[135] See page [139] of this book.
CHAPTER XVII.
Three Sermons Reviewed.
We have reached the point where it would seem in order to consider the matter contained in some of the sermons preached by Elias Hicks, in order to determine, if we can, what there was about the matter or the manner of his ministry, which contributed to the controversy, personal and theological, which for several years disturbed the Society of Friends.
The trouble was initiated, and for some time agitated, by comparatively few people. Two or three Friends began talking about what Elias said, from memory. Later they took long-hand notes of his sermons, in either case using isolated and disconnected sentences and expressions. Taken from their association with the balance of the sermon, and passed from mouth to mouth by critics, they assumed an exaggerated importance, and stood out boldly as centers of controversy.
All of the evidence goes to show that little attempt was made to give printed publicity to these discourses, until the preacher had been made famous by the warmth and extent of the controversy over the character of his preaching.
A volume of twelve sermons preached by Elias Hicks at various points in Pennsylvania in 1824 was published the following year in Philadelphia by Joseph and Edward Parker. These discourses were taken in short-hand by Marcus T. C. Gould. Two years later, in 1827, Gould began the publication of "The Quaker," which contained sermons by Elias, and a few other ministers in the Society. In his advertisement of the first volume of this publication, after stating the fact of the controversy which was rapidly dividing the Society of Friends in two contending parties, Gould says:
"At this important crisis, the reporter and proprietor of the following work was employed by the joint consent of both parties, to record in meeting the speeches of the individual whose doctrines were by some pronounced sound, and by others unsound. Since that period he has continued to record the language of the same speaker, and others who stand high as ministers in the Society, and the members have continued to read his reports, as the only way of arriving at the truth, in relation to discourses which were variously represented."