thing of the sort, being mostly taken up with getting the young people married according to the Quaker order. The original immigrants, brought together by convictions of stern duty under the persecutions of England, were not likely to indulge in any libertinism. Others, however, of a different sort came with them. It is known that very early in the history of the colony, the caves in the banks along the Delaware, made by the settlers while building their houses, became the resort of a class whose loose life greatly disturbed the orderly Quakers. The birthright idea brought a second generation of Friends upon the scene who had not endured the discipline of their fathers. These were in some cases infected by the influences around them. There are many evidences that Friends were alert to the dangers which seemed to be growing up.* The meetings

"We find a pressing concern earnestly to excite all our dear Friends, brethren and sisters, seriously to consider the state of things in this land, so lately a wilderness. When on the one hand we look back to the many blessings we have received, and the protection and peace we have enjoyed, how greatly doth it concern us to be humbled before the Almighty, and with grateful hearts take due heed to our walking before him; and on the other hand, when we take a view of the great increase of the people, and consider how many among them appear regard. less of religion, probity and virtue, who seem to combine in

brought all possible influence to bear on their Quaker Assembly to abate immorality. This Assembly did not seem at all unwilling to do what it could, and while not going quite to the length of the Puritan New Englanders, kept in operation laws against gambling, cards and dice, theatres, swearing, lying and drunkenness.

But the main duty of the meeting was to the individual offenders. After a few decades the Monthly Meeting minutes begin to show cases, not a few in the aggregate, of drunkenness and its attendant brawls, and also of personal immorality of other sorts, which were treated with the greatest plainness. The first record would be in the nature of a complaint of a preparative meeting that A. B. had been guilty of a definitely named offence, for which his or her friends had labored earnestly without avail to induce repentance, acknowledgment and reformation.

an uncommon manner to rush into immoralities and tu multuous practices, using many artful means to draw others to fall in with them, and the more perhaps because of the number of Friends who are inhabitants here, and that some are concerned in the government, by this means, since they can not persecute them as in times past, to give them trouble of another sort-how very careful ought we to be to oppose and discourage them as much is in us lies."-Yearly Meeting, 1726.

The meeting then appointed a committee to continue the efforts. If there seemed any hope they were continued, month by month, or a new one appointed. In some instances the same name again appeared in a little time in a responsible position, overseer or minister,*-showing how completely he had rehabilitated himself. Such

a retention was always preceded by a written acknowledgment of error and sorrow, which, if accepted as sincere, was read in public in the home meeting on "First-day." Perhaps in a greater number of cases the offender was considered irreclaimable, and "to clear the Truth and Friends from reproach," a committee would be appointed "to draw up a testimony against him and produce it to next meeting." At the next meeting the testimony which separated him from membership would be read and approved and another committee appointed "to read it at meeting on a First-day."

This course of discipline preserved to a remarkable extent the business and moral standing of the Society. By reforming some delinquents and excluding the others, a body was pre

* Michener's "Retrospect of Early Quakerism," page 324.

served in substantial harmony with the original ideals. It had the additional effect of enabling Friends to face squarely and honestly every moral reform as it arose. They did not blind themselves to the evils of slavery, or injustice to the Indians, or war, or intemperance by any specious pleas of Biblical authority or financial or national expediency. They saw the evil only, and struck it straight in the face. Forbearing to the last degree with offenders, they admitted of no compromise with any system involving wrong to humanity. The history of the growth of the anti-slavery sentiment has been often told, but so far as it concerns our Pennsylvania Friends, it may be repeated as an illustration of the effective way in which they cleared themselves by their admirable discipline of the evil before they launched their corporate testimony against an hostile nation.

The earliest minutes contain cautions against abuse of slaves, and advice to see that they be treated as human beings. In 1688, the German Quakers of Germantown memorialized the Yearly Meeting in a paper still in existence against "the buying and keeping of negroes." The meeting was not ready to act, but the movement was working its way among the sensitive