From the time of George Fox himself, who in 1671
visited Barbadoes, and admonished those who held
slaves there to bear in mind that they were brethren,
and that “after certain years of servitude they should
make them free,” voices had been raised again and again
in several of the American meetings to witness against
the buying and keeping of slaves.
In 1742, John Woolman, then in the employment of
a small storekeeper in New Jersey, was desired by his
master to make out a bill of sale of a negro slave-woman.
“On taking up his pen,” says Whittier, “the young clerk
felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The
thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
fellow-creatures oppressed him. God’s voice against the
desecration of His image spoke in his soul. He yielded
to the will of his employer, but while writing the instrument
he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer
and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
with the Christian religion.” This circumstance
“was the starting-point of a lifelong testimony against
slavery.
“In the year 1746, he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of
slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, ‘as a
dark gloominess overhanging the land.’ On his return,
he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published
in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to
the Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a
minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at
the tables of slave-holding planters, who were accustomed
to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not
comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving
as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gains
of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth
more than money. He therefore placed the pay for his
entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them,
as he had opportunity....
“This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed....
These labours were attended with the
blessing of the God of the poor and oppressed. Dealing
in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still
continuing the practice, a more emphatic testimony
against it was issued by the Yearly Meeting in 1774; and
two years after, the subordinate meetings were directed
to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in
holding their fellow-men as property.... In the year
1760, John Woolman, in the course of a religious visit to
New England,” attended their Yearly Meeting, where “the
London Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous
traffic in men, was read, and the substance of it embodied
in the discipline of the meeting; and the following query
was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate meetings:
‘Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying
them when imported; and do they use those well where
they are possessed by inheritance or otherwise, endeavouring
to train them up in principles of religion?’ ...
In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly
Meeting, the Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the
wrongfulness of holding slaves, and appointed a large
committee to visit those members who were implicated
in the practice.... It was stated, in the Epistle to
London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772, that a few
Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that
others ‘have been so reluctant thereto, that they have
been disowned[35] for not complying with the advice of
this meeting.’
“In 1773, the following minute was made: ‘It is our
sense that truth not only requires the young of capacity
and ability, but likewise the aged and impotent, and also
all in a state of infancy and nonage, among Friends, to
be discharged and set free from a state of slavery; that
we do no more claim property in the human race, as we
do in the beasts that perish.’
“In 1782, no slaves were known to be held in the New
England Yearly Meeting. The next year, it was recommended
to the subordinate meetings to appoint committees
to effect a proper and just settlement between the
manumitted slaves and their former masters for their past
services. In 1784, it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting
that any slaveholder who refused to comply with
the award of these committees should, after due care
and labour with him, be disowned from the Society.
This was effectual; settlements without disownment were
made to the satisfaction of all parties, and every case
was disposed of previous to the year 1787.
“In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was
prohibited about the middle of the last century. In 1771,
in consequence of an epistle from the Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those who
held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to
emancipation. In 1776, it was made a disciplinary
offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon any condition.
In 1784, but one slave was to be found in the limits
of the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the
several subordinate meetings, it was ascertained that an
equitable settlement for past services had been effected
between the emancipated negroes and their masters in
all but three cases.
“In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its
strongest hold.” In 1757, it “condemned the foreign
slave trade. In 1764, it enjoined upon its members the
duty of kindness towards their servants, of educating
them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited
from purchasing any more slaves. In 1773, it earnestly
recommended the immediate manumission of all slaves
held in bondage, after the females had reached eighteen
and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same
time it was advised that committees should be appointed
for the purpose of instructing the emancipated persons
in the principles of morality and of religion, and for
advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns....
“In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having
reported that many still held slaves, notwithstanding the
advice and entreaties of their friends, the Yearly Meeting
directed that, where endeavours to convince those
offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly
Meeting should proceed to disown them. We have no
means of ascertaining the precise number of those
actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very
small. In almost all cases the care and assiduous
labours of those who had the welfare of the Society and
of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their
error in resisting the wishes of their friends, and bringing
reproach upon the cause of truth.
So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For
three-quarters of a century the advice put forth in the
meetings of the Society at stated intervals, that Friends
should be ‘careful to maintain their testimony against
slavery,’ has been adhered to, so far as owning, or even
hiring, a slave is concerned. Apart from its first fruits
of emancipation, there is a perennial value in the example
exhibited of the power of truth, urged patiently and in
earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the way of
the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long
habit, entangled with all the complex relations of society,
and closely allied with the love of power, the pride of
family, and the lust of gain.’
I need hardly remind my readers of the singular
interest of John Woolman’s own account of his
experiences in this and other matters, which would
scarcely admit of abridgment. I have, therefore, been
obliged, though unwillingly, to content myself with the
above bare enumeration of the actual steps taken by the
various meetings, without making any attempt to show
to what an extent John Woolman’s own deep exercises
of mind contributed to bring them about. For a study
of Quaker experience, in its purest and most impressive
form, the “Journal” itself is perhaps unrivalled.
[1]“Book of Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of
Friends in Great Britain; consisting of Extracts on Doctrine,
Practice, and Church Government, from the Epistles and other
Documents issued under the sanction of the Yearly Meeting held in
London from its first institution in 1672 to 1883.” London:
Samuel Harris and Co., 5, Bishopsgate Street Without. 1883.
[2]The queries now in use
are given at length in the Appendix,
Note A.
[3]It is estimated that in 1680 (or thirty-two years from the
beginning of George Fox’s ministry) the number of Friends was
about 40,000. “In 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom
less than 1000 in prison; and it has been asserted that, between
1661 and 1697, 13,562 Quakers were imprisoned, 152 were transported,
and 338 died in prison or of their wounds” (“Encycl.
Brit.,” 9th edit., art. “Quakers”).
[4]I may, perhaps, here be allowed to point out the ambiguity of
the expression “immediate inspiration.” The word “immediate”
may be understood to mean direct, and in this sense it is, I think,
superfluous; for it is surely impossible to conceive of inspiration as
indirect, although revelation may easily be so. But it may also, in
reference to any particular thought communicated, be understood
as meaning “instantaneous;” and in this sense a special importance
has been attached to it by some Friends, which is, I believe,
deprecated by others, as restricting “ministry” to the utterance of
words believed to be at the moment given for utterance, under what
is called a “fresh anointing” from above. I would, therefore,
rather avoid at present the use of the expression “immediate
inspiration,” when speaking of our belief that there is in every
heart a witness for the truth, which is, so to speak, radiated from
the central truth. The “light” seems, on the whole, to be the figure
least open to any possible misinterpretation.
[5]Let me not be understood to mean that the process of “keeping
the mind” (in Quaker phrase) “retired to the Lord” is an
easy one. On the contrary, it may need strenuous effort. But
the
effort can be made at will and even the mere effort thus to
retire from the surface to the depths of life is sure to bring help
and strengthening—is in itself a strengthening, steadying process.
[6]“If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s,
who shall give you that which is your own?” (Luke
XVI. 12).
[7]I do not, of course, forget that, going to the imperfection of
human laws and human faculties, cases may and do occur in which
Divine guidance must lead us in ways which run counter to them.
The figure used above is intended only to illustrate the general
correspondence between the map, as it were, which can be laid
down by the reason of man, and that individual and immediate
guidance which alone can show us a higher and a narrower, but yet
freer, pathway—the pathway of that highest service which is perfect
freedom. When, in exceptional cases, any contrariety really
emerges between the human and the Divine guiding lines, we may
surely still, without too much straining of our figure, say that it is
a living power only which can free any human spirit from the too
narrow fencing in of a morbid or unenlightened conscience, and
guide it by paths running counter to the beaten track of conventional
morality, or even in some rare instances authorize and enable
and require it to overleap even the cliffs of actual law, trusting that
in such cases, as experience has already taught us, the blood of the
martyrs will still be the seed of the Church.
[8]Sermon XIV., “On the Love of God,” Butler’s “Sermons,”
p. 278 (London, 1726). And in his charge to the clergy of Durham,
published with the “Analogy” (London, 1802), he repeats the
words which I have printed above in italics, and speaks of public
worship as “a time of devotion, when we are assembled to yield
ourselves up to the full influence of the Divine presence.”
[10]It is, I think, in this connection important to distinguish between
the question, How do you in practice distinguish between a
true and a false message? and the quite separate inquiry, How do
you in theory distinguish between the human faculty of imagination
and the Divine action signified by the word “inspiration”? It is
with the first question only that I have been concerned in the text, as
it is, I believe, the only question with which honesty requires us to
grapple. Any attempt to give a full answer to the second question
would require a degree of psychological skill to which I have no
claim; and I doubt whether the very terms of the question do not
lead us beyond the province even of psychology. But, speaking in
a popular and trustful way, I should reply that we are not concerned
to discern the precise limits of the Divine and the human;
only to throw open the deepest human powers to the purest Divine
influences; that the result we look for is the fruit of a devout intelligence,
first purified, and then swayed, by the immediate action
of Divine power. It surely involves something like a contradiction
in terms to inquire at what precise line a distinction is obliterated?
[11]People have said to me again and again, If you want to be
silent, why cannot you be silent at home? Such an objection seems
hardly intended to be seriously answered, yet I have heard it so
often that I cannot but notice it. Surely it need hardly be pointed
out that it applies at least equally strongly to the practice of
meeting together to join in prayers, which, being already in print
and chosen according to the calendar, each of us might read at
home. But the worthier answer is that, whether our utterance be
prearranged or spontaneous, we meet in order to kindle in each
other the flame of true worship, and also to show forth our allegiance
to the Master, to whom we are so united as to feel our need of each
other’s sympathy in drawing near to Him.
[12]In what follows there is, indeed, no “doctrine” of any kind;
no attempt, I mean, to offer formulated or authorized teaching. I
have endeavoured to show how in my own experience the intellectual
difficulties with which the subject is surrounded did, when honestly
and patiently faced, prove in due time the means of purifying, not of
quenching, that true spirit of prayer which is indeed the very breath
of our inner life. I trust that none will misunderstand my outspokenness
in stating those difficulties. They are, and in these
days must be, freely recognized. Unless we who have a witness to
bear for the Author of spiritual worship are willing to face them,
our witness will fail to reach those who most sorely need it. I am
driven once more to appeal to “something more than candour” in
my readers for a right interpretation of my struggle to unfold
thoughts which tax my powers of utterance to the uttermost, and
which I yet dare not withhold.
[13]“Apology,” Prop. xiii.
[14]See Appendix,
Note B, for a short account of the “Home
Mission Committee.”
[15]I believe, as I have already said, that few people outside the
Society are aware of the extent to which the practice is still continued
of Friends who feel themselves called to the ministry
travelling, as we say, “in the service of truth,” or “under a sense
of religious concern,” not only from place to place in England, but
also all over the world. A remarkable variety of “services” are
in this way spontaneously undertaken, and carried out, sometimes
quite alone, sometimes with the help of one or more Friends
“liberated” to accompany the minister. And those small meetings
where there is but little vocal ministry are objects of special care
and concern to the larger meetings, of which they form a part; and
many Friends make a practice of visiting them from time to time.
There was also a special service to which ministering Friends
formerly often felt themselves called, and which, though much
disused of late years, is not altogether extinct—that of paying
“religious visits to families” in particular districts or, in other
words, of holding meetings for worship and mutual edification from
house to house—generally, but not invariably, amongst our own
members only. These visits were occasions specially adapted and
felt suitable for the exercise of that peculiar gift of “speaking to
the condition of” individuals which some Friends (especially in
former times) seem to have possessed in a remarkable degree.
I believe them to have been of deep value when rightly conducted
by the few possessing a real qualification for such delicate and at
times searching services, but perhaps peculiarly liable to degenerate
into what was neither edifying nor acceptable.
[16]For a short account of the manner in which, before the end of
the eighteenth century, the Society in America freed itself from all
complicity with slavery, as illustrating the working both of our
principles and of our organization, see Appendix,
Note C.
[17]The expression “put under dealing” describes the prescribed
preliminary to disownment. When an overseer, having found
private remonstrance unavailing, is obliged to bring a case of wrong-doing
before the Monthly Meeting, that Meeting appoints one or
two Friends to visit and “deal with” the offender, in the way of
exhortation and counsel, with a view to induce him to acknowledge
and condemn or “disown” his own fault, and thus to avert the
penalty of the Society’s disownment of himself.
[18]I hope it will be remembered that my object throughout is to
unfold the meaning of our ideal, not at all to estimate the degree
in which we actually live according to it. I am not in a position to
form any opinion worth having as to the actual state of the Society,
nor if I had any such opinion should I wish to publish it. My
desire is to explain the secret of our strength, not of our weakness.
[19]I believe that scarcely any Friend would be found to consider
the office of the policeman as an unlawful one, or to entertain
scruples about the use of physical force in maintaining order. I am
told that Friends have often, and without censure, acted as special
constables.
With regard to the subject of capital punishment, the Yearly
Meeting has, indeed, during the last fifty years, expressed very serious
doubts of its being justifiable; but the matter is treated as one
“needing prayerful consideration” by those whom it may concern,
not as beyond all question clear.
[20]It is, I believe, notorious that many of the panics which often
actually lead to war, and which tend to keep up the enormous and
demoralizing burdens of an “armed peace,” are largely brought
about by those who have a pecuniary interest in them, either for
stock-jobbing or for newspaper-selling interests.
[21]I mean by “asceticism” the practice of any humanly devised
religious or spiritual discipline, whether self-chosen or prescribed
by authority.
[22]“But I say unto you, Swear not at all.... But let your communication
be Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than
these cometh of evil” (Matt. v. 34-37).
[23]The victory thus won by Friends has paved the way for greater
liberty for all; and at the present time any one (whether “professing
with us” or not) who objects on the ground of religion to the
taking of an oath is equally at liberty to affirm.
[24]“Book of Discipline,” p. 141.
[25]The number of members was reported in 1862 as 13,844; in
1889 as 15,574. Before 1862 no returns were made.
[26]Many other causes have, no doubt, been at work in bringing
about the changes referred to in the text. I am, indeed, not qualified
to attempt anything like an adequate account, on however slight
a scale, of the recent history of the Society, and have desired in
this passage only to indicate the general direction of the principal
division of parties amongst us.
[27]Robert Barclay, who was for generation after generation regarded
as the main pillar of theoretic Quakerism, plainly declares
the Scriptures to be “a secondary rule”—subordinate, that is, to
the teaching of the Spirit by which they were given forth. He
anticipates many now familiar reflections about the inherent uncertainties
of interpretation and application which preclude the
possibility of our finding in any written words a sufficient guide in
the infinite variety of individual circumstances; and also recognizes
fully the many sources of error appertaining to writings so ancient,
and derived through so many differing versions and translations.
He declares, however, that “because they are commonly acknowledged
by all to have been written by the dictates of the Holy
Spirit, and that the errors which may be supposed by the injury of
Times to have slipt in are not such but that there is a sufficient
clear Testimony left to all the essentials of the Christian faith, we
do look upon them as the only fit outward judge of controversies
amongst Christians,” and adds that “we are very willing that all
our doctrines and practices shall be tried by them;” and that “we
shall also be very willing to admit, as a positive certain maxim,
That whatsoever any do, pretending to the Spirit, which is contrary
to the Scriptures, be accounted and reckoned a Delusion of the Devil.
For as we never lay claim to the Spirit’s leadings that we may
cover ourselves in anything that is evil; so we know, that as every
evil contradicts the Scriptures, so it doth also the Spirit in the first
place, from which the Scriptures came” (Barclay’s “Apology,”
p. 86: London, 1736).
[28]“The Inner Light,” pp. 23-26.
[29]It may be worth while to mention in this connection that there is
not, so far as I have observed, any habitual preponderance of women
in Friends’ meetings. This impression is confirmed by the fact
that the number of habitual “attenders” (non-members) at our
meetings is given (in the tabular statement prepared for the Yearly
Meeting of 1889) as follows:—
| Males | 2,962 |
| Females | 3,086 |
| 6,048 |
The rapid growth of Friends’ First Day Adult Schools is another
significant fact, as showing the openness to the teaching and influence
of Friends amongst working men, and at the same time the energetic
way in which that influence is being used. This movement began, at
the suggestion of the late Joseph Sturge, in Birmingham in 1845; and
it appears, from the annual report of the Friends’ First Day School
Association, that the number of adult scholars was in March, 1889,
as follows:—
| Men | 17,591 |
| Women | 5,535 |
| 23,126 |
The Society of Friends, it should be remembered, numbers (including
children) only 15,574 members, yet the teaching in these schools is
entirely undertaken by Friends personally, and is, I believe, done
altogether without paid help, though valuable assistance is in many
cases given by former scholars.
[30]The history of James Naylor is the best-known case in point.
[31]When any person applies for membership, the Monthly Meeting
appoints one or more Friends to visit the applicant, and to
report to the meeting the result of the interview, before a reply is
given. The precise conditions to be fulfilled in such cases are
nowhere laid down, but the object is understood, in a general way,
to be to ascertain that the applicant is fully “convinced of Friends’
principles.” The test is thus a purely personal and individual one,
and partakes of the elasticity which characterizes all our arrangements,
and which is felt to favour the fullest dependence upon Divine
guidance.
[32]“Book of Discipline,” p. 229.
[33]Published by Robert Smeal, Glasgow, 1883.
[34]It must be remembered that the Society of Friends in America
consists of many Yearly Meetings, each of which is supreme and
independent within its own compass. Their number has considerably
increased since John Woolman’s time; and in the Western States
there is also a rapid increase in the number of members.
[35]The italics are throughout Whittier’s.
