Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

This question is the very key of the position of the Society of Friends as a separate body. It is as witnesses to the independence of spiritual life upon outward ordinances that we believe ourselves especially called to maintain our place in the universal Church in the present day.

The importance of our separate position is perhaps somewhat obscured in the eyes of some amongst us by the fact that we can no longer assume the vehemently aggressive attitude of the early Friends, as against Christians of other denominations. They believed it to be their duty to attack the “hireling priests” of their day as guilty of “apostasy,” and upholders of the mysterious powers of darkness. In our own day such judgments would imply either the grossest ignorance or else downright insanity. We cannot help knowing, and rejoicing to know, that a large proportion of the clergy are amongst the most devoted and disinterested of the children of light, using their official position, as well as every other power of body and mind, for the promotion of the kingdom of God and the spread of the gospel. We desire nothing better than to fight beside them, shoulder to shoulder, against the common enemy; and we are, in fact, often associated with them in efforts of this kind.

In like manner, it would be impossible for Friends in these days to speak in the tone of the founders of the Society, as though we possessed a degree of light in comparison of which all other Christians must be considered as groping in thick darkness. The early Friends sometimes spoke of the “breaking forth of the gospel day” through the revelation made to them as of an event almost equal in importance to its original promulgation sixteen hundred years before. In these days we could not with any kind of honesty or justice claim a position so enormously in advance of our neighbours. On all hands we see evidences of fidelity and fruitfulness, and the shining of examples which we rejoice to admire, and desire to emulate.

There is thus, I think, a certain perplexity as to our relative position in the Christian Church which is a cause of some weakness amongst Friends. It is in some respects easier to maintain an aggressive attitude than one of mere quiet separateness; and it would be no wonder if some, especially of our younger members, in these days of free interchange of sympathy, should begin to falter a little as to the importance of our separate position. It is, indeed, one which will not be maintained except as the result of deep and searching spiritual discipline. The testimony against dependence on what is outward cannot be borne to any purpose at second hand. We must ourselves be weaned from all hankering after what is outward and tangible before we can appreciate the value of a testimony to the sufficiency of the purely spiritual; and that weaning is not an easy process, nor one that can be transmitted from generation to generation. Unless our younger Friends be taught in the same stern school as their forefathers, they will assuredly not maintain the vantage-ground won by the faithfulness of a former generation.

Some other causes have, I believe, tended to confuse our relation to the outer world, and make it important that Friends should look well to their path, and consider whither it is tending; whether we are really guarding the position which it is specially our business to defend, or allowing ourselves to be drawn off into the pursuit of less important matters. There are in the main stream of the Society many currents and counter-currents, and its recent history has been one of change and reaction, so that it would be dangerous and presumptuous for a new-comer to attempt to foretell its course; but I may venture to point out some of the tendencies which are and have been at work amongst us, preparing the conditions under which our future work must be done.

It is well known that the Society, which sprang very rapidly into existence in the middle of the seventeenth century, began during the eighteenth to diminish in numbers, and was for many years a steadily dwindling body. Closed meeting-houses and empty benches are now to be found in all parts of the country where, in former days, the difficulty was to find room for all who came. Within the last thirty or forty years our numbers have, however, begun slowly to increase, although the increase is so far from being equal to the rate of increase of the population at large, that in proportion to other denominations we may still be considered as in a certain sense losing ground. The actual increase, small as it is, is nevertheless a significant fact.[25]

The great falling-off in numbers during the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth centuries was probably caused, in part at least, by the fact that after the early days of growth and persecution there followed a time of outward quietness, in which the value attached to what one may call Quaker tradition became excessive, and resulted in too rigid a discipline. The actual discipline of the Society was applied with a strictness which surely was not altogether wise or wholesome; and the less tangible restraint of public opinion within the borders of a small and very exclusive sect was probably even more oppressive in its rigidity and minuteness of supervision. Until within the last thirty years or thereabouts, it was the almost invariable practice to disown all members who married “out of the Society;” and this restriction must obviously have done much not only to diminish the numbers, but probably also to alienate the affections of successive rising generations. So many of the young people lost or resigned their membership for this and other causes, that, had no change taken place, the days of the Society must to all appearance have been numbered.

But in the early part of this century, owing, in a great measure, to the influence of Joseph John Gurney and his sister, Elizabeth Fry, a new wave of religious and benevolent activity arose; and about the same time, though with what degree of connection with this impulse I do not know, a considerable relaxation of discipline took place. Not only was the practice with regard to marriages out of the Society relaxed, but many minor matters, in which an irksome and, no doubt, often hurtful rigidity had prevailed, began to be deliberately left to the judgment of individuals. In 1861 a revision of the “Book of Discipline” took place, which reflected and sanctioned the relaxation of supervision in regard to these matters. In that year the latter part of the fourth query relating to “plainness of speech, behaviour, and apparel,” was dropped, and other changes were made in the queries then in use. The Yearly Meeting, as has been already mentioned, no longer requires that any of the queries should be answered, except those which regard the regularity with which meetings are held and attended. These changes have meant in practice that the maintenance of all our special “testimonies” is now (like that against tithes) “left to the individual conscience,” and not inquired into by the meetings for discipline; and the immediate result has, of course, been a great outward and visible alteration—a rapid disappearance of distinguishing peculiarities, and no doubt an immense relief to the younger members.

A more direct result of the “evangelical” influence of the Gurneys, and others like-minded, was the setting-in of a current of activity in all sorts of benevolent, philanthropic, and missionary directions. The old dread of “creaturely activity,”—of moving in any kind of religious work without an immediate prompting and even constraining influence from above,—seems to have in some degree given place to a fear of burying our talent. The Christian duty of going forth to seek and to save, of holding forth the word of life, and letting our light shine before men, had been beautifully exemplified by some eminent men and women in the Society. Many of the younger Friends caught the flame of their zeal, and from all quarters, in these modern days, influences combine to make that “sitting still,” in which an earlier generation of Friends had found their strength, appear almost an impossibility.

With the new rising tide of fervent zeal and benevolence came a great change in the prevailing tone of religious feeling. The Bible, which, in their dread lest the letter should usurp the place of the spirit, had amongst Friends been almost put under a bushel, was brought into new prominence, and so-called “evangelical” views respecting the unique or exceptional nature of its inspiration began to be entertained. Gradually the idea of the necessity of teaching “sound doctrine” assumed an importance which had formerly been reserved for that of looking for “right guidance;” and in some quarters a visible tendency has, of late years, been manifest towards more definition of doctrines and popularizing of methods than would have been tolerated half a century ago.[26]