SOME of the happiest remembrances of my childhood are of days spent in a
little Quaker colony on a high hill.
The walk was in itself a preparation, for the hill was long and steep and
at the mercy of the north-east wind; but at the top, sheltered by a copse
and a few tall trees, stood a small house, reached by a flagged pathway
skirting one side of a bright trim garden.
I, with my seven summers of lonely, delicate childhood, felt, when I
gently closed the gate behind me, that I shut myself into Peace. The
house was always somewhat dark, and there were no domestic sounds. The
two old ladies, sisters, both born in the last century, sat in the cool,
dim parlour, netting or sewing. Rebecca was small, with a nut-cracker
nose and chin; Mary, tall and dignified, needed no velvet under the net
cap. I can feel now the touch of the cool dove-coloured silk against my
cheek, as I sat on the floor, watching the nimble fingers with the
shuttle, and listened as Mary read aloud a letter received that morning,
describing a meeting of the faithful and the ‘moving of the Spirit’ among
them. I had a mental picture of the ‘Holy Heavenly Dove,’ with its wings
of silvery grey, hovering over my dear old ladies; and I doubt not my
vision was a true one.
Once as I watched Benjamin, the old gardener—a most ‘stiff-backed Friend’
despite his stoop and his seventy years—putting scarlet geraniums and
yellow fever-few in the centre bed, I asked, awe-struck, whether such
glowing colours were approved; and Rebecca smiled and said—“Child, dost
thee not think the Lord may have His glories?” and I looked from the
living robe of scarlet and gold to the dove-coloured gown, and said:
“Would it be pride in thee to wear His glories?” and Mary answered for
her—“The change is not yet; better beseems us the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit.”
The ‘change from glory to glory’ has come to them both long since, but it
seems to me as if their robes must still be Quaker-grey.
Upstairs was the invalid daughter and niece. For years she had been
compelled to lie on her face; and in that position she had done wonderful
drawings of the High Priest, the Ark of the Covenant, and other Levitical
figures. She had a cageful of tame canary-birds which answered to their
names and fed from her plate at meal-times. Of these I remember only
Roger, a gorgeous fellow with a beautiful voice and strong will of his
own, who would occasionally defy his mistress from the secure fastness of
a high picture-frame, but always surrendered at last, and came to listen
to his lecture with drooping wings.
A city of Peace, this little house, for the same severely-gentle decorum
reigned in the kitchen as elsewhere: and now, where is such a haunt to be
found?
In the earlier part of this century the Friends bore a most important
witness. They were a standing rebuke to rough manners, rude speech, and
to the too often mere outward show of religion. No one could fail to be
impressed by the atmosphere of peace suggested by their bearing and
presence; and the gentle, sheltered, contemplative lives lived by most of
them undoubtedly made them unusually responsive to spiritual influence.
Now, the young birds have left the parent nest and the sober plumage and
soft speech; they are as other men; and in a few short years the word
Quaker will sound as strange in our ears as the older appellation Shaker
does now.
This year I read for the first time the Journal of George Fox. It is
hard to link the rude, turbulent son of Amos with the denizens in my city
of Peace; but he had his work to do and did it, letting breezy truths
into the stuffy ‘steeple-houses’ of the ‘lumps of clay.’
“Come out from among them and be ye separate; touch not the accursed
thing!” he thundered; and out they came, obedient to his stentorian
mandate; but alack, how many treasures in earthen vessels did they
overlook in their terror of the curse! The good people made such haste
to flee the city, that they imagined themselves as having already, in the
spirit, reached the land that is very far off; and so they cast from them
the outward and visible signs which are vehicles, in this material world,
of inward graces. Measureless are the uncovenanted blessings of God; and
to these the Friends have ever borne a witness of power; but now the
Calvinist intruder no longer divides the sheep from the goats in our
churches; now the doctrine of universal brotherhood and the respect due
to all men are taught much more effectively than when George Fox refused
to doff his hat to the Justice; the quaint old speech has lost its
significance, the dress would imply all the vainglory that the wearer
desires to avoid; the young Quakers of this generation are no longer
‘disciplined’ in matters of the common social life; yet still they remain
separate.
We of the outward and visible covenant need them, with their inherited
mysticism, ordered contemplation, and spiritual vision; we need them for
ourselves. The mother they have left yearns for them, and with all her
faults—faults the greater for their absence—and with the blinded eyes of
their recognition, she is their mother still. “_What advantage then hath
the Jew_?” asked St Paul, and answered in the same breath—“_Much every
way_, _chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of
God_.” What advantage then has the Churchman? is the oft repeated
question today; and the answer is still the answer of St Paul.
The Incarnation is the sum of all the Sacraments, the crown of the
material revelation of God to man, the greatest of outward and visible
signs, “_that which we have heard_, _which we have seen with our eyes_,
_which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of
life_.” A strange beginning truly, to usher in a purely spiritual
dispensation; but beautifully fulfilled in the taking up of the earthly
into the heavenly—Bread and Wine, the natural fruits of the earth,
sanctified by man’s toil, a sufficiency for his needs; and instinct with
Divine life through the operation of the Holy Ghost.
“_In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread_.”
“_Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood ye
have no life in you_.”
“_And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations_.”
From Genesis to the Revelation of the Divine reaches the rainbow of the
Sacramental system—outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual
grace:—
The sacrament of purging, purifying labour, to balance and control the
knowledge of good and evil:—
The sacrament of life, divine life, with the outward body of humiliation,
bread and wine, fruit of the accursed ground, but useless without man’s
labour; and St Paul, caught up into the third heaven, and St John, with
his wide-eyed vision of the Lamb, must eat this bread and drink this cup
if they would live:—
The sacrament of healing, the restoring of the Image of God in fallen
man.
The Church is one society, nay, the world is one society, for man without
his fellow-men is not; and into the society, both of the Church and the
world, are inextricably woven the most social sacraments.
Herein is great purpose, we say, bending the knee; and with deep
consciousness of sins and shortcomings we stretch out longing welcoming
hands to our grey brethren with their inheritance of faithfulness and
steadfastness under persecution, and their many gifts and graces; and we
cry, in the words of the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s: “O my dove,
that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs,
let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy
voice, and thy countenance is comely.” “Rise up, my love, my fair one,
and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.”