Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

Queries.

1. What is the religious state of your meeting? Are you individually giving evidence of true conversion of heart, and of loving devotedness to Christ?

2. Are your meetings for worship regularly held; and how are they attended? Are they occasions of religious solemnity and edification, in which, through Christ, our ever-living High Priest and Intercessor, the Father is worshipped in spirit and in truth?

3. Do you “walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us”? Do you cherish a forgiving spirit? Are you careful of the reputation of others; and do you avoid and discourage tale-bearing and detraction?

4. Are you individually frequent in reading, and diligent in meditating upon, the Holy Scriptures? And are parents and heads of households in the practice of reading them in their families in a devotional spirit, encouraging any right utterance of prayer or praise?

5. Are you in the practice of private retirement and waiting upon the Lord; in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, making your requests known unto Him? And do you live in habitual dependence upon the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit?

6. Do you maintain a religious life and conversation as becometh the gospel? Are you watchful against conformity to the world; against the love of ease and self-indulgence; or being unduly absorbed by your outward concerns to the hindrance of your religious progress and your service for Christ? And do those who have children or others under their care endeavour, by example and precept, to train them up as self-denying followers of the Lord Jesus?

7. Do you maintain a faithful allegiance to the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Head of the Church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, from whom alone must come the true call and qualification for the ministry of the Word? And are you faithful in your testimony to the freeness and spirituality of the gospel dispensation?

8. Are you faithful in maintaining our Christian testimony against all war, as inconsistent with the precepts and spirit of the gospel?

9. Do you maintain strict integrity in all your transactions in trade, and in your other outward concerns; and are you careful not to defraud the public revenue?

10. Are your meetings for Church affairs regularly held; and how are they attended? Are these meetings vigilant in the discharge of their duties towards their subordinate meetings, and in watching over the flock in the love of Christ? When delinquencies occur, are they treated timely, impartially, and in a Christian spirit? And do you individually take your right share in the attendance and service of these meetings?

11. Do you, as a Church, exercise a loving and watchful care over your younger members; promoting their instruction in fundamental Christian truth, and in the scriptural grounds of our religious principles; and manifesting an earnest desire that, through the power of Divine grace, they may all become established in the faith and hope of the gospel?

12. Do you fulfil your part as a Church, and as individuals, in promoting the cause of truth and righteousness, and the spread of the Redeemer’s kingdom, at home and abroad? (1875.)

NOTE B.
Home Mission Committee of the Yearly Meeting.

The desire felt by many Friends that the Society should, in a more systematic manner than was formerly thought necessary, recognize and provide for what is called “evangelistic” and “pastoral” work, led, in 1882, to the appointment of a Committee of the Yearly Meeting on “Home Missions.” This Committee began its work by inviting the co-operation of the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, and in its first Annual Report it mentions that ten of the Quarterly Meetings had appointed Committees to correspond with it; in the next year thirteen of the Quarterly Meetings were thus in correspondence with the Home Mission Committee; and in 1887 the Report states that the Home Mission Committee itself includes members of every Quarterly Meeting except one.

In 1888, the number of Friends working in connection with the Home Mission Committee was nineteen. The Report of 1889 speaks of a considerable extension of the work of the Committee, but does not give the number of workers.

The donations and subscriptions received by the Committee in the year ending May, 1889, amounted to £2333.

The work undertaken by “Home Mission Friends” is of various kinds; such as conducting first day schools, Bible classes, temperance meetings, lecturing on Friends’ principles, in some neighbourhoods visiting the sick and the poor, and in various ways endeavouring to build up and strengthen meetings which seem to be in need of help.

Notwithstanding the large measure of support which the Committee has met with, there are many Friends who feel very serious hesitation about this practice of providing “pastoral care,” and who fear lest it should tend to weaken, if not to destroy, the force of our testimony against a paid or humanly appointed ministry. The danger is obvious; and I shall not attempt to estimate the degree in which it can be averted, or the force of the reasons for encountering it. I will content myself with making from the Reports of the Committee a few extracts bearing upon this question.

“We have been forcibly impressed with the extent and variety of openings for service which have presented themselves to us. Much of this work is of a character which can, we believe, be more effectually performed by the Society of Friends than by any other religious body.... In two instances we have deemed it right to give pecuniary assistance to Friends who felt it laid upon them, as a religious duty, to give the whole or a greater part of their time to the work.... These arrangements involve no bargain or understanding whatsoever for the preaching of the gospel, and their work has been largely of an organizing character.” (1883.)

“It is found that Friends in all parts of the country are watchful lest a separate class of supported ministers should be set up, and this is a matter which has from the first received our very serious attention. It is our practice, when a Friend has offered his services to this Committee, not to enter upon the question of the amount or manner of support to be granted him until after he has been accepted by us. We have carefully avoided the establishment of any scale of maintenance, each case being separately considered on the basis of the actual needs and circumstances of the Friend in question; and we have encouraged Friends, where practicable, to contribute by their labour to their own support.” (1886.)

“We are glad to report an increase in the number of those who require no pecuniary assistance beyond necessary expenses when actually on religious service. About half the workers are living on their private means, or partially maintaining themselves by their labour. About half of the number may also be considered as stationed more or less in one place, and the remainder as engaged in evangelistic visits to various towns as way may open. Of the resident workers, several have travelled with minutes from their Monthly Meetings, or have rendered temporary assistance to particular meetings by request of other Monthly Meetings than their own.... In the meetings where our workers are resident, the voices of many new members are frequently heard in exhortation and prayer. In one of them a visiting Friend desired a meeting with all those who took vocal part in meetings. No fewer than thirteen responded to his invitation, while three or four more were prevented by other engagements.... We believe our workers are, without exception, loyal to the testimony of the Society against the establishment directly or indirectly, of a ‘one-man ministry.’... Since the formation of this Committee there is hardly a Quarterly Meeting in which they” (the Friends engaged in “evangelistic” work) “have not travelled, in several of them many times and for many weeks together.... Some of these visits have originated in concerns of the Friends themselves. In other cases the way has been made for them by an invitation of a Quarterly, Monthly, or particular Meeting, or the Committee of some Friends’ mission or adult school. In no case has this Committee deemed it consistent to SEND any worker anywhere, or to do more than lay such invitation before him, leaving it to his own conviction of duty as to whether he can see his way to accept it or not.” (1888.)

“With one exception, every Friend in connection with us has been engaged during the year to a greater or less extent in work outside the meeting in which he resides.” (1889.)

NOTE C.
Slavery.

In the introduction by J. G. Whittier to a recent edition of John Woolman’s “Journal,”[33] there is a remarkable account of the manner in which our Society in America was gradually freed from all complicity with slavery, long before the struggle for its abolition was begun elsewhere; from which I venture to make some extracts, for the sake of the illustration it affords of the working both of our principles and of our machinery.

From the time of George Fox himself, who in 1671 visited Barbadoes, and admonished those who held slaves there to bear in mind that they were brethren, and that “after certain years of servitude they should make them free,” voices had been raised again and again in several of the American meetings to witness against the buying and keeping of slaves.

In 1742, John Woolman, then in the employment of a small storekeeper in New Jersey, was desired by his master to make out a bill of sale of a negro slave-woman. “On taking up his pen,” says Whittier, “the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his fellow-creatures oppressed him. God’s voice against the desecration of His image spoke in his soul. He yielded to the will of his employer, but while writing the instrument he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent with the Christian religion.” This circumstance “was the starting-point of a lifelong testimony against slavery.

“In the year 1746, he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, ‘as a dark gloominess overhanging the land.’ On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at the tables of slave-holding planters, who were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gains of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity....

“The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia[34] must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in the history of the Christian Church. The labours of Woolman and his few but earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interest had been awakened, and this meeting was looked forward to with varied feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had come for some definite action.... At length,” after a “solemn and weighty appeal” from John Woolman, “the truth in a great measure triumphed over opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour, to do to others as we would that others should do to us, should induce Friends who held slaves ‘to set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them;’ and four Friends” (of whom John Woolman was one) “were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept slaves, within the limits of the meeting.

“This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed.... These labours were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly Meeting in 1774; and two years after, the subordinate meetings were directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding their fellow-men as property.... In the year 1760, John Woolman, in the course of a religious visit to New England,” attended their Yearly Meeting, where “the London Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read, and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate meetings: ‘Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported; and do they use those well where they are possessed by inheritance or otherwise, endeavouring to train them up in principles of religion?’ ... In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves, and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were implicated in the practice.... It was stated, in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772, that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others ‘have been so reluctant thereto, that they have been disowned[35] for not complying with the advice of this meeting.’

“In 1773, the following minute was made: ‘It is our sense that truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage, among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery; that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the beasts that perish.’

“In 1782, no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly Meeting. The next year, it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the manumitted slaves and their former masters for their past services. In 1784, it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any slaveholder who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after due care and labour with him, be disowned from the Society. This was effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.

“In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an epistle from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In 1776, it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon any condition. In 1784, but one slave was to be found in the limits of the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their masters in all but three cases.

“In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold.” In 1757, it “condemned the foreign slave trade. In 1764, it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants, of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing. Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing any more slaves. In 1773, it earnestly recommended the immediate manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and of religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns....

“In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends, the Yearly Meeting directed that, where endeavours to convince those offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meeting should proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost all cases the care and assiduous labours of those who had the welfare of the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting the wishes of their friends, and bringing reproach upon the cause of truth.

So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three-quarters of a century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated intervals, that Friends should be ‘careful to maintain their testimony against slavery,’ has been adhered to, so far as owning, or even hiring, a slave is concerned. Apart from its first fruits of emancipation, there is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth, urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit, entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.’

I need hardly remind my readers of the singular interest of John Woolman’s own account of his experiences in this and other matters, which would scarcely admit of abridgment. I have, therefore, been obliged, though unwillingly, to content myself with the above bare enumeration of the actual steps taken by the various meetings, without making any attempt to show to what an extent John Woolman’s own deep exercises of mind contributed to bring them about. For a study of Quaker experience, in its purest and most impressive form, the “Journal” itself is perhaps unrivalled.