Quaker meeting house

“ Following the custom of many early English meeting houses, the men and women sat apart, the men on one side of the middle aisle, and the women on the other, so that men and women were not equals in the individualist sense, as they are for instance, in the practice and theory of Socialism, but were equals in separate group-life; to each sex, grouped apart from the other, equal functions were supposed to be delegated. Oblong Meeting House, on Quaker Hill, had seats for two hundred and fifty people on the ground floor, and in the gallery for one hundred and fifty more. ”

“ The same statement may be made of the pervasive example of the Quaker character upon other areas of population; servants who come from the city, summer guests, artistic people who love the Hill for its beauty and suggestiveness, ministers and other public teachers who come hither.
The area to the southeast, called "Coburn," settled to a degree by those who have worked on the Hill in times past as employees, is touched with the same manner. Its meeting [113] house, erected over sixty years ago, even retains the Quaker way of seating the men and women apart. ”

“ There is a small corporation, formed for the purpose of holding and caring for the "Old Meeting House." It is known as Oblong Meeting House, Incorporated. To this corporation, consisting of three trustees, a self-perpetuating body, the Yearly Meeting of Friends [36] handed over in 1902 the building and grounds known as the "Old Meeting House," at Site 28. This ancient building, erected in 1764, is probably the oldest edifice on the Hill, and is the embodiment of the religious and historical traditions of the community. ”

“ They testify to their belief in God when they do not speak better than they could with rhetoric or eloquence. It is the influence of many, not of one; yet of certain leaders who are the organs of this impression, and of the human entity made of many who in communion become one. The self-control of it breathes power, and principle, and courage. One would expect a Quaker meeting to exert an imperious rule upon the community. It is an expression of the majesty of an ideal. I believe that the Quaker Hill meeting has been able to accomplish whatever it has put its hand to do. ”

“ They meet no more. In the Quarterly Meeting, which comprises the Monthly Meetings of an area comparable to Dutchess County, there are still some Friends, and some meetings which are not "laid down." But they come no more, at "Quarterly Meeting time" to Quaker Hill. Many of the older members are dead. Of the younger members many have only a passive adherence to Quakerism, only sufficient to excuse them from undesirable worldliness, and from irksome responsibility in other religious bodies.
The hospitality of the old Quaker assemblings has passed over into the business of boarding city people. ”

“ Class division was coming upon them, and they felt it as a sectarian division. It was indeed the end of the old community ruled by religion, and the formation of a new neighborhood life; a new Quakerism, ruled by economic classes: the persons of influence being invariably persons of means, and the dominating leaders rich. Doubtless the Quakers who led in the Division of 1828 hoped, in each party equally, to maintain the old religious domination. The community has never granted that leadership to the divided Meeting, neither to the Orthodox, nor to the Hicksites. ”

“ The meetings for business further concern themselves with arrangements for spreading the Quaker doctrine, and for carrying out various religious, philanthropic and social activities not necessarily confined to the Society of Friends.
The present organization of the Quaker church is essentially democratic; every person born of Quaker parents is a member, and, together with those who have been admitted on their own request, is entitled to take part in the business assemblies of any meeting of which he or she is a member. ”

“ A number of sub-committees are perpetually at work for special ends—social, philanthropic, etc.—and there is attached to Yearly Meeting a standing committee known as the Meeting for Sufferings, established in 1675 in the interest of the victims of persecution. It is composed of representatives of quarterly meetings and of certain officers. It is always engaged in the interest, not only of members of the Quaker body in difficult circumstances, but of sufferers all over the world. It does an enormous amount of unpublished work. ”

“ Its dominion was unbroken for one hundred years, and came to an end with the Division of the Meeting; though that event was a result as much as a cause of its termination. For one hundred years a local ethical code prevailed. While they lived apart the Quakers in their community life rejoiced in the unbroken sway of a communal code of morals, the obedience to which made for survival and economic success. When, with better roads to Poughkeepsie and to Fredericksburgh, newcomers began to invade the community ”

“ In the first place in no society is there so much vigilance over the conduct of its members, as in that of the Quakers, as this history of their discipline must have already manifested. This vigilance of course, cannot miss of its effect. But a second cause is the following. The Quaker-laws and regulations are not made by any one person, nor by any number even of deputies. They are made by themselves, that is by the society in yearly meeting assembled. If a bad law, or the repeal of a good one, be proposed, every one present, without distinction, has a right to speak against the motion. ”

“ Very many recognised him, and all had heard of him—the history of his late banishment and self- approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of the platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure. Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation, would give the meeting the new direction which all desired.
Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative life he had led ”

“ To-day I am sure no class of men in real need could appeal to the community, or to any constituent group of it, in vain. The growth has been along lines which, beginning in a group-compassion that has from earliest days recompensed any poor member of the Meeting in his sudden losses of property, have widened first to Quakers of other places, then to other Christians, then to other men, and last of all to Quakers of the other Quaker sect; and from Protestant to Catholic and Catholic to Protestant. ”

“ Those therefore who submit to this ceremony, as performed by a priest, acknowledge, according to the Quakers, the validity of an human appointment of the ministry. They acknowledge the validity of an artificial service in religion. They acknowledge the propriety of paying a Gospel-minister for the discharge of his office. The Quakers, therefore, consider those who marry out of the society, as guilty of such a dereliction of Quaker-principles, that they can be no longer considered as sound or consistent members. ”

“ The meeting for worship, more than any other agency, has given the world the Quaker type of character—the man or woman who meets life’s problems simply and wisely, because he resolves them, not by passion or prejudice, nor mainly by the motions of human wisdom or policy, but by habitually consulting the Light of God which shines in the waiting soul.
The revival in its power of the Quaker meeting is an urgent need in the crowded hurry of this twentieth century, when men live so much upon the surface and so little in the deep places of their lives. ”

“ Even those born Quakers, now that the Hicksite Meeting has been discontinued since 1885, and the Orthodox since 1903, and the Quarterly Meetings of both societies have ceased to come to the Hill, do not so often see visions or act upon "leadings." The influence of non-Quakers in the place has been of late to quarantine such "leadings" and prevent social contagion.
Frugality is universal. Almost every resident laboring man has a bank account. Indeed, these laborers have done more in saving than have the farmers. ”

“ The minutes of Purchase Meeting at Rye, through which meeting most of the Quaker Hill settlers came, indicate in only a limited number of cases that the immigrant came from a farther point; and leave the impression that the Friend so commended to the Oblong was already a resident of "the Purchase," or of its related meetings at Flushing on Long Island. An example is the case of William Russell and his wife, notable pioneers, the earliest residents of Site 25, whose letter from Purchase Meeting in 1741 indicates only that they came to Oblong from Purchase. ”

“ No protest is suffered to be entered. In such a case there can be no ostensible leader of any party; no ostensible minority or majority. The Quakers are of opinion that such things, if allowed, would be inconsistent with their profession. They would lead also to broils and divisions, and ultimately to the detriment of the society. Every measure therefore is settled by the Quakers at this meeting in the way I have mentioned, in brotherly love, and as the name of the society signifies, as Friends. ”

“ Two members of the Cabinet either are or have been Quakers, while the number of members of Parliament attached more or less to the denomination - men, that is, who either are Quakers or would be, but for the society's civil rules about marriage and the like - is extraordinary, twenty-three or nearly four per cent. Of the whole House. So great is the respect for the Friends, that legal and social rules are alike waived in their favor ”

“ Perchance the Holy Spirit will inspire some among them to speak or to pray. They are not thus gathered because this is the Quaker custom, for they are not Quakers; they are simply following a distinct command of the Master and awaiting the fulfilment of one of His promises.
William Edmundson, the Quaker preacher, driven by a storm into New London harbor on a Saturday in May, 1675, goes ashore there and endeavors to gather a meeting, but is prevented by the authorities. ”

“ Their deaths, with the deaths of certain others whom they represent, have brought to an end the period of Quaker Hill's history which I have called "The Mixed Community." The others who with them made up this group were Jedediah and Phoebe Irish Wanzer, Anne Hayes, Olive Toffey Worden, and six other persons still living, of whom four are past eighty years and two are very near one hundred years of age. This group of persons were the center of that Mixed Community. They possessed the actual authority which this population always has required in its leaders. ”

“ In the Revolution, the Meeting exercised unflinching discipline, for the purpose of keeping members out of the patriot armies, and punished with equal vigor those who paid for the privilege of exemption from military duty and those who enlisted in the ranks. In every act of the discipline of the Quaker Community appears the purpose of the Meeting, namely, to keep its members to itself and away from all other moral and spiritual control. ”

“ There is one trait in the Quaker-manners, which runs through the whole society, as far as I have seen in their houses, and which is worthy of mention. The Quakers appear to be particularly gratified, when those, who visit them, ask for what they want. Instead of considering this as rudeness or intrusion, they esteem it as a favour done them. The circumstance of asking, on such an occasion, is to them a proof, that there visitors feel themselves at home. Indeed they almost always desire a stranger who has been introduced to them "to be free." ”

“ The proposition cannot pass against the sense of the meeting. If persons are not present, it is their own fault. Thus it happens that every law, passed at the yearly meeting, may be considered, in some measure, as the law of every Quaker's own will, and people are much more likely to follow regulations made by their own consent, than those which are made against it. ”

“ Thus the Quaker ideal has given authority to the Friends, especially to the older and more conservative of them; has furnished a subtle machinery for assimilating new members into the community and thus has been an organizing power. ”

“ No less remarkable are his courage and skill. As storms thicken, he is always in the front of the battle; wherever the strife is vehement there he is; now in Lancashire, now in Leicester, in Westmoreland or Cornwall; meeting magistrates and judges, braving them at Quarter Sessions, vanquishing officers, governors of castles, and judges. Then he sits down calmly to organise, with a forecast equal to that of Wesley, the scheme of Quaker polity which has lasted to our times. ”

“ Hence this independence of mind must be a result of the trait explained in the former chapter.
But in looking into the constitution of the Quakers, we shall find it full of materials for the production of this noble trait.
Their discipline has an immediate tendency to produce it. For in no community does a man feel himself so independent as a man. A Quaker is called upon in his own society to the discharge of important offices. He sits as a representative, a legislator, and a judge. In looking round him, he finds all equal in privileges, but none superior, to himself. ”