Complete Prose Works
the dispute. "Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!" he would
say when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violent
orthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he never recanted.
A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the following comments
on them in a paper ten years ago: "It was in America, where there had
been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer was hang'd on
Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose, singularly
enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ and the nature
of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was the controversy,
and how much of human infirmity was found to be still lurking under
broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for the information in the
Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, the latter an English
Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, and who exercised his
gifts as a peace-maker with but little success. The meetings, according
to his testimony, were sometimes turn'd into mobs. The disruption was
wide, and seems to have been final. Six of the ten yearly meetings were
divided; and since that time various sub-divisions have come, four
or five in number. There has never, however, been anything like a
repetition of the excitement of the Hicksite controversy; and Friends of
all kinds at present appear to have settled down into a solid, steady,
comfortable state, and to be working in their own way without troubling
other Friends whose ways are different."
_Note_.--Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean'd
impressions from what they saw of him, (judg'd from their own points
of views,) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on another point.
They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personal ambition, the
pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect that should reflect
his own name, and to which he should give especial form and character.
Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all through progress and
civilization, by which strong men and strong convictions achieve
anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias was undoubtedly
genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrew prophet. He had the
spirit of one, and in his later years look'd like one. What Carlyle says
of John Knox will apply to him:
He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes
heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest,
intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable
man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence
to truth, in _sincerity_ as we say, he has no superior; nay, one
might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true
Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at Knox's
grave, "who never fear'd the face of man." He resembles, more than
any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility,
intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth.
_A Note yet. The United States to-day_.--While under all previous
conditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal,
Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through the
entire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion with
them, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches,
institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c., practically promoting
religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity
there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there
was of justice, art, literature, and good manners--it is clear I say,
that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and
henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs,
adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to
our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits, of the
present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid convictions,
but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance. Few speak
openly--none officially--against them. But the ostent continuously
imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains of belief in
them are now utterly ceas'd and departed from the minds of men?
_A Lingering Note_.--In the making of a full man, all the other
consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,)
are to be crown'd and effused by the religious conscience. In the higher
structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the Religious,
the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle vitalization and
antiseptic play call'd Health in the physiologic structure. To person or
State, the main verteber (or rather _the_ verteber) is Morality.
That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the
supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality.
It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man or State
vital and upright, as health keeps the body straight and blooming. Of
course a really grand and strong and beautiful character is probably to
be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference to itself, its own
personal and social sphere--with (paradox though it may be) the clear
understanding that the conventional theories of life, worldly ambition,
wealth, office, fame, &c., are essentially but glittering mayas,
delusions.
Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes find
themselves saying, It isn't only those who know most, who contribute
most to God's glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times stand with
bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. For there is
something greater (is there not?) than all the science and poems of the
world--above all else, like the stars shining eternal--above Shakspere's
plays, or Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael--something
that shines elusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening--high above all
the vaunted wealth and pride--prov'd by its practical outcropping in
life, each case after its own concomitants--the intuitive blending of
divine love and faith in a human emotional character--blending for all,
for the unlearn'd, the common, and the poor.
I don't know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has been
made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even the most
uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself as
subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights fabled.
Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure. For it isn't
only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark, or almost dark,
unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of Sirius, seven
times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space, real and potent
as any--perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none recks of them. In the
bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens, they have not even names.
Amid ceaseless sophistications all times, the soul would seem to glance
yearningly around for such contrasts--such cool, still offsets.
Notes:
[42]In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the
most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he ever
beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been like
them.
[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias
Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays--but
in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a
good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He
said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all
the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound copy of
the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and yet not
be a truly religious person at all." E. believ'd little in a church
as organiz'd-even his own--with houses, ministers, or with salaries,
creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ'
d always in the universal church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt,
ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.--He was fond of pithy
proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live, but how you live."
He said once to my father, "They talk of the devil--I tell thee, Walter,
there is no worse devil than man."
GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)
While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the origin
of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the most
mark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the
16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so many
important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe,
and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually
arous'd--(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity
of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for
witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age
of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were
wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to
think of it--that age! its events, persons--Shakspere just dead, (his
folios publish'd, complete)--Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the
solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!
As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine
qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport
ourselves back to the England of that period. As I say, it is the time
of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting forms,
governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and ebb and
flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the long feud
between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst of the sprouts, began
George Fox--born eight years after the death of Shakspere. He was the
son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was "converted" before the age
of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and physical, through which those
years of the strange youth pass'd! He claim'd to be sent by God to
fulfill a mission. "I come," he said, "to direct people to the spirit
that gave forth the Scriptures." The range of his thought, even then,
cover'd almost every important subject of after times, anti-slavery,
women's rights, &c. Though in a low sphere, and among the masses, he
forms a mark'd feature in the age.
And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb'd age! The
foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic,
the credulous, all breaking--the light of the new, and of science and
democracy, definitely beginning--a mad, fierce, almost crazy age!
The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the
Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles.
Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the
Reformation--but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy. We
think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations of
war and peace; and so it is. But there could hardly be a grander and
more picturesque and varied age than that.
Born out of and in this age, when Milton, Bunyan, Dryden and John Locke
were still living--amid the memories of Queen Elizabeth and James First,
and the events of their reigns--when the radiance of that galaxy
of poets, warriors, statesmen, captains, lords, explorers, wits and
gentlemen, that crowded the courts and times of those sovereigns still
fill'd the atmosphere--when America commencing to be explor'd and
settled commenc'd also to be suspected as destin'd to overthrow the old
standards and calculations--when Feudalism, like a sunset, seem'd
to gather all its glories, reminiscences, personalisms, in one last
gorgeous effort, before the advance of a new day, a new incipient