{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_9597/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_9597","id":"gutenberg_9597","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9597","summary":null,"tags":["American literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"This eBook was produced by David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\n                              THE INNER LIFE\n\n                                    BY\n\n                         JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER\n\n\n\nCONTENTS:\n\n     THE AGENCY OF EVIL\n     HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES\n     SWEDENBORG\n     THE BETTER LAND\n     DORA GREENWELL\n     THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS\n     JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL\n     THE OLD WAY\n     HAVERFORD COLLEGE\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE INNER LIFE\n\nTHE AGENCY OF EVIL.\n\nFrom the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for\n1843.\n\nIN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so\nwritten over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets\nand inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future\nstate of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and\nmost difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of\nevil,--the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and\nsuffering and discord,--the wrong which all men see in others and feel\nin themselves,--the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery.  A\nsuperficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of\nman's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the\nthoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes.  The\ngrossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread\nof an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our\nnature.  Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing\nbefore its face, the form whereof is not discerned.\n\nIt is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone\nfor the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously\nconsigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and\nwitchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected\nimpostures,\n\n              \"Over the backside of the world far off,\n               Into a limbo broad and large, and called\n               The paradise of fools,\"--\n\nthat indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine\nof their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and\nunbelievers among us.  Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the\nmarvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others.  In certain\nstates of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional\ngarb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us.  Imagination\ngoes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt.  We\nthink of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with\nDruid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us.  For what is the\npriest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the\nsupernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in\nthe shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual\nwonders?  Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and\ndemoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his\nfaith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints\nat, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and\nspeculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon\nof the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,\nChristian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the\nuniverse of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in\nitself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process\nof imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed\nof the spiritual world and supernatural agency?  That fearful being with\nhis tributaries and agents,--\"the Devil and his angels,\"--how awfully he\nrises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers!  How\nhe glooms, \"in shape and gesture proudly eminent,\" on the immortal canvas\nof Milton and Dante!  What a note of horror does his name throw into the\nsweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches.  What strange, dark fancies are\nconnected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand\njuries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed\n\"at the instigation of the Devil\"!\n\nHow hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood!  Even at this day,\nat the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with\nwhich I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's\nProgress.  Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal\nextremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the\ntremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where \"Apollyon straddled\nover the whole breadth of the way.\"  There was another print of the enemy\nwhich made no slight impression upon me.  It was the frontispiece of an\nold, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,\n(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind\nenough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the\nfate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent\ndeclaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the\nlower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith\ncommenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,\nwithout the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs\nwere worn off to the knees!  The rude wood-cut represented the demon\nfiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in\n\"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels.\"  He would have answered very\nwell to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.\n\nTo this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we\nare doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and\npossession.  Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of\nevil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of\ngood.  Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves\nconstrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are\nalways associated with undefined power and the ability to harm.  \"The\nDevil,\" says an old writer, \"is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat\nfaded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly.\"\n\nThe evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and\nexistent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.\nThe gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided\nsovereignty of the universe.  The Divine Teacher, it is true, in\ndiscoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and\nwhich was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He\nnowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute\npower and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom\nare all things.  Pure himself, He can create nothing impure.  Evil,\ntherefore, has no eternity in the past.  The fact of its present actual\nexistence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand\nthe secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord\nbecome the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of\nthe Infinite Parent.  Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark\nmystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of\nhumble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,\njustice, and mercy of Him who is \"light, and in whom is no darkness at\nall.\"\n\n\"Do you not believe in the Devil?\" some one once asked the Non-conformist\nRobinson.  \"I believe in God,\" was the reply; \"don't you?\"\n\nHenry of Nettesheim says \"that it is unanimously maintained that devils\ndo wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,\necclesiasticals have not clearly expounded.\"  Origen, in his Platonic\nspeculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by\nrepentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed\nto the Father of spirits, and He become all in all.  Justin Martyr was of\nthe opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the\nCabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded.  One is\nirresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the\nDeil_, by Burns:--\n\n              \"But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!\n               Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,\n               Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--\n               Still has a stake\n               I'm was to think upon yon den\n               Fen for your sake.\"\n\nThe old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his\nministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and\nliable to injury and pain.  Origen has a curious notion that any evil\nspirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from\nthenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who\nhas lost his sting.\n\n\"The Devil,\" said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a\ndiscourse on temperance, \"is a gentleman, and never drinks.\"\nNevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious\nconsideration of all who \"tarry long at the wine,\" that, in that state of\nthe drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some\nshape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as\nWinslow says of the Powahs, \"he appeareth more familiarly to them than to\nothers.\"  I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had\nbitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time\ndevoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the\neditor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid\nimpression on my mind.  He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for\nthe sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his\nabode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the\nseaboard.  Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the\nwhole time in a state of semi-intoxication.  One night he stood leaning\nagainst a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the\nwaves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels\nvaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream.  He was startled by\na voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _\"You have murdered a man; the\nofficers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!\"_  Every\nsyllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in\nthe hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably\ndreadful.  He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear\nmoonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim\nof illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary\nhorror.  Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass\nof brandy, and retired to his chamber.  He had scarcely lain his head on\nthe pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper,\nrepeating the same words.  He describes his sensations at this time as\ninconceivably fearful.  Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst\nthe confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself.  Had\nhe not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record,\nactually murdered some one?  And was not this a warning from Heaven?\nLeaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated,\nwith the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, \"Follow me!\"  He\nwalked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to\nthe head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he\nheard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, \"Follow me!\"\n\nTrembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found\nhimself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,\nor cellar, where he had never been before.  The voice still beckoned him\nonward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against\nwhich he leaned for a moment.  He heard it again, apparently only two or\nthree yards in front of him \"You have murdered a man; the officers are\nclose behind you; follow me!\"  Putting one foot forward while his hand\nstill grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty\nrecovered himself.  Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found\nhimself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled\nnearly to the top with water.  The sudden shock of this discovery broke\nthe horrible enchantment.  The whisperer was silent.  He believed, at the\ntime, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a\ndiabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection\nof that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal\ntempter.\n\nOur worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance\nguard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.\nThe New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of\nthe Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's.  They\nstood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the\ngamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer\nand fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of hereties, \"before\nthe Lord in Gilgal;\" without were \"dogs and sorcerers, red children of\nperdition, Powah wizards,\" and \"the foul fiend.\"  In their grand old\nwilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,\nhanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of\nmountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars\nof a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored\nwonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower\nhad fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the\nmisty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,\nthey recognized no holy revelation.  It was to them terrible as the\nforest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain.  Every\nadvance step they made was upon the enemy's territory.  And one has only\nto read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was\nto them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment\nof a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between\nthe sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean\nmischief; now a \"tricksy spirit,\" disturbing the good-wife's platters or\nsoiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing\nits thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, \"how\nelse is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?\"  What\nwas it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips\nof Madame Hutchinson, confuted the \"judges of Israel\" and put to their\nwits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion?  Was not his evil\nfinger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams?  Who else\ngave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a\nhold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled\nto hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles?  To\nthe vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light\nwantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot\nto the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied\ngatherings of the Quakers, \"the most melancholy of the sects,\" as Dr.\nMoore calls them?  Perilous and glorious was it, under these\ncircumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their\nstout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.\nLet no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry.  The heroes\nof old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,\nand otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention\nin comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal\nsword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, \"spirits\nthat live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,\"--\nencountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual\narmorer of Geneva.  The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as\nthe legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in\nAmadis de Gaul.  All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him\nin his \"closet wrestlings;\" portents blazed in the heavens above him;\nwhile he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and\nspiritual champion of \"the chosen people,\" stood ever ready for battle,\nwith open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of\nthe enemy.  No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against\nhim; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut\nup the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the\npresidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands\non his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that \"ye divil that was in ye girl\nflewe at and tore\" his grand sermon against witches.  How edifying is his\naccount of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the\npurpose of making experiments which should satisfy all \"obstinate\nSadducees\"!  How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is\nthe nice discrimination of \"ye divil in ye girl,\" who was choked in\nattempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent\nQuaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor\nwas idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his\ndiatribes against witches and familiar spirits!\n\n     [The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,\n     emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser\n     superstitions of their times.  William Penn, indeed, had a law in\n     his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person\n     suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its\n     absurdity.  George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his\n     journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the\n     subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that\n     the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died\n     there still walked at night in his room, he replied, \"that if all\n     the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the\n     power of God, and feared no such thing.\"\n\n     The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and\n     influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and\n     sorcery.  \"The Priest of Wakefield,\" says George Fox (one trusts he\n     does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), \"raised many wicked\n     slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people\n     drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black\n     horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,\n     and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off.\"  In his\n     account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: \"When\n     I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my\n     face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and\n     stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her\n     husband.\"\n\n     Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in\n     about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians.  The first of the\n     sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,--the latter a\n     young girl,--were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the\n     absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the\n     purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's\n     mark on them.  In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two\n     venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by\n     Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey\n     into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and\n     wolves.]\n\nAll this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his\ndemons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem\nHill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with\nplanks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his\nlife from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a\nwhole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick\ndream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie.  We may\nlaugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also\npity and shudder.  The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in\nits own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,\ntheir spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,\nthe English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the\nbenefactors of their race.  It is true they were branded through life as\ninfidels and \"damnable Sadducees;\" but the truth which they uttered\nlived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine\ncommission and Godspeed.\n\n         \"The oracles are dumb;\n          No voice nor hideous hum\nRuns through the arched roof in words deceiving;\n          Apollo from his shrine\n          Can now no more divine,\nWith hollow shriek the steep of Delphns leaving.\"\n\nDimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,\nthis all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of\nmotiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination.  The once\nimposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.\nMen are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under\nplanks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance.  The heretic now\nlaughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the\nAll-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan.  And for the sake of\nabused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we\nconsider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed\nChristendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and\ntemporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a\ndespair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance\nwith tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of\nterror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and\nthat torment the smoke of which rises forever.  Through fear of a Satan\nof the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and\nready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling\nbrothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert\nGod's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness\nof all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual\nterrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of\nRhadamanthus.  And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest\ndegree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the\naccountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth\nof which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the\nnecessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the\nsoul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the\nmany are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,\nto convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in\nreturn for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have\ngracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one.  Better\nis the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more\nacceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of\nslavish terror.  The heart which has felt the \"beauty of holiness,\" which\nhas been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of\nold in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of \"glory to God, peace on\nearth, and good-will to men,\" in the serene atmosphere of that \"perfect\nlove which casteth out fear,\" smiles at the terrors which throng the sick\ndreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and\nstartle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.\n\nThere is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,--_Die\nKohlerfamilie_.  The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its\nbloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever\nincreasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought\nin the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient\nwatchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle\nvisitation of soft light and meekest melody; \"a beautiful radiance, at\ntimes hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the\nbushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely,\nsuch as the soul may conceive, but no words express.  He felt its power\nin the depths of his being,--felt it like the mystic breathing of the\nSpirit of God.\"\n\nThe excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all\nsincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and\ndiabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan\nand in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would\ndiverge into universal skepticism.  It is one of the saddest of sights to\nsee these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting\nagainst the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from\nprofane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful\nScripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and\nconvicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched\non the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of\nscience.  A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and\nnecessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite\nSpirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of\noutward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under\ndifferent names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of\nevery religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much\nanxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless\nchampionship of error.  The witches of Baxter and \"the black man\" of\nMather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of\nsane men.  But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in\nits own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds\nand thought-wearying spaces, remains.  Nature's mighty miracle is still\nover and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the\ninheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy\ndeathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,\nstarlike, the great idea of duty.  By higher and better influences than\nthe poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to\nreverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,\nand sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy\nof an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and\nmystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his\napparent allotment,--\n\n    \"God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;\n     Round our restlessness His rest.\"\n\nIt is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and\nits \"reasonable service\" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and\ncredulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if\npossible, there is one still sadder.  It is that of men in our own time\nregarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and\nprofessing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a\ngodless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as\ncant, and humble reverence as fanaticism.  Alas!  in comparison with\nsuch, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still\nfeels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom\nGod speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man.  Better\nis it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing\nShaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,\nthan to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon\nourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a\ndead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth\ngazing into earth, and saying to corruption, \"Thou art my father,\" and to\nthe worm, \"Thou art my sister.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n                         HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES.\n\n                                 [1844.]\n\nAN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul\nand Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures\nof Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-\nspirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and\neloquent language, its vindication.  \"There is,\" says he, \"a voluptuous\nmelancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like\nevery other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite\nprinciples,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our\nimmortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind.  A\ntomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds.  It first\npresents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of\neverlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of\na blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and\nstronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a\nvirtuous character.\n\n\"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,\nthat the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.\nFrom the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that\nhave been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of\nlove arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue.  Hence it is that\nwe are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of\nan infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we\nare melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to\nrepose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason\nof her virtues.  In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no\nneed of bronzes, marbles, and gildings.  The more simple they are, the\nmore energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy.  They\nproduce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather\nthan modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with\nthe attributes of virtue rather than with those of power.  It is in the\ncountry principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very\nlively manner.  A simple, unoruamented grave there causes more tears to\nflow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment.  There it is that\ngrief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;\nit extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with\nall the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the\nmurmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of\nthe night.\"\n\nNot long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city.  It\nis a beautiful location for a \"city of the dead,\"--a tract of some forty\nor fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and\ncovered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is\nconspicuous.  The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is\nmarked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing \"family\nlots.\"  It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,\nits busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a\nsolitary farm-house attracts the eye.  All is still and solemn, as befits\nthe place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the\ngreat lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted\nfoliage of the autumnal forest.\n\nYet the contrast of busy life is not wanting.  The Lowell and Boston\nRailroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing\nthere in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing\nalong their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the\nyoung, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle\nyears, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,\nhurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping\nover the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.\n\nIt is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite\nresort.  The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among\nthese flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light\nupon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in\nthese leafy recesses.  Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the\ngentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,\n--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow.  How true is it, that, in the\nlanguage of Wordsworth,--\n\n         \"In youth we love the darkling lawn,\n          Brushed by the owlet's wing;\n          Then evening is preferred to dawn,\n          And autumn to the spring.\n          Sad fancies do we then affect,\n          In luxury of disrespect\n          To our own prodigal excess\n          Of too familiar happiness.\"\n\nThe Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated\ntheir grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular\nresort.  The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through\nwhich the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and\nbeneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through\nthe long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy\nindifference of the indolent East.  Most of the visitors whom I met at\nthe Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,\napparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,\nperhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the\nstern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded\nmounds.  But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence\nof the dead.  I cannot jest above the gravestone.  My spirit is silenced\nand rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,\nand involuntarily pays:\n\n         \"The deep reverence taught of old,\n          The homage of man's heart to death.\"\n\nEven Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind\nme that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves\nand sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened\nto the same wild music of the woods for the last time.  Then, too, comes\nthe saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that\nthese trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall\nupon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and\nthe ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed\nforever.  It is hard for us to realize this.  We are so accustomed to\nlook upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems\nstrange that they should survive us.  Tennyson, in his exquisite\nmetaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this\nsentiment:--\n\n         \"Alas!  though I should die, I know\n          That all about the thorn will blow\n          In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.\n\n         \"Not less the bee will range her cells,\n          The furzy prickle fire the dells,\n          The foxglove cluster dappled bells.\"\n\n\"The pleasures of the tombs!\" Undoubtedly, in the language of the\nIdumean, seer, there are many who \"rejoice exceedingly and are glad when\nthey can find the grave;\" who long for it \"as the servant earnestly\ndesireth the shadow.\"  Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,\nto the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our\ncommon mother.  Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with\nlife's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary\neyes which \"have seen evil, and not good,\" the everlasting shadow.\n\nYet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only\non one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn\nshadow.  No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown\nstate; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the\nmysteries towards which we are all moving.  \"Man giveth up the ghost; and\nwhere is he?\"\n\nThanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an\nanswer to this momentous question.  Over the blackness of darkness a\nlight is shining.  The valley of the shadow of death is no longer \"a land\nof darkness and where the light is as darkness.\"  The presence of a\nserene and holy life pervades it.  Above its pale tombs and crowded\nburial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him\nwho awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at\nBethany is heard proclaiming, \"I am the Resurrection and the Life.\"  We\nknow not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what\nit is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that\ndark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps\nlingers in the path.  Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer\nin His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow.  He who\nordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit\nwhen its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I\nhave elsewhere used,\n\n          --when Time's veil shall fall asunder,\n          The soul may know\n          No fearful change nor sudden wonder,\n          Nor sink the weight of mystery under,\n          But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.\n\n          And all we shrink from now may seem\n          No new revealing;\n          Familiar as our childhood's stream,\n          Or pleasant memory of a dream,\n          The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.\n\n          Serene and mild the untried light\n          May have its dawning;\n          As meet in summer's northern night\n          The evening gray and dawning white,\n          The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.\n\n\n\n\n                                SWEDENBORG\n\n                                 [1844.]\n\nTHERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is\nalmost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the\nBenares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-\nplaces of disciples and \"proselytes within the gate;\" its warehouses,\nstalls for the sale of relics.  A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved\nby awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the\n\"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise.\"  I grow weary of seeing\nman and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,\nanswering to the same bell-call.  A nightmare of materialism broods over\nall.  I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like\nthat of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that\nthe Lord alone is God.\n\nYet is there not another side to the picture?  High over sounding\nworkshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.\nThe workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes\nthan cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving.  Each human being who watches\nbeside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a\nsolemn thing to live.  Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,\noutgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch\nbeyond the horizon of time into eternity.  Death is here.  The graveyard\nutters its warning.  Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and\nmystery.  Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.\nUnderneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt\nrather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful\nquestions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--\"If a man\ndie, shall he live again?\"  \"Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?\"\nOut of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing\ninquiry, \"What shall I do to be saved?\"  \"Who shall deliver me from the\nbody of this death?\"\n\nAs a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of\nour many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their\nrepresentatives in Lowell.  The young city is dotted over with \"steeple\nhouses,\" most of them of the Yankee order of architecture.  The\nEpiscopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,--a pile of dark\nstone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows.  A plat of grass lies\nbetween it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house\nintended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and\nsurrounded by trees and shrubbery.  The attention of the stranger is also\nattracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of\nBelvidere,--one of Irving's a \"shingle palaces,\" painted in imitation of\nstone,--a great wooden sham, \"whelked and horned\" with pine spires and\nturrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast of\nthe Apocalypse.\n\nIn addition to the established sects which have reared their visible\naltars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet marked\nthe boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains of\ntheir sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and \"upper chambers\" and in\nthe solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and,\nwrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain the\nintegrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation.\n\nNot long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, I\nvisited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg.\nPassing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached the\nstream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Mills\nand mingles its waters with the Concord.  The hall in which the followers\nof the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, like\nthose of \"the people called Quakers,\" and looks out upon the still woods\nand that \"willowy stream which turns a mill.\"  An organ of small size,\nyet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filled\nthe place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plain\ndesk, placed modestly by the side of it.  The congregation have no\nregular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers,\nand selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the lay\nmembers.  A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, was\nread, and apparently listened to with much interest.  It was well written\nand deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church.  I was impressed by\nthe gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience.  There were\nhere no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of the\npomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of the\ntruth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought them\ntogether.  I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them,\nthat here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the very\ncentre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted and\nundoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of the\nSwedish prophet,--revelations which look through all external and outward\nmanifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the world\nof sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literally\nunmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life.\n\nThe character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of the\npuzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology.  A man remarkable for\nhis practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed\nin all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he has\nevolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system of\ntranscendent spiritualism.  From his aggregation of cold and apparently\nlifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth\nlike blossoms on the rod of the Levite.  A politician and a courtier, a\nman of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the\nscience, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural\nlanguage, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:\ndetailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual\nworld, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder\nat their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency.\nThese remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerful\nimagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, the\nmarvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guarded\nchannels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as\n\"facts.\"  His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seem\nto have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as well\nas feeling.  What he thought, that he saw.\n\nHe relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidents\nof a walk round his own city of Stockholm.  One can almost see him in his\n\"brown coat and velvet breeches,\" lifting his \"cocked hat\" to an angel,\nor keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that \"gold-headed\ncane\" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in\nwalking.  His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and\nprobability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost\nbordering on the ludicrous.  In his Memorable Relations he manifests\nnothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of\nparadise, or following the \"pained fiend\" in his flight through chaos;\nnothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heaven\nto heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe.  We\ncan scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;\nand the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances.  We seem to\nrecognize the \"John Smiths,\" and \"Mr. Browns,\" and \"the old familiar\nfaces\" of our mundane habitation.  The evil principle in Swedenborg's\npicture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that\nstern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an\naggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save\nin the unsavory atmosphere of the \"falses.\"  These small fry of devils\nremind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, who\nseem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who are\nmanifestly given over to believe a lie.  Thus it is that the very\n\"heavens\" and \"hells\" of the Swedish mystic seem to be \"of the earth,\nearthy.\"  He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with the\nmaterial one.\n\nIn this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt an\nanalysis of the great doctrines which underlie the \"revelations\" of\nSwedenborg.  His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to the\nreading and reflecting portion of the community.  They are not unworthy\nof study; but, in the language of another, I would say, \"Emulate\nSwedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, his\nindependent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good and\ntrue; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no man\nyour master.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n                             THE BETTER LAND.\n\n                                 [1844.]\n\n\"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution,\"\nsaid Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the\nQuarterly Review.\n\nHe who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact\nof a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the\npresent stands to it.  The actual nature and conditions of that life He\nhas hidden from us,--no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us,--no\ncelestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for\nthe wonders of the spiritual world.  Hence imagination has a wide field\nfor its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict\nthe revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved.\n\nWe naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and\nreverence on earth.  Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the\nimposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship.  There the\nMethodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by the\nstill waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes.  The Quaker, in\nthe stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was \"silence in\nheaven.\"\n\nThe Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep\ntones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps\nof the New Jerusalem.\n\nThe heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual\nreflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.\n\nThe Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a\nbeautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with\ndeer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes,--the happy\nhunting-ground of souls.  In a late letter from a devoted missionary\namong the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a\nbeautiful illustration of this belief.  Near the Omaha mission-house, on\na high luff, was a solitary Indian grave.  \"One evening,\"\nsays the missionary, \"having come home with some cattle which I had been\nseeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from\nwhence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house.  In a\nmoment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and,\nturning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and\nsupplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain\nthe splendid luminary from running his course.  With his body leaning\nforward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most\nstriking figure of sorrow and petition.  It was solemnly awful.  He\nseemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to\npray.\"\n\nA venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, just\nbefore the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an\nawfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death\nand eternity.\n\nThe excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,\nseemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite\npurity and happiness.  A friend once related an incident concerning him\nwhich made a deep impression upon my mind.  They had been travelling\nthrough a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest\nbeneath a solitary tree.  The Doctor lay for a long time, silently\nlooking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still\nheavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if\ncommuning with himself in view of the wonders he described:--\n\n    \"O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!\n     O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!\n     O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!\n     O brightness on brightness!  the pearl gate uncloses!\n     O white wings of angels!  O fields white with roses!\n     O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes\n     O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!\"\n\nThe brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better\nland are inspiring and beautiful.  Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,\nneither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in\nstore for the righteous.  Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a\nrest remaining for the people of God.  Tears shall be wiped away from all\neyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither\nshall there be any more pain.  To how many death-beds have these words\nspoken peace!  How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them\nto pass through the dark valley of shadows!\n\nYet we should not forget that \"the kingdom of heaven is within;\" that it\nis the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,\nthe sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of\neternity.  What is really momentous and all-important with us is the\npresent, by which the future is shaped and colored.  A mere change of\nlocality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.\nGuilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable\nas the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence\nwould transform hell itself into heaven.\n\n\n\n\n\nDORA GREEN WELL.\n\nFirst published as an introduction to an American edition of that\nauthor's _The Patience of Hope_.\n\nTHERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in\nthe Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of\nChristendom.  Our doors open of their own accord to receive them.  For in\nthem we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the\nDivine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of\nthem; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the\nbloom of Paradise.  So of books.  There are volumes which perhaps contain\nmany things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our\nreason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a\ncertain sweetness and savor of life.  They have the Divine seal and\nimprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with\nthe leaves which are for the healing of the nations.  The meditations of\nthe devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and\nProtestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under\nNumidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his\nbishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in\nthe same language.  The unknown author of that book which Luther loved\nnext to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in\nthis present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in\nthe heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century.  For such\nbooks know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual\nfreshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience\nheart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and\nthe inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them.  The\nbent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this\nor a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--\nreconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine\ngoodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the\nlife of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the\nfellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling\nSpirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our\nhearts.  They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or\nthe partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human\nspeculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to\nsave unto the uttermost all who trust in Him.  They insist upon simple\nfaith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they\nleave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to\ntake care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the\nnecessary, and the permanent.\n\nWith these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume\nherewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place.  It assumes the\nlife and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears\nunmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the\ntruth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but\npresent and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its\nbranches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine\nlove; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be\nrepeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the\nperennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever\nold and forever new.  It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and\nholy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian\nexperience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves\nguidingly forward.  It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who\nminister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the\nvaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too\nmuch the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will\nfeel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,\nthe strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied\nlearning which illustrates it.\n\n     [\"The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,\n     and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to\n     testify for God and holiness, than I once believed.\"--Baxter.]\n\nTo use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--\n\n\"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of\nnature here and there shine out from its lines,--a charm wanting which\nmeditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too,\nthere are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the\nway to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read,\nyou wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautiful\nhills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty\ninto the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing,\namid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenborn\nconsolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet\nevermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it is\nstill haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeating\nsnatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to\njoin the great river of God's truth.  .  .  .\n\n\"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,\nwhen the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.\nThe weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for\nrefreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.\nTo thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the\npatience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this\nlittle volume most heartily and earnestly.\"\n\n\n_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in\nEdinburgh, some two years ago.  I was at once impressed by its\nextraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone\nof meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--\nphilosophy warm and glowing with love.  It will, perhaps, be less the\nfault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to\neliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle\nmetaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to\nexpress, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,\nmany things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague\npossibilities of the highest life.  All may not be able to find in some\nof her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent\nto her own mind.  She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of\nfamiliar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual\nintuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well.  If the\nrendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration\nand comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,\nthat two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike\ntrue in themselves considered.  \"When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'\nand another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not\nrather as both, if both be true?\"\n\nSome minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain\nScriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way\nand the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly \"delays,\nwithdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him.\"\nThey will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human\nweakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil\nimaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to\nsome disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily\ninfirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father\nto perplex and mislead His children.  The sun does not shine the less\nbecause one side of our planet is in darkness.  To borrow the words of\nAugustine \"Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made.  Thou alone art\nnear to those even who remove far from thee.  Let them turn and seek\nthee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy\ncreation.\"  It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,\nand interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by\nthe light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the\ndreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in\ndubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through\nmiraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be\nmystified by it to their eternal loss.\n\nI might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and\nwriter, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and\nhesitancy over some of these pages.  But it is impossible for me to make\none to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a\nScriptural rendering.  On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,\nI have little to say in the way of controversy.  I would listen, rather\nthan criticise.  The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me\noften like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet\nnot without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight\nbitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest.  Who has not felt at\ntimes that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to\nedify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:\n\"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.  Let not Moses nor the prophets\nspeak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener\nof all.  I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all\nteachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou\nalone to me.\"\n\nThe writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication,\nannounced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful\nChristians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven.  She has\nrecently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge\nas Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_,\nthus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--\n\n\"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed\n_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through\nsuch deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still\ndeeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be\nsurprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a\npoet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own\nCowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless\nspeculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all\nbut unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander\nthrough eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful\nlittle book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of\ntrue poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.\nThere is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and\nprivacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these\nremarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own.  With no\neffort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost\nthoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as\ngladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the\ncentral depths, filtered into purity by time and travel.  The waters are\ncopious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and\nunforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes\nsad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of\nthe deep sea.\n\n\"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts\nfrom the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems.  In\nreading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not\nonly of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble,--a likeness of the spirit, not\nof the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her\nmind, it is Wordsworth,--the greatest of all our century's poets, both in\nhimself and in his power of making poets.\"\n\nIn the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will be\nsufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and\nread over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical\nwritings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces\nand extracts from the longer poems.\n\nHere are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--\n\n\n                                ASCENDING.\n\nThey who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon\nThe wide, illimitable heavens have said,\nThat, still receding as they climbed, outspread,\nThe blue vault deepens over them, and, one\nBy one drawn further back, each starry sun\nShoots down a feebler splendor overhead\nSo, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led\nAlong Faith's living way to Thee, have won\nA nearer access, up the difficult track\nStill pressing, on that rarer atmosphere,\nWhen low beneath us flits the cloudy rack,\nWe see Thee drawn within a widening sphere\nOf glory, from us further, further back,--\nYet is it then because we are more near.\n\n\n                              LIFE TAPESTRY.\n\nTop long have I, methought, with tearful eye\nPored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused\nAbove each stitch awry and thread confused;\nNow will I think on what in years gone by\nI heard of them that weave rare tapestry\nAt royal looms, and hew they constant use\nTo work on the rough side, and still peruse\nThe pictured pattern set above them high;\nSo will I set my copy high above,\nAnd gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows\nIts gracious impress; till some line of love,\nTransferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;\nNor look too much on warp or woof, provide\nHe whom I work for sees their fairer side!\n\n\n                                  HOPE.\n\nWhen I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how\nThou followest on our steps, a coaxing child\nOft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,\nStill turning on us a glad, beaming brow,\nAnd red, ripe lips for kisses: even now\nThou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,\nWho led God's chosen people through the wild,\nAnd bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou\nThat bringest waters from the Rock, with bread\nOf angels strewing Earth for us! like him\nThy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;\nBut still with milk and honey-droppings fed,\nThou leadest to the Promised Country fair,\nThough thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there\n\n\nThere is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--\n\n\n                                  GONE.\n\nAlone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware\nOf Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;\n\nA bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies\nSo soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;\n\nAnd as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware\nOf Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;\n\nAs of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest\nBoth hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast,\n\nIn accents clearer far than words, spake, \"Pray yet longer, pray,\nFor one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;\n\n\"A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair\nThat leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there\n\n\"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,\n(So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name\n\n\"She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--\nOne Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way.\n\n\"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the\nGate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;\n\n\"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,\nholy,' so that now I know not if she prays;\n\n\"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone\nFrom Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!\"\n\n\nThe following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-\nplayful strain of moralizing:--\n\n\n                                 SEEKING.\n\n\"And where, and among what pleasant places,\nHave ye been, that ye come again\nWith your laps so full of flowers, and your faces\nLike buds blown fresh after rain?\"\n\n\"We have been,\" said the children, speaking\nIn their gladness, as the birds chime,\nAll together,--\"we have been seeking\nFor the Fairies of olden time;\nFor we thought, they are only hidden,--\nThey would never surely go\nFrom this green earth all unbidden,\nAnd the children that love them so.\nThough they come not around us leaping,\nAs they did when they and the world\nWere young, we shall find them sleeping\nWithin some broad leaf curled;\nFor the lily its white doors closes\nBut only over the bee,\nAnd we looked through the summer roses,\nLeaf by leaf, so carefully.\n\nBut we thought, rolled up we shall find them\nAmong mosses old and dry;\nFrom gossamer threads that bind them,\nThey will start like the butterfly,\nAll winged: so we went forth seeking,\nYet still they have kept unseen;\nThough we think our feet have been keeping\nThe track where they have been,\nFor we saw where their dance went flying\nO'er the pastures,--snowy white.\"\n\nTheir seats and their tables lying,\nO'erthrown in their sudden flight.\nAnd they, too, have had their losses,\nFor we found the goblets white\nAnd red in the old spiked mosses,\nThat they drank from over-night;\nAnd in the pale horn of the woodbine\nWas some wine left, clear and bright;\n\"But we found,\" said the children, speaking\nMore quickly, \"so many things,\nThat we soon forgot we were seeking,--\nForgot all the Fairy rings,\nForgot all the stories olden\nThat we hear round the fire at night,\nOf their gifts and their favors golden,--\nThe sunshine was so bright;\nAnd the flowers,--we found so many\nThat it almost made us grieve\nTo think there were some, sweet as any,\nThat we were forced to leave;\nAs we left, by the brook-side lying,\nThe balls of drifted foam,\nAnd brought (after all our trying)\nThese Guelder-roses home.\"\n\n\"Then, oh!\" I heard one speaking\nBeside me soft and low,\n\"I have been, like the blessed children, seeking,\nStill seeking, to and fro;\nYet not, like them, for the Fairies,--\nThey might pass unmourned away\nFor me, that had looked on angels,--\nOn angels that would not stay;\nNo!  not though in haste before them\nI spread all my heart's best cheer,\nAnd made love my banner o'er them,\nIf it might but keep them here;\nThey stayed but a while to rest them;\nLong, long before its close,\nFrom my feast, though I mourned and prest them\nThe radiant guests arose;\nAnd their flitting wings struck sadness\nAnd silence; never more\nHath my soul won back the gladness,\nThat was its own before.\nNo; I mourned not for the Fairies\nWhen I had seen hopes decay,\nThat were sweet unto my spirit\nSo long; I said, 'If they,\nThat through shade and sunny weather\nHave twined about my heart,\nShould fade, we must go together,\nFor we can never part!'\nBut my care was not availing;\nI found their sweetness gone;\nI saw their bright tints paling;--\nThey died; yet I lived on.\n\n\"Yet seeking, ever seeking,\nLike the children, I have won\nA guerdon all undreamt of\n\nWhen first my quest begun,\nAnd my thoughts come back like wanderers,\nOut-wearied, to my breast;\nWhat they sought for long they found not,\nYet was the Unsought best.\nFor I sought not out for crosses,\nI did not seek for pain;\nYet I find the heart's sore losses\nWere the spirit's surest gain.\"\n\n\nIn _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence,\nupon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--\n\n                  \"But is there prayer\nWithin your quiet homes, and is there care\nFor those ye leave behind?  I would address\nMy spirit to this theme in humbleness\nNo tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known\nThis mystery, and thus I do but guess\nAt clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;\nYet when did Love on earth forsake its own?\nYe may not quit your sweetness; in the Vine\nMore firmly rooted than of old, your wine\nHath freer flow!  ye have not changed, but grown\nTo fuller stature; though the shock was keen\nThat severed you from us, how oft below\nHath sorest parting smitten but to show\nTrue hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow\nThe closer for that anguish,--friend to friend\nRevealed more clear,--and what is Death to rend\nThe ties of life and love, when He must fade\nIn light of very Life, when He must bend\nTo love, that, loving, loveth to the end?\n\n              \"I do not deem ye look\nUpon us now, for be it that your eyes\nAre sealed or clear, a burden on them lies\nToo deep and blissful for their gaze to brook\nOur troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt\nWhere now we dwell, enough that once ye felt\nAs now we feel, to bid you recognize\nOur claim of kindred cherished though unseen;\nAnd Love that is to you for eye and ear\nHath ways unknown to us to bring you near,--\nTo keep you near for all that comes between;\nAs pious souls that move in sleep to prayer,\nAs distant friends, that see not, and yet share\n(I speak of what I know) each other's care,\nSo may your spirits blend with ours!\nAbove Ye know not haply of our state, yet\nLove Acquaints you with our need, and through a way\nMore sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!\n\n               \"And even thus we meet,\nAnd even thus we commune!  spirits freed\nAnd spirits fettered mingle, nor have need\nTo seek a common atmosphere, the air\nIs meet for either in this olden, sweet,\nPrimeval breathing of Man's spirit,--Prayer!\"\n\n\nI give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems,\n_The Reconciler_:--\n\n                  \"Our dreams are reconciled,\nSince Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;\nThe World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth\nOf visions beautiful, and strange and wild;\nAnd Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still\nAt once make clear these visions and fulfil;\n\nEach dim sweet Orphic rhyme,\nEach mythic tale sublime\nOf strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,\nEach morning dream the few,\nWisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.\n\n           . . . . . . . . . . . . .\n\n                   \"Thou, O Friend\nFrom heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,\nDost pierce the broken language of its moan--\nThou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!\nEach yearning deep and wide,\nEach claim, is justified;\nOur young illusions fail not, though they die\nWithin the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed\nTo happy death, like early clouds that lie\nAbout the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist\nPaling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.\n\n               \"The World that puts Thee by,\nThat opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,\nThat sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,\n'We will not have Thee over us to reign,'\nItself Both testify through searchings vain\nOf Thee and of its need, and for the good\nIt will not, of some base similitude\nTakes up a taunting witness, till its mood,\nGrown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear\nIts own illusions grown too thin and bare\nTo wrap it longer; for within the gate\nWhere all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,\nA dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,\nAnd he who answers not its questions dies,--\nStill changing form and speech, but with the same\nVexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame\nUpon the nations that with eager cry\nHail each new solver of the mystery;\nYet he, of these the best,\nBold guesser, hath but prest\nMost nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;\nTrue Champion, that hast wrought\nOur help of old, and brought\nMeat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.\n\n                     \"O Bearer of the key\nThat shuts and opens with a sound so sweet\nIts turning in the wards is melody,\nAll things we move among are incomplete\nAnd vain until we fashion them in Thee!\nWe labor in the fire,\nThick smoke is round about us; through the din\nOf words that darken counsel clamors dire\nRing from thought's beaten anvil, where within\nTwo Giants toil, that even from their birth\nWith travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth,\nAnd wearied out her children with their keen\nUpbraidings of the other, till between\nThou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrong\nEach other?--ye are Brethren.' Then these twain\nWill own their kindred, and in Thee retain\nTheir claims in peace, because Thy land is wide\nAs it is goodly!  here they pasture free,\nThis lion and this leopard, side by side,\nA little child doth lead them with a song;\nNow, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more\nDoth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore,\nFor one did ask a Brother, one a King,\nSo dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--\nThou, King forevermore, forever Priest,\nThou, Brother of our own from bonds released\nA Law of Liberty,\nA Service making free,\nA Commonweal where each has all in Thee.\n\n                  \"And not alone these wide,\nDeep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry\nTheir meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;\nBut all our instincts waking suddenly\nWithin the soul, like infants from their sleep\nThat stretch their arms into the dark and weep,\nThy voice can still.  The stricken heart bereft\nOf all its brood of singing hopes, and left\n'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest\nWith snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast\nDoth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creeps\nUnto Thy side for shelter, finding there\nThe wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps\nCalm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead Care\nHath looked until its thorns, no longer bare,\nPut forth pale roses.  Pain on Thee doth press\nIts quivering cheek, and all the weariness,\nThe want that keep their silence, till from Thee\nThey hear the gracious summons, none beside\nHath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me,'\nTell forth their heavy secrets.\n\n                  \"Thou dost hide\nThese in Thy bosom, and not these alone,\nBut all our heart's fond treasure that had grown\nA burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighed\nTo Thee in plenteous measure!  none hath shown\nThat Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely made\nAll joy of ours Thine own.\n\n                 \"Thou madest us for Thine;\nWe seek amiss, we wander to and fro;\nYet are we ever on the track Divine;\nThe soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow\nTo lean on aught but that which it may see;\nSo hath it crowded up these Courts below\nWith dark and broken images of Thee;\nLead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show\nThy goodly patterns, whence these things of old\nBy Thee were fashioned; One though manifold.\nGlass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul,\nShow us Thy countenance, and we are whole!\"\n\n\nNo one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal\nquotations.  Apart from their literary merit, they have a special\ninterest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully\nillustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.\n\nIt has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that an\nobjection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all\nbooks of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual\nfrom his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personal\nsolicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not take\nsufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of\nthe neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His life\nand teachings.  This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one.  For, of\na truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that\nafforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about\nhim, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, in\nthe very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his\nneighbors starve for lack of bread.  But surely the benevolent unrest,\nthe far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering of\nothers, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing to\nfear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation\nto the Divine will.  \"The more piety, the more compassion,\" says Isaac\nTaylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred\nasceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widow\nand the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world,--which\ndeals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God.  Self-\nscrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to\nthe reformer and philanthropist.  The spiritual warrior, like the young\ncandidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory\nordeal of watching all night by his armor.\n\nTauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the\nmost earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of\nChristianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.\nThey did not separate the two great commandments.  Tauler strove with\nequal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare\nof men.  In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold\nhorrors of the \"Black Plague,\" he illustrated by deeds of charity and\nmercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence.  Woolman's whole life\nwas a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic\npiety which bears the name.\n\nHow faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of\nthose who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the\npoor?  How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid\nlaborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches\nblaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the\ndyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;\nwith the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;\nand with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil!  What a significance\nthere was in his vision of the \"dull, gloomy mass\" which appeared before\nhim, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was \"human beings\nin as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,\nand henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate\nbeing\"!  His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have\nthought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most\nmiserable sinner to whom his compassion extended.  As he did not\nlive, so neither did he die to himself.  His prayer upon his death-bed\nwas for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple\ntrust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden\nstreets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching\nconcern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the\npaternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance\nin ever-memorable words.\n\nIn view of the troubled state of the country and the intense\npreoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering\nthis volume to its publishers.  But, on further reflection, it has seemed\nto me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the\nchaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over the\nland, the contemplation of \"things unseen which are eternal\" might not be\nunwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, and\nthe trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voice\ncalling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and the\nspiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternal\nquietness which God giveth.  I cannot but believe that, in the heat and\nglare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain to\nthe calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wings\nof the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something of\nconsolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary.  For surely\nnever was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuary\nof prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divine\ngoodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice and\nrenunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts not\nits proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for \"peace in its day\" at\nthe expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemn\nwords of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to that\nof the degenerate Jew,--\"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy\nbacksliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, and\nbitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not in\nthee,\"--when \"His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness,\"\nand the hand heavy upon us which shall \"turn and overturn until he whose\nright it is shall reign,\"--until, not without rending agony, the evil\nplant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound\nthemselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like the\ntree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression,\nrebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyed\nforever.\n\nAMESBURY, 1st 6th mo., 1862.\n\n\n\n\n\n                         THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.\n\nThe following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review\nin Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and\npractice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have\nsince more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.\n\n\nI.\n\n                         AMESBURY, 2d mo., 1870.\n\nTO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW.\n\nESTEEMED FRIEND,--If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an\nindifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious\nSociety.  Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous\nconcerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we\nmay let go of old things too precious to be lost.  Hence I have been\npleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting\narticles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_.\n\nThe present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures\nand opinions, of impatience of all slow results.  The world about us\nmoves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we have\nenjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of our\nopinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded.  Our very right to\nexist as a distinct society is questioned.  Our old literature--the\nprecious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--is\ncomparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications.  We\nbear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent\nmeetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will\nand option.  There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas\nand expedients and practices of other sects.  I speak only of admitted\nfacts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint.  No one has less\nright than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor\ndifferences of opinion.  If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not\nfind it a hard task to bear with them.\n\nBut for myself I prefer the old ways.  With the broadest possible\ntolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of\nFriends.  My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other\nsects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like\nquarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with\nme, side by side, at the rope of Reform.  A very large proportion of my\ndearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned\nwith John Woolman to find \"no narrowness respecting sects and opinions.\"\nBut after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own\nSociety, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;\nand with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--\nthe Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity.  I\ncheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of\nthose who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer\ntypes of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and\nstill know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the\ndoctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends.  I am not\nblind to the shortcomings of Friends.  I know how much we have lost by\nnarrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external\nobservances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as\nconscience-keepers for others.  We have not, as a society, been active\nenough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-\ncreatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never\nout of place.  Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been\nspared us if we had been less \"at ease in Zion.\"  It is in the decline of\npractical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each\nother for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance\nand spirit.  Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing\ngood among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the\nDivine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in\nthe true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do\nfor ourselves.  There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an\neye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;\nthe great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;\nthe mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this\nworld of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant\nthanksgiving, the song of the Advent: \"Glory to God in the highest!\nPeace on earth and good-will to men!\"\n\nIt is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in\nwhich we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness\namong us.  I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects.  But, if we\nlook at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the\ncentral truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in\nan attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great\nlaw of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the\nhighest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy.  If we did\nbut realize it, we are \"set in a large place.\"\n\n\"We may do all we will save wickedness.\"\n\n\"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.\"\n\nQuakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is \"exceeding\nbroad.\"  As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and\ncatholic of faiths.  If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are\nnot up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and\nlove of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of\nthe truths of science and philosophy,--in a word, if we are not full-\ngrown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in\nourselves.  We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to\nadjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects.  By so doing we make at\nthe best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful,\nit is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith.  If, for\ninstance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a written\ncreed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I should\nprefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher,\nthe like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, and\nintellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century of\ntheological manipulation in a Quaker \"school of the prophets.\"  If I must\ngo into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the best\narticle on sale, without regard to the label attached to it.\n\nI am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society.\nI feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member.  And I\nbear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends,\nwho, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us,\nseek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the\npractices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects.  The great\napparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly\nwith our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire\nwhether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical\nChristianity than is found in our select gatherings.  I think I\nunderstand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them.\nBut it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not in\ngoing back to the \"beggarly elements\" from which our worthy ancestors\ncalled the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not in\nsetting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol,\nand oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they were\nintended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speaking\nand noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the \"plain\nlanguage\" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but in\nheeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ not\nmerely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity,\nbut in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love for\nHim manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;\nand in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:\n\"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit\nthe fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself\nunspotted from the world.\"\n\nIn conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of my\nopinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I have\nneither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whose\ndoctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whose\nhistory is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whose\nusefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fully\nassured.\n\n\nII.\n\nHaving received several letters from dear friends in various sections\nsuggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time or\nhealth to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way to\nacknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible of\nthe Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether in\ncommendation or dissent, they manifest?  I think I may say in truth that\nmy letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply to\nexpress a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was nevertheless\nreal.  I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations and\nso-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate and\ndisunite.  We have had too many divisions already.  I intended no censure\nof dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy,\nnotwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects.  The\ndomain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems the\npart of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varying\nexperiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as for\nthat youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often been\ninstrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religious\nprofession.  It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entire\nuniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;\nand we should be careful that a rightful concern for \"the form of sound\nwords\" does not become what William Penn calls \"verbal orthodoxy.\"  We\nmust consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differently\nfrom different points of vision.  Knowing our own weaknesses and\nlimitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations,\nexpositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint and\nfeeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God.\n\n         \"They are but broken lights of Thee,\n          And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.\"\n\nDiffering, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeed\nhave the \"mind of Christ,\" we shall rejoice in whatever of good is really\naccomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than those\nwhich we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lord\nrebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring them\nthat they that were not against Him were for Him.\n\nIt would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindly\nexpressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhat\noverestimated the tendencies of things in our Society.  I have no pride\nof opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness my\nerror of judgment.  In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeat\nmy deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, for\nour own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures,\nwithout laying aside the principles and practice of our religious\nSociety.  I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as our\nprivilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for the\nperformance of any duty which may be required of us.  When truly called\nto contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us,\nlike the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowhere\nbroken.\n\nI believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and\na standard.  I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most\nthoughtful members of other Christian sects.  I know that any serious\ndeparture from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to\nmany who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our\ntestimonies.  They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not\nsee that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy\nand the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence\nwill not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the\nLight of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own\nsouls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward\nexperience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation\nshall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the\nHoly Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall\nbe recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of\nrestless inquiry.  In this belief my letter was written.  I am sorry it\ndid not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no\nconsideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may\nlessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.\n\nAMESBURY, 3d mo., 1870.\n\n\nP. S.  I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal of\nthe Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia,\nwhere, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, I\nfind much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate a\nprovidential opening for good.  I confess to a lively and tender sympathy\nwith my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who \"went\nabout doing good,\" go forth into the highways and byways to gather up the\nlost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick and\nsuffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, at\ntimes, their zeal goes beyond \"reasonable service,\" and although the\nimportance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and love\nlose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on his\narmor boast like him who layeth it off.  Any movement, however irregular,\nwhich indicates life, is better than the quiet of death.  In the\noverruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way for\nhealing.  Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other,\nand this shaking of the balance may adjust it.\n\n\n\n\n\nJOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.\n\nOriginally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.\n\nTo those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult\nof explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by\nobscure and uneventful lives.  Some great reform which lifts the world to\na higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in\nanxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace\nit back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in\nthe chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the\ndivine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood\nby his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself.  The little one\nhas become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon.  \"The\nkingdom of God cometh not by observation;\" and the only solution of the\nmystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality\nDivine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the\nhuman one.\n\nThe abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout\nthe world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.\nA far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil\nwork of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to\nthe life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose\nvery existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his\nreligious society.\n\nIt is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and\nethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to\nwhich they are manifestly entitled.  In one of my last interviews with\nWilliam Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they\nwere so little known.  He had himself just read the book for the first\ntime, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he\npronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in\nthe language.  He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes\nof readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.\nCharles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard\nBarton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his\nletters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation.  Edward\nIrving pronounced it a godsend.  Some idea of the lively interest which\nthe fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the\nbeautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of\nHenry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and\nvaried culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.\nIn his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a\nsermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than\npromote belief:\n\n\"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at\nthe same time!  A perfect gem!  His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful\nsoul.  An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite\npurity and grace.  His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.\nHad he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better\nbook; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which\nhe was a great actor.  His religion was love.  His whole existence and\nall his passions were love.  If one could venture to impute to his creed,\nand not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he\nexhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert.  His Christianity is\nmost inviting, it is fascinating!  One of the leading British reviews a\nfew years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man\nwho, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to\nthe Divine pattern.  The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority\nin devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's\ngift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural\nheart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,\neven of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow.  Every now and then, in\nthe world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of\nHumanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth\nthat it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over\nthe whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of\nAssisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His\ncreatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,\nand the beasts of the field to be at peace with him.  In this pure,\nuniversal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that\ncomes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts.  Its springs are deep\nand constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very\noverflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'\"\n\nAfter all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking\nof one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's\nestimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his\nMaster; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the\nevents in which he was an actor.  A desire to supply in some sort this\ndeficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory\npaper.\n\nIt is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of\nindividuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to\nwatch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the\ncommand of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as\nits golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to\nthe well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its\nhidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it\nmoves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening\nour present humanity.  To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as\npossible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of\nslave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of\nthat act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout\nthe world.\n\nAt an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it\nemigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.\nThe act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.\nconsigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,\ntemperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a\nblessing.  Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some\nof the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily\ndescribed their condition:--\n\nWhat shall we do but sing His praise\nWho led us through the watery maze,\nUnto an isle so long unknown,\nAnd yet far kinder than our own?\nHe lands us on a grassy stage,\nSafe from the storms and prelates' rage;\nHe gives us this eternal spring,\nWhich here enamels everything,\nAnd sends the fowls to us in care,\nOn daily visits through the air.\nHe hangs in shades the orange bright,\nLike golden lamps, in a green night,\nAnd doth in the pomegranate close\nJewels more rich than Ormus shows.\n\n       . . . . . . . . .\n\nAnd in these rocks for us did frame\nA temple where to sound His name.\nOh!  let our voice His praise exalt,\nTill it arrive at heaven's vault,\nWhich then, perhaps rebounding, may\nEcho beyond the Mexic bay.'\n\n\"So sang they in the English boat,\nA holy and a cheerful note;\nAnd all the way, to guide their chime,\nWith falling oars they kept the time.\"\n\nUnhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the\ncolonists around them.  No positive condemnation of the evil system had\nthen been heard in the British islands.  Neither English prelates nor\nexpounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it.  Few\ncolonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and\nconduct.  Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its\npractice.  Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the\npietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing\never and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's\nexhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited\nupon by negro slaves.  Everywhere men were contending with each other\nupon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,\ndenying the ethics of Christianity itself.\n\nSuch was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.\nHe was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists\nof custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,\nand who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and\npurer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine\nWisdom.  He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his\nintuitive sense of right condemned it.  He solemnly admonished those who\nheld slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up\nin the fear of God.  \"I desired, also,\" he says, \"that they would cause\ntheir overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use\ncruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,\nafter certain years of servitude, they should make them free.\"\n\nIn 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited\nBarbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of\nslaves.  He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among\nthe blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge.  It was\nprobably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends\nin Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves.  It is one of\nthe first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro\nslavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls\nof Urban and Leo the Tenth.\n\nThirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had\nemigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,\naddressed a memorial against \"the buying and keeping of negroes\" to the\nYearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies.  That\nmeeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment\nin the case.  In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against \"bringing in\nany more negroes.\"  In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it\nexpresses a wish that Friends would be \"less concerned in buying or\nselling slaves.\"  The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher\nand clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to\nadopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.\n\nThe Society gave these memorials a cold reception.  The love of gain and\npower was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters\nand merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the\nChester meeting to take the shape of discipline.  The utmost that could\nbe obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to\nthe importation of negroes, and a desire that \"Friends generally do, as\nmuch as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought\nin, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only\ncaution, and not censure.\"\n\nIn the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same\nquestion.  Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends\nbecame purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the\nforeign traffic.  In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and\nNantucket suggested that it was \"not agreeable to truth to purchase\nslaves and keep them during their term of life.\"  Nothing was done in the\nYearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing\nnegroes was censured.  That the practice was continued notwithstanding,\nfor many years afterwards, is certain.  In 1758, a rule was adopted\nprohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from\nengaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.\n\nIn the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made\nthe instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the\nSociety of Friends.  A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a\nmember of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in\nhis employ to make a bill of sale of her.\n\n     [Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,\n     narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of\n     the Delaware.  In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a\n     settlement of Friends.  A very few of the old houses with their\n     quaint stoops or porches are left.  That occupied by John Woolman\n     was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each\n     story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the\n     trees he planted and loved to cultivate.  The house was not painted,\n     but whitewashed.  The name of the place is derived from the highest\n     hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and\n     commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and\n     woodlands.  Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the\n     shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the\n     great themes of life and duty.\n\n     When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty\n     years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and\n     the house of Woolman, then standing.  He describes it as a very\n     \"humble abode.\"  But one person was then living in the town who had\n     ever seen its venerated owner.  This aged man stated that he was at\n     Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary\n     among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers.  John\n     Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,\n     as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a\n     smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,\n     when a single blow terminated its existence.  Nothing was more\n     remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the\n     well-being and cornfort of the brute creation.  \"What is religion?\"\n     asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman.  \"Tenderness toward\n     all creatures.\"  Or, as Woolman expresses it, \"Where the love of God\n     is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject\n     to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen\n     that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator\n     intends for them under our government.\"]\n\nOn taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in\nhis mind.  The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his\nfellow-creatures oppressed him.  God's voice against the desecration of\nHis image spoke in the soul.  He yielded to the will of his employer,\nbut, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to\nthe buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent\nwith the Christian religion.  This young man was John Woolman.  The\ncircumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony\nagainst slavery.  In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and\nNorth Carolina.  He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery.  It\nappeared to him, in his own words, \"as a dark gloominess overhanging the\nland.\"  On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was\npublished in 1754.  Three years after, he made a second visit to the\nSouthern meetings of Friends.  Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he\nwas compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who\nwere accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could\nnot comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift\nfood and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression.  He was a\npoor man, but he loved truth more than money.  He therefore either placed\nthe pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,\nfor the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had\nopportunity.  Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled\nin the mischief of slavery.  Elders and ministers, as well as the younger\nand less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.\nHe found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the\nsame Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since\nbeen cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and\nBaptist preachers for the same purpose.  He found the meetings generally\nin a low and evil state.  The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,\nand the fine gold changed.  The spirit of the world prevailed among them,\nand had wrought an inward desolation.  Instead of meekness, gentleness,\nand heavenly wisdom, he found \"a spirit of fierceness and love of\ndominion.\"\n\n     [The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his\n     journeys among slaveholders.  Brissot, in his New Travels in\n     America, published in 1788, says: \"John Woolman, one of the most\n     distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a\n     minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in\n     imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be\n     more useful to poor people and the blacks.  He hated slavery so much\n     that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves.\"  That\n     this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the\n     following passage from the Journal: \"When I expected soon to leave a\n     friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I\n     should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving\n     money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and\n     desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of\n     their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and\n     at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked\n     clearest to me.  Before I came out, I had provided a large number of\n     small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who\n     appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them.  But\n     the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made\n     easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment\n     at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of\n     them.\"]\n\nIn love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to\nconvince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy\nfor the enslaved.\n\nAt this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took\nup his residence in Pennsylvania.  He was by birthright a member of the\nSociety of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some\nextravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West\nIndies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.\nHis violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the\nanger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island.  He came\nto Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same\nevil existing there.  He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his\nabode in the country, a few miles distant.  His dwelling was a natural\ncave, with some slight addition of his own making.  His drink was the\nspring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone.  He\npersistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the\nexpense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave\nlabor.  Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching \"deliverance\nto the captive,\" he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for\nworship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their\ndisgust and indignation.  On one occasion he entered the Market Street\nMeeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out.  A\nburly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and\nthrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the\nstreet.  There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders\nthat he did not feel free to rise himself.  \"Let those who cast me here\nraise me up.  It is their business, not mine.\"\n\nHis personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric\nlife.  A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with\nprojecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a\nhuge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes\nand a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy\nsemicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the\nold legends of troll, brownie, and kobold.  Such was the irrepressible\nprophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like\na rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling\nlike a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.\n\nOn one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,\nN. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the\nunwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,\nwas seen passing up the aisle.  Stopping midway, he exclaimed, \"You\nslaveholders!  Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,\nand show yourselves as you are?\"  Casting off as he spoke his outer\ngarment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat\nunderneath and a sword dangling at his heels.  Holding in one hand a\nlarge book, he drew his sword with the other.  \"In the sight of God,\" he\ncried, \"you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as\nI do this book!\" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small\nbladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which\nhe had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood\nthose who sat near him.  John Woolman makes no mention of this\ncircumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it\nmust have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit.  The violence\nand harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with\nthe tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except\nthe sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.\n\n     [Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, whosometimes visited him.\n     Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting\n     all mankind to Christianity.  This was to be done by three\n     witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.\n     Franklin.  But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the\n     three \"chosen vessels\" got into a violent controversy on points of\n     doctrine, and separated in ill-humor.  The philosopher, who had been\n     an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project\n     of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each\n     other.]\n\nStill later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony\nBenezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and\nspeak against slavery.  How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the\nexample of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found\nin him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the\nslumbering moral sense of his religious brethren.  The Marquis de\nChastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a\nsmall, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in\nworks of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.\nLike Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.\nThe poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova\nScotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and\nreligion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and\nsympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their\nfellow-exiles in other colonies.\n\nThe annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must\never be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in\nthe history of the Christian church.  The labors of Woolman and his few\nbut earnest associates had not been in vain.  A deep and tender interest\nhad been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied\nfeelings of solicitude by all parties.  All felt that the time had come\nfor some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in\nthe Valley of Decision.  John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man\nhumble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed\nhomespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of\nthe representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-\nstocked plantations of the country.  Bowed down by the weight of his\nconcern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the\nSociety, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were\nunder discussion.  \"My mind,\" he says, \"was frequently clothed with\ninward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and\ndrink, day and night.'  The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor\ndid I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before\nthe meeting.\"  When the important subject came up for consideration, many\nfaithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness.  No one openly\njustified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the\nmeeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many\nmembers of the Society.  It was also urged that Friends should wait\npatiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the\ndeliverance of the slave.  This was replied to by John Woolman.  \"My\nmind,\" he said, \"is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and\nthe justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with\nawfulness.  I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not\nbeen treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most\nlamentable.  Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries\nhave entered into the ears of the Most High.  Such are the purity and\ncertainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor.  In\ninfinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one\ntime to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a\ntime for delay.  Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and\nthrough a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a\nregard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable\nfoundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still\nwaiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,\nGod may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter.\"\n\nThis solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,\nin a spirit of sympathy and unity.  Some of the slave-holding members\nexpressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be\nadopted against dealing in slaves for the future.  To this it was\nanswered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually\nuntil a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of\nsuch as held slaves.  At length the truth in a great measure triumphed\nover all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed\nthat the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would\nthat others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves \"to set\nthem at liberty, making a Christian provision for them,\" and four\nFriends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--\nwere approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept\nslaves, within the limits of the meeting.\n\nThis painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed.  In that\nmeekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the\n\"fear of man, which bringeth a snare,\" the self-denying followers of\ntheir Divine Lord and Master \"went about doing good.\"  In the city of\nPhiladelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found\noccasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a\nwatchful guard over their feelings.  In his Journal for this important\nperiod of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services.  How\narduous and delicate they were may be readily understood.  The number of\nslaves held by members of the Society was very large.  Isaac Jackson, in\nhis report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly\nMeeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred\nslaves.  From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the\ndifficulties which presented themselves.  One elderly man says he has\nwell brought up his eleven slaves, and \"now they must work to maintain\nhim.\"  Another owns it is all wrong, but \"cannot release his slaves; his\ntender wife under great concern of mind\" on account of his refusal.  A\nthird has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear\nout of it.  \"Perhaps,\" the report says, \"interest dims his vision.\"  A\nfourth is full of \"excuses and reasonings.\"  \"Old Jos. Richison has\nforty, and is determined to keep them.\"  Another man has fifty, and\n\"means to keep them.\"  Robert Ward \"wants to release his slaves, but his\nwife and daughters hold back.\"  Another \"owns it is wrong, but says he\nwill not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives.\"  The far\ngreater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take\nmeasures for freeing their slaves.\n\n     [An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which\n     impressed him deeply.  On the last evening, just as he was about to\n     turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had\n     not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.\n     It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care\n     of itself.  Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind\n     quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more\n     exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host\n     eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.\n     The proposal was gladly accepted.  On introducing the object of\n     their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness\n     should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form\n     of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no\n     difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.\n     At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before\n     them.  His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on\n     his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,\n     restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on\n     his master.  At length he was informed of what had been done; that\n     he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past\n     services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived.  The old\n     man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on\n     his breast.  After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then\n     spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently\n     exclaimed, \"Oh, goody Gody, oh!\"--bringing his hands again down on\n     his knees.  Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the\n     solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too\n     much choked for utterance, he continued, \"I thought I should die a\n     slave, and now I shall die a free man!\"\n\n     It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are\n     sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to\n     duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived\n     in the mind of Isaac Jackson.  At that supreme moment, when all\n     other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of\n     solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted\n     him as with the blessing of God.]\n\nAn extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both\nthe nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind\nin which he accomplished it:--\n\n\"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,\nJohn Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves.  Some,\nwhose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of\nour visit, but in some places our way was more difficult.  I often saw\nthe necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern\nproceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down\nbefore the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness\nunder some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness\nin me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this\nworld.\"\n\n\"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more\nactive members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend\nJohn Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the\ncity.  We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their\nfamilies; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting\nsuch as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to\nthe Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the\ninfluence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of\nthis world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we\nfound peace.\"\n\nThese labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and\noppressed.  Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who\nheld slaves set them at liberty.  But many members still continuing the\npractice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly\nMeeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were\ndirected to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding\ntheir fellow-men as property.\n\nA concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the\nemancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion\nthat some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for\nservices rendered while in the condition of slavery.  The following is an\nextract from an epistle on this subject:\n\n\"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who\nhave been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and\nslavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are\nclear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to\nview as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately\nentreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,\nand that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further\nopenings of duty.\n\n\"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many\nwho are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously\nconsidered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people\nhave long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring\nis not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious\nand deep attention.\"\n\nCommittees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly\nappointed in the various Monthly Meetings.  Many former owners of slaves\nfaithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award\nand judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.\nSo deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of\nFriends!\n\nJohn Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years\nbefore, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a\nnegro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty\nyears, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he\nhad himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as\nthe agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he\nexecuted a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for\nfour years and a half of his unexpired term of service.\n\nThe appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself\nespecially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman.  At\nthe outset, all about him, in every department of life and human\nactivity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,\nand of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among\nthe foundations of society.  Yet he seems never to have doubted for a\nmoment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated\nas to his own duty in regard to it.  There was no groping like Samson in\nthe gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of\nthe temple of Dagon.  \"The candle of the Lord shone about him,\" and his\npath lay clear and unmistakable before him.  He believed in the goodness\nof God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness\nfor itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom\nand every barrier of pride and selfishness.  No one could have a more\nhumble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy\nhe felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had\nknown a preparation from that Power \"to stand as a trumpet through which\nthe Lord speaks.\"  The event justified his confidence; wherever he went\nhard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion\ngave way before his testimony of love.\n\nThe New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on\nRhode Island.  In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a\nreligious visit to New England, attended that meeting.  He saw the\nhorrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves\nof the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children\nthronging the market-place.  The same abhorrent scenes which a few years\nafter stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-\ntrade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at\nNewport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual\nconvocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the\nshame and wickedness.  \"Understanding,\" he says, \"that a large number of\nslaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale\nby a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,\nand had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly\ntrembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in\nthe day of trouble.'  I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed.\"\nHe prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the\nsignatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to\nthe importation of slaves.  His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to\nhave been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church.  The London\nEpistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,\nand the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and\nthe following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate\nmeetings:--\n\n\"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;\nand do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or\notherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?\"\n\nAt the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members\nof the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the\nhouse for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of\nthe slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in\nor holding them as property.  His tender exhortations were not lost upon\nhis auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving\nspirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.\n\nIn 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the\nYearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,\nand appointed a large committee to visit those members who were\nimplicated in the practice.  The next year this committee reported that\nthey had completed their service, \"and that their visits mostly seemed to\nbe kindly accepted.  Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at\nliberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of\nsuch an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to\ncomply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take\nit into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them\nin continued bondage.\"\n\nIt was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,\nthat a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others\n\"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not\ncomplying with the advice of this meeting.\"\n\nIn 1773 the following minute was made: \"It is our sense and judgment that\ntruth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise\nthe aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,\namong Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,\nthat we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the\nbrutes that perish.\"\n\nIn 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly\nMeeting.  The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to\nappoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the\nmanumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services.  In\n1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder\nwho refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after\ndue care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society.  This was\neffectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction\nof all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.\n\nIn the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the\nmiddle of the last century.  In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from\nthe Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those\nwho held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation.  In\n1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon\nany condition.  In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of\nthe meeting.  In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate\nmeetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past\nservices had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their\nmasters in all save three cases.\n\nIn the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold.  Its\nmembers, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were\nnecessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation.  I have\nalready alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,\nand to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them.  In 1757\nthe Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade.  In 1764\nit enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,\nof educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.\nFour years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing\nany more slaves.  In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate\nmanumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached\neighteen and the males twenty-one years of age.  At the same time it was\nadvised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of\ninstructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and\nreligion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.\n\nI quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate\nmeetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--\n\n\"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation\nare under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the\noffspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed\ntowards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive\ndisadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil\nmany among us are enjoying.\"\n\nIn 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still\nheld slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,\nthe Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those\noffenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should\nproceed to disown them.  We have no means of ascertaining the precise\nnumber of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia\nYearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small.  In almost\nall cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of\nthe Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing\noffenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting\nthe wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of\ntruth.\n\nSo ended slavery in the Society of Friends.  For three quarters of a\ncentury the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated\nintervals, that Friends should be \"careful to maintain their testimony\nagainst slavery,\" has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a\nslave is concerned.  Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there\nis a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,\nurged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the\nway of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,\nentangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied\nwith the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.\n\nThe influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been\nconfined to the religious society of which he was a member.  It may be\ntraced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in\nthis country or in Europe.  During the war of the Revolution many of the\nnoblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their\njournals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,\nand took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery\nsentiment.  Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the\nthinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner\nMifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his\nwhole after life.  He became the leader of the \"Friends of the Blacks,\"\nand carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery.  To\nhis efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by\nthe commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent\nuprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free\ngovernment.  The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated\nhis early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life\nthe volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of\nhimself and his amiable helpmate.  It was in a degree, at least, the\ninfluence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with\nthe spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle\nhad fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the\nimportance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the\naccomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,\nleft as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,\nAlexander II.  In the history of emancipation in our own country\nevidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting.  In\n1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid\nbefore the first Congress of the United States.  Not content with\nclearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an\nactive part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,\nNew York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  Jacob Lindley, Elisha\nTyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were\nknown throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom.  One of\nthe earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin\nLundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd\nGarrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been\nso faithfully and nobly devoted.  Looking back to the humble workshop at\nMount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President\nLincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!\n\nThe larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of\nslavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the\nmany to support the luxury of the few.  The argument running through them\nis searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love\nfor the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all.  They aim to\nconvince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and\npassion.  To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the\nvoice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day.  One feels,\nin reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from\nall pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,\nand intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by\ndrawing men nearer to God, and to each other.  The style is that of a man\nunlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,\nthe purity of whose heart enters into his language.  There is no attempt\nat fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple\nunadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have\nbeen wholly unknown.  He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual\nprompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that\nhis work was done in the clear radiance of\n\n          \"The light which never was on land or sea.\"\n\nIt was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne\nexpresses it, to \"order the finger of the Almighty to His will and\npleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence.\"  Very\nwise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this\nworld.  They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and\ncompetitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of\nparties and sects, into a region of calmness,--\n\n                               \"The haunt\n          Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach\n          The wild to love tranquillity,\"--\n\na quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls \"the\npure reason;\" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest\nor activity conflicts with that of another.  Beauty they certainly have,\nbut it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain\nindefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a\nsweetness as of violets.  \"The secret of Woolman's purity of style,\" said\nDr. Channing, \"is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated\nhis words.\"\n\nOf course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of\nrhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of\nepigram and antithesis.  He wrote as he lived, conscious of \"the great\nTask-master's eye.\"  With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he\nhad learned to \"wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the\nspirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,\nbear rule.\"\n\nI have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the\nentire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as\nthey mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no\nlonger a question at issue.  I content myself with throwing together a\nfew passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.\n\n\"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it\nfrom the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of\nunrighteousness.\"\n\n\"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of\nthe whole.\"\n\n\"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble\npart of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its\ntrue happiness.\"\n\n\"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts\nof men.  He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which\nare carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the\ndesire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a\nlittle suffices.\"\n\n\"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and\nclouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times\nbeheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings\nof the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use\nof His benefits.\"\n\n\"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,\ninstructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the\noutward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we\nshould not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure\nreason.\"\n\n\"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more\nrefined appearances remains to be oppression.  To labor for a perfect\nredemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole\nfamily of Jesus Christ in this world.\"\n\n\"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being `hid\nwith Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;\nbut many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light\nof life and stumbled on the dark mountains.  That purity of life which\nproceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that\nstate in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are\nbounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of\nretirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated\nfrom that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may\nhave a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us.\"\n\n\"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in\ndifferent places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,\nand proceeds from God.  It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of\nreligion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect\nsincerity.  In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become\nbrethren.\"\n\n\"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind.  In\ntrue silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,\nsave as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in\noutward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to\nus.  In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a\nperfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all\nthings, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light\nshines into the soul.  Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this\nworld are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of\ntruth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,\nthe sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised\ntherein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in\nthe fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at\ntimes, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that\nforward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do\nsomething without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.\n\n\"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our\nwills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and\nacceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us.  But when our minds\nentirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the\nopening of the last of the seals.  In this silence we learn to abide in\nthe Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except\nthat alone in which the light of life directs us.\"\n\nOccasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense\ninterest of his subject gives his language something of passionate\nelevation, as in the following extract:--\n\n\"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer\nby it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not\nlaying their sufferings to heart.  In procuring slaves on the coast of\nAfrica, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the\nnegroes, but all is at a great distance.  Many groans arise from dying\nmen which we hear not.  Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless\nchildren which reach not our ears.  Many cheeks are wet with tears, and\nfaces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not.  Cruel tyranny is\nencouraged.  The hands of robbers are strengthened.\n\n\"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what\npasseth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be\nsprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and\nheavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way\nto the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our\nears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--\nwere we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be\ndeeply affected with sorrow!\"\n\n\"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of\nheart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the\nhardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to\nthink seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in\nfixing all my demands?  Have I no desire to support myself in expensive\ncustoms, because my acquaintances live in such customs?\n\n\"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own\nconscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might\nbe omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were\nhe to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to\nbe discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find\nthe injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.'  Divine Love imposeth no\nrigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit\nof brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is\nnecessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.\n\n\"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His\ntender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences\nour minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a\ndesire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the\nafflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation.  Here we have a\nprospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so\nthat to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes\nthe business of our lives.\"\n\nHis liberality and freedom from \"all narrowness as to sects and opinions\"\nare manifest in the following passages:--\n\n\"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward\nsupport from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;\nwho love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally\nto their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of\neducation and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,\nit would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them.  The\nknowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives\nunderstanding to all men are superior to the various states and\ncircumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.\nIdolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which\nis so.  Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is\nknown to be due only to the true God.\n\n\"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son\nJesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and\nfriendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand\nfaithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while\nthe Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established\nin the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may\nbe of the number that fear God and work righteousness.\"\n\nNowhere has what is called the \"Labor Question,\" which is now agitating\nthe world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in\nthese essays.  His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too\nare his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences\nof luxury and oppression:--\n\n\"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the\nDivine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors.\"\n\n\"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate\nlabor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at\npresent, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to\nevil purposes when we are gone.  To labor hard, or cause others to do so,\nthat we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer\ndiscountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,\nis to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth.\"\n\n\"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is\nno place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by\nbargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from\nuniversal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany\ntheir proceedings.  As He who first founded the earth was then the true\nproprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the\nchildren of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance\nfrom it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but\nHis right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their\npossessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way\nwhich they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being\njustly chargeable with usurpation.\"\n\nIt will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of\nthe true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not\nwritten to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism.  They might\nhave been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as\nthey do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself\nin purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology.  The\nunderlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the\nsoul.  \"Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the\nkingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven.\"\nIn the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is\nintimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground\nthat it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties.  One may\neasily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by\nthe slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may\nstill be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,\nattach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and\nwho in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the\nDivine ear by \"vain repetitions\" and formal enumeration of sacred\nattributes, dignities, and offices.  Every instinct of his tenderly\nsensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.\nHis very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every\nwind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to\nthe Lord of the harvest.  John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is\nmanifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration\nof the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.\nThe entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting\nupon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep\nenthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-\ncreatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.\n\nHowever the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may\npresent to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no\nquestions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it.  Shall we regret that\nhe who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,\nwalking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the\nfaith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any\nform of words, however sound?  A true life is at once interpreter and\nproof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts\nof men than all the \"Evidences\" and \"Bodies of Divinity\" which have\nperplexed the world with more doubts than they solved.  Shall we venture\nto account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding\nsense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in\ngentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a\ndeep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never\nallowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than\nthreatening?  Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the\nmanifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,\nrevealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings\nafter purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs\nunder the parched surfaces of a thirsty land?  And, looking at the\npurity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith\nin the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a\nmistaken one?  Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided\nthat all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God.  \"Without\nthe actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and\nsoul of our souls,\" says Fenelon, \"we could neither do, will, nor believe\ngood.  We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to\nhear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of\nChrist.  The outward word of the gospel itself without this living\nefficacious word within would be but an empty sound.\"  \"Thou Lord,\" says\nAugustine in his Meditations, \"communicatest thyself to all: thou\nteachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate\nsounds.\"\n\n     \"However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within\n     us, and that is the Spirit of God.  Whoever feels not the warm gale\n     and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for\n     truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any\n     light though I dwelt in the body of the sun.\"--Sir Thomas Browne's\n     Religio Medici.\n\nNever was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;\nand the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world\nis still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes\ndown to us through a century, still sweet and precious.\n\nIt will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong\ntestimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,\nits common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of\nsin.  Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the\nApostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.\nSin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began\nand ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast\nnetwork and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging\nupon it in the underworld of causation.  Hence the wrong and discord\nwhich pained him called out pity, rather than indignation.  The first\ninquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience.  How far\nam I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this?  Have none of my\nfellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?\nHave the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed\nin a way free from all unrighteousness?  \"Through abiding in the law of\nChrist,\" he says, \"we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and\na concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of\nstrengthening them in error.\"  He constantly recurs to the importance of\na right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,\nand who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.\nIf such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but\n\"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of\nrighteousness.\"  His eyes were anointed to see the common point of\ndeparture from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of\nevil had their underlying root in human selfishness.  He saw that every\nsin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose\nlives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and\navarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of\nevil in another.  How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of\nself-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all\nits decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with\nPharisaical harshness!  In his Considerations on the True Harmony of\nMankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of\npossessing \"the mind of Christ,\" which removes from the heart the desire\nof superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine\nCounsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of\nall.  \"This state,\" he says, \"in which every motion from the selfish\nspirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the\nFather of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after.\"\n\nAt times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-\ncreatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of\nrighteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in\nregard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and\nlasting impressions on my mind.  I have beheld how the desire to provide\nwealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and\nhas been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been\naffected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous\nat times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the\nhumbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;\nexpensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,\nand in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,\nand made thin through hard dealing.\n\n\"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that\nwe may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed\nwhich now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven\nagainst their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony\nrestored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will\nbe, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'\"\n\nIt is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must\nhave been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,\nanise, and cummin.  There must have been something awful in the presence\nof one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and\npretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil\nhidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in \"the\nirresistible might of meekness,\" and yet so wise in spiritual\ndiscernment,\n\n          \"Bearing a touchstone in his hand\n          And testing all things in the land\n          By his unerring spell.\n\n          \"Quick births of transmutation smote\n          The fair to foul, the foul to fair;\n          Purple nor ermine did he spare,\n          Nor scorn the dusty coat.\"\n\nIn bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to\nme a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the\nappreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing\nto own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual\nsymmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words.  I have\nbeen awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit\nredeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful\nfor the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him.  I leave\nthe book with its readers.  They may possibly make large deductions from\nmy estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his\nself-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and\nsmile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all\nagree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.\n\nAMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.\n\n\n\n\n\n                            HAVERFORD COLLEGE.\n\n                 Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.\n\n                         AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.\n\nTHE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of\nthe Society of Friends can regard without deep interest.  It would give\nme great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest\nheavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a\njourney.\n\nIt was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in \"the day of small\nbeginnings.\"  The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more\nthan fulfilled.  It has grown to be a great and well-established\ninstitution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training\nhas been widely felt.  If the high educational standard presented in the\nscholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has\nbeen lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of\nQuakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious\ntestimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone\nback to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for\nleaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at\nleast, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.\n\nUnder circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored\nto maintain the Great Testimony.  The spirit of its culture has not been\na narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic\nprinciples of the eminent worthies who founded the State of\nPennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were\nmasters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable\nto all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances\nanticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.\n\nIt was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of\nPenn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,\nwrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of\nScarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age\nof our planet, and that the \"days\" of the letter of Scripture could\nonly mean vast spaces of time.\n\nMay Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,\nin investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,\nto use the words of Fenelon, \"Silenced themselves to hear in the\nstillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ.\"  Holding\nfast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and\nWord, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous\nquarrel of religion with science.  Against the sublime faith which shall\nyet dominate the world, skepticism has no power.  No possible\ninvestigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and\ntradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.\n\nThat Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as\nan approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy\nwhich can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for\nuniversal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,\nis giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in\nthe Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of\nChunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.","title":"The Inner Life: Part 3 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":30182}