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.