senses; yet, when they are allied with virtue, and express the nobler sentiments, they are very sweet and refreshing. The comedy where, of old, Aristophanes excited the Athenians to hate Socrates, and where the profligate gallants of the court of Charles II. assembled to hear the drollery of Nell Gwyn heap ridicule on the Quakers, was condemned. But innocent diversions, the delights of rural life, the pursuits of science, the study of history, would not interfere with aspirations after God. For apparel, the Quaker dresses soberly, according to his condition and education; far from prescribing an unchanging fashion, he holds it "no vanity to use what the country naturally produces," but he reproves that extravagance which "all sober men of all sorts readily grant to be evil."

Like vanities of dress, the artifices of rhetoric were despised. Truth, it was said, is beautiful enough in plain clothes; and Penn, who was able to write exceedingly well, often forgot that style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world.

The Quakers employ for the propagation of truth no weapons but those of mind. They distributed tracts; but they would not sustain their doctrine by a hireling ministry, saying: "A man thou hast corrupted to thy interests will never be faithful to them;" and an established church seemed "a cage for unclean birds." When a great high-priest, who was a doctor, had finished preaching from the words, "Ho every one that thirsteth, come buy without money," George Fox" was moved of the Lord to say to him, 'Come down, thou deceiver! Dost thou bid people come to the waters of life freely, and yet thou takest three hundred pounds a year of them?' The Spirit is a free teacher." The Quaker never would pay tithes.

To persecute, he esteemed a confession of a bad cause; for the design that is of God has confidence in itself, and knows that any other will vanish. "Your cruelties are a confirmation that truth is not on your side," was the remonstrance of a woman of Aberdeen to the magistrates who had imprisoned her husband.

In like manner, the Quaker never employed force to effect a social revolution or reform, but, refusing obedience to wrong,

deprived tyranny of its instruments. The Quaker's loyalty, said the earl of Arrol at Aberdeen, is a qualified loyalty; it smells of rebellion: to which Alexander Skein, brother to a subsequent governor of West New Jersey, calmly answered: "I understand not loyalty that is not qualified with the fear of God rather than of man." The Quaker bore witness against blind obedience not less than against will worship. He never consented to the slightest compromise of the right of free discussion. Wherever there was evil and oppression, he claimed the right to be present with a remonstrance. He delivered his opinions freely before Cromwell and Charles II., in face of the gallows in New England, in the streets of London, before the English commons. This was his method of resistance. Algernon Sidney, like Brutus, would have plunged a dagger into the breast of a tyrant; the Quaker labored incessantly to advance reform by enlightening the public conscience. Any other method of revolution he believed an impossibility. Government-such was his belief -will always be as the people are; and a people imbued with the love of liberty create the irresistible necessity of a free government. He sought no revolution but that which followed as the consequence of the public intelligence. Such revolutions were inevitable. “ Though men consider it not, the Lord rules and overrules in the kingdoms of men." Any other revolution would be transient. The Quakers submitted to the restoration of Charles II. as the best arrangement for the crisis, confident that time and truth would lead to a happier issue. "The best frame, in ill hands, can do nothing that is great and good. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion imparted to them; they depend on men rather than men on government. Let men be good, the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it." Even with absolute power, an Antonine or an Alfred could not make bricks without straw, nor the sword do more than substitute one tyranny for another.

No Quaker book has a trace of skepticism on man's capacity for progress. For him the moral power of ideas is constantly effecting improvement in society. By an honest profession of truth, the humblest person, if single-minded

and firm, "can shake all the country for ten miles round." The Inner Light is an invincible power. It is a power which never changes; such was the message of Fox to the pope, the kings, and nobles of all sorts; it fathoms the world, and throws down that which is contrary to it. It quenches fire; it daunts wild beasts; it turns aside the edge of the sword; it outfaces instruments of cruelty; it converts executioners. It was remembered with exultation that the enfranchisements of Christianity were the result of faith, and not of the sword; and that truth in its simplicity, radiating from the foot of the cross, has filled a world of sensualists with astonishment, overthrown their altars, discredited their oracles, infused itself into the soul of the multitude, invaded the court, risen superior to armies, and led magistrates and priests, statesmen and generals, in its train, as the trophies of its strength exerted in freedom.

Thus the Quaker was cheered by a firm belief in the progress of society. Even Aristotle, so many centuries ago, recognised the upward tendency in human affairs; a Jewish contemporary of Barclay made note of the tendency toward popular power; George Fox perceived that the Lord's hand was against kings; and one day, on the hills of Yorkshire, he had a vision that he was but beginning the glorious work of God in the earth; that his followers would in time become as numerous as motes in the sunbeams; and that the party of humanity would gather the whole human race in one sheepfold. Neither art, wisdom, nor violence, said Barclay, conscious of the vitality of truth, shall quench the little spark that hath appeared. The atheist-such was the common opinion of the Quakers-the atheist alone denies progress, and says in his heart: All things continue as they were in the beginning.

If from the rules of private morality we turn to political institutions, here also the principle of the Quaker is the Inner Light. He acquiesces in any established government which shall build its laws upon the declarations of "universal reason." But government is a part of his religion; and the religion that declares "every man enlightened by the divine light" establishes government on universal and equal enfranchisement.

"Not one of mankind," says Penn, "is exempted from this illumination." "God discovers himself to every man." He is in every breast, in the ignorant drudge as well as in Locke or Leibnitz. Every moral truth exists in every man's and woman's heart as an incorruptible seed; the ground may be barren, but the seed is certainly there. Every man is a little sovereign to himself. Freedom is as old as reason itself, which is given to all, constant and eternal, the same to all nations. The Quaker is no materialist; truth and conscience are not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; they cannot be abrogated by senate or people. Freedom and the right of property were in the world before Protestantism; they came not with Luther; they do not vanish with Calvin; they are the common privilege of mankind.

The Bible enfranchises those only to whom it is carried; Christianity, those only to whom it is made known; the creed of a sect, those only within its narrow pale. The Quaker, resting his system on the Inner Light, redeems the race. Of those who believe in the necessity of faith in an outward religion, some have cherished the mild superstition that, in the hour of dissolution, an angel is sent from heaven "to manifest the doctrine of Christ's passion;" the Quaker believes that the heavenly messenger is always present in the breast of every man, ready to counsel the willing listener.

Man is equal to his fellow-man. No class can, “by long apprenticeship" or a prelate's breath, by wearing black or shaving the crown, obtain a monopoly of moral truth. There is no distinction of clergy and laity.

The Inner Light sheds its blessings on the whole human race; it knows no distinction of sex. It redeems woman by the dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and free exercise of her endowments. As the human race ascends the steep acclivity of improvement, the Quaker cherishes woman as the equal companion of the journey.

Nor does he know an abiding distinction of king and subject. The universality of the Inner Light "brings crowns to the dust, and lays them low and level with the earth." "The Lord will be king; there will be no crowns but to such as

obey his will." With God a thousand years are indeed as one day; yet judgment on tyrants will come at last, and may come ere long.

Every man has God in the conscience; therefore the Quaker knows no distinction of castes. He bows to God, and not to his fellow-servant. "All men are alike by creation," says Barclay; and it is slavish fear which reverences others as gods. "I am a man," says every Quaker, and refuses homage. The most favored of his race, even though endowed with the gifts and glories of an angel, he would regard but as his fellow-servant and his brother. The feudal nobility still nourished its pride. "Nothing," says Penn, "nothing of man's folly has less show of reason to palliate it." "What a pother has this noble blood made in the world!" "But men of blood have no marks of honor stampt upon them by nature." The Quaker scorned to take off his hat to any of them; he held himself the peer of the proudest peer in Christendom. With the eastern despotism of Diocletian, Europe had learned the hyperboles of eastern adulation; but "My Lord Peter and My Lord Paul are not to be found in the Bible; My Lord Solon or Lord Scipio is not to be read in Greek or Latin stories." And the Quaker returned to the simplicity of Gracchus and Demosthenes, though "Thee and Thou proved a sore cut to proud flesh." This was not done for want of courtesy, which "no religion destroys;" but he knew that the hat was the symbol of enfranchisement, worn before the king by the peers of the realm, in token of equality; and the symbol, as adopted by the Quaker, was a constant proclamation that all men are equal.

Thus the doctrine of George Fox was not only a plebeian form of philosophy, but the prophecy of political changes. The spirit that made to him the revelation was the invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and excited to insurrection by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion. Everywhere in Europe, therefore, the Quakers were exposed to persecution. Their seriousness was called melancholy fanaticism; their boldness, self-will; their frugality, covetousness; their freedom, infidelity; their conscience, rebellion. In England, the general laws against dissent, the statute against the papist,