USA > Pennsylvania > Delaware County > Concordville > Two-hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Concord Monthly Meeting of Friends : Concordville, Delaware Co., Pa > Part 7
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Perhaps I have wandered into a privacy, but I have not into revelation, for the discipline of the Quaker adminis- tered in his domestic affairs is well known and prepares the apprentice for his maturity. This training is the best prep- aration which the young man can secure for his future re- sponsibilities. I do not know where my ancestors came from. It may have been from the wind swept moor or the busy streets of London. It matters but little to me that they have lived without ambition except in the cause of justice, which confess with a pride which I have never tried to conceal that they have always contended should be evenly divided. I my idols are to be found among the meek and contented. For me they furnish the ideals of life. They are the obvious warning signals and point out the way which divides good from evil, refinement from vulgarity, to the end where kind- ness is an unforgotten virtue and forgiveness the real sub- stance of religion.
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While the Friends' field of activity has its limits, his law of conduct reaches to where total darkness begins. His road has been the road of reason, and wherever it has led he has followed. Whenever its course passed through the affairs of men or crossed by the side of affliction his presence has been felt and his consequence acknowledged.
NORRIS J. SCOTT .- It is with some feeling of regret that we have to announce the absence of our next speaker. He is a man whom some of us delight very much to hear, and have great respect for. I have great admiration for him, for the course that he has taken in his public life, the way he has succeeded and the politics I can truthfully say which he has carried out, especially in his public life. I allude to William C. Sproul. And I am also sorry that he has not sent us any address that it might be read here to-day.
The next subject is Education. Friends as a society have always stood for education, and of later years for higher education. Now, in the formation of the Society in the time of George Fox, Friends as a rule came up more, you know, from the common people; they were not highly educated ; they didn't have the opportunity. They didn't have the wealth to go to schools. Of course, coming over with William Penn were men like Thomas Lloyd, James Logan, Isaac Norris, James Shippen and Samuel Carpenter and lots of others who were highly educated men, but as a rule they were not ; yet it was one of William Penn's most prominent objects that the children, especially, should be educated. In a letter he wrote to his wife he says: "Have their learning to be liberal, spare no cost, for by such parsimony all is lost that is saved." That is true to-day as it was then, and if there is any society who will stand and back that up, none more so than the Society of Friends.
About the first law that the province of Pennsylvania put on their statute-books, when the Friends were in the major- ity, reads as follows: "To the end that the poor as well as the rich may be educated in good and commendable learning, which is to be preferred before wealth, be it enacted that all persons having children shall cause them to be instructed in reading and writing, so that they may be able to read the Scriptures, and to write by the time they attain the age of twelve; and that then they may be taught some useful trade
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or skill;" then goes with that a penalty of $25.00 a year if they didn't carry it out. Laws are excellent, but when they have got a penalty attached to them they are more apt to be enforced. You know we have a query that has to be answered once a year-are the poor children properly edu- cated? If not, the meeting has to attend to it.
Up until the year 1856 Friends didn't have any colleges. I think that was about the time when the first college was started in this county. Now we have two in this county and there are none better anywhere, I say, in this country. They may not go so far as some of the higher, but what they do is thorough. When the child leaves one of those institutions to go out in the world he is well equipped for the duties that he has got to meet. A city surveyor-a very prominent city surveyor-told me not very many years ago -- "When I took my examination before the authorities in the city, and when I said I was educated at one of those colleges he re- marked, "That's fine; don't want anything better.'" Now to-day we have with us one of the leaders of those colleges, a man who deserves to be there too. He is going to speak-well, I believe he has changed his subject, so he will speak on just whatever he pleases. Dr. Joseph Swain.
DR. JOSEPH SWAIN .-- I want to thank our chairman for what he has said concerning the two colleges of this county. I feel that after all the good things you have heard to-day you will be willing that I should change my subject and then cut out most of the new subject so that I may not speak to you too long.
Recently I have had occasion to prepare an address on the topic of the Federation of the World. We have heard con- siderable here to-day about peace, and this new considera- tion of it which has come to me in the past few days has made me feel more strongly than ever before that there is no greater question before the world to-day, and there is no bet- ter time than now, for the Friends to come forward with their views in regard to peace.
Now as I proposed to cut out more than half of this address I want simply to read to you an analysis of it, so that I will tell vou where I begin and why I begin at that point. (Gives his paper by abstracts.)
Dr Joseph Swain. President of Swarthmore College, spoke on the subject, "The Federation of the World." In sumining up his remarks he spoke in part as follows :
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We cannot hope with our dominant political theory of to-day that war will end at once. We may have yet the most disastrous war of history, but the laws of development, both natural and moral, will make them less and less frequent until they shall disappear entirely. True Christianity is growing, education is becoming more universal, and as war destroys credit the financial interests of the world will be on the side of peace. The very destructiveness of war in loss of life, in destroying property and in the immense cost in money tends to make war an impossibility. The growing ineffectiveness of war to settle anything, plus those differ- ences made by the war itself yet to be settled by diplomacy or treaties, is a strong influence towards peace. A better under- standing between nations will give us more and better laws between nations until we are ready for a parliament of man. At present we seem to have made a beginning in this par- liamen in The Hague Conference. Our immediate tasks have been stated to be:
1. The formation of a permanent Court of Arbitral Jus- tice, finally established at Hague. Secretary Knox thinks that the third Hague Conference in 1915 will see such a court established.
2. An obligatory treaty binding on all nations to refer as many classes of disputes as can be gotten into a treaty to the permanent Court of Arbitral Justice, or if such a court is not instituted to the tribunal now in existence and before which the fisheries dispute between Great Britain and the United States has recently been tried. The recent treaties of the United States and England and the United States and France are a great step in advance in this direction.
3. A League of Peace. Such a league may be formed by a consolidation of the navies of three or four of the largest nations, or we may have a Police League simply to enforce the decisions of the Permanent Court.
Certainly college men in America should stand for peace. They are living in the greatest and most peaceful country of the world. They are trained in self-control and the scien- tific attitude of mind which is not only the power to see straight and reason right but gives the power to wait, to sacrifice, to free oneself from passion, prejudice and fear. America should lead the world in working out the practical problems of the world peace and if the college man is faith-
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ful to his opportunities the coming generations will see the fulfilling of these words from Justice Brewer :
"I believe in the promises of the Scripture, that His word shall not return unto Him void, but shall accomplish that which He pleases and shall prosper in the thing whereto He hath sent it; that the time shall come when the swords shall be beaten into plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks, and when men shall learn war no more forever.
With the eye of faith I see unrolled on the canvas of the future a glorious picture, in which shall be seen every laborer dwelling beneath his own vine and fig tree, receiving ever a living wage for his toil, every merchant and manufacturer pursuing his business and his industry without a thought of interruption by the ravages of war, and men of science and wealth combining in the achievement of more and more gigantic results, adding not merely to the necessities, but also to the comforts and luxuries of life, taking possession of land, water and air and all the forces to be found in them, and making them minister to human life. In the foreground will be seen that highest type of womanhood, the Madonna, and across her bosom will be these words: "Mary hath kept all these things and hath pondered them in her heart :" while underneath will shine in letters of fadeless light, "The United States of America has fulfilled its mission."
My friends, it has grown on me that we have an oppor- tunity to reaffirm our faith, and inasmuch as our president has taken the most advanced position of any ruler in the world, since coming here I wrote this statement, which I sub- mit to you :
Believing that there is no more important question before the world at this time than that of the promotion of the world's peace, believing that many agencies are now at work to hasten the day when the sword shall be beaten into plow- shares and men will be ready for the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, and believing the treaties ro- cently signed by the representatives of the United States and England and representatives of the United States and France to be a long step in advance; therefore, be it "Resolved, That the large body of Friends present on the occasion of the 225th anniversary of Concord Monthly Meet- ing of Friends, hearlily commends the position of President Taft who has taken the most advanced position of any ruler
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of a great nation in his efforts to secure treaties of peace on very broad lines with England, France and other nations."
THE CHAIRMAN .- I do not think anyone will have any objection to that and if the Chair hears none it will stand adopted.
Edwin J. Durnell, of Swarthmore, proposed that a copy of this proceeding should be sent to President William HI. Taft at Washington, D. C. This being cordially united with, the chairman said: "If Dr. Swain is satisfied that will be done. The following reply was received to a specially pre- pared copy (by Dr. Joseph Swain) signed by the general chairman :
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON.
August 19, 1911.
Mr Lewis Palmer, Chairman of General Committee, Concord Monthly Meeting of Friends, Concordville, Pennsyl- vania.
My dear Sir:
The President very warmly appreciates the action of the Concord Monthly Meeting of Friends in passing a resolu- tion with respect to the pending treaties of general arbi- tration, and has asked me to thank you for your courtesy in writing him. He earnestly hopes for the early ratification of the treaties.
CHARLES D. HILLES, Secretary to the President.
THE CHAIRMAN .- There was another address to be de- livered to-day, by Friend Wilbur, I believe, of Swarthmore. I have understood the paper is in the possession of someone. It could perhaps, be read at this time.
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INTERIOR OF CONCORD MEETING HOUSE
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ARE OUR PRINCIPLES WORTH WHILE? HENRY W. WILBUR.
Read by Daniel Batchellor, of Germantown, Pa.
An easy optimism gladly accords to the principles of Friends' everlasting life. Representing fundamental ethical and spiritual truth, it is argued that they are destined to be generally absorbed, and to thus be more or less operative in the lives of men and women, and in the round of social and religious progress.
This sort of optimism is exceedingly comfortable and quiet- ing to present-day indifference within the Society of Friends. The object of this paper, however, is not to administer a spiritual or moral narcotic, or to inspire Quaker egotism or self-satisfaction.
Having become eminently respectable and more or less popular, personally and collectively, Friends are praised not blamed, coddled and not criticised by the churches, and even that uncounted populace called " the world" has a business- like respect for Quaker morals and Quaker integrity. But this is quite as much the result of the record of the fathers as of the real present-worth of the sons. The past history of the Society and the present conformist morality of our mem- bers is taken as an admirable matter of course by those who could not state a Friendly fundamental or know a real Quaker testimony if they saw it traveling the highway by itself.
The writer feels pretty confident that if we were expound- ing our fundamental truths as Barclay, Penn, Penington and Job Scott expounded them, theological lions would quickly appear in the way. They might not roar as loudly or act as savagely as they did in the seventeenth century, but that they would provoke discussion is very certain. Nevertheless we do not wish to claim that hunting theological trouble is the chief religious end of man.
Our main contention now is that the Society of Friends has a present message for the world, and largely for the reason that its principles are worth while. Another affirmation is like unto it that the obligation to deliver its message instead of being annulled because of its splendid past and its conse- quent heritage is intensified thereby. There may be danger
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for any group of people when all men speak well of them, but the woe is not because of the well-speaking if it is honest, but for the reason that there is a pressing and paramount obligation on the part of people who are thus appreciated, to make good and a very great danger that they will come short of this requirement.
Prof. William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Ex- perience," in speaking of the contribution of George Fox to the religious thought and life of the world, said :
"The Quaker religion which he founded is something which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness and a re- turn to something more like the original Gospel truth than men had ever known in England. So far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving into liberality they are simply revert- ing in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed."
This is high praise. Assuming that it is merited, then the principles of friends have always been eminently worth while. The central and fundamental points in these principles may be briefly considered. These still constitute the Society's reasons for continuing to occupy the ground ..
For 1500 years Christendom had been under bondage to a dogma, which, at least by inference, held that men and women are the children of Satan, and therefore without a ransom process belonged to the evil one. George Fox, in his message and in his ministry, entirely reversed the propo- sition. In his conception men were not sons of Satan, but children of God. This was so supremely so, that a measure of the Divine Spirit was in all men. The posession was called by different names, "the seed of God," the "Divine Light of Christ," "The Light Within," etc.
Fox in the seventeenth, and Job Scott in the eighteenth century, gave clear expression to this idea. They even went further. The creeds and catechisms had placed the basis of salvation on belief in written and recorded formulaes of doctrine. The Quaker position based all of the possibili- ties of the spiritual life here and hereafter on personal experience, in which the soul was internally controlled by the Divine Spirit. Fox declared that it was the Divine Light of Christ in the heart, that brought men out of con- demnation : while those who "hated it and did not believe
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in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ."
Job Scott declared that, "The man who walks humbly in the sight of God, transgressing not the testimony of truth in his own heart, is in the way of eternal blessedness, -let his belief be what it may." On the contrary, he declared that he who "rebels against the light that shines in his own heart, let his profession be ever so splendid, his faith ever so literally orthodox, or his zeal ever so ardent, he is not in the way of life and salvation, but is in the way of danger."
The spiritual life, therefore, depends not on outward pro- fession, but upon inward possession, and what we do with the light in us, and what we let it do for us.
Until this Friendly position came, there had been no rational basis, since the apostolic period, for the divine fatherhood and the human brotherhood. With this ground- work of faith and practice, the brotherly relationship became the natural relationship, and the wonder is that the human brotherhood has not been universally recognized and realized.
While the human race was considered an alien brood, and brotherhood became a class distinction, and not a uni- versal recognition, it was perfectly natural that men should hate each other, and consider it perfectly proper and possi- bly Christian conduct to maltreat the Pagan, and the heathen ; and inferentially the unregenerate all belonged in this class. It is no stretch of the imagination to conceive that the old-time treatment of dependents, defectives and criminals, at many points verging on the barbarous and brutal, had its inception and justification in the conception of the alien character of our race.
It would seem that the one thing more than another which makes Quaker principles worth while, is the divinely rational basis they provide for human life, and the atmos- phere of human brotherhood in which all of our problems may be solved.
The sorry, but admitted fact that the Society has not always adequately recognized its own basis, or energetically practiced its own ideas or ideals, in no way discounts their value.
But the value of our principles cannot be properly con- sidered apart from their setting, made up of the machinery
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and methods provided for their upbuilding and their pro- motion. By this, I mean, the genius as contained in our theory of worship, and the ministry, plus their working in our meetings for worship.
Ideally, we have no ministerial class. Preachers are not in the Society, if they exist at all, to lord it over the heri- tage. They are simply fellow-ministers in the fellowship of kindred spirits; worship, consisting of an attitude and an atmosphere, leaves our meetings theoretically spiritual democracies, and practically so wherever we have worked our system as its best. The worshipful spirit is reached when the individual, and the collection of individuals, main- tain the right spiritual attitude towards the Divine Spirit and towards each other. Helpful song or helpful sermon will be the result of this spiritual attitude, the vocal minis- ter's only practical value consisting in the fact that he may possibly inspire, intensify and render more certain the indi- vidual and collective right attitude.
Our principles being thus practically worth while, the obligation resting upon every Friend is, to the extent of his opportunity, to promote them, bringing them into practical realization in his own life, and in the life of the community in which he lives. To do this he must be a concerned, work- ing optimist, not an easy indifferent one. He must believe in the possibilities of his principles, and that such possibili- ties depend upon his daily concern that the Light in him shall not become darkness.
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REMINISCENCES. BY LEWIS PALMER.
The earliest mention of the name Concord, so far as has come to my knowledge, is at a court held at Chester, 27th of Fourth month (called June) 1683, William Penn pre- siding. John Mendenhall is appointed Constable for Con- cord Liberty.
Both Dr. George Smith and H. G. Ashmead, Esq., in their histories of Delaware county, state that the name was bestowed because of the harmonious feelings which pre- vailed amongst its first settlers.
Our friend, Jesse C. Green, of West Chester, now in his 94th year, states that his grandfather had the tradition that the "Early Friends" met at the middle point of the original township to consider its name and establish the place for a meeting house, and there was so much unity amongst them that they decided to call the township Concord. But the middle point being found to be in a valley near the creek, that it was decided to place the meeting house on the high ground for a long time called Concord Hill, now Concordville. As originally laid out, the township was reet- angular in form, three miles square, with a road laid out in 1682 across the middle, called Concord street ; now nearly all in disuse. An irregular tract was added to the south- western side, probably because of being the part of Wmn. Penn's Manor of Rockland, which extended above the cir- cular line of Delaware State, and also because it was largely owned by Nathaniel Newlin, an influential citizen of the township.
The exact time of the building of the first Meeting House at Concord cannot now be determined nor of what material it was built, that there was a house is demonstrated by its being mentioned as already erected, as also a stable in the first deed for the land given by John Mendenball, in 1697. The consideration being that they pay one pepper corn yearly forever, if lawfully demanded, that the greater part of the
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brick building, as it now appears, was built in 1728 is indi- cated by the date stone in the eastern gable. This house, from what can be now ascertained, was warmed by open wood fires in wide chimney places in the ends of the house. In 1788 the building took fire from one of these and was burned ; the present house was then built, being enlarged by an addi- tion at the western end.
It thus remained with small porches over the doors (as appears in the engraving) until 1872, when porches were added as it may now be seen in the badge. The cost of the 1788 building was borne jointly by the Monthly Meeting one-third and Concord Quarterly Meeting two-thirds. The old walls were used as far as they extended and the total cost as near as can be ascertained was twenty-one hundred and seventy-five pounds Pennsylvania currency.
Both Dr. Smith and H. G. Ashmead state that the old house had been used as a hospital for the wounded soldiers after the battle of Brandywine, probably by direction of Gen- eral Cornwallis or a Gen. Grant, an officer of his army, who were here the 13th of September, 1777, two days after the battle. As Birmingham was situated where part of the battle was fought. it was also used as a hospital, and the dead men buried in its graveyard, in both places it is probable soldiers of both armies were nursed, but exact date seems not to have been preserved.
That the early Friends settled in Pennsylvania had been deeply imbued with the many virtues that their English progenitors established, is apparent from their actions in carrying these principles into practical effect, even amongst the privations of pioneer life. We are thankful that many of these procedures are still a vital force in our Concord meeting activities. The care for the less fortunate was very soon shown. At a Monthly Meeting, on 8th of Third month, 1699, the meeting loaned John Penack £5 for a year to buy a cow, he having lost one, and being in need of milk for his children. (See also Cope, pp. 23 ) From these begin- nings numerous instances can be found to the present time of care for the unfortunate in life's struggles, as and for the education of their children. In other lines it may be noted. In First month, 1692, there was collected €6. 12s. 4d. towards ye redemption of Friends in captivity in distant lands. This concern has also had a continued life in our meeting, and during the late lamentable civil strife, a con-
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siderable sum was sent to the aid of southern Friends from this meeting, as well as others, to alleviate the distress upon them by the ravages of war. The peaceful settlement of differences between Friends has been a cardinal principle through all our existence; beginning early it is recorded 12th of Second month, 1686: Whereas, there was a differ- ence between William Clayton, Sr., and Elinor Parke and her husband, a meeting being ordered to hear and determine between them, and having heard and considered the differ- ence. We, whose names are underwritten, do disown their spirit and manner of proceeding against ye s'd Wm. Clayton : Robert Pile, Will. Hewes, John Beal, Jacob Chandler, James Brown, Will. Stagvatt, John Simcocks, Thos. Usher, Ed. Bezer, John Harding,
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