and prosperous. "In 1690, after forty years of incessant persecution, 'it' could point to an organized body of sixty or seventy thousand adherents in Great Britain and Ireland, to flourishing congregations in other parts of Europe, and to more than one great colony it had founded in the Western World." But the fine gold soon became dim. "The Society of Friends attained its numerical meridian in this island about the year 1680, and in the next one hundred and twenty years its decline was continuous, reducing its numbers by the year 1800 to one-half of what they had been at their highest point. During the present century this decline has progressed still further, and there are now not more than twenty-six thousand persons in Great Britain and Ireland professing with Friends. Within the last one hundred and eighty years the population of the United Kingdom has trebled, but the Society of Friends has diminished nearly two-thirds."

What are the causes of this decline? Let us state the proximate causes first, those which in Mr. Rowntree's opinion, from whose pages we have just quoted, account for the actual abridgment of the society by a selfdiminishing process, rather than for its nonextension by discontinuance or failure of the assimilating function of proselytism. The resuscitation of the disciplinary system of Quakerism, in 1760, aggravating all its primary defects, and giving prominence to the principle of external separation, in narrowing the grounds of church fellowship, contracted the numerical area of the society. During the twenty years following this resuscitation, numerous "Disownments" took place, not only for immoral acts, but for the payment of tithes, marriage contrary to rule, and the like violations of the society's "testimonies." In consequence of the introduction of " Birthright Membership" in 1737, excommunications have been fatally frequent, so that "within a considerable proportion of the present century the Society of Friends in England has disowned nearly one-third of all its members who have married, a total of not less than four thousand persons." Nor is this all, but their removal has occasioned the deaths among the Friends to exceed their births by two thousand four hundred since 1810; while in the general population of England, during the same period, there have been three births to every two deaths.

From considering the more proximate we pass to an examination of the more general causes of the decay of Quakerism. These, according to Mr. Rowntree, are its disparagement of the human reason, its once inadequate estimate of the value of Holy Scripture, and its seclusive system of Church government. In rejecting a humanly appointed ministry and the symbolical rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper, Quakerism placed itself in antagonism to the sentiments and requirements of nearly all existing Christian communities. From the special causes, from the general neglect of the culture of the understanding in connection with religion, and the disregard of the æsthetic element in man's mental constitntion, the measure of Quakerism has become smaller than that of Christianity, its powers of adaptation have become limited, and its general diffusion restrained. It is in condemning the partial and oligarchical nature of Quakerism that we find the author of the second dissertation in most striking sympathy with his fellow-essayist. He regards George Fox as a pure, single-hearted, righteous man, dissatisfied with the belief in a historical Christ, complaining that "the faith of the sects stands on a man who died at Jerusalem sixteen hundred years ago," and wanting "a deliverer for that year, for that hour, a light for every moment." This deliverer, this light, was in man himself; neither conditioned by time, place, creed, occupation, character, age, nor sex; and opposed only by sin and selfwilled darkness. Strong in the persuasion of the universality of this light, Fox wrote to the Jews, to the pope, to the emperor, to the kings of France and England, to Oliver Cromwell, to Charles II., to cleric and lay, of every sect and employment, throughout Christendom, appealing to the divine witness present in them all. This Quaker reproclamation of an eternal verity against the churchmen, separatists, and politicians of the time, was the glory and strength of the teaching of Fox and his followers. Quakerism prospered, because in the general forgetfulness of the "divine idea " it singled out for emphatic revival this universal truth, in which, however variously interpreted, all humanity has so deep and abiding an interest. Thus it asserted spirituality against ceremonialism, believing that the Creator and Inspirer of forms would provide them when they were wanted; it stood for simplicity against insincerity in speech and

elaborateness in dress; it taught the supreme love of man, for the holy love within them gave them an awful sympathy with all men, a mighty hatred to all man's enemies. It witnessed against war, slavery, drunkenness, because they obscure and insult the divine light that dwells in every man. Such Mr. Hancock conceives the old Quaker idea to have been.

66

Such is Mr. Hancock's view of the decline of Quakerism; a view which in some respects is coincident with that of Mr. Rowntree, and which is principally distinguished from that gentleman's by its more abstract and deductive character, and also what non-Anglicans would regard as in some degree vitiating the purity of his argument, the assumption of Catholicity" for the communion to which he belongs. If Quakerism is declining, is not Church of Englandism declining also? If a High Churchman objects that the Society of Friends has decreased from 60,000 or 70,000 in 1690 to less than 15,000 in 1850, may not the Quaker retort that the Church of England, once we presume that of the people of England, contained, according to the census of 1851, only 5,292,551 worshippers in England and Wales, out of a population of 18,000,000? May not he refer to the Report of the Commissioners on the Religious Condition of the Country, eight or nine years since, which testifies that while with the upper classes a regular church attendance is ranked

But Quakerism soon degenerated, and the idea became lost in system; mechanism succeeded to vital action, and the sense of an hereditary vocation supplanted the living principle of duty. Thus the modern Quakers retain the accidents not the essentials of their church. They protest against forms, and only show their formality; they take up the calling of philanthropists, and manufacture brotherhood and charity by peace societies, abolition societies, and temperance societies. Mr. Hancock attributes the decay of Quakerism not only to the growing degeneracy of its professors, but to its sectarian character. Quakerism is partial and exclusive. Its disciples from the very first claimed to be a Peculium, amongst the recognized proprieties of life, "it or peculiar people, repudiating all communion with Romanists, Puritans, or Anglicans; it originated in the secularism or the spirit of the age of the seventeenth century; it degenerated with that of the eighteenth; it is now one-sided, commercial, or worldly, and anti-human. The Quaker idea is lost. The Quaker system is hostile to the age; hostile, because, while every thoughtful man, theist or atheist, craves for unity of thought, sentiment, and action, Quakerism does not assist and forward this tendency; hostile, because there is a growing attachment to Ritualism, and Quakerism refuses to acknowledge this tendency; hostile, because the age is characterized by a strong æsthetic spirit or love of art, and Quaker discipline shuts out art as an element of the world. It fights against God by its prohibitions, for the things it prohibits are parts of his discipline. "Music, romances, the drama, dancing, outward signs of mourning, memorials to the beloved dead, these all arise out of our original constitution,' and' wherever man is these things are." Elsewhere Mr. Hancock observes that our divine discipliner has given us arts, poetry, the drama, as preservatives from worldliness, and declares that, in its contempt of art and rejection of enthusiasm, modern Quakerism has taken money for its idol and is signing away its life.

is sadly certain that this vast intelligent and growingly important section of our countrymen (the artisan population) is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions in their present aspect?" It is a fact that the Church of England is not the Church of England's people; it is a question, why it is not, and a further question, how can it become so? Is its denationality the consequence of defective Catholicity, universality of truth, sentiment, and action? For we quite agree with Mr. Hancock, that no system that is partial and sectarian, no system that excludes truth in science, truth in art, truth in life, no system that shuts out any rays of the "Divine Light," or insults and mutilates any element in our common humanity, can be sovereign in its authority, Catholic in its inclusiveness, or eternal in its duration. "Every sect contains within itself the principle of its own decay, in its protestations and abridgments. Its schismatic and inexpansive character is its death-warrant." That English sectarianism is eventually doomed to die out is a conclusion that all philosophical and historical speculation justifies. Will the Church of England verify the rule by becoming a splendid exception to the prevailing exclusiveness? Can she make herself the Church of the nation by developing the spiritual life of the nation?

The Spaniards are remarkable for the sucIts tints, its motions, and its form to see-cess with which they cultivate the art of imNo beauty mine-No! nothing but the throng-provisation, and I have heard excellent asoning

POETRY.-The Path Through the Corn, 322. Cupid upon Blackstone, 322. The Future, 322. The Little Girl's Song, 384. Dream-Life, 384.

SHORT ARTICLES.-The Wasp, 326. Purkess or Purkis Family, 326. One Human Speech only before the Flood without Error, 326. Altar-Tomb used as a Communion Table, 326. James Bannon's daughter, at Lawrence, 336. Toads and their Skins, 339. Horse Racing, 356. The Lapps and Norwegians, 359. Applications of Silica, 362. Arrangements for the Funeral of Lord Macaulay, 364. Complete Works of Lord Bacon, 364. "Hardware Song," 364. The Morocco Refugees, 364. Richmond and its Maids of Honor, 374. Statistics of Letters sent by Post, 374. The Unburied Ambassadors, 374. Kentish Long-tails, 374. Macaulay's Answer to the charge of Opium-eating, 383.

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