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Che People called Quakers.

THE nobler instincts of humanity are the same in every age and in every breast. The exalted hopes that have dignified former generations of men, will be renewed as long as the human heart shall throb. The visions of Plato are but revived in the dreams of Sir Thomas More. A spiritual unity binds together every member of the human family: and every heart contains an incorruptible seed, capable of springing up and producing all that man can know of God, and duty, and the soul. An inward voice, uncreated by schools, independent of refinement, opens to the unlettered hind, not less than to the polished scholar, a sure pathway into the enfranchisements of immortal truth. This is the faith of the people called Quakers. Their rise is one of the memorable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright. To the masses in that age, all reflection on politics and morals presented itself under a theological form. The Quaker doctrine is philosophy, summoned from the cloister, the college and the saloon, and planted among the most despised of the people. As poetry is older than cri, philosophy is older than metaphysicians. The mysterious question of the purpose of our being is always before us and within us: and the little child as it begins to prattle, makes inquiries which the pride of learning cannot solve. The method of the solution adopted by the Quakers, was the natural consequence of the origin of their sect. The mind of George Fox had the highest systematic sagacity and his doctrine, developed and rendered illustrious by Barclay and Penn, was distinguished by its simplicity and unity. The Quaker has but one word The Inner Light, the voice of God in the soul. That light is a reality, and therefore in its freedom the highest revelation of truth it is kindred

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THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS.

with the Spirit of God, and therefore merits dominion as the guide to virtue it shines in every man's breast, and therefore joins the whole human race in the unity of equal rights. Intellectual freedom, the supremacy of mind, universal enfranchisement, these three points include the whole of Quakerism, as far as it belongs to civil history.

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Others have sought wisdom by consulting the outward world, and, confounding consciousness with reflection, have trusted solely to the senses for the materials of thought: the Quaker placing no dependence on the world of the senses, calls the soul home from its wanderings through the mazes of tradition and the wonders of the visible universe, bidding the vagrant sit down by its own fires to read the divine inscription on the heart. The method of the Quaker coincided with that of Descartes and his disciples, who founded their system on consciousness, and made the human mind the point of departure in philosophy. But Descartes plunged immediately into the confusion of hypothesis, drifting to sea to be wrecked among the barren waves of ontological speculation; and even Leibnitz, confident in his genius and learning, lost his way among the monads of creation and the pre-established harmonies in this best of all possible worlds; the Quaker adhered strictly to his method: like the timid navigators of old times, who carefully kept near the shore, he never ventured to sea, except with the certain guidance of the cynosure in the heart. He was consistent, for he set no value on learning acquired in any other way. Tradition cannot enjoin a ceremony, still less establish a doctrine; historical faith is as the old heavens that are to be wrapped up as a scroll. Far from rejecting Christianity, the Quaker insisted that he alone maintained its primitive simplicity. The skeptic forever vibrated between opinions: the Quaker was fixed even to dogmatism. The infidel rejected religion; the Quaker cherished it as his life. The scoffer pushed freedom to

THE USE OF FLOWERS.

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dissoluteness: the Quaker circumscribed freedom by obedience to truth. George Fox and Voltaire both protested against priestcraft; Voltaire in behalf of the senses, Fox in behalf of the soul. To the Quakers, Christianity is freedom. And they loved to remember, that the patriarchs were graziers, that the prophets were mechanics and shepherds, that John Baptist, the greatest of envoys, was clad in a rough garment of camels' hair. To them there was joy in the thought, that the brightest image of divinity on earth had been born in a manger, had been reared under the roof of a carpenter, had been content for himself and his guests with no greater luxury than barley loaves and fishes, and that the messengers of his choice had been rustics like themselves. The Inner Light is to the Quaker, not only the revelation of truth, but the guide of life. and the oracle of duty. He demands the uniform predominance of the world of thought, over the world of sensation. Thus the doctrine of disinterested virtue,-the doctrine for which Guion was persecuted, and Fenelon disgraced-the doctrine which tyrants condemn as rebellion, and priests as heresy, was cherished by the Quaker as the foundation of morality.

BANCROFT.

Che Use of Flowers.

GOD might have made the earth bring forth,
Enough for great and small,

The oak-tree, and the cedar-tree,

Without a flower at all.

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THE USE OF FLOWERS.

He might have made enough, enough,
For every want of ours,
For luxury, medicine and toil,

And yet have made no flowers.

The ore within the mountain mine,
Requireth none to grow,

Nor does it need the lotus flowers,
To make the river flow.

The clouds might give abundant rain,
The nightly dews might fall,

And the herb, that keepeth life in man,
Might yet have drank them all.

Then wherefore, wherefore were they made,
All dyed with rainbow light;
All fashioned with supremest grace,
Up-springing day and night?

Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountains high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no one passes by?

Our outward life requires them not,
Then wherefore had they birth?
To minister delight to man!

To beautify the earth!

To comfort man-to whisper hope,
Whene'er his face is dim:

For who so careth for the flowers,
Will care much more for him!

MARY HOWITT.

Faithfulness.

"See that thou copy no man save in the matter of faithfulness."— WILLIAM PENN.

LISTEN not, when men shall tell thee, here is work for thee

to do;

There, thy field of labour lieth and the good thou should'st

pursue :

Idle one when all are busy, bound, yet longing to arise,

Follow thou no mortal guidance, though it come in prophet

guise,

While the cloud is on thy spirit and the mist is o'er thy eyes.

Not the stars above us shining, in Creation's perfect plan, Have their places marked more surely than the living soul of man;

And the laws are not more changeless, which direct their daily

course,

Than the lines of light that issue from our being's radiant

Source,

To restrain the soul's outgoings with an ever gentle forcé.

Watch and wait, and as at Bethel, where of old the dreamer

lay,

Sleep-bound on his stony pillow, God himself will set thy way: Wanderer, without a foothold in illimitable space,

With the first step simply taken on thy heaven appointed race, Thou wilt know the noiseless sliding of a stone into its place.

Up then, with the break of morning! while upon thy lifted

eyes,

Clear before thee, rounds of Duty one above another rise;

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