Quaker Hill / A Sociological Study

by Warren H. Wilson

CHAPTER III.

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN TRANSITION.

In religion the solidarity of this country place has been best shown in the fact that, during most of its history, it has had but one church at a time. For one hundred years there was the undivided meeting. From 1828 to 1885 the Hicksite—Unitarian, branch of the Friends held the Old Meeting House, with diminishing numbers. The Orthodox had their smaller meeting house around the corner, attended by decreasing gatherings. In 1880 was organized Akin Hall, in which till 1892 were held religious services in the summer only. Since that time religious services have been held there all the year round. The early united meeting had a membership of probably two hundred, and audiences of three hundred were not uncommon.

The church in Akin Hall, named "Christ's Church, Quaker Hill," had in 1898 a membership of sixty-five, and audiences of fifty to two hundred and fifty, according to the occasion and the time of year. In the past the general attitude of the community toward religion has been reverent and sympathetic. It is no less so to-day.

Of religious ceremonies the Quakers claim to have none. But they are fond of ceremoniousness beyond most men. The very processes by which they abolish forms are made formal processes. They have ceremonies the intent of which is to free them from ceremony. The meeting is called to order by acts ever so simple, and dismissed by two old persons shaking hands; but these are invariable and formal as a doxology and a benediction. They receive a stranger in their own way. A visiting minister is honored with fixed propriety. An expelled member is read out of meeting with stated excommunicatory maledictions.

Worship has had on Quaker Hill a large place in characterizing the social complexion of the people. By this, I mean that the peculiarities of the Quaker worship, now a thing of the past, have engraved themselves upon character. Those peculiarities are four: the custom of silence; the non-employment of music, or conspicuous color or form; the separate place provided for women; the assertion and practice of individualism.

The silence of the Quaker meeting is far from negative. It is not a mere absence of words. It is a discipline enforced upon the lower elements of human nature, and a reserve upon the intellectual elements, in order that God may speak. I think that in this silence of the meeting we discover the working of the force that has moulded individual character on Quaker Hill and organized the social life. For this silence is a vivid experience, "a silence that may be felt." The presence and influence of men are upon one, even if that of God be not. The motionless figures about one subtly penetrate one's consciousness, though not through the senses. They testify to their belief in God when they do not speak better than they could with rhetoric or eloquence. It is the influence of many, not of one; yet of certain leaders who are the organs of this impression, and of the human entity made of many who in communion become one. The self-control of it breathes power, and principle, and courage. One would expect a Quaker meeting to exert an imperious rule upon the community. It is an expression of the majesty of an ideal. I believe that the Quaker Hill meeting has been able to accomplish whatever it has put its hand to do. The only pity is that the meeting tried to do so little.

The original religious influence of Quakerism, carried through all changes and transformation, was a pure and relentless individualism. It was the doctrine that the Spirit of God is in every heart of man, absolutely every one; resisted indeed by some, but given to each and all. With honest consistency it must be said, the Quakers applied this—and this it was they did apply—to the status of women, to the question of slavery, to the civic relations of men. This it was that made Fox and Penn refuse to doff their hats before judge, or titled lord, or the king himself.

The character of the common mind of the community has been much influenced by the fact that the Quakers made no use of color, form and music either in worship or in private life; that they also idealized the absence of these. They made it a matter of noble devotion. In nothing do local traditions abound more than in stories of the stern repression of the aesthetic instincts. One ancient Quakeress, coming to the well-set table at a wedding, in the old days, beheld there a bunch of flowers of gay colors, and would not sit down until they were removed. Nor could the feast go on until the change was effected. So great was the power of authority, working in the grooves of "making believe," that those who might have tolerated the bouquet in silence, as well as those who had sensations of pleasure in it, supported her opposition.

I have spoken elsewhere of the effect of this century-long repression and ignoring of the aesthetic movements of the human spirit, in banking the fires of literary culture in this population. The present generation, all inheriting the examples of ancestors ruled in such unflinching rigor, has in none of its social grouping any true sense of color or of the beauty of color. Neither in the garments of those who have laid off the Quaker garb, nor in the decorations of the houses is there a lively sense of the beauty of color. None of the women of Quaker extraction has a sense of color in dress; nor can any of them match or harmonize colors. I except, of course, those whose clothing is directly under the control of the city tailor or milliner. The general effect of costume and of the decorations of a room, in the population who get their living on the Hill, is that of gray tones, and drab effects; not mere severity is the effect, but poverty and want of color.