The society have always shown the greatest anxiety to be plain and simple. In the attainment of this, they changed the ancient names of days and months, as heathenish; though their reforming hands have left words in our language equally heathenish in origin. They changed the familiar mode of speech, which custom, from time immemorial, had sanctioned. They became martyrs and confessors for the honour of the pronouns thee and thou. Yet, alack! how weak are even martyrs! Though they suffered, even to wounds and blood, for thee and thou in the singular; they have for more than a hundred years been committing grammatical murder on the case and person. They have all along been guilty of saying how does thee do?" They carried their plainness, in a rigid manner, in ancient times, to their houses and furniture. Some of them when sending their effusions from the press, would not permit a proud capital letter to stand in any of their modest pages. And one removed from his fire side the luxury of tongs, and substituted the primitive instrument of a cloven stick! But the pride of plainness distinguishes the society from all other sects in their dress. They wear the broad brim, the flowing coat and breeches. The oral law respecting the make of the hat and coat, has been like the law of the Medes and Per sians; or the laws of China when they received the signature of the red pencil. But, as to the make of the last article, I mean the small clothes, I cannot find that it is a sine qua non-that it should exactly resemble the mode of that on the fine statue of Penn, in the hospital yard of Philadelphia. * * According to the oral canons, which fix and regulate their costume, the most orthodox colour is drab; sober gray and brown are tolerated. Black is, for obvious reasons, absolutely heterodox. For red, the use of it is prohibited, and even proscribed by the oral law, in terms approaching the rigour of the law of Menu, who prohibits the Brahmins of India from even trafficking in red garments. The gay Quakers, however, it must be observ ed, use nearly as much freedom with the oral canons of the society, on this article, as many of the clergy do with the canons of the church, in a better cause. They make them suit their own way of thinking. pp. 96, 97. We deem it duty here to protest against the least approximation to impurity in the treatment of religious subjects. How ever witty the sentiment or tempting the occasion, it ought to be repressed or expunged from the page which it defaces. We cannot but regret that such a writer in such a reflection as is contained in as Mr. B. should have indulged a clause which we have omitted in the above extract respecting the cosin a note on page 142 respecting tume of the statue of Penn; or that Margaret Fell, who subsequently beallusions of this sort, are exceptionacame the wife of George Fox. All ble, and impair the proper dignity of the subject. this We marked for castigation in Insani sapiens nomen ferat, aequus iniqui; sam. which may be rendered thus Let folly brand his name whoe'er he be, E'en in religion, shows its rage absurd. We present the following quotation on the topic of silent worship. There is another phenomenon of a still more singular nature. On some occasions when the whole assembly are, by a singular coincidence of sentiment and feeling, "gathered into the life," and "have their minds centred in a degree of solemn quiet," this "lord rends through the meeting." A general movement is ing, which none can feel but those who are produced; they experience secret refresh"gathered into the seed;" and this is "without words ministered from vessel to vessel." and where a few stragglers may be "out of the life," by yielding to reason or to fancy, the rest firm as the needle to the pole, feel a nameless sympathy, which in the appropriate nomenclature of their divines, is called "drawings," toward their brethren. They will travail as in birth for them. By the combined effort of the stronger brother and of the weaker brother the carnal Spirit is, by a powerful and secret process, decomposed, or precipitated, or held in solution. There is yet another phenomenon-when a mocker has chanced to come in during this awful silence, when so much was going on in the invisible world "within ;" where "the life has been raised in a high measure," and the whole society has been charged with this powerful spirit, greatest terror has been struck into his soul." Its shivering transports have glanced along his nerves like the electric shot from a Leyden, or a galvanic battery; or if the day of his "visitation should not have expired;" that means if the spectator be not too hardened to become a convert to these opinions, it will reach the measure of grace within him and raise it up." Thus the wandering soul is often smitten by a brother "secretly without words ;" and thus "one Friend is a midwife, through the secret travails of his soul, to bring forth the life in another, without words." the In some instances the society, like the devout audience of a Roman chapel during the Latin service, has received "refreshings" from addresses in a foreign language. For instance, an English audience "knew that one of the Dutch nation spoke by the Spirit, though in the Dutch language, which none of the meeting understood; because they all found refreshings." The society has often dwelt on the charms of their silent meeting. Their apologist's sober prose mounts into epic poetry, as he gives vent to his hosannas. It is evident that something of this kind must be contrived to play it off. During the painful rest of the body outwardly, some drama must be displayed within; for as every simple christian perceives the grand characteristic ordinances of christianity to be removed from the meeting as completely as from the mosque, as this worship can be performed in all its parts as well without words as by words; as every individual avows the infallible guide of an inward light, the world could not, otherwise, have conceived any just reason that could be urged against Shackleton and the Schismatic Friends; or in behalf of their own public assemblies. The apologist even in his lucid moments, when rationality peers amid the broken clouds of mysticism, talks thus in defence of public meetings. "The vessels" (each of the persons in the assembly who contains an "inward" fluid or "light;"") these "vessels" being set close together, this caloric or "light" is transfused more readily from vessel to vessel than if they remained at home. This, to say the least, appears natural enough! This is the first class of effects produced by the spirit of the silent meeting. But there was not always silence. When the Spirit "stirs up a word to edification," the inspired person rises and speaks with great vehemence. Their ancients coming forward in no ordinary characters, made no ordinary claims. "Thus saith the Lord God, "" was in olden times the usual preface of their speeches, and their writings. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," said the modest Ambrose Riggs. "This is God's word of truth;" "I warrant this from God:" "I speak from the sense of the eternal Spirit"-were the prefaces of Penn. And when the meek Burroughs "sounded the trumpet out of Zion" with fire and sword, "it was by the order of the spirit of God." "The word of the Lord came unto him saying." Their modern spirits take not such high ground. A remnant of the ancient prophets does indeed claim scriptural honours to their extemporaneous effusions; but the vulgar crowd, if not the most ortho. dox, introduce their homely remarks by an allusion to their "mental impressions." The chief object of these discourses has been to defend their peculiar tenets; to turn man to the oracle within, to lead him away from external (which with them is tantamount to carnal,) ordinances; to expatiate on the sufferings and merits of their martyrs; to extol themselves as the solitary flock of Christ; to pour out invectives against "hirelings," and against "steeple houses," and against the "dead letter" of the scriptures, and the "carnal ordinances" of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and against the crying sin of using the pronoun "you," for "thee and thou," and against ornaments and garments not of the society's cut and fashion; and against the heinous sin of salutations by uncovering the head-which iniquitous practices had strangely overrun Christendom; and had as strangely displaced the orthodox custom of covering the head in worshipping assemblies, and in the presence of superiors!-pp. 172, 174. On their opposition to singing, Mr. B. remarks But whatever the Friends plead for in theory on this article of their creed, it is certain that they practice more singing than we do. We sing before and after sermon only; but their preachers, male and female, monopolizing the whole, sing both prayers and sermons! and still their grand tenet is not surrendered. For verily, their notes are not according to the carnal rules of the amateur; and in numbers their singing is not altogether human! -pp. 178, 179. On the subject of a female ministry, after an able investigation of their claims and a sound scriptural demonstration of their invalidity, our author thus concludes: In fine, the authority assumed by the female episcopacy in the church, is more unjust and more tyrannical, than that which the female usurps in the domestic circle, when she degrades her husband and seizes the reigns of government over the family. The one is a breach of civil order; the other is a breach of the laws of God's house. And there is a degree of guilt attached to crimes of this last kind, which throws a frightful shade of aggravation and infamy over them. And can a man of spirit submit to this infamous usurpation? On the poor hen-pecked sufferer we bestow our sympathy, as on a martyr for the rights of man. In his degradation his will is not stained by any acquiescence in the tyrannical encroachments of his help mate. But the silence and the complacent submission of the society, to this public encroachment on the civil and religious rights of man, present the matter in a different point of light. We feel not so much the yearning of sympathy for the hen pecked martyr struggling occasionally for his rights. We feel all the virtuous indignation of the man and the christian against men who have sold their birth-right, and yielded up their powers to the dominion of the petticoat! Oh the times! Oh the manners! Can this age that has been enriched by every work of taste; that has elevated every branch of science to such a proud eminence; that has produced so many men of learning and refinement; so many orators in church and in state; whose labours are diffusing among all ranks in society, the most correct views of man's natural rights; such love of order, piety, and religion: Can this age bear the presumptuous opinion of them who would bring back on us the mysticism and folly of the dark ages, when bearded men listened to girls and professors resigned their chairs to doating old women! We call on every man of science and friend to literature in the society, to exert himself in correcting the vitiated taste of men; who even for their amusement can listen to the incoherent effusions of illiterate females! We call on every virtuous and amiable lady in the society, to use all her influence in taking away this scandal to man-this reproach to the sex! We call on every man of spirit and independence to set his face against this insult on to the laws of God and of nature! And his dignity and prerogative; this outrage you who have through an error of judgment, so unhappily yielded the sovereignty of manhood, gladly would we aid you in regaining your lost paradise, out of which your ambitious F.ves have so wantonly turned you! Make one effort more, we beseech you, to make them feel their proper station in society. But alas! nowords will not do it. Arguments cannot. Distraction can be restrained only by force. And none but the brutish can apply force to arguments, especially where the fair are concerned. I give up the case, therefore, as hopeless. Alas! and we have lived to see the day when those evils reign that made the most patient of the fathers groan. "Alii discunt, proh pudor! a feminis quod homines doceant-Scribimus indocti, doctique poemata passim-Hanc garrula anus, hanc delirus senex, hane sophista verbosa præsumunt, lacerant, docent, antequam discant." We have lived to see the day when these female phenomena have ceased to excite surprise or interest! The novelty is gone; and with it the burning shame that was on the cheeks of our fathers, when they were first compelled to witness the intrusion on their prerogative, and on delicacy and decency! The wonderment of the mob has subsided into a leering stare! And the thing is become a matter of perfect indifference to the orderly and the polished: to the magistrate to the pastor, and to the prelate. Oh ye grave Roman senators, who arrested the solemn business of the commonalarming events the appearance of a fewealth, in order to consult the oracle what male in your forum to plead her own cause, might portend to the city; the stoutest of you had "stood aghast with speechless trance"-had you witnessed what our eyes behold-females mounting the rostrum, and declaiming in the assem blies of the people-had you witnessed grave men, and even prelates, and even pastors, and even the united wisdom of the people in the halls of the state and the congress, sitting down under the prophecyings of mother Juliana, and the refresh. ings of a petticoated preacher! Proh tempora! Proh mores! **** Old Pope Gregory XI. groaned forth the lugubrious words in his last hours.. let no mun listen after me. to the prophecy"Ah! ings of a woman-of a Catharine De Sens!" Helen fired a Troy after ten years bloody trials and sorrow! This prophetess kindled a fire that blazed in church and state during fifty-one revolving years!******-pp. 206–208. We have already disclaimed the province of minute criticism, and will take notice of such dignified epithets ashenpecked," "petticoated" and words of that class, which too often occur, only to regret their use. There are indeed some strange words and obsolete expressions of North British tinct which we hope to see superseded in the second edition. Inaccuracies merely typographical, and some not noted in the errata at the end of the book, are observable—a few of which have occasioned much waste of paper, and several effusions of scolding by offended respondents, who, never imagining the true source of the errors, have made our author morally, intellectually, and in almost every other way responsible for the mere mistakes of his printer. 3. As to the charge of uncharitableness we have little to say. If it implies that Mr. B. has made wilful or real misrepresentation; that his references are hasty or erroneous; that he has invaded the divine prerogative to search the heart, or doom the soul of his fellow man; it ought to be formally proved: and a condign frown of popular indignation ought to lower upon his name in proportion to the degree of precipitancy or malevolence evinced. But if the charge implies only that, in the opinion and practice of Mr. B. error is no object of charity, and that philanthropy and piety unite to detect, stigmatize, and extirpate it, and that Mr. B. verily believes coram Deo that QUAKERISM IS NOT CHRISTIANITY, and that all men ought to know it-we admit the facts, but cannot for our lives see the guilt of them, or sustain the charge of uncharitableness against our author. Let the Christian public judge-let the ordeal of public sentiment be fully endured. Let time draw upon this volume his oblivious veil, or unfold with dire impartiality all its defects— it will sink or rise to its true level by an operation which we cannot control. Truth is divine and must ultimately prevail. We entertain no It is fears for the general cause. destined to ultimate victory and renown, because God is over all, blessed forever. One thing is certain-that no man is competent to pass sentence on the book who has not carefully read the whole of it. If the condition of criticism on authors were uinversally, a thorough perusal of the volume then in question, what a happy de crease of minute critics would at once be realized to society! A doctrinal and experimental acquaintance with the New Testament is also and evermore indispensable to competency of judgment on the topics, treatises and apologists of religion. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God." An unconverted man is spirtually and perversely blind. Mr. B. however is not always severe or even stern. The latter part of the following quotation presents him in a more amiable character. These are the doctrines of the society as exhibited in their books lying before the public. What a contrast to the purity of the gospel! How different from its spirit is the whole body of these doctrines; and the prospects held up by them to man pressing forward to his final destiny! On the one side, the gospel exhibits the character of Deity in its true light; combining in the infinity of perfection, all that is magnificent and glorious with all that is lovely and awful-"A just God and a Saviour." It exhibits the three distinct and divine persons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in one undivided essence. It spreads before the wandering and disconsolate sinner the most cheering hopes from the atonement of. Christ. It points out to man the fatal consequence of giving himself up to the guidance of his own heart, or of any principle within him; it woos him away from every false hope, and directs him to the exalted Saviour in heaven; it paints in proper colours the vanity of all sublunary objects; it supports the pilgrim when ready to sink in despair under the pressure of human woes; it guides him through the mazes of folly by the pure und steady light of truth; it leads him into the possession of all that is virtuous and lovely; it re freshes him from the living stream of salvation; it cheers his drooping spirit in the last fearful conflict; it lights up with holy joy the countenance of the dying christian, and throws its lovely beams of hope on the soul of the bending mourner as he conveys the dead to the silent tomb; it carries the soul of the sleeping pilgrim to the bright realms of glory, and thither it guarantees the certain ascension of the same body which he lays in the grave; there to reap the rich rewards of the divine love in pure and perpetual bliss. But on the other side, turn your eyes on these prospects set before our pilgrim. There lovely nature ceases to smile; a withering blast has passed over the face of the land; the herbs have perished; the flowers have faded; the forest has shed its leaves; the whirlwind has swept them away; the pestilence has walked in secret, and spent its energies on animated nature; desolation scowls from his throne of darkness-For oh! the sun has set over that world. His kindly influences are gone -and gone is the divine person who redeemed by purchase and by power, the trembling pilgrim; and gone too is that divine person who led his steps into the paths of righteousness. The lamp of truth flashes in the socket, and threatens to leave him in the gloom of despair; every object presents a dreary aspect; he moves through darkness to a land unknown; shifting phantoms hover round him; unearthly voices tempt him to turn inward on the energies of his own mind, and seek what is necessary there. At the sight of the moral chaos within, he is thrown back with encreasing sorrow on what is without. The pitiless storm mingles its terrors with the ragings of the mountain stream: the thunders roar; the lightning's livid glare reveals the face of nature in her new deformities; the demon of the storm mingles his unearthly shrieks with the roaring of the thunder, and lashing the whirlwind into fury, he rides over his head, and threatens to "carry him away in a tempest of the night!" Return, O pilgrim! from the valley of the shadow of death; return to the valley of vision. This is the land of light; hither thy God beckons thee; here thy Saviour stretches out his arms to receive thee; here the Comforter will dry up thy tears. And when the years of thy life shall be numbered he will bear thee away to the land of the blessed; and the church will embalm thy memory in her sweet remembrauce, while with a tear she pronounces "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord!"" 4. The "Proem" is indeed a curious sui generis and amusing article of almost 40 pages;-but we feel lit tle concerned in its defence or analy- sed. It comprises events of real history-scenes of the author's birth and boy-hood which are fresh in his memory, dear to his heart, and not alien from the matter in hand. We know that some have objected to its title―THE PROEMas stiff, and savouring of pedantry; propriate and mainly imitative of the some to its style as romantic, inapprosaic peculiarities of Sir Walter Scott; and some to its subject-matter as too heroic, martial and detailof the work itself. With these crited, to suit the tone of the subject ics we have neither company nor competition. It should however, be remembered that in this lightreading age, something spirited, fanciful and even singular is necessary to arrest the attention, and to break the monotony-the dull abstraction which is wont to characterize a religious production. Variety, sprightliness, and the charm of narrative are the condiments of the book; and the talents of the author in seasoning and furnishing his viands, is observable in the whole repast and greatly enhances the value of the entertain ment. To conclude-we recommend Mr. B.'s volume to all our readers, and especially to the clergy, for whom it was peculiarly designed, and who will, we think, consult at once their duty, their entertainment, and their usefulness by exploring its contents. How many preachers of "the everlasting gospel," commissioned from the Prince" on whose head are many crowns," to preach |