342 THE INNER LIGHT INTERPRETS THE SCRIPTURES. XVI. CHAP. The true light is therefore not the reason of the individual, nor the conscience of the individual; it is the light of universal reason; the voice of universal conscience, “manifesting its own verity, in that it is confirmed and established by the experience of all men." Moreover it has the characteristic of necessity. "It constrains even its adversaries to plead for it.” Ib. 129. "It never contradicts sound reason," and is the noblest and most certain rule, for "the divine revelation is so evident and clear of itself, that by its own evidence and clearness, it irresistibly forces the well-disposed Prop. ii. understanding to assent." Barclay, 128. Ib. 4. But would the Inner Light bend to the authority of written inspiration? The Bible was the religion of Protestants; had the Quaker a better guide? The Quaker believed in the unity of truth; there can be no contradiction between right reason and previous revelation, between just tradition and an enlightened conscience. But the Spirit is the criterion. The Barclay, Spirit is the guide which leads into all truth. The Quaker reads the Scriptures with delight, but not with idolatry. It is his own soul which bears the valid witness that they are true. The letter is not the Spirit; the Bible is not religion, but a record of religion. "The Scriptures "—such are Barclay's words are a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself." Penn, i. 326. 166 Far from rejecting Christianity, the Quaker insisted that he alone maintained its primitive simplicity. The skeptic forever vibrated between opinions; the Quaker was fixed even to dogmatism. The infidel rejected religion; the Quaker cherished it as his life. The scoffer pushed freedom to dissoluteness; the Quaker circumscribed freedom by obedience to truth. QUAKERISM PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 343 XVI. George Fox and Voltaire both protested against priest- CHAP. craft; Voltaire in behalf of the senses, Fox in behalf of the soul. To the Quakers Christianity is freedom. And they loved to remember, that the patriarchs were graziers, that the prophets were mechanics and shepherds, that John Baptist, the greatest of envoys, was clad in a rough garment of camel's hair. To them there was joy in the thought, that the brightest image of divinity on earth had been born in a manger, had been reared under the roof of a carpenter, had been content for himself and his guests with no greater luxury than barley loaves and fishes, and that the messengers of his choice had been rustics like themselves. Nor were they embarrassed by knotty points of theology. Their creed did not vary with the subtilties of verbal criticism; they revered the eternity of the Inner Light without regard to the arguments of grammarians or the use of the Greek article. Did philosophers and divines involve themselves in the mazes of liberty and fixed decrees, of foreknowledge and fate, the monitor in the Quaker's breast was to him the sufficient guaranty of freedom. Did men defend or reject the Trinity by learned dissertations and minute criticisms on various readings, he avoided the use of the word, and despised the jargon of disputants; but the idea of God with us, the incarnation of the Spirit, the union of Deity with humanity, was to the Quaker the dearest and the most sublime symbol of man's enfranchisement. 461. As a consequence of this faith, every avenue to truth was to be kept open. "Christ came not to extinguish, Penn, 1. but to improve the heathen knowledge." "The difference between the philosophers of Greece and the Christian Quaker is rather in manifestation than in Ibid. i. nature." He cries Stand, to every thought that 327. 344 XVI. Penn, i. 326. Ibid. i. 53. QUAKERISM AGREES WITH PLATO AND PLOTINUS. CHAP. knocks for entrance; but welcomes it as a friend, if it gives the watchword. Exulting in the wonderful bond which admitted him to a communion with all the sons of light, of every nation and age, he rejected with scorn the school of Epicurus; he had no sympathy with the fol538. lies of the skeptics, and esteemed even the mind of Aristotle too much bent upon the outward world. But Aristotle himself, in so far as he grounds philosophy on virtue and self-denial, and every contemplative sage, orators and philosophers, statesmen and divinęs, were gathered as a cloud of witnesses to the same unchanging truth. "The Inner Light," said Penn, "is the Domestic God of Pythagoras." The voice in the breast of George Fox, as he kept sheep on the hills of Nottingham, was the spirit which had been the good genius and guide Penn, of Socrates. Above all, the Christian Quaker delighted in "the divinely contemplative Plato," the "famous doctor of gentile theology," and recognized the unity of the Inner Light with the divine principle which dwelt with Plotinus. Quakerism is as old as hu i. 261. 619. Ibid. iii. 619. manity. The Inner Light is to the Quaker not only the revelation of truth, but the guide of life and the oracle of duty. He demands the uniform predominance of the world of thought over the world of sensation. The blameless enthusiast, well aware of the narrow powers and natural infirmities of man, yet aims at Fox, xi. perfection from sin; and tolerating no compromise, demands the harmonious development of man's higher powers with the entire subjection of the base to the nobler instincts. The motives to conduct and its rule are, like truth, to be sought in the soul. Thus the doctrine of disinterested virtue-the doctrine for which Guyon was persecuted and Fenelon THE INNER LIGHT THE RULE OF CONDUCT. 345 XVI. disgraced-the doctrine which tyrants condemn as CHAP. rebellion, and priests as heresy, was cherished by the Quaker as the foundation of morality. Self-denial he enforced with ascetic severity, yet never with ascetic superstition. He might array himself fantastically to express a truth by an apparent symbol, but he never wore sackcloth as an anchorite. "Thoughts of death and hell to keep out sin were to him no better than fig-49. leaves." He would obey the imperative dictate of truth, even though the fires of hell were quenched. Virtue is happiness; heaven is with her always. The Quakers knew no superstitious vows of celibacy; they favored no nunneries, monasteries, "or religious bedlams;" but they demanded purity of life as essential to the welfare of society, and founded the institution of marriage on permanent affection, not on transient passion. Their matches, they were wont to say, are registered in heaven. Has a recent school of philosophy discovered in wars and pestilence, in vices and poverty, salutary checks on population? The Quaker, confident of the supremacy of mind, feared no evil, though plagues and war should cease, and vice and poverty be banished by intelligent culture. Despotism favors the liberty of the senses; and popular freedom rests on sanctity of morals. To the Quaker, licentiousness is the greatest bane of good order and good government. Barclay, The Quaker revered principles, not men, truth, not power, and therefore could not become the tool of ambition. 66 They are a people," said Cromwell, "whom I Fox,169. cannot win with gifts, honors, offices, or places." Still less was the Quaker a slave to avarice. Seeking wisdom, and not the philosopher's stone, to him the love Penn, i. of money for money's sake was the basest of passions, 1. 445. and the rage of indefinite accumulation was "oppression 333. 346 XVI. 440. i. THE INNER LIGHT THE RULE OF CONDUCT. CHAP. to the poor, compelling those who have little to drudge like slaves." "That the sweat and tedious labor of the Penn, husbandmen, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure, ease and pastime of a small number of men, that the cart, the plough, the thresh, should be in inordinate severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land to feed the appetites of the Ibid. i. twentieth, is far from the appointment of the great Governor of the world." It is best, the people be neither rich nor poor; for riches bring luxury, and luxury tyranny. 496. Ibid. i. 520. Ibid. i. 522. The supremacy of mind, forbidding the exercise of tyranny as a means of government, attempted a reformation of society, but only by means addressed to conscience. The system contained a reform in education; it demanded that children should be brought up, not in the pride of caste; still less by methods of violence; but as men, by methods suited to the intelligence of humanity. Life should never be taken for an offence Penn, il. against property; nor the person imprisoned for debt. And the same train of reasoning led to a protest against The Quaker believed in the power of justice to protect itself; for himself, he renounced the use of the sword; and, aware that the vices of society might entail danger on a nation not imbued with his principles, he did not absolutely deny to others the right of defence, but looked forward with hope to the period Barclay, when the progress of civilization should realize the vision of a universal and enduring peace. 276. 540. Pref. xv. war. The supremacy of mind abrogated ceremonies; the Quaker regarded "the substance of things," and broke up forms as the nests of superstition. Every Protestant refused the rosary and the censer; the Quaker rejects common prayer, and his adoration of God is the free |