When we and the true spiritual-mindedness gone over to them. attempt thus to contrast a mere hearing of the word, and a mere utterence of prayer, and a mere searching of the Scriptures, with those spiritual attainments supposed to be consequent on silent waiting upon God in our religious meetings, it would be only justice and common sense, (to say nothing of charity), to conclude that such practices can hardly be in a church of Christ, and the members not be edified. They who do all this, in an honest mind, have surely as much right to expect the help of the Holy Spirit in this exercise, as those who sit down to do nothing-neglecting the very helps, He himself has been pleased to provide and appoint for their use. And though it be true that knowledge without charity puffeth up'-much more (if we still suppose charity absent), the conceit of knowledge in such as have it not! A 'religion' which merely exercises the understanding and changes not the heart, seems to me not only to be vain' but a solecism-a moral impossibility. It must have some effect on the life and conduct, if it be Scriptural Christianity, diligently studied and understood. The sensual and wordly-minded, the indolent and idolators of their own selves are never likely to take the pains: though God has given us not only His written word, but also an Interpreter sent from Himself, if we will but stoop and ask his aid. Let us then pray that He will be pleased thus to take us to the school of Christ, and teach us that we knew not because we were looking towards the earth: whence' such knowledge was too high for us.' Let us also, and at any rate, cease to regard with feelings of spiritual pride, and an imagined superiority the patient and industrious public teacher of God's word-lest that we have be also taken from us! I have treated the Ordinances elsewhere; and must refer to those passages of my work for matter in reply to this author on that subject. His book is a pretty clear and very temperate apology for much that is peculiar to us, as a sect;-but it does not present a just view of the doctrinal opinions and practices in worship of the early Friends'.-Ed. ART II. Decease of WILLIAM THE FOURTH. Accession of Her present Majesty, the Queen. Address of Friends to the Throne. Fifty-one Friends appear to have gone up on this occasion with the usual Address of condolence and congratulation; which I here annex as I find it in the public papers. Patriot: London, Monday, July 24. The Queen held a Court on Friday afternoon, at St. James Palace, for the reception on the Throne of Addresses from the Church of Scotland, the Society of Friends, the general body of Dissenting Ministers, and the Dissenting Ministers of the Presbyterian denomination. The deputation from the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, arrived at the Palace, and were uncovered, according to custom, by the Yeomen of the Guard. The members of the deputation present were William Doubleday, John Morland, Jacob Hagen, Joseph Coventry, Edward Harris, Abram Rawlinson Barclay, Samuel Gurney, Jacob Post, Samuel Cash, Samuel Sturge, Thomas Norton, jun., Robert Alsop, jun., William Manley, William Allen, John Hamilton, William Hargrave, George Holmes, John Thomas Barry, Richard Barrett, John Kitching, George Stacey, William Nash, Josiah Forster, John Hodgkin, Jacob Farrand, Joseph Marriage, Henry Knight, jun., Joseph Storrs, Jeremiah Jessop Candler, John Sanderson, Samuel Darton, Joseph Shewell, John Corbyn, Joseph Talwin Foster, Richard Fell, John Foster, Jonathan Barrett, Robert Howard, Thomas Norton, Joseph Neatby, Joseph Sterry, Robert Forster, John Harris, John Hodgkin, jun., John Catchpool, William Grimshaw, Edward Paull, Thomas Christy, Samuel Wheeler, Peter Bedford, Thomas Ashby, jun. William Allen read the address, which was signed by the members of a meeting appointed to represent the Society in Great Britain and Ireland, at London, the 12th day of the seventh month, 1937. The following was the address: "To Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Dominions thereunto belonging. May it please the Queen, "We, thy dutiful and loyal subjects, members of the religious Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, and representing that body in Great Britain and Ire land, are desirous to take the earliest opportunity of thus expressing our cordial and faithful attachment to our Queen. "We sensibly feel the loss of our late and beloved Monarch, King William the Fourth. We look back upon his reign as a period of no common importance in the history of our country, marked, as it has been, by the extension of civil and religious liberty, by mercy and compassion to the guilty, and by the recognition of the rights of our enslaved fellow-subjects. We rejoice in these features of his Government, as evidences of the increasing sway of Christian principles in the legislation of our country. "Under feelings of thankfulness to Almighty God, we offer to thee, our Queen, on thy accession to the Throne of these realms, our sincere congratulations on the prevalence of peace abroad and tranquility at home. May nothing be permitted to interrupt these blessings, and may the conviction more and more prevail that war is alike unchristian and impolitic. "Convinced, as we are, that the religion of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, is the only foundation for the true happiness of man and the prosperityof a people, and that it is the sacred bulwark to any Government, our prayer to God is, that it may be the stability of thy throne, and may influence all the deliberations of thy Council. "Be pleased, O Queen, to accept our earnest and heartfelt desire that thou mayest seek for heavenly wisdom to enable thee to fulfil the arduous duties which, in the ordering of Divine Providence, thou art thus early called to perform. Mayest thou live in the fear of God, and may He incline thy heart to keep his laws, and richly endow thee with the graces of his Holy Spirit; and at length, when the days of thy delegated trust on earth are ended, mayest thou, through the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, enter into an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.' Her Majesty returned the following gracious answer to the Address : I thank you for your condolence upon the death of his late Majesty, for the justice which you render to his character, and to the measures of his reign, and for your warm congratulations upon my accession to the throne. "I join in your prayers for the prosperity of my reign; the best security for which is to be found in reverence for our holy religion, and in the observance of its duties." RESURRECTION, doctrine of a, treated, 165. RICH and great, not equally taxed to the Church, 5. ROUTH, Martha, her opinion of the inspiration of the Bible, 74. SANDY foundation in doctrine, what, 9. SATAN, who and what, 180. SCHOOLS for blacks and coloured people, 96, 234. Friends' children, 88, 91, 99, 100, 226, 320, 359. SCORN of the world, a bitter but wholesome diet, 243. SCRIPTURE, as a rule; and Scripture-reading treated, 12, 24, 26, 32, use of in meetings, declined, 252. SCRUPLE, religious, what, 314. SECT, the term, treated, 286. SENSE of the Meeting, how found of old, 16, 31. SEPARATISTS on the American continent disclaimed, 278. SHARPE, Granville, 95—his Letter to Anthony Benezet, 335. SHUTE, Bishop of Durham, signs a document in favour of Friends, 29. SIDMOUTH, the Lord, his attempt on the Toleration, 101. SLAVE-TRADE, and slavery, proceedings about, 88, 90, 149, 205, 225, SMITH Joseph, 38. William, M. P., 115. SOCINIAN principles disclaimed by Friends, 130. SPEECH of the author at Freemason's Hall, 38. SPIRIT of Christ in believers, treated, 270. SPIRITUOUS and fermented liquors, advice about in Yearly Meeting, 329. STEINKOPFF, C. F. A, Sec. B. and F. B. S., 38. SUFFERINGS by distraint for tithe, &c., 1, 3. SWEDEN and Norway, intolerant proceedings in, 200. TARN, Joseph, Asst. Sec. B. and F. B. S. 38. TEIGNMOUTH, Lord John, 38. TESTIMONY of disownment, copy of a, 77. TESTS, religious, Lord Howick dismissed for opposing, 91. Act for, repealed, 273. THEOBALD, Sam., released from serving Churchwarden by an Eccle- THOMAS, Abel, American preacher, account of, 118. many and the South of France, occasions an expence of from £60. to £70. per annum, paid also out of this fund. Thus the perception and issue of the revenue of the Society may be said to lie in in a small compass: an account is moreover annually exhibited of these to the Yearly Meeting, which appoints auditors for the purpose. The collective property of the Society in lands and tenements for the purpose of Meetings for worship and discipline, the interment of the dead, &c., including the dwellings of those who have charge of such premises, has not to my knowledge been as yet valued; but it must amount to something very considerable. In the Account of Meetings' published annually for the use of Friends, we have the names of four hundred and thirty places in Great Britain and Ireland, at which are held Meetings for worship at stated times, accessible to all comers. It must be a poor Meeting-house indeed, that is not worth £150. with the ground it stands ou :-but if we consider that many of these are in cities and large towns, often consisting of substantial premises in an excellent state of repair, and add the value of the Central property in London, with the several burial grounds of the society, I think we have here an aggregate of not less than a hundred and thirty thousand and I should be disposed to estimate our whole public property at a full quarter of a million: and this unencumbered, save as before stated with a few annuities. Of this large Estate, and of the Schools, &c. connected with it, as well as of our public charities in general, it may be said on the whole that they are well and faithfully administered. The education given to the children in our Schools may be said to be equal to that of the best of the Schools on the British system. There is added in the Institution at Ackworth, a little Latin: to qualify twenty or thirty boys for becoming assistants to the medical practitioner, or apprentices to the druggist-but there is nothing either in this or in our mathematics, to create the smallest degree of jealously, in the mind of the humblest tutor at Cambridge—and for Greek, we are content as a Society to know nothing about it. Of the religious instruction imparted to the children at our Schools, which is managed in somewhat of a catechetical way by the teachers and carefully attended to, it may be remarked, that the Reports concerning it require to be viewed with a measure of allowance for our still strongly cherished prepossessions in favour of the Mystical doctrine. The children are not often addressed, I believe, by well-qualified ministers of the word; nor examined by such, with prayer for the Holy Spirit, in order to the opening of their understandings to the truths of the gospel. It is probable therefore, the far greater part of their religious notions are gathered by themselves for themselves: in reading and hearing the Scriptures and Friends writings, in private or in the class. There is one point on which I think our system of education very defective, and on which I have not concealed my sentiments. In none of the schools are the children, to my knowledge, taught any manners, or address at all! They are apt to receive a favour or a benefit without a word of acknowlegment, and to pass their best friends as they would a post in the street! Surely there is a medium between abject and servile cringing to the great, and this silly republican rudeness! Nothing in the new Testament (however we may idolize our early Friends') can be brought to justify the utter want of courtesy, in which the members of our highly professing society have been found, even towards each other, of later time. If we cannot make out the obvious Christian distinction and duty, of preferring one another, and of rendering to all their dues: honour to whom honour (as well as tribute to whom tribute); but are determined to abide by American rule in these matters, we had better methinks go live where that rule prevails! To return for a while to a more weighty subject left behind-in the year 1833, after a most full consideration of the case, the Yearly Meeting decided against having a Mission of its own to the heathen abroad: see pa. 283 of this volume. Yet is it notorious that we have at this time two concerns of the kind in hand, in each of which two Friends undertake to publish Christianity (as we hold it) to the people where they come-and one of these is amongst the very people (of the Polynesia) to whom as heathen our Fellow-christians have been carrying the Gospel in a regular way. A recurrence to the sentiments of a large Committee, reporting to the Yearly Meeting on the subject in 1833, may best enable us to appreciate the reasons of this conduct. The deplorable condition of the heathen and the degraded circumstances under which they are living, have been felt [we say to ourselves] at this time as well as in former years to be truly affecting.' Yet when we come to the point, no way opens for us to adopt any specific measure, in order to communicate to them a knowledge of the truths of the Gospel! After commending their benighted condition to the Christian sympathy and frequent remembrance of Friends, and adverting to the distribution of the Scriptures as an unexceptionable measure, we avow our real sentiments thus: We desire [we profess at least to wish] that all our members may stand open to the intimations of the Heavenly Shepherd, and follow the leadings of his Spirit, into such services as he may be pleased individually to appoint to them." Here is an assumption of the highest authority that we can expectbut in whom placed? An individual is to come and inform his friends of a special revelation to himself from the LORD Christ, laying it upon him to go to such a place or people-but he is to be sent nowhere! Others in the church, on hearing this concern' opened, allege what amounts to a special revelation to them also, that it is of the Lord and his duty. All this is listened to in a meeting of Ministers and Elders with a serious and awful attention, and the Friend is either put by, on the ascertained sense of a majority present that it is not a true revelation, (in our words, a right concern), or he is permitted, by a majority or unanimously as it may be, to go as if sent forth by Christ himself! Thus is the highest authority possible for a mission to have assigned to it placed in the breast of the missionary himself and a few (it may 6 |