It is amusing to see the modern Quakers appealing
now to history for a confirmation of their tenets and discipline--and by so
doing, in effect abandoning the strong hold of their founders. As an
_imperium in imperio_, I think the original Quakerism a conception worthy
of Lycurgus. Modern Quakerism is like one of those gigantic trees which are
seen in the forests of North America,--apparently flourishing, and
preserving all its greatest stretch and spread of branches; but when you
cut through an enormously thick and gnarled bark, you find the whole inside
hollow and rotten. Modern Quakerism, like such a tree, stands upright by
help of its inveterate bark alone. _Bark_ a Quaker, and he is a poor
creature.
* * * * *
How much the devotional spirit of the church has suffered by that necessary
evil, the Reformation, and the sects which have sprung up subsequently to
it! All our modern prayers seem tongue-tied. We appear to be thinking more
of avoiding an heretical expression or thought than of opening ourselves to
God. We do not pray with that entire, unsuspecting, unfearing, childlike
profusion of feeling, which so beautifully shines forth in Jeremy Taylor
and Andrewes and the writings of some of the older and better saints of the
Romish church, particularly of that remarkable woman, St.
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