QUAKERISM AND QUAKERS.

HURRAH for our friends the Quakers! Friends, you delight to be ycleped, and by the manes of Fox and Barclay you shall share the privileges of friendship. I am going to sketch you con amore artist-fashion. I shall depict the breadth of your brims, the sleekness of your cheeks, the cut of your coats, &c. But all shall be done in the best natured manner in the world; I will endeavour to view you through the drab-coloured medium of Mr. Clarkson's "Portraiture of Quakerism'-what more can you desire? You shall be exhibited, but not shown up. You shall trace your exact physes, with the precise elongation of jaw that is the badge of all your tribe. I will "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." The laus et vituperium, the vermilion and Indian ink, the flattery and sarcasm, shall be most impartially intermingled. I will be as careful in selecting and sorting your ingredients as a Cornish cook in manufacturing a squab pie-the component elements of pepper, onions, apples, mutton, &c. shall be regulated with a degree of equity that might astonish the Chancellor himself. This is the more indispensable as too many of your eulogisers have made you absolutely isangelic, or equal to the angels, bating the difference between wings and no wings-while others, rogueish wags that they were, have accused you of being egregious Cantwells, magicians, imps of the black prince, and other unutterable abominations. Such detractors of innocent simplicity deserve to suffer purgatory, at least, if not to go further, and fare worse.

Hurrah for the Quakers! Where shall we begin this magnificent and unparalleled critique. "Faith, I'll begin at the beginning," as the Irishman said when he ringed his pig. I don't half like the plan of the epic poets, who plunge heads and tails in medias res. Grave historians, like myself, scorn to follow such extravagant vagaries.

To begin, then, with the beginning. Where shall we look for the beginning of the Quakers? By the powers, I don't know; and not knowing, can't say. I don't give much credit to those who trace them up to the angels, and the loves of the angels, or even to the angelici and angelita. This implies a degree of poetic sublimation to which all Quakers plead not guilty.

They appear historically to have been more akin to the spiritualists and mystics that have prevailed, time immemorial, in the Jewish and Christian churches. It is, I conceive, in the history of the mystics, during all ages, that we discover the true rise and progress of Quakerism.

It may be asserted that the spiritual or mystical divinity, so patronised by Philo, Origen, Pseudo Dionysius, Erigena, and their followers, was always the highest and most orthodox of religious. doctrines in the church. This is true enough; yet it cannot be denied that the mystical divinity extended itself in impurer manifestations through several sects, that were considered as very low in eccle

siastical precedence, and decidedly heterodox in many of their tenets and practices.

A very large portion of these spiritualists, or mystics, assumed various names of Theosophists, Paulicians, Catharists, &c., and connected themselves with the secret societies of Freemasonic initiation that had come down from remote antiquity. In this great systems of initiations, subsisting under diverse name and forms, they extended all over Europe as early as the tenth century. Those who wish to see an exhibition of the views and operations of these theosophic societies, may read Rosetti's admirable work on the "Rise and Progress of the Antipapal Spirit previous to the Reformation." In fact, by various processes, direct and indirect, the theosophists helped on the reformations of all churches and states to which their influence penetrated.

Let it not seem an unfair presumption, when we thus exhibit the mystics, as at once the highest and the most multiform of religious sects-in truth they have ever been so. Agreeing in a certain grand principle of spiritualism, the mystics have, to do them justice, taken loftier and larger views of things than any of the scholastic or formalistic sects. Mysticism possesses something of the genius of Proteus being a thing essentially divine, it can change and variegate its forms to infinity:

For by the attribute of Deity,
Which it has won from heaven, self-multiplied;
The complex one appears on every side,
At the same indivisible point of time.

If mysticism, therefore, has existed among the Origenists, in that sublime and celestial orthodoxy which has placed their names at the summit of theological science,-Mysticism, likewise, has evolved its subtle emanations among many inferior and semi-ridiculous sects that have sprung up along the course of time. In this subordinate class of mystics we may place the Familists, Anabaptists, the Camisars, Quietists, Behmenites, Swedenborgians, Labadists, Guionists, Irvingites, &c. &c.

Such appears to me to be the great order of mystics in which the Quakers are to be collocated. These mystics, while on the whole. they rank as ecclesiastical sects, will be found in all times, to have been closely connected with the theosophical and free-masonic lodges of initiation, both in their doctrine and their discipline. We shall have plenty of opportunities of proving this, with relation to the Quakers. Little as they may be inclined to acknowledge the fact, they will be found to resemble the initiates of theosophy, the Rosicrucians, and Illuminati, who have become a proverb among nations.

Jacob Behmen, and the Behmenites, who flourished to an amazing extent in Germany and France during the 16th century, have generally been considered as the immediate precursors of those English mystics entitled Quakers. Behmen was, in the opinion of all who have studied his works, a man of high spirituality and strong original genius. His mind was of that heaven-scaling and

earth-defying heroism which dares all things and bears all things, in the search of wisdom. By the stern contentions of faith and prayer, by the struggling energies of unflinching reason, and the logical analysis of a few theosophic books, he attained many of the loftiest visions of truth, and compiled a system of transcendentalism more brilliant than any which had appeared for ages. He was one of the few cobblers who have proved themselves capable of judging above the last. From his dingy stall and work-shop issued the aurora of a theosophic doctrine which set Europe in a blaze. None but those who are personally acquainted with the works of Behmen, and the history of the Behmenites, can justly estimate the influence his doctrine has had on the world. It was not without some reason that such men as Poiret, Fenelon, Ramsay, and Law have eulogised this extraordinary man. It is astonishing to me that his solitary genius should have worked out so many philosophemes, resplendent as those of the Cabalists, the Brahmins, and the Pythagoreans, whom he had never read. It is a proof, if any were wanted, of the essential unity and sympathy of true genius in all times and nations. What would not Behmen have executed had he enjoyed the learning of Mirandola, Reuchlin, and Agrippa. How many of his ideas that now loom large in the mist of rhapsody, shadowy and obscure, yet vast and astounding as the ghosts of the mighty dead, would then have worn the keen edge and refulgent configuration of positive science. But, in spite of his disadvantages, Behmen is the Plato of Germany; and to him her greatest philosophers, and especially the Kantists, owe the brightest of their theories.

Such was Behmen. His life, example, and writings, I have no doubt whatever, had an extensive share in forming the disposition of George Fox, the father of the Quakers. I wish not here to draw an extensive parallel between the characters of Behmen and Fox; but it might easily be done so many saliant points of analogy and contrast do their biographies present.

The leading facts of Fox's life are thus briefly stated by Watkins: "George Fox, father of the Quakers, was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in 1624. He was apprenticed to a grazier, who employed him in keeping sheep; a situation very favorable to a mind naturally enthusiastic. After experiencing much trouble, he resolved to forsake all forms of religion, and to attend to the teaching of the Spirit. He next felt himself called on to propagate his opinions; and, accordingly, commenced preacher at Manchester, insisting on the necessity of receiving Christ in the heart, and of avoiding all ceremonies in religion. At Derby his adherents were called Quakers, on account of the trembling accent used in their exhortations, and, perhaps, from the vehemence of their gestures. About 1669, Fox married Margaret, the widow of Judge Fell, one of his converts in Lancashire; after which he went to America, and on his return, visited the eontinent. He lived to see his society in a flourishing condition, and died in 1690. His journals and tracts were printed in folio, in 1706."-(Life by Clarkson.)

The mind of Fox had not the same degree of spiritualism, or genius, which distinguished his German predecessor. It possessed,

however, enough of both to urge him into celebrity. He had the wit to discover that enthusiasm was the secret of influence and power; he therefore courted it as vigorously as his antagonists scouted it, and it energised him to attempt and achieve those victories of sectarian ambition which seemed at first altogether beyond his compass. This is not the place to relate the curious details of his itinerant life, his adventures, and successes, but they will well reward the perusal of the literary curioso.

One of Fox's tenets was that of his own inspiration. He believed that inspiration was by no means confined to the writers of the Bible; but he maintained that it was the common property of all saints, in successive degrees of quantity. While he supposed the inspired writers to enjoy the gifts of inspiration in full measure, he conceived that even the meanest pietist participated in the blessing and the promise, however insignificant his share might be.

When a man fairly persuades himself that he is thus inspired, he will necessarily assume a position in society otherwise inaccessible. He will proceed with a resolution, and speak with a decisiveness which are sure to advance his cause, however preposterous. The enthusiasm of Fox spread like wild-fire among a certain order of minds, with which he entered en rapport. The fascination of his zeal past with the rapidity of lightning to all spirits of the same fiery temperament, which were predisposed to catch the infection-and the number of such spirits, in those times of hot-headed puritanity, was by no means inconsiderable.

But if Fox had a great zeal towards God, it was not according to knowledge. Neither his talents nor opportunities enabled him to bestow anything like scientific investigation on the great masterscience of theology. He attempted, by a capricious flight of imagination, to reach an altitude in the mountain of truth only attainable by patient labour. The consequence was, that the doctrine of Fox and the Quakers presented an extraordinary jumble, an undefinable mingle-mangle of noble verities and ridiculous errors. The sublimest spiritualities, and the most grotesque formalisms were tossed higglety pigglety into the sack, and then extracted promiscuously for the admiration of the world."

One thing is particularly observable with relation to Fox and his followers: I mean the blending of enthusiasm with calmness. I have observed in many of the mystics, especially in the Swedenborgians and the Irvingites, the same phenomenon, not to call it anomaly. As if they mistrusted the vehemence of their internal impulses, they have kept them as much as possible incarcerated in their bosoms; and, as if to atone for certain indiscreet and disastrous outbursts of phantasy and passion, they have laid them under the heaviest fetters of discipline. I have known cases wherein individuals of this class have thus waged a dreadful and exterminating war within, when the calmness of the eye, and the paleness of the cheek, and the indifference of the manner, completely deceived a spectator. It is by this habit of self-restraint, that Quakers and Quietists appear to possess such supernatural suavity and placidity. And it is by this habit that men whose enthusiasm is often too in

tense for words, will go through all the minutiae of secular business, and make ample fortunes, under a veil of impenetrable mystery. I am not sure, however, whether this peculiar and unnatural selfdiscipline does not tend to promote a morbid idiosynerasy, if not something worse. Certainly the returns of the asylums for mental imbecility strike a large average against the Quakers. This, however, may partly arise from other causes, such as their marrying in and in, &c.

There is one grand doctrine in the Bible, as held by the orthodox Church, which the Quakers never seem to have apprehended-I allude to the revealed association and harmony subsisting between spirit and matter and form. Scripture represents Deity himself as Spirit, comprehending the germinal principle of what we call matter and form-as the all in all-the protoplast of all existences, the first-born of every creature. It represents all spirits as associated with some degrees of matter, and all matters as associated with some degrees of spirit; it sets forth the universe as a whole, a macrocosm of microcosms-a sympathy of sympathies. In accordance with this doctrine, it assures us that man is a compound being, composed of soul and body, answering the two grand spheres of metaphysics and physics. It assures us that to live justly, we must preserve a proper harmony with both these spheres; and as the future hope of immortality, it sets before us the period when both parts of our nature shall receive a celestial renovation; when, not only the resurrection of the spirit, but a resurrection of the body may be anticipated. Such is the catholicity of Scripture-such is the harmony of creation. One benignant Providence extends an equal loving-kindness to spirit, matter, and form. But what God hath joined together, vain man hath striven to put asunder. Hence, in all ages, the sectarian disputes between spiritualists, materialists, and formalists, each forgetting the canon of catholicity, and arguing exclusively, partially, and one-sidedly. I should not have brought this consideration forward at present, had not this doctrine been the very crux and stumbling-block of the Quakers, time immemorial. In their zeal for spiritualities, they forgot the proprieties of form. These ought they to have done, and not left the other undone; for, as man is a compound being, the forms and ceremonials of right discipline, enjoined by the apostles and the fathers, rise into a serious and eternal importance; and the inevitable consequence of neglecting or despising them is to mutilate, halve and quarter our being, in violation of the whole symmetry of nature.

Here lies the primary hallucination, which is the source of all the errors of Quakerism. The disciples of Fox and Barclay have lost the art of harmonising those spiritual, moral, historical, and literal senses of Scripture, which are all of them true, and each of them indispensable. The grand secret of biblical hermeneutics among orthodox expositors, consists in this system of universal harmony. The clear current of their interpretation involves and evolves all the elements of revelation, without exaggerating or violating any. In Quakerism, on the other hand, the partial theory of spiritual and mystical exposition is carried so far that the literal, the practical,

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