USA > Pennsylvania > Chester County > London Grove > Two hundredth anniversary of the founding of London Grove Meeting by the Society of Friends at London Grove, Pennsylvania, tenth month third, 1914 > Part 5
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The daughters wrote sometimes to former friends, And very soon these heard of Bella's joy, For she had won young Lucas,-English peer; But Katharine ne'er forgot her Marlborough boy.
You'll see historic sites on down the street, And stones that show the trace of Indians' mark, The Worth house, mill and "cottage," while below Still stand the grand old trees of Pierce's Park.
We'll leave all these and hear another tale, For Grove is full of story and romance; Then backward far I'd have you turn the page And with me at our earliest preacher glance.
He bore the very homely name, John Smith; But grateful reverence to him we owe For starting in this good community, A meeting, just two hundred years ago.
Born in New England there in Dartmouth town In 1681 the histories say, He early learned to heed the call of God And would not fight with men, but simply pray.
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His parents were of Presbyterian creed Till life among the Quakers changed their heart; And when John's summons came to go to war They knew that he could never act the part.
In Boston's gloomy prison he was cast Because he'd neither pay nor fight the foe; But after seven months his mother's pleas Were heeded, and the warder let him go.
Next year when John was nearly twenty-two He took a friend and sailed for England's shore; 'Twas eight weeks then before they saw the land And ere they were set free 'twas many more.
For France and England that year were at war, Both John and Tom were bid to fire the guns, But rather than comply, for conscience' sake They suffered many beatings, cuts and stuns.
The captain saw 'twas no use punishing, So when they touched at Plymouth let them go; 'Twas meeting day in England and they went In spite of shabby coat and peeping toe.
Four weeks they spent on English soil and then From London sailed away with divers Friends; Tom Anthony with small-pox was laid low, The rest came on to see those woods of Penn's.
Friend Painter was among the men who came, One Darlington, and Worthingtons all three, And on October 3rd in 1705 They landed near Penn's Shackamaxon tree.
A crowd of men were standing on the shore, Among them Caleb Pusey of renown, He'd left Old England twenty years before, And eagerly inquired for London town.
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John Smith was distant far from friends and home, So Caleb knowing well the family strain, Just told the lad to walk behind a while Then tied his horse till John caught up again.
An Indian trail on horseback, ride and tie, Was not so slow as you mayhap suppose: Two hours brought them near the Chester mills In sight of Caleb's house with bower of rose.
But John saw not the flowers bright and gay Nor pigs, nor turkeys, well-sweep, churn, nor gun; He only saw the vision in the door · As brown eyed Ann stood smiling in the sun.
Ann anxiously had waited the return, For sundry goods were promised off the boat; Attention very slight she gave to John,- You recollect he wore a shabby coat.
The blazing logs, the chimney's ample size, The lug-pole hung with pots of iron and brass, The spinning wheel and shining pewter plates, All graced the home where lived this Quaker lass.
A supper then, was but a frugal meal, Corn mush and milk in bowls of wooden ware, And tho scant silver and no glass was seen A guest was always welcome to such fare.
Our unfastidious parents in those days In blissful ignorance of germs and bugs Passed round one takard filled with milk or ale, And never dreamed of individual mugs.
The children stood in silence at one end, While grown folks had a bench along the board; No forks were seen, but fingers knives and spoons Were deemed enough for common man or lord.
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The days flew by and Caleb needed help, So John Smith staid and worked about the mills; Some few months later, John's old parents died And he was left alone mid Chester's hills.
A serious minded man was honest John, While Ann was witty, gay and full of fun, He,-big and clumsy youth of twenty-four She was a graceful maid of twenty-one.
And one day when John hurried to the house On errand bent for Caleb at the mill,
He saw Ann bending o'er the wash tub's foam, And suddenly he stopped and stood quite still.
In those days people washed four times a year; This quarterly event he'd seldom seen,
And Ann, of course, thot he was gazing down Upon her new made board for rubbing clean.
But still he gazed, his mouth wide open hung, While Ann wrung hard those garments every one, And as her brown curls shook about her face She smiled and sweetly said, "What ails thee John?"
He must have found his tongue in course of time, For when the master rode in, quite perturbed, He found the lovers seated on the ground, By mundane operations undisturbed.
There was a stringent rule with Quakers then, That ere man spoke of marriage or intent, Or even mentioned love to any maid He must from her good father gain consent.
However, Caleb, seeing how things stood And liking well this sturdy, honest John Plead with the elders for the sake of Ann, And took the big plain man to be his son.
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Next year they married in the meeting-house, And lived six years or so midst Upland's green; Then came to Caleb's farm in Marlborough And found it mostly trees back in '13.
How all the young men joined together then. They quickly felled a dozen trees or more, And ere two days had passed, the fire-place stood, The outer walls were higher than the door.
By pumpkin time the rafters hung with corn, . And all Ann's weaving in the chest was laid; The beds and chairs and tables in those days, Around the evening fire were mostly made.
As weeks went by, John's judgment oft was sought, And Ann was famed for apple pies and cheese; So Friends were wont to gather at this home On Sabbath days, in their few hours of ease.
One day upon the group a silence fell, And words of strength and counsel John did give; From that day unto this the meeting tried, To teach men with God's help how best to live.
For ten short years they held a meeting there Conducted it in unity and love, And gradually the numbers grew so large They built a meeting house in London Grove.
One day to that old house in '39 ¡A preacher came from Chester without hire, And seeing some had very drowsy grown Sprang to his feet and shouted "Fire, fire!"
At which the meeting folks were wide awake And one excited sleeper rose to yell "Oh, where?" and then an awful answer came,- The words I really would not care to tell.
tJohn Salkeld. This happened in Chester meeting-house in 1739.
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Now while I'm sure that you are all awake,- If you will promise often here to meet,
And come to love this ancient meeting-house,
I'll cease these truthful rhymes of Marlborough Street.
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The Influence of Friendly Ideals On Our National Life By ISAAC SHARPLESS, Haverford
T WO streams of tendency have come down through the Christ- ian Centuries. The main current has been composed of those who demanded an external authority for their standard of belief and conduct. For Catholics this standard was the deci- sions of the church, the organized body of Christ, continuous from the time of the apostles, meeting the new questions as they arose, but guided by the deliverances of the past. For Protestants it was the Book, the original and unchangeable writings of the first cen- tury Christians, revealed once for all to a selected body of disciples of Christ and applicable to all generations to come. Neither standard would exclude the other. It was a question rather of supreme authority than of acceptance, a matter of priority rather than of denial.
But besides this main current there was also a little stream, trickling down through the ages sometimes almost lost but again emerging in stronger volume, of those who while not discarding either the church or the book denied the absolute necessity of any external authority. They recognized the corporate teachings of the great and good men whose influence had kept the church in the main true to the standards of its founder and they reverenced the word committed to the first generation, but they conceived that neither of them could exactly speak to the individual condition, that in the application of these great truths the man was often left without the guide needed to show him his way. They asserted the consciousness of a divine authority, the same that granted wis- dom and insight to the church and that revealed the principles which made the Book holy, as existing within themselves sufficiently evident to determine the way, the truth and the life for them'as individuals. It came from the highest sources and its authority could not be gainsaid. It would not conflict with other revelations, but it would give definite guidance and strength and comfort and a sense of divine approval or disapproval exactly adapted to the needs of the personality in every circumstance of life.
One need mention only St. Francis and Caspar Schwenckfeld and Jacob Boehme and Madame Guyon as a few among many
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mystics who have been interpreters of this tendency. They bound themselves in spirit with the personality which was revealed in the Gospels, they would compel no one except by the bonds of love, and would suffer patiently and bravely whatever befell, assured by their inward witness that they were in the right place, and that the Master who directed their lives would bring them and their works into the triumphs which He intended.
In this line of spiritual ancestry may be placed George Fox and the early Friends. We are concerned with them now only in so far as their beliefs and practice affected their attitude to educa- tion in America.
The incentive which led to the foundation of Harvard, Yale and Princeton and to a lesser extent some of the other Colonial Colleges was the education of the ministry. Harvard expressed it very definitely. "After God had carried us safe to New England and we had builded our houses provided necessaries for our liveli- hood, reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dread- ing to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust."
There was as good a numerical background for a Quaker College in Pennsylvania in the first half of the 18th century as in Connecticut for a Congregational College or in New Jersey for a Presbyterian College Indeed for a few decades it might seem to have been doubtful whether the religion of authority or the religion of the spirit was to be the prevailing religion of the colonies. Had the latter been represented by vigorous intellectual exponents of its thought, giving to each congregation of Friends at least one clear- thinking leader, whether minister or not, (better not), capable of seeing into the future and adapting methods of conditions, the history of the colonies and of the future states might have been differently written. It did not need defense so much as exposition, and for lack of this its followers became conservative, falling back upon the methods of the brave and original men of the first genera- tion, imitators rather than pioneers.
There was a considerable number of University men among Friends of the first generation, and a fair proportion of these came to Pennsylvania. They started a school in Philadelphia in 1689
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still in honored existence. Why did they not have a college and train their educated leaders? Because the education of the schools did not seem to them essential to a minister. To the Puritan of New England, the Presbyterian of the Middle Colonies, and the Churchman of the south, with a religion based on a knowledge of the Bible, a minister without theological knowledge could hardly be imagined. Without him the congregation would not meet, or if met had nothing to do. To the Friend such training might or might not be an asset but as every man was taught of God, and the group spirit intensified the interior influence of his presence, worship of the sincerest sort could dwell in the silence, or inspired ministry could be uttered by the man or the woman who had no antecedent training of the schools.
George Fox says that it was "opened to him," a favorite expression for stating what he believed to be a direct Divine revela- tion, "that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not essential to the making of a minister of the Gospel." His generation endorsed this position placing the emphasis on the word "essential"; as Thomas Elwood, John Milton's secretary explains, "When I was a boy I had made some progress in learning and lost it all before I came to be a man. Nor was I rightly sensible of my loss until I came among the Quakers. But then I saw it and lamented it and applied myself with utmost diligence to recover it. So false I found that charge to be that they despised and denied all human learning because they deemed it to be essentially necessary to a Gospel Ministry."
The Friends that came to America feeling therefore that an educated ministry was not essential postponed their college till the really essential things were provided, and this delay proved serious. For a generation arose without higher training and which did not feel its need; which also perhaps in some cases construed Fox's "essential" into "desirable" and decided that education rather encouraged what they called the "notional religion" which Fox con- trasted with the real living first hand experience of God's working in the heart. As the ministry did not need a theological education and as they had thrown down the definite distinction between ministers and laymen, refusing to admit priestly offices in their ministers as a class, there seemed no vital need for Quaker Colleges and there were none till 1833. The Friends had something to do
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with the founding and maintenance of Brown University, of the University of Pennsylvania, of Cornell University and of Johns Hopkins University. They had an educational system of their own which in many sections was the best existing which took care of the primary and secondary training of their children and those of their neighbors, and they had a high level of average culture. Some went for general secular work to existing colleges and among themselves they developed groups of rather highly educated per- sons, as in Philadelphia just prior to the Revolution. But they had not the general belief in and respect for higher learning which gave to educated leadership its due influence and which furnished the perspective which enabled men to see that the religion of the spirit would not be hurt by, but indeed was, in the development of its efficient manifestations, dependent upon, something more human, than spiritual guidance in the heart. Perhaps within a century past Friends have seen these things. While not yielding their devotion to the ancient principle, they have felt that colleges may be its handmaids rather than, as the most of them were in Colonial days, its opponents.
So it was that, partly as a result of their mystical inheritance, a result unforeseen and somewhat illogical, the Friends as a denomination have had but little place in the higher education of the first century of American development.
They could not but come into collision with New England Puritanism for the two represented antagonistic types of religion; the one studying a theology which was fixed and static, working it out by sheer intellectual force and strategy from the pages of a book completed centuries before, but by that very study keeping his brain alive and active, the other with a progressive and continuing revelation on which he too much relied to do all the necessary work of mankind becoming himself somewhat static under conditions which demanded constant change and adaptation.
Any emphatic mystical movement is more or less temporary. It gathers to itself those who by temperament are peculiarly sus- ceptible to direct spiritual influences. It transmits its name and organization to its descendants but its susceptibility is not always inherited. Birthright membership whether a rule of its discipline or a tradition, does not necessarily include only the mystical mem- bers of the second generation, and each succeeding generation goes
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farther and farther from the capacity to live on direct spiritual revelation. Only by a continuous influx of the spiritually-minded from outside can such a society be continued. For this purpose only by a continual adaptation of the non-essential elements of the regulations to new conditions can an association attractive to the mystics be maintained and this involves some worldly wisdom and a broad grasp of surrounding movements, and consequently a need for much of trained capacity and higher education.
Yet the ability to feel the direct impulse from higher sources, while varying in degree is never entirely absent, and this ability may be a safe basis upon which to build a growing church, if there is also a full recognition of the needs of those who can not live on introversion alone. The man who wants an external authority and who would precipitate himself into community life around him will exist everywhere.
Hence Friends had a large place in the political and social life of the colonies. We know much of Pennsylvania; let us today take our illustrations from Rhode Island.
Roger Williams had no love for them. "The people called Quakers" he says "hold no God, no Christ, no Spirit, no Angel, no Devil, no Resurrection, no Judgment, no Heaven, no Hell, but what is in man." Yet bad as they were he would not allow his principle of religious liberty to have any exceptions and he accorded them all political and legal rights. But he reserved the very proper weapon of argument. And when he found that people who like himself had left Massachusetts voluntarily or otherwise for his free colony, or had gathered there from England, were becoming Quakers by the thousands, his spirit arose within him. The great debate of 1672 in the Meeting house at Newport, whither Roger Williams, a man in his seventies, had rowed 30 miles to keep the appointment was characterized by the utmost freedom, one can hardly say courtesy, of debate.
George Fox himself had just been there and made a great impression, so Roger Williams proposed a joint discussion on certain propositions which he had drawn up, but by this time George Fox had moved on. Roger said "He saw what conse- quences would roll down the mountains, and therefore this old Fox thought it best to run for it and leave the work to his journeymen and chaplains to perform in his absence." Avoidance of an issue
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was never Fox's habit, and he may be believed when he says "I never saw or heard of any propositions from Roger Williams nor did I go away in fear of him or them."
But some of Fox's friends accepted the challenge and who got the better of the debate depends on the party giving the account. "George Fox digged out his Burrowes" and "A New England Fire- brand Quenched" were the two books whose contents were about as gracious as their titles, which tell the story on the two sides. Each utterly demolished the other, and neither the Baptists nor the Quakers had anything left to stand upon. According to William Edmundson, who conducted the debate for the Friends, "The bitter old man could make nothing out. He was baffled and the people saw his weakness, folly and envy," and according to Williams, Edmundson was "A flash of wit, a face of brass, and a tongue set on fire from the Hell of Lies and Fury."
These amenities of controversy can hardly indicate the feel- ings of the people in general for a Quaker was then governor by vote of the people and presided at the discussion. For a century following they were continuously in high office and during this time they held the Governorship for 36 terms. Coddington, Easton, Clarke, Coggeshall, Carr, Wanton, were names of Friends in this highest office in the colony and moulding its policy.
As in Pennsylvania the attitude of an official during war times was difficult. Committed to uncomprising peace he was yet under the British crown which declared war at will, and England and France fought out their quarrels along the Canadian frontier. The Indians, exasperated by an ungenerous policy sought vengeance in blood, and here the Rhode Island Governors had not the power, as in Pennsylvania to quiet the difficulty by presents and promises. They contented themselves with devising measures of safety, per- forming no aggressive acts, and mollifying feelings on both sides where possible.
But with all the difficulties the Friends performed in full the duties of citizens as did other Christians taking, till the Revolu- tionary War, their share of social and governmental responsibility. George Fox had advised them when in the Colony "Look into all your ancient liberties and privileges-your divine liberty-your national liberty, and your outward liberties which belong to your commons, your town and your island colony. Mind that which is
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. for the good of your colony and the commonwealth of all people- stand for the good of your people which is the good of yourselves."
In the Revolutionary War which practically ended Quaker influences in politics they had a difficult stand to take. Opposed to war they yet had been associates with the liberty party in the different colonies in close political adhesion. They had found how to gain their rights in England and America by persistent remon- strance and quiet resistance, and were willing to try the same again when taxes and impositions were unrighteously levied upon them. But they would not fight, for fighting they thought was an immoral means of gaining even a worthy object and so they adopted the policy, which made them extremely unpopular, of peaceable neutrality for conscience sake.
Pennsylvania was settled by English immigrants who were mostly Friends when they came. But Rhode Island, and South- eastern Massachusetts were converted to Quakerism mainly as the result of the preaching of itinerant ministers who swarmed over the country pushing in most vigorously where they were least wanted. Yet they were working in the same soil which had proved so fertile in England. The people were Friends though they knew it not. A religion of quietism, of an inward revealed knowl- edge of truth, of kindness and peace and of uncompromising morality behind a meek exterior, these were characteristics of the dissenters from the rigid Massachusetts system, and when they heard them preached as an organized religion they simply found out what they were. In Connecticut where such a dissatisfied and prepared population did not exist, the Friends made no headway plunging themselves upon the stone wall of ecclesiasticism as they would.
Though the Colonial Friends got somewhat tangled up in their own theology, and did not establish colleges as others did, and as their numbers and consequence might have justified, there are certain features of Early Quakerism which it might not be amiss to instil into our college system of to-day.
The Friends of past ages somehow got on the right side of a number of moral questions very early in the history of the move- ments. By the right side one means the side which commended itself to the developed judgment of the future. There never was a Quaker duel. There never was a Quaker lottery, even in those days 5
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following the Revolution, when all good causes, churches, colleges, public improvement of all sorts were promoted by them; when George Washington did not hesitate to be the president of a lottery company to develop the capital city; when a raffle was the easy and approved method to settle an estate. A century before this Friends had decided against them and would disown a member who bought a ticket.
The contest against slavery dates from 1688. In the days just before and during the Revolution the manumission of all Quaker slaves was practically brought to a close, and by the end of the century not one who could be legally free was held by any Friendly master even in Virginia and the Carolinas. Up to 1863 their corporate influence was consistently and urgently brought to bear upon the government.
The fight against war has had no such triumphant ending. From the time when George Fox said when importuned to take the Captaincy of a Cromwellian company that "he lived by virtue of that spirit that took away the occasion of war" there has been a fairly consistent testimony against it, and 70 years of peaceful Pennsylvania history when all the other colonies had records of warfare indicate possibilities of peace with justice which is worth some study. If now the call comes up from Boards of Trade, from Labour Unions, from the Christian Churches, from civilized man everywhere, that wars must cease, it but indicates the stage of the movement when economic and social arguments come to the sup- port of the moral principles which the pioneers had urged. The converse of the formula of Archbishop Paley "Whatever is right is expedient" has many supports.
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