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+Project Gutenberg EBook, The Inner Life, Part 3, From Vol. VII.
+The Works of Whittier: The Conflict With Slavery, Politics and Reform
+#42 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
+
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+Title: The Inner Life, Part 3, From Vol. VII,
+       The Works of Whittier: The Conflict With Slavery, Politics
+       and Reform, The Inner Life and Criticism
+
+
+Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
+
+Release Date: December 2005  [EBook #9597]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 25, 2003]
+
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE INNER LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE INNER LIFE
+
+                                    BY
+
+                         JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     THE AGENCY OF EVIL
+     HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES
+     SWEDENBORG
+     THE BETTER LAND
+     DORA GREENWELL
+     THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
+     JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
+     THE OLD WAY
+     HAVERFORD COLLEGE
+
+
+
+
+
+THE INNER LIFE
+
+THE AGENCY OF EVIL.
+
+From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for
+1843.
+
+IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so
+written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets
+and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future
+state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and
+most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of
+evil,--the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and
+suffering and discord,--the wrong which all men see in others and feel
+in themselves,--the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery.  A
+superficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of
+man's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the
+thoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes.  The
+grossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread
+of an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our
+nature.  Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing
+before its face, the form whereof is not discerned.
+
+It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone
+for the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously
+consigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and
+witchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected
+impostures,
+
+              "Over the backside of the world far off,
+               Into a limbo broad and large, and called
+               The paradise of fools,"--
+
+that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine
+of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and
+unbelievers among us.  Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the
+marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others.  In certain
+states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional
+garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us.  Imagination
+goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt.  We
+think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with
+Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us.  For what is the
+priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the
+supernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in
+the shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual
+wonders?  Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and
+demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his
+faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints
+at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and
+speculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon
+of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,
+Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the
+universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in
+itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process
+of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed
+of the spiritual world and supernatural agency?  That fearful being with
+his tributaries and agents,--"the Devil and his angels,"--how awfully he
+rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers!  How
+he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas
+of Milton and Dante!  What a note of horror does his name throw into the
+sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches.  What strange, dark fancies are
+connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand
+juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed
+"at the instigation of the Devil"!
+
+How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood!  Even at this day,
+at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with
+which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's
+Progress.  Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
+extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the
+tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled
+over the whole breadth of the way."  There was another print of the enemy
+which made no slight impression upon me.  It was the frontispiece of an
+old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
+(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
+enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
+fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
+declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
+lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
+commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
+without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
+were worn off to the knees!  The rude wood-cut represented the demon
+fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
+"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels."  He would have answered very
+well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.
+
+To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we
+are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and
+possession.  Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of
+evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of
+good.  Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves
+constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are
+always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm.  "The
+Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat
+faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."
+
+The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and
+existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.
+The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided
+sovereignty of the universe.  The Divine Teacher, it is true, in
+discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and
+which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He
+nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
+power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
+are all things.  Pure himself, He can create nothing impure.  Evil,
+therefore, has no eternity in the past.  The fact of its present actual
+existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
+the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
+become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of
+the Infinite Parent.  Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark
+mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of
+humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,
+justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at
+all."
+
+"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
+Robinson.  "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"
+
+Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils
+do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,
+ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded."  Origen, in his Platonic
+speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by
+repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed
+to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all.  Justin Martyr was of
+the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the
+Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded.  One is
+irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the
+Deil_, by Burns:--
+
+              "But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!
+               Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,
+               Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
+               Still has a stake
+               I'm was to think upon yon den
+               Fen for your sake."
+
+The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
+ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
+liable to injury and pain.  Origen has a curious notion that any evil
+spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
+thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
+has lost his sting.
+
+"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a
+discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks."
+Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious
+consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in that state of
+the drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some
+shape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as
+Winslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than to
+others."  I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had
+bitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time
+devoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the
+editor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid
+impression on my mind.  He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for
+the sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his
+abode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the
+seaboard.  Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the
+whole time in a state of semi-intoxication.  One night he stood leaning
+against a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the
+waves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels
+vaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream.  He was startled by
+a voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _"You have murdered a man; the
+officers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!"_  Every
+syllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in
+the hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably
+dreadful.  He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear
+moonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim
+of illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary
+horror.  Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass
+of brandy, and retired to his chamber.  He had scarcely lain his head on
+the pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper,
+repeating the same words.  He describes his sensations at this time as
+inconceivably fearful.  Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst
+the confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself.  Had
+he not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record,
+actually murdered some one?  And was not this a warning from Heaven?
+Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated,
+with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!"  He
+walked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to
+the head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he
+heard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"
+
+Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found
+himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,
+or cellar, where he had never been before.  The voice still beckoned him
+onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against
+which he leaned for a moment.  He heard it again, apparently only two or
+three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are
+close behind you; follow me!"  Putting one foot forward while his hand
+still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty
+recovered himself.  Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found
+himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled
+nearly to the top with water.  The sudden shock of this discovery broke
+the horrible enchantment.  The whisperer was silent.  He believed, at the
+time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a
+diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection
+of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal
+tempter.
+
+Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance
+guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.
+The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of
+the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's.  They
+stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the
+gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer
+and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of hereties, "before
+the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of
+perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend."  In their grand old
+wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,
+hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of
+mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars
+of a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored
+wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower
+had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the
+misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,
+they recognized no holy revelation.  It was to them terrible as the
+forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain.  Every
+advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory.  And one has only
+to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was
+to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment
+of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between
+the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean
+mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or
+soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing
+its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how
+else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?"  What
+was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips
+of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their
+wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion?  Was not his evil
+finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams?  Who else
+gave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a
+hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled
+to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles?  To
+the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light
+wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot
+to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied
+gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr.
+Moore calls them?  Perilous and glorious was it, under these
+circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their
+stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.
+Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry.  The heroes
+of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,
+and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention
+in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal
+sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits
+that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"--
+encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual
+armorer of Geneva.  The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as
+the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in
+Amadis de Gaul.  All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him
+in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;
+while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and
+spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle,
+with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of
+the enemy.  No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against
+him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut
+up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the
+presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands
+on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl
+flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches.  How edifying is his
+account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
+purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
+Sadducees"!  How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
+the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
+attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
+Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
+was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
+diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!
+
+     [The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,
+     emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser
+     superstitions of their times.  William Penn, indeed, had a law in
+     his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person
+     suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its
+     absurdity.  George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his
+     journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the
+     subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that
+     the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died
+     there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all
+     the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the
+     power of God, and feared no such thing."
+
+     The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
+     influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
+     sorcery.  "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
+     does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
+     slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
+     drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
+     horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
+     and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off."  In his
+     account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
+     I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
+     face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
+     stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
+     husband."
+
+     Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in
+     about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians.  The first of the
+     sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,--the latter a
+     young girl,--were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the
+     absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the
+     purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's
+     mark on them.  In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two
+     venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by
+     Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey
+     into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and
+     wolves.]
+
+All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his
+demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem
+Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with
+planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his
+life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a
+whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick
+dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie.  We may
+laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also
+pity and shudder.  The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in
+its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,
+their spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,
+the English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the
+benefactors of their race.  It is true they were branded through life as
+infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered
+lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine
+commission and Godspeed.
+
+         "The oracles are dumb;
+          No voice nor hideous hum
+Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
+          Apollo from his shrine
+          Can now no more divine,
+With hollow shriek the steep of Delphns leaving."
+
+Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,
+this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of
+motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination.  The once
+imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
+Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
+planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance.  The heretic now
+laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
+All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan.  And for the sake of
+abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
+consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
+Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
+temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
+despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
+with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
+terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
+that torment the smoke of which rises forever.  Through fear of a Satan
+of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
+ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
+brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
+God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
+of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
+terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
+Rhadamanthus.  And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
+degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
+accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
+of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
+necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
+soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
+many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
+to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
+return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
+gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one.  Better
+is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more
+acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of
+slavish terror.  The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which
+has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of
+old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on
+earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect
+love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick
+dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and
+startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.
+
+There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,--_Die
+Kohlerfamilie_.  The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its
+bloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever
+increasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought
+in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient
+watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle
+visitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, at
+times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the
+bushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely,
+such as the soul may conceive, but no words express.  He felt its power
+in the depths of his being,--felt it like the mystic breathing of the
+Spirit of God."
+
+The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all
+sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and
+diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan
+and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would
+diverge into universal skepticism.  It is one of the saddest of sights to
+see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting
+against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from
+profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful
+Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and
+convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched
+on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of
+science.  A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and
+necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite
+Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of
+outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under
+different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of
+every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much
+anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless
+championship of error.  The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of
+Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
+sane men.  But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in
+its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds
+and thought-wearying spaces, remains.  Nature's mighty miracle is still
+over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the
+inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy
+deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,
+starlike, the great idea of duty.  By higher and better influences than
+the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to
+reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,
+and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy
+of an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and
+mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his
+apparent allotment,--
+
+    "God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;
+     Round our restlessness His rest."
+
+It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and
+its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and
+credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if
+possible, there is one still sadder.  It is that of men in our own time
+regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and
+professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a
+godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as
+cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism.  Alas!  in comparison with
+such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still
+feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom
+God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man.  Better
+is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing
+Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,
+than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon
+ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a
+dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth
+gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to
+the worm, "Thou art my sister."
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul
+and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures
+of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
+spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
+eloquent language, its vindication.  "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
+melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
+every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
+principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
+immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind.  A
+tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds.  It first
+presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
+everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
+a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
+stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
+virtuous character.
+
+"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
+that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
+From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
+have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
+love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue.  Hence it is that
+we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
+an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
+are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
+repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
+of her virtues.  In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
+need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings.  The more simple they are, the
+more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy.  They
+produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
+than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
+the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power.  It is in the
+country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
+lively manner.  A simple, unoruamented grave there causes more tears to
+flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment.  There it is that
+grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
+it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
+all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
+murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
+the night."
+
+Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city.  It
+is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
+or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
+covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
+conspicuous.  The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
+marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
+lots."  It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
+its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
+solitary farm-house attracts the eye.  All is still and solemn, as befits
+the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
+great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
+foliage of the autumnal forest.
+
+Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting.  The Lowell and Boston
+Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
+there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
+along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
+young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
+years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
+hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
+over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
+
+It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
+resort.  The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
+these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
+upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
+these leafy recesses.  Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
+gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
+--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow.  How true is it, that, in the
+language of Wordsworth,--
+
+         "In youth we love the darkling lawn,
+          Brushed by the owlet's wing;
+          Then evening is preferred to dawn,
+          And autumn to the spring.
+          Sad fancies do we then affect,
+          In luxury of disrespect
+          To our own prodigal excess
+          Of too familiar happiness."
+
+The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
+their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
+resort.  The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
+which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
+beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
+the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
+indifference of the indolent East.  Most of the visitors whom I met at
+the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
+apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
+perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
+stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
+mounds.  But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
+of the dead.  I cannot jest above the gravestone.  My spirit is silenced
+and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
+and involuntarily pays:
+
+         "The deep reverence taught of old,
+          The homage of man's heart to death."
+
+Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
+me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
+and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
+to the same wild music of the woods for the last time.  Then, too, comes
+the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
+these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
+upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
+the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
+forever.  It is hard for us to realize this.  We are so accustomed to
+look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
+strange that they should survive us.  Tennyson, in his exquisite
+metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
+sentiment:--
+
+         "Alas!  though I should die, I know
+          That all about the thorn will blow
+          In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.
+
+         "Not less the bee will range her cells,
+          The furzy prickle fire the dells,
+          The foxglove cluster dappled bells."
+
+"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the
+Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when
+they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly
+desireth the shadow."  Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,
+to the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our
+common mother.  Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with
+life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary
+eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.
+
+Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
+on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
+shadow.  No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
+state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
+mysteries towards which we are all moving.  "Man giveth up the ghost; and
+where is he?"
+
+Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an
+answer to this momentous question.  Over the blackness of darkness a
+light is shining.  The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land
+of darkness and where the light is as darkness."  The presence of a
+serene and holy life pervades it.  Above its pale tombs and crowded
+burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him
+who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at
+Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life."  We
+know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what
+it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that
+dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps
+lingers in the path.  Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer
+in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow.  He who
+ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit
+when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I
+have elsewhere used,
+
+          --when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
+          The soul may know
+          No fearful change nor sudden wonder,
+          Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
+          But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.
+
+          And all we shrink from now may seem
+          No new revealing;
+          Familiar as our childhood's stream,
+          Or pleasant memory of a dream,
+          The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.
+
+          Serene and mild the untried light
+          May have its dawning;
+          As meet in summer's northern night
+          The evening gray and dawning white,
+          The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
+
+
+
+
+                                SWEDENBORG
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is
+almost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the
+Benares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-
+places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses,
+stalls for the sale of relics.  A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved
+by awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the
+"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise."  I grow weary of seeing
+man and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,
+answering to the same bell-call.  A nightmare of materialism broods over
+all.  I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like
+that of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that
+the Lord alone is God.
+
+Yet is there not another side to the picture?  High over sounding
+workshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.
+The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes
+than cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving.  Each human being who watches
+beside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a
+solemn thing to live.  Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,
+outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch
+beyond the horizon of time into eternity.  Death is here.  The graveyard
+utters its warning.  Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and
+mystery.  Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.
+Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt
+rather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful
+questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--"If a man
+die, shall he live again?"  "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
+Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing
+inquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?"  "Who shall deliver me from the
+body of this death?"
+
+As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of
+our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their
+representatives in Lowell.  The young city is dotted over with "steeple
+houses," most of them of the Yankee order of architecture.  The
+Episcopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,--a pile of dark
+stone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows.  A plat of grass lies
+between it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house
+intended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and
+surrounded by trees and shrubbery.  The attention of the stranger is also
+attracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of
+Belvidere,--one of Irving's a "shingle palaces," painted in imitation of
+stone,--a great wooden sham, "whelked and horned" with pine spires and
+turrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast of
+the Apocalypse.
+
+In addition to the established sects which have reared their visible
+altars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet marked
+the boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains of
+their sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and "upper chambers" and in
+the solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and,
+wrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain the
+integrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation.
+
+Not long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, I
+visited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg.
+Passing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached the
+stream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Mills
+and mingles its waters with the Concord.  The hall in which the followers
+of the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, like
+those of "the people called Quakers," and looks out upon the still woods
+and that "willowy stream which turns a mill."  An organ of small size,
+yet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filled
+the place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plain
+desk, placed modestly by the side of it.  The congregation have no
+regular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers,
+and selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the lay
+members.  A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, was
+read, and apparently listened to with much interest.  It was well written
+and deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church.  I was impressed by
+the gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience.  There were
+here no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of the
+pomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of the
+truth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought them
+together.  I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them,
+that here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the very
+centre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted and
+undoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of the
+Swedish prophet,--revelations which look through all external and outward
+manifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the world
+of sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literally
+unmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life.
+
+The character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of the
+puzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology.  A man remarkable for
+his practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed
+in all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he has
+evolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system of
+transcendent spiritualism.  From his aggregation of cold and apparently
+lifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth
+like blossoms on the rod of the Levite.  A politician and a courtier, a
+man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the
+science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural
+language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:
+detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual
+world, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder
+at their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency.
+These remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerful
+imagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, the
+marvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guarded
+channels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as
+"facts."  His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seem
+to have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as well
+as feeling.  What he thought, that he saw.
+
+He relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidents
+of a walk round his own city of Stockholm.  One can almost see him in his
+"brown coat and velvet breeches," lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel,
+or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headed
+cane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in
+walking.  His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and
+probability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost
+bordering on the ludicrous.  In his Memorable Relations he manifests
+nothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of
+paradise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos;
+nothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heaven
+to heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe.  We
+can scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;
+and the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances.  We seem to
+recognize the "John Smiths," and "Mr. Browns," and "the old familiar
+faces" of our mundane habitation.  The evil principle in Swedenborg's
+picture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that
+stern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an
+aggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save
+in the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses."  These small fry of devils
+remind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, who
+seem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who are
+manifestly given over to believe a lie.  Thus it is that the very
+"heavens" and "hells" of the Swedish mystic seem to be "of the earth,
+earthy."  He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with the
+material one.
+
+In this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt an
+analysis of the great doctrines which underlie the "revelations" of
+Swedenborg.  His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to the
+reading and reflecting portion of the community.  They are not unworthy
+of study; but, in the language of another, I would say, "Emulate
+Swedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, his
+independent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good and
+true; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no man
+your master."
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE BETTER LAND.
+
+                                 [1844.]
+
+"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution,"
+said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the
+Quarterly Review.
+
+He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact
+of a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the
+present stands to it.  The actual nature and conditions of that life He
+has hidden from us,--no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us,--no
+celestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for
+the wonders of the spiritual world.  Hence imagination has a wide field
+for its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict
+the revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved.
+
+We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and
+reverence on earth.  Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the
+imposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship.  There the
+Methodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by the
+still waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes.  The Quaker, in
+the stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence in
+heaven."
+
+The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep
+tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps
+of the New Jerusalem.
+
+The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual
+reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.
+
+The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a
+beautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with
+deer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes,--the happy
+hunting-ground of souls.  In a late letter from a devoted missionary
+among the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a
+beautiful illustration of this belief.  Near the Omaha mission-house, on
+a high luff, was a solitary Indian grave.  "One evening,"
+says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had been
+seeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from
+whence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house.  In a
+moment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and,
+turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and
+supplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain
+the splendid luminary from running his course.  With his body leaning
+forward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most
+striking figure of sorrow and petition.  It was solemnly awful.  He
+seemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to
+pray."
+
+A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, just
+before the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an
+awfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death
+and eternity.
+
+The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,
+seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite
+purity and happiness.  A friend once related an incident concerning him
+which made a deep impression upon my mind.  They had been travelling
+through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest
+beneath a solitary tree.  The Doctor lay for a long time, silently
+looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still
+heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if
+communing with himself in view of the wonders he described:--
+
+    "O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!
+     O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!
+     O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!
+     O brightness on brightness!  the pearl gate uncloses!
+     O white wings of angels!  O fields white with roses!
+     O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes
+     O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"
+
+The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better
+land are inspiring and beautiful.  Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,
+neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in
+store for the righteous.  Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a
+rest remaining for the people of God.  Tears shall be wiped away from all
+eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither
+shall there be any more pain.  To how many death-beds have these words
+spoken peace!  How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them
+to pass through the dark valley of shadows!
+
+Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that it
+is the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,
+the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of
+eternity.  What is really momentous and all-important with us is the
+present, by which the future is shaped and colored.  A mere change of
+locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.
+Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable
+as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence
+would transform hell itself into heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+DORA GREEN WELL.
+
+First published as an introduction to an American edition of that
+author's _The Patience of Hope_.
+
+THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in
+the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of
+Christendom.  Our doors open of their own accord to receive them.  For in
+them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the
+Divine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of
+them; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the
+bloom of Paradise.  So of books.  There are volumes which perhaps contain
+many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our
+reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a
+certain sweetness and savor of life.  They have the Divine seal and
+imprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with
+the leaves which are for the healing of the nations.  The meditations of
+the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and
+Protestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under
+Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his
+bishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in
+the same language.  The unknown author of that book which Luther loved
+next to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in
+this present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in
+the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century.  For such
+books know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual
+freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience
+heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and
+the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them.  The
+bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this
+or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--
+reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine
+goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the
+life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the
+fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling
+Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our
+hearts.  They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or
+the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human
+speculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to
+save unto the uttermost all who trust in Him.  They insist upon simple
+faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they
+leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to
+take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the
+necessary, and the permanent.
+
+With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume
+herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place.  It assumes the
+life and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears
+unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the
+truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but
+present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its
+branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine
+love; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be
+repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the
+perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever
+old and forever new.  It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and
+holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian
+experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves
+guidingly forward.  It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who
+minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the
+vaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too
+much the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will
+feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,
+the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied
+learning which illustrates it.
+
+     ["The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,
+     and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
+     testify for God and holiness, than I once believed."--Baxter.]
+
+To use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--
+
+"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of
+nature here and there shine out from its lines,--a charm wanting which
+meditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too,
+there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the
+way to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read,
+you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautiful
+hills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty
+into the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing,
+amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenborn
+consolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet
+evermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it is
+still haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeating
+snatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to
+join the great river of God's truth.  .  .  .
+
+"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,
+when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.
+The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for
+refreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.
+To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the
+patience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this
+little volume most heartily and earnestly."
+
+
+_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in
+Edinburgh, some two years ago.  I was at once impressed by its
+extraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone
+of meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--
+philosophy warm and glowing with love.  It will, perhaps, be less the
+fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to
+eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle
+metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to
+express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,
+many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague
+possibilities of the highest life.  All may not be able to find in some
+of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent
+to her own mind.  She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of
+familiar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual
+intuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well.  If the
+rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration
+and comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,
+that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike
+true in themselves considered.  "When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'
+and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not
+rather as both, if both be true?"
+
+Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain
+Scriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way
+and the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays,
+withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
+They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
+weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
+imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
+some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
+infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
+to perplex and mislead His children.  The sun does not shine the less
+because one side of our planet is in darkness.  To borrow the words of
+Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made.  Thou alone art
+near to those even who remove far from thee.  Let them turn and seek
+thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
+creation."  It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
+and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
+the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
+dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
+dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
+miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
+mystified by it to their eternal loss.
+
+I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and
+writer, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and
+hesitancy over some of these pages.  But it is impossible for me to make
+one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a
+Scriptural rendering.  On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,
+I have little to say in the way of controversy.  I would listen, rather
+than criticise.  The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me
+often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet
+not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight
+bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest.  Who has not felt at
+times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to
+edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:
+"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.  Let not Moses nor the prophets
+speak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener
+of all.  I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all
+teachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou
+alone to me."
+
+The writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication,
+announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful
+Christians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven.  She has
+recently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge
+as Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_,
+thus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--
+
+"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed
+_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through
+such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still
+deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be
+surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a
+poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own
+Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless
+speculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all
+but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander
+through eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful
+little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of
+true poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.
+There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and
+privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these
+remarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own.  With no
+effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost
+thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as
+gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the
+central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel.  The waters are
+copious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and
+unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes
+sad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of
+the deep sea.
+
+"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts
+from the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems.  In
+reading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not
+only of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble,--a likeness of the spirit, not
+of the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her
+mind, it is Wordsworth,--the greatest of all our century's poets, both in
+himself and in his power of making poets."
+
+In the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will be
+sufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and
+read over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical
+writings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces
+and extracts from the longer poems.
+
+Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--
+
+
+                                ASCENDING.
+
+They who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon
+The wide, illimitable heavens have said,
+That, still receding as they climbed, outspread,
+The blue vault deepens over them, and, one
+By one drawn further back, each starry sun
+Shoots down a feebler splendor overhead
+So, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led
+Along Faith's living way to Thee, have won
+A nearer access, up the difficult track
+Still pressing, on that rarer atmosphere,
+When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack,
+We see Thee drawn within a widening sphere
+Of glory, from us further, further back,--
+Yet is it then because we are more near.
+
+
+                              LIFE TAPESTRY.
+
+Top long have I, methought, with tearful eye
+Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused
+Above each stitch awry and thread confused;
+Now will I think on what in years gone by
+I heard of them that weave rare tapestry
+At royal looms, and hew they constant use
+To work on the rough side, and still peruse
+The pictured pattern set above them high;
+So will I set my copy high above,
+And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows
+Its gracious impress; till some line of love,
+Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;
+Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide
+He whom I work for sees their fairer side!
+
+
+                                  HOPE.
+
+When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
+Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
+Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
+Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
+And red, ripe lips for kisses: even now
+Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,
+Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
+And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
+That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread
+Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him
+Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;
+But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
+Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
+Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there
+
+
+There is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--
+
+
+                                  GONE.
+
+Alone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware
+Of Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;
+
+A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies
+So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;
+
+And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware
+Of Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;
+
+As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest
+Both hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast,
+
+In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray,
+For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;
+
+"A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair
+That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there
+
+"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,
+(So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name
+
+"She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--
+One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way.
+
+"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the
+Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;
+
+"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,
+holy,' so that now I know not if she prays;
+
+"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone
+From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"
+
+
+The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-
+playful strain of moralizing:--
+
+
+                                 SEEKING.
+
+"And where, and among what pleasant places,
+Have ye been, that ye come again
+With your laps so full of flowers, and your faces
+Like buds blown fresh after rain?"
+
+"We have been," said the children, speaking
+In their gladness, as the birds chime,
+All together,--"we have been seeking
+For the Fairies of olden time;
+For we thought, they are only hidden,--
+They would never surely go
+From this green earth all unbidden,
+And the children that love them so.
+Though they come not around us leaping,
+As they did when they and the world
+Were young, we shall find them sleeping
+Within some broad leaf curled;
+For the lily its white doors closes
+But only over the bee,
+And we looked through the summer roses,
+Leaf by leaf, so carefully.
+
+But we thought, rolled up we shall find them
+Among mosses old and dry;
+From gossamer threads that bind them,
+They will start like the butterfly,
+All winged: so we went forth seeking,
+Yet still they have kept unseen;
+Though we think our feet have been keeping
+The track where they have been,
+For we saw where their dance went flying
+O'er the pastures,--snowy white."
+
+Their seats and their tables lying,
+O'erthrown in their sudden flight.
+And they, too, have had their losses,
+For we found the goblets white
+And red in the old spiked mosses,
+That they drank from over-night;
+And in the pale horn of the woodbine
+Was some wine left, clear and bright;
+"But we found," said the children, speaking
+More quickly, "so many things,
+That we soon forgot we were seeking,--
+Forgot all the Fairy rings,
+Forgot all the stories olden
+That we hear round the fire at night,
+Of their gifts and their favors golden,--
+The sunshine was so bright;
+And the flowers,--we found so many
+That it almost made us grieve
+To think there were some, sweet as any,
+That we were forced to leave;
+As we left, by the brook-side lying,
+The balls of drifted foam,
+And brought (after all our trying)
+These Guelder-roses home."
+
+"Then, oh!" I heard one speaking
+Beside me soft and low,
+"I have been, like the blessed children, seeking,
+Still seeking, to and fro;
+Yet not, like them, for the Fairies,--
+They might pass unmourned away
+For me, that had looked on angels,--
+On angels that would not stay;
+No!  not though in haste before them
+I spread all my heart's best cheer,
+And made love my banner o'er them,
+If it might but keep them here;
+They stayed but a while to rest them;
+Long, long before its close,
+From my feast, though I mourned and prest them
+The radiant guests arose;
+And their flitting wings struck sadness
+And silence; never more
+Hath my soul won back the gladness,
+That was its own before.
+No; I mourned not for the Fairies
+When I had seen hopes decay,
+That were sweet unto my spirit
+So long; I said, 'If they,
+That through shade and sunny weather
+Have twined about my heart,
+Should fade, we must go together,
+For we can never part!'
+But my care was not availing;
+I found their sweetness gone;
+I saw their bright tints paling;--
+They died; yet I lived on.
+
+"Yet seeking, ever seeking,
+Like the children, I have won
+A guerdon all undreamt of
+
+When first my quest begun,
+And my thoughts come back like wanderers,
+Out-wearied, to my breast;
+What they sought for long they found not,
+Yet was the Unsought best.
+For I sought not out for crosses,
+I did not seek for pain;
+Yet I find the heart's sore losses
+Were the spirit's surest gain."
+
+
+In _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence,
+upon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--
+
+                  "But is there prayer
+Within your quiet homes, and is there care
+For those ye leave behind?  I would address
+My spirit to this theme in humbleness
+No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known
+This mystery, and thus I do but guess
+At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;
+Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?
+Ye may not quit your sweetness; in the Vine
+More firmly rooted than of old, your wine
+Hath freer flow!  ye have not changed, but grown
+To fuller stature; though the shock was keen
+That severed you from us, how oft below
+Hath sorest parting smitten but to show
+True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow
+The closer for that anguish,--friend to friend
+Revealed more clear,--and what is Death to rend
+The ties of life and love, when He must fade
+In light of very Life, when He must bend
+To love, that, loving, loveth to the end?
+
+              "I do not deem ye look
+Upon us now, for be it that your eyes
+Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies
+Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook
+Our troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt
+Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt
+As now we feel, to bid you recognize
+Our claim of kindred cherished though unseen;
+And Love that is to you for eye and ear
+Hath ways unknown to us to bring you near,--
+To keep you near for all that comes between;
+As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer,
+As distant friends, that see not, and yet share
+(I speak of what I know) each other's care,
+So may your spirits blend with ours!
+Above Ye know not haply of our state, yet
+Love Acquaints you with our need, and through a way
+More sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!
+
+               "And even thus we meet,
+And even thus we commune!  spirits freed
+And spirits fettered mingle, nor have need
+To seek a common atmosphere, the air
+Is meet for either in this olden, sweet,
+Primeval breathing of Man's spirit,--Prayer!"
+
+
+I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems,
+_The Reconciler_:--
+
+                  "Our dreams are reconciled,
+Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;
+The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth
+Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild;
+And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still
+At once make clear these visions and fulfil;
+
+Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme,
+Each mythic tale sublime
+Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,
+Each morning dream the few,
+Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.
+
+           . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+                   "Thou, O Friend
+From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,
+Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--
+Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
+Each yearning deep and wide,
+Each claim, is justified;
+Our young illusions fail not, though they die
+Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
+To happy death, like early clouds that lie
+About the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist
+Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.
+
+               "The World that puts Thee by,
+That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,
+That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,
+'We will not have Thee over us to reign,'
+Itself Both testify through searchings vain
+Of Thee and of its need, and for the good
+It will not, of some base similitude
+Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood,
+Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear
+Its own illusions grown too thin and bare
+To wrap it longer; for within the gate
+Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,
+A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,
+And he who answers not its questions dies,--
+Still changing form and speech, but with the same
+Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame
+Upon the nations that with eager cry
+Hail each new solver of the mystery;
+Yet he, of these the best,
+Bold guesser, hath but prest
+Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;
+True Champion, that hast wrought
+Our help of old, and brought
+Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.
+
+                     "O Bearer of the key
+That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet
+Its turning in the wards is melody,
+All things we move among are incomplete
+And vain until we fashion them in Thee!
+We labor in the fire,
+Thick smoke is round about us; through the din
+Of words that darken counsel clamors dire
+Ring from thought's beaten anvil, where within
+Two Giants toil, that even from their birth
+With travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth,
+And wearied out her children with their keen
+Upbraidings of the other, till between
+Thou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrong
+Each other?--ye are Brethren.' Then these twain
+Will own their kindred, and in Thee retain
+Their claims in peace, because Thy land is wide
+As it is goodly!  here they pasture free,
+This lion and this leopard, side by side,
+A little child doth lead them with a song;
+Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more
+Doth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore,
+For one did ask a Brother, one a King,
+So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--
+Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest,
+Thou, Brother of our own from bonds released
+A Law of Liberty,
+A Service making free,
+A Commonweal where each has all in Thee.
+
+                  "And not alone these wide,
+Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry
+Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;
+But all our instincts waking suddenly
+Within the soul, like infants from their sleep
+That stretch their arms into the dark and weep,
+Thy voice can still.  The stricken heart bereft
+Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left
+'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest
+With snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast
+Doth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creeps
+Unto Thy side for shelter, finding there
+The wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps
+Calm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead Care
+Hath looked until its thorns, no longer bare,
+Put forth pale roses.  Pain on Thee doth press
+Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness,
+The want that keep their silence, till from Thee
+They hear the gracious summons, none beside
+Hath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me,'
+Tell forth their heavy secrets.
+
+                  "Thou dost hide
+These in Thy bosom, and not these alone,
+But all our heart's fond treasure that had grown
+A burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighed
+To Thee in plenteous measure!  none hath shown
+That Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely made
+All joy of ours Thine own.
+
+                 "Thou madest us for Thine;
+We seek amiss, we wander to and fro;
+Yet are we ever on the track Divine;
+The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow
+To lean on aught but that which it may see;
+So hath it crowded up these Courts below
+With dark and broken images of Thee;
+Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show
+Thy goodly patterns, whence these things of old
+By Thee were fashioned; One though manifold.
+Glass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul,
+Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole!"
+
+
+No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal
+quotations.  Apart from their literary merit, they have a special
+interest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully
+illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.
+
+It has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that an
+objection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all
+books of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual
+from his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personal
+solicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not take
+sufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of
+the neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His life
+and teachings.  This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one.  For, of
+a truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that
+afforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about
+him, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, in
+the very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his
+neighbors starve for lack of bread.  But surely the benevolent unrest,
+the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering of
+others, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing to
+fear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation
+to the Divine will.  "The more piety, the more compassion," says Isaac
+Taylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred
+asceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widow
+and the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world,--which
+deals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God.  Self-
+scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to
+the reformer and philanthropist.  The spiritual warrior, like the young
+candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory
+ordeal of watching all night by his armor.
+
+Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the
+most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of
+Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.
+They did not separate the two great commandments.  Tauler strove with
+equal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare
+of men.  In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold
+horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and
+mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence.  Woolman's whole life
+was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic
+piety which bears the name.
+
+How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of
+those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the
+poor?  How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid
+laborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches
+blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the
+dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;
+with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;
+and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil!  What a significance
+there was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared before
+him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings
+in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,
+and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate
+being"!  His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have
+thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most
+miserable sinner to whom his compassion extended.  As he did not
+live, so neither did he die to himself.  His prayer upon his death-bed
+was for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple
+trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden
+streets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching
+concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the
+paternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance
+in ever-memorable words.
+
+In view of the troubled state of the country and the intense
+preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering
+this volume to its publishers.  But, on further reflection, it has seemed
+to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the
+chaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over the
+land, the contemplation of "things unseen which are eternal" might not be
+unwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, and
+the trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voice
+calling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and the
+spiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternal
+quietness which God giveth.  I cannot but believe that, in the heat and
+glare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain to
+the calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wings
+of the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something of
+consolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary.  For surely
+never was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuary
+of prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divine
+goodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice and
+renunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts not
+its proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for "peace in its day" at
+the expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemn
+words of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to that
+of the degenerate Jew,--"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy
+backsliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, and
+bitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not in
+thee,"--when "His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness,"
+and the hand heavy upon us which shall "turn and overturn until he whose
+right it is shall reign,"--until, not without rending agony, the evil
+plant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound
+themselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like the
+tree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression,
+rebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyed
+forever.
+
+AMESBURY, 1st 6th mo., 1862.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
+
+The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review
+in Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and
+practice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have
+since more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.
+
+
+I.
+
+                         AMESBURY, 2d mo., 1870.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW.
+
+ESTEEMED FRIEND,--If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an
+indifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious
+Society.  Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous
+concerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we
+may let go of old things too precious to be lost.  Hence I have been
+pleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting
+articles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_.
+
+The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures
+and opinions, of impatience of all slow results.  The world about us
+moves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we have
+enjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of our
+opinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded.  Our very right to
+exist as a distinct society is questioned.  Our old literature--the
+precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--is
+comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications.  We
+bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent
+meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will
+and option.  There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas
+and expedients and practices of other sects.  I speak only of admitted
+facts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint.  No one has less
+right than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor
+differences of opinion.  If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not
+find it a hard task to bear with them.
+
+But for myself I prefer the old ways.  With the broadest possible
+tolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of
+Friends.  My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other
+sects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like
+quarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with
+me, side by side, at the rope of Reform.  A very large proportion of my
+dearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned
+with John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions."
+But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own
+Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;
+and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--
+the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity.  I
+cheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of
+those who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer
+types of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and
+still know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the
+doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends.  I am not
+blind to the shortcomings of Friends.  I know how much we have lost by
+narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external
+observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as
+conscience-keepers for others.  We have not, as a society, been active
+enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-
+creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never
+out of place.  Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been
+spared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion."  It is in the decline of
+practical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each
+other for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance
+and spirit.  Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing
+good among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the
+Divine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in
+the true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do
+for ourselves.  There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an
+eye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;
+the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;
+the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this
+world of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant
+thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!
+Peace on earth and good-will to men!"
+
+It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in
+which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness
+among us.  I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects.  But, if we
+look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the
+central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in
+an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great
+law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the
+highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy.  If we did
+but realize it, we are "set in a large place."
+
+"We may do all we will save wickedness."
+
+"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
+
+Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is "exceeding
+broad."  As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and
+catholic of faiths.  If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are
+not up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and
+love of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of
+the truths of science and philosophy,--in a word, if we are not full-
+grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in
+ourselves.  We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to
+adjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects.  By so doing we make at
+the best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful,
+it is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith.  If, for
+instance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a written
+creed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I should
+prefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher,
+the like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, and
+intellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century of
+theological manipulation in a Quaker "school of the prophets."  If I must
+go into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the best
+article on sale, without regard to the label attached to it.
+
+I am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society.
+I feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member.  And I
+bear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends,
+who, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us,
+seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the
+practices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects.  The great
+apparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly
+with our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire
+whether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical
+Christianity than is found in our select gatherings.  I think I
+understand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them.
+But it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not in
+going back to the "beggarly elements" from which our worthy ancestors
+called the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not in
+setting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol,
+and oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they were
+intended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speaking
+and noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the "plain
+language" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but in
+heeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ not
+merely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity,
+but in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love for
+Him manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;
+and in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:
+"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit
+the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+In conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of my
+opinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I have
+neither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whose
+doctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whose
+history is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whose
+usefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fully
+assured.
+
+
+II.
+
+Having received several letters from dear friends in various sections
+suggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time or
+health to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way to
+acknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible of
+the Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether in
+commendation or dissent, they manifest?  I think I may say in truth that
+my letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply to
+express a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was nevertheless
+real.  I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations and
+so-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate and
+disunite.  We have had too many divisions already.  I intended no censure
+of dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy,
+notwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects.  The
+domain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems the
+part of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varying
+experiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as for
+that youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often been
+instrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religious
+profession.  It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entire
+uniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;
+and we should be careful that a rightful concern for "the form of sound
+words" does not become what William Penn calls "verbal orthodoxy."  We
+must consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differently
+from different points of vision.  Knowing our own weaknesses and
+limitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations,
+expositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint and
+feeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God.
+
+         "They are but broken lights of Thee,
+          And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
+
+Differing, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeed
+have the "mind of Christ," we shall rejoice in whatever of good is really
+accomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than those
+which we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lord
+rebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring them
+that they that were not against Him were for Him.
+
+It would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindly
+expressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhat
+overestimated the tendencies of things in our Society.  I have no pride
+of opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness my
+error of judgment.  In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeat
+my deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, for
+our own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures,
+without laying aside the principles and practice of our religious
+Society.  I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as our
+privilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for the
+performance of any duty which may be required of us.  When truly called
+to contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us,
+like the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowhere
+broken.
+
+I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and
+a standard.  I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most
+thoughtful members of other Christian sects.  I know that any serious
+departure from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to
+many who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our
+testimonies.  They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not
+see that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy
+and the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence
+will not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the
+Light of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own
+souls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward
+experience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation
+shall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the
+Holy Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall
+be recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of
+restless inquiry.  In this belief my letter was written.  I am sorry it
+did not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no
+consideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may
+lessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.
+
+AMESBURY, 3d mo., 1870.
+
+
+P. S.  I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal of
+the Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia,
+where, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, I
+find much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate a
+providential opening for good.  I confess to a lively and tender sympathy
+with my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who "went
+about doing good," go forth into the highways and byways to gather up the
+lost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick and
+suffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, at
+times, their zeal goes beyond "reasonable service," and although the
+importance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and love
+lose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on his
+armor boast like him who layeth it off.  Any movement, however irregular,
+which indicates life, is better than the quiet of death.  In the
+overruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way for
+healing.  Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other,
+and this shaking of the balance may adjust it.
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
+
+Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.
+
+To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult
+of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by
+obscure and uneventful lives.  Some great reform which lifts the world to
+a higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in
+anxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace
+it back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in
+the chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the
+divine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood
+by his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself.  The little one
+has become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon.  "The
+kingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of the
+mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality
+Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the
+human one.
+
+The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout
+the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.
+A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil
+work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to
+the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose
+very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his
+religious society.
+
+It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and
+ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to
+which they are manifestly entitled.  In one of my last interviews with
+William Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they
+were so little known.  He had himself just read the book for the first
+time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he
+pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in
+the language.  He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes
+of readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.
+Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard
+Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his
+letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation.  Edward
+Irving pronounced it a godsend.  Some idea of the lively interest which
+the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the
+beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of
+Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and
+varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
+In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a
+sermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than
+promote belief:
+
+"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at
+the same time!  A perfect gem!  His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful
+soul.  An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite
+purity and grace.  His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.
+Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better
+book; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which
+he was a great actor.  His religion was love.  His whole existence and
+all his passions were love.  If one could venture to impute to his creed,
+and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he
+exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert.  His Christianity is
+most inviting, it is fascinating!  One of the leading British reviews a
+few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man
+who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to
+the Divine pattern.  The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority
+in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's
+gift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural
+heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,
+even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow.  Every now and then, in
+the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of
+Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth
+that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over
+the whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of
+Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His
+creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,
+and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him.  In this pure,
+universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that
+comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts.  Its springs are deep
+and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very
+overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'"
+
+After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
+of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
+estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
+Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
+events in which he was an actor.  A desire to supply in some sort this
+deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
+paper.
+
+It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of
+individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to
+watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the
+command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as
+its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to
+the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its
+hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it
+moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening
+our present humanity.  To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as
+possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of
+slave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of
+that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout
+the world.
+
+At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it
+emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.
+The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.
+consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,
+temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a
+blessing.  Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some
+of the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily
+described their condition:--
+
+What shall we do but sing His praise
+Who led us through the watery maze,
+Unto an isle so long unknown,
+And yet far kinder than our own?
+He lands us on a grassy stage,
+Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;
+He gives us this eternal spring,
+Which here enamels everything,
+And sends the fowls to us in care,
+On daily visits through the air.
+He hangs in shades the orange bright,
+Like golden lamps, in a green night,
+And doth in the pomegranate close
+Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
+
+       . . . . . . . . .
+
+And in these rocks for us did frame
+A temple where to sound His name.
+Oh!  let our voice His praise exalt,
+Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
+Which then, perhaps rebounding, may
+Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
+
+"So sang they in the English boat,
+A holy and a cheerful note;
+And all the way, to guide their chime,
+With falling oars they kept the time."
+
+Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the
+colonists around them.  No positive condemnation of the evil system had
+then been heard in the British islands.  Neither English prelates nor
+expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it.  Few
+colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and
+conduct.  Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its
+practice.  Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the
+pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing
+ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's
+exhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited
+upon by negro slaves.  Everywhere men were contending with each other
+upon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,
+denying the ethics of Christianity itself.
+
+Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
+He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
+of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
+and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
+purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
+Wisdom.  He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
+intuitive sense of right condemned it.  He solemnly admonished those who
+held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
+in the fear of God.  "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
+their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
+cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
+after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
+
+In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
+Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
+slaves.  He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
+the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge.  It was
+probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
+in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves.  It is one of
+the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
+slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
+of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
+
+Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
+emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
+addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
+Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies.  That
+meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
+in the case.  In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
+any more negroes."  In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
+expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
+selling slaves."  The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
+and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
+adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
+
+The Society gave these memorials a cold reception.  The love of gain and
+power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
+and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
+Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline.  The utmost that could
+be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
+the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
+much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
+in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
+caution, and not censure."
+
+In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
+question.  Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
+became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
+foreign traffic.  In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
+Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
+slaves and keep them during their term of life."  Nothing was done in the
+Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
+negroes was censured.  That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
+for many years afterwards, is certain.  In 1758, a rule was adopted
+prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
+engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
+
+In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
+the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
+Society of Friends.  A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
+member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
+his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
+
+     [Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
+     narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
+     the Delaware.  In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
+     settlement of Friends.  A very few of the old houses with their
+     quaint stoops or porches are left.  That occupied by John Woolman
+     was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
+     story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
+     trees he planted and loved to cultivate.  The house was not painted,
+     but whitewashed.  The name of the place is derived from the highest
+     hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
+     commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
+     woodlands.  Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
+     shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
+     great themes of life and duty.
+
+     When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
+     years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
+     the house of Woolman, then standing.  He describes it as a very
+     "humble abode."  But one person was then living in the town who had
+     ever seen its venerated owner.  This aged man stated that he was at
+     Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
+     among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers.  John
+     Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
+     as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
+     smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
+     when a single blow terminated its existence.  Nothing was more
+     remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
+     well-being and cornfort of the brute creation.  "What is religion?"
+     asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman.  "Tenderness toward
+     all creatures."  Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
+     is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
+     to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
+     that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
+     intends for them under our government."]
+
+On taking up his pen, 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 the 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 young man was John Woolman.  The
+circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long 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 slaveholding 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 gain of oppression.  He was a
+poor man, but he loved truth more than money.  He therefore either 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.  Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
+in the mischief of slavery.  Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
+and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
+He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
+same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
+been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
+Baptist preachers for the same purpose.  He found the meetings generally
+in a low and evil state.  The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
+and the fine gold changed.  The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
+and had wrought an inward desolation.  Instead of meekness, gentleness,
+and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
+dominion."
+
+     [The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
+     journeys among slaveholders.  Brissot, in his New Travels in
+     America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
+     distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
+     minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
+     imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
+     more useful to poor people and the blacks.  He hated slavery so much
+     that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves."  That
+     this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
+     following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
+     friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
+     should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
+     money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
+     desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
+     their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
+     at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
+     clearest to me.  Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
+     small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
+     appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them.  But
+     the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
+     easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
+     at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
+     them."]
+
+In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to
+convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy
+for the enslaved.
+
+At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took
+up his residence in Pennsylvania.  He was by birthright a member of the
+Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some
+extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West
+Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.
+His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the
+anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island.  He came
+to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same
+evil existing there.  He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his
+abode in the country, a few miles distant.  His dwelling was a natural
+cave, with some slight addition of his own making.  His drink was the
+spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone.  He
+persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the
+expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave
+labor.  Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance
+to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for
+worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their
+disgust and indignation.  On one occasion he entered the Market Street
+Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out.  A
+burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
+thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
+street.  There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
+that he did not feel free to rise himself.  "Let those who cast me here
+raise me up.  It is their business, not mine."
+
+His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
+life.  A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with
+projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
+huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes
+and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
+semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
+old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold.  Such was the irrepressible
+prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like
+a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
+like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
+
+On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
+N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
+unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
+was seen passing up the aisle.  Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You
+slaveholders!  Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
+and show yourselves as you are?"  Casting off as he spoke his outer
+garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
+underneath and a sword dangling at his heels.  Holding in one hand a
+large book, he drew his sword with the other.  "In the sight of God," he
+cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
+I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
+bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which
+he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood
+those who sat near him.  John Woolman makes no mention of this
+circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it
+must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit.  The violence
+and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with
+the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except
+the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.
+
+     [Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, whosometimes visited him.
+     Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
+     all mankind to Christianity.  This was to be done by three
+     witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
+     Franklin.  But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
+     three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
+     doctrine, and separated in ill-humor.  The philosopher, who had been
+     an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
+     of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
+     other.]
+
+Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony
+Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and
+speak against slavery.  How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the
+example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found
+in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the
+slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren.  The Marquis de
+Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a
+small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in
+works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.
+Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.
+The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova
+Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and
+religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and
+sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their
+fellow-exiles in other colonies.
+
+The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must
+ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in
+the history of the Christian church.  The labors of Woolman and his few
+but earnest associates had not been in vain.  A deep and tender interest
+had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied
+feelings of solicitude by all parties.  All felt that the time had come
+for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
+the Valley of Decision.  John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man
+humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed
+homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of
+the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-
+stocked plantations of the country.  Bowed down by the weight of his
+concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the
+Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were
+under discussion.  "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with
+inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and
+drink, day and night.'  The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor
+did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before
+the meeting."  When the important subject came up for consideration, many
+faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness.  No one openly
+justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the
+meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many
+members of the Society.  It was also urged that Friends should wait
+patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the
+deliverance of the slave.  This was replied to by John Woolman.  "My
+mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and
+the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with
+awfulness.  I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not
+been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most
+lamentable.  Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries
+have entered into the ears of the Most High.  Such are the purity and
+certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor.  In
+infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one
+time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a
+time for delay.  Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and
+through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a
+regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable
+foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still
+waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,
+God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."
+
+This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
+in a spirit of sympathy and unity.  Some of the slave-holding members
+expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
+adopted against dealing in slaves for the future.  To this it was
+answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
+until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
+such as held slaves.  At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
+over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
+that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
+that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
+them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
+Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
+were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
+slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
+
+This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed.  In that
+meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the
+"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of
+their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good."  In the city of
+Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found
+occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a
+watchful guard over their feelings.  In his Journal for this important
+period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services.  How
+arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood.  The number of
+slaves held by members of the Society was very large.  Isaac Jackson, in
+his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly
+Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred
+slaves.  From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the
+difficulties which presented themselves.  One elderly man says he has
+well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain
+him."  Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his
+tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal.  A
+third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear
+out of it.  "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision."  A
+fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings."  "Old Jos. Richison has
+forty, and is determined to keep them."  Another man has fifty, and
+"means to keep them."  Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his
+wife and daughters hold back."  Another "owns it is wrong, but says he
+will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives."  The far
+greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take
+measures for freeing their slaves.
+
+     [An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which
+     impressed him deeply.  On the last evening, just as he was about to
+     turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had
+     not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.
+     It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care
+     of itself.  Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind
+     quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more
+     exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host
+     eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.
+     The proposal was gladly accepted.  On introducing the object of
+     their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness
+     should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form
+     of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no
+     difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.
+     At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before
+     them.  His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on
+     his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,
+     restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on
+     his master.  At length he was informed of what had been done; that
+     he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past
+     services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived.  The old
+     man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on
+     his breast.  After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then
+     spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently
+     exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on
+     his knees.  Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the
+     solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too
+     much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a
+     slave, and now I shall die a free man!"
+
+     It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are
+     sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to
+     duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived
+     in the mind of Isaac Jackson.  At that supreme moment, when all
+     other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of
+     solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted
+     him as with the blessing of God.]
+
+An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
+the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
+in which he accomplished it:--
+
+"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
+John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves.  Some,
+whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
+our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult.  I often saw
+the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
+proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
+before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
+under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
+in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
+world."
+
+"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
+active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
+John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
+city.  We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
+families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
+such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
+the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
+influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
+this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
+found peace."
+
+These labors 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.
+
+A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
+emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
+that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
+services rendered while in the condition of slavery.  The following is an
+extract from an epistle on this subject:
+
+"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
+have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
+slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
+clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
+view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
+entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
+and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
+openings of duty.
+
+"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many
+who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously
+considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people
+have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring
+is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious
+and deep attention."
+
+Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly
+appointed in the various Monthly Meetings.  Many former owners of slaves
+faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award
+and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.
+So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of
+Friends!
+
+John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
+before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
+negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
+years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
+had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
+the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
+executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
+four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
+
+The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself
+especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman.  At
+the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
+activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
+and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among
+the foundations of society.  Yet he seems never to have doubted for a
+moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated
+as to his own duty in regard to it.  There was no groping like Samson in
+the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of
+the temple of Dagon.  "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his
+path lay clear and unmistakable before him.  He believed in the goodness
+of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness
+for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom
+and every barrier of pride and selfishness.  No one could have a more
+humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy
+he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had
+known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which
+the Lord speaks."  The event justified his confidence; wherever he went
+hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion
+gave way before his testimony of love.
+
+The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
+Rhode Island.  In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
+religious visit to New England, attended that meeting.  He saw the
+horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
+of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
+thronging the market-place.  The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
+after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
+trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
+Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
+convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
+shame and wickedness.  "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
+slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
+by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
+and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
+trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
+the day of trouble.'  I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
+He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
+signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
+the importation of slaves.  His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
+have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church.  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, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"
+
+At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
+of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
+house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
+the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
+or holding them as property.  His tender exhortations were not lost upon
+his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
+spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
+
+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.  The next year this committee reported that
+they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to
+be kindly accepted.  Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at
+liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of
+such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to
+comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take
+it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them
+in continued bondage."
+
+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 for not
+complying with the advice of this meeting."
+
+In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment 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
+brutes 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 former slave-holder
+who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after
+due care and labor 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 save three cases.
+
+In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold.  Its
+members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
+necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation.  I have
+already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
+and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them.  In 1757
+the Virginia Yearly Meeting 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
+religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
+
+I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
+meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
+
+"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
+are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
+offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
+towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
+disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
+many among us are enjoying."
+
+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 endeavors to convince those
+offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings 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 labors 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.
+
+The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
+confined to the religious society of which he was a member.  It may be
+traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
+this country or in Europe.  During the war of the Revolution many of the
+noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
+journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
+and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
+sentiment.  Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
+thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
+Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
+whole after life.  He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
+and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery.  To
+his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
+the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
+uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
+government.  The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
+his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
+the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
+himself and his amiable helpmate.  It was in a degree, at least, the
+influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
+the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
+had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
+importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
+accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
+left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
+Alexander II.  In the history of emancipation in our own country
+evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting.  In
+1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
+before the first Congress of the United States.  Not content with
+clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
+active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
+New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  Jacob Lindley, Elisha
+Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
+known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom.  One of
+the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
+Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
+Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
+so faithfully and nobly devoted.  Looking back to the humble workshop at
+Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
+Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
+
+The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of
+slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the
+many to support the luxury of the few.  The argument running through them
+is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love
+for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all.  They aim to
+convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and
+passion.  To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the
+voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day.  One feels,
+in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from
+all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,
+and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by
+drawing men nearer to God, and to each other.  The style is that of a man
+unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,
+the purity of whose heart enters into his language.  There is no attempt
+at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple
+unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have
+been wholly unknown.  He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual
+prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that
+his work was done in the clear radiance of
+
+          "The light which never was on land or sea."
+
+It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
+expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
+pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence."  Very
+wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
+world.  They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
+competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
+parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
+
+                               "The haunt
+          Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
+          The wild to love tranquillity,"--
+
+a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
+pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
+or activity conflicts with that of another.  Beauty they certainly have,
+but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
+indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
+sweetness as of violets.  "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
+Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
+his words."
+
+Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
+rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
+epigram and antithesis.  He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
+Task-master's eye."  With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
+had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
+spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
+bear rule."
+
+I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
+entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
+they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
+longer a question at issue.  I content myself with throwing together a
+few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
+
+"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
+from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
+unrighteousness."
+
+"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
+the whole."
+
+"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
+part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
+true happiness."
+
+"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
+of men.  He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
+are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
+desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
+little suffices."
+
+"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
+clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
+beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
+of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
+of His benefits."
+
+"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,
+instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the
+outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we
+should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure
+reason."
+
+"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more
+refined appearances remains to be oppression.  To labor for a perfect
+redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole
+family of Jesus Christ in this world."
+
+"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being `hid
+with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
+but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
+of life and stumbled on the dark mountains.  That purity of life which
+proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
+state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
+bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
+retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
+from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
+have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
+
+"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
+different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,
+and proceeds from God.  It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of
+religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
+sincerity.  In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
+brethren."
+
+"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind.  In
+true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,
+save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in
+outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to
+us.  In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a
+perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all
+things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light
+shines into the soul.  Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this
+world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of
+truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,
+the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised
+therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in
+the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at
+times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that
+forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do
+something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.
+
+"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our
+wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and
+acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us.  But when our minds
+entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the
+opening of the last of the seals.  In this silence we learn to abide in
+the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except
+that alone in which the light of life directs us."
+
+Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense
+interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate
+elevation, as in the following extract:--
+
+"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
+by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
+laying their sufferings to heart.  In procuring slaves on the coast of
+Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
+negroes, but all is at a great distance.  Many groans arise from dying
+men which we hear not.  Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
+children which reach not our ears.  Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
+faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not.  Cruel tyranny is
+encouraged.  The hands of robbers are strengthened.
+
+"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
+passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
+sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
+heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
+to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
+ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
+were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
+deeply affected with sorrow!"
+
+"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of
+heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the
+hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to
+think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in
+fixing all my demands?  Have I no desire to support myself in expensive
+customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?
+
+"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own
+conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might
+be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were
+he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to
+be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find
+the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.'  Divine Love imposeth no
+rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit
+of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is
+necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.
+
+"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
+tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
+our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
+desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
+afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation.  Here we have a
+prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
+that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
+the business of our lives."
+
+His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
+are manifest in the following passages:--
+
+"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
+support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
+who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
+to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
+education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
+it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them.  The
+knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
+understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
+circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
+Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
+is so.  Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
+known to be due only to the true God.
+
+"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
+Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
+friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
+faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
+the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
+in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
+be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
+
+Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
+the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
+these essays.  His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
+are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
+of luxury and oppression:--
+
+"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
+Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
+
+"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate
+labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at
+present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to
+evil purposes when we are gone.  To labor hard, or cause others to do so,
+that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer
+discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,
+is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."
+
+"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
+no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
+bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
+universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
+their proceedings.  As He who first founded the earth was then the true
+proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
+children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
+from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
+His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
+possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
+which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
+justly chargeable with usurpation."
+
+It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
+the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
+written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism.  They might
+have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
+they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
+in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology.  The
+underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
+soul.  "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
+kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
+In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
+intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
+that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties.  One may
+easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
+the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
+still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
+attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
+who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
+Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
+attributes, dignities, and offices.  Every instinct of his tenderly
+sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
+His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
+wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
+the Lord of the harvest.  John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
+manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
+of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
+The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
+upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
+enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
+creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
+
+However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
+present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
+questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it.  Shall we regret that
+he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
+walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
+faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
+form of words, however sound?  A true life is at once interpreter and
+proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
+of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
+perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved.  Shall we venture
+to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
+sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
+gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
+deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
+allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
+threatening?  Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
+manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
+revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
+after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
+under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land?  And, looking at the
+purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
+in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
+mistaken one?  Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
+that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God.  "Without
+the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
+soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
+good.  We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
+hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
+Christ.  The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
+efficacious word within would be but an empty sound."  "Thou Lord," says
+Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
+teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
+sounds."
+
+     "However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within
+     us, and that is the Spirit of God.  Whoever feels not the warm gale
+     and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for
+     truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any
+     light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's
+     Religio Medici.
+
+Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
+and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
+is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
+down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
+
+It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
+testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
+its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
+sin.  Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
+Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
+Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
+and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
+network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
+upon it in the underworld of causation.  Hence the wrong and discord
+which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation.  The first
+inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience.  How far
+am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this?  Have none of my
+fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
+Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
+in a way free from all unrighteousness?  "Through abiding in the law of
+Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
+a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
+strengthening them in error."  He constantly recurs to the importance of
+a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
+and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
+If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
+"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
+righteousness."  His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
+departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
+evil had their underlying root in human selfishness.  He saw that every
+sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
+lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
+avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
+evil in another.  How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
+self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
+its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
+Pharisaical harshness!  In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
+Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
+possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
+of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
+Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
+all.  "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
+spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
+Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
+
+At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
+creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
+righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
+regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
+lasting impressions on my mind.  I have beheld how the desire to provide
+wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
+has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
+affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
+at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
+humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
+expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
+and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
+and made thin through hard dealing.
+
+"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that
+we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed
+which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven
+against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony
+restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will
+be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"
+
+It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must
+have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,
+anise, and cummin.  There must have been something awful in the presence
+of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and
+pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil
+hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the
+irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual
+discernment,
+
+          "Bearing a touchstone in his hand
+          And testing all things in the land
+          By his unerring spell.
+
+          "Quick births of transmutation smote
+          The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
+          Purple nor ermine did he spare,
+          Nor scorn the dusty coat."
+
+In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to
+me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the
+appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing
+to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual
+symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words.  I have
+been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit
+redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful
+for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him.  I leave
+the book with its readers.  They may possibly make large deductions from
+my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his
+self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and
+smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all
+agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.
+
+AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            HAVERFORD COLLEGE.
+
+                 Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.
+
+                         AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.
+
+THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of
+the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest.  It would give
+me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest
+heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a
+journey.
+
+It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small
+beginnings."  The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more
+than fulfilled.  It has grown to be a great and well-established
+institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training
+has been widely felt.  If the high educational standard presented in the
+scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has
+been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of
+Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious
+testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone
+back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for
+leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at
+least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.
+
+Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored
+to maintain the Great Testimony.  The spirit of its culture has not been
+a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic
+principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of
+Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were
+masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable
+to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances
+anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.
+
+It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
+Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
+wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
+Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
+of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
+only mean vast spaces of time.
+
+May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
+in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
+to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
+stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ."  Holding
+fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
+Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
+quarrel of religion with science.  Against the sublime faith which shall
+yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power.  No possible
+investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
+tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
+
+That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
+an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
+which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
+universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
+is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
+the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
+Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE INNER LIFE  ***
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