AMONG THE QUAKERS.
There is no more engaging or solemn subject of contemplation than the
decay of a religious belief. Right or wrong, by that faith men have
lived and died, perhaps for centuries; and one cannot see it pass out
from the consciousness of humanity without something more than a cursory
thought as to the reasons of its decadence. Being led by exceptional
causes to take a more than common interest in those forms of belief
which lie beyond the pale of the Church of England, I was attracted by a
notice in the public journals that on the following morning the Society
of Friends would assemble from all parts of England and open a
Conference to inquire into the causes which had brought about the
impending decay of their body. So, then, the fact of such decay stood
confessed. In most cases the very last persons to realize the unwelcome
truth are those who hold the doctrines that are becoming effete.
Quakerism must, I felt, be in a very bad condition indeed when its own
disciples called together a conference to account for its passing away.
Neither men nor communities, as a rule, act crowner's 'quest on their
own decease. That faith, it was clear, must be almost past praying for
which, disbelieving, as our modern Quietism does, the efficacy of
assemblies, and trusting all to the inward illumination of individuals,
should yet summon a sort of Quaker Oecumenical Council. I thought I
should like to probe this personal light myself, and by inquiring of one
or two of the members of the body, learn what they thought of the
matter. I was half inclined to array myself in drab, and _tutoyer_ the
first of the body I chanced to encounter in my walks abroad. But then it
occurred to me how very seldom one did meet a Quaker nowadays except in
the "month of Maying." I actually had to cast about for some time before
I could select from a tolerably wide and heterogeneous circle of
acquaintance two names of individuals belonging to the Society of
Friends; though I could readily remember half a dozen of every other
culte, from Ultramontanes down to Jumpers. These two, at all events, I
would "interview," and so forestall the Conference with a little select
synod of my own.
It was possible, of course, to find a ludicrous side to the question;
but, as I said, I approached it seriously. Sydney Smith, with his
incorrigible habit of joking, questioned the existence of Quaker
babies--a position which, if proven, would, of course, at once account
for the diminution of adult members of the sect. It was true I had never
seen a Quaker infant; but I did not therefore question their existence,
any more than I believed postboys and certain humble quadrupeds to be
immortal because I had never seen a dead specimen of either. The
question I acknowledged at once to be a social and religious, not a
physiological one. Why is Quakerism, which has lived over two hundred
years, from the days of George Fox, and stood as much persecution as any
system of similar age, beginning to succumb to the influences of peace
and prosperity? Is it the old story of Capua and Cannæ over again?
Perhaps it is not quite correct to say that it is now beginning to
decline; nor, as a fact, is this Conference the first inquiry which the
body itself has made into its own incipient decay. It is even said that
symptoms of such an issue showed themselves as early as the beginning of
the eighteenth century; and prize essays have been from time to time
written as to the causes, before the Society so far fell in with the
customs of the times as to call a council for the present very difficult
and delicate inquiry. The first prize essay by William Rountree
attributes the falling off to the fact that the early Friends, having
magnified a previously slighted truth--that of the Indwelling Word--fell
into the natural error of giving it an undue place, so depriving their
representations of Christian doctrine of the symmetry they would
otherwise have possessed, and influencing their own practices in such a
way as to contract the basis on which Christian fellowship rests. A
second prize essay, called "The Peculium," takes a still more practical
view, and points out in the most unflattering way that the Friends, by
eliminating from their system all attention to the arts, music, poetry,
the drama, &c., left nothing for the exercise of their faculties save
eating, drinking, and making money. "The growth of Quakerism," says Mr.
T. Hancock, the author of this outspoken essay, "lies in its
enthusiastic tendency. The submission of Quakers to the commercial
tendency is signing away the life of their own schism. Pure enthusiasm
and the pursuit of money (which _is_ an enthusiasm) can never coexist,
never co-operate; but," he adds, "the greatest loss of power reserved
for Quakerism is the reassumption by the Catholic Church of those
Catholic truths which Quakerism was separated to witness and to
vindicate."
I confess myself, however, so far Quaker too that I care little for the
written testimony of friends or foes. I have, in all my religious
wanderings and inquiries, adopted the method of oral examination; so I
found myself on a recent November morning speeding off by rail to the
outskirts of London to visit an ancient Quaker lady whom I knew very
slenderly, but who I had heard was sometimes moved by the spirit to
enlighten a little suburban congregation, and was, therefore, I felt the
very person to enlighten me too, should she be thereunto moved. She was
a venerable, silver-haired old lady, clad in the traditional dress of
her sect, and looking very much like a living representation of
Elizabeth Fry. She received me very cordially; though I felt as if I
were a fussy innovation of the nineteenth century breaking in upon the
sacred, old-fashioned quiet of her neat parlour. She "thee'd and thou'd"
me to my heart's content: and--to summarize the conversation I held with
her--it was to the disuse of the old phraseology and the discarding of
the peculiar dress that she attributed most of the falling off which she
was much too shrewd a woman of the world to shut her eyes to. These
were, of course, only the outward and visible signs of a corresponding
change within; but this was why the Friends fell off, and gravitated, as
she confessed they were doing, to steeple-houses, water-dipping, and
bread-and-wine-worship. She seemed to me like a quiet old Prophetess
Anna chanting a "Nunc Dimittis" of her own on the passing away of her
faith. She would be glad to depart before the glory had quite died out.
She said she did not hope much from the Conference, and, to my
amazement, rather gloried in the old irreverent title given by the
Independents to her forefathers from their "quaking and trembling" when
they heard the Word of God, though she preferred still more the older
title of "Children of the Light." She was, in fact, a rigid old
Conservative follower of George Fox, from the top of her close-bordered
cap to the skirts of her grey silk gown. I am afraid my countenance
expressed incredulity as to her rationale of the decay; for, as I rose
to go, she said, "Thou dost not agree, friend, with what I have said to
thee--nay, never shake thy head; it would be wonderful if thou didst,
when our own people don't. Stay; I'll give thee a note to my son in
London, though he will gainsay much of what I have told thee." She gave
me the letter, which was just what I wanted, for I felt I had gained
little beyond a pleasant experience of old-world life from my morning's
jaunt. I partook of her kindly hospitality, was shown over her
particularly cosy house, gardens, and hothouses, and meditated, on my
return journey, upon many particulars I learnt for the first time as to
the early history of Fox; realizing what a consensus there was between
the experiences of all illuminati. I smiled once and again over the
quaint title of one of Fox's books which my venerable friend had quoted
to me--viz., "A Battle-door for Teachers and Professors to learn Plural
and Singular. _You_ to _Many_, and _Thou_ to _One_; Singular, One,
_Thou_; Plural, Many, _You_." While so meditating, my cab deposited me
at the door of a decidedly "downy" house, at the West End, where my
prospective friend was practising in I will not mention which of the
learned professions. Both the suburban cottage of the mother and the
London ménage of the son assured me that they had thriven on Quakerism;
and it was only then I recollected that a poor Quaker was as rare a
personage as an infantile member of the Society.
The young man--who neither in dress, discourse, nor manner differed
from an ordinary English gentleman--smiled as he read his mother's
lines, and, with a decorous apology for disturbing the impressions which
her discourse might have left upon me, took precisely the view which had
been latent in my own mind as to the cause of the Society's decay.
Thoroughly at one with them still on the doctrine of the illuminating
power of the Spirit in the individual conscience, he treated the archaic
dress, the obsolete phraseology, the obstinate opposition to many
innocent customs of the age, simply as anachronisms. He pointed with
pride to the fact that our greatest living orator was a member of the
Society; and claimed for the underlying principle of Quakerism--namely,
the superiority of a conscience void of offence over written scripture
or formal ceremony--the character of being in essence the _broadest_
creed of Christendom. Injudicious retention of customs which had grown
meaningless had, he felt sure, brought down upon the body that most
fatal of all influences--contempt. "You see it in your own Church," he
said. "There is a school which, by reviving obsolete doctrines and
practices, will end in getting the Church of England disestablished as
it is already disintegrated. You see it even in the oldest religion of
all--Judaism. You see, I mean, a school growing into prominence and
power which discards all the accumulations of ages, and by going back to
real antiquity, at once brings the system more into unison with the
century, and prevents that contempt attaching to it which will accrue
wherever a system sets its face violently against the tone of current
society." He thought the Conference quite unnecessary. "There needs no
ghost come from the dead to tell us that, Horatio," he said, cheerily.
"They will find out that Quakerism is not a proselytizing religion," he
added; "which, of course, we knew before. They will point to the
fashionable attire, the gold rings, and lofty chignons of our younger
sisters as direct defiance of primitive custom. I am unorthodox
enough"--and he smiled as he used that word--"to think that the attire
is more becoming to my younger sisters, just as the Society's dress is
to my dear mother." That young man, and the youthful sisters he told me
of, stood as embodied answers to the question I had proposed to myself.
They were outward and visible evidences of the doctrine of Quaker
"development." The idea is not dead. The spirit is living still. It is
the spirit that underlies all real religion--namely, the personal
relation of the human soul to God as the source of illumination. That
young man was as good a Quaker at heart as George Fox or William Penn
themselves; and the "apology" he offered for his transformed faith was a
better one than Barclay's own. I am wondering whether the Conference
will come to anything like so sensible a conclusion as to why Quakerism
is declining.