RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES OF THE COMMONWEALTH.*
Tuts book, it appears, was specially intended by its author for the study and perusal of the religious society of which he was himself a member. Mr. Barclay was a Quaker, and his work, which contains a good deal of curious information, is chiefly about Quakerism in its various aspects, and explains its origin, its growth, and its decline. He has also much to tell us about its relation to the religious systems of other Nonconforming communities, which, in his opinion, have prospered or declined in proportion to the hold they retained on the principles on which the Quaker Society originally took its stand. If the volume before us, which treats the subject very fully and with all the knowledge of a man who has had exceptionally good opportunities of making himself acquainted with it, is not likely to be very popular, it is at least worthy of the attention of all who care to understand one very important side of their country's history.
After giving us a sketch of the various phases of religious opinion in England in the early part of the seventeenth century, Mr. Barclay proceeds to speak of the teaching of George Fox, to whom Quaker doctrines and organisation mainly owed their origin. The age was one in which men's hearts were powerfully stirred, and there were but few who did not believe that they were on the verge of a tremendous crisis. Hence the idea of a " Fifth Monarchy," which was believed to be very near at hand, —an idea not to be carelessly confounded with the craze of a few fanatics and visionaries, known as " Fifth Monarchy men." In such a time, idle, groundless fantasies would be sure to exist
• The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. By Robert Barclay. London : Hodder and Stoughton.
side by side with deep and serious thought. There were the " Seekers," as they called themselves, a name which really denoted a genuine reality; and of these it was that Cromwell says, in one of his letters, that "to be a Seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder." A tendency to religious mysticism was one of their most marked characteristics, and occasionally their lan- guage almost seemed to imply that they esteemed historical Christianity very lightly. It would seem that they were led into this way of thinking by their impatience of anything like a rigid ecclesiastical system, which was to them simply an incubus on the free motions of the Divine Spirit. The freedom of the human conscience was, in their view, imperilled by all existing Church organisations, and external formality ended, it was said, in " gross conforming stupidity." One is not at all surprised to learn that some of the members of this sect asserted that the gift of working miracles had not ceased. In this, and in other matters, too, the old proverb that " extremes meet" was strangely verified.
The Quaker movement was closely allied with the " Seekers," and was a development from their teachings. For George Fox and his, age, Mr. Barclay has a profound admiration. He regards, indeed, the ideas current about the gift of miracles as pure delusions, which, however, find some excuse in the atmo- sphere of excitement and earnestness in which men then lived. But as to the age itself, he looks on it as " the noblest era of English history, and one in which we see the rise of ideas which were destined immeasurably to bless our own time." It can hardly be said that this is extravagant language. To the Puri- tans of the seventeenth century, to much of their belief, and above all, to their intense religious earnestness, the England of our day unquestionably owes a debt which it is impossible to estimate. And that Quakerism, in many untold ways, contri- buted very considerably to results for which we have every reason to be thankful, there cannot, we think, be a doubt. There was not a single religions community which was not touched by its influence, and that influence was often singularly purifying and ennobling. Fox was one of those men whom it is easy to carica- ture, as Macaulay has done, whose humorous sketch of the man will be familiar to most of our readers. Macaulay's vigorous com- mon-sense was shocked by the seeming perverseness with which Fox interpreted literally what was obviously figurative, and figu- ratively what was as obviously literal. Perhaps a little more re- flection and a little deeper insight, would have made him see that a man who put a plain and literal meaning on some of those precepts in the Sermon on the Mount which are usually supposed to teach the supreme importance of a Christian temperrwas in a fair way to spiritualise Christ's command as to the Sacraments. Fox un- doubtedly used, as Mr. Barclay admits, a very peculiar lan- guage ; but he was no fool, or mere visionary. He had distinct aims, which he tried to carry out in a straightforward and busi- ness-like way. He felt strongly that any true Christian might be a preacher of the Gospel, and that only in this manner could a religious spirit be thoroughly reawakened. Although he was particularly careful not to mix up his teaching with allusions to the politics of the time, he did not by any means impress on his disciples that they must altogether hold aloof from political life, or that there is an absolute incompatibility between the duties of a Christian and those of a magistrate. It was the notion of anything like a priesthood which seemed to him so fatal to true Christian life. It has been commonly supposed that he thought much of the wonderful physical manifestations which are said to have accompanied his preaching, but here Mr. Barclay believes he has been misrepresented, and that he inclined to the view of Wesley, who, as is well blown, by no means believed that intense visible excitement was necessarily a sign of genuine spiritual emotion. Fox and the early Friends were fond of the phrase, "The Lord showed me," which certainly does seem to have a flavour of fanaticism ; but it is quite possible that, as the author suggests, he did not mean that some entirely new truth had been revealed to him, but that he had arrived at a conclusion after earnest thought, with the aid of the Divine Spirit. The form of expression naturally strikes us as pedantic and affected, but it by no means follows that in Fox's mouth it was not quite inarti- ficial. All that we know of the man points this way. He was not, as a mere fanatic would have been, a despiser of the thoughts and writings of others, but he was specially careful to keep abreast of the questions of the day and of its controversial literature. One side of his character is to be particularly noted, and Mr. Barclay dwells on it at some length. He endeavoured to reform the criminal law and prison discipline. He looked
on the neglect of the poor as a disgrace to Christendom. He petitioned Parliament on their behalf. " Let all the poor people," he said, "blind, and lame, and cripples, be provided for in this nation, that there may not be a beggar in England, nor England's dominions." Quakers have often been honourably conspicuous in works of mercy, and have taken their share in movements for the mitigation and improve- ment of the lot of the poor and feeble. It ought to be remem- bered that they were the first Christian Society which refused to deal in slaves, and that in 1783 they presented to the House of Commons the first petition for the abolition of the Slave- trade. And their zealous efforts for the Christian education of the poor, without any very definite dogmatic teaching, are a striking testimony to the worth of their religious principles.
Quaker doctrine, it is easy to show, had its weak side, and led occasionally to singular results. The incessant endeavour to pre- sent a contrast to the world made the community attempt a minute legislation over the whole life of its members, from the cradle to the grave. The artificial rules about marriage were, in our author's opinion, a blunder, which had a very detrimental effect on the Society. When attempts are made to prescribe rules as to food and gait and dress, we may be sure a fatal falsehood has entered into the system, and can but think of St. Paul's warn- ing against the teachers whose chief text was, "Touch not, taste not, handle not." Here was one folly enough to account for the failure of the Quaker experiment. Some rules and regula- tions there may and perhaps must be in such matters, but when they usurp a control over the whole sphere of life, insurrection is at hand, and the end not very far off. Quakerism was also threatened by another danger. Between some of its teachings and pantheism there was not a very wide interval, and the doctrine of the inward light, with the mysticism of which it savoured, might easily pass into speculations destructive both of Christianity and of common morality. Something of this sort actually occurred in what was known as the " Hicksite " seces- sion, among the Friends in America, in 1805. This was a really heavy blow to the Quaker community, and it appears in part to have been due to the fact that their Ministers and Elders had such a weak hold on the minds of the young, that when Elias Hicks, the leader of this movement, talked of " freedom from the rule of popes and cardinals," he very soon won a numerous following of disciples and sympathisers. Hitherto an intense reverence for the getter of Scripture had marked the Society,. but now, under the influence of Hicks, the younger members were taught that they need believe nothing which they could not understand. This led to a great relaxation of discipline among them. Mr. Barclay sets all this down to that re- action against human learning which was so powerful in the time of the Commonwealth, and which led to some of the most absurd Puritan excesses. Speaking as a Quaker, Mr.. Barclay contends that the cultivation of the intellect is really needful for an adequate instruction in the truths of the Christian religion, and is a guarantee against particular forms of error which arise from ignorance and one-sided conceptions. That good man, Richard Baxter, as is well known, heartily disliked Quakerism, and its teachers and preachers. " Does the Spirit," he asked, " set a man's tongue going so that he cannot stop it P If all have the light, why may I not have it P" When he was asked who gave him his commission to preach, he offered to show it to his opponent, if he would do the same. "Mine," said the man," is invisible." "Why," retorted Baxter, " may you not take the answer you give P" The Quakers, he says in his autobiography, "were but the Ranters turned from horrid profaneness and blasphemy to a life of extreme austerity." In his estimation, they were utterly mischievous. " The Devil and the Jesuits, having found out that the Ranters served not their turn, took under their special patronage the Society of Friends." Certainly the warlike spirit of the age had infused itself into theological controversy. " I disown," said a Presbyterian minister, in the same seventeenth century, " all preaching daughters of men which are in this age, both the Jesuitesses among the Papists; and the prophetesses late sprung up among deluded Protestants." The first female preacher, it is to be noted, was one of Fox's first converts, and began to preach in 1650. Female preaching soon became an established practice. Fox, however, was brought to say, not much, indeed, on the subject, but that " some of them might cease." One of them was returned on his hands, with the following note :— "This little short maid is of little or no service in the ministry. It were well to be laid on her to be a servant somewhere."
Here is evidence," Mr. Barclay observes, "of the existence of enthusiasm, and of sound sense being used to govern it." Might it not have been better had the " sound sense " forbidden the experimenV Quakerism, as we all know, has long been steadily declining. In 1700, the Society numbered 60,000 members ; now it can boast of only 17,000, and of 318 meeting-houses. The chief cause of this decline is, in the author's opinion, to be traced to the unwise enforcement of the marriage regulations ; but we suspect that this is an inadequate view, and that a host of other in- fluences have had their share in the result. The method of the organisation of the Society was nothing like so pliant and flexible as that of the Roman Church, which is never at a loss to adapt itself to altered circumstances. Mr. Barclay thinks that those Churches whose worship is most simple, and which enable the greatest number of their members to work of their own free- will, have the strongest vitality. The latter of these two con- ditions is realised in the Church of Rome, and this undoubtedly is one of its sources of strength. As the author says, one of the weaknesses of the Protestant Churches is that they do not sufficiently develope religious sympathy in their members. The Quaker community did this for a time, and in its early begin- nings, and hence its power for good, which all now admit. When it lost this secret, it dwindled down into a small and unimportant sect.
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