VOL. XL.

EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY AN ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS.

CONTENTS.

No. 6.

JOHN COMLY, AGENT,

AT PUBLICATION OFFICE, No. 1020 ARCH STREET.

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AGENTS:-Edwin Blackburn, Baltimore, Md.
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Benj. Strattan, Richmond, Ind.

Entered at the Post-Office at Philadelphia, Penna. as second-class

matter

Spiritual Insight........

Sermon from the Fishes.

Comparatively Few, etc............................

Mothers.........

Correspondence.........

Local Information

Editorial: Forms-Tobacco Habit in Schools-Unity Leaf

lets-Women Graduates...

Marriages.......

Deaths...

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For Friends' Intelligencer.
ESSENTIALS IN RELIGION.

That religion is pre-eminently and essentially a condition of the heart, and that the formula of doctrine (so called) professed by the generality of the bodies of professors of the Christian name are intellectual convictions, founded not on the natural instincts, not on experience, but mainly on authority, is the assertion and assurance of many sincere hearts who are wearied of the dreary iterations of creed and of dogma, and who long for the substance of things hoped for.

The test of truth in doctrine is now asked

for in the innermost of the heart. The sense

of what is right and good, and the dictates of affection are felt to be divine in their nature, and the conviction is surely gaining ground that the wisdom and justice, the love and tenderness of the Heavenly Father is of the same nature, though infinitely greater in degree than that of the loving human heart.

We feel that the Divine Being holds more immediate connection with man through the conscience and affections than through the intellect, and year by year, the ranks of those whose trust is in the Spirit which giveth light rather than in the letter which killeth, is gaining strength. There are many reasons which might be recounted and dwelt upon which account for the fact that the Society of

Friends, the goodly house of our fathers, in which we have an abiding place, does not attract to its threshold any great number of those who have sympathy with our cherished principles; but we have evidence that much good seed which faithful servants of the Eternal Wisdom have scattered by the waysides and in the fertile fields, is springing up and bearing its fruit in due season. "The little leaven" which was hidden in the meal is surely leavening the lump.

Not only is a restatement of outgrown creeds demanded, but a new statement of the foundation on which belief rests is desired. Man is seeking a clearer discernment of the religious thought of our day recognizes foungrounds of faith. It is felt that the deeper dations underlying all written texts, and sees that it is not the Bible that has made religion, but that religion in the human heart has

made

"The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe." In the meantime cannot those who own the simple faith of the Society of Friends calmly abide in the trust that the unseen Power which has been the constant reliance of the faithful through long generations will continue to be their refuge, their guide, and their

Redeemer. There are teachings of the Spirit of God, as these are made sensible to the inward ear, there is the ministry of nature and of life, and there is the testimony of enlightened souls to the eternal verities, as fully to be known and enjoyed now as in any former day. A larger and nobler faith, united with truer love and sympathy between the sons of men, seems to promise blessings manifold to those who are the inheritors of the testimonies. We must ever long for clearer light and greater zeal, that the full harvest may be garnered and that the work of advancement in all true service of the Highest, all tender help for man, shall go on unceasingly. S. R.

SPIRITUAL INSIGHT.

The following incident is related in an article by H. S. Newman, entitled "Herefordshire Friends in the Olden Time,” in Friends' Quarterly Examiner of First month.

A number of gentlemen were sitting in the traveller's room of the principal inn in Leominster, and by chance there happened to be among them almost every variety of religious denomination. This led to a conversation in which a clergyman of the Church of England made the extraordinary assertion that there was more true religion in the little finger of old Thomas Waring, the Quaker stay-maker of that town, than in all the Dean and Chapter of Hereford, the Bishop included, "though I say it," continued the clergyman, “who am myself a Prebend of that Cathedral." One of the company expressed his astonishment at such an assertion, but the clergyman proceeded to justify it by facts, and amongst other statements brought forward to illustrate the simple but profound piety of his character, he related the following:

"Old Thomas Waring, the stay-maker of Leominster, sat one evening in his shop among his work people, when it was strongly impressed on his mind that he must set off directly to the neighboring town of Ross. It was winter time; the days were short, and the weather none of the best. The idea seemed so strange to him that he tried to get rid of it, but he could not free his mind of what appeared to be his duty. It was impressed upon him like a mission, and he was one of those pure, simple, and obedient spirits that once knowing the will of God he must implicitly obey it. He rose from the seat where he was at work, and giving orders that his horse should be immediately saddled, set out. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and thirty miles to Ross. He stopped at Hereford to bait his horse, and, in order to lose no time, fed it with oatmeal mash, and resumed his journey.

"It was late in the night when he approached Ross, and still his business there re mained unknown. In passing over the Wye, however, as he entered the town, he cast his eyes upward, and saw in the darkness of the night, and amid the tall dark houses; a light in an attic window, and immediately it was revealed to him that there lay his mission, and that in going there all would be made plain. He lost not a moment, but riding directly up to the door, knocked loudly. No one came, and while waiting, he gave his horse in charge to a boy in the street, bidding him take it to a brother Quaker's-one George Dew-and say that the owner of the horse would sleep at his house that night.

"Any one but a simple man full of faith, as old Thomas Waring was, would have feared lest the boy should run off with the horse; but the old man was a discerner of spirits, and the boy conveyed both the horse and the message faithfully. After waiting long at the door of the house, a young woman opened it, and timidly asked 'What he pleased to want? He told her in all simplicity that he did not know, but that if she would listen for a few moments to what he had to say, perhaps she herself might explain it. She invited him in, and he related to her the way his mind had been impressed, remarking, in conclusion, 'And having told this, I can only repeat that I do not know for what I am come.' The young woman was much affected, and wept bitterly. 'Sir,' said she, 'I can tell you for what you are come; it is to save me. I was gone into that upper room with the firm intention of putting an end to my life, which has become very miserable. Nothing would have prevented me from committing suicide had you not come. God has sent you. I now see that I am not altogether forsaken or abandoned by Him.' Thou art not forsaken of God, indeed,' said the good man, himself deeply affected, as he went on to pour hope and consolation into her sorrowful spirit; and thus his visit to Ross was by no means purposeless."

In conclusion, while many of us feel that, as Friends, we are very unworthy successors of so noble an ancestry, we do well to praise the Lord that He has upheld us as a people from generation to generation; and we may rejoice that He has still a purpose for us to fulfil. HENRY S. NEWMAN.

A SERMON FROM THE FISHES.

The Christian Register of Second month 15th, gives us a discourse by Prof. James T. Bixby, which is an eloquent "plea for the dumb creation."

One of the famous legends of the Catholic Church, relates, that St. Anthony having endeavored without effect to convert some Italian heretics, he betook himself to the seashore and preached to the fishes. After giving the details of the legend, which for the sake of brevity we omit, the writer proceeds. But suppose St. Anthony, instead of going to the fishes to teach, had gone to them to learn; instead of seeking to amaze the heretics by the exhibition of the fishes as docile listeners, had pointed them to the instruction. that the smallest creature that swims in the water had for them.

I think for my part that, if Anthony had taken any commonest fish, and studied it till he could have shown to the incredulous skeptics the marvels hid in it, he would have easily won their attention. Let him have pointed out to them the wonderful adaptations of the structure of a fish to the element in which it has been created to live; the gills by which it extracts the oxygen from the water; the large, flattened eye, specially adjusted to the denser medium of the sea; the air-bladder that, by its contraction or expansion, enables it to rise or sink as it pleases; the living oars on its sides, by which it at once rows itself onward, and balances itself in the yielding element; the gracefully pointed and tapering lines of its body, offering the least possible resistance to its passage through the water; the untutored instincts that secure the preservation of the creature and the propagation of its race,-if St. Anthony could have pointed out these signs of providential care, he would not have needed any supernatural intervention to awaken the wonder and reverence of the heretics.

And if, moreover, he had been able to tell them of some of the living miracles, the ancient incarnated anticipations of men's most curious inventions that nature, in the person of the denizens of the ocean, can show (as modern research assures us); if he could have pointed out, therefore, in the archer fish, which secures the insects on which it feeds by shooting drops of water at them through its tubular mouth, a natural prototype of the air gun; if he could have exhibited in the waterbeetle, which, before descending beneath the -water, encloses in the space between its body and its hermetically closing wing-cases air enough to supply it till it returns again to

the surface, the very principle and action of the diving-bell; or, if he could have shown in the angler-fish, which, bearing above its enormous mouth certain prolonged, cane-like filaments, beautifully set in a ring and staple joint so as to turn every way, and at the end of these singular appendages having a little looks like a living worm, and attracts the piece of flesh which, when waved about, smaller fish on which it feeds, so that they rush within reach of the huge jaws of the angler; in this fish, I say, pointing out the invention of fishing rod and line as one old been able to show to the heretics of his day as creation's dawn,-if Anthony had thus such wonderful illustrations as these of a wise Creator, there would have been made manifest miracles enough to convert the most stubborn of them.

Yes, "ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee."

The orders of the animal creation contain facts, laws, and curious instances that may quicken the awe of the holiest saint, and teach something new to the most learned scholar. We not infrequently deplore the march of science, which has destroyed much of our belief in the sweet old tales of fairy land, which has cast such a haze of doubt over the miracles of ecclesiastical faith. But science has given us ample compensation in fairy tales of science, in miracles of natural history, more full of poetry and wonderment than any tale that the imagination of Eastern story-teller ever gave birth to. What can be more beautiful than the plumage of the birds of paradise glistening with their rainbowtinted hues, or the delicate skeleton of thread-like crystal which the glass-sponge spins?

What more singular than the amphibious. Anableps of South America, with its fourfold eyes, the upper pair adjusted to see above the surface of the water, and the lower pair to see below the surface? The pride of modern invention seems to many deserving of rebuke; and they would, therefore, forbid it from pushing farther its sacrilegious investigations. I would rather humble its pride, if it be thought necessary so to do, by showing it that Nature had already perfected man's chief inventions ages before him. Paper-making was carried on by the wasps centuries ere it was known to the Chinese. Symmetrically shaped pottery, made of moulded clay, was manufactured by insects and birds before man ever existed. In the ichneumon fly and the grasshopper was perfected from the first the modern agricultural invention of the seed-drill. In thread-spinning, the spiders

stole a march on Arkwright, and in balloon- ! making on Montgolfier.

his

In house-building, the seal supplied the Greenlander with the model of his snow huts; and the ant has shown us how to thatch roofs. If man has equipped himself with dagger and lancet and set traps to catch prey, what instrument that he has made can compete with the keen weapons of flea and mosquito, the admirable snares of the ant-lion, and the dens of the trap-door spiders? The modern life-boat is an excellent invention; still better, the latest improvement in the hulls of iron ships, which, by double shells, having the space between them divided into compartments, gain a vast increase of strength and safety. But the lines of the first are almost identical with those of the egg-boat which the gnat constructs; and the method of the second is to be found exemplified in the skull of every elephant. In fact, there seems no end to the anticipations of man's most ingenious devices that may be

shown in the works of Nature.

Fresh surprises attend every new investigation. How marvelous seem these new tales of recent discovery, the agricultural ants that plant and raise their annual crops of grain; the dairy ants that keep their herds of aphides, and milk them regularly to supply themselves with drink; the tailor-birds which sew leaves together to form their nests; or the bower birds that build and decorate with shells, beads, and flowers their gardenhouses for social assembly and amusement! Doubtless, in the early stages of human development, savage man derived no little instruction in the industrial arts and the invention of tools and instruments and vehicles from the teaching of the animals. And there are many things still to which our most advanced science might wisely go for hints and counsel. If, for example, man is ever to be able to fly with the bird, it will be by a more thorough study of the principles by the combination of which God has enabled the bird to fly.

Nature, if we will listen to her, ever has suggestions for our mind and heart. To the pure spirit, every bird that sings and every daisy that stars the green turf is a thought of God. The temple of nature, in which every bold cliff is an altar, and every green leaf and bright blossom an offering, beams with light and love. Chirping cricket and warbling thrush are ever calling us to grateful praise. The divine revelation is not ended, but He that hath spoken is speaking to us still.

God of the granite and the rose,
Soul of the sparrow and the bee!
The mighty tide of being flows

Through countlesss channels, Lord, from thee.

It leaps to life in grass and flowers, Through every grade of being runs; While, from creation's radiant towers, Its glory flames in stars and suns. "Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee, and the fishes shall declare unto thee." We may study them, not merely as natural objects, but as moral examples. To look to insect or quadruped for models on which to frame nobler human life seems a paradox. We call them the lower animals. We employ the word "brute" as a superlative of odiousness and contempt. To be called "beast" we regard as the extreme in

sult.

But, in point of fact, there are points in which these lower animals are the superiors of us all. Their power of navigating the air is our envy; and their faculty of finding their way home through unfamiliar regions, and directing their course unerringly across trackless wastes, we not only despair of imitating, but even of understanding how it is done. The carrier-pigeon outstrips both post-coach and steamboat. The power of fore-knowing weather changes, which animals possess, is our amazement; and their delicate senses, especially of smell and sight, enable them to do what we cannot begin to do.

And, as to manners and morals, there are no small number of men who would really raise themselves a good deal, if they could get up to the level of the brute.

Few animals remain willingly unclean. No animal takes delight in inflicting lengthened and needless pain on another. Intemper ance, impurity, revenge, torture, tyranny, and all the unnatural vices and sins to which debased men surrender themselves,-all these lie in depths of self-defilement that dip far below the plane of brute existence. Only corrupted humanity, abusing its godlike gifts to degrade instead of elevate it, ever sinks to such slimy pits of moral wretchedness. That thing, just pulled out of the gutter, reeling from side to side of the sidewalk, with leering eye and frenzied brain, shouting its maudlin outcries,-do you call that a brute? That blackhearted villain gloating over the pangs he is inflicting on some unfortunate enemy, exulting at the agonies of a fellow-man,-do you call that a beast?

Do not insult a self-respecting dog, an honest tiger, by such a comparison.

(To be concluded.)

THE curiosity of an elevated mind is directed toward things; that of a small one toward persons.