Quakers

“ But I must tell you a little more about the Quakers, who not only founded Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and gave to the State and the city their peculiar character, but who exercised a deep and lasting influence upon the spiritual life of the people, both of England and New England. In Sweden we know the Quakers merely as a strange sect which says thou to everybody; will not take an oath; and wear their broad- brimmed hats in the presence of every one. We know them only from little outward peculiarities. I have here become acquainted with their inward significance for the whole of humanity. ”

“ He saw that the Quakers could never become in the world what they hoped to be—a mystical church, a body of men swayed without let or hindrance by the Divine Spirit, pioneers for the world upon the upward way—unless they were willing to pay the price of the saintly office. ”

“ Didst thou never read, that he is worse than an infidel that will not provide for his family? I have often heard the Quakers blamed for not working, but thou art the first that ever I heard blame them for working.’ At this the captain said, ‘Turn him away, he is a Quaker.’ But a little after he cried, ‘Pull him again, he is no Quaker;’ and said to Thomas, ‘Thou art no Quaker; for here thou bringest corn, and of it is made bread, and by the strength of that bread we kill the Dutch; and therefore no Quaker. Or art not thou as accessary to their deaths as we? ”

“ Now it must be observed, that the Quakers are a sober and temperate people, that they generally marry at a proper age, and that they have large families. It is therefore impossible, if the descendants of the early Quakers had continued in the society, that their number should not have been much larger than we find it at the present day, and, if so, there must have been a secession or an expulsion, amounting, notwithstanding all influx by conversion, to a decrease. ”

“ On Monday morning, we took the stage-coach at Middlebury for this place. An old Quaker, in a broad-brimmed hat and a coat of the ancient cut, shaped somewhat like the upper shell of the tortoise, came to hand in his granddaughter, a middle-aged woman, whom he had that morning accompanied from Lincoln, a place about eighteen miles distant, where there is a Quaker neighborhood and a Quaker meeting-house. The denomination of Quakers seems to be dying out in the United States, like the Indian race; not that the families become extinct, but pass into other denominations. ”

“ These meetings excited at first the vigilance and anger of the magistrates; but when they came to see the regulations made by the Quakers, in order that none of their poor might become burthensome to their parishes, they went away—whatever they might think of some of their new tenets of religion—in admiration of their benevolence.
The Quakers of the present day consider their poor in the same light as their venerable elder, namely, as members of the same family, whose wants it is their duty to relieve; and they provide for them nearly in the same manner. ”

“ The Quakers by means of their discipline have a greater personal knowledge of each other, than the members of any other religious society. But two-thirds of the commitee were Quakers, and hence the circumstance is explained. Hence also nine-tenths of our first coadjutors were Quakers. ”

“ And this courage to dare to say what they believe to be right, as it was an eminent feature in the character of the primitive, so it is unquestionably a trait in that of the modern Quakers. They use no flattery even in the presence of the king; and when the nation has addressed him in favour of new wars, the Quakers have sometimes had the courage to oppose the national voice on such an occasion, and to go before the same great personage, and in a respectful and dignified manner, to deliver a religious petition against the shedding of human blood. ”

“ 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." ”

“ I have always disliked Quakers. I remember a story my father used to tell, when I was a child, about his being over-reached in a most ingenious, practised manner, by one of the scoundrels, as he called the whole race. ”

“ In the year 1661, fifty-four Quakers were in Worcester gaol, and about the same time seven or eight others were in the lockup at Evesham, where they were confined for fourteen weeks in a cell 22 ft. square and 6 ft. high, being fed on bread and water and not once let out during the whole time, so that people could not endure to past the place; female Quakers were thrust with brutal indecency into the stocks and there left in hard frost for a day and night, being afterwards driven from the town. ”

“ The dress of the Quakers has descended from father to son in the way that has been described. There is reason therefore to suppose, that the Quakers as a religious body, have deviated less than others front the primitive habits of their ancestors, rather from a fear of the effects of unreasonable changes of dress upon the mind, than from an attachment to lifeless forms. ”

“ The great and practical philanthropist, John Howard, when he was at Ackworth, which is the great public school of the Quakers, was so struck with the quiet deportment of the children there, that he mentioned it with approbation in his work on Lazarettos, and gave to the public some of its rules, as models for imitation in other seminaries.
But if the Quakers believe that this pure principle, when attended to, is an infallible guide to them in their religious or spiritual concerns; if they believe that its influences are best discovered in the quietness and silence of their senses ”

“ The Quakers, it is confessed by their adversaries, are not chargeable with the same sort of pride and vanity, which attach to the characters of other people, who dress in a gay manner, and who follow the fashions of the world, but it is contended, on the other hand, that they are justly chargeable with a preciseness, that is disgusting, in the little particularities of their cloathing. This precise attention to particularities is considered as little better than the worshipping of lifeless forms, and is usually called by the world the idolatry of the Quaker-dress. ”

“ But were the Quakers really narrow, or were they any more narrow than other rigorously self-disciplined people: Spartans, Puritans, soldiers whose discipline enables them to achieve great results? All discipline is in one sense narrow. Quaker quietude and retirement probably conserved mental energy instead of dissipating it. In an age of superstition and irrational religion, their minds were free and unhampered, and it was the dominant rational tone of their thought that enabled science to flourish in Pennsylvania. ”

“ The Quakers went forward from their great purgation—a strictly closed sect, carefully guarded from outside influence, the younger generations forced either to conform to the traditional pattern or to suffer banishment—depleted and decreasing until the time of the modern revival taking place about the middle of the nineteenth century. ”

“ It is to many an endearing thought, that they shall lie after their death, near the remains of those whom they loved in life. But the Quakers, in general, have not thought it right or wise to indulge such feelings. They believe that all good men, however their bodies may be separated in their subterraneous houses of clay, will assuredly meet at the resurrection of the just. ”

“ Wherever Quakers are found they are the useful and steady citizens. Their eminence seems out of all proportion to their comparatively small numbers. It has often been asked why this height of attainment should occur among a people of such narrow religious discipline. ”

“ Amongst the few converts made in Oxford, however, was the man who, in his turn, brought William Penn into the Quaker fold. In pious London, sunk in theological strife, the obscure Waiters, Ranters, and Seekers were the most favourable soil.
The Quakers, however, worked everywhere, ploughing up the land, calling men to cease the strife of words, and to wait before the Lord for living experience. ”

“ But the next day he wrote a letter to the said count, and therein told him, ‘For thy saying, we want no Quakers here, I say, under favour, you do; for a true Quaker is one that trembleth at the word of the Lord, that worketh out his salvation with fear and trembling.’
W. Penn being come to Mulheim, could now no more find opportunity to speak with the countess than the first time he was in those parts; and therefore he went to Duisburgh, Wesel, and Cleves, where having had conferences with some religious people, he returned by way of Utrecht to Amsterdam, where G. Fox was also come back again. ”

“ These Quakers were all of the thrifty, industrious type which had gone to West Jersey a few years before. Men of means, indeed, among the Quakers were the first to seek refuge from the fines and confiscations imposed upon them in England. They brought with them excellent supplies of everything. Many of the ships carried the frames of houses ready to put together. But substantial people of this sort demanded for the most part houses of brick, with stone cellars. ”

“ Such an enquiry too, while it bewilders the understanding, generally affects the mind. But the Quakers avoid all such curious enquiries as these, and therefore they suffer no interruption of their enjoyment from this source. Others again, by the adoption of gloomy creeds, give rise frequently to melancholy, and thus lay in for themselves a store of fuel for the torment of their own minds. But the Quakers espouse no doctrines, which, while they conduct themselves uprightly, can interrupt the tranquillity of their lives. ”

“ Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance. ”

“ In the long list of Quakers eminent in all walks of life, not only in Pennsylvania but elsewhere, are to be found John Bright, a lover of peace and human liberty through a long and eminent career in British politics; John Dickinson of Philadelphia, who wrote the famous Farmer's Letters so signally useful in the American Revolution; Whittier, the American poet, a Quaker born in Massachusetts of a family converted from Puritanism when the Quakers invaded Boston in the seventeenth century ”

“ Several of the Quakers follow agriculture. But these are few, compared with the rest of the society, or compared with the number of those who formerly followed a rural life. Almost all the Quakers were originally in the country, and but few of them in the towns. ”

“ In many respects the Quakers may be compared with the Mennonites. The Quaker Church was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century by an Englishman, John Fox, and spread to America as early as 1656, where it now numbers, perhaps, 400,000 persons, living chiefly in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Quakers lay great emphasis on silence, and even in their meetings they observe long pauses, in which each member communes with the Holy Spirit. ”

“ But the Quakers did not think it meet to appear there to enter into a dispute with him, the rather because the king at that time was beyond sea, and many of the vulgar were idle for want of work and trade, occasioned by the scarcity of money, which then was very great, by reason of the recoining it, insomuch that it could not be foreseen whether some disaffected persons might not have got together, and caused a dangerous disturbance. ”

“ The first outward fact that presents itself to us, is the fact of the origin of the Quaker-dress, if the early Quakers, when they met in religious union, had met to deliberate and fix upon a form or standard of apparel for the society, in vain could any person have expected to repel this charge. ”

“ They note the immense quantities of game, the Indians bringing in fat bucks every day, the venison better than in England, the streams full of fish, the abundance of wild fruits, cranberries, hurtleberries, the rapid increase of cattle, and the good soil. A few details concerning some of the interesting characters among these early colonial Quakers have been rescued from oblivion. There is, for instance, the pleasing picture of a young man and his sister, convinced Quakers, coming out together and pioneering in their log cabin until each found a partner for life. ”

“ The Quakers, as every body knows, differ more than even many foreigners do, from their own countrymen. They adopt a singular mode of language. Their domestic customs are peculiar. They have renounced religious ceremonies, which all other christians, in some form or other, have retained. They are distinguished from all the other islanders by their dress. ”

“ Now, since at that time they were resolved to banish the Quakers, so called, George Whitehead published a little book, in which he showed the unreasonableness of the persecutors, and also strengthened his [Pg 26] friends with solid arguments against the charge of stiffneckedness, answering some specious objections; amongst the rest, that the Quakers might keep small meetings, and so not fall under the lash of the law; for if they did not meet above five in number, they kept without the reach of the law; and by keeping private meetings they might also acquit their consciences before God. ”