body of Protestant Dissenters, so named by the public at large, but styled by themselves, “The Society of Friends.” This society was founded by George Fox in the year 1647. The Friends are remarkable for differing from the community in religious doctrines, mode of worship, and social customs, more than any other body of Christians; and it may safely be asserted that their character has been less understood, and more seriously misrepresented, than that of almost any other religious association of modern times. Mosheim, Neale, Formey, Voltaire, and Hume have given us descriptions of the Society of Friends, of which it would be difficult to say which abounds most in ignorant mistakes or wilful distortions. Of late years a fairer estimate of these people has manifested itself in the public mind. Men of deep thinking and eminent genius have been led to examine their history and writings, and have pronounced decisions upon them very different from those of the authors just mentioned. Coleridge, in his *Biographia Literaria*, says, “One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist foils on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect as bursts forth in many a simple page of George Fox.” Thomas Carlyle, in his *Sartor Resartus*, pronounces George Fox “the greatest of modern reformers;” and Charles Lamb, in the *Essays of Elia*, declares, that “Sewell’s History of the Quakers is worth all other ecclesiastical history put together.”

We shall now proceed to give such an account of the rise, progress, and opinions of this society as an intimate acquaintance with it and the writings of its members enables us to furnish, and as will be found amply borne out by a careful reference to the most authentic records, and to its existing condition.

It has commonly been stated that this society was, at its commencement, termed the *Family of Love*, or *Seekers*. But this is a mistake. The *Seekers* were a people of prior origin, and of very different notions. From their peculiar extravagance, they acquired the name of *Ranters*, and seem to have been the very people that Butler had in his eye when writing his * Hudibras*. They held that

Saints may do the same things by The spirit in sincerity Which other men are tempted to, And at the devil’s instance do, And yet the actions be contrary, Just as the saints and sinners vary.

The attempt to confound the Quakers with this sect was origin of one of the first acts employed by the enemies of Quakerism the term to stamp it with opprobrium. Fox occasionally fell in with Quaker them in his travels, and sharply reproved them for their errors. The Friends, for some time after they had been gathered into a distinct body, were known only by the name of “the Professors of the Light,” or “Children of the Light,” from “their fundamental principle, which,” to use the words of William Penn, “is as the corner-stone of their fabric; and, indeed, to speak eminently and properly, their characteristic or main distinguishing point or principle, viz., the light of Christ within, as God’s gift for man’s salvation; the root of the goodly tree of doctrine that grew and branched out of it.” They were known by no other name till 1650; three years after the commencement of their society, when George Fox being brought before the magistrates of Derby for preaching there, and telling them to “quake at the name of the Lord,” one of them, Gervase Bennett, an Independent, caught up the word, and called him and his friends *Quakers*. That was the real origin of the term Quaker; “a term which,” says Sewell, their historian, “so caught the public fancy, and especially that of the priests, that they sounded it gladly abroad, never after that time giving any other name to the professors of the Light, so that it soon ran all over England, and making no stand there, it quickly reached the neighbouring countries; and that English name sounding very oddly in the ears of foreigners, hath given occasion to many silly stories.”

Perhaps to no great reformer has so little justice been paid done as to George Fox. Beyond the pale of his own society his character has in fact never been understood. By some grave and even eminent writers he has been denounced as a silly enthusiast; by others as a blasphemer; and others, again, have denied that he was the founder of Quakerism at all. No statements can be more at variance with the truth. For three or four years after his first setting out he was the sole preacher of the society. It was

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1 Penn’s Rise and Progress of the Quakers, 12th edition, p. 12; Sewell’s History of the Quakers, 5th edition, l. 10; Gough’s History of the Quakers, l. 33. 2 Penn’s Rise and Progress, p. 18. 3 Sewell’s History, l. 43. Quakers, he, as may be abundantly seen in the histories of the society, and the writings of his most celebrated disciples, who gave its character and constitution to this religious association. They are his opinions, his feelings, his tone of mind, which stamped it with its peculiar form and spirit. That in the fervour of his enthusiasm, and the elation of brilliant success, he ran into some fanatical extravagances, and even absurdities, is what is perhaps inseparable from the career of a sanguine advocate of great moral and social changes; and we shall soon point to some of these, in tracing his exertions for the organization of his infant society. There have indeed been one or two documents, a letter to Cromwell, and a letter to himself from the wife and daughters of Judge Fell, raked up out of a vast mass of manuscripts left behind him, and eagerly and repeatedly pushed before the public by his enemies, and recently again by some seceders from the Quakers themselves, in order to stamp him as a blasphemer, and a man open to the silliest adulation. It is not by such a mode, however, that the genuine character of any man is to be decided, but by a careful examination and candid judgment of his whole life and works. Did we apply so one-sided and unphilosophical a test to that of any great reformer, what should we now think of Luther, Jerome of Prague, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, or many others? If we shut our eyes to the nobler points of their characters, and opened them only to their defects; if we estimated Jerome of Prague by his recantation, Luther by his notions of combats with the devil, Calvin by the burning of Servetus, Knox by his zeal in the demolition of cathedrals, or Wesley by his belief in omens and apparitions, what an absurd verdict should we pass upon these great men! Such, however, has generally been the mode of judging of George Fox; whilst his labours, and religious and moral doctrines recorded by himself and the historians of the society, mark him as one of the most extraordinary men of his age. We shall soon have to observe upon how many important points of morals and manners he called in question the received opinions of his time; nor whatever his sagacious mind had once embraced as truth, he had the integrity and boldness to proclaim everywhere. He advanced into the presence of princes, and proclaimed it there in the same fulness, and with the same ease and freedom, as he did amongst his own peers. Yet with this daring and determined spirit, his contemporary disciples are unanimous in attesting his gentleness and unassuming modesty amongst them. The testimony of his eminent friend William Penn, who had seen much of society in all its gradations, is that of all those who knew him best. "He was a man that God endued with a clear and wonderful depth; a dissembler of others' spirits, and very much master of his own... He was of an innocent life, no busy-body nor self-seeker; neither touchy nor critical... So meek, contented, modest, easy, steady, tender, it was a pleasure to be in his company. He exercised no authority but over evil, and that everywhere and in all; but with love, compassion, and long-suffering. A most merciful man, as ready to forgive as unapt to take or give an offence. Thousands can truly say he was of an excellent spirit and savour amongst them, and because thereof the most excellent spirits loved him with an unsignified and unfading love."

George Fox was born of humble parents at Drayton in Leicestershire. In the quaint language of Sewel, "his father was Christopher Fox, a weaver by trade, an honest man, and of such a virtuous life that his neighbours used to call him righteous Christler. His mother was Mary Lago, an upright woman, and of the stock of the martyrs." George was put apprentice to "a shoemaker that dealt also in wool and in cattle;" but he became most attached to the agricultural part of his master's business. His humble origin and education have often been adverted to, as implying a stigma upon Quakerism; but it is unquestionably to this circumstance that Quakerism owes its most distinguishing features, and probably the greatest amount of good that it has done, or may yet do, in the world.

As Fox grew up, pursuing his solitary occupations in the fields, his strong mind soon began to employ itself on the subject of the utmost moment to a mortal creature, the grounds of his hopes of a future existence, and the true understanding of the Scriptures. That which, at a first view, seemed to be a disadvantage to Fox, his want of learning and his obscurity of station, have, through the native vigour of his intellect, become eminently advantageous. His mind was neither tramelled by creeds, nor directed by classical or other knowledge, nor misled by the glimmerings of school philosophy. He was thrown, by his absolute want of a higher education, on his Bible. The whole strength and earnestness of his understanding were concentrated on the inquiry into the doctrines it contained; and he seems, with a wonderful clearness and singleness of eye, to have at once comprehended the pure and simple system of the Christian faith. He embraced it heartily and for ever. No bias of selfishness, no hopes of honour or of gain, ever appeared to weigh with him for a moment; it was to Christianity for itself alone that he attached himself, and he set out to proclaim it in the face of the world, with that boldness which always distinguished him. At first his travels were principally through the midland counties, where he convinced great numbers of his principles. For four years he appears, as already stated, to have been the only preacher of those principles; and, what is singular, the second preacher of Quakerism was a woman named Elizabeth Horton. In the fifth year of Quakerism there were, however, according to Sewel, no less than twenty-five preachers, and in the seventh year upwards of sixty. These, traversing the kingdom in all directions, excited an extraordinary commotion. But in order fully to understand the uproar which the preaching of Quakerism created, it is necessary to call to mind the features of that age, and to see what the doctrines of Fox really were.

George Fox made his appearance just as the struggle between the crown and the people was drawing to a close. Charles I. was already in the hands of the Parliament. The Fox monarchy had been destroyed, and the public mind was full of new schemes of liberty and legislation. Then came the struggle between the Parliament and the military power. Not only the monarchy and the Parliament, but the church establishment itself, fell. Men soon began to grow weary of alternate tyranny and lawlessness both in ecclesiastical and in political matters. They were disgusted, too, with the greediness of priests of different denominations, struggling shamelessly for power and wealth. The diffusion of the Scriptures during the respective reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth had now made them pretty common in the hands of the people. Thousands and tens of thousands were scattered throughout the country, who were become dissatisfied with the old institutions, and anxious to ally themselves with some body, the doctrines and practice of which were more consonant to their newly-awakened ideas. But they were not merely on the watch; they were in a state of high excitement. The novelty and animating nature of the doctrines of the gospel, and perhaps still more the splendour of eastern metaphor exhibited in the prophetical writings, had thrown them everywhere into a sort of spiritual intoxication. When, therefore, George Fox made his progress through the country, his voice was like a trumpet to collect around him hosts of inquirers. Priests, notwithstanding the opposition of their order, left their pulpits; officers in the army, judges, gentle-

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1 Penn's Rise and Progress, pp. 53-56. 2 Sewel's History, i. ii. men, mechanics, and husbandmen; all classes, indeed, flocked round him, and found in his system of a free gospel, and renouncement of the vanities of the times, that which they had hitherto sought in vain.

The doctrines which Fox taught, and which have been received and are still held as the true faith by the Society of Friends, are principally the following:

1st. The great foundation and corner-stone of Quakerism, as William Penn justly terms it, is the doctrine of the Inward Light, founded on various passages of Scripture, but especially on the words of the gospel according to St. John, that "Christ is the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." They believe in the words of a document, issued by themselves, that "every man coming into the world is endued with a measure of this light, grace, and spirit of Christ, by which, as it is attended to, he is enabled to distinguish good from evil, and to correct the disorderly passions and corrupt propensities of his nature; and that without the spirit inwardly revealed, man can do nothing to the glory of God, or to effect his own salvation."

2d. The spirituality of Christianity is a doctrine which flows directly from this root, and hence they believe in the non-essentiality of religious ceremonies. "We think," say they, "this influence (the influence of the Spirit of Christ) especially necessary to the performance of the highest act of which the human soul is capable, even the worship of the Father of lights and spirits, in spirit and in truth; therefore we consider as obstructions to pure worship all forms which divert the attention of the mind from the secret influence of this unction from the Holy One. (1 John ii. 20-27.) They cannot, therefore, admit of any fixed liturgy, any stated forms of prayer, or any regular preaching. "Yet, although true worship is not confined to time and place, we think it incumbent on Christians to meet often together (Heb. x. 25), in testimony of their dependence on the heavenly Father, and for a renewal of their spiritual strength; nevertheless, in the performance of worship, we dare not depend for our acceptance with him on a formal repetition of the words and experiences of others; but we believe it to be our duty to cease from the activity of the imagination, and to wait in silence to have a true sight of our condition bestowed upon us." On this ground the sole outward act of worship amongst the Friends consists in meeting together and sitting down in silence, without any singing, or stated prayers or sermon.

3d. From the same great fundamental tenet of the society it directly flows, that as this influence is absolutely necessary to the performance of individual worship, it is more especially so in the exercise of the ministry. There can be no preaching unless the preacher immediately feel himself moved to speak; therefore there can be no electing of particular individuals by the church, or education of them for the office of the ministry. It implies a ministry entirely of divine ordination, and without the participation of any human authority. According to this faith, there is and can be no paid priesthood. The gospel is a free gift to be freely exercised.

4th. The Friends do not hold the doctrine of the Trinity according to the common acceptation of the word. They think it safest on this mysterious subject to confine themselves to the terms of Scripture; and these are the words of their confession on this subject:—"We agree with other professors of the Christian name in the belief in One Eternal God, the Creator and Preserver of the universe; and in Jesus Christ his Son, the Messiah and Mediator of the New Covenant (Heb. xii. 24)."

5th. The belief in the entire spirituality of the gospel system has led the Friends to consider some rites received and practised by other bodies of Christians as non-essential. "There are two ceremonies in use amongst most professors of the Christian name,—water baptism, and what is termed the Lord's Supper. The first of these is generally considered as the essential means of initiation into the church of Christ, and the latter of maintaining communion with him. But as we have been convinced that nothing short of his redeeming power, inwardly revealed, can set the soul free from the thraldom of sin, by this power alone we believe salvation to be effected. We hold, that as there is one Lord and one faith (Eph. iv. 5), so his baptism is one in nature and operation; that nothing short of it can make us living members of his mystical body; and that the baptism of water, administered by his forerunner John, belonged, as the latter confessed, to an inferior and decreasing dispensation (John iii. 30). With respect to the other rite, we believe that communion between Christ and his church is not maintained by that nor by any other external performance, but only by a real participation in his divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4) through faith; that is the supper alluded to in the Revelations (Rev. iii. 20). 'Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and be with me;' and that where the substance is attained, it is unnecessary to attend to the shadow, which doth not confer grace, and concerning which opinions so different, and animosities so violent, have arisen."

6th. Their great doctrine of the inward light necessarily implies the doctrine of repentance and a new life; in the words of Penn, "Repentance from dead works to serve the living God, which comprehends three operations:—First, a sight of sin; secondly, a sense and godly sorrow for sin; thirdly, an amendment for the time to come. This was the repentance they (the first Quakers) preached and pressed, and a natural result of the principle they turned all people unto."

7th. "From hence sprung another doctrine which they were led to declare. Perfection from sin, according to the Scriptures of truth, which testify it to be the end of Christ's coming, and the nature of his kingdom, and for which his Spirit was and is given,—viz., to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and holy because God is holy.... But they never held a perfection of wisdom and glory in this life, or from natural infirmities, or death, as some have, with a weak and ill mind imagined and insinuated against them."

Such are the great and strictly religious doctrines of the Society of Friends. There are others which they hold in common with other Christians, and which need not be enumerated here; but there are others, again, constituting a great system of philosophy, of morals, and manners, which distinguished the faith of George Fox from that of his predecessors and contemporaries, and which, if permitted to operate freely throughout society, would unquestionably produce the most amazing and beneficent changes. In the gospel declarations, that "God made of one blood all the nations of the earth," and that "he is no respecter of persons," he perceived nothing less than a charter of the most perfect freedom and equality of right to the whole human race. He carried out this idea so liberally, that he extended it to the female part of the community. He declared the equality of the sexes; that there is no sex in souls, but all are one in Christ Jesus; and on this ground he gave the female Friends a participation in the civil economy of the society. He extended this doctrine to all nations and colours; one right and one law for all men, whether white or black. In the declaration of Christ the heathen lorded it over one another, but it should not be so amongst his disciples, where he saw the law of brother-

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1 Penn's Rite and Progress, p. 19. 2 Ibid., p. 19. Quakers.

This law once recognised, he could no longer recognise the contrary law of bloodshed and revenge; he was bound to pronounce the anti-Christianity of war. He pronounced the anti-Christianity of all oaths, on the clear and unequivocal command of Christ, "Swear not at all."

He regarded Christianity as a heavenly dispensation, sent down to draw us from the follies and vanities of the world, and the very essence of which consisted in a renewed vitality of mind. This led him to resist, despise, and expose those assumptions of absurd titles, those demands of servile obeisance and empty flatteries by mere wealth and fictitious rank, which degrade both givers and receivers, and fill the world with so much misery and heart-burnings, so much meanness and pride. On this principle, he adopted the utmost simplicity of dress and manners. He resumed the original use of thee and thou to a single person, the more so as you was then used to a rich person, and thou to a poor one. He abandoned the practice of what he called "hat-homage," taking off the hat, and bowing, as marks of obeisance to superiors. He refused to address persons of rank by the titles of your Majesty, your Excellency, your Grace, &c., looking upon it as the basest flattery, where there happened to be neither majesty, excellency, nor grace. Believing in the authenticity of no ministry but such as depended alone upon the teaching of the Holy Ghost, he denied the right to tithes, church-rates, or any compulsory payments to the support of a priesthood. As he regarded the ceremony of marriage as requiring for its celebration no interference of a minister of the gospel, he refused the mode adopted at the altars of the Established Church, and introduced a simple form of marriage in the meetings of his own society. He rejected the common customs of mourning and burial, as not being in accordance with the simplicity of the gospel. Regarding the names of the months and days of the week as originating in mythological idolatry, he substituted a mere numerical nomenclature. Various practices and social indulgences, as singing, dancing, music, the frequenting of theatres and other places of public amusement, playing at games of chance for money, drinking of healths, horse-racing, and field-sports, were renounced and discouraged by him, as incurring waste of time, or as inconsistent with the serious hopes and duties of Christians. These innovations were all adopted by the Society of Friends, and became fixed rules of practice.

It is obvious that a system like this could not be promulgated without setting in array against it an innumerable host of enemies. There was scarcely a custom of society, or a profession in it, at which it did not aim a severe blow. The church, the army, the law, each felt that it was menaced with decay or change. Royalty saw that if this doctrine succeeded, it would lop off the right arm of arbitrary power, for it could not flatter the divine right of kings. The clergy saw that it did not object to this or that dogma, this or that ceremony, like the Puritans, but it assailed, root and branch, state religion itself. If Quakerism succeeded, where would be the soldier and the marine; where the gainful trade of litigation? It was a system which aimed a death-blow at the flatteries of the world, and the self-gratulation and self-indulgent spirit of human nature; and it was accordingly speedily saluted with one general and furious tempest of hatred and vengeance.

But, before turning to the persecutions of the Quakers, we must first notice the singular zeal, and as singular enterprises, of their first ministers. It has been stated that in the seventh year of Quakerism these ministers amounted to upwards of sixty. These numbers continued for some years to increase rapidly; and they were animated with a surprising spirit of proselytism. Of these, Francis Howgill, John Audland, Samuel Fisher, had been clergymen; George Bishop, Richard Hubberthorn, William Ames, officers in the army; Anthony Pearson, John Crook, justices of peace. Of the rest, Edward Burrough, Robert Farnsworth, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, John Camm, Thomas Lowe, William Caton, and James Parnell, were amongst the most eminent. William Penn and Robert Barclay, two of their most celebrated members, did not join the society till about twenty years after its formation. There was also a considerable number of women-preachers, who displayed a spirit as bold and zealous as the men.

Firmly persuaded that they were actuated by the immediate influence and revelation of the Divine Spirit, and ordained to restore the primitive form and simplicity of the Christian faith, the Quaker preachers traversed every quarter of the United Kingdom, entering the churches of the establishment, denouncing their ceremonies and doctrines, telling the people that they were come to call them off from such things, from "the beggarly elements" of outward observances and outward teachers, to the great Inward Teacher; that the ground on which these churches stood was no more holy than any other ground; and that sprinkling with water, putting on of surplices, and repeating ready-made prayers, were but relics of Popery. As these clergy and churches were maintained by the nation, they conceived that they had the clearest right to call upon the nation to look into them. They did not stop here; they believed it their duty to address solemn warnings to magistrates, to Parliament, to the protector or the king as it might be, and what they regarded as their duty to the public. George Fox, Edward Burrough, Samuel Fisher, George Whitehead, and others of the Friends, had repeated interviews with Cromwell, Charles II., and other monarchs; and William Penn was a regular visitor at court during the short reign of James II. Many of the preachers extended their travels to France, Germany, Holland, and America. George Fox himself visited Holland, America, and the West Indies. Penn and Barclay visited Holland and Germany, and were received with the most cordial sympathy by Elizabeth, the princess of the palatinate, who entered into a religious correspondence with them.

Their success, and perhaps the very heat and opposition of the times, so stimulated their zeal and confirmed and strengthened their opinions, that they now declared that they moved in the same spirit and power as the apostles. George Fox declared them little better than impostors who did not possess and act in that power and spirit. He believed that by the Inward Light, not only the Scriptures, but both the intellectual and physical world, were opened to him. "He knew not only a renewing of the heart, and a restoration of the mind, but the virtues of the creatures were also opened to him;" so that he began to deliberate whether he should practise physic for the good of mankind. . . . The three great professions in the world, physic, divinity and law, were opened to him," &c. He worked miracles, according to his own testimony and that of his friends. He cured a woman of a distracted mind, by merely telling her, in the name of the Lord, to be quiet. He commanded a man at Arnside to stretch out his withered arm, and it was restored. But he believed himself not only endowed with the apostolic, but with the prophetic power. He foretold to Judge Fell, a fortnight before anybody else dreamed of such a thing, the dissolution of the Parliament by force. He had a vision of an angel with a fiery sword, prophetic of the great fire in London. Meeting Cromwell riding in Hampton Court Park, as he drew near, "he perceived a waft of death go forth from him." Cromwell invited him to come to the palace, but on going the next day he found him already on his death-bed. He exercised the same gift on many other occasions, foretelling judgments on his persecutors. His coadjutors laid claim to the same revelations. They were zealous to the last to address warnings to magistrates and to governments; as Francis Howgill to Cromwell; Samuel Fisher to the Parliament; Edward Burrough to Cromwell and his council, &c. They foretold events. Thomas Aldam foretold the fall of Cromwell; George Bishop, the great plague in London; Thomas Ibbit, Humphry Smith, George Fox the younger, and Thomas Briggs, the great fire of London; Edward Burrough, the death of Cromwell, his own death, and various other events. They exhibited signs, like the ancient prophets. A woman went into the Parliament in 1658, with a pitcher in her hand, and breaking it, told them, so should they be broken to pieces. Thomas Aldam took off his cap before the Protector, and tearing it to pieces, said, "so shall the government be rent from thee and thy house." In 1660 Robert Huntington went into the church at Brough, near Carlisle, wrapped in a white sheet, and with a halter about his neck, to show the Independents and Presbyterians that the surplice would be introduced again, and that some of them would be hanged. A woman appeared in a Protestant church at Dieppe, in sackcloth and ashes. Thomas Ibbit, two days before the fire of London, dismounted from his horse with his clothes hanging loosely about him, as though he had come in great haste, and went about the city denouncing judgment. Solomon Eccles went into a Catholic chapel at Galway in Ireland, and when the people were on their knees, appeared naked above his waist, with a chafing-dish of coals and burning brimstone on his head, and crying "Woe to these idolatrous worshippers," declared that God had sent him to show them their portion, unless they repented. The same man went into a church in Aldermanbury in 1659, and seating himself on the pulpit-cushion, in the face of the audience, began to sew. In 1662 Daniel Baker, being in a ship becalmed opposite to Gibraltar, went ashore on Maunday Thursday, proceeded to the mass-house, and amid the people at high mass he rent his clothes, discovering sackcloth on his body; then taking his hat from his head, he threw it on the ground and stamped on it, and calling on them to repent, so passed away.

But the zeal of the first Quakers could not expend itself even in these extraordinary demonstrations; many of them set out to the very ends of the earth, with what they believed to be commissions from on high. One young woman, Mary Fisher, proceeded to Adrianople (although once stopped at Venice, and sent back by the British consul) to convert the Grand Turk, who received her in the most courteous manner. Two others, Catharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, went to Malta to reclaim the Catholic inhabitants, but did not meet with so handsome a reception as their sister had done from the Sultan. They were clapped into the prison of the Inquisition, and only liberated after a four years' imprisonment, through the interference of Lord D'Aubigny. John Love, John Perrot, Samuel Fisher, and John Stubbs went to Rome, to testify, in the presence of the Pope and cardinals, against their superstitions. Love died in the Inquisition, but the others escaped. George Robison travelled to Jerusalem to denounce the trade which the friars made of the holy sepulchre, and to convert the Mohammedans, and also returned safe. Others crossed to New England, where we shall have occasion to speak of them immediately.

The persecutions which the Friends suffered forms another remarkable chapter in their history, and one in which they appear to great advantage. We have seen what were their doctrines, and that their promulgation was sure to plunge them into a sea of suffering. This was soon verified. Wherever they appeared, the clergy, who justly looked upon them as the most daring and determined enemies that ever appeared against them (for they everywhere declared to the people that their system was anti-Christian, and rotten to the very core), on all hands roused the civil and military powers against them. Wherever they preached they were hauled before the magistrates, fined or imprisoned; but though the persecution waxed hotter and fiercer every day, they never for a moment flinched, or remitted their activity in travelling and preaching all over the country. No persecution in modern times fell more heavily or savagely upon any people; and it must be said, to the honour of the society, that no people ever stood up more firmly for the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. The trials of the Friends, and especially that of John Crook in 1662, and that of William Penn and William Mead in 1670, at the Old Bailey, will for ever remain as noble monuments of their resistance to the arbitrary proceedings of the courts of judicature at that time, and their violent infringement of the privilege of jury. In the latter case there happened to be a noble jury, who, insensible to the most atrocious attempts made by the court to force a verdict, were shut up without "meat, drink, fire, or tobacco," for two nights and a day, and, still remaining immoveable, were conveyed with the prisoners to Newgate.

The enemies of the Quakers were furnished with abundant means of oppression, in the various acts which had been passed since the days of Henry VIII. till then, against the Popish recusants, and otherwise, to compel conformity to the Established Church. There was the 27th of Henry VIII.; the 1st of Elizabeth, for twelvepence a day; the 5th of Eliz. De Excommunicato cepiendo; the 35th of Elizabeth, for abjuring the realm, on pain of death; the 3rd of James I. for praemunire, imprisonment for life, and confiscation of estate; the 13th and 14th of Charles II. for transporting Quakers; the 17th of Charles II. against Nonconformists; the 22d of Charles II. against seditious conventicles. They were so surrounded with snares that there existed not a chance of escape if there were the slightest desire to punish them. If all charges against them failed on any occasion, there was the oath of allegiance and supremacy always ready to present to them; and the Quakers could not take any oath whatever. But by the last act against conventicles, passed in 1670, they were completely given up as a prey to the informers. Any five persons convicted of being present in one house, over and above the ordinary family, were to be Quakers fined five shillings for the first offence, ten for a second, twenty pounds for preaching, forty for a second offence, and twenty pounds for the building in which the meeting was held, the whole to be levied by distress; and if any one person could not pay his fine, it was to be levied on any one or more who could, the informer receiving one-third of the amount. Under such temptations to low cupidity, loss of their property and imprisonment of their persons spread throughout the whole country. Cromwell and Charles II. both professed a desire to stay this persecution, but they took few measures to effect this object; on the contrary, during the whole reign of Charles persecution raged more and more vehemently. Their sufferings lasted thirty years, and the simple matter-of-fact relation of them fills two large folio volumes of more than one thousand four hundred closely-printed pages. The prisons were full of them, and these prisons were pestilential dungeons, of which we can now hardly credit the description. In them there were at one time 4200 Quakers. The prisons of London had suffocating crowds in them, and the celebrated hole in Newgate was the death of numbers. Ellwood, the friend of Milton, and who had the honour to suggest the composition of Paradise Regained, was in Newgate amongst these numbers, and has left us, in his Life, some curious sketches of those scenes. The majority of the first preachers of Quakerism died in prison. In 1662 twenty Friends died in the London jails; in 1664 twenty-five more; in 1665 fifty-two others, besides seven who died after liberation, in consequence of their treatment during confinement. According to Besse, the historian of their sufferings, the total number of Friends who perished in prison during this period was 369. In Bristol at one time every adult was in prison. In London in 1670 Charles issued an order, signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and thirteen others, commanding Mr. Christopher Wren to pull down their meeting-houses at Ratcliffe and Horsleydown, which was done, and the materials sold. Peel meeting-house was ransacked, and stripped of doors and windows. Their other meeting-houses were nailed up; and the Friends, who met on the ruins, or in the street, were driven away by soldiers, mercilessly beaten with the butt-ends of their muskets, and some of them killed. Throughout the severe winter of 1683, these steadfast people collected in the streets to worship, in spite of all pains and penalties, and suffered incredible hardships and insults. The dead were disinterred from their graves; women and children were dragged by the hair along the streets; some were pricked with needles and bodkins, and others were sold to the sugar plantations. Meantime their property was at the mercy of constables and informers, who wrenched open their doors with sledge-hammers and screws, and carried off everything, to the very children's food, often leaving not a tool to work with, or a horse to plough the land. In many instances these fellows, where the men were in prison, carried the keys of their houses in their pockets, went in and out as they pleased, declaring that they would "eat of the best and drink of the sweetest, and these rogues of Quakers should pay for all." There was levied at one time on the Friends at Bristol, for fines, L16,400; and, from a careful examination of the records of the society, it clearly appears that property was taken or destroyed at that period to the amount of upwards of one million sterling.

This sketch of their persecutions would not be perfect if we omitted their treatment in New England. There, the colony of Independents, whose history is so well known from the circumstance of their having fled from persecution at home, and immediately become persecutors themselves, and whose cruelties to the Indians and to one another form so gloomy a passage in history, no sooner heard that two Quaker women were arrived in the harbour, than they seized on them before they could land, put them in prison, stripped them naked, and barbarously treated them. They ordered three other Quaker women to be stripped to the waist, and flogged through eleven towns, a distance of eighty miles, in all the severity of frost and snow. They then hanged three men and one woman, before a mandate from the king could arrest their bloody course.

The extent of persecution was much diminished by William Penn opening an asylum for his friends in his new state of Pennsylvania, whither great numbers emigrated; and a final stop was put to them by James II. He permitted the Friends to substitute an affirmation instead of an oath; then came the Toleration Act of William II., recognising more fully the rights of conscience; and subsequent acts legalized their marriages, and placed them at ease amongst their fellow-citizens. They still continued their conscientious refusal to pay tithes and church-rates, and these are taken by distraint, to the average annual amount of about L11,000.

It would give an unfair view of the Society of Friends, if, after exhibiting the vehemence of their early zeal, we did not remind the reader of the peculiar spirit and circumstances of that age. Then all the elements of political and religious unrest were in a state of chaotic turbulence, and the whole style of language and of action amongst all denominations was such as would now be pronounced violent and fanatical. The Quakers, in this respect, only partook of the spirit of the age; and to understand them more truly, we must see them in their patient steadfastness under their dreadful misusage, in which they gave the highest evidence of the influence and support of the Divine Spirit. It is to their everlasting honour that they never showed the least symptom of retaliation. Though often urged, when circumstances were in their favour, to denounce their enemies, they had on all such occasions but one answer, "We leave them to the Lord." They not only went on steadily, preaching and convincing thousands, but they set about and organized a system of discipline or church-government, distinguished in a remarkable degree for its order and decorum. In the first place, they established a standing committee in London, called "The Meeting for Sufferings," for receiving the earliest accounts of the persecutions of their friends from all parts of the kingdom, and for taking the promptest measures for their mitigation. It was in this committee that George Fox was to be constantly found to the latest day of his life, whenever in London, anxiously engaged in endeavouring to alleviate the sufferings of the society. The system of discipline then organized, and which continues, in the main, as it was left by the first Quakers, we have now to describe.

Wherever the Friends have a meeting-house, they hold Discipline once a month, after the meeting for worship is over, a meet-ing for disciplining; or, in other words, for all the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the body. Though they do not pay their ministers, they deem it right to defray their expenses when they travel in the ministry. They hold it a Christian duty to support their own poor, and to educate their children. For these purposes they raise the necessary funds by voluntary contribution at these meetings, which are called Preparative Meetings; that is, meetings preparatory to the monthly meetings, which include several preparative meetings. Each preparative meeting appoints representatives to attend the monthly meeting.

The monthly meeting receives the funds for the poor, and appropriates to each meeting what is necessary. It also receives the funds for the public schools, and for what is called "the National Stock;" that is, a fund placed at the disposal of the society at large for general charges; and hands them in by its representatives to the quarterly meeting. In these monthly meetings is chiefly vested the real property of the society, as its meeting-houses, lands, &c. They judge of the fitness of persons applying for member- Quakers excite to due attention to religious and moral duties; and deal with disorderly members. They grant certificates of membership and conduct to those removing into other monthly meetings, without which they could not be received as members. They appoint two or more persons in each particular meeting, called overseers, to watch over the general conduct of the members, maintain the decorum of the meeting, and see the discipline enforced. They appoint also two or more persons, of high religious standing, as elders, to watch over the ministry, to judge of the fitness of such as offer themselves as preachers, and to sympathize with those already acknowledged. It is contrary to the rules of the society for any of its members to go to law with each other; all differences are to be settled by arbitration; and it is the duty of the monthly meetings to deal with such as violate this rule. Parties wishing to marry appear at these meetings and declare their intention; persons are appointed to inquire whether the parties are free from other engagements, and whether they have the consent of parents or guardians. These inquiries being answered in the affirmative, and the parties signifying to the following monthly meeting their continuance in the same mind, are permitted by it to proceed.

Several of these monthly meetings compose a quarterly meeting. A quarterly meeting, indeed, generally embraces one or two counties. At the quarterly meetings are produced, from the monthly meetings, written answers to certain standing queries respecting the conduct of the members, and the meetings' care over them. These accounts are digested into one, and sent on by representatives to the yearly meeting. The money contributions for the national stock, &c., are not forwarded by the representatives from the quarterly meetings to the yearly meeting directly, but by appointed correspondents in each quarterly meeting to the Meeting for Sufferings, which is the fiscal and executive organ of the yearly meeting. Ministers wishing to travel in the ministry in Great Britain must obtain a certificate from their own monthly meeting; and if they extend their views to Ireland, they must take one from the quarterly meeting. The quarterly meetings assist their monthly meetings in difficult cases, and hear any appeals from their judgment.

From the quarterly meetings in spring, representatives are sent to the yearly meeting in London; thus the affairs of the society coming into operation in every meeting in the kingdom, gradually concentrating themselves into one focus, concerns of a local nature being dropped in their own proper sphere, and the monthly or quarterly meetings, and those of a more general interest being carried on to the great annual assembly. To understand, however, the mechanism of the society, it must be explained that these meetings of discipline, monthly, quarterly, and yearly, are not restricted to the representatives only. All members may, and great numbers do, attend them; for not only has every member a right to give an opinion on all public questions, but these meetings offer points of pleasant reunion and acquaintance. It must, too, be understood that the women, simultaneously with the men, but in a separate apartment, hold their own monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings of discipline, in which they watch over the interests, the moral conduct, and the religious consistency of the female portion of the community. There is also, previous to any meeting of discipline, a meeting of ministers and elders, to strengthen each others' hands. To their meeting in London, more commonly called "the Morning Meeting," is intrusted the revision of manuscripts which concern the principles of the society, and the granting of certificates to ministers wishing to travel abroad during the intervals of the yearly meeting. These ministers and elders afterwards take their places in the general meetings of discipline. The ministers are also members of the Meeting for Sufferings, which, as already stated, is the standing committee of the society.

These subordinate and preliminary meetings, then, having been held, the yearly meeting comes on in London in the month of May. There is but one yearly meeting for these united kingdoms, to which come representatives from Scotland and Ireland. But in America, where the great body of the Quakers is now to be found, there are eight yearly meetings, which correspond with the English yearly meeting, and with one another; besides five yearly meetings of what are called Liberal or Hicksite Quakers, with whom neither the English nor the other American Quakers hold any communication. The discipline in all is pretty much the same, and therefore the description of that in London may represent the rest. It elects a clerk, who officiates at once as chairman and secretary, and an assistant-clerk, to relieve him by reading long documents, &c. The meeting is held by adjournment from day to day, and generally continues about ten days. It receives epistles from Friends in Ireland, and the orthodox yearly meetings in America, and appoints committees to draw up answers. It receives and considers the answers to the standing queries on the moral and religious condition of the society, from all the quarterly meetings. Accounts are laid before it by the Meeting for Sufferings of all the seizures for tithes, church-rates, &c. It has committees sitting on the state of the public schools, on the subject of slavery, and on other questions, in which the Friends take great interest, and on which they frequently feel bound to address the crown, petition Parliament, or call upon the public for its attention. It has a committee to receive all appeals against the decision of the quarterly meetings. It alone has power to alter any of the established rules of the society, or to make new ones. It sometimes appoints committees to visit such quarterly meetings as appear in need of help; and it always addresses a general epistle to the society, which is read in every meeting in the kingdom; the women Friends issuing an epistle from their meeting, addressed to the female community exclusively.

In their mode of worship the Friends differ from all other peculiar Christians. Believing all worship to depend upon the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit, and having therefore no paid ministers, no stated prayers, no singing even, they walk into their meeting-house, the men with their hats on, and sit down in silence. They keep on their hats because they do not believe that place to be holier than any other, or that worship is more acceptable at one time than another, but that it is enjoined on us and is good for us, to assemble ourselves together before God. They have no separate pews, but all the men sit together on one row of benches, and all the women on another. They have no pulpit, because they have no fixed preacher; but as they may have several voluntary ones, they have a long raised gallery in front of the congregation, where the ministers sit, the men facing the men, and the women facing the women of the audience. The elders sit with them or with the overseers, in a lower gallery, still facing the meeting. As the ministry is independent of human appointment, so is it of human choice in its distribution. There may be, and often are, half a dozen ministers or more resident, as in large towns, and there may be a succession of sermons and prayers, whilst in great numbers of other meetings there is no minister, nor a word spoken for years together, except it be by travelling ministers, who occasionally visit, not only their meetings, but each family belonging to them.

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1 For all that relates to the civil and religious economy of the society, see its statute-book; The Book of the Rules of Discipline, &c. Such were the early Quakers, and such are the forms of polity and worship which they have left behind them. Those who now see the Friends as they are would scarcely believe them to be descended from so fiery and innovating a race. The old Quakers were vehement in the promulgation of their principles, and aggressive in their attacks on the principles of others. The present Friends neither assail the religious doctrines of others, nor seem anxious to diffuse their own. The virtue of the first Quakers was active, that of the present is passive to a miracle. They cling tenaciously to the outward forms of their system, and to their peculiarities of dress, speech, and renunciation of popular amusements; but the ancient fire which once lit up their body seems to have gone out. They profess to hold their great principles as sacred as their ancestors did, but they show little anxiety to make them known. Much of this remarkable change is plainly attributable to natural causes. The violence of a religious paroxysm determines the length of its duration. When persecution ceased, the Friends found themselves thrown, by their abandonment of the ordinary amusements and tastes of the world, on trade for occupation, and led home for relaxation. They became busy, domestic, and of consequence wealthy. These causes will explain much, but there is another cause which will explain more of the present circumstances of the society; their great tenet, and corner-stone of their faith, the Inward Light. Carrying this doctrine to the extent which they do, that it is the all-sufficient guide; that its guidance is to be sought and waited for; that we must put down before it our own imaginations and reason, and without its impulse we must make no religious movement, it has had this effect; it has acted as a blight upon the ministry. Those who might feel disposed to address their meetings from a simple feeling of love, and desire for the salvation of their fellows, and from a belief that every good motive must come from the source of all good, and would be blessed by Him; these, perhaps the most able members of the body, have yet shrank from the task, because they felt that they should be restrained by the elders, as persons running in their own strength, and in their own natural reason. Those who have not been so sensitive, and have been adopted as ministers, have entered upon a process of putting down every motion and faculty of their own minds, and of waiting for a direct and palpable revelation from heaven. The consequence need not be stated. It is a fact, that since the first days of Quakerism they have had few preachers of extraordinary eloquence or originality of mind. The ministry is now confessedly low, and the sermons heard in their meetings are most frequently commonplace and rambling. The experiment of an unpaid ministry in their hands has been by no means a splendid one. No spread or prevalence of their doctrines has followed, at all answerable to the ground of inspiration assumed. With the exception of two preachers who have lately paid a visit to Australia and the South Sea Islands, they have sent out no missionaries, nor contributed to the funds of those societies which did, because they were not moved to it; as if the evidence of success were not sufficient warrant. In their meetings of discipline the same principle has produced the same effects. Though all profess to live under the influence of the spiritual guide, some are supposed to live under it more habitually. These have acquired the name of Weighty Friends, that is, Friends of weight of character and consequent influence. Instead, therefore, of deciding all questions in these meetings by the ordinary mode of voting, or by a show of hands, a mode, one would have imagined, particularly consonant to their views of natural right, they have adopted the singular one of deciding by weight; that is, by the dicta of the Weighty Friends, who for the most part are men of weighty purses too. These Friends have only to say, "I am of this or that opinion," without assigning any reason, and this is taken as the sense of the meeting, and decides the question. Thus is the government of the society thrown into the hands of an oligarchy of the most dangerous kind; for none can be more dangerous than that of an assumed sanctity; and thus are the advantages of their otherwise popular system curiously neutralized.

The same principle has operated still further. It has damped religious inquiry and discussion. In the common affairs of life and trade, where the Friends have used their understandings, they have shown themselves shrewd and successful; in matters of religion they thought it right to renounce their natural faculties, and wait. When the young have expressed to ministers, or any of their elder Friends, their doubts or uneasiness on any religious point, they have replied, "they did not feel free to discuss such matters;" they advised them to "centre down into their own minds, to turn inward to the infallible guide." The consequence became apparent in a dearth of religious intelligence. There was not the same inquiry into and clear recognition of religious doctrines amongst them as amongst other communities of Christians; and when the spirit of research burst upon them from without they were startled. Many felt themselves like mere children in theology, and were scattered different ways.

These divisions first showed themselves in America in Modern 1827. They originated in objections to the doctrines of a schism very popular and aged minister, Elias Hicks; but at the yearly meeting in Philadelphia that year, it was found that great numbers were of his opinions, and the parties came to an open rupture. The schism soon spread to New York, and the feud raged for some years with great violence, ending eventually in the total disruption of the society in America. It is difficult to state the numbers of the society, because there has always been a reluctance to take a regular census of the body. In the year 1659, from the number of females who signed petitions to Parliament, it was calculated that the number altogether in England was about 30,000. At present, from calculations made by private individuals, there does not appear to be quite 20,000; but in America they have been variously estimated at from 100,000 to 160,000, and may be very safely rated at more than 100,000. The section of the American Quakers calling themselves orthodox state the numbers who avowed the opinions of Elias Hicks at 30,000; the Hicksites themselves claim 60,000. It may therefore be fairly taken for granted that the body there is pretty equally rent in two. The English Quakers renounced the Hicksite Quakers, though these people protested that they held, and had always held, the doctrines of the first Friends in their integrity. Scarcely was this schism effected when the Quakers in England found themselves assailed on the opposite side by a party which had been most urgent with them to disown the Hicksites. This attack appeared in the shape of a publication called A Beacon to the Society of Friends, warning them against the errors of Hicks, and advocating water-baptism, the taking of the Lord's Supper, and other opinions which the Quakers from the first had abandoned. The heats and contentions incident to religious disputes have, on this ground, distracted the society here; some few have withdrawn from the body, and several individuals have been dismissed for adopting ceremonies which Quakerism rejects; but the body itself has hitherto remained entire. It is not necessary here to enter into the points in dispute. It may suffice to say, that the Hicksites are charged with setting the Inward Light above the Scriptures, and the Beaconites with setting the Scriptures above the Inward Light; the Hicksites with running too far into mysticism, and the Beaconites into the "beggarly elements" of outward form. Both parties appeal to Scripture against each other, and the English Friends appeal to it against Quakers. them both. The circumstance to be regretted is, that this society, which has boasted that it "has no creed," and which says, "We require no formal subscription to any articles, either as to the condition of membership, or to qualify for the services of the church; we prefer judging of men by their fruits;" should thus rend itself to pieces about "articles of faith," and the very stuff of which "creeds" are made.

If, however, the Society of Friends, having an "infallible philanthro-guide," has not avoided wandering different ways; if, being "a Society of Friends," they have not avoided bickerings and divisions; they have the honour of being amongst the noblest and most unwearyed philanthropists which the world has ever seen. In this character they have proudly maintained their testimonies. If George Fox was not untouched with the extravagances of his age, he outstripped that age two hundred years in his clear perception of the highest requirements of Christianity. He was amongst the first, if not the first, to call public attention to the dreadfull state of our prisons, to the injustice of capital punishments for mere stealing, and to the atrocious system of confining fresh prisoners with the most thoroughly debased. He declared the anti-christianity of war, oaths, and slavery. In the maintenance of all these great truths, to the recognition of which the world is now but tardily coming, his followers have nobly emulated him. William Penn, by his just treatment of the Indians, and the full liberty of conscience granted in his new state of Pennsylvania, showed the noble lessons he had learned in this school. It was amongst the Friends that the great crusade against Negro slavery commenced in the person of John Woolman, an American minister. From that time to the present the Quakers have never ceased their efforts in that cause. They were the first in England to form an association for the abolition of the slave-trade. Thomas Clarkson, on setting out on his career, found them everywhere ready to co-operate with him, and to the last day of the struggle their purses and personal exertions were never spared. They have not been less zealous in spreading their opinions of the crime and impolicy of war; and in prison discipline Elizabeth Pryor, a name not enough known or honoured, and her more known but not more deserving coadjutor Elizabeth Fry, have merited largely of the public. It is in this point of view, in thus early and steadily, theoretically and practically, exhibiting Christianity in its highest and most beneficent form, "peace on earth and good-will towards men," that the Friends have conferred on society the greatest good of which men can be made the instruments, and deserve from it the most grateful esteem.

Since the first publication of this article, a great change has been going on in the Society of Friends in regard to some of the things to which George Fox and the early Friends objected, and also as regarded certain "testimonies," as they were called, which had originated with the first Friends, or had gradually developed themselves in supposed accordance with the principles of the society. There are certain arts and practices which have nothing evil in themselves, but, on the contrary, are highly esteemed by mankind in general, as having a refining and elevating tendency, which George Fox discouraged the practice of, on the plea that they led to gross abuses, to undesirable associations, or were consumptive of time which might be better employed. Under the host of things to be avoided on such grounds were the fine arts, painting, sculpture, music, singing, and dancing. The fine arts were objected to both because they were, in Fox's time, too frequently employed on meretricious subjects, and to flatter the worst tastes and habits of society. They were made to flatter grossly the mere worldly great, and to perpetuate characters which were better buried in oblivion. Fox thought the only mode of protecting his followers against the pernicious influence of arts so employed was to forbid them altogether. Friends were neither allowed to practise these abused and degraded arts, nor to embellish their houses with specimens even of their better kind, as leading only to a love of the merely ornamental, and to a costly display which fostered ostentation. To adorn their houses with paintings and sculpture was inconsistent with that simplicity of life, and that religious tone of mind, which the Friends were called upon to cultivate in opposition to the spirit of the world.

The objection to painting and sculpture, on account of their abuse, applied still more strongly to music, singing, and dancing. These at that time were too redolent of the sensuous, the frivolous, the false, and the dissipated, to be admitted into the houses of Friends. They led, moreover, directly to worldly acquaintanceships, worldly pleasures, and a worldly tone; to assemblies, theatres, operas, concerts, and parties where mere amusement, at the cost of seriousness and propriety, was the prevalent feature. The Friends regarded, moreover, the years of youth which are requisite to acquire proficiency in painting, music, and the merely elegant accomplishments, as a serious absorption of a period when more solid acquirements demanded almost the whole attention; besides, it was not a singing and piping age to the Friends, but an age of contempt, persecutions, prisons, and tribulations.

Such, then, were the principles and circumstances which shaped and coloured the life of Quakerism, and left their results fixed till a recent period; but during this recent period the members of the society have gradually emerged more familiarly into the intercourse of life at large. They were become wealthy, well-educated, and esteemed for their high moral character. They were come in contact with, in the prosecution of great aims, Bible societies, anti-slavery societies, societies for promoting education and other similar objects; and when, by the acceptance of their affirmation instead of on oath, they were admissible to the magistracy and to Parliament, their intercourse with the best society became more extended.

Under these influences, and under the influence of a very marked and progressive improvement in the public taste as it regarded the fine arts, and consequently from the high moral qualities required as works of art, Friends began to see that the rejection of a good thing on account of its popular abuse was by no means a sound practice; that it became good, intelligent, and independent people to support the moral and religious progress of the arts by adding their own moral momentum, the purifying force of the countenance of the virtuous, to the patronage of what was eminently good in itself. They came, therefore, more and more to recognise what was ameliorating and beneficial to human life in the fine arts; and of late years every one must have remarked the numbers of Friends, especially at the time of the yearly meetings, who have crowded our galleries of painting and sculpture. A considerable number of them became purchasers of good pictures having a high moral purpose. You find such works beginning to embellish their walls, and their children have been carefully educated in drawing, and a taste for it. Though we are not aware of any distinguished painter who is a member of the society, they have distinguished engravers and photographers; and their admiration of fine works of art is now become general. Music is cultivated in a great number of Friends' families; they have an amateur singing society, and it is by no means an uncommon sight to see in the

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1 Sewell, i. 67; Fox's Journal, i. 143. 2 Journal of John Woolman; also Woolman's Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Philadelphia, 1754; Dublin, 1776. Coincident with these social phenomena have appeared, from the same cause, the growth of more liberal ideas in the society, amalgamating with the more moral sentiment of the age in general, other relaxations of the ancient rigour of Quakerism. This rigour had been especially maintained in regard to marriage. They regarded the marriage of one of their members to a person belonging to the world at large, or to another religious body, as leading to many and serious evils,—those of a divided household, divided on the most momentous question, that of religious faith. This unequal yoking they beheld with peculiar repugnance, from its necessary effect on the minds of the children of such marriages, who must grow up under the distracting effects of a diversity of faith in the parents, and in being pulled two ways in attendance on different forms of worship. To discourage such marriages, they did not allow any one to be married at their meetings to one of their members who was not himself or herself a member, although this person might attend their meetings and hold their religious opinions; nor could such a couple be married by a priest, because the Friends had a decided testimony against a "hireling ministry;" and for a Friend to be married by such a minister would constitute a breach of the fundamental principles of the society. All such offenders, unless they took the precaution previously to resign their membership, were disowned,—that is, expelled from membership,—by the society. By this rigour the Friends actually branded a law of nature as an unchristian offence; nor did they relax this rigour when the parties, instead of going to a "hireling minister," could go to a magistrate.

But the quarterly meeting of Yorkshire, taking the start in a more rational view of things, brought a proposition to the yearly meeting in May 1856, suggesting that these rules respecting marriage should be abolished, and marriages allowed betwixt a member of the society, and one not in the society, but professing with it; or even betwixt two persons neither of whom should be a member, but both of whom should attend the meetings of the society and profess its principles; and that these marriages should be solemnized in the manner and in the meetings of Friends.

This bold proposition naturally took the more advanced in age and orthodoxy by surprise. The proposition was warmly debated at that and the succeeding yearly meetings of 1857 and 1858, and by the last was referred for decision to a conference of three hundred members, which met in London on the 2d of November 1858, and by which the proposition was fully acceded to.

But before this conference was brought another question, also marking a great change in the opinion of the society, not in any religious tenet, but in its view of certain social practices. Though neither George Fox nor the early Friends established any particular costume, as is commonly imagined they did, but merely adhered to the fashion of their own day, discarding all sorts of finery from it, the practice of the society in adhering to the fashion of their day, in spite of the perpetual changes of fashion, had, in fact, established a costume of Quakerism in marked contrast to the costume of the present age. The world had gone on changing; the Quakers had endeavoured to stand still. They had not, indeed, been able to stand perfectly still. Spite of themselves, changes and modifications of dress, both in men and women, had gradually stolen in; so that the costume of modern Friends was neither that of the age of Fox and Penn nor of any other age. In the main, it was singularly formal, stiff, bald, and ungraceful.

But in other particulars the first Friends had introduced remarkable changes into their language and customs, in direct opposition to the spirit and practice of the world. As it was the invincible practice of their time to address rich men as "you," and poor men as "thou," they condemned the custom as unchristian and corrupt, and determined to address every one alike in the singular number, as most consonant with the rules of grammar. As the days of the week and the months were for the most part named in honour of heathen gods and heroes, they discarded these names, and designated them only by numerals, as First Day, Second Day; First Month, Second Month, &c. All these reforms, which appear to us now trivial and far-fetched, were, however, founded in the practice of the early Quakers in that noble resistance to everything corrupt, adulterous, invidious, and unjust, which ran through their whole spirit and system.

But the Friends of late saw that the odious practice of saying "thou" to a poor man, and "you" to a rich, had ceased; that the practice of saying "Mr.," "Mrs.," "Sir," or "Madam" in address was no longer a piece of flattery, but of simple courtesy, and of much greater truth than calling any one friend who really was no friend at all. To this conference meeting in November 1858 was referred the question, whether there ought not to be a modification of the fourth of a set of queries which had to be answered once a quarter from every district of the society, the latter part of which query demanded whether Friends were faithful in maintaining "plainness of speech, behaviour, and apparel." It was contended that these words had, through time, acquired a false value; that they must bind Friends to a particular costume which the first Friends never intended, and to a language which only testified against an obsolete custom; that the words in the minds of the first Friends applied only to the practice of simplicity in dress, address, and language, but that they had now obtained another meaning, and went to perpetuate forms which were only sectarian, were not necessarily Christian, and had therefore better be omitted; and the conference also adopted this conclusion. The fiat of the conference has yet to receive the sanction of the yearly meeting; but as it is not likely to stultify its own reference, Friends feel themselves practically released from everything sectarian in regard to speech, behaviour, and apparel; to abandon all that in the world's eye stood as the visible form of Quakerism, and to adopt every one for himself what he deems consonant with the great principles of simplicity and Christian propriety.

Many of the public journals have professed to see in this great change the dissolution of the principles of Quakerism itself; but this arises from an ignorance of what Quakerism really is. Quakerism consists of a body of great Christian principles, which are already detailed in this article. The outward forms, as they became sectarian, only disguised and hid from public view these great principles. Quakerism does not depend, has never depended in the slightest degree, on the forms of caps or coats, or on any forms of speech, but on the high and independent assertion of the great doctrines of Christianity. As is the nature of all artificial props, "the peculiarities" of Quakerism have only tended to cause the Friends to lean on them instead of on their great and real principles, and to deceive the world by an idea of Quakerism as a religion of forms and oddities, whereas it is one of the noblest truths and the most solemn protests against whatever is unjust, oppressive, hollow, degrading, or demoralizing in the principles and practices of the world; and we may feel assured that all these false props being thrown down, and Quakerism left to depend for distinction only on its genuine and undisguised principles, will make those principles more prominent than ever.

For a full account of the schism amongst the American Friends, we must refer to The Friend, and The Herald of Truth, journals published by the opposite parties; The Beacon, and Christian Enquirer; all published in America.