LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE ATTRACTION OF QUAKERISM.
go TEE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"] Sin,—Your article of June 9th on this subject has greatly interested your numerous Quaker readers, but I expect you will have many letters besides mine pointing out to you that the statement that the Society is "slowly dying away," on which your discussion is based, is entirely erroneous. I believe the Times is originally responsible for the error, which has been copied by other papers. So far from the Society of Friends "hastening to an honoured grave," it is every year increasing. The addition to the membership this year is one hundred and twenty-one, a rather smaller number than usual. Looking over a longer period, we find that the present number in England and Scotland is seventeen thousand one hundred and fifty-three against thirteen thousand eight hundred and forty-four in 1861. The increase is, as a rule, slightly in excess of the growth of the general population. And when its source is examined, it still more clearly contradicts the notion that ottr "recruits do not repair the losses caused by silent secessions " ; for less than one in three of our new members enter by the gate of birth, the rest come by "convincement." There were three hundred and twenty adult recruits this year (a poor year) against one hundred and thirty-eight "seceders." The fact is, we make an annual loss on "births and deaths," and only increase by adhesions from outside. This curious phenomenon in natural decrease is due to the fact that our marriages are rather late and prudent, our families not large, and a not very wise rule at present exists by which admission at birth is only granted to children both of whose parents are in membership. The central idea of Quakerism has been well put by your 'writer; one seldom finds its attractiveness so accurately expressed by an outsider; but when it comes to the explanation of the smallness of the Society, a question on which I have naturally long pondered, I am not able entirely to unite with him. First, our doctrine, of non-resistance is unintentionally misrepresented. It is actually held by us in every variety of strength and dilution, but prac- tically nobody objects to force as such, nor to the police. In a recent symposium on the subject in the British Friend an outsider had to be found to champion the Tolstoyan view. The lady who would not lock up her house was no more typical among us than she would be in the Church of England. On actual war, there are Friends like John Bright, who did not theoretically object to all war, but only to every war which had happened in his time; and there are others who would take a more absolute line. But our testimony against war is not, after all, quite in the central trunk of our teaching, though an important branch of it. Again, English- men are said, in your article, to shun our Society because of the "rigidity of the rules" enforced by the pressure of our corporate opinion. I rub ray eyes. What rules ? Dress ? Let any one attend the nearest Friends' meeting and look around. He will find that we buy the same kind of clothes at the same shops as other people. Music? It is the rarest thing to find a Friend's house where it is not practised. Dancing is a common accomplishment. The theatre is rather a burning question among us, as among religious folk generally; but there is not an overwhelming opinion of any kind about it. Many Friends habitually go. The fact is, we are singularly free from outward rules. The comparison of our free young people to the "clipped yew" makes one smile. No Lent disturbs our festivities, no fasts or special services demand our observance; our meetings are not as frequent as those of many sects ; and little burden for their regular attendance is laid upon any, except that of their own sense of duty. May I conclude by offering some explana- tion of my own of the smallness of our body ? First, we have become largely a middle-class body, closely associated by marriage and business. This makes increase from the working class difficult on social grounds, and is the reason why our adult schools, whither twenty-eight thousand working men and women come every Sunday, do not feed the Church more than they do. In some meetings this state of things has happily broken down. As to growth from the educated classes, I think that must always be difficult, so many social and personal reasons bind men of cultivation to
their own Church. All social influences work for Angli- canism. But this is quite secondary to the great reason of all, which is that it is not an easy thing to be a Friend. Self-reliance is, as you say, attractive ; but it is taxing also, and most people do not care to pay the tax. Think what it means to have no one to be relied upon to preach to you, no one to sing toyou, no music in your worship, no mathetic help in carved column or stained glass. no one to tell you what to believe, no creed to cling to, no Sacrament to solemnise you, no clergyman to look after you in pastoral fashion. Every Friend has to take a share in all these things for himself. You must be ready to preach if inwardly called, to teach if you can, to visit the sick and the poor, to attend to all the extensive business of the Society. And a Friend's inward exercise makes no less demand. Silence must not be to him a time of idle vacancy, but of communion, with no outward aid. The majority of men cannot enjoy this. If there be the excellences in Quakerism which your article so kindly enumerates, let it be remembered that no excellence is cheap and not many kinds are common. The Quaker temperament is not the creation of a day in anybody. Pulpit oratory is, as you say, impossible in a Friends' meeting, though our spontaneous and amateur ministry has about it a timbre which is all its own, and makes (in my own opinion) a mighty appeal to what is good in the soul. We have truly very few professed theologians in our body; we have no career for them; but our new Summer Schools of Theology show that we are not now negligent of the study. Let me assure you that the Society is not showing any symptoms of decline, and that it long promises to provide a congenial and bracing home for many spiritually minded people from [We are delighted to publish our correspondent's letter, which, if he will allow us to say so, is full of that dignified charm which belongs to the Society of Friends. We are still more delighted to find that the figures as to the diminution of the Friends taken by us from the Times are incorrect. The influence of the Society is one which the nation could ill spare, and we most sincerely trust that the Friends may remain among us in full vigour, numerical as well as spiritual.—ED. Spectator.]
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