Introductory Dialogue with a Quaker

Quaker. Are you serious in saying that you do not wish me to forsake the Society in which I have been educated?

Author. I did not say that. I hope that you will not forsake the principles in which you have been educated.

Q. You mean those general principles of morality and that common Christianity, which you and I have been alike taught to revere?

A. No; that is not my meaning. Whatever those general principles and common doctrines may be I do not believe that you will retain them, unless you retain also those which are proper to Quakerism.

Q. What can that imply, except that I ought to continue in the Society?

A. I can answer that question better, if you will tell me what are your present inducements to leave it.

Q. The story is a long one. I am afraid you will not hear me to the end of it. I think I was first startled by a contradiction which I remarked between the profession and the practices of our members.

A. You may make many changes before you find a body in which the same observation will not force itself upon you.

Q. I am quite aware of it; and I hope I have common sense enough not to part with any serious conviction, because hypocrites may feign to possess it, or a good man may hold it with a feeble grasp. That was not my difficulty. The contradiction I noticed seemed to me to infect all the arrangements, nay, in some degree, the very constitution of our Society. We are witnesses for spirituality; I feel as if we were rank formalists.

A. Corruption may have crept into your system; but why judge of it by its present appearances? Is there no possibility of reformation?

Q. For a long time I believed there was. I said to myself, I will study the writings of the early Quakers. I shall find in them that higher and purer spirit which seems to have departed from us.

A. Were you disappointed?

Q. I thought not. The writers I studied manifested deep earnestness, courage, self-denial, an intense conviction that what they said was true, a readiness to live and die that others might hear it.

A. You concluded, therefore, that your Society had a sound foundation to rest upon?

Q. If I had been convinced of that, I do not think I should have despaired of its present state. But here lay my perplexity. Since I had read the Scriptures diligently and had known something of my own heart, the statements which I heard from our Quaker ministers respecting human depravity, the grace of God, the redemption by Christ, had seemed to me for the most part vague and unsatisfactory. Still the doctrines upon these subjects, which are ordinarily, and I think rightly, called Evangelical, are recognised among us; by some they are brought out prominently. On the contrary, by those older Quakers, whom on some grounds I felt so much disposed to admire, these doctrines are far less distinctly exhibited; other Christians seem to be blamed for attaching importance to them; sometimes expressions are used which are almost incompatible with the belief of them.

A. Did you think that they substituted some notions of their own for these doctrines?

Q. I reluctantly adopted that suspicion, and this it is which makes me wonder that you should talk about my retaining the principles of Quakerism. These principles are, it seems to me, in opposition to what I suppose you consider the leading tenets of the Gospel.

A. How did you arrive at that persuasion?

Q. I was led to it by the workings of my own mind, and then it was confirmed to me by the testimony of two persons, who in many of their views were at variance.

A. Who were these?

Q. The first was an Independent dissenter. He expressed strong admiration of the language and conduct of Fox and Penn on many occasions. He said indeed that he could not join them in objecting to all pecuniary provision for ministers, in their dislike of baptism and in several points of that kind; but that he heartily wished the energy which they displayed in denouncing ecclesiastical superstitions and oppressions would communicate itself to English dissenters.

A. Surely this was most complimentary language.

Q. But when he came to speak of Fox’s theological tenets, he adopted an entirely different tone. He described him as a mystic, ignorant of the truths of the Gospel, the proclaimer of theories which utterly subverted them. The same opinion was maintained, if possible, with more earnestness by a clergyman of your Church, who was present at the time. Much, he said, as he disliked the indecorous and violent language of Fox respecting the Established Church, he considered his doctrine of an Inward Light immeasurably more dangerous than such language could ever be. It was utterly incompatible with the Bible, and with the experience of every true Christian.

A. You remember perhaps some of the arguments by which your two friends defended these positions?

Q. I do not think their arguments made so much impression upon my mind as the clear and settled persuasion which they both alike entertained, that if Fox were right, the Bible must be wrong. You may smile at my confession that I attached weight to such assertions, when I cannot recall the evidence which was produced for them; but I know very well, that assertions which proceed from deep conviction do often affect me more than elaborate and logical proofs.

A. The case is the same with me. I shall not, therefore, ridicule your acknowledgment.

Q. I am glad to hear it; for I do not find that ridicule in general acts profitably upon my mind. These two gentlemen, the dissenter and the evangelical clergyman, after they had impressed me very strongly by their serious objections, thought it expedient to indulge their humour at the expense of our founders and their mystical notions.

A. When they had entered the castle, they were naturally anxious to dismantle it.

Q. They took away more defences from me than perhaps they meant. While they were with me, I felt as if I were bound to say something in behalf of feelings and thoughts which from my childhood I had held sacred, even though they might be deserting me. When I was left alone, I found that I had indeed supported my Quakerism inadequately; but I had perceived rents and hollows in their system, of which I was not previously aware. Their wit succeeded in shaking my reverence at once for my own faith, and for that which I had hoped would have been a substitute for it.

A. A melancholy state of mind indeed, as all who have known it can testify.

Q. While I was under the influence of these feelings, I read two Unitarian books, one written by an Englishman of the last century, one by an American of the present.

A. The former at least did not treat your mystic feelings with more indulgence than your evangelical friends had shown towards them.

Q. No; but he taught me that it was possible to throw quite as good ridicule upon the Calvinistical doctrine, as they and he were agreed in throwing upon mine. The value of his critical remarks and discoveries I was not able to appreciate; but he said enough to convince me that Scripture has been often strained to make out a case in favour of the opinions which he attacked, and that the number of positive texts in their favour was far smaller than I had fancied. Moreover, his views of the character of God and his feelings respecting his fellow-creatures accorded better with the testimony of my conscience, than those which I had been wont to hear from the members of any sect except my own.

A. The impression he left upon your mind then was on the whole pleasing?

Q. By no means. My feeling, when I laid down the book, was one of utter coldness and dreariness. The very idea of a spiritual world and of a spiritual life seemed to be wanting in it; materialism was the ultimate point to which all its speculations were tending, if it were not the basis of them.

A. But that was not the case, I should think, with the American.

Q. No; he was a person of a very different temper. Some of his statements were not unlike those which I have met with in Fox and Penn. His mind was more comprehensive than theirs; more capable of taking interest in ordinary affairs and general literature, but scarcely less morally exalted—I was at times inclined to say—scarcely less spiritual.

A. You could acquiesce comfortably in his religious scheme?

Q. I almost fancied that I could; there was something so very capacious and engaging in it. But just as I had finished the book I fell ill, and before I recovered I received news of the death of one of my oldest and dearest friends. Then all my interest both in the Englishman and the American vanished; I think I disliked the last most, because his promises were the fairest.

A. But did not you say you had traced a fine vein of humanity and spirituality in him?

Q. I thought so; but let him be as humane or as spiritual as he would, he was not personal. There was nothing in him from which a soul, struggling with life and death, could derive the least help. He was evidently meant for sunshine and gala days. Then I recollected the words of my evangelical friends, and the doctrines which they had set before me. They seemed to me in that moment all important. I bitterly accused myself for having thought them narrow and hard. What had I to do with large views about men’s happiness or the character of God? My own individual soul was at war, and he who could show me a way of peace for it was the friend I wanted. With other matters it seemed now that I had no right to trouble myself.

A. On your recovery you probably sought the advice of the Independent dissenter whom you named?

Q. On some accounts I desired rather to have another interview with the clergyman who had spoken so strongly against Fox and mysticism; but just at that time he left the neighbourhood. His successor in the parish was, I heard, an author; so I purchased his books before I ventured to call upon him.

A. Did they encourage you to expect assistance from him?

Q. I thought I had been shaken enough before by my own discoveries, and by the words of my different counsellors; but it seems not: these books were to upset me altogether.

A. How! You encountered a sceptic in the disguise of a clergyman?

Q. Oh, no; he was the most vehement enemy of all scepticism. He said doctrines had been delivered in the earliest ages of Christianity, which it behoved us to receive with a simple uninquiring faith; that the blessings of salvation were connected with our submission to a certain system which had been ordained by God; that in the evangelical teaching this system had been almost entirely forgotten, or treated as if it were merely a point of external arrangement; that that teaching spoke of a period of conversion in which men passed from death unto life, while the Church and Scripture referred this wonderful change to baptism.

A. You did not believe these statements; why then did they affect you so powerfully?

Q. Partly perhaps because they were uttered with that strong and deep conviction which I have confessed does always act most strongly upon me, especially if it be supported, as I know in the case of this clergyman it is, by the testimony of a laborious and self-denying life. But yet I think there was another cause. A person, who has suffered severely from religious struggles, has an inward sighing after rest which no one else can know. Bruised, beaten, humbled, he cannot help listening to anyone who tells him that he has been all wrong; he has been so tormented by his own miserable experiments and failures, that he must rejoice to hear that he ought to give them up altogether. After many struggles therefore with my pride and my modesty, the shame of uttering my feelings and the pain of hiding them, I thought I would state my difficulties to the new clergyman.

A. He can scarcely have looked for a proselyte from such a quarter.

Q. He evidently did not desire one; and as I had been used to meet persons who spared no pains to bring me over to their ways of thinking, the change was so far rather agreeable. But besides this he evidently did not understand me; nay, if I was not mistaken, he thought it would be a wrong thing to understand me. I daresay that I stammered and spoke incoherently when I tried to tell him the thoughts that were in my mind. One cannot speak quite so clearly about one’s self as about the weather and the crops, and indeed he made so many efforts to turn the conversation to those subjects, and fixed such steady clear cold eyes upon me when I asked him for information upon any others, that I certainly did not exhibit less embarrassment at the close than at the beginning of our interview.

A. How did he show that he misunderstood you?

Q. You know how I was educated—to look upon all forms and ordinances as sinful. Such thoughts had grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. But of late I have repeatedly felt as if these forms might be desirable; nay, as if there were something in me which needed them. It was on this point especially that I wished to speak to Mr. I knew that there were many things which it might not be right that he should teach me at present; but I thought that a person, who looked upon forms as most important to our moral life, might have removed some of the difficulties which clouded my mind in reference to them, or at least have interpreted some of those desires and longings, which, in spite of my prejudices, I had conceived for them. But this wish he seemed to consider irreverent and presumptuous. “I can enter,” he said, “into no explanations with you; you are not in a state to understand explanations; you have one plain duty to perform—submit to the ordinances of Christ’s Church, confess the sins of your fathers in withdrawing from it, and your own in continuing the schism; receive Christian Baptism; then I shall be happy to instruct you.” “I am much inclined to take this course,” I replied. “but I feel some difficulties and scruples which I do not know how to overcome.” “Sir,” he said, “the case may be stated very shortly to you. The Fathers of the Church, the Saints and Martyrs of the first five centuries, the Greek Church, the Romish Church, the English Church, all agree that Baptism is the one only door by which we can enter into Christ’s fold, and therefore into everlasting life. An ignorant mechanic in the 17th century said that there was some other door—you have chosen to disbelieve the whole Catholic Church, and to follow the mechanic. Is this a safe proceeding? If a speculation in cloth or wool were proposed to you, and a hundred competent judges said it would be your ruin—one person, totally unacquainted with the trade, said that it might turn out well—would you not think yourself mad to venture upon it? Will you put your chances of salvation upon a still greater risk?” With these words he wished me good morning.

A. How did this argument affect your mind?

Q. You will wonder at me, perhaps—I wonder at myself when I consider how very consistent and plausible it seems—but I never felt less moved by any words in my life: I am wrong—they did produce an effect upon me—they almost counter-balanced the impression which had been made upon my mind before, in favour of your Church and its ordinances.

A. How could that be?

Q. Reverence was what I looked for above all things in this clergyman. He had talked of the sin of irreverence in his book, and my heart had felt the truth of his words. He said it was his reverence which hindered him from speaking to me on the subject of his faith. And yet he could teach me to calculate about eternal life as if it were a matter of merchandise! He spoke not to that in me which was looking above the earth, but to my earthly selfish nature, not to that in me which was ready to submit to anything or bear anything for the sake of doing God’s will and attaining a knowledge of Him, but to all my proud, contentious, disputatious feelings. He did not address me as a creature capable of reverence, though he accused me of irreverence; nay, he taught me to connect a lower, more grovelling, notion of Christianity than I had ever done while under the most irreverent of my teachers.

A. You felt, then, that you should be more right in continuing a Quaker?

Q. No, I did not feel that; my mind was in the most wretched contradiction. But I said to myself, I am urged to forsake the body in which I have lived, and my fathers have lived: I am to turn away from those who first taught me to revere the operations of my own spirit, and to tremble at the name of God; I am to break all the bonds of old affection and sympathy: and why? because there are higher objects and interests for which even these must be sacrificed? because I must leave father and mother for the sake of Christ? no, because it is the safer, the more politic, course; because it is likely, upon a balance of probabilities, that I shall be in less danger of suffering a selfish loss here, or hereafter, if I take it. Magnify the loss to me as you will; heap up the epithets infinite, eternal, as you may—this is a question of principle not of degree, and when I set principle at nought, I believe these words, great and terrible as they sound, lose all their meaning to me.

A. You must not commit the unfairness of supposing that the clergyman with whom you spoke really attached no higher and more spiritual idea to the words than that which he seems to have conveyed to you; he probably meant to use an argumentum ad hominem.

Q. I fully understood that. The conviction I formed from some parts of his book was, and still is, that he had a very high and spiritual apprehension of things. I knew he would think me unfit to be admitted to his arcana, nor did I claim such an honour. But from the little I have read about the Catechumens in the primitive Church, I fancied that they were not taught something wholly different in kind from that which they learnt after their baptism.¹ I did not know that they were reasoned with upon those selfish motives which it must have been the object of their after initiation to cure them of. But be that as it may, an argumentum ad hominem is meant, I suppose, to produce conviction of some kind or other; else it is merely a gratuitous insult to the person against whom it is directed. Now I cannot conceive anyone on whom this kind of argument would produce conviction. It assumes him to whom it appeals to care for nothing but profit and loss. A person who does care for nothing but profit and loss would merely smile at the attempt to awaken his fears about an unseen and future blessing; his whole mind is wrapt up in the things that are passing around him. Your wisdom, therefore, consists in ignoring the existence of that which might listen to you, and in addressing yourself to that which has no ears.

A. Well, but if this be an error, it is not peculiar to one or another school among us. In a commercial country we are all more or less inclined to act, think, and argue upon such maxims as these.

Q. I do not think the clergyman I speak of would be very grateful to you for telling him he had adopted his notions from a commercial age. But I was not bringing it as a charge against a school—I was only telling you my own story.

A. It is a sad and eventful one—but you have not finished it?

Q. The next incident will surprise you most of all. I have scarcely courage to confess that during the last two months I have had frequent and not unpleasant interviews with a Romish priest.

A. The argument about safety is so established and habitual a one among the members of his Church, that I think he cannot have been more agreeable to you than the English clergyman.

Q. He has rarely, if ever, resorted to it—possibly he may have guessed from something I said to him the first time we met, that it was not one which was likely to have any great weight with me. So far from denouncing any of my former thoughts and opinions, he has taken pains to show me how many points of sympathy there are between us.

A. Of sympathy—between a Romanist and a Quaker!

Q. “I find,” he says, “in the writings of the early Quakers, the most earnest longings after a universal Church. Is it wonderful that they should have felt such longings? That which is called the English Church—the only one they knew of—is limited to a particular locality, subjected to the yoke of a national sovereign, tied down by national laws and customs. Depend upon it, my friend, your founders were right: that is not Christ’s Church which is not universal.”

A. How did you answer that?

Q. I said that our Quaker system was by its very nature spiritual, and that his Church seemed to me to be opposed to spirituality. “Opposed to spirituality!” he exclaimed; “and where will you find so many men and women of a high spirituality, so many men and women who resembled your own in their love of mystical contemplation—as among us? Has not Thomas à Kempis been always a favourite with your friends? And is not the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ par excellence, the book of Catholic devotion?” “These,” I said, “were individuals—but the system?” “Well,” he continued; “the system—look, if you please, at that. What is your great complaint against the English system? Is it not that the mouths of men are shut who are urged by the Spirit to speak God’s word? Can you bring that charge against us? Look at our friars, taken from the humblest classes, recognised the moment they discover a real inward vocation, adopted at once as our teachers though they have no one worldly qualification to recommend them. Do you not find fault with your English authorities because they forbid one whole sex to act as the handmaids of Christ and of His flock? It is very true we do not adopt your notion that women may speak in the churches; we adhere more strictly to the words of Scripture than to suffer such a practice: but the feeling which has led you to lift your voices in behalf of their rights and duties meets with every encouragement among us Catholics. We rejoice to see women devoting themselves to the service of the Church: we bestow upon them all help and honour while they are living: we account them saints when they die.” Another point of agreement he discovered between us. “What is the great moving spring and centre of action to which all your writers refer? Surely it is love. They believe that though faith and hope be great Christian graces, the greatest of all is charity. That is the very principle for which we are contending. The Protestants wish to substitute faith for love. We say—as your friends have also said—that we will not.”

A. Do you find that these arguments have brought your mind to greater quietness and satisfaction?

Q. Quietness and satisfaction! The words seem to me as if they were spoken in a dream. No indeed! I am as far from quietness and satisfaction as any poor mortal ever was. If ever the thought of joining the Romish Church do present itself, it comes to me as the fearful dream of something to which I may be driven—as a last hopeless alternative. And just as often it seems to me that I may become a St. Simonian or a Socialist. These systems, too, have their attractions; they address themselves to wants in me which I think must be satisfied—and yet, perhaps, they never are to be satisfied. Oftentimes I wish above all things for a potion that would put me to sleep.

A. To sleep, my friend—perchance to dream.

Q. I know it well; this broken fever-sleep is worse than being awake.

A. Need I now answer the question which you asked me at the beginning of our conversation—what I meant by wishing you to keep your Quaker principles, though you might leave the Quaker Society?

Q. Indeed you must; I am as much in the dark about the possibility of such a distinction as ever.

A. Your first objection to Quakerism arose from the feeling that it was not acting out its original idea.

Q. And my second from the feeling that that idea was a false one.

A. Let us consider. Did you really discover that idea to be a false one, or some other to be true?

Q. I found, or thought I found, certain great doctrines laid down in Scripture—doctrines most important to my own being—and of these the early Quakers seemed to take only a very passing notice, if they did not reject them altogether.

A. I do not doubt that you discovered these doctrines in Scripture, or that you found them practically important, or that the early Quakers comparatively neglected them. What I doubt is, whether you ascertained those doctrines of which the Quakers did take notice to be unimportant, unscriptural, or inconsistent with the others.

Q. I certainly thought they were.

A. Yes, and to that judgment of yours, formed, perhaps, upon very hasty and insufficient evidence, you attached the same sacredness as to the witness of your heart and conscience, and of Scripture with your heart and conscience, that those doctrines of which your evangelical friends spoke were needful to you.

Q. Is that a practical distinction?

A. It is one which you have yourself recognised in the most emphatic manner. Did not you say that while the dissenting minister and the evangelical clergyman were maintaining their own positions, they made the deepest impression upon you? And did not you say that when they began to ridicule the mystical opinions, they created the most vehement reaction in your mind against that which you had been previously inclined to adopt?

Q. I certainly said so.

A. Well! and in that confession, I think I can find an explanation of all your subsequent experience. You parted too suddenly with something which God meant you to keep, and all the bewilderment and restlessness you have since suffered has been the necessary and appointed punishment of that error.

Q. If it be so, it is an error which I cannot retrieve. The Evangelical, the Unitarian, the English clergyman, the Romanist, may have left me nothing to fill the void in my mind, but they have effectually despoiled me of what was there before. They have not convinced me that there is a standing-place in any of their systems, but they have made me certain that I have none in my own.

A. Alas! it is thus that men—benevolent men, honest men—holy men, trifle with that which is most awful and sacred in the minds of their brethren! But they suffer as much evil as they inflict.

Q. In what way?

A. They turn the truths which they hold in their inmost hearts, and which God has given them to defend, into negations and contradictions; they oblige themselves to resort to insufficient proofs and false assumptions in support of these truths, because they have wilfully rejected the evidence of them which God was supplying in the wants and cravings of their fellow men; they encourage infidelity under the name of faith; they form parties when they mean to proclaim principles which would make parties impossible; they set up theories and systems based upon private judgments and individual conceits, when they are professing by some way or other to lead us on to permanent truths which belong to all and are necessary for all; they create new divisions by the very efforts which they make to promote unity; they invent lines and landmarks of their own, but the grand everlasting distinctions which God has established escape them altogether.

Q. But why declaim against an evil which seems so deeply rooted in human nature, that the efforts of six thousand years to eradicate it have proved abortive?

A. Why, indeed; if I did not believe that God has provided a complete and effectual witness against this evil, which is, as you say, so rooted in our selfish natures; if I did not see that this witness had prevailed to make itself heard in every age above all the clamours and distractions which were seeking to drown its voice: if I were not convinced that the world would have been torn in pieces by its individual factions, if there had not been this bond of peace and fellowship in the midst of it; if I were not sure that peace is meant to drive out war, good evil, light darkness; if I could not recognise more abundant proofs of this glorious fact in our own day than in any previous one; if it did not seem to me that all sects and factions, religious, political, or philosophical, were bearing testimonies, sometimes mute, sometimes noisy, occasionally hopeful, oftener reluctant, to the presence of that Church Universal, which is at once to justify their truths, explain the causes of their opposition, and destroy their existence.

Q. But the difficulty is that these factions have been in the Church Universal itself—assign whatever meaning you please to that phrase.

A. That is just the very point I was asserting. I said there was a sect spirit, a spirit which laboured to set up individual whims, opinions, and judgments in each of us; in us of the English Church, as well as in the Romanist, the foreign Protestant, the Quaker, the Evangelical Dissenter, or the Unitarian. The question is whether we do not all in our hearts and consciences feel and know that this sect spirit is a vile, accursed, devilish spirit; whether, if we do know this, these same hearts and consciences do not testify that it is not meant to rule the world; whether if that testimony be true, we are not bound to inquire what is to rule the world instead of it.

Q. And that inquiry you think I may even yet enter upon with some hope?

A. The early Quakers testified that there was a Kingdom of Christ in the world, and that it would subdue all kingdoms to itself. Are you willing to inquire with me into the grounds upon which they make this assertion; to consider whether those grounds be tenable; and whether the Quaker system be or be not the realisation of the Quaker idea? Shall we then inquire into the principles of those religious bodies who wish you to reject Quakerism; asking whether these also may not be sound and true, and whether they have not been depraved and degraded by certain negative notions to which they have been appended; whether the systems which have been invented to express them do really express them or no? Supposing our conclusions on this last point should not be satisfactory, shall we then proceed to consider the assertion of the Romanist—that there is a Catholic Church which existed before all these systems, and which is derived from a higher authority than all of them? If he should be able to make this assertion good, we may then inquire whether the Romish system be this Church or the disease of it; whether that system have exalted the ordinances of the Church which its supporters acknowledge and revere, or have degraded them and deprived them of their significance; whether this Church Catholic be in contradiction to those ideas which the Quakers and the other Protestant bodies hold, or whether it be the legitimate and perfect realisation of them. We cannot complete this investigation without examining that point upon which your Romanist friend discovered so close a resemblance between your views and his; the point, I mean, whether a national society and a universal society be in their natures contradictory and incompatible; or whether they have been only made so by certain notions which interfere with the universality of the spiritual body as well as with the distinctness of the national body. When we have arrived at some conclusion upon this matter, we shall be in a condition to speak of our position in England; to inquire if there be a Catholic Church here or not, and if there be, under what circumstances it exists, what are its dangers and evils, whether these dangers and evils are reasons for our living in separation from it or for uniting ourselves more closely to it.

Q. I am ready to hear what you have to say on these subjects, though I cannot pretend that I look for any great discoveries.

A. I rejoice that you do not. If we begin with the expectation of great results our pride will be rewarded with disappointment, and we shall add one more scheme to those which were so fair in appearance, and which have proved so abortive: if we desire to walk humbly along the path which God has marked out for us, rejecting no light, however feeble, which He vouchsafes, and trusting in Him to guide us to the perfect day, I do not think that His promise to wayfaring men will be unfulfilled to us.