Complete Prose Works

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At length after a pause and stillness becoming almost painful, Elias
rises and stands for a moment or two without a word. A tall,
straight figure, neither stout nor very thin, dress'd in drab cloth,
clean-shaved face, forehead of great expanse, and large and clear
black eyes,[42] long or middling-long white hair; he was at this time
between 80 and 81 years of age, his head still wearing the broad-brim.
A moment looking around the audience with those piercing eyes, amid
the perfect stillness. (I can almost see him and the whole scene
now.) Then the words come from his lips, very emphatically and slowly
pronounc'd, in a resonant, grave, melodious voice, _What is the chief
end of man? I was told in my early youth, it was to glorify God, and
seek and enjoy him forever._

I cannot follow the discourse. It presently becomes very fervid, and
in the midst of its fervor he takes the broad-brim hat from his head,
and almost dashing it down with violence on the seat behind, continues
with uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly
suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal
division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did
not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing
conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which
all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple,
yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect.
Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard
Father Taylor, the sailor's preacher, and found in his passionate
unstudied oratory the resemblance to Elias Hicks's--not argumentative
or intellectual, but so penetrating--so different from anything in
the books--(different as the fresh air of a May morning or sea-shore
breeze from the atmosphere of a perfumer's shop.)

While he goes on he falls into the nasality and sing-song tone
sometimes heard in such meetings; but in a moment or two more as if
recollecting himself, he breaks off, stops, and resumes in a natural
tone. This occurs three or four times during the talk of the evening,
till all concludes.

Now and then, at the many scores and hundreds--even thousands--of his
discourses--as at this one--he was very mystical and radical,[43] and
had much to say of "the light within." Very likely this same inner
light, (so dwelt upon by newer men, as by Fox and Barclay at the
beginning, and all Friends and deep thinkers since and now,) is
perhaps only another name for the religious conscience. In my opinion
they have all diagnos'd, like superior doctors, the real in-most
disease of our times, probably any times. Amid the huge inflammation
call'd society, and that other inflammation call'd politics, what is
there to-day of moral power and ethic sanity as antiseptic to them and
all? Though I think the essential elements of the moral nature exist
latent in the good average people of the United States of to-day,
and sometimes break out strongly, it is certain that any mark'd or
dominating National Morality (if I may use the phrase) has not only
not yet been develop'd, but that--at any rate when the point of view
is turn'd on business, politics, competition, practical life, and in
character and manners in our New World--there seems to be a hideous
depletion, almost absence, of such moral nature. Elias taught
throughout, as George Fox began it, or rather reiterated and verified
it, the Platonic doctrine that the ideals of character, of justice,
of religious action, whenever the highest is at stake, are to be
conform'd to no outside doctrine of creeds, Bibles, legislative
enactments, conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow the
inward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only the
true Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps
strainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England records
of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts.

In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or
instructions, ("seal'd orders" the biographer calls them,) prepar'd by
the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:

Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that
they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells
with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis'd of old that they shall
see God.

How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in
Omar Khayyam:

I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell,
And by-and-by my soul return'd to me,
And answer'd, "I myself am Heaven and Hell."

Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of
Quakerism, the difficult-to-describe "Light within" or "Inward Law, by
which all must be either justified or condemn'd," I will not undertake
where so many have fail'd--the task of making the statement of it for
the average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter and
partly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks
himself says in allusion to it--one or two of very many passages.
Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancient
peripatetics, have left no record remaining--they were extempore, and
those were not the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver'd in
Chester, Pa., toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful
transcript; and from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hidden
wheat that may need to be pick'd and thrash'd out several times before
you get the grain,) we give the following extract:

I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be
call'd home to the substance. For the Scriptures, and all the
books in the world, can do no more; Jesus could do no more than to
recommend to this Comforter, which was the light in him. "God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we walk in the
light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another."
Because the light is one in all, and therefore it binds us together
in the bonds of love; for it is not only light, but love--that love
which casts out all fear. So that they who dwell in God dwell in
love, and they are constrain'd to walk in it; and if they "walk in
it, they have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

But what blood, my friends? Did Jesus Christ, the Saviour, ever have
any material blood? Not a drop of it, my friends--not a drop of it.
That blood which cleanseth from the life of all sin, was the life of
the soul of Jesus. The soul of man has no material blood; but as the
outward material blood, created from the dust of the earth, is the
life of these bodies of flesh, so with respect to the soul, the
immortal and invisible spirit, its blood is that life which God
breath'd into it.

As we read, in the beginning, that "God form'd man of the dust of
the ground, and breath'd into him the breath of life, and man became
a living soul." He breath'd into that soul, and it became alive to
God.

Then, from one of his many letters, for he seems to have delighted in
correspondence:

Some may query, What is the cross of Christ? To these I answer, It
is the perfect law of God, written on the tablet of the hear
and in the heart of every rational creature, in such indelible
characters that all the power of mortals cannot erase nor obliterate
it. Neither is there any power or means given or dispens'd to the
children of men, but this inward law and light, by which the true
and saving knowledge of God can be obtain' d. And by this inward law
and light, all will be either justified or condemn'd, and all made
to know God for themselves, and be left without excuse, agreeably to
the prophecy of Jeremiah, and the corroborating testimony of Jesus
in his last counsel and command to his disciples, not to depart from
Jerusalem till they should receive power from on high; assuring them
that they should receive power, when they had receiv'd the pouring
forth of the spirit upon them, which would qualify them to bear
witness of him in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the uttermost
parts of the earth; which was verified in a marvellous manner on the
day of Pentecost, when thousands were converted to the Christian
faith in one day.

By which it is evident that nothing but this inward light and law,
as it is heeded and obey'd, ever did, or ever can, make a true
and real Christian and child of God. And until the professors
of Christianity agree to lay aside all their non-essentials in
religion, and rally to this unchangeable foundation and standard of
truth, wars and fightings, confusion and error, will prevail, and
the angelic song cannot be heard in our land--that of "glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to men."

But when all nations are made willing to make this inward law and
light the rule and standard of all their faith and works, then we
shall be brought to know and believe alike, that there is but one
Lord, one faith, and but one baptism; one God and Father, that is
above all, through all, and in all.

And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded
in the scriptures of truth be fulfill'd--"He," the Lord, "shall
judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell
with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play
the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the
cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain; for the earth," that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are
not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one,
and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through
religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number
of instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people," in the
preachings of this remarkable man.

Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding.
If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind
oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper
even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks
emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried
with him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them--a sympathetic
germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no
book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge,
intuition--not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'd
out only by powerful human magnetism:

Unheard by sharpest ear--unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest
mind,
Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world,
incessantly,
Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss;
Open, but still a secret--the real of the real--an illusion;
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner;
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme----historians in prose;
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted;
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d.

That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life--that aspiration towards
the ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in
perhaps every character. More definitely, as near as I remember (aided
by my dear mother long afterward,) Elias Hicks's discourse there in
the Brooklyn ball-room, was one of his old never-remitted appeals to
that moral mystical portion of human nature, the inner light. But it
is mainly for the scene itself, and Elias's personnel, that I recall
the incident.

Soon afterward the old man died:

On first day morning, the 14th of 2d month (February, 1830,) he was
engaged in his room, writing to a friend, until a little after ten
o'clock, when he return'd to that occupied by the family, apparently
just attack'd by a paralytic affection, which nearly deprived h
of the use of his right side, and of the power of speech. Being
assisted to a chair near the fire, he manifested by signs, that the
letter which he had just finish'd, and which had been dropp'd
the way, should be taken care of; and on its being brought to him,
appear'd satisfied, and manifested a desire that all should sit down
and be still, seemingly sensible that his labours were brought to a
close, and only desirous of quietly waiting the final change. The
solemn composure at this time manifest in his countenance, w
very impressive, indicating that he was sensible the time of his
departure was at hand, and that the prospect of death brought no
terrors with it. During his last illness, his mental faculti
were occasionally obscured, yet he was at times enabled to give
satisfactory evidence to those around him, that all was well, and
that he felt nothing in his way.

His funeral took place on fourth day, the 3rd of 3rd month. It was
attended by a large concourse of Friends and others, and a solid
meeting was held on the occasion; after which, his remains were
interr'd in Friends' burial-ground at this place (Jericho, Queens
county, New York.)

I have thought (even presented so incompletely, with such fearful
hiatuses, and in my own feebleness and waning life) one might well
memorize this life of Elias Hicks. Though not eminent in literature or
politics or inventions or business, it is a token of not a few, and is
significant. Such men do not cope with statesmen or soldiers--but I
have thought they deserve to be recorded and kept up as a sample--that
this one specially does. I have already compared it to a little
flowing liquid rill of Nature's life, maintaining freshness. As if,
indeed, under the smoke of battles, the blare of trumpets, and the
madness of contending hosts--the screams of passion, the groans of the
suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all
hell's heat and noise and competition above and around--should come
melting down from the mountains from sources of unpolluted snows, far
up there in God's hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along
among us low in the ground, at men's very feet, a curious little brook
of clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water.

_Note.--The Separation_.--The division vulgarly call'd between
Orthodox and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827,
'8 and '9. Probably it had been preparing some time. One who was
present has since described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friends
in Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with
Elias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument
he made use of these words: "The blood of Christ--the blood of
Christ--why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was no
more effectual than the blood of bulls and goats--not a bit more--not
a bit." At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a great
tumult. Hundreds rose to their feet.... Canes were thump'd upon the
floor. From all parts of the house angry mutterings. Some left the
place, but more remain'd, with exclamations, flush'd faces and eyes.
This was the definite utterance, the overt act, which led to the
separation. Families diverg'd--even husbands and wives, parents and
children, were separated.

Of course what Elias promulg'd spread a great commotion among the
Friends. Sometimes when he presented himself to speak in the meeting,
there would be opposition--this led to angry words, gestures, unseemly
noises, recriminations. Elias, at such times, was deeply affected--the
tears roll'd in streams down his cheeks--he silently waited the close
of the dispute. "Let the Friend speak; let the Friend speak!" he would
say when his supporters in the meeting tried to bluff off some violent
orthodox person objecting to the new doctrinaire. But he never
recanted.

A reviewer of the old dispute and separation made the following
comments on them in a paper ten years ago: "It was in America, where
there had been no persecution worth mentioning since Mary Dyer was
hang'd on Boston Common, that about fifty years ago differences arose,
singularly enough upon doctrinal points of the divinity of Christ and
the nature of the atonement. Whoever would know how bitter was the
controversy, and how much of human infirmity was found to be still
lurking under broad-brim hats and drab coats, must seek for the
information in the Lives of Elias Hicks and of Thomas Shillitoe, the
latter an English Friend, who visited us at this unfortunate time, and
who exercised his gifts as a peace-maker with but little success. The
meetings, according to his testimony, were sometimes turn'd into mobs.
The disruption was wide, and seems to have been final. Six of the
ten yearly meetings were divided; and since that time various
sub-divisions have come, four or five in number. There has never,
however, been anything like a repetition of the excitement of the
Hicksite controversy; and Friends of all kinds at present appear to
have settled down into a solid, steady, comfortable state, and to be
working in their own way without troubling other Friends whose ways
are different."

_Note_.--Old persons, who heard this man in his day, and who glean'd
impressions from what they saw of him, (judg'd from their own points
of views,) have, in their conversation with me, dwelt on another
point. They think Elias Hicks had a large element of personal
ambition, the pride of leadership, of establishing perhaps a sect that
should reflect his own name, and to which he should give especial form
and character. Very likely. Such indeed seems the means, all through
progress and civilization, by which strong men and strong convictions
achieve anything definite. But the basic foundation of Elias was
undoubtedly genuine religious fervor. He was like an old Hebrew
prophet. He had the spirit of one, and in his later years look'd like
one. What Carlyle says of John Knox will apply to him:

He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes
heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in him a good, honest,
intellectual talent, no transcendent one;--a narrow, inconsiderable
man, as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence
to truth, in _sincerity_ as we say, he has no superior; nay, one
might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true
Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at Knox's
grave, "who never fear'd the face of man." He resembles, more than
any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility,
intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth.

_A Note yet. The United States to-day_.--While under all previous
conditions (even convictions) of society, Oriental, Feudal,
Ecclesiastical, and in all past (or present) Despotisms, through the
entire past, there existed, and exists yet, in ally and fusion with
them, and frequently forming the main part of them, certain churches,
institutes, priesthoods, fervid beliefs, &c., practically promoting
religious and moral action to the fullest degrees of which humanity
there under circumstances was capable, and often conserving all there
was of justice, art, literature, and good manners--it is clear I say,
that, under the Democratic Institutes of the United States, now and
henceforth, there are no equally genuine fountains of fervid beliefs,
adapted to produce similar moral and religious results, according to
our circumstances. I consider that the churches, sects, pulpits,
of the present day, in the United States, exist not by any solid
convictions, but by a sort of tacit, supercilious, scornful suffrance.
Few speak openly--none officially--against them. But the ostent
continuously imposing, who is not aware that any such living fountains
of belief in them are now utterly ceas'd and departed from the minds
of men?

_A Lingering Note_.--In the making of a full man, all the other
consciences, (the emotional, courageous, intellectual, esthetic, &c.,)
are to be crown'd and effused by the religious conscience. In the
higher structure of a human self, or of community, the Moral, the
Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the subtle
vitalization and antiseptic play call'd Health in the physiologic
structure. To person or State, the main verteber (or rather _the_
verteber) is Morality.

That is indeed the only real vitalization of character, and of all the
supersensual, even heroic and artistic portions of man or nationality.
It is to run through and knit the superior parts, and keep man or
State vital and upright, as health keeps the body straight and
blooming. Of course a really grand and strong and beautiful character
is probably to be slowly grown, and adjusted strictly with reference
to itself, its own personal and social sphere--with (paradox though
it may be) the clear understanding that the conventional theories of
life, worldly ambition, wealth, office, fame, &c., are essentially but
glittering mayas, delusions.

Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will sometimes find
themselves saying, It isn't only those who know most, who contribute
most to God's glory. Doubtless these very scientists at times stand
with bared heads before the humblest lives and personalities. For
there is something greater (is there not?) than all the science
and poems of the world--above all else, like the stars shining
eternal--above Shakspere's plays, or Concord philosophy, or art of
Angelo or Raphael--something that shines elusive, like beams
of Hesperus at evening--high above all the vaunted wealth and
pride--prov'd by its practical outcropping in life, each case after
its own concomitants--the intuitive blending of divine love and faith
in a human emotional character--blending for all, for the unlearn'd,
the common, and the poor.

I don't know in what book I once read, (possibly the remark has been
made in books, all ages,) that no life ever lived, even the most
uneventful, but, probed to its centre, would be found in itself as
subtle a drama as any that poets have ever sung, or playwrights
fabled. Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure.
For it isn't only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark,
or almost dark, unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of
Sirius, seven times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space,
real and potent as any--perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none
recks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens,
they have not even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications all
times, the soul would seem to glance yearningly around for such
contrasts--such cool, still offsets.

Notes:

[42]In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the
most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he ever
beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been like
them.

[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias
Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays--but
in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a
good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He
said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend
all the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound
copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and
yet not be a truly religious person at all." E. believ'd little in
a church as organiz'd-even his own--with houses, ministers, or with
salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But
he believ' d always in the universal church, in the soul of man,
invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.--He
was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live,
but how you live." He said once to my father, "They talk of the
devil--I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than man."

GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)

While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the origin
of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the most
mark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the
16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so
many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout
Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were
unusually arous'd--(some would say demented.) It was a special age of
the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were
hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an
age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were
wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to
think of it--that age! its events, persons--Shakspere just dead, (his
folios publish'd, complete)--Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the
solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!