A 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HICKSITE 
 QUAKERS 
 
 AND THEIR 
 
 DOCTRINES 
 
 James M. DeGarmo 
 
 A.M., Ph.D. 
 
 inillilUinllliiii'-. 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029465162 
 
HIcksite Quakers and their doctrines; by 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 465 162 
 
E OUAKi:^: 
 
 GARMO. A.M., Ph.D, 
 
 ■■'. Vr.RK. 
 
 1, UUecatutc Co. 
 
 - - J 
 
/ 
 
 / . 
 
 
 
THE HICKSITE QUAKERS 
 
 AND THEIR DOCTRINES 
 
 $ 
 
 By JAMES M. DeGARMO, A.M., Ph.D, 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Zbc Gbtietfan literature Co, 
 1897 
 
 DFW 
 
Copyright, 1897, 
 By the christian LITERATURE CO. 
 
 ,0, 
 
 / ^ 7 5 ■ a. ; 43 
 
 ^ 
 ^ 
 
 TROW DIKECTORV 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
To 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 MY NOBLE QUAKER FATHER 
 
 AND 
 
 MY SAIXTED QUAKER MOTHER 
 
 WHOSE PUKE AND HOLY LIVES HAVE BEEN A 
 
 PERPETUAL BENEDICTION TO 
 
 J THEIR CHILDREN 
 
 rbls little Uolumc (9 ScMcateJ 
 
 BY THEIR GRATEFUL SON 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This Book is not intended to be in an} 
 sense a liistory of the Hicksite Quakers. It 
 originated in a Paper read by the author 
 before A'assar Brothers' Institute in Pough- 
 keepsie, some years ago. in reply to pubHc 
 utterances of a Clergyman against the 
 Quakers, and the fomi of that address has 
 been partly preser\-ed, tliough it has been 
 entirely rewritten and annotated. Its prep- 
 aration has been rest and recreation for me 
 in my busy life. It has proved a dehghtful 
 task to pass in critical review the faith and 
 practices with which I was familiar in my 
 Boyhood and Youth ; and not only has it 
 revived precious memories with which the 
 past is peopled, but I am not unconscious 
 that the prolonged studies and careful com- 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 parisons into which this work has led me 
 have resulted, for myself, in more definite 
 and more comprehensive views of religious 
 truth in general, and especially of those pri- 
 mary and fundamental truths of Christian- 
 ity, the Immanence of God in the Soul of 
 Man, Man's immediate spiritual commun- 
 ion with Him, and His revelation of Him- 
 self in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 I am not disinclined to believe that upon 
 these fundamental doctrines, with truly 
 catholic liberty of interpretation, all Protes- 
 tant Christians may yet join in a common 
 worship, and the scattered fragments of the 
 Church be re-united into the aggressive 
 army of Truth and Progress. 
 
 This Essay has been severely criticised 
 for the use of the term " Quakers " instead 
 of " Friends," the name they themselves 
 prefer. It is urged that this is not their 
 chosen designation, but that they were 
 called " Quakers " in reproach. This is no 
 doubt true, but what was intended as a re- 
 proach, has become an honor ; what was 
 
Preface. . vii 
 
 fixed upon them as a stigma, has become 
 a crown of glory. The world knows what 
 we mean by " Quakers " ; the expression 
 has passed into history, and for me and 
 many another of their descendants it has 
 associations that cannot easily be sacrificed. 
 So I accept the censure, and retain the 
 name as it was written. 
 
 It will easily be noticed that I have used 
 the past and present tenses almost inter- 
 changeably. It was inevitable that this 
 should be so. My intimate associations 
 with the Quakers as a Society were in the 
 past, in youth's Golden Days, but my ad- 
 miration for their character, and my love for 
 their blessed spirituality are living facts of 
 the present. So I let the confusion of tenses 
 stand, conscious that if it is not the best in 
 a literary sense, it is at least the true reflec- 
 tion of my own mind, and of the moods in 
 which the work has been done. 
 
 In addition to my own experiences 
 among the Quakers, and to the authorita- 
 tive Discipline of the Society, I am much 
 
via Preface. 
 
 indebted to two little Books for succinct 
 resumes of Hicksite Quaker Doctrine. The 
 one is " Essays on the views of Friends," by 
 John J. Cornell, " Approved by the Repre- 
 sentative Committee of the Genesee Yearly 
 Meeting," and published by the " Friends 
 Publishing Association of Philadelphia." 
 The other is " Sermons by Sunderland P. 
 Gardner," delivered in Philadelphia in 1885. 
 They are both valuable works, and are re- 
 ferred to in the notes as " Essays " and 
 " Sermons," without further qualifications. 
 To the Rev. A. F. Olmsted, D.D., late 
 Rector of the Church of the Messiah in 
 Rhinebeck, I am under lasting obligations, 
 not only for criticisms and suggestions, but 
 for generous sympathy and encouragement 
 in my effort to make a clear statement of 
 Quaker opinions. With the foundation of 
 all Quakerism, the belief in man's con- 
 sciousness of God's immediate self-revela- 
 tion to the human soul, he was in perfect 
 accord, however he might dissent from 
 other points of their doctrine. 
 
'Preface. ix 
 
 To my Students, ex-Students and 
 Friends, whose generosity has made it 
 possible for me to pubhsli tliis boolc, I can 
 only return sincerest thanks. The delicacy 
 of the compliment thus paid me is appre- 
 ciated, and adds one more to the many 
 pleasant incidents of my life as a teacher. 
 
 Finally, if this little work shall be instru- 
 mental in spreading a better knowledge of 
 the Faith and Character of the Church of 
 my Childhood, or in showing to some 
 minds among the Quakers their practical 
 unity with the more active and prosperous 
 Body of the Church of Christ, I shall feel all 
 my labors repaid a hundred-fold. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHATTER I'AGE 
 
 I. Thi' Hicksitc On.ikcrs. Their Decadence ij 
 
 II. Their General Character 24 
 
 III. Their Belief in God and in His IVorship 44 
 
 IV. Belief in Christ and Salvation 57 
 V. The Bible, Inspiration, and Prayer 64 
 
 \l. The Sacraments and the Ministry 81 
 
 Xl\. Miracles, Inunortalitv, and Evil 90 
 
 VIII. Ther are Christians and Mystics 96 
 
 IX. Some Further Considerations 106 
 
 X. A Sn.mmary . iig 
 
 XI. Where Shall They Go ? . . . 124 
 
 XII. Conclusion ..... ij^ 
 
THE HICKSITE QUAKERS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Tlv HLksiff Qujiiirs. Tccir DecjJence, 
 The 0-al-cer Socier^-. or Re-isr-O-::? 5oc; 
 
 While in hha: cour.:r}" i: ren:air.ed nniied 
 and aggressive, on being Trar.splaiiied to 
 America, under conditions of greater free- 
 dom, differences of opinion sprang up on 
 fundanienial poin:s. as :he nanrre of Cnris:. 
 the Characier of the Atonement, the An- 
 t]iorir\- of the Bible, the Sal'S'ation by Christ. 
 the necessir." o: s. tormal creec, £ni vet 
 others of trtinor :ntp?rt=nce. The one side 
 or pantA' adopted the ttsttal orthodox or 
 e^■angelical viev.-s held by ain:ost all of our 
 
 Protestant Cnu.rches. The other side 
 I i 
 
f4 The Hicksite Qiiahers. 
 
 adopted what may be called, for the sake 
 of distinction, more liberal views, as the 
 Divinity but not the Deity of Christ, the 
 Inspiration but not the Infallibility of the 
 Bible, and they differed widely also in their 
 interpretation of Salvation by Christ. These 
 differences failed of reconciliation, as both 
 parties claimed to find support for their 
 views in the writings and opinions of earlier 
 Friends, especially of George Fox, Robert 
 Barclay, Thomas Ellwood, William Penn 
 and others. Having no central authority 
 to decide such issues, the divergence of 
 views increased, till in 1827 a complete 
 schism or separation took place, resulting 
 in the establishment of two organizations, 
 each claiming to be the legitimate body or 
 Religious Society of Friends. The one ad- 
 hering to evangelical standards was known 
 as the " Orthodox Society of Friends." A 
 prominent part on the liberal side was taken 
 by a very able, eloquent and active preach- 
 er, Elias Hicks, who, whether right or 
 wrong in his opinions, was evidently a man 
 
The Hicksite Qiiakers. 75 
 
 of great power and influence. From his 
 prominence in the Society the second party 
 became known as the " Hicksite Society 
 of Friends," though nothing was further 
 from the mind of Elias Flicks than the idea 
 of affixing his name to the body of rehgious 
 views he advocated, and many of the So- 
 ciety still repudiate the title. But history 
 and use fix such marks of distinction often 
 against the most vehement protests, and so 
 this branch of the divided Society is known 
 as Hicksite Quakers. Springing as it did 
 out of a bitter controversy, and assailed as 
 heretical and unsound by its sister Society, 
 it is perhaps not strange that\ few people 
 have ever been more persistently misun- 
 derstood and misrepresented than the Soci- 
 ety of Hicksite Quakers. Having no form- 
 ulated Creed to be subscribed to as an in- 
 dispensable condition of acceptance in the 
 Fraternity, no set of test questions by which 
 to try such as would become acknowledged 
 Ministers of the Word, and exercising so 
 large a toleration towards all varieties of 
 
1 6 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 opinion, if held and announced with any 
 moderation at all, and shrinking from any- 
 thing like discussion, they have been dis- 
 credited in many quarters as a religious or- 
 ganization of very doubtful tendencies, and 
 often openly assailed as perverters of Chris- 
 tianity/^ In the days of Puritanism, when an 
 error^of thought was held to be as fatal as 
 a sin actually committed, no other estimate 
 of them was to be expected. But now, 
 when the leaven of Christian Charity and 
 Forbearance is so manifestly at work in 
 every Denomination, when a larger tolera- 
 tion is everywhere demanded, — when every 
 Church includes such a variety of opinions 
 within its fold, — and especially when the 
 first notes are being sounded of that call for 
 unity among Protestants which is yet to 
 issue in some common worship, it would 
 seem that the times are ripe for a more ju- 
 dicial consideration of the true position of 
 these Quakers. Moreover, to many the So- 
 ciety is a thing of the past. Not manjr years 
 ago, they were a strong organization, both 
 
77'e Hkksite Ojiahers. 17 
 
 in numbers and influence, in many parts of 
 the country. Their " First Day " gather- 
 ings were large, and able men and women 
 took up their IMinistry, and bore faithful 
 testimony ever\-Avhere. Xot only among 
 their own people, but often among those 
 of no Church affiliation whatever, these 
 ^Ministers were welcomed and gladly heard. 
 Their zeal often overleaped the limits of 
 their local work, and led them to bear the 
 Banner of the Preached A\'ord to distant 
 parts, in great humility of Spirit, yet. too. 
 in strains of exulting triumph over sin and 
 death. Taking no pay for their services, 
 hut freely giving of the grace they had re- 
 ceived, they remind one. not infrequently. 
 of the Apostles of old. preaching Christ as 
 the panacea of all mortal ills. Their plain, 
 economic habits accorded well with the 
 earlier condition of our busy people, and 
 their simple ser\-ice asked but little outlay 
 on the externals, but slight expense for the 
 ganncv.ts of religion. Their demands upon 
 the intellect were not large, for they in- 
 2 
 
1 8 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 dulged in no subtle abstractions, no elab- 
 orate metaphysics of doctrine, and there 
 was no active ill-will borne them, as they 
 made no efforts to win proselytes from 
 other folds. 
 
 But a change has been slowly going on, 
 and to the careful observer it is now plain 
 that their Society has passed the period of 
 its greatest activity, and has entered upon 
 a period of decline. Where once it was 
 strong, it may now have no organization at 
 all. Many of its Meeting Houses are aban- 
 doned, or opened only at funerals, and oth- 
 ers have been pulled down or converted to 
 other purposes. In Dutchess County alone 
 several of its meetings have been given up, 
 one or two others lead a merely nominal 
 existence, and no one of the active meet- 
 ings has a preacher of old-time readiness 
 and eloquence. In some instances, perhaps 
 in most, the decline in numbers and interest 
 is certainly caused by the absence of an)' 
 regular preaching. Friends themselves 
 claim that the dearth of preachers is due 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. ig 
 
 to unfaithfulness in heeding the monitions 
 of the Inward Light. The spirit that ani- 
 mated them once is faihng among their de- 
 scendants. 
 
 In some parts of the United States I am 
 told that the Society is on the increase, is 
 adapting itself to the changing circum- 
 stances of the times, discarding its stereo- 
 typed forms, and is imbued with new hfe. 
 But I think a careful census of its active 
 membership will show here, as it does in 
 England, a steady decrease, that points to 
 ultimate extinction. Every sign is in that 
 direction. The Quaker dress, once so com- 
 mon, has almost disappeared from our 
 streets, and the zeal of its Preachers drives 
 them less frequently out upon long and 
 tedious journeys to bear their faith to 
 weary, fainting hearts. So, too, its sweet 
 and simple speech, which always seemed to 
 me so divine, and yet so lovingly and in- 
 tensely human, is giving place to the com- 
 mon phrase of the world, and with it is fad- 
 ing out one of the most fascinating of 
 
20 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 the visible characteristics of old-fashioned 
 Quakerism. But above all other indications 
 of decay, is the startling fact that the Young 
 People, the descendants of Quakers, though 
 born into all the rights and privileges of 
 membership, are silently and often regret- 
 fully withdrawing from the fold, and finding 
 their spiritual homes in other denomina- 
 tions. Some, too, have severed all connec- 
 tion with the visible Church, and are drift- 
 ing, without helm or purpose, on the shore- 
 less seas of Agnosticism and denial. 
 
 Thus we briefly indicate the apparent 
 signs of dissolution, — not from violence 
 without, — for it has suffered none in our 
 day, — but from disintegration within, — by 
 that natural process of decay inevitable to 
 every organization whose work is done. 
 
 It is natural and necessary that in its de- 
 cline it should be made the subject of criti- 
 cisms and questionings. On the one hand, 
 men who have never known it in its palmy 
 days, would honestly ask about its creed. 
 " What do the Quakers beHeve ? " is not 
 
The Hicksite Qiiahers. 21 
 
 an uncommon question where there is no 
 longer a Quaker to answer. Or again, 
 " Are the Quakers really a Christian Soci- 
 ety ? " — and still further I have been asked 
 in all sincerity, " Are they not a body of 
 Infidels and Atheists ? " To such seekers 
 after knowledge there should be plain an- 
 swers given. But on the other hand, there 
 are explicit charges made against them as 
 false and malicious as can be concocted by 
 bigotry, ignorance and self-conceit. For 
 example, — not long since, at the funeral of 
 a venerable and respected Quaker a cler- 
 gyman of another denomination asserted 
 that " This man had lived without God and 
 without religion in the world," and inti- 
 mated that this was true of Quakers as a 
 class. It is such statements as this, whether 
 originating in ignorance or malice, which 
 demand some answer. If the Quakers 
 merely refuse, as this man did, the minis- 
 trations of a clergyman in the hour of 
 death, it may only mean that they have no 
 confidence in the holy office he claims to 
 
22 , The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 exercise. But if they do live " Without God 
 and without rehgion " all their lives, then 
 their pretence of being a religious body for 
 the worship of God is a bit of masquerading 
 which should be promptly uncovered. If 
 they do not so live, these falsehoods about 
 them should be exposed, even though men 
 in clerical garb become their self-consti- 
 tuted Judges. 
 
 Let no one suppose for a moment that I 
 am an impartial and unbiassed advocate. I 
 should be ashamed to be so. I love the 
 Quakers, and I have known the serene con- 
 secration of their faith, and the beauty of 
 their lives, and the deep sincerity of their 
 worship. Born into the arms of a Blessed 
 Quaker Mother, — drinking Quakerism in 
 the very milk that nursed me, — learning it 
 from my Father's lips, and breathing it in 
 all the air of my Childhood and Youth, I 
 have known it intimately, and I owe it too 
 deep a debt of love and gratitude to be in- 
 dififerent in its defense. However much I 
 may lament its weaknesses, mine shall not 
 be the hand to deal it one unkind blow. 
 
The Hichsite Qiiakers. 2^ 
 
 Mine, rather the high privilege, from the 
 bosom of another church, to speak in its 
 defense, and to utter its trutliful praises in 
 this hour of its waning prestige. 
 
 True enough, my maturer manhood has 
 found rest and a home in the Protestant 
 Episcopal Church, — not because I found 
 Quakerism all false, but because I found all 
 its truths in the Church, and my soul's 
 larger liberty in her more comprehensive 
 inheritance of tradition, of ritual, of prayer 
 and of sacred song, and her more pliant and 
 expansive organization to meet the wants 
 of a world that never pauses in its career of 
 progress. But loyalty to the truth should 
 be the motto of Episcopalian, Quaker or 
 Presbyterian alike, and for that truth's sake 
 I would write. 
 
 But let it be distinctly understood that I 
 speak of the Hicksite Quakers as an Organ- 
 ization, and not of any who have discarded 
 the fundamentals of all religion, and yet 
 claim the name of Quakers. Such must 
 speak for themselves, they have no advo- 
 cate in me. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Their General Character. 
 
 It is as well, jDerhaps, that we should in- 
 quire as to what has been the character of 
 this suspected people, how they have borne 
 themselves in the struggle for existence ? 
 Whether their lives have shown that dis- 
 solute tendency springing from a disregard 
 of all religious obligations ? ( If they can 
 stand the Scriptural test, " By their fruits 
 ye shall know them," or as the Apostle has 
 put it, " I will show you my faith by my 
 works," then they may not be so dangerous 
 after all ! Have their works been good or 
 ill ? Certainly, in their relations with the 
 world they have been an almost ideal peo- 
 ple. Simple, gentle, sincere and kind-heart- 
 ed, is the all but unanimous verdict. Have 
 they not been uniformly good friends, 
 H 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 2^ 
 
 obliging neighbors, and valuable citizens ? 
 To whom have the distressed and sorrow- 
 ing gone more freely for sympathy and 
 comfort, than to these " Broad-Brims and 
 Strait Coats " ? Who among all the de- 
 nominations of Protestants has been more 
 kindly tolerant of every man's opinion, 
 more profoundly convinced of the Brother- 
 hood of all men ? ' In business, the member 
 who does not pay, or honestly strive to pay, 
 his just debts, is an exception, a Subject to 
 be labored with by his Brethren and to be 
 visited with the penalties of the Discipline 
 if he is obstinate in his non-compliance. 
 The whole section of the Discipline on 
 " Trade " is admirable, and breathes the 
 very spirit of honor and of rectitude in deal- 
 ing with failures and misfortunes among 
 members. It shows, moreover, how exten- 
 sively the society could and did interfere 
 with the affairs of a brother in financial dis- 
 tress. This interference could take on the 
 form of wise counsel, of kind admonition 
 and warning, or finally, if an objectionable 
 
26 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 course was continued, of disowning from 
 membership in the society. The Discipline 
 Hkewise forbids the habitual use of intox- 
 icants, as a beverage, the frequenting of 
 taverns and all places of gaming or of triv- 
 ial and questionable amusements. So too 
 the Quakers have thrown the strongest 
 safeguards around the marriage relation, 
 and I have never yet known of an applica- 
 tion for divorce from their members. It is 
 worth noticing that the Puritans of New 
 England shamefully persecuted the Quak- 
 ers for their " dangerous heresies " of opin- 
 ion, fining, imprisoning, robbing and whip- 
 ping them pitilessly. But these same dan- 
 gerous heretics have preserved the most 
 sacred of all the relations of life, the mar- 
 riage relation, with unswerving fidelity and 
 christian spirit, while it is the acknowledged 
 disgrace of the descendants of the Puritans 
 that divorce is attainable among them not 
 only for very insufficient reasons, but even 
 without any reason at all, except the caprice 
 of parties concerned. Dr. Leonard Bacon 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 2j 
 
 is authority for the most telling arraign- 
 ment of his own New England on this 
 question. The fruits of Puritanism com- 
 pare badly in this respect with the course 
 of the Quakers, so much distrusted for 
 their opinions. 
 
 Another characteristic of this people is 
 the consideration shown to poorer mem- 
 bers, — not such only as are objects of char- 
 ity, but those also who, from comparative 
 poverty, would naturally have little influ- 
 ence in any organization. Their Society is 
 a commonwealth without titles and with- 
 out distinctions among the Brethren. They 
 have no desirable pews for sale which the 
 rich can buy over the poor, for their sit- 
 tings are absolutely free. The privilege of 
 the front or " facing " seats, though no- 
 where recognized by written law in the so- 
 ciety, is generally conceded to the older 
 and more active members, who have seen 
 long service in the interests of the meeting. 
 But there, too, the richest and the poorest 
 sit side by side without any mark of rank. 
 
28 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 and many a time have I seen an old man 
 sitting at the " Head of the meeting " who 
 earned his bread by daily labor of a severe 
 kind, while next to him sat one worth his 
 thousands yearly. In their intercourse with 
 one another special care was taken to make 
 such members feel that they stood upon a 
 perfect equality with all the rest, and that 
 they held a goodly place in the affections of 
 their more favored Brethren. Well do I 
 remember that I once overheard two 
 Friends exhorting each other to greater 
 diligence in cheerful, comforting conversa- 
 tion with a timid, hesitating Brother, who 
 evidently feared that his poverty might not 
 commend him to their good graces. At an- 
 other time I heard an exhortation to visit 
 such a member, and take a meal with him, 
 to remove any undue humiliation he might 
 feel from his poverty. These are little 
 things, but they tend to show the kind of 
 equality existing among the Quakers. We 
 are accustomed to say that there is no high, 
 no low, no rich, no poor in Christ, and the 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. 2g 
 
 Spirit of our Blessed Master would make 
 it so, but it still remains a fact that the rich- 
 est men can and do hire the best pews in 
 most Churches, and so we are seated to 
 worship according to our wealth and influ- 
 ence. I am not censuring the Church for 
 this apparently unavoidable difficulty, I 
 only say that the Quakers do not do it that 
 i(.'ay. Their Society is a religious republic, 
 where men are on a common footing and 
 can worship and give of their penury or 
 their plenty as may be, and not be reminded 
 of it by the location of their pew. 
 
 A very attractive feature of the organiza- 
 tion is its " Birthright Membership." Ev- 
 ery child whose parents are Friends at the 
 time of its birth, is by inheritance a child of 
 the society, and at a suitable age is enrolled 
 as an active member. If one parent only 
 is a member, the child, with the consent of 
 both parents, becomes a birthright member. 
 Neither rite nor sign is needed to confirm 
 its membership, but it assumes its place in 
 the Church as naturally and as necessarily 
 
^o The Hichsite Qtiahers- 
 
 as in the paternal home. From the earhest 
 years of understanding, with its earhest 
 thoughts, the child is made to feel itself in 
 the fold of the Church of Christ, and to re- 
 gard this as a sacred inheritance. It creates 
 an atmosphere of fixedness, of certainty, 
 and throws around the growing youth the 
 most restraining and beneficial influences. 
 Some other Churches seek the same result 
 by means of infant baptism. Moreover, 
 these Quakers have been, with all their 
 plain ways, a sunny-faced, cheery people. 
 It has seemed to be a kind of unwritten law 
 among them to maintain a cheerful coun- 
 tenance. " I remember their pleasant ways, 
 and how glad I was to visit them when a 
 boy, for it always made me happier," said 
 an elderly man to me a short time since. 
 They had what Matthew Arnold calls 
 " Sweetness and Hght " in their composi- 
 tion, and their faith disposes them that 
 way. They dwell less than many others on 
 the awful fact of retribution even in this 
 world. Yet the bitterness and desolation 
 
Tbe Hicksite Quakers. ^i 
 
 of spirit in which they often find themselves 
 through some unfaitlifuhiess to tlie Inner 
 Light must be of itself a terrible retribu- 
 tion. They may be at times reduced almost 
 to despair by the withdrawal of the marks 
 of Divine favor within them. John Wool- 
 man, Elias Hicks, and every strong writer 
 among them, record these periods of suffer- 
 ing. But after all they prefer to dwell on 
 the gentler and hoHer attributes of God, — 
 his love, his mercy, his forgiving grace, his 
 readiness to stir the depths of their souls, 
 and this disposes their hearts to cheerful- 
 ness, rather than gloom. They are not 
 vaguely grasping at a far off Heaven, and 
 
 " The golden pomegranates of Eden 
 To quiet their fever and pain," 
 
 but are in the enjoyment of immediate ac- 
 ceptance with their Heavenly Father. They 
 are thus eminently fitted to soothe and com- 
 fort the sorrowing, and for works of charity 
 and deeds of mercy. Their gentle ways were 
 in themselves a benediction. Their sys- 
 
jj2 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 tern of caring for their own poor is a marvel 
 of delicacy and tact, and is followed as a 
 sacred duty. No honest Quaker in good 
 standing need ever apply to the town for 
 assistance, so scrupulously do they care for 
 the needy among the Brethren. Again and 
 again have I known the indigent and af- 
 flicted to be assisted by comforting words 
 and still more comforting provisions with 
 the most exquisite consideration for the 
 feelings of the sufferer, the strictest priv- 
 acy being observed lest his self-respect be 
 wounded before the world. Nor do they 
 limit their ministrations to their own denom- 
 ination, but reheve suffering everywhere, if 
 their means allow. One characteristic of 
 their charity has left an indelible impres- 
 sion on my mind, — the firmness with which 
 they insist on the able-bodied being self- 
 sustaining. Their aid has always been stu- 
 diously withheld if the needy one has the 
 health and strength to earn his own living. 
 They will give him an opportunity for work, 
 but make no parley with indolence. It is 
 
The Hicksile Quakers. ^5 
 
 good Quaker doctrine tliat man shall earn 
 his bread by the sweat of his brow, and so 
 the constitutional drones shun the Quakers. 
 Look over their people to-day, and show a 
 more uniformly well-conditioned class if 
 you can. Not miserly and stingy, but eco- 
 nomical and thrifty ; good livers and plain 
 dressers. Their plainness in dress is not en- 
 tirely a matter of economy, but a protest 
 against estimating man by the apparel in 
 which he may be attired. 
 
 So too the Quakers are a peaceful, law- 
 abiding class, avoiding all unseemly wran- 
 gling and disputation, and are bound by 
 their Discipline to settle their differences 
 without litigation. The principle and prac- 
 tice of arbitration as advocated and applied 
 by Friends so many years ago, are identical 
 with the methods now rapidly gaining 
 ground for settling the differences of capital 
 and labor, and the disputes of nations. 
 They were the forerunners in this applica- 
 tion of mutual forbearance, voluntary com- 
 promise and Christian love to the serious 
 
)4 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 difficulties between men, and were far in 
 advance of their time. It seems to have 
 prevailed among them more from the spirit 
 of love and justice than from any special 
 theorizing on the matter. Through the 
 honest attention they gave to the spirit of 
 their religion they reached conclusions 
 which are still struggling for recognition 
 even in the churches of our land. And as 
 they settled their own personal differences 
 by arbitration, so they pleaded with nations 
 to arrange all international questions with- 
 out bloodshed. They have always borne a 
 strong testimony against war as unchris- 
 tian, inhuman and debasing, advocating 
 peace in the name of the Great Prince of 
 Peace. " Their ways are ways of pleasant- 
 ness, and all their paths are peace." Some- 
 times this opposition to war on principle led 
 them into anomalous situations, as notably 
 in the war with the South. They agitated 
 for the abolition of slavery, yet were op- 
 posed to the conflict which achieved that 
 abolition. They always favored peaceful 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 55 
 
 emancipation, and could not be held re- 
 sponsible for the evils done in retaliation 
 for their advocacy of high principle. Yet 
 the tide of patriotism swept many of the 
 younger ones from their moorings of non- 
 resistance, and they fought like heroes and 
 died like martyrs for their country's life.* 
 There is probably no feature of their prin- 
 ciples that has been so sorely tried as this 
 principle of peace, and it has sometimes put 
 them into queer dilemmas. I once visited 
 my Father of Blessed Memory, a staunch 
 peace man, during the days of Grant's piti- 
 less fighting in the Wilderness, when blood 
 seemed in the very air. Naturally enough, 
 the conversation turned upon the war, and 
 on Grant's obstinate grip, — when Father, 
 usually so self-possessed, rose nervously 
 
 * In the circle of my own acquaintance, John and 
 Edward Ketchum and Nehemiah Mann enlisted, and 
 died in the defence of liberty. They were the sons 
 of Quaker Parents, whose patriotic devotion overcame 
 their scruples against war, and they sleep in Soldiers' 
 graves. 
 
)b The Hichsite Qiiakers. 
 
 from his chair, stepped rapidly to and fro 
 across the room, and excitedly exclaimed : 
 " Well, I hope Grant will whip the life out of 
 the rebels ! " It seemed to restore the bal- 
 ance, like a safety-valve, for he immediately 
 resumed his seat, only adding by way of 
 apology, — " It is all wrong though, this 
 fighting, my Boy ! " " The Old Adam " 
 had overcome his Quaker conviction and 
 self-control for the moment, and his Boy 
 took sides with Adam that time. 
 
 This calm, serene self-control was an- 
 other striking feature of the Quaker Char- 
 acter. Charles Lamb in his " Imperfect 
 Sympathies " speaks of " The admirable 
 presence of mind which is notorious in 
 Quakers upon all contingencies," and of 
 " The astonishing composure of this peo- 
 ple." This did not spring from heartless- 
 ness nor stoicism, but it was rather the 
 spiritual conquest of passion, its subjuga- 
 tion to the steadier and holier impulses of 
 the soul. In truth, the main tendency of 
 Quakerism was the subjection of all passion 
 
The Hicksite Qjjakers, jy 
 
 to the dominion of tlie commanding voice 
 of God within them, and the serenity of 
 character, the composure and self-posses- 
 sion under trying circumstances, was its 
 legitimate result. 
 
 No men have been more tenderly solic- 
 itous for the oppressed than these Quakers. 
 All through the long dark period when the 
 conscience of the nation seemed stvipefied, 
 these people demanded the liberty of the 
 slaves, and the cry of these heralds of free- 
 dom was sounding through the land against 
 the sin of human Slavery. When hundreds 
 who did not hesitate to hurl the " Odium 
 Theologicum" at them, were hunting slaves 
 at the bidding of the South, these quiet 
 Quakers were aiding the negroes in their 
 flight towards freedom, and their homes 
 were safe stations for the famous " Under- 
 ground Railroad " of abolition days. 
 
 They, too, were among the first to rec- 
 ognize the claims of Woman to a perfect 
 equality in the affairs of life. That exqui- 
 site sense of justice which their introspec- 
 
jS The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 tive and self-regulating habits cultivated 
 revealed to them the truth that right was 
 not the property or privilege of sex, any 
 more than freedom inhered in color. They 
 gave to their women a voice in the manage- 
 ment of the meetings and struck from their 
 marriage ceremony all unequal promises of 
 service and obedience. The Quaker women 
 were an active factor in reality, though a 
 separate " Meeting for business " was cre- 
 ated for them, instead of instituting one 
 common business meeting for both men and 
 women. But this Women's Meeting was 
 and still is by no means an idle figure. It 
 has frequently asserted itself vigorously, 
 and under able leadership has antagonized 
 the Men's Meeting and refused to agree 
 with its decisions. The two bodies of co- 
 ordinate rank and powers were a close ap- 
 proach to absolute equality long before 
 other branches of the church had made any 
 move in that direction. But in the meet- 
 ings for worship women were allowed 
 a place of perfect equality in the ministry of 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. ^g 
 
 the word and in prayer. Some of the ablest 
 ministers of the society have been women. 
 In their educational schemes too, their 
 Boys and Girls were put upon an equal 
 footing of substantial work in School. All 
 the frippery fashionably attached to the 
 education of women was rigorously dis- 
 carded, and real mental nutriment was of- 
 fered her instead. Long before Vassar, or 
 Smith, of Wellesley were inchoate schemes 
 in the minds of their founders, these modest 
 Quakers were giving their Daughters as 
 good training as they gave their Sons. 
 They thus recognized that mental equality 
 of the Sexes which has been a distinctive 
 feature of their Society, and towards which 
 the rest of the world has been slowly strug- 
 gling, through much hesitation of mind 
 and tribulation of spirit. The result was a 
 surprising development of mental qualities 
 among Quakeresses. Many of the finest 
 platform speakers among women have 
 sprung from their Society. Their mental 
 ■discipline, with the mysticism and repose of 
 
40 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 their worship, has produced some of the 
 best specimens of womanhood the world has 
 ever seen. The whole Quaker habit is pe- 
 culiarly adapted to the highest development 
 of woman's nature. Their Quietism suits 
 her, giving her the dignity of repose, and 
 specially fits her for all the most sacred du- 
 ties of life, duties whicTi she takes up as un- 
 der the very eye of God. What wives and 
 mothers they have made ! What homes they 
 have gathered round them ! What a blessed 
 and benign influence they have shed wher- 
 ever they went ! There have been women 
 among them on whose countenances the 
 peace of Heaven seemed resting. Lamb 
 notices in his " Quaker Meeting " the be- 
 nign countenances of some of the members. 
 " I have seen," he says, " faces in their as- 
 semblies upon which the dove sat visibly 
 brooding." Mrs. H. B. Stowe mentions 
 this fact also, and others have spoken of it 
 in a similar manner. It must have been a 
 striking characteristic to attract so much at- 
 tention. One woman among them attained 
 
The. Hichsite Quakers. 41 
 
 a national celebrity, a woman whose life was 
 exposed to the public gaze, yet who carried 
 her womanly gentleness Hke a shield about 
 her into the thickest of the fray, — Lucretia 
 Mott of Philadelphia. She was woman, 
 prophet and saint in one; noble, gifted and 
 motherly, one of the few the world will not 
 forget. There has been many another no- 
 ble woman among them whose presence 
 was a benediction. The Quaker type of 
 womanhood is a peculiar one, resembling 
 in some features the type of the "Religious" 
 among the Catholics, but differing from 
 that in not renouncing the world, but in 
 adapting itself to all the varied and trying 
 duties of wife and mother, and sharing the 
 temptations of the busy life of humanity, 
 yet always gentle, strong, incorruptible, 
 serene, intelligent and self-poised, while 
 overflowing with all that is most womanly 
 and ai¥ectionate. 
 
 But among the men the effort for self- 
 repression was a sterner one, and the issue 
 of the conflict often more doubtful, — for 
 
42 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 they came into more varied contact with the 
 world, and its bitter struggle roused more 
 of the lion or of the hypocrite in them. Yet 
 there, too, the Quaker spirit conquered 
 oftener than it was conquered. My own 
 Father was naturally an imperious, quick- 
 tempered man, yet no one ever heard him 
 in angry altercation with another, or heard 
 loud, boisterous words from his lips, — but 
 I have seen strong men shrink before his 
 quiet, withering speech when he was angry, 
 as though they feared a bullet might pierce 
 their hearts. He was Quaker through and 
 through. 
 
 This picture of the Quaker character is 
 not an overdrawn one, — I believe it is faith- 
 ful to the life. And surely the traits depicted 
 here are just such as constitute the fruits of 
 the highest Christian Faith. Would we not 
 naturally expect the people who display 
 such a character, to be devout, reverent. 
 God-fearing and God-loving Souls ? Are 
 not such spirits, by whatever name they may 
 be called, the very flower and fruit of a holy 
 
The Hicksite Qitahers. 43 
 
 Christianity ? I do not believe anyone is 
 prepared to concede that such divine results 
 spring from Pantheism, Infidelity or Athe- 
 ism. And if not, then we will be prepared 
 to inquire more minutely into the Faith on 
 which such a character is founded, and from 
 which it draws its perennial inspiration. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Their Belief in God and in His Worsliip. 
 
 The foundation of all Quakerism is a be- 
 lief in the existence of a personal, spiritual 
 God and in His worship. Whatever else the 
 Quaker is or is not, he is at the farthest re- 
 move from Agnosticism, — he believes, pro- 
 foundly, reverently, in the One Eternal God, 
 the Creator, and Sustainer of all things, and 
 he knows of God's presence in his own Soul. 
 His faith does not make Him a far off, soli- 
 tary God, seated in some Celestial City, 
 watching from a distance the machinery of 
 the Universe He has set in motion, but an 
 Immanent Spirit, " Who is over all, and 
 through all, and in all." And by this they 
 do not mean that He is merely present in 
 the All of things, but that He is potentially, 
 really and actively present in every individ- 
 44 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. ^5 
 
 ual soul. They further believe that He gives 
 the humble and obedient heart manifest 
 signs and tokens of his presence,— that they 
 hear the very voice of God, speaking in- 
 wardly, spiritually, and with authority to 
 their minds and consciences. And not to 
 them only, but to every human heart, come 
 these Divine messages^ if that heart will but 
 hear them. And they believe, too, that men 
 may prepare their spirits by humble waiting 
 in silence upon God for the reception of 
 such messages. In that silent introspection, 
 they make unconditional surrender of their 
 own wills and passions, and are made ten- 
 derly susceptible of Divine impressions and 
 inspirations. The more frequently the 
 Spirit of man enters into this holy commun- 
 ion with God, the keener become its suscep- 
 tibilities, the easier the road to that sublim- 
 est act of the soul. Some of the expressions 
 used in reference to this are especially pe- 
 culiar and suggestive. They say that their 
 " hearts are made tender before the Lord," 
 that he " opened many things " to them in 
 
46 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 answer to their supplicating silence. This 
 condition must, however, be observed, — 
 there must be an absolute surrender of self 
 and all its claims, — and " Thy Will, not 
 mine, O Lord " must be the spiritual lan- 
 guage of the heart. Such worship cannot be 
 noisy and demonstrative. There must be 
 nothing to turn the attention from the face 
 of the Divine, — nothing to blunt its sensi- 
 tiveness to the faintest touch of inspiration. 
 Everything that can detract from perfect 
 quiescence of mind and spirit must be re- 
 moved. So ornaments of architecture, the 
 beauties of color, and the melodies of sound, 
 have no place in their services. And they 
 are not omitted from accident or parsi- 
 mony, but upon principle. The eye of sense 
 must be closed to the exterior world, that 
 the Divine illumination may be vouchsafed 
 within. So they build no stately temples of 
 worship, rear no holy altars, and chant no 
 vesperO In plain, even barren rooms they 
 gather, without sound of bell or summons 
 of herald. One by one they drop into their 
 
The Hichsite Qttakers. 47 
 
 seats, without removing their hats, and the 
 " service " begins in profound silence. But 
 in that silence they are worshipping, — waiting 
 in lowliest reverence and spiritual humility 
 upon the Lord. (They are not noisily telling 
 him of their wants and wishes, but with 
 souls uncovered towards Him, they wait for 
 His Spiritual Power to manifest itself to 
 their Spirits, convicting them of sin, hum- 
 bling them before his perfect Holiness, 
 quickening them to the perception of Divine 
 Truth, and refreshing them with the con- 
 sciousness of their unity with Infinite Love 
 and Purity.) To the uninitiated it seems 
 quaint enough, that deep silence, — no 
 psalm, no hymn, no invocation ; — at most 
 an exposition of Truth or an exhortation 
 from some worshipper who believes him- 
 self or herself to be moved to bear a " Testi- 
 mony " or breathe a prayer before the wait- 
 ing congregation, — then the silence re- 
 newed, — the hand-shaking that breaks up 
 the common service, — some might feel like 
 laughing at it all, but they would not, had 
 
48 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 they lived within the circle of its chastening 
 influence, and knozvn the deep and awful 
 sincerity of the Faith of these people in the 
 Living God. . Sometimes the zvholc hour of 
 service would be spent in this waiting si- 
 lence, and no word be uttered. No one feels 
 moved to speak, and it would be scarcely 
 less than blasphemy to speak without such 
 moving in the heart. But such " Silent 
 Meetings " as they themselves call them 
 are by no means counted as lost occasions. 
 For the truest and staunchest Friends they 
 are often seasons of the richest spiritual 
 fruitage ; — of great " Ingatherings " and 
 " Refreshings." Often have they expressed 
 their thankfulness for blessings dropped 
 upon them in their " Silent Meetings,'' for 
 the sweet communings they had experi- 
 enced, and the inward grace and strength 
 they had felt vouchsafed unto them there. 
 They had felt their hearts covered with His 
 overshadowing presence and brought into 
 perfect stibmission to his will. And that is 
 the Quaker ideal of Worship. To none is 
 
The Hichsite Qitaken. 49 
 
 the Eternal more vividly present than to 
 him, and in this belief in the Spiritual God, 
 actively present to his soul, is the key to the 
 whole form of Worship, to the very life of 
 Quakerism.^ They apply various terms to 
 this Presence in their consciousness, calling 
 it, " The Inner Light," * — " The Divine 
 Word," — " The Indwelling Logos," — " The 
 W^itness of Truth," — " The Testimonj' of 
 the Spirit," — but the meaning in all these 
 expressions is the same, — it is the ever-pres- 
 ent God, appealing to Man's Spirit, to his 
 Love, to his Conscience, to all that is high- 
 est in his being. That is the one tremen- 
 
 ^ An admirable statement of the idea of the Inward 
 Light is made in "The Quaker Invasion of Massachu- 
 setts," by R. P. Hallowell, in these words: "God is 
 an indwelling spirit and humanity is His holy tem- 
 ple. His law is written upon the hearts of all men, and 
 obedience to it will lead them into all truth, so far as 
 religious truth is revealed to men. Through the oper- 
 ation of this law the soul of man is accessible to his 
 Creator. It is the rule of life to which every one must 
 subject himself, and out of which duty is evolved." 
 — Page 118. 
 4 
 
50 The Hicksite Qiiahers. 
 
 dous fact which they never doubt, and 
 which overshadows and behttles all other 
 facts in comparison. That Presence is not 
 confined to the Meeting House nor to its 
 peculiar service. They believe they can 
 commune with it in their daily toil, in their 
 moments of solitude, and at times even in 
 crowded thorovighfares. They believe this 
 is a matter beyond all definition or demon- 
 stration ; one of experience with every in- 
 dividual soul, — an ultimate fact incapable 
 of resolution, and beyond the province of 
 logic, except as a premise to start from. 
 Hence we find among them no elaborate 
 demonstrations of the Being of God, and no 
 attempt at a logical theory of Ontology or 
 Theology. They prefer to assume as pri- 
 mary and fundamental this truth, which 
 they claim is directly certified to the human 
 consciousness, and requires no proof. It is 
 not an argument to convince, but a sum- 
 mons to listen to the voice within, and know 
 for yourself that God is. It is an appeal to 
 Consciousness, before all else. 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 5/ 
 
 To many this appeal may seem revolu- 
 tionary ; but if Protestantism is to stand at 
 all, this will be the key to its position. Deny 
 the validity of the appeal to Consciousness, 
 and Authority alone remains, and the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church has the only consist- 
 ent, logical theory of Infallible authority. 
 But once concede that the deliverances of 
 Consciousness are valid as tests of truth, — 
 that through it and hy it God docs speak to 
 man's soul, inspiring, strengthening and 
 guiding it, and an Authority is established 
 which must supersede all others, for it is 
 the very " Voice of God." For the soul to 
 which it comes, it must be the final and su- 
 preme law, for its impressions and impulses 
 are fresh and vital from the depths of ever- 
 lasting purity and holiness. This is Quaker 
 Doctrine, — that Man's Consciousness or 
 Spiritual Nature is the avenue down which 
 come the mysterious inspirations of the Di- 
 vine, — the organ whose keys are swept by 
 the fingers of God, — whose true music is 
 the melody of heaven, — and whose Author- 
 
52 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 ity is superior to Bishops or Cardinals, to 
 Church or Bible. The Church, the Sacred 
 Scriptures, the utterance of prophet, poet or 
 saint, may be and are helps to the soul 
 struggling upwards toward the light, but 
 the one Living Voice is audible within you, 
 and you must hear its accents to certify you 
 of your peace. Its solicitations to right- 
 eousness are to be heeded, and its strength 
 will become your stiength in your weak- 
 ness, and its leadings will guide you over 
 mountain and through valley, over the bogs 
 and moors and fens of life, and never be- 
 guile your trust to its ruin. Hour by hour 
 it is pleading with us all, in tones thrilling 
 with infinite tenderness, if we will only bring 
 our wills into a condition of obedience to its 
 admonitions. " Drink from this Living 
 Fountain " is the Quaker call, for it alone 
 giveth life ; and this is the " Light that 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world," 
 
 " This light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream," 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. 5^ 
 
 and which, though we heed it not, 
 
 " Is yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 Is yet the master light of all our seeing, 
 
 . . and has power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence." 
 
 This belief is not a new one, the Quakers 
 never claim it as such. It has been so from 
 the creation ; — they refer all great religious 
 movements and experiences to the action of 
 the Immanent God, and so bind into one 
 beautiful brotherhood the religious life of 
 all times and of all peoples. That life 
 varies in intensity and depth and purity as 
 the spiritual eye of the race is more or 
 less clearly recipient and interpretative 
 through growth. Through the very gross- 
 ness of their natures men are disqualified 
 for a correct interpretation of these divine 
 impressions. Their own wills may be set 
 against all obedience, for they are not con- 
 strained of necessity to listen to the voice 
 within. Thus the Free Will of Man is a ear- 
 
5^ The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 dinal tenet of the Quakers, and here again 
 their appeal is to Consciousness, not to any 
 subtle argument. It is the direct " Argu- 
 mentum ad hominem," — " Do you not 
 know of yourself that you can turn from the 
 evil and choose the good, or abandon your 
 spirit to the sinful and perishing ? " In such 
 liberty alone is moral responsibility possi- 
 ble, and the consciousness of freedom is a 
 fundamental faith with the Friends. 
 
 But even unto the true disciple this in- 
 spiring influence is not an uninterrupted 
 one. Its hours are uncertain, for it, too, has 
 its times and seasons, its mysterious flit- 
 tings ofl: and on, and its long reaches of 
 abiding and refreshing calm, which mortals 
 cannot explain. But its uncertainty is in no 
 way attributable to changeableness in God, 
 ^only to Man's unfaithfulness to the lead- 
 ings of the spirit. Hence it is sometimes a 
 dim, far off, uncertain intimation of the 
 truth, and again it is a clear indication which 
 it were recreancy to deny. At others it is a 
 flash of conviction, stunning and smiting as 
 
The Hicksite Qiiakers. 55 
 
 it smote St. Paul, or again it seems the 
 ripening of a pure soul, and bursts into the 
 glad surprise of a revelation in the heart of 
 a St. John. But it must not be inferred that 
 this inspiration is necessarily accompanied 
 by miraculous signs and wonders. In " Es- 
 says " we find this statement : " This inspi- 
 ration comes as naturally and as gently to us 
 as does the light of the sun to illuminate the 
 earth, and brings to the physical and intel- 
 lectual faculties a knowledge of material 
 things. ... Its voice is heard in an hour 
 of silent meditation, or while busied with 
 our lawful avocations, or amid our times of 
 relaxation and pleasure " (pp. 34 and 35). 
 They also claim the graces and virtues of 
 humanity as the fruit of this inspiration of 
 the spirit. Abundant proofs of this claim 
 will be found in " Penn's Rise and Prog- 
 ress," in Barclay, in Elias Hicks, et passim 
 in their writings. 
 
 But here a special distinction must be ob- 
 served, necessary to guard against a com- 
 mon misrepresentation of the Quakers. In 
 
56 The Hichsite Qtiakers. 
 
 all its varied manifestations they never iden- 
 tify nor confound this spiritual force with 
 material force in a pantheistic sense. It is 
 thought, it is love, it is righteousness, it is 
 justice, it is perfect holiness, and these can 
 be the attributes of nothing but a living 
 Personality in which they inhere. Their 
 phraseology points continually to this fact. 
 They speak of God almost universally as 
 " Our Heavenly Father,'' or in words of 
 similar meaning, and never in terms that in- 
 dicate pantheism. While the universe is 
 filled with him, he is not the universe, but 
 transcends and controls it. So they have 
 kept themselves free from all thought of 
 the physical embodiment of God in a mate- 
 rial form. He can no more have such a 
 figure than thought and love can have it. 
 He dwells among them as a living spirit, 
 and they will tolerate no representation 
 thereof. They accept the fact without at- 
 tempting its solution. I 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Their Belief in Christ, and Salvation. 
 
 But the Hicksite Quakers are not trini- 
 tarians, and do not, save in very rare in- 
 stances, accept the orthodox theory of the 
 three-fold nature of the Supreme God, — 
 they do not beheve that God the Father is 
 one Person, Jesus the Son another Person, 
 the Holy Ghost another Person, each God, 
 and the Three together constituting in some 
 mysterious way, only one God. Jesus him- 
 self they regard as a mortal, a man, like 
 unto other men, except that he kept himself, 
 or was kept by the power of God which is 
 the Christ, free from sin. They do not be- 
 lieve that God was crucified upon Calvary, 
 nor that Jesus' blood, in and of itself, had or 
 has any peculiar efficacy in ransoming the 
 world. But they do believe in Jesus as the 
 57 
 
^8 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 Christ, the Anointed Son of God, the Savior, 
 the Revelation of the Father. God was in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. 
 It was this presence of God in his fulness in 
 the soul of Jesus that made him the unique 
 Son of God, the revelation unto the world 
 of the Eternal Good, hut did not make him 
 God. The Holy Ghost is to them one of the 
 manifestations of the Supreme, and God in 
 the heart of Man, God as revealed through 
 Jesus Christ, and God as manifested in the 
 operations of the Holy Spirit, are all one 
 and the same Supreme. All men may be- 
 come Sons of God, but Jesus was the unique 
 Son of God, because his will was complete 
 in its submission to the Will of the Father, 
 and the Spirit of the Father dwelt in him in 
 its fulness. He could save men from their 
 sins, by leading them away from sin and 
 into perfect unity with God. So unto them 
 he is the Dear Master, The Savior, The Son 
 of Man, The Son of God, The Reconcilia- 
 tion unto Salvation. They do not offer him 
 worship as Deity, but they do confess him 
 
The Hicksite Qiiahers. ^g 
 
 as the " Light that lighteth every man that 
 Cometh into tlie world." Tliey ofTer no ex- 
 planation of how God was in Christ so per- 
 fectly, nor do they presume to tell where 
 the human ceases and the Divine begins in 
 Jesus nor in their own souls. Their own 
 natures are a profound mystery to them. 
 Conscious of certain powers of their own, 
 they are equally conscious of the Infinite 
 background of possibilities in which their 
 being rests. If our common human nature 
 lies open to the inspiration of the Divine, 
 how much more so the transcendingly pure 
 and holy nature of Jesus, in whom the finite 
 and the infinite coalesced in perfect unison. 
 In that perfect union of the human and the 
 divine lies the unapproachable mystery of 
 the Savior's nature. It is still more clearly 
 put in another extract from " Friends' In- 
 telligencer and Journal " of January 4, 1890. 
 " We believe in the divinity of Christ as 
 well as the humanity of Jesus. It was not 
 the manhood alone that constituted the Son 
 of God, but Christ in Jesus, — or the spirit 
 
6o The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 in the flesh, or God in man. Thus God was 
 manifested in the flesh in Jesus, ' And we 
 beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
 begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
 truth.' " 
 
 As they keep close to the language of 
 Scripture in speaking of Christ, so also do 
 they in speaking of his mission upon Earth. 
 They accept none of the mechanical theo- 
 ries of his atoning work. They do not be- 
 lieve he died to ransom humanity from the 
 effects of Adam's sin, nor to appease an of- 
 fended God, nor to balance the scales of an 
 impartial and unswerving justice. The idea 
 that Christ's sacrifice had in it anything of 
 expiation in the sense of penalty for past 
 sins, or of substituting the innocent Lord as 
 the criminal in the place of guilty men, to 
 satisfy the absolute justice of God, is ut- 
 terly foreign to the Quaker mind. To them 
 God's mercy is not so straitened by his jus- 
 tice that the latter must be satisfied before 
 the former can have full sway in winning 
 Man to the Father. Moreover, right and 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 6i 
 
 justice are of no different nature in the Di- 
 vine mind and in the human, and as an 
 earthh' court would outrage every sense of 
 Justice by substituting an innocent person 
 on the gallows for the murderer who has 
 gone free, so would the High Court of 
 Heaven fliy in the face of every sense of right 
 by exacting the death of the innocent Son of 
 God as an expiation for the accumulated 
 sins of humanity. The vicarious sacrifice, 
 in the sense of substitution, found no sup- 
 porters or at least very few among the Hick- 
 site Quakers. But none the less they posi- 
 tively affirm that there is no salvation save 
 in Christ. In Job Scott's " Salvation by 
 Christ " occur these words : — " I am as 
 sure there is no salvation out of Christ, as 
 I am of anything in the world." But the 
 question lies in what constitutes salvation. 
 Thoughtful Quakers hold definite opinions 
 on this point, for they recognize the fact 
 that man's material or animal nature is in- 
 different or averse to the holy life of God, 
 and incapable of attaining it without the 
 
62 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 help of his Spirit. That Spirit has been 
 working in all ages past, but supremely in 
 Christ, revealing itself as it could in har- 
 mony with the freedom of man's will. Man 
 cannot forcibly be converted to holiness, 
 but must be freely enlightened and as freely 
 brought to a knowledge of God — to obe- 
 dience unto him and communion with him 
 as the only source of light and peace. Jesus 
 came in the Spirit to reveal God to man, and 
 so to reconcile man to God, in the truest 
 scriptural sense. By this revelation of God's 
 love and mercy to his children, as well as by 
 his own spirit of self-sacrifice and tender- 
 ness, he wins the heart of man from the life 
 of the flesh to the life of the spirit, which is 
 the inheritance of the Children of God. In 
 thus bringing man to communion with the 
 Father, he becomes his savior, he lifts the 
 burden of his sins, and transplants him from 
 strife and suffering into the kingdom of 
 purity and peace, which is the Holy City, 
 the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. 
 Thus was given unto man the gift of Life 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. 6^ 
 
 Eternal, in its true meaning. Ever and 
 again do we hear the Savior's words from 
 Quaker Ups, — " And this is Life Eternal, 
 that they might know Thee the only true 
 God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast 
 sent." And as that knowledge is attainable 
 nozv, so that life eternal may be entered 
 upon in spirit here on earth. The Quaker 
 faith is not deemed essential to escape a 
 future perdition, but to aid a faithful hum- 
 ble striving after the Divine Life here and 
 now. Its salvation is not a saving from a 
 material hell, but from a life of sin, of un- 
 cleanness, of corruption, and of carnal pleas- 
 ures, into a life of pure living, holy thinking 
 and saintly aspiration. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 The Bible, Inspiration and Prayer- 
 
 In their utterances on religious subjects 
 the Hicksite Friends use freely the lan- 
 guage of the Bible, and draw their illustra- 
 tions largely from it. They prefer to call it 
 " The Scriptures of Truth." Again and 
 again have I known them to retreat to its 
 expressions as to an impregnable fortress 
 in controversy, while they do not adhere to 
 its literal meaning in their interpretations.* 
 
 * It is certainly singular that a people who are so 
 very free in their spiritual interpretations of Scripture 
 should adhere to the " Ipsissima verba, " the very literal 
 meaning, in the matter of oaths. They are strictly for- 
 bidden to take an oath, and the prohibition is based on 
 the positive command of Jesus, " Swear not at all, etc." 
 But why should they interpret this literally, and not 
 also that equally positive command, " Take, therefore, 
 no thought of the morrow, etc.," with reference to 
 64 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. f>'y 
 
 If asked to define their idea of God, they 
 will probably answer ; — " God is a Spirit, 
 and he who would worship him must wor- 
 ship him in spirit and in truth." If asked 
 if Jesus was " Very God of very God, of one 
 substance with the Father," they will reply, 
 — Jesus is " The Sent of the Father," — "The 
 Good Shepherd," — " The Divine Light," — 
 " The Prince of Peace," — language strictly 
 scriptural, and quite as apt as any definitions 
 of the Catechism. When urged to say what 
 he thought of heaven, an old Friend answer- 
 ed me, — '' Behold, the kingdom of heaven 
 is within thee." It is a favorite expression 
 of many preachers among them that " The 
 kindom of heaven cometh not with observa- 
 tion," as confirming their faith in its purely 
 spiritual nature. Many of them are diligent 
 readers of the Bible, and their Discipline 
 exhorts them to careful study thereof. 
 
 worldly foresight ? For they are very prudent and 
 prosperous people, caring zealously for the morrow's 
 provision. Yet a complete consistency of opinion can 
 hardly be expected. 
 5 
 
66 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 Some of them love especially the grand 
 and majestic language of Isaiah, and fairly 
 revel in its inspiring strains. The only time 
 I ever distinctly remember to have heard 
 Rachel Barker, a Quaker Preacher of 
 Poughkeepsie, was one " First Day " morn- 
 ing in the little white meeting house in La- 
 fayette Place. There had been an unusually 
 prolonged silence, when she rose, and in her 
 full, strong voice burst into Isaiah's words : 
 " Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm 
 of the Lord ; awake, as in the ancient days, 
 in the generations of old," and followed 
 them with a fervent invocation and a sum- 
 mons to her hearers to " Come home " to 
 the judgment of the Living Voice in their 
 own' hearts, that sounded like the trumpet 
 peal of a Messenger of God. 
 
 At another time, one winter's evening, 
 during the thrilling experiences of old Anti- 
 Slavery times, Lucretia Mott and some 
 prominent Friends sat by the fireside of a 
 humble farmer's family near Poughkeep- 
 sie. The conversation had run long on the 
 
The Hichsite Qiiahers. 6y 
 
 sufferings of the slaves, which she had pict- 
 ured so vividly before their eyes as to enlist 
 the sympathies of all, when a deep silence 
 suddenly fell upon the room. For a few sec- 
 onds she sat with bowed head and folded 
 hands, as in deep meditation. Then slowly 
 raising her head, and clasping her hands 
 more closely, in a voice soft and musical as 
 only her voice could be, she said with meas- 
 ured utterance : 
 
 " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, 
 and not comforted, behold I will lay thy 
 stones with fair colors, and lay thy founda- 
 tions with sapphires. And I will make thy 
 windows of agates, and thy gates of carbun- 
 cles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. 
 
 " And all thy children shall be taught of 
 the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy 
 children." 
 
 Then, turning to her host, she added ; 
 " There is comfort in it, Peter." And Peter 
 answered, " Yes, Lucretia, the Comforter 
 will come." And again the silence fell upon 
 them, and the incident struck deep into the 
 
68 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 soul of one listening Boy, who here narrates 
 ■an experience of his own Quaker home, the 
 -memory of which comes like a fast-reced- 
 ing voice on the still air of contemplation. 
 
 But with all this fondness for Scripture 
 and familarity with it for quotation, there 
 is no devotion to the letter thereof. " The 
 letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." For 
 the Hicksite Quaker the Bible, like every- 
 thing else, must be freely brought to the 
 test of the Inward Light, and a truth de- 
 rives no additional authority from being 
 found within its covers. Its authority lies 
 not at all in its inerrancy, nor in the authen- 
 ticity of its various books in point of au- 
 thorship, nor in its infallible teachings. It 
 is a precious Book, and a source of inesti- 
 mable comfort and strength, because it is a 
 record, correct in the main, of God's deal- 
 ings with his people in other times, and so 
 becomes corroborative of the Living Wit- 
 ness in their own hearts. It contains the 
 " Word of God " as given to holy men and 
 interpreted by them, but not every word of 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 6c> 
 
 the Bible is the " Word of God," nor is it 
 their " Only rule and guide for faith and 
 practice." They reject the equivalent ideas 
 of plenary inspiration and infallible author- 
 ity, maintaining that much of it is clearly 
 human and in no way binding on the con- 
 sciences of men. But it must not be in- 
 ferred that the Quakers reject entirely the 
 doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. On 
 the other hand they emphatically afifirm that 
 holy men were inspired then and in other 
 ages too, and from the heights of that in- 
 spiration wrote for all time and for all classes 
 of people, bearing faithful witness to the 
 truth revealed unto them by the Spirit of 
 God. The eternal nature of that truth is 
 certified by the same Holy Spirit in the 
 hearts of men now, and so God's revelation 
 is made authoritative. If it is urged against 
 this view that revelation becomes an indi- 
 vidual matter, the Quaker's ready reply is 
 that it was so in the case of the Bible writers 
 themselves, has been so and is so even yet. 
 That inspiration does not involve the infalli- 
 
JO The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 bility of the individual inspired as a teacher, 
 is Hkewise maintained, and they point to the 
 fact that the authors of the various books of 
 the Bible nowhere claim to write without 
 possibility of error. Even if they did so 
 write, to maintain that impossibility of error 
 would involve an infallible translator, an in- 
 fallible transcriber, and an infallible in- 
 terpreter, and the issue would be the estab- 
 lishment of a hierarchy of interpretation not 
 inferior in its pretensions to the claims of 
 the Priestly Hierarchy of the Church of 
 Rome. It is thus for its spiritual content 
 that the Bible is prized by the Quakers, and 
 not for its authoritative issuance directly 
 from the hand of God. None the less is it 
 held in sincerest reverence as the great de- 
 pository of faith through the ages, though 
 not the fijial nor the only one. Its inestima- 
 ble value lies in its witness to the truth and 
 in its testimony to the Christ, and all Mem- 
 bers are advised in their Discipline to in- 
 struct their children " That the same 
 blessed experience of the word of sanctifica- 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 7/ 
 
 tion through the operation of the Spirit of 
 Truth, to which they (the Scriptures) clearly 
 bear testimony is to be witnessed now, as in 
 former ages, by all who attend to its mani- 
 festations." " Search the Scriptures for in 
 them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
 are they which testify of me." They thus 
 refuse to acknowledge the Bible as author- 
 ity over the souls of men. If God inspired 
 its writers, so will he give us inspirations 
 suited to our needs, as he gave to them. 
 Whatever Moses or David or Paul experi- 
 enced in his communion with the Most 
 High, was imperative law for him, but the 
 record of that experience cannot supersede 
 the overshadowing presence of God's Spirit 
 with our spirits, nor stifle the voice with 
 which he persuades us of righteousness and 
 truth. Thus the Bible is strength and com- 
 fort and confirmation in the faitti, but it is 
 not itself the fountain nor the all-sufficient 
 source of truth. That fountain is the Eter- 
 nal Father, the Immanent God, and no 
 other. So positive is their teaching on this 
 
J2 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 point, that it will be better to let their own 
 words speak for them in the matter, as they 
 will thus define their own position in rela- 
 tion to the Bible. 
 
 In " Essays " are found extracts concern- 
 ing the Bible which are very clear in mean- 
 ing. On page y^i ^s this; " I would ever keep 
 its teachings secondary, and only corrobora- 
 tive of the immediate inspiration of the In- 
 ner Light." And again on page 71 ; '' The 
 Scriptures possess a deep intrinsic value as 
 a corroborative evidence of what is innne- 
 diately revealed to the Soul of Man." And 
 a true reverence and humility are exhibited 
 in this little extract from " Essays " ; "I 
 would then be vmderstood to be a believer 
 in all the truths contained in the Bible so far 
 as I understand them, while I would not be 
 understood as disbelieving those that I do 
 not understand, for much that seems mys- 
 terious and incomprehensible now, may yet 
 be unfolded in the future, as much has been 
 in the past." Likewise in " Sermons " we 
 find these utterances, page 32 ; " We must 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. 23 
 
 go beyond the Scriptures, and become ac- 
 quainted with that which was before them," 
 namely, God ! On page 33 we have ; " See 
 how clear these Scriptures are ; they need 
 no further proof than that they corroborate 
 the Divine Truth as it is revealed in our 
 own souls.'' And again on page 18 we find ; 
 " There is a great deal that is very valua- 
 ble in the Scriptures, and that may be a great 
 encouragement to us, but we must go to 
 that source and foundation which existed 
 before the Scriptures were written, and that 
 is our heavenly Father ; and his word still 
 continues to be for our instruction." These 
 sentiments were universal among Hicksite 
 Friends. Nay more, they were the senti- 
 ments of Quakers long before they were 
 divided into Hicksite and Orthodox, for 
 Barclay, in his celebrated " Apology," says 
 that the Scriptures " May be esteemed a 
 secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, 
 from which they have all their excellency 
 and certainty ; for as by the inward tes- 
 timony of the Spirit do we alone truly know 
 
^4 77?e Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 them, so they testify that the Spirit is that 
 Guide by which the Saints are led into all 
 truth ; therefore, according to the Script- 
 ures the Spirit is the first and principal 
 leader." 
 
 Still further evidence on this point is the 
 following extract from the " Friends' In- 
 telligencer and Journal," Jan. 4, 1890, being 
 a reprint from the same paper of Oct. 14, 
 1865. 
 
 " We are told in Scripture, ' In the be- 
 ginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God. The 
 Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, 
 and we beheld his glory as of the only be- 
 gotten of the Father, full of grace and 
 truth." This is what we recognize as the 
 Word of God, — even the power of God un- 
 created, and the Scriptures are the fruit of 
 this power. They are the words of God. 
 They were created by this Word that was in 
 the beginning. Hence we cannot recognize 
 them as the Word of God, for they were 
 created, and the Word of God never was 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. yj 
 
 created, but was in the beginning with God, 
 and was God. 
 
 These extracts serve to put their estimate 
 of the Bible in its true Hglit. Holding such 
 opinions, they have been undisturbed by all 
 the difficulties about the Authorship of the 
 books of the Bible, or its vindication from 
 errors of fact as charged by men like Bishop 
 Colenzo. And the struggle now going on 
 over the so-called " Higher Criticism " has 
 no interest for a people who look to the im- 
 mediate inspiration of God himself as the 
 fountain of all spiritual knowledge. 
 
 For in their estimate of it, no errors of 
 translators or transcribers, nor errors of 
 numbers nor yet of scientific statement, 
 could in the least detract from its value as a 
 witness to the truth of God. Whether the ac- 
 count of creation in Genesis is chronologic- 
 ally correct or not, God was, " In the begin- 
 ning " still the origin of all things. And in 
 like manner the truth of Christ's revelation 
 of the Father remains unaltered, whatever 
 may be the disagreements of the writers on 
 
76 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 minor points of fact. It will thus be seen 
 that their faith in Christian Truth and Love 
 and Practice is above and independent of all 
 rfrstructive or constructive criticism. The 
 value of the Scriptures, for them, can never 
 be diminished by any errors in the text of 
 the sacred writings, for the text has no part 
 in making the truth. It is the spirit of the 
 Scriptures, not its infallibility, which they 
 prize. And as a natural result of this indif- 
 ference to the exact agreement of the Gos- 
 pels may be traced in large part, the fact 
 that they have produced no great names in 
 Biblical research, though diligent readers of 
 the New Testament in particular. For the 
 same reason they have given little heed to 
 verbal exegesis, and have taken no part in 
 the various textual discussions of other de- 
 nominations. 
 
 With such ideas of God, of silent worship, 
 of Christ, and of the Bible, it is plain the 
 Quakers must be a devout and prayerful 
 people. But to public prayer, in assemblies, 
 they attach but little importance. They hold 
 
The Hicksite Quakere. jj 
 
 Tchat the permanent attitude of the devout 
 soul is one of prayer, — of reverent, expect- 
 ant waiting on the Spirit of the Lord. The 
 uttered petition does not constitute prayer 
 at all, though genuine prayer, through the 
 moving? of the Holy Spirit, may issue in 
 spoken petitions. It is the submissive long- 
 ing of the heart, feeling in utter self-abase- 
 ment a thirst after the Righteousness of 
 God, — a perfect sense of obedience to the 
 voice within, whispering in mysterious ways 
 the persuasions of duty, and the peace of as- 
 sured acceptance. And their answer to 
 prayer is a purely spiritual one. It comes in 
 the conscious illlumination of the soul, — in 
 clearer perceptions of duty, — in a deeper 
 and more abiding assurance of peace in 
 God's love, — sometimes it comes in quick- 
 ened intellectual perceptions, and a deeper 
 insight into the meanings of events. The 
 depth and power of Scripture are often 
 " opened " to them in response to this 
 ■prayerful attitude of the soul. Sudden im- 
 pressions, flashed upon them in this mood, 
 
75 The Hick site Quakers. 
 
 will change the direction of a contemplated 
 journey, and stay or hasten the utterance of 
 some " testimony " against a popular evil. 
 To " Pray without ceasing " is the very at- 
 mosphere of Quakerism. 
 
 Thus their faith in God, in Christ, in 
 Prayer, is more an element of their very be- 
 ing than an imposition from without. Their 
 religion is wrought into the very fiber of 
 their daily life. No people I have ever 
 known have been more thoroughly satur- 
 ated with their religious convictions than the 
 Quakers are, none have struggled more 
 resolutely to realize their religion every 
 moment. They strive to make their faith a 
 living reality, — to fed their prayer, and to 
 know its multitudinous answer, written by 
 the finger of God on the tablets of the heart, 
 though they find ever renewed the truth 
 that, 
 
 '' Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
 Of the unspoken." 
 
 But these people talk very little about 
 their religion, and discourage all noisy 
 
Tloe Hichsite Quakers. yg 
 
 demonstrations. They are not " Garrulous 
 of their dealings with God," and frown upon 
 noisy revivals and seasons of religious ex- 
 citement, as obstacles to the more quiet and 
 enduring work of the Spirit. Very vividly 
 do I remember how, in a time of great re- 
 ligious feverishness, a dear Friend and 
 neighbor approached my father with the 
 
 blunt but well-meant question, — " Have 
 
 you ever got rehgion, Peter ? " "What did 
 thee say ? " was the surprised reply. "Have__.. 
 you ever got religion ? " " Xot much, not 
 much," was the quiet answer, " but my 
 peace was made long ago, — my Father and 
 I are at one, — I have no need of thee," and 
 with a dignified wave of the hand he dis- 
 missed the intruder, then closed the gate by 
 which they had stood, and turning away 
 left his questioner to meditate on the com- j 
 plete confidence of the Quaker who had J 
 never "got rehgion " in his pecuhar v/a.y.j 
 But in their private gatherings by their 
 own firesides, when no curious outsiders 
 were present, they have often narrated their 
 
So ne Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 rich spiritual experiences, and spoken of 
 their seasons of blessed communion and 
 peace. They comfort, strengthen and en- 
 courage one another at such times, though 
 they rarely gratify curiosity by unveiling 
 the Holy of Holies within them to the gaze 
 of the uninitiated. There is something com- 
 mendable in this reticence before " the 
 world's people " about their own spiritual 
 experiences, as though they constituted a 
 sacred precinct of life, the very ground of 
 its blessed beauty and harmony, too hal- 
 lowed for vulgar criticism, and each mem- 
 ber became as a string of a delicate harp, 
 while from the whole, attuned in perfect 
 unison, burst forth that music which is di- 
 vine. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Sacraments and the Ministry. 
 
 There is nothing in the society of Friends 
 more unique than their theories of Baptism 
 and of the Christian Ministry. They allow 
 no baptism but the baptism of the Spirit, 
 and require none either for admission to 
 membership or the Ministry. They hold 
 that the baptism of water has been super- 
 seded, and that John the Baptist foretold 
 its discontinuance when he said ; " I in- 
 deed baptize you with water unto repent- 
 ance, but He that cometh after me is 
 mightier than I, . . . He shall baptize 
 you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." 
 John's baptism was the forerunner and the 
 symbol of the baptism of the Spirit, which 
 they say, is " The true, real and only effect- 
 ive baptism that could purify and cleanse 
 6 8i 
 
82 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 the man from all the pollutions of sin." 
 (" Essays," page yy, et passim.) They thus 
 abolished the outward sign and retained 
 only its inward significance. 
 
 So too they had no rite of confirmation 
 and no creed nor confession of faith to be 
 subscribed, — nothing but the seal of God 
 on their own hearts. They did not need the 
 visible bread and wine of the sacramental 
 feast to call to their remembrance the 
 Blessed Lord, on whose spiritual body and 
 blood they hourly fed, and so their Ministry 
 was not a body of men set apart for the per- 
 formance of these rites, nor with any 
 priestly functions whatever. They had not 
 even a ceremony of ordination, or setting 
 apart, only an approval by a meeting of 
 Ministers and Elders, and a recommenda- 
 tion by them, under the firm belief that the 
 only consecration for the Ministry of the 
 Word must be accomplished by the imme- 
 diate influence and teaching of the Holy 
 Spirit. The following extracts from " Es- 
 says " will best show their position: 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 8j 
 
 " The preparation requisite . . . is an 
 entire submission of the will of the man to 
 the Divine Will ; a keeping the spiritual 
 ear open to the instructions received 
 through the revelations of immediate inspi- 
 ration ; a passive learning the lessons that 
 each da3-'s revelations bring, and a patient 
 waiting for the divine command to enter the 
 work, without anxiety as to the where, the 
 how, or the manner in which he will require 
 us to labor " (pp. 26 and 29). The Minister 
 must thus feel himself moved to bear testi- 
 mony to the Grace of God, and must prove 
 his calling by the edification and strength- 
 ening of the Brethren. No intellectual tests 
 are imposed, no Course in College or Semi- 
 nary is required. The worthlessness of in- 
 tellectual and literary qualifications alone is 
 afifirmed as follows ; " Without this inspira- 
 tion, no matter how sound the doctrine, how 
 well arranged the words, or how eloquently 
 spoken, it does not reach the heart ; it only 
 pleases the human ear for the time, and 
 proves of no lasting benefit, neither tending 
 
S4 The Hichsite Qiiakers. 
 
 to encourage the halting or desponding, nor 
 to discourage the selfish, the high-minded, 
 or the callous and indifferent from pursuing 
 their improper course of life " (pp. 26 and 
 29). They further think that he who is to 
 bear the Word in his ministry will be given 
 what he shall say, and has no need of fore- 
 thought or preparation. It is a remarka- 
 ble fact that the Preacher sometimes feels 
 impelled to speak by the urgency of the 
 Spirit within, in spite of his own wish to be 
 silent. John Woolman says that he " Fre- 
 quently felt a necessity to stand up, when the 
 spring of the ministry was low." He was 
 " Reluctant to say too much," but was im- 
 pelled onward by what he believed to be the 
 Divine Presence and Power. It is not an 
 uncommon thing to hear preachers say that 
 their own preference is to be silent, but the 
 Will of God is manifested unto them, and 
 they must bear its testimony. In " Ser- 
 mons," page 53, is this statement, a com- 
 mon one for preachers; " I have spoken that 
 which has come before me, not one word of 
 
The Hichsite Qjiakers. 8^ 
 
 which I had when I sat down." For this 
 ministry no amount of scholastic training 
 availed anything, — God's consecrating hand 
 laid upon his soul alone can open the way tO' 
 its profitable exercise, and this is in strict 
 harmony with their views of God's imma- 
 nence. But the further corollary of this is 
 that as he receives his precious gift without 
 money and without price from God, he must 
 so impart of its blessings without pay of any 
 kind. No genuine Hicksite Quaker Minister 
 can accept a salary in any shape. They have 
 always borne an unswerving testimony 
 against a " Hireling Ministry, as directly 
 opposed to the Spirit in which Jesus and his 
 apostles labored for the advancement of his 
 kingdom upon earth. This position no 
 doubt involves a literalness of meaning that 
 proves too much even for the Quakers, for 
 Christ had not where to lay his head : " no 
 wife, no home, no abiding place for his 
 weary body. If the Quaker Minister would 
 imitate his Blessed Master so literally in all 
 things, he too, must take up the burden of 
 
86 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 his houseless and homeless ministry, and 
 go as did the Christ from place to place as 
 the Spirit called him, trusting to the Provi- 
 dence of God to feed and clothe, and sus- 
 tain him in his task. Yet few things would 
 be more utterly foreign to the practical 
 habits of the thrifty Quakers. Their minis- 
 try is open to any who may feel called to 
 participate therein, and can satisfy their 
 meeting that they possess the necessary 
 anointing of the spirit, and give evidence 
 that they have been with Christ in holy 
 places. 
 
 This absence of all intellectual and liter- 
 ary qualifications no doubt made the de- 
 liverances of most of their Preachers too 
 commonplace and monotonous, with too 
 little of that variety which is necessary even 
 in the most spiritual of " Conferences." 
 Many mistook their own inclinations for the 
 promptings of God, and failed in the edifi- 
 cation of the Brethren, merely repeating 
 with ceaseless iteration scriptural passages 
 whose meaning they ignorantly wrested 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 87 
 
 from their true import. Yet of what minis- 
 try cannot the same thing be said ? How 
 many of our educated Clerg-y fall far short 
 of the mark of the ideal preacher must be 
 manifest to any patient listener to the aver- 
 age pulpit utterances. But with the Quak- 
 ers this difficulty was increased by their pe- 
 culiar tenets. Men who earn their bread by 
 manual labor, as most Quakers do, can 
 scarcely be expected to attain much refine- 
 ment or elegant persuasiveness of speech. 
 And yet they have produced preachers of 
 rare and winning power, who have delivered 
 their messages of " Peace on earth, and 
 Good Will to men " with great acceptance. 
 I have often been struck by the magnificent 
 flights of fancy, the grandeur of imagination 
 and the striking figures of speech which 
 characterize the utterances of some of their 
 ablest Ministers. The highly poetic nature 
 of Quaker mysticism is often reflected in 
 their quaint but effective sermons, and di- 
 rect and powerful appeals to special duties 
 have often come from their lips. 
 
88 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 Then, too, the}' have kept their Ministry 
 quite as free from current agnosticism and 
 scepticism as an}' denomination. In tlie 
 great freedom allowed by them, preachers 
 have arisen who sought to be the propa- 
 gators of doubt, unbelief, and sometimes 
 even of atheism, and who have tried to main- 
 tain their right to deliver such testimony in 
 the public meetings for worship. But these 
 apostles of materialism have been invaria- 
 bly discountenanced and silenced by their 
 Society, or finally disowned altogether, 
 when they refused to recognize their want 
 of unity with the fundamentals of Quaker- 
 ism. In this way they have tried to main- 
 tain the integrity and strictly religious char- 
 acter of their acknowledged Ministry, while 
 still permitting a very generous liberty of 
 expression to all parties. They always in- 
 sisted on moderation in their utterances, 
 and sometimes opinions with which they 
 felt no unity, but which were uttered with 
 modesty and evident seeking for clearer 
 light, were left unrebuked, and with kind 
 
The Hicksite Oiiakeis. 
 
 89 
 
 commendations to the Supreme Voice of 
 God in the heart. Hesitation they could 
 tolerate, denial not at all. Their Ministry 
 was devoutly Christian, or nothing. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Miracles, Immortality, and Evil. 
 
 It will thus be seen how these people seek 
 to reduce all the rites and ceremonials of re- 
 ligion to their elementary spiritual signifi- 
 cance. And for such thinkers, whose lives 
 are a continuous miracle from the direct in- 
 spiration of the Father, and who see in the 
 material world the vast theatre of his im- 
 mediate action and control, the phj-sical 
 side of miracles, commonl}^ so called, has 
 indeed but little significance. As a rule 
 they neither affirm nor deny miracles but 
 quote them for the spiritual lesson they con- 
 vey. Their faith does not depend on any 
 recorded events, miraculous or otherwise, 
 for its evidence, as a daily miracle of God's 
 communion and inspiration is wrought 
 within them in great power. And what is 
 
 go 
 
The Hicksite Oiiahers. gi 
 
 true of other miracles is equally true of the 
 resurrection of Christ, which they interpret 
 as symbolizing the resurrection of the soul 
 from the grave of spiritual impotency, blind- 
 ness and sin to the glorious freedom of the 
 children of God. I have never known them 
 to cite the resurrection of our Lord as proof 
 of Man's immortality, but always in its 
 spiritual bearings. Indeed, the whole fab- 
 ric of modern Quakerism stands on this 
 consciousness of immediate communion 
 with God, on the teachings of the Light 
 within. From that they draw their Moral 
 Law, and all its imperative sanctions. From 
 that likewise they derive their proof for im- 
 mortality. And yet again and again have I 
 heard the assertion by men ignorant of their 
 real faith that they do not believe in the im- 
 mortal life, or as it is usually put ; " The 
 Quakers don't believe in heaven, do they ? " 
 In such cases the questioners confound 
 " Heaven " and " Immortality," while the 
 Quakers keep them entirely distinct in their 
 minds. With them heaven is not a locality. 
 
p2 The Hichsite Qtmkers. 
 
 nor a time, but a spiritual condition, the 
 state of unity and communion with God and 
 Christ, and is attainable here and now as 
 well as in the future life. " Behold the 
 kingdom of heaven is within )'OU," not will 
 be, but immediately is. But they are firm 
 believers in the undying nature of the hu- 
 man soul, while they make no auguries of 
 its future state, neither promising it the 
 golden streets of the New Jerusalem, nor 
 threatening it with the burning deeps of 
 hell. Their Discipline speaks of " The un- 
 certainty of this life, and the great impor- 
 tance of a preparation for that which is ta 
 come." (Page 37, edition of 1872.) Elias 
 Hicks, probably their greatest preacher, in 
 his last letter, says ; " For it has ever been 
 the lot of the righteous to pass through 
 many trials and tribulations in their passage 
 to that glorious, everlasting, peaceful and 
 happy abode, where all sorrow and sighing 
 come to an end." In the " Essays " the Au- 
 thor repeatedly refers to " The Future 
 Life," — to " Man's immortal nature," — to 
 
The Hicksite (Junkers. . 9_j 
 
 the " Enjoyment of the eternal World," — 
 to " The Courts of Heaven, both in the pres- 
 ent and the future life," and such expres- 
 sions and allusions may be found in all their 
 writings and utterances. Words must lose 
 their meaning before such people can be 
 said to have lost their faith in immortality. 
 It is true that the main stress of Quakerism 
 is the attainment of the Divine Life noiv, 
 wisely judging that he who takes counsel of 
 the Spirit of God in his own heart, will not 
 wander far from the eternal fold in the life 
 beyond. They propound no " Scheme of 
 salvation " from hell and the Devil, only a 
 present and continual salvation from our 
 own selfishness and base desires. They 
 have no belief in original sin, in total de- 
 pravity, in a personal devil or a localized 
 hell, and so need no aid of any scheme to 
 save them. Their Satan is the uninspired 
 flesh, with its carnal lusts and passions ; their 
 hell the condition of indifference to the life 
 of God, and of Christ, or alienation from it, 
 here or hereafter. From this satan and this 
 
g4 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 hell they would be saved by being born 
 into the communion of God the Father, as 
 was Jesus. Evil, they say, is perverted 
 good, consequent upon man's free will and 
 his liberty of choice essential to the develop- 
 ment of a moral being, and beyond that they 
 attempt no solution of its origin, though 
 they stouti)' insist that it has no source in a 
 personal devil. Above all do they firmly 
 deny all foreordination and predestination, 
 and plant themselves squarely on the moral 
 accountability of every person, and his abil- 
 it}-, if humble and willing to heed God's 
 warnings, to mould himself after the divine 
 ideal. They are thus unencumbered by 
 complicated theories of evil, and they are no 
 doubt wise in freeing their worship from all 
 subtleties concerning it. It is not so much 
 a knowledge of the source whence evil comes 
 that humanity craves, as it is the means by 
 which man may overcome it and triumph 
 in holiness. Whatever theory we may 
 adopt, there will always remain an unex- 
 plained residuum in the problem ; and to 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 95 
 
 thoughtful minds, the awful fact of vice and 
 sin and wickedness in humanity will be one 
 of the insoluble enigmas of existence. 
 Without seeking its solution, they can look 
 death and eternity in the face, and shrink 
 not back in dread and terror. Comforted by 
 the ever present Power, which is ahke in 
 the Nozv and in the Hereafter, they go se- 
 renely and trustingly into the mysteries that 
 sleep forever beyond the visible boundaries 
 of Being. And so their childlike faith at- 
 tains its perfect consummation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 They are Christians and Mystics. 
 
 Having thus briefly stated the main points 
 of the Hicksite Quaker faith, everj^ tenet of 
 which can be found in some parts of early 
 Christianity, it remains to make some clas- 
 sification of them in regard to it. What are 
 they ? Heretics, infidels, pantheists, or 
 plain Christians ? It is difficult to see more 
 than one answer to the cjuestion, or how 
 we can fail to classify them as the most posi- 
 tive kind of Christians. To say that they 
 live " Without God and Religion in the 
 world " is an outrage on the meaning of 
 words. If these people know them not, 
 what can the terms " God " and " Relig- 
 ion " mean ? Or can we with any better 
 reason call them Pantheists, while we re- 
 member that the purest Personality is in- 
 96 
 
o P 
 
 ^ < 
 
 o o 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. 97 
 
 volved in the use of such terms as " Love," 
 " Righteousness," " Divine Purpose," and 
 " Perfect Holiness ? " Did you ever hear 
 of righteous sticks and stones or stars ? Or 
 of the hoHness of the earth and moon ? As 
 well might we say both, as to affirm " Pan- 
 theism " of the Quaker faith ! With just 
 as little reason can we hesitate to call them 
 Christians, because they cannot go through 
 the Augsburg Confession, and the Heidel- 
 berg or Westminster Catechisms, or the 
 thirty-nine Articles of the Episcopal Church. 
 Jesus made no such tests, imposed no such 
 examens on his disciples. " Follow me " 
 is the Master's summons, and the Quakers 
 have tried to obey it. To question their 
 place in the legions of Christianity is to af- 
 firm that men may be imbued with the spirit 
 of Christ, meekly and reverently seek to fol- 
 low in his footsteps according to the light 
 that is given them, — may humbly struggle 
 against sin and all manner of uncleanness 
 in his name, — may bear the visible marks 
 of his gentleness and love about them, — 
 
p8 The Hicksite Qtiakers. 
 
 may fight a good fight in his strength, and 
 finish the course in innocence and recti- 
 tude ; — may do all this, and yet, for some 
 metaphysical opinion not exactly conform- 
 able to another's creed, may be outcasts 
 from his kingdom, aliens from his Father's 
 Love, and minions of darkness rather than 
 Children of the Light. Let him believe 
 such a creed who can, I have no sympathy 
 with a Christianity that spurns these mani- 
 fest marks of discipleship, and seeks a test 
 other than such as is learned at the very feet 
 of Jesus. It is from that very source the 
 Quaker seeks to learn, — from the very 
 Spirit which made Jesus the Christ unto 
 men. 
 
 There can be little doubt that a just es- 
 timate of the Quakers will place them in the 
 ranks of the Mystics, always a considerable 
 power in the Church, yet always a class 
 somewhat vague and indefinite in its limita- 
 tions. Any definition will seem imperfect, 
 yet one of the best is that given by Rev. 
 James Martineau of London, in a remark- 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. gg 
 
 able sermon entitled, " The Tides of the 
 Spirit," in which he says ; " The Mystic 
 would mould himself into accordance with 
 the divine constancy by spreading the mar- 
 gin of his prayer till it covers the whole of 
 life ; and would let out the imprisoned 
 glory of his highest mood to transfigure all 
 the j'ears." The devout Quaker seems to 
 have aimed at precisely this moulding of 
 himself into harmony with the constancy of 
 God, — at making his whole nature like a 
 harp whose everj^ string is sensitive to the 
 slightest touch of the Divine. It matters not 
 that some may think this impossible of at- 
 tainment, for a few souls have always sought 
 it, and many of them have proved an in- 
 spiration and means of revival within the 
 confines of the Mihtant Church. The 
 Quakers sought such attainment while 
 mingling in the busy world, and not by re- 
 tiring into meditative solitude. They were 
 no monks nor hermits, but loving children 
 of God. Their ideas are as old as the Church 
 itself, and many and honorable names are 
 
loo The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 embraced in the list of those who have held 
 them. Eckhart, Origen, Lauler, Bernard 
 of Clairvaux, the Saintly Fenelon of Cam- 
 bray, Madame Guyon, and many a lesser 
 light, have pointed to the same heavenly 
 road that the Quakers show the true disci- 
 ple. The Roman Catholic Communion has 
 been especially fruitful in mystics of a high 
 order, differing from each other according 
 to their natures and the times upon which 
 they were cast, but agreeing with each other 
 and with all mystics in a few cardinal tenets. 
 These are, for the most part, the immanence 
 of God in his Creatures, his presence in the 
 fulness of infinite power ; the reality of di- 
 rect communion between his spirit and 
 man's spirit ; that this communion is con- 
 ditional upon the entire submission of the 
 human will to the divine ; and that in this 
 conscious presence of God and Christ lies 
 the real meaning of all religion, and our 
 only certainty of acceptance with Him who 
 is the Author of all. One common charac- 
 teristic is the tendency to ignore the forms 
 
The Hicksite Qiiakers. loi 
 
 of sacraments and set orders of worship, and 
 to trust in ecstatic visions and visitations. 
 Some sought to know the very Essence of 
 God by complete absorption into his will 
 and love. This speculative side of Mysti- 
 cism the Quakers did not adopt, but gave 
 themselves to the devotional and practical 
 side, which seeks the experience of imme- 
 diate communion with the Father, and the 
 realization of heaven in the heart while on 
 earth. The protest against a heartless con- 
 formity with external forms is common to 
 nearly all mystics. In reading Lauler's ac- 
 count of his own conversion, one might 
 fancy himself reading an extract from Fox 
 or Woolman, so similar are the experiences. 
 The Mendicant Catholic Friar bade Mad- 
 ame Guyon hear the voice of God in the si- 
 lence of her own heart, words well adapted 
 to the speech of an old-time Quaker 
 preacher. They all have seasons of great 
 desolation of spirit, when the struggle seems 
 to have gone hopelessly against them, and 
 God to have abandoned them. Then again 
 
I02 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 their souls will rise to sublimer heights, as 
 on the wings of light, and they will spirit- 
 ually dwell with God and Christ. 
 
 But there is one feature of Quakerism 
 which must not be omitted and by which it 
 is widely separated from extreme mj'sti- 
 cism. Many of the older mystics, like Eck- 
 hart and even Madame Guyon, sought to 
 merge their own personal being in the per- 
 sonality of God. In the heights of their 
 communion with the divine, they would lose 
 their own identity, — and personal annihila- 
 tion was the issue they aimed it. This is 
 Pantheism, pure and simple, the Nirvana 
 of the eastern mystic, — the destruction of 
 the Ego in the Supreme. From this impo- 
 tent conclusion the Quakers have been 
 saved. However intimate the communion 
 they experience, they never for an instant 
 merge the human in the Divine, never lose 
 their distinct personality. They were and 
 are too intensely realistic for such a conclu- 
 sion. They seek to envelope life in the at- 
 mosphere of heaven ; but that only conse- 
 
The Hicksiie Quakers. lOj 
 
 crates life, without evacuating it of its human 
 nature. And thus they escape the greatest 
 danger of mysticism, which, carried to ex- 
 tremes, is but another word for individual 
 annihilation. 
 
 The mystics, at different periods in the 
 history of the Christian Church, have proved 
 themselves the very fountains of life and de- 
 votion, and have done much to keep alive 
 our holy religion in its purity. But they 
 have never been numerous for the simple 
 reason that the high spiritual tension re- 
 quired of them is unattainable by the aver- 
 age toiling, struggling Christian. The sub- 
 jective element is too predominating in their 
 experiences, and men are hardly competent 
 to take religion reduced to its unembodied 
 spiritualities as their ever3'day nourishment, 
 but require a healthy mixture of embod- 
 ied temporalities. Even the most saintly 
 among them cannot keep permanently the 
 heights of e.xaltation he can temporarily at- 
 tain. As Wordsworth writes, 
 
 " 'Tis difficult to keep 
 Heights which the soul is competent to win." 
 
I04 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 This permanent altitude of the soul was 
 made more difficult still with the Quakers, 
 for they discarded all the sacraments, all 
 the outward signs and symbols by which 
 men are wont to call to mind the inward 
 grace, and which they use as aids in its at- 
 tainment, and threw the spirit directly upon 
 the contemplation and experience of the 
 deep significance of Baptism, Confirmation 
 and the Holy Communion without the en- 
 acting of the rite itself, relying solely on the 
 purely Spiritual powers to give sign of 
 quickened life within. No doubt this dis- 
 carding all visible aids to faith has resulted 
 in an exalted spirituality with the chosen 
 few, whose souls are strung Sensitive to all 
 intimations of the Divine. But it has as cer- 
 tainly set a mark of Discipleship too high 
 for common attainment, and necessarily 
 limited the Society to the peculiar ones, 
 who are capable of dwelling in the high 
 places of worship. Moreover, it has, in this 
 way reduced all spiritual experiences to one 
 pattern, and so developed in many in- 
 
The Hicksite Qtiakers. 
 
 •05 
 
 stances, one of its most manifest weak- 
 nesses, an utter incompetency to appreciate 
 and estimate any religious experiences not 
 shaped after the pattern of its own. It is a 
 common fault of enthusiasts, and some of 
 the Quakers share it with others. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Sonic Further ConsiJcrdtioiis. 
 
 The hostility of the Quakers to a " Hire- 
 ling 2^Iinistry " and their reluctance to en- 
 ter into anv common worship not involving 
 their own forms, have kept them isolated, 
 a religious comnumity by themselves. AA itli 
 some this prejudice was so strong that they 
 disliked to attend funerals conducted by 
 salaried clergymen. Their religiotis synt- 
 pathies with other denominations were not 
 kept sutttciently lively and interested, and 
 ver\' rarelv fotnid any public expression at 
 all. They never interfered in the slightest 
 degree with any other worship. obsen.-ing 
 the strictest neutrality in the difterences of 
 others, and always maintaining the right of 
 every man to worship as he wotild. Some 
 
 of the first Roman Catholics who came here 
 io6 
 
ne Hicksite Qiiahers. loy 
 
 found the mystical Quakers their stoutest 
 defenders in their right to estabUsIi the Holy 
 Church on American soil, though with the 
 services conducted by the Priesthood they 
 had no sympathy whatever. In my own 
 home our Father strictly forbade us to in- 
 timate by word or deed any dislike for Cath- 
 olicism when a new farm-hand came who was 
 a Catholic. But with all their liberality in 
 this respect, their minds were kept so intent 
 on the contemplation of one peculiar phase 
 of God's self-revelation as to disqualify them 
 for a just appreciation of other modes of His 
 manifestation, and they thus missed that 
 comprehensive religious sympathy so es- 
 sential to a body ministering to the wants 
 and aspirations of large numbers of souls. 
 The Society was thus kept limited in num- 
 bers and shorn of much of the strength that 
 might have restilted from inter-communion 
 with other denominations. 
 
 With their peculiar and exclusive ideas 
 of " Waiting on the Lord in silence," the 
 Quakers could admit no music into their 
 
io8 The Hicksite Ojiakers- 
 
 worship, and in their protest against the 
 frivoHties of life they shut out the cultiva- 
 tion of its harmonies and melodies from the 
 household, thus encroaching some on the 
 groinid of extreme Puritanism. In this way 
 they lost to themselves one of the best allies 
 of all worship, one of the purest inspirations 
 of exalted feeling and belittled one of hu- 
 manity's most sacred gifts. By a similar 
 intensity of faith and exaggerated zeal to re- 
 buke the follies of the world, they ignored 
 the di^•ine instinct of personal adornment 
 in the young, and reduced their dress to an 
 exact formula as to pattern, color and trim- 
 mings. To such an extreme of exacting 
 scruples were they sometimes carried, as to 
 lead a young woman out of the meeting who 
 wore too many ribbons of a bright hue. 
 These same Friends, who protested so ear- 
 nestly against devotion to the fashions of 
 the world, adopted a fashion of their own, 
 and adhered to it with such tenacity, that 
 some travelled from Poughkeepsie to Phil- 
 adelphia for the sole purpose of procuring 
 
The Hichsite Quakers. lop 
 
 clothing of the appropriate cut and appear- 
 ance. But many of them outgrew this spe- 
 cies of fetichism and discarded the plain 
 style of coat on the ground of inconsistency 
 in taking so much trouble to secure it. My 
 own Father was one of the number. Xot 
 only the severe plainness of their dress, but 
 also the barrenness and dreariness of their 
 meeting-houses, and the absence of home 
 decoration, seemed to fly into the very face 
 of that sense of artistic grace and beauty 
 which is ever springing up in the heart of 
 man and craving utterance. They seem to 
 have been ignorant of the fact that God's 
 revelations of himself are not confined to the 
 immediate inner life of j\Ian, but that he 
 speaks to the mind in the intricacies of sci- 
 ence, to the imagination in every line of 
 grace, in every form of symmetry, and in 
 ever}' beauty of color and delicacy of tint or 
 of sound ; and to the heart in even.' holy af- 
 fection for wife or children or mankind. By 
 the very intensity of faith and devotion 
 Quakerism has passed too much into a 
 
no The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 stereotyped form of worship, and a set style 
 of dress and speech, with little allowance for 
 the progress of theological development, or 
 the changing demands of a civilization that 
 cannot pause. It has tried to mould its 
 birthright members after one spiritual pat- 
 tern, to make them, too, a marked and pecu- 
 liar people in speech, in dress and in con- 
 duct. For the attainment of this purpose, 
 righteous enough in itself, but mistaken in 
 its aim, they have assumed a minuteness of 
 supervision reaching into all the details of 
 life. That supervision is the more ofifen- 
 sive, as it is vested in the members of the 
 Meeting, and not in any one person trained 
 to the work. The tyranny of the multitude 
 is ever more exacting and less amenable to 
 reason than tyranny of the single man. So 
 this Society has made few converts, and has 
 steadily lost to other denominations those 
 born into its birthright membership, while 
 not a few are waiting in silence the develop- 
 ments of the new with a half suspended al- 
 legiance to the old ; and some, alone, and 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. in 
 
 aloof from sympathy with rehgion at aU, 
 are treading the mysterious and chilhng 
 ways of Agnosticism, that realm of thought 
 and feeling whose only prayer is a cry of 
 ignorance, and where no mid-day sun of 
 trust nor midnight star of hope guides the 
 wanderer to his eternal rest. 
 
 And Quakerism has been a peculiar phase 
 of Mysticism in this too, that it has left lit- 
 tle impression on the general or theological 
 literature of its time. This result is inevit- 
 able from its theory of the ministry of the 
 word, and its general deportment towards 
 the learned professions. Its ministers need 
 no special training if what they are to say 
 is given them directly from the impressions 
 of the Holy Spirit. They are to wait till 
 those impressions come, and not attempt to 
 gild the very speech of God with refine- 
 ments of rhetoric or oratory. But the law 
 was practically closed to the earnest Quaker, 
 and medicine seems to have had little at- 
 traction for them. So none of the learned 
 professions have been enlisted in behalf of 
 
112 Tbe Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 their living faith, and the Society has left 
 but few literary remains that will survive 
 the test of time. There is a uniformity in all 
 their expressions and experiences, and a 
 narrowness in the range of thought, that 
 promises little of perpetuity to their writ- 
 ings. They have been too busy with the 
 devotional and ethical phase of their cultus 
 to be very productive in the field of letters. 
 Believing, as they do, that God works 
 through human instrumentalities, they neg- 
 lected the parallel fact, that the more deli- 
 cately fashioned and perfected the instru- 
 ment is, the more perfect its display of the 
 various powers committed to its keeping. 
 The harp that would sing in many tones 
 needs more than a single string. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that the 
 Quakers have long been active promoters of 
 educational interests. Some of the earliest 
 Boarding Schools in the country were 
 founded by them, and in Dutchess County 
 Old " Nine Partners " long held a promi- 
 nent place. Not only have they maintained 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. //j 
 
 excellent schools, but Swarthmore College 
 in Pennsylvania is a monument of their de- 
 sire for the higher education. Its President 
 is one of the most accomplished educators 
 of the day, and ranks among the first in 
 literary attainment. Ezra Cornell, the 
 Founder of Cornell University, one of the 
 greatest educational institutions of the day, 
 was a Quaker. Still it must be noted that 
 those who have achieved the most have not 
 done it through the direct influence of the 
 meeting, and ver}^ few old-time Quakers 
 have attained eminence in letters or in art. 
 Quakerism however, has given us our 
 most truly National Poet, John Greenleaf 
 Whittier, the Singer most identified with the 
 People, and most in sympathy with their 
 aspirations. In his song the true Quaker 
 sentiment has found its highest and most 
 perfect expression, while the white-haired 
 singer kept his place among the silent wor- 
 shippers on " First Day " mornings. Its 
 truths are fresh and vital in his mind, and 
 he has uttered them in his verse freely. In 
 
114 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim " he has put 
 the very spirit of their worship into his 
 song : 
 
 " Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt 
 Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt 
 On his moved lips the seal of silence melt. 
 
 " Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole 
 Of a diviner life, from soul to soul, 
 Baptizing in one tender thought the whole." 
 
 The last three lines are full of the deep 
 meaning of a " Silent Meeting " among the 
 Friends. So, too, their sense of God's 
 Providence is given in these stanzas from 
 " The Eternal Goodness." 
 
 "And so beside the silent Sea 
 I wait the muffled Oar ; 
 No harm can come from him to me 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 " I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
The Hick site Q_iiiikers. ii^ 
 
 What " heretics " they are, these Quakers 
 to put so absohite a trust in God's gnardian 
 care ! \\'ould that such " heresy " were 
 common in the land ! 
 
 In the exquisite poem " The Prayer of 
 Agassiz " he has given utterance to their 
 'hought of prayer. 
 
 " Then the master in his place 
 Bowed his head a little space, 
 And the leaves by soft airs stirred, 
 Lapse of wave and cry of bird 
 Left the solemn hush unbroken 
 Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
 While its wish, on earth unsaid, 
 Rose to heaven interpreted. 
 As, m life's best hours, we hear 
 By the Spirit's finer ear 
 His low voice within us, thus 
 The All-Father heareth us ; 
 And his holy ear we pain 
 With our noisy words and vain ; 
 Not for Him our violence 
 Storming at the gates of sense, 
 His the primal language, his 
 The eternal Silences." 
 
ii6 The Hicksite Cluakers- 
 
 And again in the Prologaie to " Miriam " 
 he touches their faith in the Immanent God, 
 ivhen he speaks of 
 
 ■■ The tokens ot" that primal Force. 
 Older than heaven itsell. yet new 
 A5 the young heart it reaches to. 
 Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
 The tidal wave of human souls : 
 Guide. Comforter and Inward Word ! 
 The Eternal Spirit of the Lord I " 
 
 And yet again he says : 
 
 ■■ Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
 The garden of the heart, and talks 
 With man. as under Eden Trees. 
 In all his varied languages." 
 
 '■ Bv inward sense, by outward signs. 
 God's presence sti'l the heart di\"me5." 
 
 In " The ^Meeting " is foinid a still more 
 complete statement of Otiaker Belief and 
 practice. There, too. they \\\\\ find, mir- 
 rored in the sweetest verse, more than one 
 of the little prejudices which disfigure the 
 
Tl:e Hicksite Qiiaken. iij 
 
 Friendly Escutcheon. In this ver\- poem 
 of " The ^Meeting- " he gives a skilful thrust 
 at music, and art, and learning in the pul- 
 pit ; 
 
 ■• I ask no organ's soulless breath 
 To drone the themes of life and death. 
 Xo altar candle-lit by day. 
 No ornate wordsman's rhetoric play. 
 No cool philosophy to teach 
 Its bland audacities of speech 
 To double-tasked idolaters 
 Themselves their Gods and worshippers, 
 No pulpit hammered by the fist 
 Of loud asserting dogmatist. 
 Who borrows from the hand of love 
 The smoking thunderbolts of Jove." 
 
 But in higher moods he rises above all carp- 
 ing criticism and prejudice of sect, and sings 
 the Quaker faith in God's universal pres- 
 ence in exulting strains : 
 
 ■■ I trace His presence in the blind 
 Pathetic gropings of my kind. — 
 In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung. 
 In cradle-hymns of life they sung. 
 
ii8 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 Each, in its measure, but a part 
 Of the unmeasured Over-Heart." 
 
 — Miriavi. p. 342. 
 
 Or with yet clearer emphasis he says : 
 
 " Somewhat of goodness, something true 
 From sun and spirit shining through 
 All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
 Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark. 
 Attests the presence everywhere 
 Of love and providential care.'' 
 
 But we cannot linger among his delight- 
 ful songs. In all his moods, he is evermore 
 the Dear Old Quaker Poet. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Summary. 
 
 Upon the weaknesses of the Quaker Or- 
 ganization it is not my purpose to dwell at 
 any length. Mysticism has not, of itself, 
 sufficient coherence to form the basis of a 
 permanent society. And when, to the tenets 
 of Mysticism, is added a kind of asceticism 
 in dress and speech and conduct, which is 
 entirely foreign to the atmosphere of these 
 days, it needs no prophetic mind to foresee 
 the ultimate disappearance of the Friends 
 as a Society or a toal change in some fun- 
 damental characteristics. That Society has 
 produced a noble type of Manhood and of 
 Womanhood, saintly souls in unity with 
 high ideals of God and of Humanity. It has 
 proclaimed the Immanent Father, con- 
 sciously active in the souls of men, and the 
 119 
 
120 The Hkksite Quakers. 
 
 great trend of Christianity to-day is away 
 from other theories, and toward this of im- 
 manence. It has defended absokne tolera- 
 tion in worship, and advocated the snpen- 
 orit\- of ^lan to all institutions. It has stood 
 for the spirit of the Scriptures as against the 
 letter thereof, — for ]\Ian's Free Will and 
 }vIoral Accountability before God, as against 
 Augustinianism, Calvinism and Necessity. 
 The greatest advance in Theology for the 
 last century has been away from the neces- 
 sitarians and towards those of the Alexan- 
 drian Greeks. — away from a literal con- 
 struction tOAvards a spiritual interpretation 
 of the words of the Bible, — away from a 
 catechetical strictness of thinking about God 
 and Christ, and towards a holy living in 
 God and Christ. — away from a mechanical 
 theory of Atonement by substitution or ran- 
 som, and towards a spiritual salvation from 
 sin through the Spirit of God as manifested 
 in Jesus Christ, — away from a semi-idola- 
 trous devotion to rites and towards a more 
 spiritual phase of Christianity ; and all 
 
The Hiiksi/i' Qh\i!:iTS. 
 
 these cliaiii^cs ;iro clearly in the direelion of 
 the Cardinal Poctriiies of the Onakers. 
 These iloelrines have always existed in the 
 llistorie Cduu'eh, Init have of late years re- 
 eeiwnl a reniarkahle development in its 
 Sermons and books. In a eharminL;' hook 
 h^• A. |. r. Hare. "Memorials of a Oniet 
 Life," are the following" passai^es, taken 
 from Maria Hare's Note Book, which would 
 be t\pieal (Quakerism from a Quaker pen. 
 
 " All tlie rubbish of earthly mindedness 
 seemed swept away, antl I lay, as it were, 
 ipiite passi\e for the acting- of Gotl's Spirit. 
 Thoughts of (.iod were the first to spring 
 up in the morning ; my heart waitcil not 
 for my head to teach it how to pra)', but wa^^ 
 liftcil up unconsciously and without effort 
 in worils of prayer and praise." And again 
 she speaks of " The operation of His Spirit, 
 sometimes felt almost sensibly in an inde- 
 scribable conuuunion with Tlini ;" or fur- 
 ther ; " In prayer I felt most strongly thai 
 God was ii: Mr, that 1 no longer had to 
 search for llini out of self. I lis temple was 
 
122 The Hick site Qiiakers. 
 
 my soul." Yet Mrs. H.^re was a devout 
 member of the Church of England, and ex- 
 tracts of similar import might be made from 
 writers of other denominations. They are 
 quoted to show that Quakers are not the 
 only ones holding these peculiar tenets. 
 
 Sunday after Sunday all the great truths 
 of Quakerism are proclaimed from pulpits 
 all over the land, and if the Friends grieve 
 at the decay of their Organization, they can 
 also rejoice that its truths are slowly but 
 surely leavening the great mass of Chris- 
 tendom. Let me be clearly understood here, 
 — I do not say the Quakers have brought 
 all this about of themselves, but that thev 
 have all along had hold of many of the 
 truths and of the Spirit that are working 
 the mighty change, and so were clearly in 
 the line of true historic religious develop- 
 ment. 
 
 If Quakerism, in its denominational form, 
 is to pass away, it will be because its mis- 
 sion is done, its truths awarded their true 
 place in the Christian Life and the best of 
 
The Hicksite Qiiakers. 12 j 
 
 its Spirit infused into the Historic Church, 
 and so its " Raison d'etre " has ceased to 
 exist. But it may be that in the counsels 
 of that inscrutable wisdom to which it has 
 ever looked for light and strength, it is des- 
 tined to be revived and transformed to suit 
 the Spirit of the times that are before us, 
 and still to bear its simple yet comforting 
 testimony to a doubting world. But all evi- 
 dence now points to its probable extinction. 
 \\'hatever may be its fate, we may rest as- 
 sured its members are neither Infidels, Athe- 
 ists nor Pantheists, but devout, believing 
 Christians. — that their faith has been life's 
 best consolation to many a wear\-soul. — and 
 has given it rest and peace in Christ and his 
 love, — and that in private or in public, they 
 have ever borne and will ever bear, faithful 
 witness to the Grace, Majesty and forgiving 
 ^lercy of that God, " Who is the Author of 
 Peace and the Lover of Concord, — in the 
 knowledge of whom standeth our Eternal 
 life, and whose ser\ace is perfect freedom " 
 of bodv and of Soul. 
 
CHAl'TER XI. 
 
 Where Shall They Go ? 
 
 Having transferred my own allegiance, 
 through a period of hesitation and investi- 
 gation, from the Quaker Society to the Prot- 
 estant Episcopal Church, I have been sur- 
 prised and gratified to find how many of the 
 Descendants of the Quakers have found 
 their spiritual homes in that communion. A 
 little consideration will show us that this is, 
 after all, the natural course of things. For 
 the more thoughtful among them must dis- 
 cover that the Quakers have reduced their 
 absence of form itself to a perfect form and 
 so are become extreme formalists. Their 
 opposition to a ceremonial worship, in- 
 tended to emphasize their repugnance to 
 the exaltation of ritual, dogma and sacer- 
 dotal rule over the spirit of devotion and 
 124 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 12^ 
 
 continual service of God, lias degenerated 
 into a fixed ceremonial. A Quaker service 
 is as thoroughly determined beforehand, as 
 to its form, as an Episcopal service. Any 
 persistent violation of that form would be 
 as promptly censured and punished among 
 Quakers as among Episcopalians. The 
 silence of a Quaker meeting is just as much 
 expressive of the inward worship of their 
 hearts, as the uttered prayer and praise of 
 the Church, and no more so. The Friends 
 very properly insist upon compliance with 
 their order, and punish recalcitrant mem- 
 bers by disowning them. Public worship is 
 impossible without some form, and without 
 public worship all religious organization is 
 impossible. But it is a permanent danger of 
 all religious service, that the ceremony be- 
 comes evacuated of its spirit, and is prized 
 for its own sake, rather than for the religious 
 life it fosters. The Quakers are a living 
 proof of this tendency. In their honest ef- 
 forts to do away with all institutional re- 
 ligion, they have instituted a monotonous 
 
126 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 formalism, devoid of the variety and rich 
 spiritual symbolism of the services of the 
 Church. And so we find the extremists 
 among them just as thorough formalists in 
 their services, their dress and their speech, 
 as the Ritualists in the Episcopal Church. 
 The extreme conservative among them at- 
 taches as much importance to the proper 
 period of silence, to the use of certain 
 phrases and forms of sermonizing, to the 
 plain coat, to the " Thee " and " Thou," and 
 the " First-Day " of their speech, as the Rit- 
 ualistic Rector attaches to his procession- 
 als and recessionals, his copes and albs and 
 chasubles and all tlie other ritualistic para- 
 phernalia. In either case, when the cere- 
 monial is invested with its living spiritual 
 significance, whether it be silence or ritual 
 it may be grand and impressive. But when 
 the spirit has departed from either, it be- 
 comes a barren form. There is just as little 
 meaning to an earnest soul in the superflu- 
 ous whining of the ultra Quaker formalist 
 over the degeneracy of the age, over its 
 
The Hicksite Qjiakers. i2j 
 
 pianos and violins in homes, its fine dresses 
 and amusements, as there is in the clerical 
 cry for the church, with all her progressive 
 instincts and necessities, to return again to 
 the " Dogmatic, Sacramental, Sacerdotal 
 and Ritualistic religion of three hundred 
 years ago." Both forget that the world 
 moves, — and each would stop the " Riot of 
 private opinion" with his peculiar whim. 
 But the Church moves on, — and will ulti- 
 mately relegate both to the realm of efifete 
 causes. There is just as little spiritual food 
 in the one as in the other for a soul hunger- 
 ing and thirsting after the righteousness of 
 God. The younger minds of the Hicksite 
 Quakers are alive to these facts, — they are, 
 by virtue of their inherited instincts and 
 training a religious class in the best sense 
 of the term, — and while they turn with long- 
 ing hearts from both Quaker fossilism and 
 Episcopal Mediasvalism, they can accept the 
 Liturgy of the Living, Aggressive and Pro- 
 gressive Church, not as a formula of Divine 
 origin, nor as the sole avenue of God's re- 
 
128 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 deeming grace, but as an order of service at 
 once convenient, beautiful, appropriate, ex- 
 pressive and necessary, — the fruit of many 
 centuries of Christian culture and worship, 
 and with such modifications as it is likely to 
 receive from time to time at the hands of 
 the Church, admirably adapted to the wants 
 of the age, both for public worship and pri- 
 vate devotion. This objection to the Li- 
 turgical Service once overcome, all other 
 Quaker ideas harmonize more nearly with 
 the Episcopal Church than with any other 
 Denomination. 
 
 Their central doctrine of God's imma- 
 nence, and of his immediate communion 
 with the Spirit of Man, I have heard Sun- 
 day after Sunday from the lips of a devout 
 and scholarly Doctor of Divinity in an 
 Episcopal pulpit, and I find it affirmed also 
 in the works and sermons of the clergy. 
 The learned Maurice, of England, says: — 
 " Continued intercourse with the Father of 
 Light ... is the only safeguard." 
 And again, " I feel that there is another 
 
wW^ 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. I2g 
 
 spirit dwelling with my Spirit, and willing 
 to guide it into all good." And his Biog- 
 rapher saj's of him : " A certain inward 
 voice, a certain Inward Light, was however 
 acquiring an authority with him superior to 
 the indications of circumstance." And the 
 Rev. F. W. Robertson says : — " God's spirit 
 in the soul, an inward power of doing the 
 thing we will and ought, — that is strength, 
 and nothing else." And again, " The 
 thought of your mind is perchance the 
 thought of God." And, " It is given us to 
 distinguish between the voice which is from 
 above, and that which speaks from below," 
 and all through that wonderful sermon on 
 " The loneliness of Christ," he makes even 
 better statement of the doctrine than the 
 Quakers themselves. 
 
 Of course it is not pretended that all in the 
 Church hold this idea, for it is fortunate that 
 there is here no authority to compel all 
 thought and expression to assume one 
 mould, and the Church is comprehensive 
 enough to embrace the Spirit of a Maurice 
 
/JO The Hichsite Qiiakers. 
 
 or a Hare, and the ultramontane tendencies 
 of the Theologian whose gaze is averted 
 from the present to his millennial past. 
 
 So, too, the Quaker idea of common wor- 
 ship by participation in one common feeling 
 and aspiration. 
 
 " Baptising in one tender thought the 
 whole," is realized in the use of the Collects 
 of the Book of Common Prayer, by which 
 all are brought to join in one worship. But 
 especially in its freedom from the gloomy 
 tenets of Calvinism is the Church attractive 
 to a mind trained in the Quaker School. Its 
 theology is least infected with the doctrines 
 of Election, Fore-ordination, Predestina- 
 tion, or the more terrible one of Eternal 
 Damnation. Bibliolatry, too, has no su- 
 preme rule in this denomination, and liberty 
 of opinion is as absolute in its Communion 
 as is possible within the limits of devotion 
 to God and Christ. It makes no require- 
 ments for admission beyond the Apostles' 
 Creed, and imposes no special, particular- 
 ized interpretation of its phraseology. It 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. iji 
 
 requires no experience of any miraculous 
 conversion, and leaves the individual con- 
 science as unfettered as Quakerism can. 
 Not only is one's own liberty of thinking and 
 acting as free as it could be anywhere, but 
 the Church would not presume to interfere 
 in matters of amusement, of forms of mar- 
 riage ceremony, and of supervision over 
 members such as Quakerism has assumed. 
 The minuteness of that supervision has ma- 
 terially weakened the Society of Friends, — 
 the Church has no desire to undertake it. 
 She assumes no authority over the con- 
 science of men, — she is content to leave 
 them in the freedom wherewith Christ has 
 made them free. 
 
 These facts are becoming more and more 
 apparent to the growing younger minds 
 among the Quakers, and are operating pow- 
 erfully, not only with them, but often with 
 old and firm adherents of the Society. My 
 Father was a regular and devoted attendant 
 at meetings as long as he had strength to 
 go, but he said, " If I should ever leave the 
 
1^2 The Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 Friends, it would be for the Episcopal 
 Church." He saw its wise hberty and ap- 
 proved it. He often approved of Episcopal 
 freedom from " Rant about religion," and 
 from what he, in his homely phrase, denom- 
 inated " Hell-fire preaching." His chief 
 objection, after that of a " Hireling Minis- 
 try," was to subscribing the formulated doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, which he did not then 
 know was no part of the Confession of 
 Faith required, beyond what stands in the 
 Apostles' Creed. I once heard him say to 
 an Episcopal Clergyman, " If thee will say, 
 as the Scripture says, that God was in 
 Christ reconciling the world unto himself, 
 and not add another word of thy own, I will 
 be in perfect unity with thee." So when his 
 Son, after years of careful thought, gave in 
 his allegiance from conviction to the His- 
 toric Church, and passed into its fold, he 
 interposed no word of censure, nor betrayed 
 the least disappointment or regret. He 
 foresaw and admitted the decay of his own 
 Society, and in no way expected it to be the 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. i ^^ 
 
 Church of the future. He lieheved the 
 Quakers were more nearly in unity with the 
 Episcopalians than with any others, and 
 more than once gave expression to his con- 
 victions. And while no step of my life has 
 been more fruitful of good results to my- 
 self, mentally and spiritually, my satisfaction 
 with it is exalted and intensified by the 
 knowledge of its approval by his pure and 
 upright spirit. The Quaker Society has al- 
 ready furnished, through its descendants, 
 three Bishops for the Church, — Alonzo 
 Potter, Horatio Potter and Henry Potter ; 
 devout men, wise administrators, and an 
 honor to the Priestly Ofificc. And apropos 
 of this fact, I may tell the answer of the 
 Quaker Lady, a few months since, who, 
 when rallied by me on the propriety of unit- 
 ing with the church and leaving her own 
 societ}', aptly replied: — "Oh no, there is 
 great need of Quakers yet, to furnish the 
 best materials out of which to make Episco- 
 pal Bishops." And as I lay down my pen 
 and commit this little work to its fate, I 
 
I ^4 '^^^ Hicksite Qiiakers. 
 
 trust it will not be amiss in me to say to 
 those Quakers who find their religious as- 
 sociations broken up in the decay of their 
 Society, and are waiting some opening to 
 transfer their allegiance to a living Church, 
 that they need make no unwilling surrender 
 of their liberty of thought, investigation and 
 individual opinion to enter the Communion 
 of the Episcopal Church ; that the Church 
 fears no honest thinking, no sincere search 
 after truth ; that her Clergy are no Priestly 
 tyrants, but willing leaders in the great 
 fields of science and of general thought ; that 
 her devotional heritage will enrich their 
 lives beyond all measure ; that her great 
 minds will unfold to them treasures of 
 thought and lines of investigation to charm 
 and delight them ; while all her ordinances, 
 administered in Christian love and freedom, 
 will call all truth " To their pure minds 
 by way of remembrance," and help to unite 
 them more intimately with that Spirit they 
 have already learned to adore, with the 
 Christ in whom that Spirit dwelt in its ful- 
 ness, and in whom is peace evermore. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 The previous chapters were written some 
 years ago. Since then a new movement has 
 begun within the society of Hicksite 
 Friends. An effort is in progress to put it 
 more fully in line with the requirements of 
 modern thought and action. Its members 
 are convinced of the necessity of immediate, 
 systematic and harmonious work to pro- 
 long its life and increase its usefulness. It 
 is a hopeful sign that they recognize and 
 admit its weakness, are convinced of the 
 main causes leading to its deterioration, and 
 are ready to apply the necessary remedies. 
 These causes lie chiefly in directions previ- 
 ously indicated in this book ; in the decrease 
 and intellectual poverty of its ministry, — in 
 the loss of its young members, — in its use- 
 less exclusiveness and hostility to music and 
 135 
 
1^6 The Hichsite Qjiakers. 
 
 artistic decoration, — in its isolation from 
 other Christian Bodies, — in its failure to 
 keep up a rational interest in Holy Script- 
 ure, and in the critical study of its books, — 
 and especially in the loss of its missionary 
 spirit to bear the preached word to the 
 thirsting multitudes by the wayside. But a 
 new spirit, it is claimed, has been infused in- 
 to its ranks, a Neo-Quakerism is in process 
 of development, whose bow of promise is al- 
 ready in the sky. To this Regeneration of 
 Quakerism we must give conscientious au- 
 dience, in our final chapter. At Swarth- 
 more College in Pennsylvania, which is rec- 
 ognized as the official educational institu- 
 tion of the Society, large and important 
 general Conferences have been held for the 
 purpose of considering the present and fut- 
 ure welfare of the organization, to revive its 
 failing spirit, to kindle fresh enthusiasm, 
 open new avenues of social and philanthrop- 
 ic effort, and most important of all, to 
 gather into the fold again and retain in the 
 work of the society, the young people in its 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. i^j 
 
 birthright membership. They realize that 
 these have been aHenated b}' too much 
 stringency in matters of dress, of speech, of 
 music, of amusements, of marriage, and by 
 a too rigid adlierence to its inflexible forms 
 of worship and of service. They are con- 
 vinced that the root ideas of Quakerism can 
 be maintained in their purity, and all this 
 minute supervision of members be aban- 
 doned for greater freedom in non-essentials. 
 It is a hopeful spirit. They maintain the 
 foundations of old Quakerism with fervid 
 zeal, and assert the conscious communion 
 of the human soul with the living God as 
 the mainstay of their faith, as the essential 
 sine qua non of their worship, just as they 
 have always done, only enforcing it now in 
 the name of modern research and modern 
 progress, and supplementing it by all 
 reasonable instrumentalities for its continu- 
 ous missionary propagation, thereby assim- 
 ilating themselves more nearly with the his- 
 toric body of the Church. 
 
 In that great gathering of three thousand 
 
I ^8 The Hichsite Qiiakers. 
 
 people, the Friends not only heard their 
 primary religious concepts propounded and 
 explained, but they heard the more star- 
 tling assertion that the Higher Criticism of 
 the Bible and the ripest conclusions of Sci- 
 ence all tend to establish the vaHdity of 
 those concepts, and to furnish them with 
 their logical " raison d'etre," apart from 
 their own inward evidence. In this they are 
 no doubt right, and in strict harmony with 
 the trend of liberal thought. And upon 
 such a basis they urge the more extended 
 and critical study of the Sacred Scriptures, 
 and especially of the life of the blessed 
 Jesus, for clear and conclusive proofs that 
 Christianity, as exemplified and taught by 
 Him, is founded upon this essential faith in 
 God's immediate inspiring Presence, and 
 upon no other basis. Thus, in his new de- 
 parture, the modern Friend would avail 
 himself of the researches and investigations 
 of the learned in other denominations to 
 put himself " en rapport " with the tenden- 
 cies of the age, and as an intellectual vindi- 
 
The Hichsite Qttahers. i ^g 
 
 cation of the main tenet of his faith. But 
 unlettered ignorance will not be available to 
 proclaim this modern phase of Quakerism, 
 and out from this representative body of 
 Friends comes the call for a better ministry, 
 the ministry of more thoroughly educated 
 people. Not for men and women educated 
 for the special work of the ministry, and set 
 apart as a privileged priestly class, but for 
 men and women so educated and trained as 
 speakers, that should they feel called to 
 preach the word, they may do it with ac- 
 ceptance to cultivated listeners. Dr. Ed- 
 ward O. Janney says on this point ; " We 
 do not, indeed, educate for the ministry, but 
 we ought to educate our young 
 people so that, if they become ministers 
 later in life, they will be qualified for it." 
 (Swarthmore Conferences, 1896, Second 
 Session, p. 65.) 
 
 In the same Conference Anna M. Jackson 
 says ; " When we have young, earnest, ed- 
 ucated, consecrated teachers of Quakerism, 
 they will prove to the thinking masses that 
 
140 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 the development of man, physically, men- 
 tally, and morally, has regularly grown from 
 the beginning, guided by inexorable Law, 
 the product of Love, — not only the ' great- 
 est thing in the world,' but the most rational 
 thing in the world." (Ibid. p. 59.) Many 
 others uttered similar opinions, and no dis- 
 sent was expressed by the conference, which 
 seemed thus to be in unity with them. Ver- 
 ily, the fetters of conservatism are falling 
 away, and these Quakers are putting them- 
 selves into a position where intellectual cult- 
 ure is not worthless for the ministry of 
 Christ, nor the wisdom of this world folly 
 to the most consecrated spirits. It is a 
 great step in advance. 
 
 But with this change the militant spirit 
 of old-time Quakerism is reviving. It is no 
 longer enough to preach the Gospel at 
 home, it must be carried to those who have 
 it not, — and an organized propaganda of 
 their faith must be instituted, to shed light 
 in dark places. Dr. Jesse W. Holmes very 
 tersely touches a weak spot when he says ; 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. 141 
 
 " Instead of preaching the Gospel to every 
 creature, we have settled down to preach- 
 ing it to each other." (Ibid. 50.) Now it 
 must be carried to the masses, who are hun- 
 gering for it. " The masses," says Anna 
 M. Jackson, " are outside of the churches 
 searching for something they do not find 
 there." (Ibid. 58.) This something Quak- 
 erism is to supply, and hence comes their 
 clarion call for missionaries, to bear abroad 
 the Good Tidings, not of any elaborate 
 " Plan of Salvation " nor " Scheme of Re- 
 demption," but of the Eternal Presence of 
 God and his Christ in the soul, capable of 
 saving to the uttermost any of the children 
 of men. " The World is ripe for Quakerism, 
 and the masses need it, but we touch them 
 at too few points," says the same speaker 
 (p. 59). To touch them at more points, new 
 instrumentalities must be called into action. 
 The First Day School is adopted, although 
 once frowned down as possessing some 
 priestly element. Even music is introduced, 
 though some protests are raised against this 
 
14^ The Hichsite Quaker s. 
 
 as not friendlike. The greatest freedom of 
 organization and management is allowed, 
 to enable them to adapt themselves to dif- 
 ferent environments. Some advised affilia- 
 tion with Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tions for practical work (though not without 
 dissent,) and even Orders of Deaconesses 
 were favorably mentioned. The forming 
 of Adult Classes among laborers not in any 
 church connection was strongly urged, and 
 the necessity of thoroughly equipped 
 teachers was made apparent. So would 
 they make the practical nature of their re- 
 ligion felt among the impoverished and 
 neglected ones of Earth. And in all this ac- 
 tive work of the body militant, they do not 
 seek to proselyte from other churches, but 
 to reach those who have no religious con- 
 nection, and are still in ignorance of the 
 Voice of God pleading within them. 
 
 Thus the Neo-Quakers are putting on the 
 armor once more to fight anew the old bat- 
 tle against indifference and vice and sin, 
 armed with new weapons forged in the 
 
The Hicksite Qtiakers. 14J 
 
 modern workshop, and burnished and 
 edged with worldly culture, as well as with 
 the baptism of the Spirit. They are called 
 upon to discard the outgrown and useless 
 conservatisms that have hindered their 
 progress and their best talent, — to no lon- 
 ger wear the trammels of peculiar dress and 
 speech, and to become, like St. Paul, " all 
 things to all men," that some may be saved. 
 And with all this they are urged to seek 
 grounds of agreement rather than of differ- 
 ence with other denominations, to visit their 
 churches, and so establish an affiliation with 
 the great body of militant Christianity, from 
 which they have hitherto stood aloof. Ex- 
 clusiveness shall cease, and brotherhood 
 prevail. It is a magnificent vision of 
 growth, and has in it elements of coherence, 
 which the Progressive Friends, once so 
 strong and promising in Pennsylvania, 
 lacked utterly. Bare progress is too vague 
 and indefinite a tie to furnish a working mo- 
 tive, — it must have a definite direction, a 
 luminous something to be won, — a note of 
 
144 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 no uncertain sound by which it can be dis- 
 tinguished, and which wiU be its guide in 
 storm and sunshine. 
 
 What, then, is to be the key-note of this 
 new movement ? What the one unmistak- 
 ably celestial tone, sounding on unbrokenly 
 through all the multiform discords that 
 must result from the clashing of diverse nat- 
 ures and opinions ? There must be a cen- 
 tral enthusiasm to draw and to hold them. 
 For the select few, as we have pointed out 
 in an earlier chapter, the conscious com- 
 munion of the All-Father in seasons of 
 great spiritual exaltation will be the inspira- 
 tion for the work. But this is too high a 
 tension for the multitude who must be won 
 in the new crusade. They have Httle time 
 and less inclination for the introspective 
 personal communion with the unseen Spirit 
 of Life. Only by long effort can they rise 
 to such heights of Spiritual attainment. 
 There is need of a personal attachment, a 
 personal affection, a personal inspiration,— 
 the tangible leadership of the Divine. And 
 
S '^ 
 
The Hick site Quakers. 14^ 
 
 where in all history, in all life, in all crea- 
 tion, can that be found in greater fulness 
 than in the one personality in which the 
 perfect graces of humanity inhere, purified, 
 exalted, and touched by the life of God, — 
 in the One Person of history, in Jesus of 
 Nazareth, which is the Christ ? So the Neo- 
 Ouakerism reverts again to the Holy Jesus 
 and His stainless life for the fountains 
 whence the thirsting novices shall be called 
 to drink. Not that there are no other di- 
 vine souls in the spiritual Hierarchy, but in 
 Him is the revelation of the Father most 
 complete, and through him is the Divine 
 Love most clearly manifested. All shall 
 be called to quench their thirst for the 
 Divine at this ever open source with- 
 out excluding other incarnations the 
 world may have known. But there is 
 no sense of expiation, of mediation in their 
 call. " We do not employ any man to 
 be mediator between us and God," said 
 Edgar M. Zavitz in the Conference (p. 
 24). None the less are they loyal to the 
 
146 The Hichsite Quakers. 
 
 Christ of history and of Revelation. The 
 same speaker continues ; " No other 
 church in Christendom owns him as its 
 head to the extent that Friends do. All 
 others look to man to conduct the services, 
 — we alone and entirely to Christ " (p. 24). 
 It is to the living and reigning Christ in 
 their hearts they turn, just as the Quakers 
 have always done, not as one bearing their 
 punishment that they may escape it, but as 
 showing them the stainless Hfe, the faith in 
 the Father and communion with him, and 
 the sacred Brotherhood of Man. In this 
 simple faith of their Fathers, the Christian- 
 ity, as they think, of revelation, they would 
 go forth to bear their glad evangel to the 
 fainting multitudes by the way. 
 
 But this Glad Evangel implies Evangel- 
 ists, and evangelists are mortals who must 
 live by their labor. How then shall the 
 ministry of the Church be maintained ? 
 Here lies the crucial test in the rejuvenation 
 of historic Quakerism. How can their min- 
 istry be sustained, without yielding one of 
 
The Hicksite Qtiakers. 14'p 
 
 their cardinal testimonies, tliat against a 
 " hireling ministry ? " Is a paid ministry 
 necessarily mercenary ? It involves a re- 
 opening of the whole question, and a care- 
 ful consideration as to whether the offensive 
 use of that word " hireling " has not been 
 utterly overdone. Why should it be invidi- 
 ously applied to those who use their gifts 
 in a spiritual way, any more than to those 
 who labor in the intellectual field ? This 
 distinction is not only not a vital point in the 
 doctrine of Friends, but appears to be in di- 
 rect opposition to all just inferences from 
 that doctrine. No hard and fast line can be 
 drawn where pay cannot be given and ac- 
 cepted for real services rendered. 
 
 No doubt it once was a vital issue when 
 Quakerism was largely a protest against 
 priestly domination. But now, we have no 
 state church, and when, in the light of evo- 
 lution, it is equally a tenet that all the 
 graces of mind and spirit are the free gifts 
 of God in his magnificent unfoldings, why 
 should this one be singled out as to be nee- 
 
148 The Hichsite Qtiakers. 
 
 essarily given for the benefit of humanity 
 free, while others are liberally rewarded ? 
 If the pious Quaker who labors in the vine- 
 yard of the Lord as a Doctor of Medicine 
 can rightfully demand remuneration for his 
 labors, why should not the one who is called 
 to work in the spiritual vineyard be equally 
 entitled to remuneration for his toil ? The 
 graces and intellectual powers of the latter 
 are no more the free endowment of the Fa- 
 ther, than the skill and knowledge of the for- 
 mer. Thus the broader view of our human 
 attainments and endowments can abolish the 
 difficulty that seems to furnish an insupera- 
 ble obstacle to the prospective develop- 
 ment of the church. Not by any less fidelity 
 in the use of God's gifts to men shall this be 
 accomplished, but by a more comprehensive 
 view of the entire contents of his gifts, — the 
 full scope of which is discernible only under 
 the illumination of the idea of evolution as a 
 divine process. The intellectual powers, 
 the spiritual powers, the afifectional, are all 
 susceptible of improvement by careful at- 
 
The Hicksite Qiiakers. 149 
 
 tention and nurture, and there can be no 
 reason why the results of the one side of hu- 
 man nature should be liberally rewarded in 
 this world's coin, and the other side be de- 
 nounced as " hireling " or mercenary when 
 it asks its adequate compensation. By the 
 logical and consistent extension of its own 
 fundamental doctrines can Neo-Quaker- 
 ism be saved from the impotent conclusion 
 that would deprive it of an active and a help- 
 ful ministry of the Living Word. The right 
 of the ministry to its pecuniary reward is 
 just as legitimate an outcome of Friends' 
 doctrine as the right of any laborer to his 
 hire in the toil of the farm or the factory. 
 There will be conservatives who will pro- 
 test against this, but their antagonism must 
 be overcome for the living body must avail 
 itself of the means necessary for the propa- 
 gation of its faith. The Church that ceases 
 to be a missionary body in the true sense, 
 thereby dooms itself to stagnation and de- 
 cay. The genuinely missionary spirit of 
 these conferences is the best herald of a bet- 
 
j^o The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 ter day for Quakerism, and its propagation 
 depends largely upon a cultivated and con- 
 secrated ministry. But another evidence of 
 the growth in grace among them is the pres- 
 ence of the Orthodox Quakers side by side 
 with the Hicksites in this conference, though 
 not officially representing their own Soci- 
 ety. No one, in reading their discourses, 
 could distinguish the one from the other by 
 the tenor of their speeches. 
 
 I have thus tried to represent, briefly but 
 fairly, the revival that is going on in some 
 sections of the country among the Hicksite 
 Friends. Of the entire sincerit}' and ear- 
 nestness of the movement there can be no 
 shadow of doubt. The leaders are noble 
 spirits, and speak confidently of success in 
 their undertaking. The opening Address of 
 the Chairman of the Conference, Aaron M. 
 Powell, was overflowing with faith in the 
 inherent vitality of the Society, and in its 
 adequacy for still disseminating true spirit- 
 ual religion. Many others shared that con- 
 fidence, and spoke hopefully of its future 
 
The Hicksite Quahers- i^i 
 
 advances. Joseph Wharton, following the 
 parallel of Lincoln's famous speech, says 
 that the mission of Quakerism " Is to take 
 care that religion of the people, for the peo- 
 ple, and hy the people, shall not perish," nor 
 be relegated in its ministry to a priestly 
 hierarchy. The movement has by no means 
 spread to all sections of the church, though 
 committees are travelling widely bearing 
 witness to the new, serene light that once 
 more kindles on the horizon of the old or- 
 ganization. It is towards this light that the 
 young and hopeful are slowly turning their 
 expectant faces. 
 
 Shall their longing be in vain ? For still 
 the question remains ; Is this revival to be 
 a permanent one ? Or is it all but the final 
 struggle that betokens death and foretells 
 dissolution ? Let us venture no prophecy. 
 Great hearts, strong minds, pure souls, and 
 earnest wills are devotedly taking up the 
 work, and manifold blessings will as- 
 suredly attend its prosecution. Should this 
 Society regain its prestige, and reach 
 
I ^2 The Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 out its wisely lielping hand of simple 
 faith to the multitude through a vigorous 
 propaganda, there can be no doubt that 
 it will be a means of grace to thousands 
 of hungry, waiting souls, who are neither 
 scofifers, infidels nor atheists, but who can- 
 not accept the creeds of the Churches in 
 sincerity. Many communities would find 
 its simple forms better suited to their wants 
 and their resources, than the more elabo- 
 rate, more beautiful and more costly forms 
 of other denominations. Yet as they adopt 
 new instrumentalities they will gradually ap- 
 proach the other churches and do work simi- 
 lar to theirs. Still there is work enough to 
 be done in redeeming humanity from vice 
 and sin to employ every agency for good, 
 and no body of Christ's followers has pre- 
 empted any portion of the blessed work. 
 The Neo-Quakerism will find the harvest 
 ready and waiting for the reapers. Will it 
 rise in God's conquering might, to do its 
 work ? Time alone can tell. Should it hear 
 the Voice, heed its monitions, gird on its 
 
The Hicksite Quakers. i s^ 
 
 spiritual armor and go forth in its power, no 
 one ^Yill rejoice more sincerely than he who 
 has labored so earnestly to state its character 
 and its faith in this little book, — a labor of 
 the heart. — a work of love and tender rem- 
 iniscences. For to him as to them the In- 
 ner Light of Consciousness is the test of 
 truth. — the Immediate Communion of the 
 hiunan soul with its Divine Creator and 
 Savior is the one fundamental fact of relig- 
 ion, of worship, and of life itself. Upon 
 that foundation, whatever is built in love 
 and prayer, must prevail for blessed ends. 
 \\'hether such ends involve the rejuve- 
 nation and perpetuity of the Society of 
 Hicksite Friends, its baptism for a new 
 work, its rehabilitation in the plenitude of 
 power, and still retaining its cardinal tenets, 
 or its gradual but inevitable mergence into 
 some more pliant and more comprehensive 
 organization which shall inherit its leaven- 
 ing principles and more effectually do its 
 work, must remain, for the present, among" 
 the mvsteries of Inscrutable ^^'isdom. The 
 
I ^4 Th^ Hicksite Quakers. 
 
 light of an apparent dawn is along the hori- 
 zon, — let Its prayerfully watch if perchance 
 it be the herald of the coming day, the pre- 
 cursor of the glory of the ever-living Son 
 of God. 
 
 " Hail, Gracious Light, the Spirit's day ; 
 Pure effluence of celestial ray ; 
 First offspring of creative morn. 
 At God's omniscient fiat born." 
 
[The following poem, by the Author of this book, is in- 
 dicative of the Quaker belief in the " Voice Within," or 
 the '' Inner Light,'' and is appended to this chapter with- 
 out further comment.] 
 
 THE VOICE, 
 " And I heard a Voice from heaven.'' 
 
 Canst thou not hear, Oh doubting Soul, 
 As fierce, wild billows o'er thee roll 
 
 From life's rough sea, 
 The Voice that pleads within thy heart, 
 And fain would peace and love impart, 
 
 God's peace for thee ? 
 
 A still, small Voice, whose accents clear 
 Only the listening soul can hear, 
 
 In reverence bent ; 
 A spirit Voice, that hath no sound. 
 Yet moves the human heart profound. 
 
 With love intent. 
 155 
 
1^6 The yoke. 
 
 It comes not in the tempest's roar. 
 That sweeps with desolation o'er 
 
 Thy troubled path ; 
 But softer Voice than mother mild 
 E'er whispered to her darling child. 
 
 Our Father hath. 
 
 When hushed in holiest reverence, thou 
 Dost low in adoration bow, 
 
 And wait His time ; 
 Then in thy silence shall His word 
 Sweep o'er the heart's responsive chord. 
 
 In strains sublime. 
 
 And thou shalt know the Voice that gives 
 Peace to the soul of him that lives 
 
 By its behest ; 
 Thou knowest not whence it came, nor where 
 It vanished on the throbbing air, 
 
 But tho2i art blest. 
 
 A peace serene shall dwell with thee. 
 And often, as on bended knee 
 
 Thou prayest alone, 
 The Spirit of the living God 
 Shall make thy heart His own abode. 
 
 His glorious throne. 
 
The Voice. 757 
 
 And thou, with heavenly Presence blest, 
 Upon the Eternal Heart shall rest, 
 
 And rest for aye ; 
 That peace shall be thy spirit's dower, 
 Thy life's consummate, holy flower, 
 
 Its radiant day. 
 
 From this communion shalt thou rise 
 To cleave the splendor of the skies, 
 
 And there behold 
 The Beatific Vision, won 
 By spirits that have freely gone 
 
 Where God's \'oice called.