CHAPTER XXV
, Putting off the Harness 218
APPENDIX 226
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
ELIAS HICKS (from bust, by Partridge) Frontispiece
HICKS HOUSE AND JERICHO MEETING HOUSE, facing 57
CHILDREN OF ELIAS HICKS, facing 97
FACSIMILE OF LETTER, facing 105
ELIAS HICKS (from painting, by Ketcham), facing 121
SURVEYOR'S PLOTTING, BY ELIAS HICKS, facing 144
BURYING GROUND AT JERICHO, facing 216
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
Elias Hicks was a much misunderstood man in his own time, and the lapse of eighty years since his death has done but little to make him known to the passing generations. His warm personal friends, and of them there were many, considered him little less than a saint; his enemies, some of whom were intensely bitter in their personal feeling, whatever may have been the basis of their judgment, believed him to be a man whose influence was malevolent and mischievous. It is no part of the purpose of this book to attempt to reconcile the conflicting estimates touching the life and character of this remarkable man. On the contrary, our hope is to present him as he was, in his own environment, and not at all as he might have been had he lived in our time, or as his admirers would have him, to make him conform to their own estimate. In this biographical task, Elias Hicks becomes largely his own interpreter. As he measured himself in private correspondence and in public utterance, so this book will endeavor to measure him.
We believe that it is not too much to say that he carried the fundamental idea of the Society of Friends, as delivered by George Fox, to its logical conclusion, as applied to thought and life, more clearly and forcibly than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. Not a few of those who violently opposed him, discounted the position of Fox and Barclay touching the Inner Light, and gave exaggerated importance to the claims of evangelical theology. Whatever others may have thought, Elias Hicks believed that he preached Christianity of the pure apostolic type, and Quakerism as it was delivered by the founders. It should be remembered that the conformist and non-conformist disputants of the seventeenth century talked as savagely about Fox as the early nineteenth century critics did about Hicks. In fact, to accept the theory of Fox about the nature and office of the indwelling spirit, necessarily develops either indifference or opposition to the plans and theories of what was in the time of Elias Hicks, if it is not now, the popularly accepted theology.
No attempt has been made to write a comprehensive and detailed history of the so-called "separation." So far, however, as the trouble related to Elias Hicks, it has been considered, and as much light as possible has been thrown on the case. Necessarily this does not admit of very much reference to the setting up of separate meetings, which followed the open rupture of 1827-28, or the contests over property which occurred after the death of Elias Hicks. Even the causes of the trouble in the Society only appear as they seem necessary to make plain the feeling of Elias Hicks in the case, and the attitude of his opponents toward him.
In dealing with the doctrines of Elias Hicks, or his views about various subjects, we have endeavored to avoid the one-sided policy, and to discriminate between the matters which would be accepted by the majority of those Friends to-day who are erroneously made to bear the name of Elias Hicks, and the theories which they now repudiate. On the other hand, his most conservative and peculiar ideas are given equal prominence with those which more nearly conform to present-day thought.
In stating cases of antagonism, especially where it appeared in public meetings, we have endeavored rather to give samples, than to repeat and amplify occurrences where the same purpose and spirit were exhibited. The citations in the book should, therefore, be taken as types, and not as mere isolated or extraordinary occurrences.
References to the descendants of Elias Hicks, and other matters relating to his life, which do not seem to naturally belong in the coherent and detailed story, will be found in the appendix. This is also true of the usual acknowledgment of assistance, and the reference to the published sources of information consulted by the author in writing the book.
INTRODUCTION.
Now and again a human life is lived in such obedience to the "heavenly vision" that it becomes an authority in other lives. The unswerving rectitude; whence is its divine directness? the world has to ask. Its clear-sightedness; how comes it that the eye is single to the true course? Its strength to endure; from what fountain flows unfailing strength? Its quickening sympathy; what is the sweet secret?
The thought of the world fixes itself into stereotyped and imprisoning forms from which only the white heat of the impassioned seer and prophet can slowly liberate it. At last the world ceases to persecute or to crucify its liberator, and lo! an acknowledged revelation of God! This came to pass in the seventeenth century, when it was given George Fox to see and to proclaim that "there was an anointing within man to teach him, and that the Lord would teach him, himself."
The eighteenth century developed another teacher in the religious society of Friends, whose message has been a distinctly leavening influence in the thought of the world. It is not easy to account for Elias Hicks. He was not the "son of a prophet." Nor was he a gift from the _schools_ of the time in which he lived. In the "Journal of His Life and Religious Labours," published in 1832 by Isaac T. Hopper, there is no reference to school days.
There is one clue to this man that may explain much to us. Of his ancestry he says in the restrained language characteristic of his writings, "My parents were descended from reputable families, and sustained a good character among their friends and those who knew them." Here, then, is the rock-foundation upon which he builded, the factor which could not be spared from the life which he lived--that in his veins was the blood of those who had "sustained a good character among those who knew them." Some of the leisure of his youth had been given to fishing and fowling, which he looked back to as wholesome recreation, since he mostly preferred going alone. While he waited in stillness for the coming of the fowl, 'his mind was at times so taken up in divine meditations, that the opportunities were seasons of instruction and comfort to him.' Out of these meditations grew the conviction in his tendered soul that it was wanton diversion for himself and his companions to destroy the small birds that could be of no use to them.
Recalling his youth, he writes: "Some of my leisure hours were occupied in reading the Scriptures, in which I took considerable delight, and it tended to my real profit and religious improvement." It may be that this great classic in English, as well as library of ancient history, and book of spiritual revelation, was not only the food that stimulated his spiritual growth, but also took the place to him, in some measure, of the schools as a means of culture. It is plain to see that he had what is the first requisite for a student--a hungering mind. The alphabet opened to him the ways and means, which he used as far as he could, for the satisfying of this divine hunger. A new book possessed for him such charm, it is said, that his friends who invited him for a social visit, knowing this, were careful to put the new books out of sight, lest he should become absorbed in them, and they lose his ever-welcome and very entertaining conversation. He even had experience as a teacher; and the testimony is given by an aged Friend, once his pupil: "The manners of Elias Hicks were so mild, his deportment so dignified, and his conversation so instructive, that it left an impression for good on many of his pupils' minds that time never effaced."
That he had not the teaching of the schools narrowed his own resources, and, doubtless, restricted his field of vision. But such a life as his, that garnered wisdom more than knowledge of books, is a great encouragement to those who have not had the opportunities of the schools. We might not know without being told that he had missed from his equipment a college degree; but we do know that his endowment of sound mind was supplemented with incorruptible character; we do know that his life was founded upon belief in everlasting truth and an unchanging integrity. The record of his unfolding spiritual life shows that
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' The youth replies, 'I can.'"
There is evidence that Elias Hicks had not only a hungering mind, but that he had in marked degree the open mind, and that he accorded to others liberty of opinion. It is said that he was unwilling that his discourses be printed, lest they become a bondage to other minds. He wrote to his friend, William Poole: "Therefore every generation must have more light than the preceding one; otherwise, they must sit down in ease in the labour and works of their predecessors." And he left a word of caution to approaching age, when he said in a meeting in New York: "The old folks think they have got far enough, they are settling on the lees, they are blocking up the way." It does not disturb my thought of him that my own mother remembered a mild rebuke from him for the modest flower-bed that brightened the door-yard of her country home. For I discover in him rudiments of the love for beauty. A minister among Friends was once his guest during the harvest season on Long Island, and recalled long after that, when the hour arrived for the mid-week meeting, he came in from the harvest field, and not only exchanged his working for his meeting garments, but added his gloves, although it was hot, midsummer weather. There was certainly the rudimentary love for beauty in this scrupulous regard for the proprieties; but it was kept in such severe check that he could not justify the spending of time upon a flower-border. The poet had not then expressed for us the sweet garden prayer that might have brought to his sensitive mind a new view of the purpose and value of the flower-border:
"That we were earthlings and of earth must live, Thou knowest, Allah, and did'st give us bread; Yea, and remembering of our souls, didst give Us food of flowers; thy name be hallowed!"
From the days in which he preferred his hours of solitude in fishing as opportunities for "divine meditations" we can trace his steady spiritual growth. While his business life was henceforth subordinated to his labors among men to promote the life of the spirit, he was never indifferent to the exact discharge of his own financial obligations; nor was he indifferent to the needs of others. One incident surely marks him as belonging to the School of Christ: "Once when harvests were light and provisions scarce and high, his own wheat fields yielded abundantly. Foreseeing the scarcity and consequent rise in prices, speculators sought early to buy his wheat. He declined to sell. They offered him large prices, and renewed their visits repeatedly, increasing the price each time. Still he refused to sell, even for the unprecedented sum of three dollars a bushel. But by and by, when his poorer neighbors, whose crops were light, began to need, he invited them to come and get as much wheat as they required for use, at the usual price of one dollar a bushel."
He entered into the life of his community and of his times, anticipating by nearly a century the work of Friends' Philanthropic Committees of the present day. It is related that he was much opposed to an attempt to establish a liquor-selling tavern in the Jericho neighborhood--that when he saw strangers approaching he would invite them to accept his own hospitality, thus making unnecessary the tavern-keeping business in the sparsely settled country town.
We would expect that, with his sense of justice and his appreciation of values, Elias Hicks would place men and women side by side, not only in the home, but also in the larger household of faith, and in the affairs of the world. It is remembered that his face was set in this direction--that, strict Society-disciplinarian as he was, he advocated a change in the Discipline to allow women a consulting voice in making and amending the Discipline.
It must be borne in mind that he lived through the Revolutionary period of 1776, and through the War of 1812. So true was he to his convictions against war that he would not allow himself to benefit by the advanced prices in foodstuffs; and we are told that the records of his monthly meeting show that he sacrificed much of his property by adherence to his peace principles.
Neither can we forget the testing that came to him in the institution of slavery. For, according to the custom of the times, his own father was the owner of slaves. His open mind responded to the labors of a committee of the New York Yearly Meeting; and upon the freeing of his father's slaves, he ever after considered their welfare, making such restitution as he could for past injustice.
To his daughter, Martha Hicks, he wrote: "My dear love to thee, to thy dear mother, who next to the Divine Blesser has been the joy of my youth, and who, I trust and hope, will be the comfort of my declining years. O dear child, cherish and help her, for she hath done abundance for thee."
These fruits of the religious faith of Elias Hicks are offered as the test given us by the Great Teacher himself, by which to know the life of a man. They mark a life rooted in the life of God. Imperishable as the root whence they grew, may they feed the souls of men from generation to generation, satisfying the hungry, strengthening the weak, and making all glad in the joy of each! Thus it is permitted to be "still praising Him."
ELIZABETH POWELL BOND.
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