The two rival and ever-competing definitions of reality both find expression. Each must tolerate the other. Reaction takes place without bitterness. Again and again there is revealed the fruitfulness of that spirit which believes in and seeks goodness, beauty, and truth—these alone, and these in all. Recent statistics have shown[23] that women, though always numerically superior in the society, have supplied a comparatively small number of both officers and ministers, and of clerks relatively none, and that, moreover, this deficit is gradually increasing, and is not made good by any sufficiently compensating output of public work outside the society.
It has been suggested that we may presume, in consideration of these facts, that women Friends have by this time availed themselves of their opportunity to the full extent of their capacities, and that the result, as far as government is concerned, is that the conduct of large public meetings is almost entirely entrusted to men.
In the correspondence that followed the publication of the statistics certain modifying statements were made. It was suggested that of late years the increasing membership had brought in women who were without the Quaker tradition—a fact which would account for the growing deficit of feminine activities. Attention was also drawn to the unseen mass of feminine initiative, the result of which is credited to men.
It is, of course, evident that if we begin by assuming that equality of opportunity shall result in identity of function, if we believe, moreover, that government is merely a matter of machinery, and ministry can be estimated by the counting of heads and of syllables, we shall be led to the conclusion that, while the more obvious results of the Quaker experiment may do something towards disarming haunting fears as to the safety of acknowledging the full spiritual and temporal fellowship of women, it does comparatively little to justify the claims and expectations of the feminists in general.
But whatever standard we apply, however we may choose to approach the question of the public ministry of women; however, further, we may estimate the value of the fact that all the practical business of the society is talked out in their hearing, that measures are sometimes initiated, sometimes abolished, invariably commented on, modified and steered by them, we cannot form any idea of what Quakerism has done for women or women for Quakerism without some consideration of an aspect of the matter hitherto almost entirely neglected by historians and commentators, which yet, in the opinion of the present writer, may be claimed not only as giving some part of the explanation of the relative inactivity of women in the more obvious transactions of the society, but as being a very substantial part of the clue to the rapid development and the healthy persistence of Quaker culture—and that is the profound reaction upon women of the changed conditions of home-life; for amongst the Quakers the particularized home, with its isolated woman cut off from any responsible share in the life of “the world” and associating mainly with other equally isolated women, is unknown. A woman born into a Quaker family inherits the tradition of a faith which is of the heart rather than of the head, of intuition rather than intellectation, of life primarily rather than of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem particularly suited to the development of her religious consciousness; and she comes, moreover, into an atmosphere where her natural sense of direct relationship to life, her instinctive individual aspiration and sense of responsibility, instead of being either cancelled or left dormant, or thwarted and trained to run, so to say, indirectly, is immediately confirmed and fostered.
She is in touch with, has, as we have seen, her stake and her responsibility in regard to every single activity of the meeting of which she is a member. Through every meeting and through every home, moreover, there is the cleansing and ventilating ebb and flow of the life of the whole society, and this not merely by means of the circulation of matter relating to the deliberations and the work of the society, but also in the form of personal contact. Beyond the exchange of hospitality in connection with monthly and quarterly meetings for worship and for business, there is a constant flow of itinerating ministers and others of both sexes between meetings either on special individual concerns or in the interest of some single branch of the society’s work.
Simple easy intercourse between family and family, meeting and meeting, is part of the fabric of Quaker home-life. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps just because amongst the Quakers, in a very true and deep sense, the world is home and home is the world, because, in other words, the inner is able without obstruction to flow out and realize itself in the outer, the sense of family-life, of home, and fireside, is particularly sweet and strong. The breaking of family ties is rare. The failure that leads to the divorce court is practically unknown.
We may look with wonder and admiration at the great figures amongst Quaker women, upon those who built their lives into the first spreadings of the message; upon those who went, under the urgency of their faith, alone into strange lands, where means of communication were the scantiest; upon the persecuted and martyred women, the women of initiative and organizing genius; upon Anne Knight of Chelmsford pioneering female suffrage in England, founding the first political association for women; upon Elizabeth Fry, after a full career as house-keeper, mother, and social worker, turning, late in life, to the prisons of England, and transforming them, so to say, with her own hands. But, perhaps, it is in the daily home-life of the society that the distinctively feminine side of doctrinized and organized Quakerism reaches its fairest development.
CHAPTER VII
THE PRESENT POSITION
The counter-agitation[24] brought forth in England by the American Hicksite movement, ended, after prolonged discussion and stress, in a decisive readjustment of the Society of Friends. There were numerous secessions into the Evangelical church and the Plymouth Brotherhood. There were separations of those who followed Elias Hicks in his repudiation of doctrines and creeds, and of those who favoured Wilbur in protesting against “book religion,” reasserting the doctrines of the Quaker fathers, and insisting on simplicity of life; but the society as a whole was swept forward, under the leadership of Joseph John Gurney (brother of Elizabeth Fry), by the invading wave of Protestant evangelicalism. Gurney, coming of old Quaker stock, though religious and pious and full of zeal for the salvation of the world, never grasped the essentials of Quakerism. He had no touch of the intuitive genius which makes the mystic. Every line he has written betrays the Protestant biblicist, the man who puts the verbal revelation before any other whatsoever. He did not repudiate the Fathers, but he denied that they had ever questioned the supreme authority of the scriptures as the guide of mankind.