George Fox's journal
is a leaf from a strange chapter of the world's history: from the history of
religion. If a plain man should come among us now, asking leave of none to
speak, but "testifying" in religious assemblies to the reality of the
inward life of light and peace in Christ, his blunt and simple ways might be
unpleasing to many, but every scoffer would look on, more with wonder than with
anger. Many, I am sure, would welcome such a voice of sincerity and
"livingness," sounding through the outward services of religion. The
days of religious persecution can scarcely return again; nor, it is to be
hoped, the days of those strange phenomena which so irritated our ancestors;
men walking as signs to the people, declaring their dreams to be visions from
God, and uttering wild, unmeaning prophecies for inspiration. How hard it is to
learn what "true religion and undefiled" is! Life is
a better word for this universal bond than religion. And we shall see,
sometime, that it is only by the redemption of all our powers, all that is in
us and in the outward world, that we are truly "saved." We must
receive the true light through and through, we must keep our common sense, our
talents, our genius, just the same; — only that light must glow through all, to
make all alive. And when home, and friendships, and amusements, and all useful
and beautiful thoughts and things are really made transparent with that divine
light, when nothing that God has given us is rejected as "common or
unclean," the "new heaven and the new earth" will have been
created, and we shall live in our Creator and Redeemer.
The great difference
between the early Quakers and the Puritans seems to me to be that the former
had larger ideas of truth, deeper and broader revelations, yet mixed with
greater eccentricities, as might be expected. The Puritans were most anxious
for a place where they could worship undisturbed, as their consciences
dictated; the Quakers were most desirous that the Word of Life should be spoken
everywhere, — the Light be revealed to all. Each made serious mistakes, — what
else could we expect, from the best that is human? And the errors of both were,
in great part, the errors of the age, — intolerance and fanaticism.
SOURCE: Daniel
Dulany Addison, Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary, pp. 106-8
