We may, perhaps, accept something of all these readings; we may recognize the unsuitability for the daily need of the world at large of a church neither primarily institutional nor primarily doctrinal. We may admit, for many minds in a Christendom generally ignorant of its own history of an episcopally ordained and invested female clergy, the handicap of recognized feminine ministry; we may see the full unreason of birthright membership, and the change of base in the modern revival, without, perhaps, being driven to conclude that England’s attempt to introduce into field and market-place the hitherto cloistered mystical faith and practice has entirely failed.
For amidst the stereotyped Puritanism of this middle period, with its fear of beauty, its suspicion of all pursuits not directly utilitarian or devotional, saints were born. The century which produced John Woolman and the men and women who initiated and took the lion’s share in the movement for the abolition of slavery; which supplied to the cause of science and to the medical profession, in spite of exclusion from the main streams of learning, eminent men[15] in numbers quite out of proportion to the size of the group; which saw the blossoming of public education in the form of the fine Quaker schools where girls and boys were educated side by side,[16] must have been rich in inarticulate and unrecorded saintly lives.
There must have been in the sober Quaker homes, where affection ruled without softness, where love was heroic rather than sentimental, many who followed, not as imitators, but with all the strength of an original impulse the pathway chosen by those who have been willing to pay the price of an enhanced spiritual life; the withdrawal, in varying measure, from the values and standards accepted by the world at large. They kept watch. They worked amongst their fellows in a dusk between memory and anticipation. They felt to the uttermost and fought to the uttermost the weakness of the self. They were faithful, and in due time the society as a whole felt the breath of revival.
CHAPTER V
QUAKERISM IN AMERICA
The American colonies seemed to the early leaders of the Quaker movement to offer at once a field for the free development of their faith and a base whence they might spread to the ends of the earth. The possibility of buying land from the Indians was being discussed in the society as early as 1660. But though, it is true, Quaker influence was decisive in establishing religious toleration in America, though the relationship between the native tribes and the colonists was transformed through their substitution of unarmed treaty parties for the existing methods of intimidation and of strictly fair dealing for dishonesty and contract-breaking, though they initiated and took the lion’s share in the abolition of slavery,[17] and established the precedent of a State founded on brotherly love, although they did more than any other group of refugees or body of colonists to settle the foundations of the religious and civil life of the country; yet the texture of the religious life of the American people is to-day largely Puritan Protestantism, and of the Quaker influence in government there remains not a trace.
For more than half a century after the savage persecution[18] by the Puritans—reaching its fullest fury in Boston under Governor Endicott—had come to an end, Quakerism was a steadily growing power in America.
The Quakers flourished in Rhode Island, to whom they supplied many Governors, and where at one time they were continually in office; they made fair headway in Connecticut. In Long Island their establishment was finally secured by the advice of the Dutch home Government on the ground of their excellence as citizens. They achieved a foothold in Virginia in face of the indignant persecutions of the Episcopalians. Their history in Maryland is an excellent illustration of the nature of their work on behalf of religious toleration. When, in 1691, an Act was framed to secure the establishment of the Protestant church, the Quakers, who were by this time both numerous and influential in the colony, laboured in opposition to it until they brought the bill to nought. They supported the Catholics in their struggle for emancipation, and were largely instrumental in securing the repeal, in 1695, of the Act against them. They also joined with Rome to prevent the Episcopalian Church from being established by law, but in this they were only partially successful. In the Carolinas they appear to have fared well. For years, though in a minority, they controlled the government. New Jersey was thrown open to them by a large purchase of land. William Penn’s share in this transaction was the beginning of his practical interest in America, finally to express itself in the foundation of the Quaker State of Pennsylvania,[19] which was very largely his own work. His labours as a religious apologist, filling some five volumes, and representing in his graceful, polished style the application to social life of the Puritan morality upon which the Quakers had grafted their beliefs, are secondary to his work in America, for which he gave up all he possessed—influence, the prospect of a brilliant career at home, friends, fortune, and health.
This colony, bought strip by strip in honest treaty with the Indians, developed more quickly than any other. It was a home for refugees of every shade of opinion. Friends at no time formed more than half the population, but their influence was supreme.
Two years after the settlement of the State[20] Penn writes that two general assemblies had been held with such concord and despatch that they sat but three weeks, and at least seventy laws were passed without one dissent in any material thing.
For thirty years there was peace, liberty, and refuge for all, and an unrivalled prosperity. We may picture Penn, in the days of witch crazes, holding his one trial of a witch, and establishing the precedent of finding the woman guilty of the common fame of being a witch, but not guilty as indicted; and in another characteristically Friendly moment refusing, when greatly in need of funds, six thousand pounds for a trade monopoly which would have violated his principle of fairness to the Indians. Free thought was encouraged, and a little group of distinguished men appeared in Philadelphia. The final downfall of Friendly administration in Pennsylvania was the result of the refusal on the part of the majority of the Quakers to adjust their principles to the demand sent to the Quaker legislature for means to proceed against the French and the Indians.