The form of organization of the meeting in the Society of Friends was due to the needs then existing, and was planned, even to the smallest unit, by the founder of the society. The chief purposes of the organization, when first begun, were (1) moral and religious discipline of members, (2) assistance to the poor among their number, and (3) to protect themselves against the oppression of outsiders (function of the meeting on sufferings). The functions of the higher meeting (yearly) were chiefly advisory in character, while those of the lower meetings (preparative) were to work out the details. Educationally, the yearly meeting exercised an influence very early by its frequent recommendations and the literature sent to the smaller individual meetings. This rôle was likewise assumed by the Burlington and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.[73] This close relationship between the meetings of different order and the educational influence is in part shown by extracts taken from the meeting records.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS OF QUAKER LEADERS
Criticism inevitable; beneficial
Any institution one may name has its adverse critics. The basis of their criticism is often ill-defined; it is sometimes fact, sometimes imagination; it may spring from a knowledge of truth, or possibly from ignorance.
Some criticism based on misunderstanding
Certain doctrines
Quakerism has had many critics and the effect of wise criticism may be seen in some of the changes from the old to the modern Quakerism. Much of that which was unjust and without foundation of fact, failed to have any effect whatever. But though the effect on the institution may have been nil, it occurs in some cases that the criticism still lives in the popular mind and is accorded a good degree of authenticity. By those better informed it may not be so considered. It is with one of these criticisms, concerning the attitude of Quakers toward education, that we are chiefly concerned in this chapter. Due chiefly to a misinterpretation of the doctrine of inner light and its application, which was mentioned in the first chapter, there arose an erroneous conception of the Quakers’ attitude towards education. This conception is not always constant; it varies now to this side, now to that, but does not cease to persist. In order that this criticism may be put as clearly as possible before the reader, use is made here of a quotation from the works of S. H. Cox, at one time a member of Friends, who expresses with clearness the opinion of a very considerable group of critics.
The criticism offered by S. H. Cox
But there is one feature of the system of Friends which deserves a recognition here—its inimical regard to classical and scientific learning. I do not say that all Friends are thus hostile, or that they are all alike hostile to liberal learning but I charge this hostility on the system. That such is its character, appears from the denunciation, the indiscriminate proscription of Barclay, and that not in a few places in his book. It appears in the general hostility of Friends to all colleges and seminaries where the elevated branches are thoroughly taught. Not one young Friend out of five hundred, even in this free country, ever obtains a liberal education in fact or in name; certainly never becomes graduated in the arts at any chartered institution, and where an instance occurs, it is always attended with special difficulties. They have no college of liberal science in the world! Some, I know, of the suspected worldly sort in Philadelphia have proposed and would have forwarded so excellent an object, but they were always awed into despondency by the unlettered, all-knowing light within. And in this, their obsequiousness was quite consistent, for if schools, academies, and universities are all in their nature wrong, and as such forbidden of God, it is certainly right to desist totally and at once from the prosecution of their cause! Incidental evils they will always include, but the system is not chargeable with these, unless in its nature it approves and fosters them. There will always be, perhaps, hypocrites at the communion table but christianity does not make them, and the purest ministry of the gospel will often become a savor of death unto death, but sinners themselves and not such a ministry are to blame for the consequence. And so the best organized system of intellectual education that the world has seen has often presented the appalling spectacle of profligate and wicked students perverting its privileges. But what of that? Shall we burn our colleges? Why not our primary school houses too? What beneficient institution, what bounty of the blessed God is not perverted and abused in this naughty world....[74]