for ever their high and false pretensions! I know indeed that in Sewel, Gough, Penn, and others, the word is used, and reference had to its general import. But how brief, passing, inconclusive! It may mean (and it occurs very rarely even thus) that Christ rose from the dead-and not that the whole species shall rise also. I have heard the doctrine, as christians hold it, often disclaimed and ridiculed by Friends of different classes, long before the schism. Mosheim signalizes their denial of the resurrection of the dead, as one of the known and central attributes of the heresy. So do other authors, and those of the first respectability. Here the reader may inquire, "Why, if Quakerism is Christianity, has it been so doubted, impeached, denounced, by wise and holy men in all ages and places since its rise? The men who have been its characteristic oppugners, are the first in the evangelical world, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and they are all agreed in exploding it, as a sophistical delusion and an impious deceit. Says Dr. Owen, among other solemn and pertinent declarations, "Sin will not be mortified by the power of their light within, nor by their resolutions, nor by any of their austere outward appearances, nor peculiar habits or looks, which in this matter are openly pharisaical." He says that in his day they only gratified deceitfully the impulses of sin, by "exciting and provoking themselves to exceed all others in clamors, railings, evil speakings, reproaches, calumnies, and malicious treating of those who dissented from them, without the least discovery of a heart filled with kindness and benignity unto mankind, or LOVE UNTO ANY BUT THEMSELVES." And this is a specimen of the common sentiment. I cannot leave this matter without remarking the power of education, especially with Friends! THEIR MODE OF EDUCATION IS THE MAKING AND THE KEEPING AND THE SECRET OF THEIR SECT. They subdue the infant mind and awe the infant conscience, with the direct rays of the inward light. They identify all divinity and right, in the associations of their children, with the light within and its friendly fruits. Here the spell commences that "grows with their growth and strengthens with their strength." Investigation is much akin to scepticism and so is devoutly precluded :—but what worse scepticism it is to suppose that investigation could rase the foundation of our faith! They must take every thing for granted or see it in the light! They must wear a ridiculous cut and color of clothes, such as are orthodox or common to the clanship; and use the plain language, and act like Friends: and then if they feel awkward and foolish; if their garb appear ridiculous to themselves; if their manners expose them to jeering and affront; if they are insolently struck (as I have often been) in the street by worthless boys and cursed as "a Quaker;" if their effeminate holy whine is profanely mocked-as it often is by saucy passengers; and if a thousand other inconveniences accrue; especially if they are sometimes asked for one good reason for such singularity in gratuitous opposition to mankind, they must just bear it all for righteousness' sake; not be afraid of the cross, but remember EARLY FRIENDS, how much more they endured in the same cause! Now, much of this, which they call "a guarded education," is just the worst kind of sorcery. It is fascination and religious tyrannizing over the blighted attributes of mind! It is a system exactly calculated to prostrate every noble, courageous and manly sentiment; and to transmute a fine ingenuous boy into a sorry, sly, and often simulating creature in the form of man. 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; Is evil; hurts the faculties; impedes. Their progress in the road of science; blind's The eyesight of discovery; and begets, In those that suffer it, a sordid mind, Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's noble form.-CowPER. The strength of the educational influence is wonderful. It is so identified with the voice of God speaking in them, at them, to them, and {through them; and that constantly and audibly; that its witchery is unparalleled. Hence it is almost impossible by any means to break the charm, where once it has gained a commanding influence in early life! The power of association, the homogeneousness of the scheme, the visible uniform in which they always appear, their peculiarities of language and behavior, their family interests and relationships, with innumerable other matters, all unite to make an influence and an atmosphere of the sect, which they easily identify with goodness and heaven, and from which it is next to impossible to escape. Hence in general to be born a Friend is to die a Friend. Argument, evidence, truth, may all be against them in vain: they feel it not, they know it not and there they are, stagnant and immovable. This is a portentous character of the system, and ought to make especially the young to pause and consider! When I look back on that influence as it affected me, my feelings are unutterable:-I have never spoken or written their intensity! I bless "the only wise God" that I am not what I was, a Friend! By this however I do not mean that I had any "godly sincerity" or did my duty according to knowledge, while one of them. So far from this, I then knew that I was no christian, and felt that I was unfit to die; inasmuch as I often and even habitually acted contrary to the "light within :" by which I now mean only my natural conscience armed against me, as it was, with a very superficial knowledge of the scriptures. I did however believe that Quakerism and christianity were just the same; and so deep were my convictions in favor of the scheme, that the operation of scripture, in that respect revolutionizing my mind, was truly agonizing. It was also difficult and terrible! To find one's self wholly wrong in first principles; to see the necessity of repentance; to renounce all the hallowed and long habituated associations of infancy and childhood; to see scripture every where contradicting what you before knew to be true; and to embrace "that which is good" after "proving all things:" what is this but difficulty and anguish! The system ought to be right that so rivets its principles to the very being of its disciples! It ought to be right, for it is very seldom renounced at all; and much more seldom for the sake of Jesus Christ! It ought to be right, for otherwise all its present votaries will probably live and die in error: so great the power of educational religious prejudice; I feel it to this day! I never see a very plain garb, without some of the reverent associations of childhood:-it looks so good, so patriarchal, so inspired! This proves only the power of education in general, and of religious education in particular, and of early religious education more especially, as it does not prove that Friends are right in the lessons of religion which they inculcate! A Friend is ordinarily made before he is five years of age! the stamp of character is impressed on a yielding surface so deeply, and so seemingly by the hand of God himself, that its print is indelible! This I call the cement and the secret of their system. In addition to this all their children are born, not spiritually but naturally, into full birth-right membership! and it needs no evangelical regeneration or subsequent profession to constitute the finished Friend; which a child commonly becomes, as soon as he becomes of mature age. But when some are recreant to the light, and sin against the costume and other ordinances and sacraments of the society, they are still Friends in their consciences-in their associations-in their convictions! They were made such without catechism, intelligence, or evidence. In some solemn |