THE INNER LIFE

 BY

 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

 THE AGENCY OF EVIL HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES SWEDENBORG THE BETTER LAND DORA GREENWELL THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL THE OLD WAY HAVERFORD COLLEGE

THE INNER LIFE

THE AGENCY OF EVIL. 

From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for1843. 

IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, sowritten over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophetsand inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a futurestate of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest andmost difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin ofevil, --the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin andsuffering and discord, --the wrong which all men see in others and feelin themselves, --the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery. Asuperficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena ofman's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but thethoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes. Thegrossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dreadof an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from ournature. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passingbefore its face, the form whereof is not discerned. 

It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atonefor the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniouslyconsigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, andwitchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detectedimpostures, "Over the backside of the world far off, Into a limbo broad and large, and called The paradise of fools, "--

that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routineof their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics andunbelievers among us. Yet it must be owned that, if they have not themarvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others. In certainstates of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professionalgarb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imaginationgoes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. Wethink of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, withDruid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is thepriest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of thesupernatural and the reality of the unseen, --a man of mystery, walking inthe shadow of the ideal world, --by profession an expounder of spiritualwonders? Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft anddemoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to hisfaith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hintsat, which has modified more or less all the religious systems andspeculations of the heathen world, --the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhonof the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew, Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian, --evil in theuniverse of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence, --initself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural processof imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believedof the spiritual world and supernatural agency? That fearful being withhis tributaries and agents, --"the Devil and his angels, "--how awfully herises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers! Howhe glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent, " on the immortal canvasof Milton and Dante! What a note of horror does his name throw into thesweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches. What strange, dark fancies areconnected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grandjuries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed"at the instigation of the Devil"!

How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day, at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that withwhich I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim'sProgress. Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudalextremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating thetremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddledover the whole breadth of the way. " There was another print of the enemywhich made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of anold, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady, (who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kindenough to edify her young visitors, ) containing a solemn account of thefate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverentdeclaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to thelower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwithcommenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly, without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legswere worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demonfiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels. " He would have answered verywell to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter. 

To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil weare doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft andpossession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin ofevil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being, --the antagonism ofgood. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselvesconstrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which arealways associated with undefined power and the ability to harm. "TheDevil, " says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhatfaded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly. "

The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created andexistent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion. The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a dividedsovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, indiscoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, andwhich was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but Henowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolutepower and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whomare all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil, therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actualexistence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understandthe secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discordbecome the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes ofthe Infinite Parent. Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the darkmystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye ofhumble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity, justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness atall. "

"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformistRobinson. "I believe in God, " was the reply; "don't you?"

Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devilsdo wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are, ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded. " Origen, in his Platonicspeculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, byrepentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowedto the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr was ofthe opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and theCabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded. One isirresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to theDeil_, by Burns:--

 "But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben! Gin ye wad take a thought and mend, Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken-- Still has a stake I'm was to think upon yon den Fen for your sake. "

The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and hisministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions andliable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evilspirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses fromthenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp whohas lost his sting. 

"The Devil, " said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in adiscourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks. "Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the seriousconsideration of all who "tarry long at the wine, " that, in that state ofthe drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in someshape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, asWinslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than toothers. " I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has hadbitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this timedevoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as theeditor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vividimpression on my mind. He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, forthe sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up hisabode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on theseaboard. Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself thewhole time in a state of semi-intoxication. One night he stood leaningagainst a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; thewaves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vesselsvaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream. He was startled bya voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _"You have murdered a man; theofficers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!"_ Everysyllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something inthe hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribablydreadful. He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clearmoonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victimof illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentaryhorror. Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glassof brandy, and retired to his chamber. He had scarcely lain his head onthe pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper, repeating the same words. He describes his sensations at this time asinconceivably fearful. Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidstthe confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself. Hadhe not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record, actually murdered some one? And was not this a warning from Heaven?Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated, with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!" Hewalked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, tothe head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again heheard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"

Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and foundhimself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement, or cellar, where he had never been before. The voice still beckoned himonward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, againstwhich he leaned for a moment. He heard it again, apparently only two orthree yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers areclose behind you; follow me!" Putting one foot forward while his handstill grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficultyrecovered himself. Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he foundhimself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, fillednearly to the top with water. The sudden shock of this discovery brokethe horrible enchantment. The whisperer was silent. He believed, at thetime, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of adiabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollectionof that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universaltempter. 

Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advanceguard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel. The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts ofthe Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's. Theystood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like thegamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayerand fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of hereties, "beforethe Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children ofperdition, Powah wizards, " and "the foul fiend. " In their grand oldwilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes, hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides ofmountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altarsof a giant world, --with its early summer greenness and the many-coloredwonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer showerhad fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which themisty day of their cold island was as moonlight, --they saw no beauty, they recognized no holy revelation. It was to them terrible as theforest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain. Everyadvance step they made was upon the enemy's territory. And one has onlyto read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy wasto them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figmentof a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating betweenthe sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of meanmischief; now a "tricksy spirit, " disturbing the good-wife's platters orsoiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointingits thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "howelse is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?" Whatwas it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lipsof Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to theirwits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evilfinger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who elsegave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such ahold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupledto hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? Tothe vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the lightwantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven footto the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopiedgatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects, " as Dr. Moore calls them? Perilous and glorious was it, under thesecircumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up theirstout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror. Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry. The heroesof old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads, and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mentionin comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnalsword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spiritsthat live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man, "--encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritualarmorer of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance asthe legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando inAmadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on himin his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, andspiritual champion of "the chosen people, " stood ever ready for battle, with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches ofthe enemy. No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined againsthim; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shutup the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of thepresidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay handson his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girlflewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is hisaccount of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for thepurpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinateSadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy isthe nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl, " who was choked inattempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilentQuaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctorwas idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite hisdiatribes against witches and familiar spirits!

 [The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period, emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser superstitions of their times. William Penn, indeed, had a law in his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its absurdity. George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the power of God, and feared no such thing. "

 The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield, " says George Fox (one trusts he does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour, and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off. " In his account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her husband. "

 Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians. The first of the sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, --the latter a young girl, --were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's mark on them. In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and wolves. ]

All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and hisdemons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on SalemHill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured withplanks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and hislife from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to awhole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sickdream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We maylaugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must alsopity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion inits own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule, their spell-bound generation, --the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone, the English Scot, and the New England Calef, --deserve high honors as thebenefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life asinfidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they utteredlived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divinecommission and Godspeed. 

 "The oracles are dumb; No voice nor hideous humRuns through the arched roof in words deceiving; Apollo from his shrine Can now no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphns leaving. "

Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror, this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation ofmotiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The onceimposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church. Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed underplanks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic nowlaughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of theAll-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake ofabused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when weconsider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professedChristendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual andtemporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in adespair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliancewith tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes ofterror, --the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, andthat torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satanof the future, --a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash andready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority, --our toilingbrothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convertGod's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happinessof all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actualterrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm ofRhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightestdegree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution, --theaccountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body, --the truthof which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as thenecessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of thesoul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that themany are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit, to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, inreturn for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can havegracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Betteris the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and moreacceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission ofslavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness, " whichhas been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as ofold in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace onearth, and good-will to men, " in the serene atmosphere of that "perfectlove which casteth out fear, " smiles at the terrors which throng the sickdreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, andstartle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor. 

There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances, --_DieKohlerfamilie_. The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in itsbloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, everincreasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thoughtin the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patientwatchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentlevisitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, attimes hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating thebushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely, such as the soul may conceive, but no words express. He felt its powerin the depths of his being, --felt it like the mystic breathing of theSpirit of God. "

The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in allsincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft anddiabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satanand in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, woulddiverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights tosee these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attemptingagainst the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies fromprofane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtfulScripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected andconvicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretchedon the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver ofscience. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, andnecessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infiniteSpirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena ofoutward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, underdifferent names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful ofevery religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them muchanxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopelesschampionship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" ofMather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part ofsane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled inits own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worldsand thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is stillover and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be theinheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holydeathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises, starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences thanthe poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught toreverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness, and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercyof an overruling Providence, --walking by faith through the shadow andmystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be hisapparent allotment, --

 "God's greatness flows around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness His rest. "

It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith andits "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism andcredulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, ifpossible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own timeregarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, andprofessing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of agodless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion ascant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison withsuch, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion stillfeels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whomGod speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Betteris it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancingShaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith, than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look uponourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization, --barnacles on adead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earthgazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father, " and tothe worm, "Thou art my sister. "

 HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES. 

 [1844. ]

AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Pauland Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasuresof Tombs, --a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing andeloquent language, its vindication. "There is, " says he, "a voluptuousmelancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, likeevery other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two oppositeprinciples, --from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of ourimmortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. Atomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It firstpresents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image ofeverlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment ofa blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger andstronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was avirtuous character. 

"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue, that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting. From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects thathave been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions oflove arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is thatwe are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes ofan infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that weare melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid torepose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reasonof her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is noneed of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, themore energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. Theyproduce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique ratherthan modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, withthe attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in thecountry principally that their impression makes itself felt in a verylively manner. A simple, unoruamented grave there causes more tears toflow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is thatgrief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself withall the effects of Nature, --with the dawning of the morning, with themurmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness ofthe night. "

Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. Itis a beautiful location for a "city of the dead, "--a tract of some fortyor fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, andcovered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak isconspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and ismarked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "familylots. " It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills, its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even asolitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befitsthe place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of thegreat lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frostedfoliage of the autumnal forest. 

Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and BostonRailroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standingthere in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushingalong their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity, --theyoung, the beautiful, the gay, --busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middleyears, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs, hurrying on, on, --car after car, --like the generations of man sweepingover the track of time to their last 'still resting-place. 

It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favoriteresort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger amongthese flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken lightupon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds inthese leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is thegentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad, --a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in thelanguage of Wordsworth, --

 "In youth we love the darkling lawn, Brushed by the owlet's wing; Then evening is preferred to dawn, And autumn to the spring. Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness. "

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decoratedtheir grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popularresort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, throughwhich the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, andbeneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse throughthe long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happyindifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met atthe Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along, apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full, perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves thestern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlandedmounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presenceof the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silencedand rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me, and involuntarily pays:

 "The deep reverence taught of old, The homage of man's heart to death. "

Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remindme that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leavesand sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listenedto the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comesthe saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, thatthese trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fallupon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds andthe ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closedforever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed tolook upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seemsstrange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisitemetaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to thissentiment:--

 "Alas! though I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow. 

 "Not less the bee will range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells. "

"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of theIdumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad whenthey can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestlydesireth the shadow. " Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain, to the long afflicted and the hopeless, --rest on the calm bosom of ourcommon mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused withlife's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the wearyeyes which "have seen evil, and not good, " the everlasting shadow. 

Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery, --a curtain lifted onlyon one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemnshadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknownstate; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal themysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; andwhere is he?"

Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without ananswer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness alight is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a landof darkness and where the light is as darkness. " The presence of aserene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowdedburial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Himwho awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb atBethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. " Weknow not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not whatit is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in thatdark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footstepslingers in the path. Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemerin His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He whoordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spiritwhen its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which Ihave elsewhere used, --when Time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know No fearful change nor sudden wonder, Nor sink the weight of mystery under, But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow. 

 And all we shrink from now may seem No new revealing; Familiar as our childhood's stream, Or pleasant memory of a dream, The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing. 

 Serene and mild the untried light May have its dawning; As meet in summer's northern night The evening gray and dawning white, The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning. 

 SWEDENBORG

 [1844. ]

THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one isalmost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon, --theBenares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses, stalls for the sale of relics. A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelievedby awe and reverence, --a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise. " I grow weary of seeingman and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse, answering to the same bell-call. A nightmare of materialism broods overall. I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets likethat of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth, --thatthe Lord alone is God. 

Yet is there not another side to the picture? High over soundingworkshops spires glisten in the sun, --silent fingers pointing heavenward. The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processesthan cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving. Each human being who watchesbeside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is asolemn thing to live. Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace, outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretchbeyond the horizon of time into eternity. Death is here. The graveyardutters its warning. Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence andmystery. Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all. Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, feltrather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearfulquestions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet, --"If a mandie, shall he live again?" "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizinginquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?" "Who shall deliver me from thebody of this death?"

As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes ofour many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have theirrepresentatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with "steeplehouses, " most of them of the Yankee order of architecture. TheEpiscopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street, --a pile of darkstone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows. A plat of grass liesbetween it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-houseintended for the minister, built of the same material as the church andsurrounded by trees and shrubbery. The attention of the stranger is alsoattracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope ofBelvidere, --one of Irving's a "shingle palaces, " painted in imitation ofstone, --a great wooden sham, "whelked and horned" with pine spires andturrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast ofthe Apocalypse. 

In addition to the established sects which have reared their visiblealtars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet markedthe boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains oftheir sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and "upper chambers" and inthe solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and, wrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain theintegrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation. 

Not long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, Ivisited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg. Passing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached thestream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Millsand mingles its waters with the Concord. The hall in which the followersof the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, likethose of "the people called Quakers, " and looks out upon the still woodsand that "willowy stream which turns a mill. " An organ of small size, yet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filledthe place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plaindesk, placed modestly by the side of it. The congregation have noregular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers, and selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the laymembers. A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, wasread, and apparently listened to with much interest. It was well writtenand deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church. I was impressed bythe gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience. There werehere no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of thepomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of thetruth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought themtogether. I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them, that here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the verycentre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted andundoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of theSwedish prophet, --revelations which look through all external and outwardmanifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the worldof sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literallyunmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life. 

The character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of thepuzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology. A man remarkable forhis practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versedin all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he hasevolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system oftranscendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of cold and apparentlylifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forthlike blossoms on the rod of the Levite. A politician and a courtier, aman of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of thescience, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most naturallanguage, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritualworld, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonderat their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency. These remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerfulimagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, themarvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guardedchannels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as"facts. " His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seemto have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as wellas feeling. What he thought, that he saw. 

He relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidentsof a walk round his own city of Stockholm. One can almost see him in his"brown coat and velvet breeches, " lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel, or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headedcane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion inwalking. His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness andprobability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almostbordering on the ludicrous. In his Memorable Relations he manifestsnothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates ofparadise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos;nothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heavento heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe. Wecan scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;and the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances. We seem torecognize the "John Smiths, " and "Mr. Browns, " and "the old familiarfaces" of our mundane habitation. The evil principle in Swedenborg'spicture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor thatstern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but anaggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none savein the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses. " These small fry of devilsremind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, whoseem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who aremanifestly given over to believe a lie. Thus it is that the very"heavens" and "hells" of the Swedish mystic seem to be "of the earth, earthy. " He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with thematerial one. 

In this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt ananalysis of the great doctrines which underlie the "revelations" ofSwedenborg. His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to thereading and reflecting portion of the community. They are not unworthyof study; but, in the language of another, I would say, "EmulateSwedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, hisindependent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good andtrue; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no manyour master. "

 THE BETTER LAND. 

 [1844. ]

"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution, "said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in theQuarterly Review. 

He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the factof a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which thepresent stands to it. The actual nature and conditions of that life Hehas hidden from us, --no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us, --nocelestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us forthe wonders of the spiritual world. Hence imagination has a wide fieldfor its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradictthe revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved. 

We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love andreverence on earth. Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy theimposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship. There theMethodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by thestill waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes. The Quaker, inthe stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence inheaven. "

The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deeptones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harpsof the New Jerusalem. 

The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensualreflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people. 

The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, abeautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled withdeer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes, --the happyhunting-ground of souls. In a late letter from a devoted missionaryamong the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed abeautiful illustration of this belief. Near the Omaha mission-house, ona high luff, was a solitary Indian grave. "One evening, "says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had beenseeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction fromwhence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house. In amoment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and, turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer andsupplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detainthe splendid luminary from running his course. With his body leaningforward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a moststriking figure of sorrow and petition. It was solemnly awful. Heseemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how topray. "

A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, justbefore the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of anawfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of deathand eternity. 

The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth, seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinitepurity and happiness. A friend once related an incident concerning himwhich made a deep impression upon my mind. They had been travellingthrough a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to restbeneath a solitary tree. The Doctor lay for a long time, silentlylooking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the stillheavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as ifcommuning with himself in view of the wonders he described:--

 "O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen! O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between! O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses! O brightness on brightness! the pearl gate uncloses! O white wings of angels! O fields white with roses! O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"

The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the betterland are inspiring and beautiful. Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good instore for the righteous. Heaven is described as a quiet habitation, --arest remaining for the people of God. Tears shall be wiped away from alleyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neithershall there be any more pain. To how many death-beds have these wordsspoken peace! How many failing hearts have gathered strength from themto pass through the dark valley of shadows!

Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that itis the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience, the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as ofeternity. What is really momentous and all-important with us is thepresent, by which the future is shaped and colored. A mere change oflocality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul. Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerableas the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocencewould transform hell itself into heaven. 

DORA GREEN WELL. 

First published as an introduction to an American edition of thatauthor's _The Patience of Hope_. 

THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called inthe Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart ofChristendom. Our doors open of their own accord to receive them. For inthem we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, theDivine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out ofthem; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from thebloom of Paradise. So of books. There are volumes which perhaps containmany things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which ourreason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with acertain sweetness and savor of life. They have the Divine seal andimprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic withthe leaves which are for the healing of the nations. The meditations ofthe devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic andProtestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine underNumidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from hisbishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us inthe same language. The unknown author of that book which Luther lovednext to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home inthis present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as inthe heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century. For suchbooks know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetualfreshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experienceheart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, andthe inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. Thebent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in thisor a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation, --reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divinegoodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, thelife of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and thefellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwellingSpirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in ourhearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, orthe partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by humanspeculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able tosave unto the uttermost all who trust in Him. They insist upon simplefaith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; theyleave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion totake care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, thenecessary, and the permanent. 

With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volumeherewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes thelife and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bearsunmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of thetruth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, butpresent and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and itsbranches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divinelove; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to berepeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul, --theperennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, foreverold and forever new. It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, andholy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christianexperience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or movesguidingly forward. It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those whominister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to thevaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, toomuch the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it willfeel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style, the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and variedlearning which illustrates it. 

 ["The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil, and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than I once believed. "--Baxter. ]

To use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--

"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness ofnature here and there shine out from its lines, --a charm wanting whichmeditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too, there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by theway to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read, you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautifulhills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beautyinto the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing, amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenbornconsolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yetevermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it isstill haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeatingsnatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, tojoin the great river of God's truth. . . . 

"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude, when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master. The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils forrefreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words. To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of thepatience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend thislittle volume most heartily and earnestly. "

_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication inEdinburgh, some two years ago. I was at once impressed by itsextraordinary richness of language and imagery, --its deep and solemn toneof meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency, --philosophy warm and glowing with love. It will, perhaps, be less thefault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able toeliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtlemetaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks toexpress, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation, many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vaguepossibilities of the highest life. All may not be able to find in someof her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparentto her own mind. She startles us, at times, by her novel applications offamiliar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritualintuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well. If therendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustrationand comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying, that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be aliketrue in themselves considered. "When one saith, Moses meant as I do, 'and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do, ' I ask, more reverently, 'Why notrather as both, if both be true?"

Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certainScriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Wayand the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays, withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him. "They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to humanweakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evilimaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or tosome disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodilyinfirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Fatherto perplex and mislead His children. The sun does not shine the lessbecause one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words ofAugustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone artnear to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seekthee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thycreation. " It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness, and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience bythe light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape thedreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us indubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, throughmiraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others bemystified by it to their eternal loss. 

I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader andwriter, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse andhesitancy over some of these pages. But it is impossible for me to makeone to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or aScriptural rendering. On the grave and awful themes which she discusses, I have little to say in the way of controversy. I would listen, ratherthan criticise. The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to meoften like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yetnot without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slightbitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt attimes that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease toedify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. Let not Moses nor the prophetsspeak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightenerof all. I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let allteachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thoualone to me. "

The writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication, announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtfulChristians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven. She hasrecently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judgeas Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_, thus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--

"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, throughsuch deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness stilldeeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not besurprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, apoet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our ownCowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearlessspeculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and allbut unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wanderthrough eternity, ' which increases every time we take up that wonderfullittle book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount oftrue poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand. There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness andprivacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to theseremarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own. With noeffort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmostthoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, asgladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of thecentral depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. The waters arecopious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid andunforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimessad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that ofthe deep sea. 

"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extractsfrom the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems. Inreading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, notonly of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble, --a likeness of the spirit, notof the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to hermind, it is Wordsworth, --the greatest of all our century's poets, both inhimself and in his power of making poets. "

In the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will besufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back andread over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metricalwritings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief piecesand extracts from the longer poems. 

Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--

 ASCENDING. 

They who from mountain-peaks have gazed uponThe wide, illimitable heavens have said, That, still receding as they climbed, outspread, The blue vault deepens over them, and, oneBy one drawn further back, each starry sunShoots down a feebler splendor overheadSo, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, ledAlong Faith's living way to Thee, have wonA nearer access, up the difficult trackStill pressing, on that rarer atmosphere, When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack, We see Thee drawn within a widening sphereOf glory, from us further, further back, --Yet is it then because we are more near. 

 LIFE TAPESTRY. 

Top long have I, methought, with tearful eyePored o'er this tangled work of mine, and musedAbove each stitch awry and thread confused;Now will I think on what in years gone byI heard of them that weave rare tapestryAt royal looms, and hew they constant useTo work on the rough side, and still peruseThe pictured pattern set above them high;So will I set my copy high above, And gaze and gaze till on my spirit growsIts gracious impress; till some line of love, Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;Nor look too much on warp or woof, provideHe whom I work for sees their fairer side!

 HOPE. 

When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and howThou followest on our steps, a coaxing childOft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled, Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow, And red, ripe lips for kisses: even nowThou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild, Who led God's chosen people through the wild, And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thouThat bringest waters from the Rock, with breadOf angels strewing Earth for us! like himThy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;But still with milk and honey-droppings fed, Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair, Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there

There is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--

 GONE. 

Alone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was awareOf Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;

A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and diesSo soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;

And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was awareOf Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;

As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prestBoth hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast, In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray, For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;

"A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stairThat leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there

"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim, (So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name

"She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way. 

"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within theGate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;

"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy, holy, ' so that now I know not if she prays;

"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath goneFrom Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"

The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-playful strain of moralizing:--

 SEEKING. 

"And where, and among what pleasant places, Have ye been, that ye come againWith your laps so full of flowers, and your facesLike buds blown fresh after rain?"

"We have been, " said the children, speakingIn their gladness, as the birds chime, All together, --"we have been seekingFor the Fairies of olden time;For we thought, they are only hidden, --They would never surely goFrom this green earth all unbidden, And the children that love them so. Though they come not around us leaping, As they did when they and the worldWere young, we shall find them sleepingWithin some broad leaf curled;For the lily its white doors closesBut only over the bee, And we looked through the summer roses, Leaf by leaf, so carefully. 

But we thought, rolled up we shall find themAmong mosses old and dry;From gossamer threads that bind them, They will start like the butterfly, All winged: so we went forth seeking, Yet still they have kept unseen;Though we think our feet have been keepingThe track where they have been, For we saw where their dance went flyingO'er the pastures, --snowy white. "

Their seats and their tables lying, O'erthrown in their sudden flight. And they, too, have had their losses, For we found the goblets whiteAnd red in the old spiked mosses, That they drank from over-night;And in the pale horn of the woodbineWas some wine left, clear and bright;"But we found, " said the children, speakingMore quickly, "so many things, That we soon forgot we were seeking, --Forgot all the Fairy rings, Forgot all the stories oldenThat we hear round the fire at night, Of their gifts and their favors golden, --The sunshine was so bright;And the flowers, --we found so manyThat it almost made us grieveTo think there were some, sweet as any, That we were forced to leave;As we left, by the brook-side lying, The balls of drifted foam, And brought (after all our trying)These Guelder-roses home. "

"Then, oh!" I heard one speakingBeside me soft and low, "I have been, like the blessed children, seeking, Still seeking, to and fro;Yet not, like them, for the Fairies, --They might pass unmourned awayFor me, that had looked on angels, --On angels that would not stay;No! not though in haste before themI spread all my heart's best cheer, And made love my banner o'er them, If it might but keep them here;They stayed but a while to rest them;Long, long before its close, From my feast, though I mourned and prest themThe radiant guests arose;And their flitting wings struck sadnessAnd silence; never moreHath my soul won back the gladness, That was its own before. No; I mourned not for the FairiesWhen I had seen hopes decay, That were sweet unto my spiritSo long; I said, 'If they, That through shade and sunny weatherHave twined about my heart, Should fade, we must go together, For we can never part!'But my care was not availing;I found their sweetness gone;I saw their bright tints paling;--They died; yet I lived on. 

"Yet seeking, ever seeking, Like the children, I have wonA guerdon all undreamt of

When first my quest begun, And my thoughts come back like wanderers, Out-wearied, to my breast;What they sought for long they found not, Yet was the Unsought best. For I sought not out for crosses, I did not seek for pain;Yet I find the heart's sore lossesWere the spirit's surest gain. "

In _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence, upon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--

 "But is there prayerWithin your quiet homes, and is there careFor those ye leave behind? I would addressMy spirit to this theme in humblenessNo tongue nor pen hath uttered or made knownThis mystery, and thus I do but guessAt clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?Ye may not quit your sweetness; in the VineMore firmly rooted than of old, your wineHath freer flow! ye have not changed, but grownTo fuller stature; though the shock was keenThat severed you from us, how oft belowHath sorest parting smitten but to showTrue hearts their hidden wealth that quickly growThe closer for that anguish, --friend to friendRevealed more clear, --and what is Death to rendThe ties of life and love, when He must fadeIn light of very Life, when He must bendTo love, that, loving, loveth to the end?

 "I do not deem ye lookUpon us now, for be it that your eyesAre sealed or clear, a burden on them liesToo deep and blissful for their gaze to brookOur troubled strife; enough that once ye dweltWhere now we dwell, enough that once ye feltAs now we feel, to bid you recognizeOur claim of kindred cherished though unseen;And Love that is to you for eye and earHath ways unknown to us to bring you near, --To keep you near for all that comes between;As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer, As distant friends, that see not, and yet share(I speak of what I know) each other's care, So may your spirits blend with ours!Above Ye know not haply of our state, yetLove Acquaints you with our need, and through a wayMore sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!

 "And even thus we meet, And even thus we commune! spirits freedAnd spirits fettered mingle, nor have needTo seek a common atmosphere, the airIs meet for either in this olden, sweet, Primeval breathing of Man's spirit, --Prayer!"

I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems, _The Reconciler_:--

 "Our dreams are reconciled, Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youthOf visions beautiful, and strange and wild;And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost stillAt once make clear these visions and fulfil;

Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme, Each mythic tale sublimeOf strength to save, of sweetness to subdue, Each morning dream the few, Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true. 

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

 "Thou, O FriendFrom heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own, Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!Each yearning deep and wide, Each claim, is justified;Our young illusions fail not, though they dieWithin the brightness of Thy Rising, kissedTo happy death, like early clouds that lieAbout the gates of Dawn, --a golden mistPaling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst. 

 "The World that puts Thee by, That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train, That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry, 'We will not have Thee over us to reign, 'Itself Both testify through searchings vainOf Thee and of its need, and for the goodIt will not, of some base similitudeTakes up a taunting witness, till its mood, Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tearIts own illusions grown too thin and bareTo wrap it longer; for within the gateWhere all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate, A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies, And he who answers not its questions dies, --Still changing form and speech, but with the sameVexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shameUpon the nations that with eager cryHail each new solver of the mystery;Yet he, of these the best, Bold guesser, hath but prestMost nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;True Champion, that hast wroughtOur help of old, and broughtMeat from this eater, sweetness from this strong. 

 "O Bearer of the keyThat shuts and opens with a sound so sweetIts turning in the wards is melody, All things we move among are incompleteAnd vain until we fashion them in Thee!We labor in the fire, Thick smoke is round about us; through the dinOf words that darken counsel clamors direRing from thought's beaten anvil, where withinTwo Giants toil, that even from their birthWith travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth, And wearied out her children with their keenUpbraidings of the other, till betweenThou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrongEach other?--ye are Brethren. ' Then these twainWill own their kindred, and in Thee retainTheir claims in peace, because Thy land is wideAs it is goodly! here they pasture free, This lion and this leopard, side by side, A little child doth lead them with a song;Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no moreDoth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore, For one did ask a Brother, one a King, So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest, Thou, Brother of our own from bonds releasedA Law of Liberty, A Service making free, A Commonweal where each has all in Thee. 

 "And not alone these wide, Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cryTheir meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;But all our instincts waking suddenlyWithin the soul, like infants from their sleepThat stretch their arms into the dark and weep, Thy voice can still. The stricken heart bereftOf all its brood of singing hopes, and left'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nestWith snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breastDoth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creepsUnto Thy side for shelter, finding thereThe wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weepsCalm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead CareHath looked until its thorns, no longer bare, Put forth pale roses. Pain on Thee doth pressIts quivering cheek, and all the weariness, The want that keep their silence, till from TheeThey hear the gracious summons, none besideHath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me, 'Tell forth their heavy secrets. 

 "Thou dost hideThese in Thy bosom, and not these alone, But all our heart's fond treasure that had grownA burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighedTo Thee in plenteous measure! none hath shownThat Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely madeAll joy of ours Thine own. 

 "Thou madest us for Thine;We seek amiss, we wander to and fro;Yet are we ever on the track Divine;The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slowTo lean on aught but that which it may see;So hath it crowded up these Courts belowWith dark and broken images of Thee;Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and showThy goodly patterns, whence these things of oldBy Thee were fashioned; One though manifold. Glass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul, Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole!"

No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberalquotations. Apart from their literary merit, they have a specialinterest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fullyillustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations. 

It has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that anobjection may be urged against the following treatise, as against allbooks of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individualfrom his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personalsolicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not takesufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love ofthe neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His lifeand teachings. This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one. For, ofa truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than thatafforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering abouthim, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, inthe very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while hisneighbors starve for lack of bread. But surely the benevolent unrest, the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering ofothers, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing tofear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignationto the Divine will. "The more piety, the more compassion, " says IsaacTaylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentredasceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widowand the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world, --whichdeals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God. Self-scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all tothe reformer and philanthropist. The spiritual warrior, like the youngcandidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatoryordeal of watching all night by his armor. 

Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among themost earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature ofChristianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence. They did not separate the two great commandments. Tauler strove withequal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfareof men. In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untoldhorrors of the "Black Plague, " he illustrated by deeds of charity andmercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Woolman's whole lifewas a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monasticpiety which bears the name. 

How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes ofthose who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of thepoor? How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paidlaborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretchesblaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with thedyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil! What a significancethere was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared beforehim, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beingsin as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separatebeing"! His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to havethought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the mostmiserable sinner to whom his compassion extended. As he did notlive, so neither did he die to himself. His prayer upon his death-bedwas for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simpletrust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and goldenstreets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touchingconcern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of thepaternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterancein ever-memorable words. 

In view of the troubled state of the country and the intensepreoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offeringthis volume to its publishers. But, on further reflection, it has seemedto me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in thechaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over theland, the contemplation of "things unseen which are eternal" might not beunwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, andthe trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voicecalling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and thespiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternalquietness which God giveth. I cannot but believe that, in the heat andglare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain tothe calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wingsof the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something ofconsolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary. For surelynever was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuaryof prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divinegoodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice andrenunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts notits proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for "peace in its day" atthe expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemnwords of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to thatof the degenerate Jew, --"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thybacksliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, andbitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not inthee, "--when "His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness, "and the hand heavy upon us which shall "turn and overturn until he whoseright it is shall reign, "--until, not without rending agony, the evilplant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have woundthemselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like thetree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression, rebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyedforever. 

AMESBURY, 1st 6th mo. , 1862. 

 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 

The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Reviewin Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle andpractice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which havesince more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude. 

I. 

 AMESBURY, 2d mo. , 1870. 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW. 

ESTEEMED FRIEND, --If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been anindifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religiousSociety. Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitousconcerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things wemay let go of old things too precious to be lost. Hence I have beenpleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fittingarticles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_. 

The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measuresand opinions, of impatience of all slow results. The world about usmoves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we haveenjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of ouropinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded. Our very right toexist as a distinct society is questioned. Our old literature--theprecious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--iscomparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications. Webear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silentmeetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of willand option. There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmasand expedients and practices of other sects. I speak only of admittedfacts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint. No one has lessright than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minordifferences of opinion. If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall notfind it a hard task to bear with them. 

But for myself I prefer the old ways. With the broadest possibletolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society ofFriends. My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of othersects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt likequarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull withme, side by side, at the rope of Reform. A very large proportion of mydearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learnedwith John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions. "But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my ownSociety, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity. Icheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives ofthose who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truertypes of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known andstill know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold thedoctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends. I am notblind to the shortcomings of Friends. I know how much we have lost bynarrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of externalobservances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting asconscience-keepers for others. We have not, as a society, been activeenough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is neverout of place. Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have beenspared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion. " It is in the decline ofpractical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with eachother for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substanceand spirit. Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doinggood among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with theDivine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, inthe true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really dofor ourselves. There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with aneye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until thisworld of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilantthanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!Peace on earth and good-will to men!"

It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age inwhich we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manlinessamong us. I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects. But, if welook at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in thecentral truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; inan attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that greatlaw of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for thehighest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy. If we didbut realize it, we are "set in a large place. "

"We may do all we will save wickedness. "

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. "

Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is "exceedingbroad. " As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal andcatholic of faiths. If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we arenot up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture andlove of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients ofthe truths of science and philosophy, --in a word, if we are not full-grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but inourselves. We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying toadjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects. By so doing we make atthe best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful, it is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith. If, forinstance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a writtencreed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I shouldprefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher, the like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, andintellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century oftheological manipulation in a Quaker "school of the prophets. " If I mustgo into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the bestarticle on sale, without regard to the label attached to it. 

I am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society. I feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member. And Ibear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends, who, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us, seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of thepractices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects. The greatapparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very stronglywith our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquirewhether the result of this activity is a truer type of practicalChristianity than is found in our select gatherings. I think Iunderstand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them. But it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not ingoing back to the "beggarly elements" from which our worthy ancestorscalled the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not insetting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol, and oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they wereintended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speakingand noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the "plainlanguage" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but inheeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ notmerely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity, but in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love forHim manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;and in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visitthe fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himselfunspotted from the world. "

In conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of myopinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I haveneither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whosedoctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whosehistory is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whoseusefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fullyassured. 

II. 

Having received several letters from dear friends in various sectionssuggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time orhealth to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way toacknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible ofthe Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether incommendation or dissent, they manifest? I think I may say in truth thatmy letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply toexpress a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was neverthelessreal. I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations andso-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate anddisunite. We have had too many divisions already. I intended no censureof dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy, notwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects. Thedomain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems thepart of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varyingexperiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as forthat youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often beeninstrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religiousprofession. It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entireuniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;and we should be careful that a rightful concern for "the form of soundwords" does not become what William Penn calls "verbal orthodoxy. " Wemust consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differentlyfrom different points of vision. Knowing our own weaknesses andlimitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations, expositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint andfeeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God. 

 "They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. "

Differing, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeedhave the "mind of Christ, " we shall rejoice in whatever of good is reallyaccomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than thosewhich we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lordrebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring themthat they that were not against Him were for Him. 

It would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindlyexpressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhatoverestimated the tendencies of things in our Society. I have no prideof opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness myerror of judgment. In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeatmy deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, forour own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures, without laying aside the principles and practice of our religiousSociety. I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as ourprivilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for theperformance of any duty which may be required of us. When truly calledto contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us, like the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowherebroken. 

I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony anda standard. I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and mostthoughtful members of other Christian sects. I know that any seriousdeparture from the original foundation of our Society would give pain tomany who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of ourtestimonies. They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do notsee that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophyand the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidencewill not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon theLight of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our ownsouls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inwardexperience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelationshall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of theHoly Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shallbe recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age ofrestless inquiry. In this belief my letter was written. I am sorry itdid not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that noconsideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer maylessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it. 

AMESBURY, 3d mo. , 1870. 

P. S. I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal ofthe Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia, where, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, Ifind much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate aprovidential opening for good. I confess to a lively and tender sympathywith my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who "wentabout doing good, " go forth into the highways and byways to gather up thelost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick andsuffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, attimes, their zeal goes beyond "reasonable service, " and although theimportance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and lovelose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on hisarmor boast like him who layeth it off. Any movement, however irregular, which indicates life, is better than the quiet of death. In theoverruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way forhealing. Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other, and this shaking of the balance may adjust it. 

JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL. 

Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work. 

To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficultof explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted byobscure and uneventful lives. Some great reform which lifts the world toa higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited inanxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to traceit back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link inthe chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, thedivine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understoodby his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself. The little onehas become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon. "Thekingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of themystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentalityDivine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath thehuman one. 

The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughoutthe world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth. A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evilwork of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse tothe life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whosevery existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of hisreligious society. 

It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal andethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention towhich they are manifestly entitled. In one of my last interviews withWilliam Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that theywere so little known. He had himself just read the book for the firsttime, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as hepronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography inthe language. He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classesof readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect. Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from BernardBarton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in hisletters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation. EdwardIrving pronounced it a godsend. Some idea of the lively interest whichthe fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in thebeautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary ofHenry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide andvaried culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to asermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather thanpromote belief:

"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading atthe same time! A perfect gem! His is a _schone Seele_, a beautifulsoul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisitepurity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings. Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still betterbook; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in whichhe was a great actor. His religion was love. His whole existence andall his passions were love. If one could venture to impute to his creed, and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind heexhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His Christianity ismost inviting, it is fascinating! One of the leading British reviews afew years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the manwho, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest tothe Divine pattern. The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authorityin devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman'sgift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the naturalheart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences, even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. Every now and then, inthe world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests ofHumanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forththat it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended overthe whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis ofAssisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with Hiscreatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In this pure, universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing thatcomes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deepand constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its veryoverflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it. '"

After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speakingof one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world'sestimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of hisMaster; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed theevents in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort thisdeficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductorypaper. 

It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress ofindividuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; towatch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to thecommand of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well asits golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back tothe well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from itshidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as itmoves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdeningour present humanity. To this end it is my purpose, as briefly aspossible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment ofslave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect ofthat act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughoutthe world. 

At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of itemigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies. The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II. Consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality, temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into ablessing. Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in someof the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happilydescribed their condition:--

What shall we do but sing His praiseWho led us through the watery maze, Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own?He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;He gives us this eternal spring, Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps, in a green night, And doth in the pomegranate closeJewels more rich than Ormus shows. 

 . . . . . . . . . 

And in these rocks for us did frameA temple where to sound His name. Oh! let our voice His praise exalt, Till it arrive at heaven's vault, Which then, perhaps rebounding, mayEcho beyond the Mexic bay. '

"So sang they in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note;And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time. "

Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of thecolonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system hadthen been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates norexpounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it. Fewcolonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession andconduct. Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in itspractice. Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, thepietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausingever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister'sexhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waitedupon by negro slaves. Everywhere men were contending with each otherupon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned, denying the ethics of Christianity itself. 

Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes. He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mistsof custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth, and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher andpurer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the DivineWisdom. He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but hisintuitive sense of right condemned it. He solemnly admonished those whoheld slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them upin the fear of God. "I desired, also, " he says, "that they would causetheir overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not usecruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free. "

In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisitedBarbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment ofslaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection amongthe blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It wasprobably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friendsin Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one ofthe first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negroslavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bullsof Urban and Leo the Tenth. 

Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who hademigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania, addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to theYearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. Thatmeeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgmentin the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing inany more negroes. " In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, itexpresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying orselling slaves. " The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higherand clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting toadopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings. 

The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain andpower was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential plantersand merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of theChester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that couldbe obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse tothe importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, asmuch as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be broughtin, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is onlycaution, and not censure. "

In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the samequestion. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friendsbecame purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in theforeign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth andNantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchaseslaves and keep them during their term of life. " Nothing was done in theYearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importingnegroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding, for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adoptedprohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting fromengaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade. 

In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was madethe instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in theSociety of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, amember of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man inhis employ to make a bill of sale of her. 

 [Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long, narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted, but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the great themes of life and duty. 

 When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very "humble abode. " But one person was then living in the town who had ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death, as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature, when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the well-being and cornfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?" asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward all creatures. " Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator intends for them under our government. "]

On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple inhis mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of hisfellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration ofHis image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer, but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both tothe buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistentwith the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. Thecircumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimonyagainst slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, andNorth Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. Itappeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging theland. " On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which waspublished in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to theSouthern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, hewas compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, whowere accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who couldnot comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a giftfood and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was apoor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placedthe pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he hadopportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangledin the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the youngerand less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands. He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted thesame Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have sincebeen cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; andBaptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generallyin a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim, and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them, and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love ofdominion. "

 [The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves. " That this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of them. "]

In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored toconvince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathyfor the enslaved. 

At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage tookup his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of theSociety of Friends, but having been disowned in England for someextravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the WestIndies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves. His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited theanger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He cameto Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the sameevil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up hisabode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a naturalcave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was thespring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. Hepersistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at theexpense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slavelabor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliveranceto the captive, " he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings forworship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to theirdisgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market StreetMeeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. Aburly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate andthrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of thestreet. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystandersthat he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me hereraise me up. It is their business, not mine. "

His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentriclife. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, withprojecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; ahuge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyesand a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowysemicircle of beard falling low on his breast, --a figure to recall theold legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressibleprophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging likea rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settlinglike a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience. 

On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington, N. J. , in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, theunwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat, was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "Youslaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine, and show yourselves as you are?" Casting off as he spoke his outergarment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coatunderneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand alarge book, he drew his sword with the other. "In the sight of God, " hecried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, asI do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a smallbladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), whichhe had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh bloodthose who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of thiscircumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and itmust have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violenceand harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common withthe tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, exceptthe sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself. 

 [Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, whosometimes visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three witnesses, --himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other. ]

Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, AnthonyBenezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write andspeak against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by theexample of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter foundin him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken theslumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis deChastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as asmall, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged inworks of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks. Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits. The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from NovaScotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue andreligion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid andsympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of theirfellow-exiles in other colonies. 

The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia mustever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations inthe history of the Christian church. The labors of Woolman and his fewbut earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interesthad been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with variedfeelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had comefor some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face inthe Valley of Decision. John Woolman, of course, was present, --a manhumble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyedhomespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel ofthe representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-stocked plantations of the country. Bowed down by the weight of hisconcern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of theSociety, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters wereunder discussion. "My mind, " he says, "was frequently clothed withinward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat anddrink, day and night. ' The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nordid I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter beforethe meeting. " When the important subject came up for consideration, manyfaithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one openlyjustified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest themeeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to manymembers of the Society. It was also urged that Friends should waitpatiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for thedeliverance of the slave. This was replied to by John Woolman. "Mymind, " he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, andthe justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered withawfulness. I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have notbeen treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been mostlamentable. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their crieshave entered into the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity andcertainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor. Ininfinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from onetime to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not atime for delay. Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, andthrough a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through aregard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutablefoundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, stillwaiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance, God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter. "

This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly, in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding membersexpressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should beadopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it wasanswered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectuallyuntil a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives ofsuch as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphedover all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreedthat the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we wouldthat others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to setthem at liberty, making a Christian provision for them, " and fourFriends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as keptslaves, within the limits of the meeting. 

This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed. In thatmeekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the"fear of man, which bringeth a snare, " the self-denying followers oftheir Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good. " In the city ofPhiladelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they foundoccasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep awatchful guard over their feelings. In his Journal for this importantperiod of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services. Howarduous and delicate they were may be readily understood. The number ofslaves held by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, inhis report of his labors among slave-holders in a single QuarterlyMeeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundredslaves. From the same report may be gleaned some hints of thedifficulties which presented themselves. One elderly man says he haswell brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintainhim. " Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; histender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal. Athird has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clearout of it. "Perhaps, " the report says, "interest dims his vision. " Afourth is full of "excuses and reasonings. " "Old Jos. Richison hasforty, and is determined to keep them. " Another man has fifty, and"means to keep them. " Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but hiswife and daughters hold back. " Another "owns it is wrong, but says hewill not part with his negroes, --no, not while he lives. " The fargreater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to takemeasures for freeing their slaves. 

 [An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which impressed him deeply. On the last evening, just as he was about to turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for. It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care of itself. Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place. The proposal was gladly accepted. On introducing the object of their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy. At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before them. His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen, restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on his master. At length he was informed of what had been done; that he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived. The old man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on his breast. After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on his knees. Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a slave, and now I shall die a free man!"

 It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived in the mind of Isaac Jackson. At that supreme moment, when all other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted him as with the blessing of God. ]

An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show boththe nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mindin which he accomplished it:--

"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends, John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some, whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad ofour visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often sawthe necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concernproceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow downbefore the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmnessunder some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tendernessin me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of thisworld. "

"1st month, 1759. --Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the moreactive members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friendJohn Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in thecity. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and theirfamilies; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visitingsuch as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often tothe Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with theinfluence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor ofthis world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which wefound peace. "

These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor andoppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many whoheld slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing thepractice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the YearlyMeeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings weredirected to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holdingtheir fellow-men as property. 

A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of theemancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusionthat some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves forservices rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is anextract from an epistle on this subject:

"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people whohave been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity andslavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we areclear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open toview as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionatelyentreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home, and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the furtheropenings of duty. 

"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of manywho are not in religious profession with us, who have seriouslyconsidered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those peoplehave long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspringis not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our seriousand deep attention. "

Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordinglyappointed in the various Monthly Meetings. Many former owners of slavesfaithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the awardand judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands. So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts ofFriends!

John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some yearsbefore, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of anegro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirtyyears, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although hehad himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted asthe agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, heexecuted a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man forfour years and a half of his unexpired term of service. 

The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himselfespecially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. Atthe outset, all about him, in every department of life and humanactivity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength, and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way amongthe foundations of society. Yet he seems never to have doubted for amoment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitatedas to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson inthe gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars ofthe temple of Dagon. "The candle of the Lord shone about him, " and hispath lay clear and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodnessof God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witnessfor itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of customand every barrier of pride and selfishness. No one could have a morehumble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercyhe felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he hadknown a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through whichthe Lord speaks. " The event justified his confidence; wherever he wenthard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opiniongave way before his testimony of love. 

The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, onRhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of areligious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw thehorrible traffic in human beings, --the slave-ships lying at the wharvesof the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and childrenthronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few yearsafter stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation atNewport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annualconvocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in theshame and wickedness. "Understanding, " he says, "that a large number ofslaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on saleby a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak, and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my bellytrembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest inthe day of trouble. ' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed. "He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for thesignatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end tothe importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear tohave been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The LondonEpistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read, and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; andthe following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinatemeetings:--

"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance orotherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"

At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those membersof the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of thehouse for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being ofthe slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing inor holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost uponhis auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and lovingspirit in which they were offered reached many hearts. 

In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, theYearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves, and appointed a large committee to visit those members who wereimplicated in the practice. The next year this committee reported thatthey had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed tobe kindly accepted. Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such atliberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight ofsuch an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling tocomply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to takeit into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep themin continued bondage. "

It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772, that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for notcomplying with the advice of this meeting. "

In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment thattruth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewisethe aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage, among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery, that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in thebrutes that perish. "

In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England YearlyMeeting. The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings toappoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between themanumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services. In1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holderwho refused to comply with the award of these committees should, afterdue care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society. This waseffectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfactionof all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787. 

In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about themiddle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle fromthe Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit thosewho held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves uponany condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits ofthe meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinatemeetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for pastservices had been effected between the emancipated negroes and theirmasters in all save three cases. 

In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Itsmembers, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, werenecessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I havealready alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson, and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants, of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing. Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasingany more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediatemanumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reachedeighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it wasadvised that committees should be appointed for the purpose ofinstructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality andreligion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns. 

I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinatemeetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--

"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generationare under strong obligations to express our love and concern for theoffspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributedtowards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictivedisadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toilmany among us are enjoying. "

In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many stillheld slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends, the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince thoseoffenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings shouldproceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precisenumber of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the VirginiaYearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almostall cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare ofthe Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducingoffenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resistingthe wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause oftruth. 

So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of acentury the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at statedintervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimonyagainst slavery, " has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, aslave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, thereis a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth, urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in theway of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit, entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely alliedwith the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain. 

The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means beenconfined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may betraced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken inthis country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of thenoblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as theirjournals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends, and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slaverysentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, thethinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with WarnerMifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected hiswhole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks, "and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. Tohis efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti bythe commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequentuprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a freegovernment. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulatedhis early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after lifethe volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion ofhimself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, theinfluence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued withthe spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantlehad fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. Of Russia to theimportance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object theaccomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which, left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake, Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own countryevidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laidbefore the first Congress of the United States. Not content withclearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took anactive part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, ElishaTyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends wereknown throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One ofthe earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was BenjaminLundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William LloydGarrison became interested in the great work to which his life has beenso faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop atMount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of PresidentLincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!

The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects ofslavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of themany to support the luxury of the few. The argument running through themis searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender lovefor the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all. They aim toconvince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice andpassion. To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like thevoice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day. One feels, in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed fromall pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight, and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin bydrawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a manunlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attemptat fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simpleunadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to havebeen wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritualprompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt thathis work was done in the clear radiance of

 "The light which never was on land or sea. "

It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browneexpresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will andpleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence. " Verywise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of thisworld. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, andcompetitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air ofparties and sects, into a region of calmness, --

 "The haunt Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach The wild to love tranquillity, "--

a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "thepure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interestor activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have, but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certainindefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of asweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style, " saidDr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictatedhis words. "

Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks ofrhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness ofepigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the greatTask-master's eye. " With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus hehad learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let thespirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide, bear rule. "

I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with theentire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch asthey mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is nolonger a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together afew passages from them which touch subjects of present interest. 

"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit itfrom the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities ofunrighteousness. "

"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good ofthe whole. "

"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noblepart of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from itstrue happiness. "

"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the heartsof men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments whichare carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from thedesire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that alittle suffices. "

"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, andclouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at timesbeheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessingsof the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right useof His benefits. "

"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God, instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that theoutward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that weshould not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to purereason. "

"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in morerefined appearances remains to be oppression. To labor for a perfectredemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the wholefamily of Jesus Christ in this world. "

"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being `hidwith Christ in God, ' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true lightof life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life whichproceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, thatstate in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants arebounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place ofretirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separatedfrom that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and mayhave a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us. "

"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which indifferent places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms ofreligion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfectsincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they becomebrethren. "

"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind. Intrue silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things, save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness inoutward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable tous. In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from aperfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from allthings, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure lightshines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which is of thisworld are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit oftruth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church, the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercisedtherein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ inthe fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt attimes, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and thatforward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and dosomething without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ. 

"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of ourwills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good andacceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us. But when our mindsentirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth theopening of the last of the seals. In this silence we learn to abide inthe Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote exceptthat alone in which the light of life directs us. "

Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intenseinterest of his subject gives his language something of passionateelevation, as in the following extract:--

"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who sufferby it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of notlaying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast ofAfrica, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among thenegroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dyingmen which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherlesschildren which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, andfaces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny isencouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened. 

"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of whatpasseth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to besprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, andheavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their wayto the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in ourears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping, --were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not bedeeply affected with sorrow!"

"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness ofheart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with thehardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus tothink seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity infixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensivecustoms, because my acquaintances live in such customs?

"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his ownconscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which mightbe omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, werehe to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire tobe discontinued by them, --whoever is thus awakened will necessarily findthe injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them. ' Divine Love imposeth norigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spiritof brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it isnecessary that we relinquish all that is selfish. 

"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; Histender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influencesour minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel adesire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of theafflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have aprospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, sothat to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomesthe business of our lives. "

His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"are manifest in the following passages:--

"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inwardsupport from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universallyto their own private interest, --though these, through the strength ofeducation and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors, it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. Theknowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and givesunderstanding to all men are superior to the various states andcircumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult. Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, whichis so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which isknown to be due only to the true God. 

"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His SonJesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, andfriendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to standfaithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; whilethe Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is establishedin the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, maybe of the number that fear God and work righteousness. "

Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question, " which is now agitatingthe world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than inthese essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich tooare his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequencesof luxury and oppression:--

"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with theDivine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors. "

"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderatelabor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil atpresent, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied toevil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause others to do so, that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemerdiscountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order, is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth. "

"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there isno place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done bybargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished fromuniversal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompanytheir proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the trueproprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to thechildren of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenancefrom it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, butHis right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of theirpossessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a waywhich they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without beingjustly chargeable with usurpation. "

It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds ofthe true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly notwritten to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They mighthave been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing asthey do with Christian practice, --the life of Christ manifesting itselfin purity and goodness, --rather than with the dogmas of theology. Theunderlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in thesoul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into thekingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven. "In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it isintimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the groundthat it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One mayeasily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt bythe slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it maystill be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists, attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, andwho in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter theDivine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacredattributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderlysensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession. His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in everywind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly tothe Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, ismanifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstrationof the spirit, --a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart. The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waitingupon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deepenthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father. 

However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it maypresent to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has noquestions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret thathe who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One, walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to thefaith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than anyform of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter andproof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the heartsof men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which haveperplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we ventureto account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abidingsense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work ingentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of adeep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, neverallowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather thanthreatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, themanifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others, revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longingsafter purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springsunder the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at thepurity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faithin the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was amistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guidedthat all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Withoutthe actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher andsoul of our souls, " says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believegood. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, tohear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice ofChrist. The outward word of the gospel itself without this livingefficacious word within would be but an empty sound. " "Thou Lord, " saysAugustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thouteachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulatesounds. "

 "However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within us, and that is the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the sun. "--Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. 

Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the worldis still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comesdown to us through a century, still sweet and precious. 

It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelongtestimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity, its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion ofsin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of theApostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself. Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which beganand ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vastnetwork and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence convergingupon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discordwhich pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The firstinquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How faram I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of myfellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyedin a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law ofChrist, " he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, anda concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means ofstrengthening them in error. " He constantly recurs to the importance ofa right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ, and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men. If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face ofrighteousness. " His eyes were anointed to see the common point ofdeparture from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths ofevil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that everysin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whoselives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, andavarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms ofevil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes ofself-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of allits decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned withPharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony ofMankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance ofpossessing "the mind of Christ, " which removes from the heart the desireof superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the DivineCounsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness ofall. "This state, " he says, "in which every motion from the selfishspirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to theFather of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after. "

At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause ofrighteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises inregard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep andlasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to providewealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, andhas been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have beenaffected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirousat times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under thehumbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply, and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing. 

"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel thatwe may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removedwhich now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heavenagainst their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmonyrestored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which willbe, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"

It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight musthave been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint, anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presenceof one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, andpretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evilhidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "theirresistible might of meekness, " and yet so wise in spiritualdiscernment, "Bearing a touchstone in his hand And testing all things in the land By his unerring spell. 

 "Quick births of transmutation smote The fair to foul, the foul to fair; Purple nor ermine did he spare, Nor scorn the dusty coat. "

In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been tome a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between theappreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willingto own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritualsymmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words. I havebeen awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spiritredeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankfulfor the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him. I leavethe book with its readers. They may possibly make large deductions frommy estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all hisself-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, andsmile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will allagree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman. 

AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo. , 1871. 

 HAVERFORD COLLEGE. 

 Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D. 

 AMESBURY, MASS. , 9th mo. , 1884. 

THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member ofthe Society of Friends can regard without deep interest. It would giveme great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst. , but the years restheavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such ajourney. 

It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of smallbeginnings. " The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been morethan fulfilled. It has grown to be a great and well-establishedinstitution, and its influence in thorough education and moral traininghas been widely felt. If the high educational standard presented in thescholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond hasbeen lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name ofQuakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precioustestimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have goneback to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials forleaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, atleast, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it. 

Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavoredto maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not beena narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholicprinciples of the eminent worthies who founded the State ofPennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who weremasters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitableto all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instancesanticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry. 

It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member ofPenn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England, wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks ofScarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable ageof our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture couldonly mean vast spaces of time. 

May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who, in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who, to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in thestillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ. " Holdingfast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light andWord, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrousquarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shallyet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possibleinvestigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter andtradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts. 

That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities asan approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophywhich can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it foruniversal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect, is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses inthe Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances ofChunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.