupulous guard over the lips, 
 which is so strongly characteristic of all Friends at 
 all worthy of the name, culminates in their united 
 testimony against oaths. This has, indeed, been 
 always regarded by Friends as a matter of simple 
 obedience to a plain command of Jesus Christ ; 
 and I think that nothing but long habit could 
 reconcile any sincere disciple to the ordinary in- 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 151 
 
 terpretation of His words as intended to forbid 
 "profane swearing" only.* Many others besides 
 Friends have felt this scruple ; but to our Society 
 belongs the indisputable credit of having, through 
 a long and severe course of suffering for their 
 " testimony," obtained a distinct recognition of the 
 sufficiency in their case of a plain affirmation, 
 thereby vindicating a principle which is beginning 
 to be generally recognized — the principle of having 
 but one rule for all cases, that of plain truth ; of 
 being as much bound by one's word as one's bond. 
 I think it can hardly be questioned that, through 
 this simple and unflinching course of obedience to 
 the plain injunction of Jesus Christ, Friends have 
 done much to raise the standard of veracity in our 
 country.f 
 
 The refusal to pay tithes is a part of the testi- 
 mony against a paid ministry, of which I have 
 sufficiently spoken in the last chapter ; and I need 
 here only say that in all these cases of resistance 
 to the demands of authority, for military service, 
 for oaths, or for tithes, the idea has been that of 
 
 * " But I say unto you, vSwear not at all. . . . But let your com- 
 munication be Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatsoever is more than 
 these cometh of evil" (Matt. v. 34-37). 
 
 t The victory thus won by Friends has paved the way for greater 
 liberty for all ; and at the present time any one (whether " professing 
 with us" or not) who objects on the ground of religion to the 
 taking of an oath is equally at liberty to affirm. 
 
152 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 witnessing at one's own cost against unjust or 
 unrighteous demands. It is, I think, fair to claim 
 that it is at one's own cost that one refuses a 
 demand even for money when it is made by those 
 who have the power to take the money or its 
 •equivalent by force, and when no resistance is ever 
 •offered to their doing so. Friends have again and 
 again submitted patiently to the levying of much 
 larger sums than those originally claimed, as well 
 as to severe and sometimes lifelong imprisonments, 
 and other penalties, rather than by any act of their 
 •own give consent to exactions which they believed 
 to be unrighteous in their origin or purpose. While 
 such unmistakable proofs of disinterestedness were 
 given, the motive for withholding money could 
 hardly be misunderstood. With regard to tithes, 
 however, the circumstances have, since the Tithes 
 Commutation Act, become so complicated, that few 
 Friends now feel a refusal to pay them a suitable 
 method of testifying against a paid ministry, and 
 the Yearly Meeting has placed on record this sense 
 of the alteration of the state of the case in a minute 
 dated 1875 :* "This meeting believes that the time 
 has arrived when the mode of bearing this testi- 
 mony must be left to the individual consciences of 
 Friends." 
 
 * " Book of Discipline," p. 141. 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 153 
 
 Amongst lesser matters as to which Friends 
 have made a stand upon principle against pre- 
 vailing customs, may be mentioned "the super- 
 stitious observance of days," especially that of 
 fasts or thanksgivings prescribed by the civil 
 government (a power which we do not regard as 
 competent to prescribe religious exercises), and 
 the practice of wearing mourning, and placing 
 41 inscriptions of a eulogistic character " on tomb- 
 stones. In Friends' burial-grounds nothing beyond 
 the name, and the dates of birth and death, is per- 
 mitted. The objections to wearing mourning are 
 obvious, both on the ground of unnecessary expense 
 and trouble at a time when the mind should surely 
 be left as much as possible undisturbed, and also 
 on that of its being an expression (and an expres- 
 sion so formal as to be of doubtful sincerity) of 
 grief and gloom in regard to providential dispen- 
 sations which, however painful, we should desire to 
 accept with cheerful submission. There is obviously 
 much to be said for this application of the principle 
 of simplifying our customs, and adjusting our dress 
 and other surroundings to the permanent rather 
 than the transient circumstances of our lives. 
 
 To simplify life to the very uttermost — is not 
 this truly in itself a worthy aim ; nay, the one 
 inexorable condition of excellence ? 
 
154 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 We have just now been engaged with com- 
 paratively trivial matters — straws which show as 
 no more solid thing can do which way the wind 
 blows. These things are important, not in them- 
 selves, but in relation to the principles in honest 
 obedience to which they have been worked out. 
 Simplicity — " the simplicity which is in Christ "— 
 the simplicity, not of exclusion, but of Divine all- 
 subduing supremacy — this is the keynote of our 
 ideal ; and it is a keynote to which the human 
 heart must always in some degree respond. At 
 the bottom of all art, of all beauty, and surely, we 
 may say, of all goodness, lies the principle of sub- 
 ordination — the necessity of a perpetual choice 
 between the permanent and the transient, the 
 essential and the superficial. Quakerism is an 
 honest endeavour to carry out this principle in 
 the Christian life ; to weigh " in the balance of the 
 sanctuary " the meat that endureth against the 
 meat that perisheth ; to cleave to the eternal at 
 the sacrifice, if necessary, of all that is temporal. 
 
 I am, of course, not absurd enough to claim 
 that this endeavour is peculiar to Quakerism. My 
 object throughout is to show what are the eternal 
 and unassailable principles of truth to which 
 Quakerism appeals, to which it clings as to its 
 strongholds. And I believe that the severe sifting 
 
SPECIAL TESTIMONIES. 155, 
 
 away of non-essentials which lies at the foundation 
 of our revolt from accepted ecclesiastical practices, 
 and which has ramified in detail into these minor 
 testimonies, often rigidly and at times even 
 laughably worked out by individuals, is a process 
 more and more urgently needed in these days of 
 rapid growth in all material and intellectual 
 resources. 
 
 The permanent danger of giving our labour and 
 our lives " for that which satisfieth not " was surely 
 never more desperate than in these days of hurry 
 and fulness, when merely to stand still needs a 
 resolute effort of will. Are not half the lives we 
 know carried along in a current they know not 
 how to resist towards objects they but vaguely 
 recognize, and in their heart of hearts do not 
 value ? Was the bondage of outward things ever 
 more oppressive than it is to many of those who 
 are ostensibly, and ought to be really, in a posi- 
 tion of entire outward independence ? How many 
 of us have attained to the unspeakable repose of 
 having our centre of gravity in the right place, of 
 leaning upon nothing that can fail ? 
 
 There is no royal road to ridding ourselves of 
 superfluities. It is a lifelong process of severe 
 purification, which at every turn demands the 
 sacrifice of the lower to the higher. But as this 
 
t56 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 severity is the necessary price of attaining what 
 is highest, so also it is the one spell by which 
 life and significance and value can be given to 
 what is lower. If it burns it also brightens ; 
 while it destroys it irradiates. I believe it to be 
 in all things true that nothing can have its full 
 value except when rightly subordinated to that 
 which is of more importance than itself. If you 
 sacrifice the higher to the lower, you not only 
 make a bad bargain, but you injure the very 
 object which you thus purchase. That of which 
 you make an idol turns to dust in the process. 
 The idol which you have the courage to pluck 
 from its throne may come to life through that very 
 act. From the closest human affection down to 
 the most trivial outward adornment, all lovely 
 things owe their perfection of loveliness to being 
 held in their due subordination to what is yet 
 higher. " He that will lose his life shall save it ; " 
 a hard saying, indeed, — with the hardness of the 
 imperishable rock in which is our fortress and our 
 stronghold. 
 
( 157 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OUR CALLING. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to explain what are those 
 principles and practices into which we as a body 
 have been led through what we believe to be 
 obedience to the Spirit of Truth. I know that in 
 some respects we seem to our fellow Christians to 
 have mistaken the voice of our Guide, and to be,. 
 through ignorance perhaps, but yet lamentably, 
 excluding ourselves from the most precious privi- 
 leges, if not consciously disregarding the most 
 sacred injunctions. It is a very solemn question 
 upon which we thus join issue with almost all the 
 Churches of Christendom ; — What is, in fact, essen- 
 tial Christianity ? 
 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them." It would 
 ill become me to attempt any estimate of the 
 fruitfulness of that branch of the Christian Church 
 which I have joined as compared with the branch 
 of it in which I was brought up. I have been 
 
158 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 occupied throughout with our ideal, not with the 
 degree of our fulfilment or failure to fulfil it. I 
 feel bound, however, to say that I cannot reconcile 
 the fact of the signs of life and spiritual energy 
 which I find within as well as without the Society 
 with the idea that either branch of the Church is 
 really cut off from the root of the living Vine. 
 Does it follow that our peculiar principles and 
 practices are of no consequence ? 
 
 I cannot myself believe that this is a legitimate 
 •conclusion from the admitted fact that undeniably 
 holy and Christian lives are led within as well as 
 without our borders. That fact does, I think, show 
 at least that everything does not depend either 
 upon the observance or the disuse of outward 
 ordinances — it shows that either course may be 
 pursued in good faith and without destruction to 
 the Christian life ; but it is not inconsistent with 
 the belief that results of profound importance to 
 the character of our Christianity are involved in 
 this question of ordinances and orders, and that it 
 therefore behoves us to seek the utmost clearness 
 with regard to it. 
 
 This question is the very key of the position of 
 the Society of Friends as a separate body. It is 
 as witnesses to the independence of spiritual life 
 tupon outward ordinances that we believe ourselves 
 
OUR CALLING. 159 
 
 especially called to maintain our place in the 
 universal Church in the present day. 
 
 The importance of our separate position is per- 
 haps somewhat obscured in the eyes of some 
 amongst us by the fact that we can no longer 
 assume the vehemently aggressive attitude of the 
 early Friends, as against Christians of other 
 •denominations. They believed it to be their duty 
 to attack the "hireling priests" of their day as 
 guilty of " apostasy," and upholders of the myste- 
 rious powers of darkness. In our own day such 
 judgments would imply either the grossest igno- 
 rance or else downright insanity. We cannot help 
 knowing, and rejoicing to know, that a large pro- 
 portion of the clergy are amongst the most devoted 
 and disinterested of the children of light, using 
 their official position, as well as every other power 
 of body and mind, for the promotion of the kingdom 
 of God and the spread of the gospel. We desire 
 nothing better than to fight beside them, shoulder 
 to shoulder, against the common enemy ; and we 
 are, in fact, often associated with them in efforts 
 of this kind. 
 
 In like manner, it would be impossible for 
 Friends in these days to speak in the tone of the 
 founders of the Society, as though we possessed 
 a degree of light in comparison of which all other 
 
1 6c QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 Christians must be considered as groping in thick 
 darkness. The early Friends sometimes spoke of 
 the " breaking forth of the gospel day " through the 
 revelation made to them as of an event almost equal 
 in importance to its original promulgation sixteen 
 hundred years before. In these days we could not 
 with any kind of honesty or justice claim a position 
 so enormously in advance of our neighbours. On 
 all hands we see evidences of fidelity and fruitful- 
 ness, and the shining of examples which we rejoice 
 to admire, and desire to emulate. 
 
 There is thus, I think, a certain perplexity as 
 to our relative position in the Christian Church 
 which is a cause of some weakness amongst 
 Friends. It is in some respects easier to maintain 
 an aggressive attitude than one of mere quiet sepa- 
 rateness ; and it would be no wonder if some, 
 especially of our younger members, in these days 
 of free interchange of sympathy, should begin to' 
 falter a little as to the importance of our separate 
 position. It is, indeed, one which will not be main- 
 tained except as the result of deep and searching 
 spiritual discipline. The testimony against de-' 
 pendence on what is outward cannot be borne to 
 any purpose at second hand. We must ourselves 
 be weaned from all hankering after what is outward 
 and tangible before we can appreciate the value 
 
OUR CALLING. 161 
 
 of a testimony to the sufficiency of the purely 
 spiritual ; and that weaning is not an easy process, 
 nor one that can be transmitted from generation 
 to generation. Unless our younger Friends be 
 taught in the same stern school as their forefathers, 
 they will assuredly not maintain the vantage-ground 
 won by the faithfulness of a former generation. 
 
 Some other causes have, I believe, tended to 
 confuse our relation to the outer world, and make 
 it important that Friends should look well to their 
 path, and consider whither it is tending ; whether 
 we are really guarding the position which it is 
 specially our business to defend, or allowing our- 
 selves to be drawn off into the pursuit of less 
 important matters. There are in the main stream 
 of the Society many currents and counter-currents, 
 and its recent history has been one of change and 
 reaction, 'so that it would be dangerous and pre- 
 sumptuous for a new-comer to attempt to foretell 
 its course ; but I may venture to point out some 
 of the tendencies which are and have been at work 
 amongst us, preparing the conditions under which 
 our future work must be done. 
 
 It is well known that the Society, which sprang 
 very rapidly into existence in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, began during the eighteenth 
 to diminish in numbers, and was for many years a 
 
 M 
 
162 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 steadily dwindling body. Closed meeting-houses 
 and empty benches are now to be found in all parts 
 of the country where, in former days, the difficulty 
 was to find room for all who came. Within the last 
 thirty or forty years our numbers have, however, 
 begun slowly to increase, although the increase is 
 so far from being equal to the rate of increase of 
 the population at large, that in proportion to other 
 denominations we may still be considered as in a 
 certain sense losing ground. The actual increase, 
 small as it is, is nevertheless a significant fact* 
 
 The great falling-ofif in numbers during the 
 eighteenth and part of the nineteenth centuries was 
 probably caused, in part at least, by the fact 
 that after the early days of growth and perse- 
 cution there followed a time of outward quietness, 
 in which the value attached to what one may 
 call Quaker tradition became excessive, and 
 resulted in too rigid a discipline. The actual 
 discipline of the Society was applied with a strict- 
 ness which surely was not altogether wise or 
 wholesome ; and the less tangible restraint of 
 public opinion within the borders of a small and 
 very exclusive sect was probably even more 
 oppressive in its rigidity and minuteness of super- 
 
 * The number of members was reported in 1862 as 13,844; in 
 1889 as 15,574. Before 1S62 no returns were made. 
 
OUR CALLING. 163 
 
 vision. Until within the last thirty years or there- 
 abouts, it was the almost invariable practice to 
 disown all members who married "out of the 
 Society ; " and this restriction must obviously have 
 done much not only to diminish the numbers, but 
 probably also to alienate the affections of successive 
 rising generations. So many of the young people 
 lost or resigned their membership for this and 
 other causes, that, had no change taken place, the 
 days of the Society must to all appearance have 
 been numbered. 
 
 But in the early part of this century, owing, in 
 a great measure to the influence of Joseph John 
 Gurney and his sister, Elizabeth Fry, a new wave 
 of religious and benevolent activity arose; and 
 about the same time, though with what degree 
 of connection with this impulse I do not know, a 
 considerable relaxation of discipline took place. 
 Not only was the practice with regard to marriages 
 out of the Society relaxed, but many minor mat- 
 ters, in which an irksome and, no doubt, often 
 hurtful rigidity had prevailed, began to be de- 
 liberately left to the judgment of individuals. In 
 1 86 1 a revision of the "Book of Discipline" took 
 place, which reflected and sanctioned the relaxa- 
 tion of supervision in regard to these matters. 
 In that year the latter part of the fourth query, 
 
164 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 relating to "plainness of speech, behaviour, and 
 apparel," was dropped, and other changes were 
 made in the queries then in use. The Yearly 
 Meeting, as has been already mentioned, no longer 
 requires that any of the queries should be answered, 
 except those which regard the regularity with which 
 meetings are held and attended. These changes 
 have meant in practice that the maintenance of all 
 our special "testimonies" is now (like that against 
 tithes) " left to the individual conscience," and not 
 inquired into by the meetings for discipline ; and 
 the immediate result has, of course, been a great 
 outward and visible alteration — a rapid disappear- 
 ance of distinguishing peculiarities, and no doubt 
 an immense relief to the younger members. 
 
 A more direct result of the " evangelical " 
 influence of the Gurneys, and others like-minded, 
 was the setting-in of a current of activity in all 
 sorts of benevolent, philanthropic, and missionary 
 directions. The old dread of " creaturely activity," 
 — of moving in any kind of religious work without 
 an immediate prompting and even constraining 
 influence from above, — seems to have in some 
 degree given place to a fear of burying our talent. 
 The Christian duty of going forth to seek and to 
 save, of holding forth the word of life, and letting 
 our light shine before men, had been beautifully 
 
OUR CALLING. 165 
 
 exemplified by some eminent men and women in 
 the Society. Many of the younger Friends caught 
 the flame of their zeal, and from all quarters, in 
 these modern days, influences combine to make 
 that "sitting still," in which an earlier generation 
 of Friends had found their strength, appear almost 
 an impossibility. 
 
 With the new rising tide of fervent zeal and 
 benevolence came a great change in the prevailing 
 tone of religious feeling. The Bible, which, in 
 their dread lest the letter should usurp the place 
 of the spirit, had amongst Friends been almost 
 put under a bushel, was brought into new pro- 
 minence, and so-called " evangelical " views re- 
 specting the unique or exceptional nature of its 
 inspiration began to be entertained* Gradually 
 the idea of the necessity of teaching "sound 
 doctrine " assumed an importance which had 
 formerly been reserved for that of looking for 
 " right guidance ; " and in some quarters a visible 
 tendency has, of late years, been manifest towards 
 more definition of doctrines and popularizing of 
 methods than would have been tolerated half a 
 century ago. * 
 
 * Many other causes have, no doubt, been at work in bringing 
 about the changes referred to in the text. I am, indeed, not qualified 
 to attempt anything like an adequate account, on however slight 
 a scale, of the recent history of the Society, and have desired in 
 
166 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 Although these modern tendencies have un- 
 doubtedly been accompanied by, and have prob- 
 ably in some degree led to, an increase in our 
 numbers, a strong protest has from time to time 
 been raised against them by those who feel that 
 Quakerism had its root and its strength in a deep 
 inward and spiritual experience which frees from 
 all dependence upon outward things. In America 
 the protest against (or, as those who protest would 
 no doubt rather say, the introduction of) this 
 modern phase of comparatively superficial religious 
 activity has caused grievous schisms and troubles. 
 About the year 1826, a large party, under the 
 leadership of one Elias Hicks, in that country 
 broke off altogether from the main body of Friends, 
 and is suspected by the " orthodox " of having, 
 under professed obedience to the inner light, be- 
 come practically a Unitarian or rationalist body. 
 In England, however, the two main currents have 
 flowed side by side, and have not resulted in any 
 considerable division of the stream. 
 
 Both parties claim to be taking their stand 
 upon the original principles of the early Friends. 
 Those who uphold above all things the doctrine 
 of the inner light, and the primary necessity of 
 
 this passage only to indicate the general direction of the principal 
 division of parties amongst us. 
 
OUR CALLING. 167 
 
 immediate inspiration and guidance to the bring- 
 ing forth of any good word or work, and especially 
 to the performance of any acceptable worship, 
 have abundant evidence to produce, in the writings 
 of Fox, Barclay, Penn, Penington, and other fathers 
 of the Society, that this was the foundation and 
 the constant burden of all their teaching. Those, 
 on the other hand, who are throwing themselves 
 heart and soul into missionary and " evangelistic " 
 efforts, say truly enough that the early Friends 
 did not so "wait for guidance" as to be content 
 to sit still and make no effort to lighten the 
 darkness around them, and that it was the inter- 
 mediate or " mediaeval," not the " primitive " teach- 
 ing of the Society which exalted the individual 
 consciousness into the supreme authority, thus 
 developing, in fact, a claim to something approach- 
 ing personal infallibility. 
 
 There are, of course, dangers in either extreme — 
 in the over-valuation of visible and tangible ac- 
 tivity, and in the undue intensity of introspective 
 quietism. Too much " inwardness " seems to 
 develop an extraordinary bitterness and spirit of 
 judgment, under the shadow of which no fresh 
 growth would be possible. It is obviously danger- 
 ous to sanity. Too much " outwardness " dilutes 
 and destroys the very essence of our testimony, 
 
168 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 encourages a worthless growth of human depend- 
 ence,, and can hardly fail to be dangerous to sin- 
 cerity. But yet the divergence is, I believe, a case 
 rather of diversity of gifts and functions than of 
 contradiction in principle. Both functions are 
 surely needed. Where a living fountain is really 
 springing up within, it must needs tend to over- 
 flow. The leaves and blossoms are as essential to 
 the health and. fruitfulness of a tree as its root. 
 The secret, as I believe, of the strength of our 
 Society, its peculiar qualification for service in 
 these days, lies in its strong grasp of the oneness of 
 the inward and the outward, as well as in the deep 
 and pure spirituality of its aim in regard to both. 
 
 There is, I believe and am sure, a special and 
 urgent need in these days for that witness to the 
 light — light both within and without — which was 
 the special office of early Quakerism. I am not 
 equally sure that Quakerism, as it is, is the vehicle 
 best adapted to convey that testimony to the pre- 
 sent generation. If it be not so, it is largely the 
 fault of our degeneracy as a body ; of the lapse 
 of our Society into a rigid formalism during the 
 eighteenth century, and into a shallow seeking for 
 popularity in the nineteenth. But, in spite of all 
 such right-hand and left-hand defections, it seems 
 to me that there is life enough yet in the old 
 
OUR CALLING. 169 
 
 tree for a fresh growth of fruit-bearing branches. 
 It seems to me that the framework of the Society 
 has vigour and elasticity enough yet to be used as 
 an invaluable instrument by a new generation of 
 fully convinced Friends, were our younger members 
 but fully willing and resolved to submit to the 
 necessary Divine discipline. It is no new wave 
 of " creaturely activity," no judicious adapting of 
 Quakerism to modern tastes, that will revive its 
 power in the midst of the present generation. It 
 is a fresh breaking forth of the old power, the 
 unchanging and unchangeable power of light and 
 truth itself, met and invited by a fresh sub- 
 mission of heart in each one of us, which can alone 
 invigorate what is languishing amongst us, and 
 make us more than ever a blessing to the nation. 
 
 Had this power ever wholly disappeared from 
 amongst us, there would be little use in dwelling 
 fondly upon its deserted tenement. It is because 
 a measure of the ancient spirit is still to be recog- 
 nized amongst our now widely scattered remnant 
 that I would fain stir it up, amongst our own 
 members especially, and if possible also amongst 
 others, by means of the experience actually ac- 
 quired by our Society of the power of an exclu- 
 sively spiritual religion. 
 
 It is, I hope, hardly necessary to repeat that it 
 
170 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 is not Quakerism, but Truth, that I desire to serve 
 and to promote ; the sect may no longer be what 
 is needed, and may be destined to extinction, for 
 aught I know. But that view of Truth which has 
 found in Quakerism its most emphatic assertion, — 
 that purely spiritual worship and that supremacy 
 of the light within which were set forth with 
 power by Fox and Barclay and Penington, — these 
 things are of perennial value and efficacy, and the 
 need for their fresh recognition seems to be in our 
 own day peculiarly urgent. 
 
 There can, indeed, be no rivalry between in- 
 ward and outward light. Light, we know, is 
 one, and there can be no contradiction between 
 its various manifestations, although there may, of 
 course, be any amount of contradiction between 
 the respective visions of different people. It seems, 
 indeed, as idle to look for an absolutely colourless 
 medium within as without, in our own hearts as in 
 the Bible or the Church ; and upon each one lies 
 the responsibility of accepting correction from all 
 quarters. Yet for each one of us there must be 
 a final authority ; and I do not see how that 
 authority can be found elsewhere than in the 
 inmost chamber of our own hearts, for it is by that 
 authority alone that we can be justified even in 
 choosing any external guide. It is, indeed, im- 
 
OUR CALLING. 171 
 
 possible for any one who recognizes the shining of 
 light within to doubt its supreme authority. 
 
 To speak of light shining in one's own heart as 
 something not conclusive for oneself would be 
 almost a contradiction in terms. But just because 
 it is within one's own heart, its range is strictly 
 limited. My inner light can be no rule (though in 
 a sense it may be as a lamp) for any one else, for 
 the very reason which forbids me to dispute it. 
 Each one surely owes an exclusive allegiance to 
 that ray of Divine light which shines straight into 
 his own inmost sanctuary. 
 
 It is, therefore, no disloyalty to the light within 
 to acknowledge the need of an outward standard 
 for purposes of united action or mutual judgment, 
 or to accept an outward test of the reality of our 
 possession of inward light. Those who have 
 learnt to recognize in the light within the radiance 
 of the Divine Word will acknowledge no lower 
 voice as the supreme authority without ; and will 
 accept no other test of its reality than that assigned 
 by Christ Himself — righteousness of life. 
 
 Friends have always without hesitation accepted 
 the Bible as the one common standard by which 
 their practice and their teaching should be tried,* 
 
 * Robert Barclay, who was for generation after generation re- 
 garded as the main pillar of theoretic Quakerism, plainly declares 
 
172 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 and have acknowledged from the first that no claim 
 to Divine inspiration could be justified except by 
 the actual possession of the righteousness taught by 
 Christ Himself in word and in deed — a righteous- 
 ness " exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees." 
 And here we come upon the fact, not always 
 sufficiently remembered, that the indispensable 
 words " inward " and " outward " need care in the 
 handling. It is of great importance to my whole 
 subject that the different senses in which they may 
 
 the Scriptures to be "a secondary rule "—subordinate, that is, to 
 the teaching of the Spirit by which they were given forth. He 
 anticipates many now familiar reflections about the inherent un- 
 certainties of interpretation and application, which preclude the 
 possibility of our finding in any written words a sufficient guide in 
 the infinite variety of individual circumstances ; and also recognizes 
 fully the many sources of error appertaining to writings so ancient, 
 and derived through so many differing versions and translations. 
 He declares, however,, that "because they are commonly acknow- 
 ledged by all to have been written by the dictates of the Holy 
 Spirit, and that the errors which may be supposed by the injury of 
 Times to have slipt in are not such but that there is a sufficient 
 clear Testimony left to all the essentials of the Christian faith, we 
 do look upon them as the only fit outward judge of controversies 
 amongst Christians," and adds that "we are very willing that all 
 our doctrines and practices shall be tried by them ; " and that "we 
 shall also be very willing to admit, as a positive certain maxim, 
 That whatsoever any do, pretending to the Spirit* which is contrary 
 to the Scriptures ; be accounted and reckoned a Delusion of the Devil. 
 For as we never lay claim to the Spirit's leadings that we may 
 cover ourselves in anything that is evil ; so we know, that as every 
 evil contradicts the Scriptures, so it doth also the Spirit in the first 
 place, from which the Scriptures came" (Barclay's "Apology," 
 p. 86 : London, 1736). 
 
OUR CALLING. 173 
 
 be applied should be kept in mind. I have already* 
 pointed out that the mystical meaning of " within " 
 or " inwardness " is not the only one upon which 
 we insist. 
 
 This well-known Quaker watchword must always 
 be understood as asserting not only that light is to 
 be found by retiring into the inmost chamber of 
 one's own heart, but also that it is intrinsic, essen- 
 tial, original; that, coming from within, it must, 
 if real, illuminate the whole being. Righteousness, 
 the fruit and result of obedience to light, is in this 
 sense both inward and outward ; it is external, 
 but not extraneous ; outward in the sense of being 
 visible, tangible, open to the light of day — a thing 
 which, however it may be defined or accounted 
 for, is universally recognizable, and is acknowledged 
 by all as justifying the teaching which produces 
 it ; it is not outward in the sense of coming from 
 without, or of being in any degree arbitrary, or 
 accidental, or dependent upon the judgment of our 
 fellow-creatures ; it is a natural, not an artificial, 
 test and result of the inward state. Neither is it 
 outward in the sense of appertaining only to 
 what is visible. It does, indeed, impress its stamp 
 even upon the very frame, and of course it consists 
 largely in a visible and real dominion of the mind 
 * " The Inner Light," pp. 23-26. 
 
174 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 over the body ; but it is, in its origin and essence, 
 of the spirit, not of the flesh. 
 
 It was the constant and vigorous seeking for and 
 application of this test of righteousness which dis- 
 tinguished the early Friends from mere mystics. 
 Those " Friends of the Light " were not content to 
 brood over a light shut in to their own hearts. 
 They let it shine freely before men, boldly pro- 
 claiming its universality, and calling all men to 
 walk in it. They stoutly claimed that it was the 
 light of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the very Sun of 
 Righteousness, and that the light, spirit, and grace 
 of Christ in their own hearts was one with the 
 spirit in which the Scriptures were given forth. 
 Above all, they insisted that the light was the 
 Spirit of Truth, and must lead into all truth ; not 
 into omniscience or infallibility, but into truth in 
 the inmost parts — truth in word, in thought, and 
 in deed. Thus they recognized the great truth 
 that the light within and the light without are alike 
 aspects of the Eternal Word of God — that Word 
 which, abiding in us, is our Eternal Life. 
 
 Light within — not the vision of the mystic alone, 
 but cleanness of heart, uprightness, sincerity, 
 singleness of mind — of this light they affirmed that 
 every living soul had some germ, which, as it was 
 attended to, would lead out of the evil it con- 
 
OUR CALLING. 175 
 
 demned. And the glory of their teaching was that 
 it summoned each human spirit to work out its 
 own salvation — in fear and in trembling truly, and 
 in the strength of God working with and in it, 
 but without dependence on any human being, or 
 on anything perishable, or disputable, or accidental ; 
 to repent, and to bring forth fruits meet for repent- 
 ance ; to walk soberly, as children of the day. 
 
 This is what I mean by the pure spirituality of 
 the aim of Friends both as to the inward and the 
 outward. The inner light they desire to walk in is 
 not an intellectual but a purifying light ; it consists 
 not in rapture, ecstasy, sensation, but in clear in- 
 sight into the deepest kind of truth ; it leads not 
 to knowledge, but to holiness, — which is, indeed, 
 knowledge of the truth. It shines in quietness ; 
 and in order to cherish it we must lay aside our 
 preoccupation with the vivid and clamorous and 
 transitory things that are without, dwelling in still- 
 ness upon what is eternal, that all things may be 
 revealed in their true proportions. It courts and 
 acknowledges an outward test ; but that test con- 
 sists in the quality of its own outward results, as 
 commending themselves to every man's conscience, 
 and reveals itself not in a conformity to other 
 people's teaching, but in a transforming power. 
 The outward stamp we value is not a stamp or sign 
 
176 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 applied or administered from without and by 
 material means, but the outward and visible radi- 
 ance of the flame kindled within. The supremacy 
 of the inner light as recognized by us is the 
 supremacy of the fountain over the stream, and 
 the cleanness and cleansing power of the stream is 
 the proof of the purity of the fountain. It is in 
 fixing attention upon moral and spiritual results, 
 rather than upon precision of doctrine or correct- 
 ness of ceremonial observance, that Friends have, 
 I believe, hit the right nail on the head. In our 
 own day, as in George Fox's day, this direct appeal 
 to conscience is surely the one unfailing means by 
 which men and women can be " turned to the 
 light," brought to recognize Him who is the 
 Light, and taught to find in Him their everlasting 
 rest — the rest which is the beginning of power 
 and of victory. 
 
 If we be right in our belief that the salvation of 
 Jesus Christ is a purely spiritual influence, a flame 
 which finds in every human heart some prepared 
 fuel, and which is to be, spread from heart to heart 
 as fire is kindled from torch to torch ; which is to 
 be maintained not by rites and ceremonies, and 
 " the apostolical succession" of outward ordination, 
 but by that turning from dead works to serve the 
 living God which is in the power of every living 
 
OUR CALLING. 177 
 
 soul, and which no one can perform for another ; — 
 if this view be true, then Friends have yet a great 
 work to do in promulgating it, and a great respon- 
 sibility in having received it as an inheritance. 
 
 For this is not yet the commonly accepted view. 
 The Christianity which has spread and flourished 
 is still deeply saturated with reliance upon outward 
 rites and outward ordinances, and deeply entangled 
 with rigid formularies. It is largely composed of 
 creeds and doctrines, which, whether theoretically 
 true or false, are yet capable of being held in 
 unrighteousness, and incapable, therefore, of truly 
 redeeming the souls who trust in them. 
 
 Most Christians say or assume that these things 
 are vitally helpful to them. I dare not presume to 
 say that they are wrong, though I own that I think 
 the assumption too conventional to be conclusive. 
 But of one thing I am quite sure. There is a 
 great and increasing multitude amongst us who 
 cannot accept outward rites or clerical teaching. 
 We see by the experience of Roman Catholic 
 countries how inevitably the spread of priestly 
 influence amongst devout women is accompanied 
 by the utter alienation of thinking men from 
 religion itself. I fear that a tendency of the same 
 kind is visible in England now\ What is the 
 proportion of men to women to be seen in the 
 
 N 
 
178 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 congregations of London churches? Is it not 
 obvious even to our outward senses that there 
 is something in modern Christianity which the 
 masculine mind rejects ? We have, indeed, abun- 
 dant proof in the literature of our day that this 
 is the case. Are we driven to conclude that it is 
 the essence of the religion of Jesus Christ which 
 is rejected by masculine thought ; or does the 
 stumbling-block lie in human additions to the 
 teaching of Christ Himself? 
 
 I cannot doubt, and I believe few of the worthiest 
 representatives of masculine thought would deny, 
 that His own teaching, as we have it in the 
 Gospels, is eternal truth ; as secure against every 
 storm of doubt and revolt as the sun in heaven is 
 secure against the whirlwind. The Christianity of 
 Jesus Christ Himself is the Christianity upon which 
 Friends alone, or almost alone, have boldly taken 
 their stand as all-sufficient. In preaching this 
 essential Christianity we can appeal with bold- 
 ness to the witness in every human heart ; and I 
 venture to say that it is not a religion for women 
 and children only, but one which appeals to and 
 fortifies the best instincts of manly independence.* 
 
 * It may be worth while to mention in this connection that there 
 is not, so far as I have observed, any habitual preponderance of 
 women in Friends' meetings. This impression is confirmed by 
 
OUR CALLING. 179 
 
 Let it not be supposed that I attribute the whole 
 of the modern revolt from religion to the engraft- 
 ing of ecclesiastical " developments " upon the 
 simplicity which is in Christ. I know, of course, 
 that many other forces tend to alienate men (and 
 women too) from God, and that there is much in 
 the progress of scientific discovery which it is 
 difficult to reconcile quickly with even the very 
 
 the fact that the number of habitual "attenders" (non-members) 
 at our meetings is given (in the tabular statement prepared for the 
 Yearly Meeting of 1889) as follows : — 
 
 Males 2,962 
 
 Females 3,086 
 
 6,048 
 
 For a list of meetings for worship now held in London, see 
 Appendix, Note D. 
 
 The rapid growth of Friends' First Day Adult Schools is another 
 significant fact, as showing the openness to the teaching and in- 
 fluence of Friends amongst working men, and at the same time 
 the energetic way in which that influence is being used. This 
 movement began, at the suggestion of the late Joseph Sturge, in 
 Birmingham in 1845 '■> an d ^ appears, from the annual report of the 
 Friends' First Day School Association, that the number of adult 
 scholars was in March, 1889, as follows : — 
 
 Men 17,591 
 
 Women 5,535 
 
 23,126 
 
 The Society of Friends, it should be remembered, numbers 
 (including children) only 15,574 members, yet the teaching in these 
 schools is entirely undertaken by Friends personally, and is, I 
 believe, done altogether without paid help, though valuable assist- 
 ance is in many cases given by former scholars. 
 
180 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 essence of religion. It is because the ship of faith 
 is in danger that I long to see it lightened of un- 
 necessary burdens. It is because men are ready 
 enough to cast from them all thought of the things 
 which belong to their peace, and to abandon in 
 despair the hope which alone can purify their 
 lives, that I long to see that hope disentangled 
 from whatever is worn out and cumbersome and 
 unreasonable. 
 
 Quakerism in its origin was a bold and successful 
 struggle to do this. The glory of early Quakerism 
 was in its integrity, in its uncompromising, un- 
 flinching requirement that the life should bear 
 witness to the truth, and its resolute stand against 
 any other requirement. The " inner light " was 
 not only a word of the deepest poetical and mys- 
 tical significance ; it was a doctrine of sternest 
 righteousness, and at the same time an assertion 
 of resolute independence. Those who were con- 
 scious of the shining of Divine light into their 
 own hearts needed no priestly absolution or inter- 
 position. They were willing to stand or fall by 
 their innocence in the sight of all men. Their very 
 gaolers often trusted them to convey themselves to 
 their distant prisons if they had but promised. It 
 was well known in those early days that a Friend's 
 word was as good as his bond ; and to this very 
 
OUR CALLING. 181 
 
 day a reputation for special truthfulness and sobriety- 
 clings to them, and not, I believe, without reason. 
 
 I am anxious to insist upon the resolution to 
 maintain a high moral standard amongst us, not 
 only because of the supreme intrinsic importance 
 of righteousness ; not only because I believe that 
 as religion is cleared of outward and ceremonial 
 and perishable elements this indestructible growth 
 of holiness has more room to expand ; but also 
 because it cannot be denied, and should, indeed, 
 never be forgotten, that there is very real ground 
 for the suspicion, or, at any rate, the jealous 
 scrutiny, with which any peculiarly exalted spiritual 
 aspirations are apt to be regarded. 
 
 There is a well-known and very awful connection 
 between religious emotion and emotions arising 
 from sources less pure. There is an ever-present 
 danger lest in any endeavour to stimulate the one 
 we should rouse the other, and a still worse danger 
 lest the lower should assume the garb and appear- 
 ance of the higher. The history of religious re- 
 vivals affords abundant warning of the dangers 
 inseparable from all sudden outbursts of feeling, 
 even where much of it is deep and true and 
 lasting. 
 
 No doubt the founders of the Society of Friends 
 had their share of such instructive and at times 
 
182 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 mortifying experience.* They were brave men, 
 and knew the reality of their own deep experience, 
 and were not easily discouraged by a few extra- 
 vagances (they appear, indeed, to have been remark- 
 ably few) amongst their followers. But there is 
 reason to think that they were strongly impressed 
 with the importance of specially guarding the 
 sobriety becoming the children of the day, at a 
 time when their own preaching was working in 
 men's minds like new wine. Besides the one great 
 and invariable safeguard of their constant preach- 
 ing of righteousness, and appeal to the light with- 
 out as the test of the reality of the light within, 
 there were two special precautions which they con- 
 sciously or unconsciously took against the danger 
 of spiritual, or quasi-spiritual, excitement. 
 
 One of these was the full recognition that the 
 action of the Spirit of God upon the heart con- 
 sisted not only in impulse but in restraint, and 
 that for its right interpretation the part of the 
 creature was to be quiet. " Stand still in the light " 
 is one of the familiar burdens of George Fox's advice. 
 Friends were, and are still, as carefully taught to 
 submit to the restraints as to yield to the impulses 
 of "best wisdom." To "dwell deep," to "pause 
 upon it," not to proceed unless " way opens," nor on 
 
 * The history of James Naylor is the best-known case in point. 
 
OUR CALLING. 183 
 
 any account to disregard a " stop in one's mind," — 
 these and many such familiar Quaker admonitions 
 show by how much " holy fear " their zeal has 
 habitually been tempered. 
 
 "Quietism" is, indeed, the natural accompaniment 
 of " mysticism " (of mysticism, that is, in the sense 
 of belief in the inner light). That a vivid sense of 
 the presence of the Creator should bring stillness 
 to the creature is inevitable. And only under the 
 restraining and controlling power of the deep awe 
 thus inspired can it be safe or wholesome for the 
 human spirit to stand in the immediate presence of 
 its own Divine Source. There was surely a deep 
 truth in the old Hebrew feeling, " Shall man see 
 God and live?" Religious emotion need not be 
 unreal to be unwholesome. The deeper the chord 
 stirred, the more awful the danger arising from any 
 jarring or deviation from the due and steady 
 amount of tension. 
 
 Another precaution against the danger of yield- 
 ing to excitement, or to immature or unguarded 
 impulse, is provided in our whole system of " Church 
 government" and oversight, and especially in the 
 importance attached to ascertaining " Friends' 
 unity " with any proposed religious service before 
 proceeding in it. This is a curious and beautifully 
 adapted sheath provided for the buddings of a 
 
184 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 ministry which is free in the sense of being entirely 
 spontaneous, prompted only by an impulse believed 
 to be from above. It is by no means an unknown 
 thing, perhaps not even an uncommon thing (but 
 of this I speak from but scanty opportunities of 
 observation), for Friends in their business meetings 
 to discourage " concerns " which do not appear to 
 them to be justified by reasons sufficiently weighty, 
 or which in some other way fail to commend them- 
 selves to the judgment of the meeting. 
 
 Not only directly, but also by the indirect effect 
 of the value thus collectively and traditionally 
 assigned to care and caution in handling spiritual 
 things, do these recognized practices tend to in- 
 culcate sobriety and patience. And above all it 
 is a deeply ingrained feeling in the Quaker mind 
 that every vessel to be used for sacred purposes 
 must before all things be clean. Every one coming 
 forward as a minister of the gospel especially must 
 approve himself, or herself, in the full light of day 
 as not only preaching, but living, according to the 
 Spirit of Truth. 
 
 And these "ministers," be it remembered, are 
 not people leading a sheltered and separate life ; 
 but men and women engaged in the ordinary 
 business of life, following trades and professions, 
 and sharing in all the daily experiences of those 
 
OUR CALLING. 185 
 
 to whom they minister. Is there not something 
 peculiarly adapted to the needs of our day in the 
 combination of matter-of-fact, wholesome, sober 
 independence with the thorough-going and un- 
 reserved spirituality and purity of our acknow- 
 ledged aim — that, namely, of living under the 
 Immediate guidance of the Spirit of Truth ? 
 
 It is here that I see in the ideal of Quakerism 
 the one perennially right and fruitful ideal of 
 Christian life — obedience to truth in the fullest 
 and highest sense ; the living truth — not truth in 
 the sense of accurate or orthodox belief about 
 Christ, but of an actual partaking of His Spirit, 
 who Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; 
 a learning through obedience to know His voice, 
 and a continual witness-bearing to others of the 
 reality and the power of His living presence and 
 teaching. We can bear this witness in one, and 
 only in one, way ; our lives must be penetrated by 
 the light — the light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world — penetrated and kindled 
 and purified, till they too shine both inwardly and 
 outwardly. The life is the light of men. 
 
 In our days faith is challenged at every point 
 and at every turn, with a freedom and a violence 
 which was unknown fifty years ago. All that can 
 be shaken is being shaken, to its very foundations. 
 
1 86 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 My own firm belief is that, though full of danger, 
 this is on the whole a natural, a necessary, and, in 
 the main, a beneficial process. Throw a large 
 load of fuel on a clear fire, and for a time it may 
 seem doubtful whether it is not extinguished ; but 
 if the flame be strong enough, it will rise again 
 through the smoke and dust, and burn the stronger 
 for what it has mastered. And so assuredly will 
 faith in whatever is truly eternal rise above all 
 present confusions and darkenings of counsel, and 
 burn with fresh power in those hearts which have 
 steadfastly cleaved to truth, be its requirements 
 what they may. 
 
 The Society of Friends has always refused to 
 require adhesion to any formularies as an express 
 or even implied condition of membership ; and 
 surely it has done wisely.* It has frankly and 
 steadily accepted the Bible as the one common 
 standard and storehouse of written doctrine, but it 
 has always had the courage to trust unreservedly 
 
 * When any person applies for membership, the Monthly Meet- 
 ing appoints one or more Friends to visit the applicant, and to 
 report to the meeting the result of the interview, before a reply is 
 given. The precise conditions to be fulfilled in such cases are 
 nowhere laid down, but the object is understood, in a general way, 
 to be to ascertain that the applicant is fully "convinced of Friends' 
 principles." The test is thus a purely personal and individual one, 
 and partakes of the elasticity which characterizes all our arrange- 
 ments, and which is felt to favour the fullest dependence upon 
 Divine guidance. 
 
OUR CALLING, 187 
 
 to the immediate teaching of " the Spirit which 
 gave forth the Scriptures " for their interpretation, 
 and for the leading of each one " into all truth ; " 
 it has hitherto been true to its belief in the living 
 Guide. And this, I am convinced, is the only 
 belief which will meet the needs of the free thought 
 of our day. 
 
 If thought is to be truly free, in the sense of 
 fearless and unbiased, it must not only be open 
 to the whole range of experience, but it must be 
 subject to the correction of central and unchanging 
 principles ; freedom requires stability as well as 
 openness. I believe that those of us who have 
 learned to submit to correction both from without 
 and from within, who dare to face at once every 
 real fact, and every necessary process of mental 
 discipline, within their reach, have a most weighty 
 office to fill amidst the troubled thoughts and lives 
 of our day. For while human nature is what it is, 
 it must recognize, however dimly, that it needs 
 not only to be fed with knowledge, but to be 
 strengthened with might in the inner man. 
 
 People want, and must have if they are to be 
 spiritually helped at all, two things mainly at this 
 moment, as I believe. They want a higher, purer, 
 worthier form of faith and worship than they have 
 been accustomed to find provided for them ; and 
 
188 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 they want stronger proof of the reality of the 
 objects of faith than is commonly offered. 
 
 By a higher, purer, worthier form of faith and 
 worship, I do not mean improved formularies or 
 liturgies ; I mean rather that openness to improve- 
 ment which is precluded by fixed forms, and 
 which the very beauty and dignity of the Anglican 
 Liturgy tends to impede. They want, I believe, a 
 manner of worship which shall be simpler, more 
 living and actual — truly higher and purer because 
 less intellectually ambitious, and more freshly in- 
 spired by human needs and Divine help ; and a 
 manner of speaking about Divine things less con- 
 ventional, less technical and artificial, arising more 
 visibly from actual experience, and based more 
 solidly upon common ground. They want not 
 authorized teachers, but competent witnesses ; not 
 to listen to sermons and religious " services," how- 
 ever admirable, which are delivered in fulfilment 
 of a professional engagement, within prescribed 
 bounds of orthodoxy, at stated times and in 
 regular amount ; but to come into personal con- 
 tact with those who have seen, felt, encountered, 
 the things of which they speak ; and who speak 
 not because they are officially appointed to speak, 
 but out of the fulness of the heart because they 
 must — people who dare be silent when they have 
 
OUR CALLING. 189 
 
 nothing to say, and who are not afraid to acknow- 
 ledge their ignorance, their doubts, or their per- 
 plexities. We are becoming critical and impatient 
 of conventionalities, not only, as I believe, because 
 education is spreading, but also because we are 
 hungry for reality, because we are brought face to 
 face (by the astonishing circulation of everything) 
 with all manner of problems which are awful 
 enough for us all, and doubly awful for those 
 whose foundation is in any way insecure. In the 
 presence — and in these days every corner of the 
 land, not to say of the world, is in a sense present 
 to our mental vision — in the presence of every 
 variety of human (and animal) misery, of vice and 
 crime and violence, and inherited degradation and 
 disease, of changes and dangers and crumblings 
 away of every refuge, who can wonder if men and 
 women refuse to be satisfied with shallow or con- 
 ventional explanations of the fearful problems 
 confronting them and challenging their faith? 
 The glibness, the exasperating completeness, the 
 unconscious blasphemy, of many " orthodox " vin- 
 dications of Providence, are enough to disgust 
 people with mere orthodoxy. 
 
 We Christians have been roughly awakened by 
 the storm, and are beginning to recognize that we 
 needed such a correcting and sifting of our thought 
 
igo QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 and language as modern attacks are abundantly sup- 
 plying. At such a moment it is surely an unspeak- 
 able privilege for any religious body to be entirely 
 unshackled by creeds and formularies ; to have 
 nothing in its traditions or practices to hinder it 
 from profiting by this process of correction, or 
 from uttering its perennial and unalterable testi- 
 mony in the freshest and most flexible and modern 
 language it can command. And perhaps it is a 
 still greater privilege, in the midst of this Babel, to 
 have learnt the thrice-blessed power of silence ; to 
 have secured both in private and in public the 
 opportunity and the practice of dwelling silently 
 upon that which is unspeakable and unchangeable ; 
 of witnessing to the light in that stillness which most 
 clearly reflects the Divine glory, in which the accu- 
 sations of the enemy are most effectually quenched. 
 And not only do people in these days want 
 purer expressions of faith ; they need also stronger 
 proofs of the reality of its objects. I do not, of 
 course, mean new proofs ; I do not mean that 
 really new evidence can ever be forthcoming in 
 favour of eternal truth, though fresh aspects and 
 illustrations and revelations of it are indeed crowd- 
 ing upon us day by day. I mean rather that the 
 battle which was formerly fought by single 
 champions here and there has now broken forth 
 
OUR CALLING. 191 
 
 along the whole line ; that in these days, whether 
 we will or no, we are all in the thick of the fight ; 
 that no one can help hearing the deepest of all 
 truths called in question at every turn ; and that 
 we need weapons, if not of tougher quality, yet 
 of readier use and more thoroughly proved, more 
 honestly our own, than those which may have 
 sufficed in former times. We need, I believe, 
 moral and spiritual rather than merely intellectual 
 proof of the reality of that which alone can satisfy 
 the human spirit in its deepest needs. Let creeds, 
 like all other beliefs, be sifted, and tested, and 
 corrected, and proved or disproved, and in every 
 way dealt with as truth may require. Those whose 
 one object is truth can have nothing to dread from 
 any serious and legitimate handling of any ques- 
 tion whatever. But, when all is said and thought, 
 it remains for ever true that man cannot by search- 
 ing find out God ; while yet without Him what 
 good shall our lives do us ? It is not by supplying 
 people with the wisest and truest replies to their 
 difficulties that they can be effectually armed against 
 them. Second-hand belief is poor comfort in days 
 when authority of all kinds is so freely discredited. 
 And at all times and under all circumstances some- 
 thing more than theory is required for victory. 
 For what, after all, is this " faith," which above 
 
192 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 all things we who have even a grain of it must 
 desire to hold forth to others? "This is the 
 victory which overcometh the world, even our 
 faith." It is a power, not a mere belief; and power 
 can be shown only in action, only in overcoming 
 resistance. Power that shall lift us one by one 
 above temptations, above cares, above selfishness ; 
 power that shall make all things new, and subdue 
 all things unto itself; power by which loss is 
 transmuted into gain, tribulation into rejoicing, 
 death itself into the gate of everlasting life ; — is not 
 this the true meaning of faith ? 
 
 I see no possible means of spreading such faith as 
 this but to exercise it ; in our own persons, as the 
 way is prepared for us, to work righteousness, to 
 obtain promises, out of weakness to be made strong, 
 to wax valiant in fight — yes, and to receive our dead 
 raised to life again. These are the proofs which will 
 convince the world "of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 judgment ; " these, not reasonings, are the proofs 
 of a Divine Fountain of life and power to which 
 Friends have been taught to attach weight. For- 
 mularies, even the most perfect in their day, and 
 the most venerable in their origin, will wear out. 
 The meaning of language shifts, and the changing 
 lights of knowledge distort whatever forms do not 
 change with them ; but the power of an endless 
 
OUR CALLING. 193 
 
 life will never lose its hold on human hearts ; and 
 the need for help from the cloud of witnesses 
 compassing us about was never sorer than in our 
 own days. 
 
 Around us from all sides comes the cry, spoken 
 or unspoken, " Give us of your oil." But we who 
 are not unsupplied are being sternly taught to 
 reply, " Not so ; but go ye to them that sell, and 
 buy for yourselves." 
 
 " To them that sell." The " water of life " is for 
 all that are athirst ; the " wine and milk " are with- 
 out money and without price. But the oil, the 
 supply of light for other lives, this must truly be 
 bought with a price. Not at second-hand, not by 
 sitting at our ease and absorbing the thoughts of 
 others, can we become as lamps to show forth the 
 path of life. Our own hearts must first be baptized 
 with fire, and our knowledge bought at the cost of 
 suffering. It is such dearly-bought knowledge 
 alone which can enable any one to raise a standard 
 round which others will rally in fighting the good 
 fight of faith. 
 
 The special struggle of our day is a struggle for 
 truth. We who have been bold to call ourselves 
 children of light, shall we not boldly join hands 
 with all who are struggling towards the light? 
 Shall we not be willing and ready to lay aside 
 
 O 
 
194 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 every weight, — not only every hindering possession 
 or habit, but every vain endeavour to bind in the 
 truth of God by human formularies and definitions, 
 — and unreservedly trust to the living teaching of 
 the Spirit for ourselves and others, " looking for 
 God in holiness, that we may behold His power 
 and glory " ? 
 
 Holiness — that is, obedience — is surely the rock 
 upon which alone we can build any faith that will 
 endure. Standing firmly on that rock, and on that 
 only, we may hope to catch some glimpses of the 
 Divine mysteries. " Clouds and darkness are 
 round about Thee, but righteousness and truth are 
 the habitation of Thy throne." It ill becomes us 
 to attempt to explain all the dealings of God with 
 man, still more the mysteries of the Divine Being 
 and Nature ; and that which must for ever remain 
 a mystery to the most faithful of His children it is 
 idle indeed to undertake to explain to others. Yet 
 let us never flinch from bearing witness to that of 
 which through these awful clouds we have from 
 time to time been permitted to obtain some broken 
 vision. Let us never cease to do what in us lies 
 to persuade our fellows to lift their eyes also to 
 the heavens, and though the vision may tarry, to 
 wait for it in steadfast patience. They may call 
 us dreamers, and we may think them blind. When 
 
OUR CALLING. 195 
 
 we speak of the stars, they may say we are idly 
 romancing about a mere painted ceiling. But the 
 end is not yet. No roof of human workmanship will 
 endure for ever. Sooner or later all that is of earth 
 must perish and crumble away. Then is the time 
 for the children of light to " lift up their heads," 
 knowing that " their redemption draweth nigh." 
 
 For beyond all words and all proofs lies the true 
 anchorage of the spirit, to which every firmly 
 rooted life bears a witness neither needing nor 
 admitting of utterance. Deeper than all need of 
 mere conviction is the need of rest and stability. 
 We must be at rest before we can be free. In 
 quietness and in confidence is our strength. While 
 our hearts are tossed and agitated by every wave 
 of this troublesome world, while the shadows of 
 passing things have power to distract and confuse 
 our vision, we cannot clearly discern that truth 
 which alone can make us free. 
 
 Truly " there remaineth a rest for the people of 
 God ; " a satisfying, soul-restoring fulness of rest 
 of which some of us have begun to taste. Some 
 of us know assuredly that nothing perishable is the 
 habitation of our spirits. Some of us know what 
 it is to be willingly brought into an order flowing 
 perceptibly and perpetually from the one un- 
 changeable will of God, in which alone can our 
 
196 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 own will be harmonized and made steadfast. Some 
 of us are learning ever more and more fully to 
 accept the Father's will because it is the will of 
 the Father, entering more and more truly day by 
 day into the spirit of sonship. To experience in 
 our own hearts the harmonizing, purifying, in- 
 vigorating power of the Divine will is to be at rest 
 for ourselves and for others ; not to be set free 
 from suffering or to become indifferent to it, but to 
 be undisturbed by it — to know that underneath all 
 the agitations of the creatures are the everlasting 
 arms ; to receive strength to consent to whatever 
 is ordained by that blessed will, and to resist what- 
 ever is opposed to it. 
 
 In thus taking up the cross, we begin to see 
 something of its glory, to experience something of 
 its redeeming power. When we have ourselves 
 passed from death unto life, having been led 
 through " sundry kinds of death " into ever fuller 
 and more abundant life, then indeed we can bear 
 witness to the redeeming power of Christ ; then we 
 speak of what we do know, and our hands have 
 handled, of the Word of life ; then we are on our 
 own ground. 
 
 It has ever been our belief that the light of 
 Christ, the brightness of the Father's glory, is 
 (through obedience to light, even while in ignorance 
 
OUR CALLING. 197 
 
 of its Source) purifying the hearts of many who 
 name not His Name — who are not yet able to 
 recognize the blessed Face from which the light 
 shines. But the fulness of "the light which no 
 man can approach unto " is surely reserved for 
 those who stand before the throne of God and of 
 the Lamb, and with full purpose of heart bow 
 in adoration before Him that sitteth thereon. 
 
 We claim to be a people who have found rest 
 in God ; a people building our house upon the 
 rock, through obedience to those " words of eternal 
 life " given forth by Christ, the Word. We recog- 
 nize His Voice as speaking to us, not only in the 
 pages of Scripture, but also in the whole course 
 of life as ordered by Him ; and yet more closely 
 in the inmost chamber of our own hearts ; and we 
 desire to yield to it an undivided allegiance. 
 
 Our calling is, as branches of the living Vine, 
 to let the working of that Voice, Light, Spirit, and 
 Grace of Christ be shown forth in our own lives ; 
 and, as power may be given us, to bear witness of 
 it also in words; baptizing and being baptized into 
 the one Name in which alone is salvation. 
 
 If, therefore, we have so unassailable a stronghold, 
 so deep and immovable a foundation, let us never 
 cease to look up steadfastly into heaven, if so be 
 we may " see the heavens opened ; " that we may 
 
198 QUAKER STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 receive into our hearts, and reflect with ever- 
 increasing fulness in our lives the rays of the Sun 
 of Righteousness. The vision may indeed be inter- 
 cepted again and again by the driving clouds ; our 
 sight may fail or falter ; but the glory itself is 
 unchangeable, and it is in reflecting that glory 
 alone that any human face can be, to those that 
 stand by, " as the face of an angel " — of a Divinely 
 appointed messenger of glad tidings. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 The following are the twelve queries now read, "at 
 least once in the year," in all our meetings. The parts 
 of the second and tenth, to which alone answers are 
 required, are printed in italics. It should, however, be 
 observed that, "with regard to those queries to which 
 no answer is required, Monthly Meetings are encouraged 
 to report to their Quarterly Meetings, from time to time, 
 on such of the subjects comprised in them, as they may 
 think desirable. Quarterly Meetings are recommended 
 to transmit such reports, or a summary of them, to the 
 Yearly Meeting."* 
 
 Queries. 
 
 i. What is the religious state of your meeting? Are 
 you individually giving evidence of true conversion of 
 heart, and of loving devotedness to Christ ? 
 
 2. Are your meetings for worship regularly held ; and 
 how are they attended ? Are they occasions of religious 
 * " Book of Discipline," p. 229. 
 
200 APPENDIX. 
 
 solemnity and edification, in which, through Christ, our 
 ever-living High Priest and Intercessor, the Father is 
 worshipped in spirit and in truth ? 
 
 3. Do you "walk in love, as Christ also hath loved 
 us"? Do you cherish a forgiving spirit? Are you 
 careful of the reputation of others ; and do you avoid 
 and discourage tale-bearing and detraction ? 
 
 4. Are you individually frequent in reading, and 
 diligent in meditating upon, the Holy Scriptures ? And 
 are parents and heads of households in the practice of 
 reading them in their families in a devotional spirit, 
 encouraging any right utterance of prayer or praise ? 
 
 5. Are you in the practice of private retirement and 
 waiting upon the Lord; in everything by prayer and 
 supplication, with thanksgiving, making your requests 
 known unto Him ? And do you live in habitual depen- 
 dence upon the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit ? 
 
 6. Do you maintain a religious life and conversation 
 as becometh the gospel ? Are you watchful against 
 conformity to the world ; against the love of ease and 
 self-indulgence ; or being unduly absorbed by your 
 outward concerns to the hindrance of your religious 
 progress and your service for Christ? And do those 
 who have children or others under their care endeavour, 
 by example and precept, to train them up as self-denying 
 followers of the Lord Jesus ? 
 
 7. Do you maintain a faithful allegiance to the 
 authority of our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Head of 
 the Church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, from 
 whom alone must come the true call and qualification 
 for the ministry of the Word ? And are you faithful in 
 
APPENDIX. 201 
 
 your testimony to the freeness and spirituality of the 
 gospel dispensation ? 
 
 8. Are you faithful in maintaining our Christian testi- 
 mony against all war, as inconsistent with the precepts 
 and spirit of the gospel ? 
 
 9. Do you maintain strict integrity in all your trans- 
 actions in trade, and in your other outward concerns ; 
 and are you careful not to defraud the public revenue ? 
 
 10. Are your meetings for Church affairs regularly 
 held ; and how are they attended '? Are these meetings 
 vigilant in the discharge of their duties towards their 
 subordinate meetings, and in watching over the flock in 
 the love of Christ ? When delinquencies occur, are they 
 treated timely, impartially, and in a Christian spirit ? 
 And do you individually take your right share in the 
 attendance and service of these meetings ? 
 
 n. Do you, as a Church, exercise a loving and 
 watchful care over your younger members ; promoting 
 their instruction in fundamental Christian truth, and in 
 the scriptural grounds of our religious principles ; and 
 manifesting an earnest desire that, through the power of 
 Divine grace, they may all become established in the 
 faith and hope of the gospel ? 
 
 12. Do you fulfil your part as a Church, and as 
 individuals, in promoting the cause of truth and right- 
 eousness, and the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, at 
 home and abroad ? (1875.) 
 
202 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE B. 
 Home Mission Committee of the Yearly Meeting. 
 
 The desire felt by many Friends that the Society 
 should, in a more systematic manner than was formerly 
 thought necessary, recognize and provide for what is 
 called " evangelistic " and ''pastoral" work, led, in 
 1882, to the appointment of a Committee of the Yearly 
 Meeting on " Home Missions." This Committee 
 began its work by inviting the co-operation of the 
 Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, and in its first Annual 
 Report it mentions that ten of the Quarterly Meetings 
 had appointed Committees to correspond with it; in 
 the next year thirteen of the Quarterly Meetings were 
 thus in correspondence with the Home Mission Com- 
 mittee; and in 1887 the Report states that the Home 
 Mission Committee itself includes members of every 
 Quarterly Meeting except one. 
 
 In 1888, the number of Friends working in connection 
 with the Home Mission Committee was nineteen. The 
 Report of 1889 speaks of a considerable extension of the 
 work of the Committee, but does not give the number of 
 workers. 
 
 The donations and subscriptions received by the 
 Committee in the year ending May, 1889, amounted to 
 ^2333. 
 
 The work undertaken by " Home Mission Friends " is 
 of various kinds ; such as conducting first day schools, 
 Bible classes, temperance meetings, lecturing on Friends' 
 principles, in some neighbourhoods visiting the sick and 
 
APPENDIX. 203 
 
 the poor, and in various ways endeavouring to build up 
 and strengthen meetings which seem to be in need of 
 help. 
 
 Notwithstanding the large measure of support which 
 the Committee has met with, there are many Friends 
 who feel very serious hesitation about this practice of 
 providing " pastoral care," and who fear lest it should 
 tend to weaken, if not to destroy, the force of our 
 testimony against a paid or humanly appointed ministry. 
 The danger is obvious; and I shall not attempt to 
 estimate the degree in which it can be averted, or the 
 force of the reasons for encountering it. I will content 
 myself with making from the Reports of the Committee 
 a few extracts bearing upon this question. 
 
 " We have been forcibly impressed with the extent 
 and variety of openings for service which have presented 
 themselves to us. Much of this work is of a character 
 which can, we believe, be more effectually performed by 
 the Society of Friends than by any other religious 
 body. ... In two instances we have deemed it right to 
 give pecuniary assistance to Friends who felt it laid upon 
 them, as a religious duty, to give the whole or a greater 
 part of their time to the work. . . . These arrangements 
 involve no bargain or understanding whatsoever for the 
 preaching of the gospel, and their work has been largely 
 of an organizing character." (1883.) 
 
 " It is found that Friends in all parts of the country 
 are watchful lest a separate class of supported ministers 
 should be set up, and this is a matter which has from 
 the first received our very serious attention. It is our 
 practice, when a Friend has offered his services to this 
 
2o 4 APPENDIX. 
 
 Committee, not to enter upon the question of the amount 
 or manner of support to be granted him until after he 
 has been accepted by us. We have carefully avoided 
 the establishment of any scale of maintenance, each 
 case being separately considered on the basis of the 
 actual needs and circumstances of the Friend in ques- 
 tion ; and we have encouraged Friends, where practi- 
 cable, to contribute by their labour to their own 
 support." (1886.) 
 
 " We are glad to report an increase in the number 
 of those who require no pecuniary assistance beyond 
 necessary expenses when actually on religious service. 
 About half the workers are living on their private means, 
 or partially maintaining themselves by their labour. 
 About half of the number may also be considered as 
 stationed more or less in one place, and the remainder as 
 engaged in evangelistic visits to various towns as way 
 may open. Of the resident workers, several have tra- 
 velled with minutes from their Monthly Meetings, or 
 have rendered temporary assistance to particular meet- 
 ings by request of other Monthly Meetings than their 
 own. ... In the meetings where our workers are resi- 
 dent, the voices of many new members are frequently 
 heard in exhortation and prayer. In one of them a 
 visiting Friend desired a meeting with all those who 
 took vocal part in meetings. No fewer than thirteen 
 responded to his invitation, while three or four more 
 were prevented by other engagements. . . . We believe 
 our workers are, without exception, loyal to the testimony 
 of the Society against the establishment, directly or 
 indirectly, of a 'one-man ministry.' . . . Since the for- 
 
APPENDIX. 205 
 
 mation of this Committee there is hardly a Quarterly 
 Meeting in which they" (the Friends engaged in "evan- 
 gelistic " work) " have not travelled, in several of them 
 many times and for many weeks together. . . . Some of 
 these visits have originated in concerns of the Friends 
 themselves. In other cases the way has been made for 
 them by an invitation of a Quarterly, Monthly, or parti- 
 cular Meeting, or the Committee of some Friends' mis- 
 sion or adult school. In no case has this Committee 
 deemed it consistent to send any worker anywhere, or to 
 do more than lay such invitation before him, leaving it to 
 his own conviction of duty as to whether he can see his 
 way to accept it or not. " (1888.) 
 
 " With one exception, every Friend in connection with 
 us has been engaged during the year to a greater or less 
 extent in work outside the meeting in which he resides." 
 (1889.) 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 Slavery. 
 
 I n the introduction by J. G . Whittier to a recent^ 
 edition of John Woolman's "Journal, * there is a remark- 
 able account of the manner in which our Society in 
 America was gradually freed from all complicity with 
 slavery, long before the struggle for its abolition was 
 begun elsewhere ; from which I venture to make some 
 Extracts, for the sake of the illustration it affords of the 
 working both of our principles and of our machinery. 
 
 * Published by Robert Smeal, Glasgow, 1883. 
 
206 APPENDIX. 
 
 From the time of George F ox himself, who in 167 1 
 visited Barbadoes, and admonished those who held 
 slaves there to bear in mind that they were brethren, 
 and that "after certain years of servitude they should 
 make them free," voices had been raised again and again 
 in several of the American meetings to witness against 
 the buying and keeping of slaves. 
 
 In 1742, John Woolman, then in the employment of 
 a small storekeeper in New Jersey, was desired by his 
 master to make out a bill of sale of a negro slave-woman. 
 " On taking up his pen," says Whittier, " the young clerk 
 felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The 
 thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his 
 fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the 
 desecration of His image spoke in his soul. He yielded 
 to the will of his employer, but while writing the instru- 
 ment he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer 
 and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping incon- 
 sistent with the Christian religion." This circumstance 
 "was the starting-point of a lifelong testimony against 
 slavery. 
 
 "In the year 1746, he visited Maryland, Virginia, and 
 North Carolina. He was afflicted ByTfre' prevalence of 
 slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, ' as a 
 dark gloominess overhanging the land.' On his return, 
 he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published 
 in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to 
 the Southern meetings of Friends, Travelling as a 
 minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at 
 the tables of slave-holding planters, who were accustomed 
 to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not 
 
APPENDIX. 207 
 
 comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving 
 as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gains 
 of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth 
 more than money. He therefore placed the pay for his 
 entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, 
 for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, 
 as he had opportunity. . . . 
 
 "The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting 
 in j r ^8 at Philadelphia* must ever be regarded as 
 one of the most important religious convocations in 
 the history of the Christian Church. The labours of 
 Woolman and his few but earnest associates had not 
 been in vain. A deep and tender interest had been 
 awakened, and this meeting was looked forward to with 
 varied feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt 
 that the time had come for some definite action. . . . 
 At length," after a " solemn and weighty appeal " from 
 John Woolman, " the truth in a great measure triumphed 
 over opposition; and, without any public dissent, the 
 meeting agreed that the injunction of our Lord and 
 Saviour, to do to others as we would that others should 
 do to us, should induce Friends who held slaves ' to 
 set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for 
 them ; ' arid-four Eriends " (of whom John Woolman was 
 one) " were approved of as suitable persons tajrisit,and 
 treat with such as kept slaves, within the limits of the 
 
 * It must be remembered that the Society of Friends in America 
 consists of many Yearly Meetings, each of which is supreme and 
 independent within its own compass. Their number has considerably 
 increased since John Woolman's time ; and in the Western States 
 there is also a rapid increase in the number of members. 
 
2o8 APPENDIX. 
 
 "This painful and difficult duty was faithfully per- 
 formed. . . . These labours were attended with the 
 blessing of the God of the poor and oppressed. Deal ing 
 in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who 
 held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still 
 continuing the practice, a more emphatic testimony 
 against it was issued byHhe^Yearly Meeting in 1774 ; and 
 two years after, the subordinate meeti«gs--^ere directed 
 to deny the right of membership to such as persistjg4jLa~-** 
 holding their fellow-men as property. ... In the year 
 1760, John Woolman, in the course of a religious visit to 
 New England," attended their Yearly Meeting, where " the 
 London Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous 
 traffic in men, was read, and the substance of it embodied 
 in the discipline of the meeting ; and the following query 
 was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate meet- 
 ings : ' Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying 
 them when imported ; and do they use those well where 
 they are possessed by inheritance or otherwise, endeavour- 
 ing to train them up in principles of religion ? ' . . . 
 In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly 
 Meeting, the Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the 
 wrongfulness of holding slaves, and appointed a large 
 committee to visit those members who were implicated 
 in the practice. ... It was stated, in the Epistle to 
 London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772, that a few 
 Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that 
 others 'have been so reluctant thereto, that they have 
 been disowned* for not complying with the advice of 
 this meeting.' 
 
 * The italics are throughout Whittier's. 
 
APPENDIX. 209 
 
 "In 1773, the following minute was made: c It Js our 
 sense that truth not only requires the young of capacity 
 and ability, but likewise the aged and impotent, and also 
 all in a state of infancy and nonage, among Friends, to 
 be discharged and set free from a state of slavery ; that 1 
 we do no more claim property in the human race, as we 
 do in the beasts that perish.' 
 
 " In _i782 , no slaves were known to be held in the New 
 England Yearly Meeting. The next year, it was recom- 
 mended to the subordinate meetings to appoint com- 
 mittees to effect a proper and just settlement between the 
 manumitted slaves and their former masters for their past 
 services. In 1784, it was concluded by the Yearly Meet- 
 ing that any slaveholder who refused to comply with 
 the award of these committees should, after due care 
 and labour with him, be disowned from the Society. 
 This was effectual ; settlements without disownment were 
 made to the satisfaction of all parties, and every case 
 was disposed of previous to the year 1787. 
 
 " In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was 
 prohibited about the middle of the last century. In 1771, 
 in consequence of an epistle from the Philadelphia Yearly 
 Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those who 
 held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to 
 emancipation. In 1776, it was made a disciplinary 
 offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon any condition. 
 In 1784, but one slave was to be found in the limits 
 of the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the 
 several subordinate meetings, it was ascertained that an 
 equitable settlement for past services had been effected 
 
 P 
 
210 APPENDIX. 
 
 between the emancipated negroes and their masters in 
 all but three cases. 
 
 "In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its 
 strongest hold." In 1757, it "condemned the foreign 
 slave trade. In 1764, it enjoined upon its members the 
 duty of kindness towards their servants, of educating 
 them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing. 
 Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited 
 from purchasing anymore slaves. In 1773* ft earnestly 
 recommended the immediate manumission of all slaves 
 held in bondage, after the females had reached eighteen 
 and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same 
 time it was advised that committees should be appointed 
 for the pupose of instructing the emancipated persons 
 in the principles of morality and of religion, and for 
 advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns. . . . 
 
 "In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having 
 reported that many still held slaves, notwithstanding the 
 advice and entreaties of their friends, the Yearly Meeting 
 directed that, where endeavours to convince those 
 offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly 
 Meeting should proceed to disown them. We have no 
 means of ascertaining the precise number of those 
 actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia 
 Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very 
 small. In almost all cases the care and assiduous 
 labours of those who had the welfare of the Society and 
 of humanity at heart were successful in inducing 
 offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their 
 error in resisting the wishes of their friends, and bringing 
 reproach upon the cause of truth. 
 
APPENDIX. 211 
 
 "So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For 
 three-quarters of a century the advice put forth in the 
 meetings of the Society at stated intervals, that Friends 
 should be ' careful to maintain their testimony against 
 slavery,' has been adhered to, so far as owning, or even 
 hiring, a slave is concerned. Apart from its firstfruits 
 of emancipation, there is a perennial value in the example 
 exhibited of the power of truth, urged patiently and in 
 earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the way of 
 the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long 
 habit, entangled with all the complex relations of Society, 
 and closely allied with the love of power, the pride of 
 family, and the lust of gain." 
 
 I need hardly remind my readers of the singular 
 interest of John Woolman's own account of his 
 experiences in this and other matters, which would 
 scarcely admit of abridgment. I have, therefore, been 
 obliged, though unwillingly, to content myself with the 
 above bare enumeration of the actual steps taken by the 
 various meetings, without making any attempt to show 
 to what an extent John Woolman's own deep exercises 
 of mind contributed to bring them about. For a study 
 of Quaker experience, in its purest and most impressive 
 form, the " Journal " itself is perhaps unrivalled. 
 
212 APPENDIX, 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 The meetings for worship now held in London are as 
 follows : — 
 
 i. Devonshire House (12, Bishopsgate Street With- 
 out). 
 Sunday, n a.m. and 6.30 p.m. 
 Tuesday, 10.30 a.m. (omitted in Q. M. week). 
 Wednesday, 6.30 p.m. 
 
 2. Peel (Peel Court, John Street, Smithfield). 
 
 Sunday, 11 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. 
 Wednesday, 10 a.m. 
 
 3. Stoke Newington (Park Street, Church Street). 
 
 Sunday, 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. 
 Thursday, 10.30 a. m. 
 
 4. Wandsworth (High Street). 
 
 Sunday, 11 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. 
 Thursday, 7 p.m. (omitted in M. M. and Q. M. 
 weeks). 
 
 5. Hammersmith (Waterloo). 
 
 Sunday, 11 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. 
 
 6. Upper Holloway (Mercer's Road). 
 
 Sunday, 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and 6.30 p.m. 
 Wednesday, 10,30 a.m. (omitted in Y. M., Q. M., 
 and M. M. weeks). 
 
APPENDIX. 213 
 
 7. Westminster (52, St. Martin's Lane, Charing 
 Cross). 
 Sunday, n a.m. and 6.30 p.m. 
 Thursday, 10 a. m. (omitted in Q. M. and M. M. 
 weeks). 
 There are fifteen other meetings for worship belong- 
 ing to London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting ; but 
 as they are suburban rather than metropolitan, I do not 
 include them in this list. 
 
 Meetings for worship are also (by permission of the 
 Monthly Meeting) appointed to be held during the 
 present year at 
 
 Chelsea (48, Cheyne Walk). 
 Sunday,. 4 p.m. 
 Tuesday, 4 p.m. 
 All particulars respecting meetings all over the country 
 are to be found in a small sixpenny volume, called the 
 " Friends' Book of Meetings," published annually (by 
 direction of the Yearly Meeting) by S. Harris and Co., 
 5, Bishopsgate Street Without, E.C. 
 
 the end. 
 
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