USA > Massachusetts > The Puritans versus the Quakers : a review of the persecutions of the early Quakers and Baptists in Massachusetts, with notices of those persecuted and of some of their descendants and tributes to Roger Williams and William Penn > Part 5
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and Virginia, signed to an accompanying memorial for the same object being the name of Benjamin Franklin, the grandson of a Quaker, as President of the Pennsyl- vania Abolition Society, in its behalf. It was on the presentation of a petition of the Society of Friends in New England, as a body, through their official represen- tatives, for the abolition of that monstrous enormity, the Fugitive Slave Act, that Charles Sumner made his first great speech in the United States Senate against slavery, Aug. 26, 1852, when he stood almost solitary and alone in that body in defence of human freedom, against such tremendous odds, in the then darkest days of pro-slavery domination,-in which speech Sumner sounded the pro- phetic knell of the doomed institution of slavery. And it is a very significant fact, that the President of the United States who wrote the Proclamation of Emancipation, and whose signature to it gave it its effect, was himself a descendant of Pennsylvania Quakers. It was a Quak- er preacher, William Martin, in Cork, Ireland, fifty years ago, who started the first temperance movement in that country, and through his persuasive appeals made a con- vert, among others, of the celebrated " apostle of temper- ance," Father Mathew, whom the Quaker, by his persistent urgings, induced to sign the total abstinence pledge and become a missionary in the cause, and to enter upon that remarkable career for good in which Father Mat- thew afterwards became so successful in the conversion of so many others of his race, both in Ireland and in America, as attested by the innumerable Father Matthew Total Abstinence Societies organized all over this and the old country, with their beneficent results for humani- ty. It was an English Quakeress, Elizabeth Fry, who
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inaugurated the grand philanthropic system of prison discipline reform, the establishment of schools for the reformation of the depraved, and devoted her whole life and energies for the cause, including frequent visits and preaching to the inmates of jails, hospitals, etc. And what friend of his race, what lover of poetry devoted in its most enlivening strains to the promotion of all hu- mane causes, can but experience genuine satisfaction, if he is connected with any religious sect, at a denomina- tional association with America's Poet of Freedom and Humanity, John Greenleaf Whittier, whose name is synonymous with all that is noble, and pure, and inspir- ing in elevated sentiment.
The Society of Friends, or Quakers, as an organ- ized body, may be lessening in numbers, but its mem- bers have the proud satisfaction of seeing the grand principles on which they started, more and more perme- ate other denominations and the world. Rising superi- or to the proselyting spirit which has too often animated other religious bodies, the Quakers have looked more to the advancement of the truths they have uttered than to a numerical increase of their denomination, trusting to the working of the Spirit of God in the hearts of those whom they would influence through the inspira- tion which they have received themselves from on high, rather than to the more common sensational method of appeals for special effect. The Quaker method, being broader and deeper, and less selfish, is more lasting in its influence on the world, for permanent good.
The Quakers have not thus, it is true, exhibited that wisdom so generally utilized in a selfish world, of paying sufficient attention to the building up or repair-
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ing of their denominational fences, for the increase of their numbers; in fact, they have no fences to repair, preferring rather to have their views go forth untram- meled before the people, whenever and wherever they utter them, trusting in God for the results. Would that there was more of this unselfish spirit in the religious world, like that of the Quakers of old, who sought more the advancement of the kingdom of righteousness and peace upon the earth, than the mere building up of a sect; seeking thus unselfishly to advance this kingdom, at the sacrifice even of their own lives, when menaced with the pains and penalties of a series of persecutions hardly ever before paralleled in the history of religious persecutions for opinions' sake.
I cannot better illustrate or enforce the views I have tried to express regarding the Quakers in the past, than in the words of one of the truly inspired men of this generation, whose poetic strains fall as harmonious- ly and melodiously upon the ear, as the sounding of the majestic waters of the beautiful Merrimac, by the side of which he was born and has so long dwelt :
The Quaker of the olden time ! So calm, and firm, and true, Unspotted by its wrong and crime, He walked the dark earth through ; The lust of power, the love of gain, The thousand lures of sin Around him, had no power to stain The purity within.
With that deep insight which detects All great things in the small, And knows how each man's life affects The spiritual life of all,
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He walked by faith and not by sight, By love, and not by law ; The presence of the wrong or right He rather felt than saw.
He felt that wrong which wrong partakes, That nothing stands alone, That whoso gives the motive, makes His brother's sin his own ; And, pausing not for doubtful choice Of evils great or small, He listened to that inward voice Which calls away from all.
Oh ! Spirit of that early day, So pure, and strong, and true, Be with us in the narrow way Our faithful fathers knew ; Give strength the evil to forsake, The cross of truth to bear, And love and reverent fear to make Our daily lives a prayer.
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Who scoffs at our birthright? The words of the seers And the songs of the bards in the twilight of years, All the foregleams of wisdom in santon and sage, In prophet and priest, are our true heritage.
The Word which the reason of Plato discerned ; The Truth, as whose symbol the Mithra fire burned ; The soul of the world which the Stoic but guessed, In the " Light Universal " the Quaker confessed !
No honors of war to our worthies belong ; Their plain stem of life never flowered into song ; But the fountains they opened still gush by the way, And the world for their healing is better today.
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There are those who take note that our numbers are small, New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall ; But the lord of the seed field takes care of his own, And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.
The last of the sect to his fathers may go,
Leaving only his coat for some Barnum to show ; But the Truths which he taught will expand with the years, Till the false dies away and the wrong disappears.
Meanwhile, shall we learn, in our ease, to forget To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom, our debt ? Hide their words out of sight like the garbs that they wore, And for Barclay's apology offer one more ?
Shall we fawn round the priest-craft that glutted the shears And festooned the stocks with our grandfathers' ears ? Talk of Woolman's uusoundness, count Penn heterodox ? And take Norton, or Wilson, in place of George Fox ?
Mather's creed for our faith which embraces the whole, Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul, Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run, And man has not severed what God has made one.
For our sense of God's goodness revealed everywhere, As sunshine impartial, as free as the air ;
For our trust in humanity, heathen or Jew, And our hope for all darkness "The Light" shineth through.
I cannot better close what I have to say in illustra- tion of the distinguishing characteristics of the Society of Friends as a religious denomination in the past, than by reference to an eminent practical exemplar of their principles in the old world, the late Joseph Sturge of Birmingham, England. Well do I remember the time, fifty years ago, when he came to this country, and in company with his American friend and co-adjutor in ev- ery good work, the poet Whittier, visited Worcester, and attended the Friends' meeting, soon after the beginning
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of the holding of regular Friends' meetings here, in an "upper chamber," near the corner of Main and Walnut streets. In my mind's eye I recall their appearance in that meeting as they sat side by side with the leading Quakers of that time in Worcester, John Milton Earle, Anthony Chase, Edward Earle, Charles Hadwen, Samuel H. Colton, Elisha Harkness, and others, including my own father and mother, all of whom have passed to their reward on high. If I remember rightly, there was no vocal expression of the "Inner Light" on that occasion, but the Spirit of God was fully, if not audibly, manifested in the hearts and countenances of all pres- ent, as they sat in silent worship and communion with Him who said, " Behold, I stand at the door, and knock ; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." Joseph Sturge was one of the most devoted workers in behalf of those grand distinctive Quaker principles which recognize the universal brotherhood of man, and oppose all wars between nations as well as strife be- tween individuals, laboring for the coming of that good time when "swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks," and when the oppressed and depraved of every race and clime shall be elvated to the stature of true manhood. Besides his warm sympa- thy and active efforts for the relief and benefit of the unfortunate and down-trodden in his own land, he ex- tended his aid for the amelioration of the condition of suffering humanity in other countries. After the death of this noble man, the following beautiful and just trib- ute to his memory was written by his friend Whittier. The allusion to. "war's worn victims" refers to Sturge's
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efforts for the relief of those who had suffered in conse- quence of the devastating war in which England had been engaged with other European powers, by which the people of Finland, Holstein, and neighboring territo- ry had so terribly suffered :
Silent for once the restless hive of labor, Save the low funeral tread, Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor The good deeds of the dead.
For him no minster's chant of the immortals Rose from the lips of sin ; No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals To let the white soul in.
But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces In the low hovel's door, And prayers went up from all the dark by-places And dwellings of the poor.
The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, The vagrant of the street, The human dice wherewith in games of battle The lords of earth compete,
Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping, All swelled the long lament Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping His viewless monument !
For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor, In the long heretofore, A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender, Has England's turf closed o'er.
And if there fell from out her grand old steeples No crash of brazen wail, The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples Swept in on every gale.
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It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows, And from the tropic calms Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows Of Occidental palms ;
From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian peasants, And harbors of the Finn,
Where war's worn victims saw his gentle presence Come sailing, Christ-like, in,
To seek the lost, to build the old waste places, To link the hostile shores
Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies The moss of Finland's moors.
Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, Who in the vilest saw Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple Still vocal with God's law ;
And heard with tender ear the spirit of sighing As from its prison cell, Praying for pity, like the mournful crying Of Jonah out of hell.
Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, But a fine sense of right, And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion Straight as a line of light.
His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, In the same channel ran : The crystal clearness of an eye kept single Shamed all the frauds of man.
The very gentlest of all human natures He joined to courage strong, And love outreaching unto all God's creatures With sturdy hate of wrong.
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Tender as woman ; manliness and meekness In him were so allied, That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a single side.
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And now he rests : his greatness and his sweetness No more shall seem at strife ;
And death has moulded into calm completeness The statue of his life.
Where the dews glisten and the song-birds warble, His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his modest shade.
The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing ; Beneath its smoky vale, Hard by, the city of his love is swinging Its clamorous iron flail.
But round his grave are quietude and beauty, And the sweet heaven above,- The fitting symbols of a life of duty Transfigured into love !
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