The Quakers. By Frederick Storrs Turner. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)—This
"historical and critical study" is a book of great interest and merit. Mr. Turner traces with much ability and with unfailing fairness the history of Quakerism in its rise, its prosperity, and its decline. How serious that decline is is evident at once from the beginning. A. not unreasonable estimate puts the sect at one hundred thousand in 1700. This was out of a population of five millions. But now the population is seven times greater, and if the Quakers had increased in this degree, there would be now about seven hundred thousand of them. As a matter of fact, they do not number, it is reckoned, more than fifteen thousand. We cannot speak too highly of this book. Mr. Turner is kindly and appreciative, but he does not hide the faults of the Friends from himself. The noticeable thing about them is the tendency to minimise the objective side of religion.
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