CHAPTER XV.
First Trouble in Philadelphia.
Transferring the story of the opposition to the ministry of Elias Hicks to Philadelphia, it would appear that its first public manifestation occurred in 1819. During this year he made his fifth somewhat extended religious visit to the meetings within the bounds of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Elias was attending the monthly meeting then held in the Pine Street meeting-house, and obtained liberty to visit the women's meeting. While absent on this concern, the men's meeting did the unprecedented thing of adjourning, the breaking up of the meeting being accomplished by a few influential members. For a co-ordinate branch of a meeting for discipline to close while service was being performed in the allied branch in accord with regular procedure was considered irregular, if not unwarranted. The real inspiring cause for this conduct has been stated as follows by a contemporary writer:
"An influential member of this meeting who had abstained from the produce of slave labor came to the conclusion that this action was the result of his own will. He therefore became very sensitive and irritable touching references to the slavery question, and very bitter against the testimony of Elias Hicks. It is believed that this was one of the causes which led to the affront of Elias Hicks in the Pine Street Meeting aforesaid."[114]
[114] "A review of the general and particular causes which have produced the late disorders and divisions in the Yearly Meeting of Friends, held in Philadelphia," James Cockburn, 1829, p. 60.
It was claimed in the famous New Jersey chancery case[115] by the Orthodox Friends, that there was precedent for adjourning a meeting while a visiting minister in proper order was performing service in a co-ordinate branch of the Society. Be that as it may, the weight of evidence warrants the conclusion that the incident at Pine Street was intended as an affront to Elias Hicks. The conservative elements in Philadelphia had evidently made up their minds that the time had come to visit their displeasure upon the Long Island preacher.
[115] Foster's report, many times referred to in these pages, is a two-volume work, containing the evidence and the exhibits in a case in the New Jersey Court of Chancery. The examinations began Sixth month 2, 1830, in Camden, N. J., before J. J. Foster, Master and Examiner in Chancery, and continued from time to time, closing Fourth month 13, 1831. The case was brought to determine who should possess the school fund, of the Friends' School, at Crosswick, N. J. The decision awarded the fund to the Orthodox.
The incident referred to above must have occurred in the latter part of Tenth month. Elias says in his Journal, after mentioning his arrival in Philadelphia: "We were at two of their monthly meetings and their quarterly meeting."[116] He makes no mention of the unpleasant occurrence.