YALE
DIVINITY SCHOOL
LIBRARY

Gift of
JOHN R. MOTT

THE QUAKERS
PAST AND PRESENT

THE QUAKERS
PAST AND PRESENT

BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON

" The Quaker religion ... is something which
it is impossible to overpraise."
William James :
The Varieties of Religious
Experience

NEW YORK
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
214-220 EAST 23rd STREET

FOREWORD
The foUowing chapters are primarily an
attempt at showing the position of the
Quakers in the family to which they belong —
the famUy of the mystics.
In the second place comes a consideration
of the method of worship and of corporate
Uving laid down by the founder of Quaker-
^K ism, as best calculated to foster mystical
j^ gifts and to strengthen in the community
^ as a whole that sense of the Divine, indweU-
*<T ing and accessible, to which some few of his
^ foUowers had already attained, and of
^§ which aU those he had gathered round him
<X had a dawning apprehension.
O The famous " pecuUarities " of the Quakers
>«.faU into place as foUowing inevitably from
2 their central belief.
"*5 The ebb and flow of that beUef, as it is
-3 v
tn
^3

FOREWORD
found embodied in the history of the Society
of Friends, has been dealt with as fuUv as

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM 1
U. THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 16
m. THE QUAKER CHURCH 33
IV. THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM 52
V. QUAKERISM IN AMERICA 61
VI. QUAKERISM AND WOMEN 71
VTE. THE PRESENT POSITION 81
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 94
BIBLIOGRAPHY 94
NOTE 96

VU

THE QUAKERS
PAST AND PRESENT
CHAPTER I
THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
The Quakers appeared about a hundred
years after tbe decentraUzation of authority
in theological science. The Reformers'
dream of a remade church bad ended in
a Europe where, over against an aUenated
parent, four young Protestant communions
disputed together as to the doctrinal in
terpretation of the scriptures. Within
these communions the goal towards which
the breaking away from the Roman centre
had been an unconscious step was already
weU in view. It was obvious that the
separated churches were helpless against
the demands arising in their midst for the
right of individual interpretation where
they themselves drew such widely differing

THE QUAKERS
conclusions. The Bible, abroad amongst
the people for the first time, helped on the
loosening of the hold of stereotyped beUefs.
Independent groups appeared in every
direction. In England, the first movement towards
the goal of " religious liberty " was made
by a body of believers who declared that a
national church was against the wiU of
God. Catholic in ideal, democratic in form,
they set their hope upon a world-wide
Christendom of seU-governing congrega
tions. They increased with great rapidity,
suffered persecution, martyrdom, and tem
porary dispersal.*
Following on this first chaUenge came the
earliest stirring of a more conservative
Catholicism. Fed by such minds as that of
Nicholas Farrer, grieving in scholarly seclu
sion over the ravages of the Protestantisms,
it found expression in Laud's effort to re
store the broken continuity of tradition in
the English church, to reintroduce beauty
into her services, and, while preserving ber
* The Brownists; now represented in the Congre
gational Union. 2

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
identity as a developing national body, to
keep open a rearward window to the light
of accumulated experience and teaching.
But hardly-won freedom saw popery in
his every act, and his final absolutism, his
demand for executive power independent of
ParUament, wrecked the effort and cost
him his life.
These characteristic neo-Protestantisms
were obscured at the moment of the appear
ance of the Quakers by the opening in this
country of the fuU blossom of the Genevan
theology. The fate of the Presbyterian
system, which covered England Uke a net
work, and had threatened during the shifting
poUcies of Charles's long struggle for abso
lute monarchy to become the estabUshed
church of England, was sealed, it is true,
when CromweU's Independent army checked
the proceedings of a Presbyterian House of
Commons ; but the Calvinian reading of tbe
scriptures had prevailed over the popular
imagination, and in the Protectorate Church
where Baptists, Independents, and Presby
terians held Uvings side by side with the
clergy of the Protestant Establishment,
3

THE QUAKERS
where the use of the Prayer-Book was for
bidden and the scriptures were at last
supreme, the predominant type of rehgious
culture was what we have since learned to
caU Puritanism. In 1648 Puritanism had
reached its great moment. Its poet* was
growing to manhood, tortured by the uncer
tainty of election, half-maddened by his
vision of the doom hanging over a sin-
stained world.
But far away beneath the institutional
confusions and doctrinal dilemmas of tbis
post-Reformation century fresh Ufe was
weUing up. The unsatisfied rehgious energy
of the maturing Germanic peoples, groping
its own way home, had produced Boehme
and his foUowers, and filled the by-ways of
Europe with mystical sects. Outwards from
free HoUand — whose repubUc on a basis of
reUgious toleration had been founded in
1579 — spread the Anabaptists, Mennonites,
and others. Coming to England, they re
inforced the native groups — the Baptists,
FamiUsts, and Seekers — who were preaching
* Bunyan was born in 1628, four years later than
Fox. 4

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
personal reUgion up and down the country
under the protection of CromweU's indul
gence for " tender " consciences, and found
their characteristicaUy EngUsh epitome and
spokesman in George Fox.
Born in an EngUsh viUage* of homely
pious parents,! w^° were both in sympathy
with their thoughtful boy, his genius de
veloped harmoniously and early.
Until his twentieth year be worked with
a shoemaker, who was also a dealer in cattle
and wool, and proved his capacity for busi
ness Ufe. Then a crisis came, brought about
by an incident meeting him as he went
about his master's affairs. He had been
sent on business to a fair, and had come
upon two friends, one of them a relative,
who tried to draw him into a bout of health-
drinking. George, who had had his one
glass, laid down a groat and went home in
a state of great disturbance, for he knew
both these men to be professors of reUgion.
* In 1624, at Drayton-in-the-Clay, in Leicestershire.
f His father, a weaver by trade, and known as
" Bighteous Christer," is described by Fox as a man
"with a seed of God in him"; his mother, Mary
Lago, as being " of the stock of the martyrs."
5

THE QUAKERS
He grappled with the difficulty at once.
He spent the hours of that night in pacing
up and down his room, in prayer and crying
out, in sitting stiU and reflecting. In the
light of the afternoon's incidents he saw and
felt for tbe first time the average daily life
of the world about him, " how young
people go together into vanity, and old people
into the earth," aU that gave meaning to
life for him had no existence in their lives,
even in the lives of professing Christians.
He was thrown in on himself. If God was
not with those who professed him, where
was He ?
The labours and gropings of the night
simpUfied before the dawn came to the
single conviction that he must "forsake aU,
both young and old, and keep out of all,
and be a stranger unto aU." There was no
hesitating. He went forth at once and
wandered for four years up and down the
Midland counties seeking for light, for
truth, for firm ground in the quicksands of
disintegrating faiths, for a common prin
ciple where men seemed to puU every way
at once. He sought all the "professors "
6

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
of every shade and Ustened to all, but would
associate with none, shunning those who
sought him out : " I was afraid of them, for
I was sensible they did not possess what
they professed." He went to hear the
great preachers of tbe day in London and
elsewhere, but found no light in them. Now
and again amongst obscure groups to which
hope drew him one and another were struck
by his sayings, and responded to him, but
he shrank from their approval. The clergy
of different denominations in the neigh
bourhood of bis home, where be returned
for a while in response to tbe disquietude
of his parents, could not understand his
difficulties. How should they ? He was
perfectly sound in every detail of the
Calvinian doctrine. They could make
nothing of a distress so unUke that of
other pious young Puritans. Orthodox as
he was, there is no sign in his outpourings
of any concern for bis soul, not a word of
fear, nor any sense of sin, though he heartily
acknowledges temptations, a divided nature,
" two thirsts." He begs tbe priests to teU
him the meaning of his troubled state
7

THE QUAKERS
not as one doubting, but rather with the
restiveness of one under a bondage, keep
ing him from that which be knows to be
accessible. One minister advised tobacco and psalm-
singing, another physic and bleeding. His
family urged him to marry.
His distress grew, amounting sometimes
to acute agony of mind: "As I cannot de
clare the great misery I was in, it was so
great and heavy upon me, so neither can I
set forth the mercies of God unto me in all
my misery." Brief intermissions there were
when he was " brought into such a joy that
I thought I had been in Abraham's bosom."
But on the whole bis wretchedness
steadily increased. None could help. Tbe
written word had ceased to comfort him.
He wandered days and nights in soUtary
places taking no food.
IUumination came at last — a series of
convictions dawning in the mind that truth
cannot be found in outward things, and,
finaUy, the moment of release — the sense of
which he tries to convey to us under the
symboUsm of a voice making his heart leap
8

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
for joy — leaving him remade in a new
world. Two striking passages from his Journal
may serve to iUustrate this period of his
experience: "The Lord did gently lead me
along, and did let me see His love, which
was endless and eternal, and surpasseth aU
the knowledge that men have in the natural
state, or can get by history or books . . .
and I was afraid of aU company, for I saw
them perfectly where they were, through
the love of God which let me see myself " ;
and, again, as he struggles to express tbe
change tbat had taken place for bim : " Now
I was come up in spirit through the flaming
sword into the paradise of God. AU things
were new ; and aU the creation gave another
smeU unto me than before beyond what
words can utter."
Two years of intense life foUowed. He
came back to the world with his message for
aU men, aU churches, with no new creed to
preach, but to caU aU men to see their
creeds in the Ught of the Uving experience
which had first produced them, to Uve them
selves in that Ught shining pure and

THE QUAKERS
original within each one of them, tbe Ught
which wrote the scriptures and founded the
churches ; to refuse to be put off any longer
with "notions," mere doctrines, deriva
tive testimonies obscuring the immediate
communication of life to the man himseff.
This message — the message of the inner
Ught of immediate inspiration, of the
existence in every man of some measure
of the Spirit of God — the Quakers laid, as
it were, side by side with tbe doctrines of
the Puritanism amidst which they were
born. They did not escape the absolute
dualism of tbe thought of their day. They
beUeved man to be shut up in sin, alto
gether evil, and they declared at tbe same
time that there is in every man that which
will, if he yields to its guidance, Uft him
above sin, is able to make him here and now
free and sinless. The essential irrecon
cilability of the two positions does not
appear to have troubled them.
This belief in the divine light within the
individual soul was, of course, nothing
new. The Roman Church had taught it.
Instruction as to the conditions whereby it
10

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
may have its way with a man was the end
of her less worldly labours.
The Protestants taught it ; the acceptance
of salvation, the birth of the Ught in the dark
ness of the individual soul was the message
of the Book. But George Fox and his
foUowers claimed that the measure of
divine Ufe, nesting, as it were, within the
Ufe of each man, was universal, was before
churches and scriptures, and had always led
mankind. Yet it was not to be confused
with the natural Ught of reason of tbe
Socinians and Deists, for tbe first step
towards union with it was a control of all
creaturely activities, a total abandonment
of each and every claim of the surface in-
teUigence — " notions," as the Quakers caUed
them — a process of retirement into the
innermost region of being, into " the Ught,"
"the seed," "the ground of the soul,"
" that which hath convinced you."
The God of the Quakers, then, was no
Uterary obsession coming to meet them
along the pages of history; no traditional
immensity visiting man once, and silent
ever since, to be momentarily invoked from
11

THE QUAKERS
infinite spatial distance by external means
of grace; no "notion," no mere meta
physical absolute, but a Uving process, a
changing, changeless absolute, a breath
controUing aU things, an amazing birth
within the soul. Tradition they valued as
a record of God's dealings with man. The
Bible held for them no enfeebling speU.
Their controversial writings have, indeed,
anticipated, as has recently been pointed
out,* the methods of the higher criticism;
they touch on the synoptic problems; they
ask their biblicist opponents whether they
are talking of original autographs, tran
scribed copies, or translations. They raUy
them: "Who was it that said to the Spirit
of God, 0 Spirit, blow no more, inspire
no more men, make no more prophets from
Ezra's days downward till Christ, and from
John's days downward for ever ? But
cease, be • silent, and subject thyself, as
well as aU evil spirits, to be tried by the
standard that's made up of some of the
writings of some of those men thou hast
* William C. Braithwaite : The Beginnings of
Quakerism. (Macmillan, 1912.) 12

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
moved to write already; and let sucb and
such of them as are bound up in the bibles
now used in England be the only means of
measuring aU truth for ever."
The Incarnation was to them the one in
stance of a perfect shining of the Ught, a
perfect realization of the fusion of human
and divine, the fuU indwelling of the God
head, which was their goal. The incidents
of that Ufe shone clear to them in the Ught
of what went forward in themselves in pro
portion as they struggled to Uve in the spirit.
But neither was this claim, tbe assertion
of an immediate pathway to reaUty within
the man himself, anything new in the world.
Each nation, each great period of civiUzation,
has produced individuals, or groups sepa
rated by time and creed, but unanimous in
their testimony as to its existence.
The giants among them stand upon the
highest peaks of human civiUzation. Their
art or method in debased or arrested forms
is to be found in every vaUey. They have
been caUed " mystics," and it is to the
classical century of European mysticism, to
the group (of which Tauler was tbe main-
13

THE QUAKERS
stay) caUing themselves the "Friends of
God," that we must go for an outbreak of
mystical genius akin to that which took
place in seventeenth-century England. Both
groups made war on the official Christianity
of their day, and strove to relate Christen
dom afresh to its true source of vitaUty, to
re-form the church on a spiritual basis. The
testimony, the end, and the means for the
attainment of the end were the same in
both. The immense distinction between
them arose from the difference in tbe con
ditions under which the two ventures were
made. The fourteenth - century mystics
opened their eyes in a congenial environ
ment, in a church whose symboUsm, teach
ing, and ordinances, were a coherent re
flection of their own experiences, stood
justified by their personal knowledge of
the " law " of spiritual development, tbe
conditions of advance in the way on which
their feet were set.
They owed much to tradition, to their
theological studies, to their famiUarity with
the recorded experiences of holy men;
they recognized their church as tbe trans-
14

THE BIRTH OF QUAKERISM
mitter of this tradition, as the guardian of
saintly testimony on the subject of their
art. They recognized her, not as an end
but as a means, not as a prison, but as a
home for aU the human family, keeping
open her doors, on the one hand, to the un
converted, providing, on the other, a suit
able medium, the right atmosphere and
opportunities, whereby pilgrims in the spirit
ual Ufe might develop, to their full, possi-
biUties in advance of the common measure
of the group. They chid her, they exposed
abuses, and caUed for reforms ; they chal
lenged the " carnal conception " of the
sacraments, and denounced the loose Uves of
her dignitaries; but they remained in the
church. The Quakers, on the contrary, appeared
when few of those who were in authority
were able to understand what had arisen
in their midst. Fox brought his chaUenge
by the wayside ; untrammeUed by tradition,
fearless in inexperience, he endowed aU
men with his own genius, and caUed upon
the whole world to join him in the venture
of faith. 15

CHAPTER II
THE SOCIETY OE FRIENDS

When Fox came back to the world from his
lonely wanderings, he had no thought of
setting up a church in opposition to, or
in any sort of competition with, existing
churches. His message was for aU, wor
shipping under whatever name or form ; his
sole concern to reveal to men tbeir own
wealth, to wean them to turn from words
and ceremonials, from aU merely outward
things, to seek first the inner reaUty.
Many of the Puritan leaders were brought
by their contact with Fox to a more vital
attitude with regard to the faith in which
they had been brought up. Several of
the magistrates before whom he and his
foUowers were continuaUy being haled, un
able after hours of examination and dis-
16

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
cussion not only to find any cause of offence
in these men, but unable, also, to resist
the appeal of their strength and sincerity,
espoused their cause with every degree of
warmth, from whole-hearted adherence to
lifelong, unflagging interest and sympathy.
But the general attitude, from the panic-
stricken behaviour of those who regarded
the Quakers as black magicians, incarnations
of the Evil One, or Jesuits in disguise, to
the grave concern of the Calvinist divines,
who saw in the Quaker movement a pro
fane attack upon the foundation-rock of
Holy Scripture, was one of fear — fear
based, as is usual, upon misunderstanding.
A concise reasoned formulation of tbe
Quaker standpoint, though it may be picked
out from the writings of Fox and the early
apologists, was to come, and then only im
perfectly, when the scholarly Robert Bar
clay joined the group; meanwhile, the
sometimes rather amorphous enthusiasm,
the "mysterious meetings," the apoca
lyptic claims and denunciations — meaning
less to those who had no key — stood as a
barrier between the " children of the light "
17 B

THE QUAKERS
and the religious feUowship of the Common
wealth church. Fear is clearly visible at
the root of the instant and savage persecu
tion of the Quakers, not only by the mob,
but by official Calvinism, throughout the
chapter of its power. The keynote was
struck by the local authorities at Notting
ham, who responded to Fox's plea for the
Inner Light during a Sunday morning's
service in tbe parish church by putting liim
in prison. It is usuaUy maintained that his
offence was brawling, but it is difficult to
reconcile this reading with the facts of the
case. Theological disputations were the
most popular diversions of the day. There
were no newspapers, nor, in the modern
sense of the word, either "poUtics " or
books; popular Uterature consisted largely
of reUgious pamphlets ; amateur theologians
abounded ; the public meetings arousing the
maximum of enthusiasm were those gathered
for the duels of weU-known controver
sialists; while speaking in church after the
minister had finished was not only recog
nized, but far from unusual. In this in
stance the minister had preached from the
18

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
text, "We have also a more sure word of
prophecy; whereunto ye do weU that ye
take heed, as unto a Ught that shineth in
a dark place, until the day dawn and the
day star arise in your hearts," and had de
veloped his theme in the sense that the sure
word of prophecy was the record of tbe
Scripture. Fox — whom we may imagine
already much the man WiUiam Penn
later on described for us as "no busy
body or self-seeker, neither touchy nor
critical ... so meek, contented, modest,
easy, steady, tender, it was a pleasure to
be in his company. ... I never saw him
out of his place or not a match for every
service and occasion; for in aU things he
acquitted himself Uke a man — yea, a strong
man, a new and heavenly-minded man — ¦
civil beyond aU forms of breeding in his
behaviour " — rose with his chaUenge, threw
down the gauntlet to biblicism, and de
clared that the Light was not the Scrip
tures, but the Spirit of God. . . .
But, as we have seen, reUgious England
was not whoUy Puritan. Fox's world was
waiting for hnn. From every denomination
19

THE QUAKERS
and every rank of society the Children of
the Light came forth. Very many — notably
the nuclear members of smaU independent
groups — had reached the Quaker experience
before he came. The beUefs and customs
which have since been identified with the
Society of Friends were already in existence
in the group of Separated Baptists at Mans
field in Nottingham, which formed in face
of the closed doors of official religion the
centre of the Uttle Quaker church. The
singleness of type, moreover, in the mis
sionary work of the early Quakers, extending,
as it did, over the whole of Christendom,
carried on independently by widely differing
natures — " narrow " nonconformist minis
ters, prosperous business men, army officers
and privates, shepherds, cloth - makers,
gentlewomen and domestic servants, under
every variety of circumstance, would be
enough in itseff to reveal Fox as the child
of his time. But as we watch the move
ment, as we see it assailed by those dangers
arising wherever systems and doctrines are
left behind and reason gets to work upon
the facts of a man's own experience; as we
20

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
find the fresh life threatening here to
crystallize into formal ideaUsm, there to
flow away into pantheism or antinomianism,
again to pour into a dead sea of placid
iUumination; as we see the Uttle church
surviving these dangers and continuaUy re
viving, we recognize that Fox was more
than the Uberator of mystical activity.
He was its steersman. His constructive
genius cast the mould which has enabled
this experiment to escape the fate over
taking simUar efforts. Seventeenth-century
mysticism in France* and Spain was suc
cumbing to Quietism. MoUnos, the Spanish
monk, a contemporary of Fox, popularized
a debased form of Teresian mysticism,
formulating it as a state " where the
soul loses itself in the soft and savoury
sleep of nothingness, and enjoys it knows
not what " ; while in France the practice
of passive contemplation had gained in
the reUgious Ufe of the time a popularity
which even the mystical genius of Madame
Guyon — who herself, it is true, lays in her
writings over-much stress upon this, the
* If we except the doomed Port Royalists.
21

THE QUAKERS
first step of the mystic way — failed to
disturb. For Fox, we cannot keep too clearly in
mind, the relationship of the soul to the
Light was a life-process ; the " inner " was
not in contradistinction to the outer. For
him, the great adventure, the abstraction
from aU externaUty, the purging of the seU,
the Godward energizing of the lonely soul,
was in the end, as it has been in aU the great
" actives " among the mystics, the most
practical thing in the world, and ultimately
fruitful in life-ends. He surprises us by
the intensity of his objective vision, by the
number of modern movements he antici
pates: popular education; the abolition of
slavery; the substitution of arbitration for
warfare amongst nations, and for litigation
between individuals ; prison reform, and the
revising of accepted notions as to tbe status
of women. He deUghts us with the strong
balance of bis godUness, bis instant sus
picion of reUgiosity and emotionaUsm, his
deaUng with those extremes of physical
and mental disturbance which are apt in
unstable natures to accompany any sudden
22

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
flooding of the field of consciousness; his
discouragement of ranting and " eloquence,"
of self-assertion and infaUibiUty — of any
thing indicating lack of control, or mili
tating against the fuU operation of the
Ught. But, enormously powerful as was the in
fluence of Fox upon the movement which
he Uberated and steered, it was at the same
time exceptionaUy free — even in relation
to the comparatively imitative mass of the
Quaker church — from that Umitation which
justifies the famous description of an insti
tution as the lengthened shadow of a
man. The partial escape of the Quaker
church from this almost universal fate of
institutions becomes clear when we fix our
attention on the essential nature of Fox's
" discovery " and what was involved in his
offering it to the laity, when we note that
within the Quaker borders there arose that
insistence on the " originaUty " of Ufe on
aU levels that has, at last, in our own day,
made its appearance in official phUosophy.

23

THE QUAKERS

II

The history of the Quaker experiment re
veals in England three main movements : the
first corresponding roughly to the life of Fox,
and covering the period of expansion, per
secution,* and establishment; the second,
which may be caUed the retreat of Quaker
ism, the quiet cultivation of Quaker method ;
and the third, the modern evangeUstic
revival. Tbe first rapid spreading in the North of
England was materiaUy helped by the
estabUshment, in 1652, of a centre at
Swarthmoor HaU, near Ulverston in Lanca
shire, the property of Judge FeU and his
wife Margaret, good churchpeople, much
given to reUgious exercises, and holding
open house for traveUing ministers of aU
denominations. The capture of this strong
hold gave the movement a northern head
quarters, and a post-office. Margaret FeU,
converted by Fox at the age of thirty-eight,
built the rest of her Ufe into the movement ;
* Toleration Act passed 1689. Fox died two years
later. 24

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
seventeen years later — more than ten years
after the death of her husband — she be
came Fox's wife. Her voluminous and
carefuUy preserved correspondence with the
leading missionaries of the group alone
forms almost a journal of the early years
of the Society.*
The whole of the* countryside at Swarth
moor, whose minister Fox had repudiated,
finding him fiUed with a ranting spirit,
high words and "notions "— "fuU of filth,"
as he tersely notes in his Journal — came out
against him.
He was given up to justice, ordered to be
whipped, and then handed over to the
mercy of the mob, who beat him until he
feU senseless. Presently, rising up, he bade
them strike again. A mason numbed his
arm with a blow from a staff; the arm re
covered instantly under the power of his
outgoing love for his persecutors. Inci
dents of this kind — of beatings, stonings,
and assaults of a more disgusting nature —
* The bulk of the "Fell" correspondence is pre
served at the headquarters of the Society of Friends,
Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, E.C.
25

THE QUAKERS
are typical of the treatment received with
unvarying sweetness by the Quaker mis
sionaries, both in England and in America.
On several occasions Fox's life was at
tempted. Persecutions of aU kinds, moreover, feU
far more heavily upon the Quakers than
upon other nonconformists, owing to their
persistence in holding their meetings openly
— meeting in the street if their premises
were burned down, the children meeting
together when the parents were imprisoned.
Fines, flogging, piUory, the loathsomeness
of damp and uncleansed dungeons, the
brutaUty of gaolers, left their serenity un
moved ; the exposure of women in the stocks
for seventeen hours on a November night
confirmed their faith. In the Restoration
period particularly, when the strong influ
ence of the reUgious soldiers of tbe Common
wealth — many of whom, including Crom-
weU, were able to grasp the tendency of
Fox's conception — was removed, persecution
became methodical. Some three thousand
odd had suffered before the King came back,
twenty-one dying as a result of cruel treat-
26

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
ment. Three hundred died during the Res
toration period, and they were in prison
thousands at a time, for although Charles II.,
once the leaders had made clear their lack of
poUtical ambition, promised them fuU free
dom from disturbance, the panic of fear of
sectaries of aU kinds which foUowed the
FUth Monarchy outbreak in London opened
an era of persecution and imprisonment.
Enormous sums of money were extracted
from them under various pretexts; the
Quaker and Conventicle Acts were used
against them with ingenious brutahty, an
inducement in the shape of the fine imposed
being held out to informers. The MiUtia
Act was, of course, a convenient weapon,
and their refusal to pay tithes meant a per
petual series of heavy distraints. It was a
common trick with judges and magistrates
when they could find no legitimate ground
of complaint, to tender to Quakers the Oaths
of Allegiance and Supremacy and turn them
into law-breakers on the ground of their
refusal to swear. Wales offered the most
ferocious persecution suffered by them in
these islands, but the Welsh converts fur-
27

THE QUAKERS
nished Pennsylvania with a fine group of
vigorous, industrious colonists.
In 1654 the "new doctrine " was brought
to the South by some sixty traveUing mis
sionaries. The Universities, inflamed, no
doubt, in advance by the report of tbe Quaker
scorn of wisdom and high " notions " — having
aheady revenged themselves upon four
Quaker girls who were the first to " pubUsh
truth " in tbe coUeges and churches, Cam
bridge foUowing up the savagery of the
students by pubUc flogging, Oxford by
ducking — had little but rage and evil treat
ment for the missionaries. Amongst the
few converts made in Oxford, however, was
the man who, in his turn, brought WilUam
Penn into the Quaker fold. In pious London,
sunk in theological strife, the obscure Waiters,
Ranters, and Seekers were the most favour
able soil.
Tbe Quakers, however, worked every
where, ploughing up the land, caUing men
to cease the strife of words, and to wait
before the Lord for Uving experience.
They had come down in June, and in
August were so far settled as to under-
28

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
take expansion east and west. The east, a
stronghold of Puritanism, was less receptive
than the western country, where Seekers
abounded and convincements took place by
hundreds. Ireland was broken into by WiUiam Ed-
mondson, an ex-CromweUian soldier. The
country was in process of being " settled "
by EngUsh colonists, who, most of them being
either Baptists or Independents, were already
a sufficient source of irritation, and the
progress of the new message was slow, and
met with a persecution, borrowing much of
its bitterness from the state of nervous fear
prevailing amongst the civil and miUtary
authorities . For a time there was an attempt
systematicaUy to exclude Friends from the
country, but it gave way before the zeal
and simpUcity of the preachers, and Quaker
ism, gaining most of its early converts from
the army, became in the end a rapidly ex
panding force.
In Scotland Quaker teaching progressed
slowly. By 1656 the Continent had been
attacked, HoUand and Germany, Austria
and Hungary, Adrianople, where a young
29

THE QUAKERS
girl who had gone out alone reasoned with
the Sultan, and was told that she spoke truth,
and asked to remain in the country ; Rome —
where John Love was given up by the Jesuits
to the Inquisition, examined by the Pope,
and hanged — tbe Morea, and Smyrna, and
Alexandria were visited. Many attempts
were made to land at the Levantine ports,
most of which were, however, frustrated by
English consuls and merchants; George
Robinson reached Jerusalem, and came near
to meeting his death at the hands of the
Turks; and the first isolated attempt had
been made in the West Indies and America.
These activities and expansions were helped
forward and confirmed by Fox during the
intervals between his many imprisonments.
He spent altogether some six years in prison.
For the rest, his life was one long missionary
enterprise, and during his detentions he
worked unceasingly.
He early recognized the need of a definite
church organization, and matured a system
whose final acceptance by the society as a
whole was helped on by an incident occurring
during his eight months' confinement in
30

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Launceston gaol.* James Nayler, one of
the sweetest and ablest of Quaker writers
and preachers, of an acutely " suggestible "
temperament, and less stable than his
foUowers, unsettled by the success attending
his work both in the north and the south
and by the adulations of some of the more
excitable of his feUow-workers, permitted
on the occasion of his entry into Bristol a
triumphant procession, the singing of ho-
sannas, and Messianic worship. It is note
worthy that of the thousand odd Quakers
in Bristol at the time not one took any part
in the outbreak. Tbe matter was taken
up by ParUament, a committee was ap
pointed, and Nayler came near being put
to death for blasphemy. He suffered in
the pUlory, was whipped through London
and Bristol, his tongue was bored, his
forehead branded, and he was kept in
prison for three years. He made fuU
pubUc recantation of his errors, and enjoyed
fuU communion with the society which had
* Part of which was spent in a dungeon reserved for
witches and murderers, and left uncleansed year after
year. 31

THE QUAKERS
never repudiated him, recognizing even in
his time of aberration the fine spiritual char
acter of the man. Tbis incident, loaded with
publicity, brought much discouragement to
Friends ; but it also showed them their need
of the organization and discipUne insisted
upon by Fox. And so the Quaker church —
the most flexible of aU religious organiza
tions — came into being.

32

CHAPTER III
THE QUAKER CHURCH
At the heart of the Quaker church is
" meeting " — the sUent Quaker meeting so
long a source of misunderstanding to those
outside the body, so clearly iUuminated
now for aU who care to glance that way,
by the Ught of modern psychology. We
have now at our disposal, marked out with
aU the wealth of spatial terminology char
acteristic of that science, a rough sketch of
what takes place in our minds in moments
of sUent attention. We are told, for in
stance, that when in everyday Ufe our atten
tion is arrested by something standing out
from the cinematograph show of our accus
tomed surroundings, we fix upon this one
point, and everything else fades away to
the "margin" of consciousness. The
" thing " which has had the power of so
arresting us, of making a breach in the
33 o

THE QUAKERS
normal, unnoticed rhythm of the senses,
aUows our " real self " — our larger and
deeper being, to which so many names have
been given — to flow up and flood the whole
field of the surface inteUigence. Tbe typical
instances of this phenomenon are, of course,
the effect upon the individual of beauty on
all its levels — the experience known as faUing
in love and the experience of " conversion."
With most of us, beyond these more or
less universal experiences, the times of
illumination are intermittent, fluctuating,
imperfectly accountable, and uncontrol
lable. The " artist " lives to a greater or
less degree in a perpetual state of illumina
tion, in perpetual communication with his
larger seH. But he remains within the
universe constructed for him by his senses,
whose rhythm he never fuUy transcends.
His thoughts are those which the veil of
sense calls into being, and though that veil
for him is woven far thinner above the
mystery of life than it is for most of us,
it is there. Imprisoned in beauty, he is
content to dweU, reporting to his fellows
the glory that he sees. 34

THE QUAKER CHURCH
The reUgious genius, as represented pre
eminently by the great mystics — those in
whom the sense of an ultimate and essential
goodness, beauty, and truth, is the dominant
characteristic — have consciously bent aU
their energies to breaking through the veil
of sense, to making a journey to the heart
of reaUty, to winning the freedom of the
very citadel of Life itself. Their method has
invariably included what — again borrowing
from psychology — we must caU the de-
Uberate control of aU external stimuU, a
swimming, so to say, against the whole
tide of the surface inteUigence, and this in
no negative sense, no mere sinking into a
state of undifferentiated consciousness, but
rather, as we have seen with Fox, a setting
forth to seek something already found —
something whose presence is in some way
independent of the normal thinking and
acting creature, something which has aheady
proclaimed itself in moments of heightened
consciousness — in the case of the religious
temperament at " conversion."
SUence, bodUy and mental, is necessarily
tbe first step in this direction. There is
35

THE QUAKERS
no other way of entering upon the difficult
enterprise of transcending the rhythms of
sense, and this, and nothing else, has been
invariably the first step taken by the mystic
upon his pilgrimage. Skirting chasms of
metaphor, abysses of negation and fear, he
has held along this narrowest of narrow ways.
But the early Quakers and the old-time
mystics knew nothing of scientific psychol
ogy. They arrived " naturaUy " at their
method of seeking in silence what modern
thought is caUing " the intuitive principle
of action " — " the independent spiritual
life fulfilUng itself within humanity " —
" the unformulated motive which is the
greater part of mind." Like every seeker,
on whatever level, they were led by
feeling. Feeling passed into action.
Thought foUowed in due course, and was
deposited as doctrine. They spoke, groping
for symbols, of "the seed," "the light,"
" the true birth." In other words — lest we
go too far with psychology's trinity of
thought, feeUng, and wiU as separable
activities " doing the wiU " — they " knew
the doctrine." 36

THE QUAKER CHURCH
From this standpoint of obedience to the
" inner Ught " they found within, they
" understood " what they saw around them,
and brought a fresh revelation to the world.
"I was afraid of aU company," says Fox
during his early trials, "for I saw them
perfectly where they were, through the love
of God which let me see myself." For
them the keynote of life is what an in
dependent uninstructed French mystic,
Brother Lawrence,* has caUed " the prac
tice of the Presence of God," and the man
to whom the practical spade-work of the
mystics, the art of introversion and con
templation, the practice (very variously
interpreted) of purgation, the pathway that
leads to " unknowing " and to union with
what men have caUed God, has not been
entered on as a matter of living experi
ence, is no Quaker, no matter how pious,
how philanthropicaUy orthodox, how " re
Ugious " he may be. In a meeting for
worship he is a foreign body, an uncon
verted person.
Side by side with the meeting for worship
* Nicholas Hermann.
37

THE QUAKERS
is the business meeting — a monthly meeting
which is tbe executive unit of the society.
It is held under the superintendence of a
clerk, whose duty it is to embody the results
of discussions in a series of minutes (voting
and applause are unknown), and to send
these up to the larger quarterly meeting of
the district — a group of monthly meetings —
delegates being appointed by each monthly
meeting to secure representation. Tbe
meetings are open to aU members and to
outsiders on appUcation. Most local ques
tions are settled by the quarterly meetings,
whose deliberations are on the same plan as
those of the monthly meetings. Questions
affecting the society as a whole, and matters
otherwise of wide importance, go up to
Yearly Meeting — the General Assembly of
the Society — where, as in the subordinate
meetings, decisions are reached by means
of a taking by the clerk of the general
" sense " of the gathering after free dis
cussion. The decisions of Yearly Meeting
are final. It issues periodicaUy a Book of
Discipline, in which are embodied, in the
form of epistles and other documents, the
38

THE QUAKER CHURCH
general attitude of the society as a whole in
matters of behef and conduct. A number
of sub-committees are perpetuaUy at work
for special ends — social, philanthropic, etc. —
and there is attached to Yearly Meeting a
standing committee known as the Meeting
for Sufferings, established in 1675 in the
interest of the victims of persecution. It
is composed of representatives of quarterly
meetings and of certain officers. It is
always engaged in the interest, not only of
members of the Quaker body in difficult
circumstances, but of sufferers all over the
world. It does an enormous amount of
unpublished work. Notorious, of course, is
the history of the party of Quakers who
arrived in Paris on the raising of the siege*
with food and funds for the famine-stricken
town; less known is the constant quiet
assistance, such as that rendered to famine
and plague districts and at tbe seat of war
in various parts of tbe world. There are
two offices in the Quaker body : that of
Elder, whose duty it is to use discretion in
acting as a restraining or encouraging influ-
* 1870. 39

THE QUAKERS
ence with younger members in their min
istry; and that of Overseer, exercising a
general supervision over members of their
meeting, admonishing them, if it should be
necessary, as to the payment of just debts ;
the friendly settlement of " differences "
about outward things ; the discouraging and,
as far as possible, restraining legal pro
ceedings between members ; " deaUng " with
any who may be conducting themselves,
either in business or in private Ufe, in a
way such as to bring discredit upon their
profession; caring for the poor, securing
maintenance for them where necessary,
and assisting them to educate their children.
When any person has been found to be
specially helpful in a meeting, and his or
her ministry is recognized over a con
siderable period of time as being a true
ministry, exercised "in the spirit," such a
one is, after due dehberation, " acknow
ledged " or " recorded " as a " minister."
This acknowledgment, however, confers no
special status upon the individual, and
implies no kind of appointment to preach
or otherwise to exercise any special function
40

THE QUAKER CHURCH
in the society. There is, apparently, to-day
a growing feeUng against even this slight
recognition of ministry as also against the
custom hitherto prevaiUng of the special
" bench " for Elders, which is usually on a
raised dais, and facing the meeting. Men
and women work, both in government and in
ministry, side by side. Until the year 1907
they held their Yearly Meeting separately,*
with occasional joint sittings. Since then all
Yearly Meetings are held jointly, though
the women's meetings are stiU held for
certain purposes.
The superficial structure of the society
has existed, together with its founder's
system of the methodical recording of births,
marriages, and deaths, much as we know it
to-day from the beginning.
The distinctive Quaker teaching — with
its two main points, the direct communication
of truth to a man's own soul : the presence,
in other words, of a " seed of God " in every
man; and the possibiUty here and now of
complete freedom from sin, together with
the many subsidiary testimonies, such as
* See chapter on Quakerism and Women.
41

THE QUAKERS
that against war, oaths, the exclusion of
women from the ministry, etc., depending
from these points — has also survived through
many crises, and, in spite of the perpetual
danger of being overwhelmed by tbe Cal
vinism amidst which it was born, and
which to this day takes large toll of the
society, and perpetuaUy threatens the whole
group, is stiU represented in its original
purity. The Quakers have never, in spite of their
deprecation of the written word and their
insistence on the secondariness of even the
highest " notions " and doctrines, been back
ward in defending their faith. They sat at
the feet of no man, nor did they desire that
any man should sit at theirs ; but when
they met, not merely at the hands of the
wilder sectaries, but from sober, godly
people, with accusations of blasphemy,
when they were told that they denied Christ
and the Scriptures, they rose up and justi
fied themselves. They were fully equal to
those who attacked them in the savoury
vernacular of the period, in apocalyptic
metaphor, in trouncings and denunciations.
42

THE QUAKER CHURCH
Bunyan, their relentless opponent through
out, is thus apostrophized by Burrough:
"Alas for thee, John Bunion ! thy several
months ' travaU in grief and pain is a fruit
less birth, and perishes as an untimely fig,
and its praise is blotted out among men, and
it's passed away as smoke." But through
out the vehemence of tbe Friends' contro
versial writings runs the sense of fair play —
the fearlessness of truth; the spirit, so to
say, of tolerance of every beUef in the midst
of their intolerance of an " unvital " attitude
in the behever. Their positive attitude to
Ufe, their grand affirmation, redeems much
that on other grounds seems regrettable.
By the time the classical apologist of
Quakerism — Robert Barclay, a member of
an ancient Scottish family, UberaUy edu
cated at Aberdeen CoUege and in Paris,
who had on his conversion forced himself
to ride through the streets of his city in
sackcloth and ashes — had pubUshed his
book,* any justification of Quakerism had,
from the point of view of the laity at large,
ceased to be necessary. They had had
* An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. 1678.
43

THE QUAKERS
some thirty years' experience of the fruits
of the doctrine; they knew the Quakers as
neighbours; had scented something of the
sweet fragrance of their austerity; had
wondered at their independence of happen
ings, their freedom from fear, their central
ized strength, their picking their way, so
to say, amongst the externalities of Ufe with
the calm assurance of those who hold a
clue where most men blunder, driven by
fear or selfish desire. They knew them,
moreover, as untiringly available outside
their own circle on behalf of every sort of
distress. The custodians, amateur and
official, of theology stiU preyed upon them,
though many of these were, no doubt,
disarmed by the Puritan orthodoxy of the
background upon which Barclay's rationale
of the Quaker's attitude is wrought.
Tbere is ample evidence that he was widely
read, both in England and abroad, and the
fact that no one took up the chaUenge,
though Baxter and Bunyan were stiU
Uving and working, may perhaps be ac
counted for by the absence in the Apology
of any clear statement of the real irrecon-
44

THE QUAKER CHURCH
cilabiUty between Quakerism and attitudes
that are primarily doctrinal or institutional.
He accepts the scriptures as a secondary
Ught, saying that they may not be esteemed
the "principal ground of aU Truth and
Knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary
rule of faith and manners," that they cannot
go before the teaching of the very spirit
that makes them intelligible. He maintains
that the closing adjuration in the Book of
Revelation refers only to that particular
prophecy, and is not intended to suggest
that prophecy is at an end. The ground of
knowledge is immediate revelation, which
may not be " subjected to the examination
either of the outward Testimony of the Scrip
ture or of the Natural Reason of Man as to
a more noble or certain Rule or Touchstone."
He considers that Augustine's doctrine of
original sin was caUed out by his zeal
against the Pelagian exaltation of the
natural light of reason. He admits that
man in sin — the natural man — can know no
right; that, therefore, the Socinians and
Pelagians are convicted in exalting a
"natural light," but that, nevertheless,
45

THE QUAKERS
God in love gives universal Ught, convicting
of sin, and teaching if not resisted. He
quahfies the Quaker claim to the possi-
biUty of absolute present salvation from sin
by adding that there may be a faUing off.
The whole of his argument displays the
impossibility of rationaUzing the position
to which the Quakers had felt their way in
terms of the absolute duaUsm of seven
teenth-century philosophy. He places the
doctrines of natural sinfulness and of uni
versal Ught side by side, and so leaves them.
The logical instabiUty of Quaker formulas
due to the Umitations of the scientific
philosophy of the day (not until the dawn
of our own century has a claim analagous to
theirs been put forward on the inteUectual
plane) — due, in other words, to the charac
teristic lagging of thought behind Ufe, while
comparatively immaterial in the founders
and leaders of the Quaker movement, who
were all mystics or mysticaUy minded per
sons, a variation of humanity, pecuUar
people gathered together, with aU their
differences, by a common characteristic,
seeing their universe in the same terms
46

THE QUAKER CHURCH
urged towards unanimous activity — began
to bear fruit in the second generation.
Mystical genius is not hereditary, and to the
comparatively imitative mass making up the
later generations the Inward Light becomes
a doctrine, a conception as mechanical and
static as is the infalhble Scripture to the
imitative mass of the Protestants.
We may not, of course, apply the term
"imitative" in too absolute a sense. All
have the Ught. We are aU mystics. We
aU Uve our Uves on our various levels, at
first hand. But a fuU recognition of this
fact need not blind us to the further fact
that, whUe those who have mystical genius
need no chart upon their journey, most of
us need a plain way traced out for us
through the desert. Most of us foUow the
gleam of doctrine thrown out by first-hand
experience, and chng to that as our guide.
But if the Quaker message failed as theology,
and the later generations swung back to
the simpler doctrine of Protestantism and
re-enthroned an infaUible Scripture, some
thing, nevertheless, had been done. Within
the precincts of Quakerism certain paths
47

THE QUAKERS
backwards were, so to say, permanently
blocked. A fresh type of conduct was
assured. The world, the environment in
which the new Uves of the group were to
arise, had been changed for ever.
The working out of the logical insecurity
of the Quaker position is interestingly
shown in the person of George Keith, in-
teUectuaUy the richest of the early Quakers,
a man whose writings have been acknow
ledged by his feUows, and would stiU stand
if he had not left the group, as amongst
the best expositions of the Quaker attitude.
He was a Scotch Presbyterian, and seems
to have joined the Quakers while stiU a
student at Aberdeen University. For nearly
thirty years he was under the speU of the
Quaker reading of Ufe, and Uved during
this time weU in the forefront of pubUc
discussion and persecution. We find him
writing books and pamphlets in and out
of prison, fuU of the ardour and the joy of
his discovery that there are to-day imme
diate revelations, speaking with deUght of
the meaning and use of silence, defending
his new faith before Presbyterian divines
48

THE QUAKER CHURCH
and University students, declaring that he
found Friends " wiser than aU the teachers
I ever formerly had been under."
It was not until after the death of Fox,
when the first generation of " born Friends "
was growing up, that he began to express
his sense of the danger he saw ahead.
Then we find him accusing Friends of
neglecting the historic evidences of their
faith, of sacrificing the outer to the inner.
His main doctrinal divergence from them was
his assertion that salvation is impossible
without the knowledge of and beUef in the
historic Jesus. But doctrine was not his
only difficulty. He went to the very heart
of the situation. He saw that the Quakers
could never become in the world what they
hoped to be — a mystical church, a body of
men swayed without let or hindrance by
the Divine Spirit, pioneers for the world
upon the upward way — unless they were
willing to pay tbe price of the saintly office.
He begged for the abolition of birthright
membership, for an open confession of
faith for incoming members, that the
children of Friends should come and offer
49 d

THE QUAKERS
themselves as strangers, their spiritual
claims weighed and considered; that mar
riage should not be celebrated according
to the Quaker rites between those who
were not faithful Friends; that a sort of
register should be kept of tbose who, in
and out of meeting, were live and con
sistent Christians. His view of the situa
tion, though put forward with a violence
and bitterness which prejudiced it with his
hearers, and brought his own spiritual Ufe
under suspicion, is largely justified by the
subsequent experience of tbe society. His
chaUenge attracted a large foUowing in
America, whither he had gone as head
master of a Friends' school. The other
leaders of the society, both in London and
Pennsylvania, denied his assertion of the
neglect by Friends of the historical Christ,
while protesting that we must beheve that
the light of Christ reaches every man,
whether he have heard of hnn or no.
In 1692 the matter came before the
Yearly Meeting, and Keith and his large
body of foUowers were condemned in writing
of the "spirit of reviUng, raiUng, lying,
50

THE QUAKER CHURCH
slandering," and of mischievous and hurtful
separation. So the schism was formed, and
a new sect arose, which estabUshed many
meetings amidst controversy and bitterness.
The foUowing year London Yearly Meeting,
considering his case in sittings that some
times lasted for days, finaUy declared him
to have separated himself from the holy
feUowship of the Church of Christ, and dis
owned bim. His foUowing graduaUy dis
appeared. For some years he traveUed
about in America, visiting meetings and
protesting against his disownment. Later
on he became an Independent, then an
EpiscopaUan. He died as a minister of the
Church of England. There is a story, which
most authorities consider to be weU authenti
cated, representing him as saying before he
died that if God had taken him while he
was a Quaker, it would have been weU with
him.

51

CHAPTER IV
THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM
But the swing-back for the imitative mass
to tbe easily grasped dogma of an infallible
Scripture did not take place at once. It
appears as a clearly accompUshed fact at
the time of the mid-eighteenth-century de
parture of Quakerism on its second mission
ary effort. Meanwhile, we must consider
the intervening hundred years — the second
period of Quakerism — generaUy known as
the century of Quietism.
The first generation of Quakers had passed
away. The great mission — the going forth
to win mankind to Uve by the Inner Light —
had failed. Better fitted, apparently, than
any since the early Christians to evangeUze
the world, cathohc to the limit of the term,
knowing nothing of " heathen " nor of any
"living in darkness"; a body of devotees
culled from all existing groups, hampered
52

THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM
by no official church, unhindered by luxury,
undaunted by distance and difficulty, work
ing in the open under storms of persecution
that had driven their companion groups to
hiding or dissolution, the Friends of Truth
had failed to bring even the churches to
the acknowledgment of that on which they
aU ultimately rested. Passing through Euro
pean Christendom and beyond, they gath
ered in their feUows, retreated to camp, gave
up their original enterprise, and became a
separatist sect. The greater number of
them were flourishing tradespeople, owing
their success in business largely to the fact
that, whereas trade as a whole was stiU
subject to those passions which had caUed
forth in old times the law forbidding any
transaction beyond the sum of twenty
pennies to be made without the presence of
the port-reeve or other responsible third
person, here were men who required neither
bond nor agreement, who were as good as
their word, asking one price for their goods,
and refusing to bargain. Their social Ufe at
the beginning of the second period has been
described for us by one of the last of the
53

THE QUAKERS
earlier generation, coming late in life to
English Quaker circles after twenty years
of absence. WiUiam Bromfield was a medical
man who had followed James II. to Ireland
because of his goodness to tbe Quakers, had
served him for years in Paris as his secre
tary, and had suffered imprisonment in the
Bastille for conscience' sake. At one mo
ment we see him visiting a Trappist mon
astery, explaining to the Fathers the Quaker
faith and manner of living — the Trappists
acknowledging the Quakers as ripe for
sainthood — and then we read of his bitter
disillusionment. He finds* "riches, pride,
arrogancy, and faUing into parties." He
notes with grief that onlookers are saying
that the Quakers, who might have converted
the world had they kept their first faith, are
now become apostates and hypocrites, as
vain in their Conversation, Habits, and
Dresses, as any other people." Even the
poor tradesmen and mechanics amongst
them wore periwigs: "a wicked covering
of Horse-hair and Goats '-hair." Men were
* W. Bromfield : The Faith of the True Christian and
the Primitive Quaker's Faith. 1725.
54

THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM
"trick'd out in cock'd Hats, their fine
Cloathes with their Cuts a la mode and long
cravats." Women went about with "bare
neck, Hoop'd Petticoats, Lac'd Shoes,
Clock't Hose, Gold-chains, Lockets, Jewels,
and fine Silks." Seeing in these character
istics of the main mass of tbe second genera
tion nothing but the ravages of laxity, the
faithful nucleus of the society determined
on a measure of reform. A missionary
party, with fuU powers to tbis end, went
forth in 1760 from London Yearly Meeting.
In every separate meeting throughout the
country wayward members were dealt with.
Many were reclaimed; those who showed
themselves either stubborn or indifferent
were expeUed from tbe society. Disown
ment for marriage outside the group dates
from this time, and it has been estimated
that by this means alone the membership
was reduced by one-third.
Amongst the remnant the Quaker testi
monies against extravagance in dress, un
profitable occupations and amusements,
and advices as to simplicity in manners,
were stereotyped into a code, and became
55

THE QUAKERS
matters of strict observance. It is from
this middle period that the popular picture
of Quakerism is borrowed. The Quakers
went forward from their great purgation — a
strictly closed sect, carefuUy guarded from
outside influence, the younger generations
forced either to conform to the traditional
pattern or to suffer banishment — depleted
and decreasing until the time of the modern
revival taking place about the middle of
the nineteenth century.
The deductions made by modern commen
tators from these data faU into two groups.
There is tbe view held generaUy by those
standing outside the body, whether enemies
or friends, that Quakerism comes to an end
with its heroic period. The first recognize
its initial catholicity, rejoice in its successful
tilting with Puritan Protestantism, but see
it foredoomed by its heresies, by its neglect
of the outward symbols of tbe sanctification
of human Ufe, and by the deleterious effect of
the admission of women into the ministry.
The sympathizers see the early Quakers
either as the glory of seventeenth-century
Christianity or the left wing of a widespread
56

THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM
effort to democratize formal reUgion — a
shifting of the centre of authority from the
official custodian to the man himself. They
come regretfuUy upon the undisciphned
ranks of the second generation. They have
no faith in the movement for reform; for
them the Uttle church of the Spirit dwindles,
Ut with a faint sunset glow of romance down
towards extinction. AU, both enemies and
friends, who see Quakerism end with the
seventeenth century, dispose of the modern
revival by placing it within the general
movement of Protestant evangelicalism.
The second group of deductions appears
to be shared by the Quakers themselves in
so far as their present literary output is
representative of the feeUngs and opinions
of the body. They appear to attribute their
failure to capture the world, on the one
hand, to their exclusion from the main
stream of thought and culture, and, on
the other, to the inabUity of the early
protagonists to present a formulation of
their central doctrine free from contra
dictions, to their subjection to the dualistic
philosophy of the day, which saddles their
57

THE QUAKERS
teaching of the Inner Light with a tendency to
neglect all external means of enUghtenment.
Beyond these two most usual readings of
the early history of Quakerism, we find the
more recent apologists of Christian mysti
cism, while freely admitting the Quakers
into the fellowship of the mystics, dispose
inferentially of the possibiUty of the
"free" mystical church of which Friends
dreamed on the ground of tbe rarity of the
religious — the still greater rarity of the
mystical temperament. In their opinion
the art and science of reUgion wiU always be
carried on by specialists; the torch-bearers
will be few, though their light iUumine
the pathway of the world. A world-church,
therefore — a church which must cast ber wings
over all in her striving to turn all towards the
light — must organize primarily in the interest
of conduct as an end. In this view the
Quaker system, in so far as it invites every
man to be his own church, must always fail.
We may, perhaps, accept something of
aU these readings; we may recognize the
unsuitability for the daily need of the world
at large of a church neither primarily insti-
58

THE RETREAT OF QUAKERISM
tutional nor primarily doctrinal. We may
admit, for many minds in a Christendom
generaUy ignorant of its own history of an
episcopaUy ordained and invested female
clergy, the handicap of recognized feminine
ministry; we may see the fuU unreason of
birthright membership, and the change
of base in the modern revival, without,
perhaps, being driven to conclude that
England's attempt to introduce into field and
market-place the hitherto cloistered mystical
faith and practice has entirely failed.
For amidst the stereotyped Puritanism of
this middle period, with its fear of beauty,
its suspicion of aU pursuits not directly
utUitarian or devotional, saints were born.
The century which produced John Woolman
and the men and women who initiated and
took the Uon's share in the movement for
the aboUtion of slavery; which supphed to
the cause of science and to the medical pro
fession, in spite of exclusion from the main
streams of learning, eminent men* in
* The biographies of Quakers and ex- Quakers
amount to about 3 per cent, of the whole of the entries
in the Dictionary of National Biography (1885-1904),
reckoning from 1675. 59

THE QUAKERS
numbers quite out of proportion to the size
of the group ; which saw the blossoming of
pubUc education in the form of the fine
Quaker schools where girls and boys were
educated side by side,* must have been rich
in inarticulate and unrecorded saintly Uves.
There must have been in the sober Quaker
homes, where affection ruled without soft
ness, where love was heroic rather than
sentimental, many who foUowed, not as
imitators, but with aU the strength of an
original impulse the pathway chosen by
tbose who have been willing to pay the
price of an enhanced spiritual Ufe ; the with
drawal, in varying measure, from the values
and standards accepted by the world at large.
They kept watch. They worked amongst
their feUows in a dusk between memory and
anticipation. They felt to the uttermost and
fought to the uttermost the weakness of the
seh. They were faithful, and in due time the
society as a whole felt the breath of revival.
* Ackworth was founded in 1779, Sidcot remodelled
on Quaker lines in 1808, the present Saffron Walden
School opened in Islington in 1811, and several others
since both in England and Ireland, all now open to the
general public. 60

CHAPTER V
QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
The American colonies seemed to tbe early
leaders of the Quaker movement to offer at
once a field for the free development of
their faith and a base whence they might
spread to the ends of the earth. The possi-
biUty of buying land from the Indians was
being discussed in the society as early as
1660. But though, it is true, Quaker influ
ence was decisive in estabhshing reUgious
toleration in America, though the relation
ship between the native tribes and the
colonists was transformed through their
substitution of unarmed treaty parties for
the existing methods of intimidation and
of strictly fair dealing for dishonesty and con
tract-breaking, though they initiated and took
the lion's share in the abohtion of slavery,*
* As early as 1657, and before he had come in con
tact with slavery, Fox addressed a letter of advice
61

THE QUAKERS
and established the precedent of a State
founded on brotherly love, although they did
more than any other group of refugees or
body of colonists to settle the foundations
of the religious and civil Ufe of the country ;
yet the texture of tbe reUgious Ufe of the
American people is to-day- largely Puritan
Protestantism, and of the Quaker influence
in government there remains not a trace.
from England to all slave-holding Friends. In 1671,
seeing for himself the system at work in Barbadoes,
he recommended that the holders should free their
slaves after a term of service, and should arrange
for their welfare when freed. The first documentary
protest against slavery put forward by any religious
body came from the German Quakers in Philadelphia
(Germantown); they had come as settlers from
Kirchheim in Germany, where Penn's teaching had met
with an ardent response. John Woolman spent twenty
years in ceaseless labour on behalf of the slaves.
Throughout the society the work went on; meetings
were held, individual protests were made, slave-
holding Friends were visited. By 1755 it was gener
ally agreed that negroes should be neither bought nor
imported by Friends, and less than thirty years later
the society, with the exception of a few isolated and
difficult cases, was free of slavery. Many Friends paid
their slaves for past services, and in all cases provision
was made for their welfare.
62

QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
For more than hah a century after the
savage persecution* by the Puritans — reach
ing its fuUest fury in Boston under Governor
Endicott — had come to an end, Quakerism
was a steadily growing power in America.
The Quakers flourished in Rhode Island,
to whom they suppUed many Governors,
and where at one time they were continuaUy
in ofiice; they made fair headway in Con-
* The first Quakers to reach America were two
women, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher. When they
arrived at Boston, their luggage was searched, their
books were burned in the market-place by the hang
man; they were stripped and examined for signs of
witchcraft, and after five weeks' imprisonment and
cruelty were shipped back to Barbadoes. Then
followed a series of persecutions too horrible to be
detailed, increasing in severity from fines — tireless,
bedless, and almost foodless — imprisonment in chains
in the Boston winter, floggings (one part alone of the
punishment of the aged William Brand consisted of
117 blows on bis bare back with a barred rope, while
two women were stripped to the waist in the mid
winter snow and lashed at the cart-tail through eleven
towns), ear-croppings, and tongue-borings, to the
death penalty suffered by three men and one woman.
The intervention of Charles II. referred only to the
death penalty. Whippings continued until 1677, and
imprisonment for tithes until 1724.
63

THE QUAKERS
necticut. In Long Island their estabUsh
ment was finaUy secured by the advice of
the Dutch home Government on the ground
of their exceUence as citizens. They
achieved a foothold in Virginia in face of
the indignant persecutions of the Episco
palians. Their history in Maryland is an
exceUent iUustration of the nature of their
work on behalf of reUgious toleration.
When, in 1691, an Act was framed to secure
the estabUshment of the Protestant church,
the Quakers, who were by this time both
numerous and influential in the colony,
laboured in opposition to it until they
brought the biU to nought. They sup
ported the CathoUcs in their struggle for
emancipation, and were largely instru
mental in securing the repeal, in 1695, of
the Act against them. They also joined
with Rome to prevent the EpiscopaUan
Church from being estabUshed by law, but
in this they were only partiaUy successful.
In the Carohnas they appear to have fared
weU. For years, though in a minority,
they controUed the government. New
Jersey was thrown open to them by a large
64

QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
purchase of land. WiUiam Penn's share in
this transaction was the beginning of his
practical interest in America, finaUy to
express itself in the foundation of the
Quaker State of Pennslyvania,* which was
very largely his own work. His labours as a
rehgious apologist, fiUing some five volumes,
and representing in his graceful, polished
style the apphcation to social Ufe of the
Puritan morality upon which the Quakers
had grafted their behefs, are secondary to
his work in America, for which he gave up
aU he possessed — influence, the prospect of
a brilliant career at home, friends, fortune,
and health.
This colony, bought strip by strip in
honest treaty with the Indians, developed
more quickly than any other. It was a
home for refugees of every shade of opinion.
Friends at no time formed more than half
the population, but their influence was
supreme. * It is interesting that Penn did his utmost — even
to attempting to bribe the secretaries when the
charter was drawn up — to abolish the Penn prefixed
by James II. to his own original Sylvania.
65 E

THE QUAKERS
Two years after the settlement of the
State* Penn writes that two general as
semblies had been held with such concord
and despatch that they sat but three weeks,
and at least seventy laws were passed with
out one dissent in any material thing.
For thirty years there was peace, liberty,
and refuge for all, and an unrivaUed pros
perity. We may picture Penn, in the days
of witch crazes, holding his one trial of a
witch, and establishing the precedent of
finding the woman guilty of the common
fame of being a witch, but not guilty as
indicted; and in another characteristicaUy
Friendly moment refusing, when greatly in
need of funds, six thousand pounds for a
trade monopoly which would have violated
his principle of fairness to the Indians. Free
thought was encouraged, and a little group
of distinguished men appeared in Phila
delphia. The final downfaU of Friendly
administration in Pennsylvania was the
result of the refusal on the part of the
majority of the Quakers to adjust their
principles to the demand sent to the Quaker
* In 1683.
66

QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
legislature for means to proceed against the
French and the Indians.
Up to the time of this occurrence it had
seemed as if America were on the way to
becoming an autonomous province of the
British Empire, steered by Quaker prin
ciples. Privilege after privilege had been
quietly secured by Penn from the home
government, and it is not difficult to beheve
that if on the eve of the Revolution negotia
tions had been left in Friendly hands, the
war of separation need not have taken place.
When it broke out, the Quakers retired de
cisively from legislative and municipal posi
tions. A Quakerized Uberty party carried
on the traditions of civil Uberty up to the
last moment. The Scotch-Irish Presby
terians, who despised the Quakers, and
treated the Indians as heathen to be exter
minated, formed the main body of the
Pennsylvanian revolutionary party.
Friends suffered under English taxation,
and their principles prevented them from
smugghng, yet they opposed not merely
warfare, but revolution, disowning those
who supported it, and reiterated their
67

THE QUAKERS
loyalty to England. They were arrested
and imprisoned as friends of the British,
their goodly farms and their meeting-houses
were placed at the mercy of troopers and
foragers, whose pay they would not accept.
Their decent streets were demoralized.
They went quietly about their business as
best they might, pursuing, even while the
war was in progress, their labours in the aid
of drunkards and slaves, their succour of
the uneducated.
They built schools for the negroes, and
when, after the revolution was at an end
(whereupon they duly suffered at the hands
of the rejoicing multitude), there came
the scandal of the " walking purchase " of
land from the Indians and the fear of a
serious outbreak, they formed a private
association and pacified tbe Indians, pre
venting warfare at the cost to themselves
of weeks of negotiation and the sum of five
thousand pounds paid by them. Incidents
of this type occur again and again in Quaker
history, and are practical proof of the fact
that their avoidance of the spirit of strife, so
often present in pohtical life, was no kind of
68

QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
timidity, of passive resistance, or comfortable
retirement from the business of the world.
Least of aU was it indifference to what went
forward in the pubhc affairs of the nation.
Apart from its temporary dominion of
" affairs," American Quakerism follows much
the same Une of development as does the
movement at home. The original impulse
tends to be superseded for the imitative
mass by a doctrine embodied in an insti
tution; the dogma of the Inner Light be
comes dangerously absolutist. There is a
corresponding return to the steadying refuge
of an infallible scripture, and the modern
church, whUe stiU united and distinguish
able by the marks of Quaker culture, of
faith and practice, kindling here and there
to the older insight and vision, shows a
divided front.
In 1827 a large group — now known as
Hicksites — separated under Ehas Hicks,
whose repudiation of doctrines and creeds,
and insistence on right living, resulted, in
the opinion of "orthodox " Friends, in a
wrong attitude towards Christ and the
scriptures. The evangehcal reaction in
69

THE QUAKERS
England, which was, in part, a result of
the Hicksite controversy, brought about a
further division in America under John
Wilbur, who protested against Evangehcal
biblicism, and reasserted the doctrine of
the Inner Light, insisted on plainness of
speech and dress, and looked with suspicion
upon "art." The orthodox group, deeply
tinged with Protestant evangeUcaUsm, have
largely adopted the pastoral system. There
are now at least four distinct groups in
America.* * " According to recent statistics, the membership
of the fourteen orthodox bodies is upward of 90,000 ;
of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 4,400 ; of the Conser
vative Yearly Meeting, about 4,000; and of seven
Hicksite Yearly Meetings, under 19,000— say, 27,500
Friends belonging to Yearly Meetings in America with
which we do not correspond " (Facts about Friends.
Headley Bros. 1912).

70

CHAPTER VI
QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
Watching the pilgrims who pass one by
one along the mystic way, we see both
women and men. Teresa, Catharine, Eliza
beth, MechthUd, no less than Francis,
Tauler, Boehme, stand as high peaks of
human achievement in entering into direct
relationship with the transcendental life.
But when we reach the humbler levels of
institution and doctrine, the reUgious genius
of womanhood tends to be pushed, so to
say, into an obhque relationship. Under
organized Christianity, and particularly
under Protestantism, has this been so.
Amongst the first Christians, it is true,
women preached and prophesied. There
is, moreover, in the history of the early
centuries sound evidence of an ordained
and invested female clergy. Taking that
history as a whole, however, women have
71

THE QUAKERS
been, and are stiU, excluded from the
councils of the churches and from the re-
sponsibiUties and privileges of priesthood.
Devout churchwomen, and, in particular,
devout Protestants, are nourished on hteral
interpretation of records, which assure them
of an essential inferiority to their male
companions, and enjoin subjection in aU
things. At marriage, they sacramentaUy
renounce individuality. Quakerism stands
as the first form of Christian behef, which
has, even in reaching its doctrinized and
institutionized levels, escaped regarding
woman as primarily an appendage to be
controUed, guided, and managed by man.
This escape was the result, not of any kind
of feminism, any sort of special sohcitude
for or beUef in women as a class. Nor was
it the result of a protest against any definitely
recognized existing attitude. Such unstable
and fluctuating emotions could not have
carried through the Quaker reformation of
the relations of the sexes. The recognition
of the pubUc ministry of women was an act
of faith. It was a step that foUowed from
a central beUef in the universahty of the
72

QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
inner Ught. It was taken in the face of
difficulties. It hampered the Quakers enor
mously in relation to the outside world. It
was the occasion of profound disturbance
within the body. Heart-searching and hesi
tation rose here and there to an opposition
so convinced as to form part of the pro
gramme of the first schismatics.* Fox had
to fight vahantly. His central belief once
clear, he cut clean through the Pauhne
tangle of irreconcilable propositions, and
forged from the depths of his conviction
phrases that would, were they but known,
do yeoman service in the present agitation
for the release of the artificiaUy inhibited
responsibilities of women. He is never
tired of reminding those who cling to the
story of the FaU that the restoration of
humanity in the appearance of Christ took
the reproach from woman. He raUies men,
often with dehcious humour, on their desire
to rule over women, and exhorts those who
despise "the spirit of prophecy in the
daughters " to be " ashamed for ever." But
although faith won, it is probable that the
* The Perrot Schism, 1661.
73

THE QUAKERS
majority took the step only under the
urgency of deep-seated consciousness, the
surface inteUigence stiU loudly asserting
the necessary pre-eminence of mascuhne
standards. Even amongst the most de
termined advocates of tbe recognition of a
woman's spiritual identity, amongst those
who condemned its suppression as blas
phemous, we meet the suggestion that this
recognition need not in any way interfere
with her proper subjection to her husband.
Nevertheless, Fox succeeded in equaUzing
the marriage covenant.
The government of tbe society, therefore,
was for many years carried on by men alone,
a women's meeting coming into existence, as
we have seen, only when obviously impera
tive — in relation to the care of the women
and children suffering under persecution —
and persisting only for special 'purposes
quite apart from the business of the society
as a whole. Men and women, however,
occasionaUy visited each other's meetings,
and joint sittings were sometimes held.
It was the experience coming to the sup
port of dawning theory, of the superior
74

QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
working of these joint meetings, that finaUy
enfranchised Quaker womanhood.
It is interesting to note that one of the
most striking features of the technique of
Quaker meetings, whether for business or
worship, is the working out of the dis
tinctive characteristics of the sexes. Their
contradiction, and the tendency psychology
has roughly summarized of women, as a
class, to control thought by feehng, and of
men, as a class, to aUow " reason " the first
place, is here at its height.
The two rival and ever-competing defi
nitions of reaUty both find expression.
Each must tolerate the other. Reaction
takes place without bitterness. Again and
again there is revealed the fruitfulness of
that spirit which beheves in and seeks
goodness, beauty, and truth — these alone,
and these in aU. Recent statistics have
shown* that women, though always nu-
mericaUy superior in the society, have sup-
pUed a comparatively smaU number of both
officers and ministers, and of clerks rela
tively none, and that, moreover, this deficit
* The Friend, March, 1912 : "Woman inthe Church."
75

THE QUAKERS
is graduaUy increasing, and is not made
good by any sufficiently compensating out
put of public work outside the society.
It has been suggested that we may pre
sume, in consideration of these facts, that
women Friends have by this time availed
themselves of their opportunity to the fuU
extent of their capacities, and that the re
sult, as far as government is concerned, is
that the conduct of large public meetings is
almost entirely entrusted to men.
In the correspondence that foUowed the
pubUcation of the statistics certain modi
fying statements were made. It was sug
gested that of late years the increasing
membership had brought in women who were
without the Quaker tradition — a fact which
would account for the growing deficit of
feminine activities. Attention was also
drawn to the unseen mass of feminine initia
tive, the result of which is credited to men.
It is, of course, evident tbat if we begin
by assuming that equahty of opportunity
shaU result in identity of function, if we
beUeve, moreover, that government is merely
a matter of machinery, and ministry can be
76

QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
estimated by the counting of heads and of
syUables, we shaU be led to the conclusion
that, while the more obvious results of the
Quaker experiment may do something to
wards disarming haunting fears as to the
safety of acknowledging the fuU spiritual
and temporal feUowship of women, it does
comparatively Uttle to justify the claims
and expectations of the feminists in general.
But whatever standard we apply, how
ever we may choose to approach the ques
tion of the pubhc ministry of women ;
however, further, we may estimate the value
of the fact that aU the practical business of
the society is talked out in their hearing,
that measures are sometimes initiated,
sometimes aboUshed, invariably commented
on, modified and steered by them, we can
not form any idea of what Quakerism has
done for women or women for Quakerism
without some consideration of an aspect of
the matter hitherto almost entirely ne
glected by historians and commentators,
which yet, in the opinion of the present
writer, may be claimed not only as giving
some part of the explanation of the relative
77

THE QUAKERS
inactivity of women in the more obvious
transactions of the society, but as being a
very substantial part of the clue to the
rapid development and the healthy per
sistence of Quaker culture — and that is
the profound reaction upon women of the
changed conditions of home-Uf e ; for amongst
the Quakers the particularized home, with
its isolated woman cut off from any re
sponsible share in the life of " the world "
and associating mainly with other equaUy
isolated women, is unknown. A woman
born into a Quaker family inherits the tra
dition of a faith which is of the heart rather
than of the head, of intuition rather than
inteUectation, of Ufe primarily rather than
of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem
particularly suited to the development of
her reUgious consciousness; and she comes,
moreover, into an atmosphere where her
natural sense of direct relationship to life,
her instinctive individual aspiration and
sense of responsibihty, instead of being
either canceUed or left dormant, or thwarted
and trained to run, so to say, indirectly, is
immediately confirmed and fostered.
78

QUAKERISM AND WOMEN
She is in touch with, has, as we have seen,
her stake and her responsibihty in regard
to every single activity of the meeting of
which she is a member. Through every
meeting and through every home, more
over, there is the cleansing and ventilating
ebb and flow of the hfe of the whole society,
and this not merely by means of the circula
tion of matter relating to the dehberations
and the work of the society, but also in the
form of personal contact. Beyond the ex
change of hospitahty in connection with
monthly and quarterly meetings for worship
and for business, there is a constant flow of
itinerating ministers and others of both
sexes between meetings either on special
individual concerns or in the interest of
some single branch of the society's work.
Simple easy intercourse between family
and family, meeting and meeting, is part -of
the fabric of Quaker home-life. Perhaps for
this reason, perhaps just because amongst
the Quakers, in a very true and deep sense,
the world is home and home is the world,
because, in other words, the inner is able
without obstruction to flow out and reaUze
79

THE QUAKERS
itseh in the outer, the sense of family-Ufe,
of home, and fireside, is particularly sweet
and strong. The breaking of family ties is
rare. Tbe failure that leads to the divorce
court is practicaUy unknown.
We may look with wonder and admiration
at the great figures amongst Quaker women,
upon those who built their hves into the
first spreadings of the message; upon those
who went, under the urgency of their faith,
alone into strange lands, where means of
communication were the scantiest; upon the
persecuted and martyred women, the
women of initiative and organizing genius;
upon Anne Knight of Chelmsford pioneering
female suffrage in England, founding the
first poUtical association for women; upon
EUzabeth Fry, after a fuU career as house
keeper, mother, and social worker, turning,
late in hfe, to the prisons of England, and
transforming them, so to say, with her own
hands. But, perhaps, it is in the daUy
home-life of the society that the distinc
tively feminine side of doctrinized and organ
ized Quakerism reaches its fairest develop
ment. 80

CHAPTER VII
THE PRESENT POSITION
The counter-agitation* brought forth in
England by the American Hicksite move
ment, ended, after prolonged discussion and
stress, in a decisive readjustment of the
Society of Friends. There were numerous
secessions into the Evangehcal church and the
Plymouth Brotherhood. There were separa
tions of those who foUowed EUas Hicks in
his repudiation of doctrines and creeds, and
of those who favoured WUbur in protesting
against "book rehgion," reasserting the
doctrines of the Quaker fathers, and in
sisting on simplicity of life; but the society
as a whole was swept forward, under the
leadership of Joseph John Gurney (brother of
EUzabeth Fry), by the invading wave of Pro-
* The Beacon Controversy, so named from Isaac
Crewdson's publication in 1835, expressing Evangelical
views of an advanced type.
81 F

THE QUAKERS
testant evangehcalism. Gurney, coming of
old Quaker stock, though reUgious and pious
and f uU of zeal for the salvation of tbe world,
never grasped the essentials of Quakerism.
He had no touch of the intuitive genius
which makes the mystic. Every line he
has written betrays the Protestant bibhcist,
the man who puts the verbal revelation
before any other whatsoever. He did not
repudiate the Fathers, but he denied that
they had ever questioned the supreme
authority of the scriptures as the guide of
mankind. His strong persuasive personahty re
vived the enthusiasm of the imitative mass
of the society, and once more the Quakers
faced the world. It was a new world. The
reUgious Uberty Friends had prophesied
and worked towards had come at last.
The Test Act had been repealed. Non
conformists were admitted to Parhament
and to the Universities of Oxford and Cam
bridge. The London University had been
established. The emerging Quakers, on
their side, began to break down the barriers
they had erected between themselves and
82

THE PRESENT POSITION
the world by their pecuUarities of speech
and of dress, and showed a tendency to
relax their hostihty towards "art."
They were a Uttle band, tempered and
discipUned by their century of quiet culti
vation of the Quaker faith and method, and
they were at once available for a share,
strikingly disproportionate to their numbers,
in the evangehcal work of an awakening
Christendom. From the time of their emer
gence their missionary labours have been
unremitting. They engaged in prison re
form and the reform of the penal code.
They initiated the reform of the lunacy laws,
working for the substitution of kindly
treatment in special institutions* for the
orthodox method of chains and imprison
ment. They began to educate the poor.
The foundation of their Foreign Missions
dates from this period of revival.
They have widening centres of mission
ary work in India, Madagascar, Syria,
China, and Ceylon. They have been the
* The Friends' Eetreat at York, established in
1796, was the beginning of humane treatment of the
insane in this country. 83

THE QUAKERS
main movers in the work of abohshing the
opium traffic, and are engaged, both at
home and abroad, in aU the many weU-
known efforts towards social ameUoration,
amongst which, perhaps, the leading part
they have taken in experimental phil
anthropy, in educational method (their co
education schools scattered over the country
are models of method, standing for common
sense, humanity, and a wise use of modern
resources), in the housing and betterment
of the lot of the working classes, and in the
establishment of garden suburbs, are par
ticularly worthy of mention.
From their Sunday-school work, begun in
Bristol in 1810, and graduaUy spreading
over the country, has arisen what is per
haps the most widely influential of the
present activities in which Friends are
interested on behalf of the working classes — •
the Adult School Movement. OriginaUy
initiated* in the interest of loafers at street
corners, it has now become a national move
ment, with a complete organization, upwards
of a thousand schools, and a membership
* In 1845 by Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham.
84

THE PRESENT POSITION
in its ninetieth thousand. It is spreading
on the Continent and in America. At the
meetings of its weekly classes, which are
open to aU who care to attend (the men's
and women's classes are held independently),
led by an elected president, who may be an
adherent of any creed or of none, part of
the time is devoted to the consideration of
rehgious questions and part to lecturettes,
debates, readings, and so on. Each school
develops secondary interests and engages in
special work.
Within the society from which this per
petual stream of evangehcal work flows
forth we must distinguish two distinct types
of rehgious culture. There is, first of aU,
the main mass, differing only in its method
of worship from the main body of Protestant
nonconformity — taking, as we have said, its
stand first and foremost upon the scriptures.
In most Quaker meetings to-day this typi-
caUy " Protestant " attitude predominates
numericaUy. But while we recognize this
state of affairs as one of the inevitable con
sequences of any endeavour to found an
" open " church upon a mystical basis, it
85

THE QUAKERS
is, nevertheless, amongst the Quakers, modi
fied, to a certain extent, in two ways : first,
by its subjection to its environment, the
framework of the old Quaker culture, the
training imphed in Fox's method both of
private and pubhc worship, in the expecta
tion of unmediated Divine leadership in aU
the circumstances of Ufe, the training in
freedom from the domination of formulae
and deductions, the insistence on the im
portant meaning of the individual soul.
It is modified, in the second place, by
the nucleus of genuine mystical endowment,
which has persisted through the centuries
at the heart of the Quaker church, both
handed down in the direct Une and coming
in from without; the remnant whose influ
ence has so often made this little church
the sorting-house, so to say, amongst the
sects for mysticaUy minded persons. And
during the last ten years — the years which
have seen such a striking revival of the
interest in mysticism, have felt a clearing
and a growth of the recognition of the im
portance to the race as a whole of mystical
genius, have produced a mass of seriously
86

THE PRESENT POSITION
undertaken studies of this phenomenon
from every point of approach — the Quaker
church has continued increasingly to fulfil
this function. Not only from the sects,
but from the older establishments, and from
the ranks of religiously unclassified "philos
ophy " and "culture," there is a steady
migration towards the Quaker fold.
The vitality of this modern Quaker group
is expressing itseh at the present time in a
twofold activity over and above the home
and foreign missionary work we have aheady
noted. This activity is visible throughout
the society, both in England and in America.
There is, on the one hand, an effort emanat
ing from the more inteUectual section of the
group, to express Quakerism in terms of
modern thought, to reach, as far as may be,
with the help of modern psychology, a
phUosophical " description " of the doctrine
of the " inner light " — a description which
is thought to be much more possible to-day
than it was at the time of George Fox.
This effort, which includes the rewriting in
detail and from original documents of the
history of the Society of Friends, is em-
87

THE QUAKERS
bodied in the work of a httle group of Quaker
writers, prominent amongst whom are the
late John Wilhelm Rowntree, tbe late Miss
Caroline E. Stephen, Dr. Rufus M. Jones,
Mr. WiUiam C. Braithwaite, Mr. Edward
Grubb, and Miss Joan M. Fry. Mr. Edward
Grubb,* perhaps one of the most iUuminating
of the Quaker writers upon the doctrine of
the Inner Light, reahzes with perfect clear
ness that the dogma of the InfaUible Spirit
presents at least as many difficulties as that
of an infaUible Church or Bible ; that in
the case of either of these infalhbihties the
question immediately arises as to " who " is
the infaUible interpreter ? Fox, he points
out, trusted urgency and unaccountabihty
by mere thought processes for the sign of
the higher source. He adds to this that
" the spirit in one man must be tested by
the spirit in many men. The individual
must read his inward state in the hght of
the social spiritual group," . . . and thus
reaches a sort of spiritual democracy. On
the whole, however, his appeal is to ideahsm
as the supplanter of materiaUsm; he claims
* Authority and the Light WitMn.
88

THE PRESENT POSITION
thought as the prius of knowledge, and
identifies consciousness with thought. He
leaves us with the " notional " God of
transcendental ideaUsm, who is just as far
off as the corresponding matter-and-force
God of consistent materialism.
Mr. WiUiam C. Braithwaite is, perhaps,
happier. "The consciousness," he says in
Spiritual Guidance in Quaker Experience*
" that our subjective impression of guidance
needs correction to aUow for the personal
factor, and the sense that truth of aU kinds
and in aU ages is harmoniously related,
naturaUy point to the great advantage of
co-ordinating the hght that has come to our
souls with the hght that has come to others
in our own day or in past ages. This is not
the same thing as merely relying on tradi
tion or accepting an experience second-hand ;
nor does it mean that we refuse to accept
any guidance which goes beyond the experi
ence of others — it means simply that over
the country we have to traverse there are
many paths aheady trodden along which we
may have safe and speedy passage."
* Swarthmoor Lecture. Headley Bros., 1909.
89

THE QUAKERS
Professor Rufus Jones, who has done
much in relation to the psychology of
Quakerism, also voices the corporate idea
in declaring that the Friend must test his
Ught by the larger revelation of his co-
beUevers, and they, again, by the larger
revelation which has come to prophets and
apostles, saints and martyrs; but here,
again, we seem to find ourselves within a
circle of ideas. In place of the simple
homely imagery of Fox, "the seed," "the
Ught," the "new birth," "that which hath
convinced you," we have in these modern
descriptions, it is true, aU the rich and
intricate spatial terminology of modern
science; but, so far, the most successful
efforts in the direction of "description " of
mystical reUgion in modern terms have not
come from the society, where the beUef in,
and the attempt to Uve in sole dependence
upon, the indweUing spirit is stiU, for very
many of its members, the single aim, where
there are still many with whom " knowing "
is more important than "knowing about."
The boldest and clearest sighted, the most
comprehensive and lucid descriptions of the
90

THE PRESENT POSITION
mystic type, of his distinctive genius, his
aim and method, his kinship with his
feUows throughout the ages, the world-old
record of his search and its justification,
are to be found elsewhere.*
Side by side with the attempt to rationaUze
and restate in terms of modern thought the
faith that is in them is a movement enroUing
growing numbers, particularly of younger
Friends, in both continents, in the direction
of expressing Quakerism in terms of modern
life. Home Ufe, social Ufe, business Ufe, every
modern development, is brought to the test
of Quaker principles. There is a spirit
abroad declaring that Quakerism has become
devitahzed; that the reUgious Ufe is stereo
typed and perfunctory; that the joyous, aU-
conquering zeal of the early Friends was
the outcome of a secret unknown to their
foUowers; that the way to the fount at
which they were sustained is lost — that it
may be found again if the daily Ufe is
* In the work, for example, of Miss Evelyn Under
hill, author of Mysticism (Macmillan, 1911), The Mystic
Way (Macmillan, 1913). 91

THE QUAKERS
brought under Divine control. A caU has
gone forth to sacrifice, to scale the heights
of right living in that purer air, that the
sight may grow clear.
Everywhere in Quakerdom we meet this
question as to the secret of tbe early Quakers.
Do we read in tbis outcry an admission of
the failure of group mysticism as it has so
far been attempted by the Society of
Friends ? The little church of the spirit
seems to be at the turning of the ways.
All barriers are down. The rationale of
primitive Quakerism is fuUy estabUshed.
The Quakers no longer stand facing an out
raged or indifferent Christendom. The prin
ciples " discovered " by their founder are
conceded in theory by the religious world as
a whole. WiU they remain in their present position,
which may be described as that of a Pro
testant Ethical Society, with mystical tra
ditions and methods, part of an organized
and nationahzed world-church, suffering the
necessary hmitations of a body thrown open
to aU, converted and unconverted, com
mitted to the necessity of teaching doctrinal
92

THE PRESENT POSITION
"half-truths," organizing necessarily in the
interest of conduct as an end ? or wiU they
constitute themselves an order within, and
co-operating with, the church — an order of
lay mystics, held together externaUy by the
sane and simple discipUne laid down by Fox,
and guarded thus from the dangers to which
mysticism is perenniaUy open; an order of
men and women willing corporately to
fulfil, whUe Uving in the daily hfe of the
world, the conditions of revelation, and ad
mitting to membership only those similarly
willing ; a " free " group of mystics ready
to pay the price, ready to travel along
the way trodden by aU their predecessors,
by aU who have truly yearned for the
uncreated Light ?

93

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1624. Birth of George Fox.
1647. Fox's public ministry begins.
1650. Friends nicknamed Quakers by a Derby magis
trate.
1652. Acquisition of headquarters at Swarthmoor
Hall.
1654. Missions to the South and East.
1656. First Quakers in America.
1657. Fox appeals to Friends on behalf of their slaves.
1678. Barclay's apology published in English.
1681. Pennsylvania founded.
1689. Toleration Act passed.
1691. Death of George Fox.
1760. Reform of Society of Friends.
1835. Modern Evangelical Revival.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Geobge Fox: Journal. Edited by Norman Penney.
Cambridge University Press, 1911.
George Fox: Journal. Bi-centenary edition in two
volumes. Headley.
Geoege Fox: Works. Eight volumes. Philadelphia,
1831.
94

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robert Barclay : An Apology for the True Christian
Divinity. In English, 1678.
William Penn: No Cross, No Crown.
John Woolman : Journal.
Caroline E. Stephen: Quaker Strongholds. Headley,
1907.
John Wilhelm Rowntree: Essays and Addresses.
Headley, 1905.
T. Edmund Harvey: The Rise of the Quakers. Head-
ley, 1905.
Elizabeth B. Emmott: The Story of Quakerism.
Headley, 1908.
Allen C. Thomas: The History of the Society of
Friends in America.
Rufus M. Jones: The Quakers in the American
Colonies. Macmillan, 1912.
Rttfus M. Jones : Social Law in the Spiritual World.
Headley, 1905.
Rufus M. Jones: Studies in Mystical Religion. Mac
millan, 1909.
Rttfus M. Jones: Children of the Light (Anthology
of Quaker Mystics). Headley, 1909.
Evelyn Underhill : Mysticism. Macmillan, 1911.
William C. Braithwaite: The Beginnings of Quaker
ism. Macmillan, 1912.
William C. Braithwaite: Spiritual Guidance in
Quaker Experience. Headley, 1909.
Edward Grubb: Authority and the Light Within.
Clarke, 1908.
The Book of Discipline. Successive editions from 1783.
The Society of Friends. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Eleventh edition.
95

NOTE
The bulk of Quaker hterature falls into two
main groups: (l)The voluminous writings
of the early Quakers — journals, epistles,
doctrinal works, and controversial matter —
most of which were issued under the censor
ship of a body of Friends meeting in Lon
don, while a large mass of unprinted manu
scripts and transcripts of manuscripts, ad
mirably classified and indexed, is available
at the headquarters of the Society, Devon
shire House, Bishopsgate, whose hbrary
contains also the largest coUection of books
relating to the Society ; (2) the modern out
put of history, commentary, expository,
apology, and evangeUstic writing.
Most of the printed works of George Fox
have been coUected in the eight volumes of
the Philadelphia edition. A considerable
quantity is still in manuscript. The Cam
bridge edition of his Journal is particularly
interesting in having been printed unaltered
from the original manuscript. It is incom
plete, and is best supplemented by the
bi-centenary edition (see Bibliography).

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