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Still-born Silehou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Offspring of a heaenly kind!
Frost o the uth, and thaw o the nd!
Secrecy;s藏书网;/ss fident, and he
Who kes religion stery!
Adrations speakingst tongue!
Leae, thy desert shades ang,
?9９lib.Reeres hallowed cells,
Where retired deotion dwells!
With thy enthusias e,
Seize our tongues, and strike us du!*
[Footnote] * Froquot; Poe of all sorts,quot; by Richard Fleo, 1653.
_________
Reader, wouldst thou know what true pead quiet an; wouldst thou find a refuge frothe noises and curs of the itude; wouldst thou enjoy at once solitude and society; wouldst thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out frothe sotory faces of thy species; wouldst thou be alone, a apanied; solitary, yet not desote; singur, yet not without so to keep thee in tenance; a unit in aggregate; a sile in posite : -- e with into a Quakers Meeting.
Dost thou loe silence deep as that quot;before the winds were de?quot; go not out into the wilderness, desd not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy ts; nor pour wa into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faithd self-strusting Ulysses. -- Retire with into a Quakers Meeting.
For a n to refrain een frogood words, and to hold his peace, it is endable; but for a itude, it is great stery.
What is the stillness of the desert, pared with this pce? what the ununig teness of fishes? -- here the goddess reigns and reels. -- quot;Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud,quot; do not with their inter-founding uproars re augnt the brawl -- nor the waes of the blown Baic with their clubbed sounds -- than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is iplied and rendered re intense by nuers, and by syathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. ion itself hath a positie re and less; and closed eyes would seeto obscure the great obscurity of dnight.
There are wounds, whi ierfect solitude ot heal. By ierfect I an that which a n eh by hielf. The perfect is that which he sotis attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers Meeting. Those first herts did certainly uand this principle, when they retired iian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one anothers want of ersation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of inunicatieness. In secur oasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long winter eening, with a friend sitting by -- say, a wife -- he, or she, too, (if that be probable), reading another, without interruption, or oral unication? -- there be no syathy without the gabble of words? -- away with this inhun, shy, single, shade-and--haunting solitariness. Gie , Master Ziern, a syathetic solitude.
To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of so cathedral, ti-stri;
Or under hanging untains,
Or by the fall of fountains;
is but a ulgar luury, pared with that which those enjoy, who e together for the purposes of re plete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness quot;to be fe.quot; -- The Abbey Church of Westnster hath nothing so sole, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quakers Meeting. Here are no tos, no inscriptions,
-- sands, ighings,
Dropt frothe ruined sides of kings--
but here is sothing, which throws Antiquity herself into the fround -- Silence -- the eldest of things -- nguage of old Night -- pritie Durser -- to which the i decays of uldering grandeur hae but arried by a iolent, and, as we y say, unnatural progression.
How reerend is the iew of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!
Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unschieous synod! ocation without intrigue! parliant without debate! what a lesson dost thou read to cil, and to sistory -- if  e of you lightly -- as haply it will wander -- yet spirit hath the wisdoof your , when sitting ang you i peace, whie out-welling tears would rather firthan disturb, I hae reerted to the tis of yinnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fo and Dewesbury. -- I hae withat, which brought before eyes your heroic tranquillity, infleible to the rude jests and serious iolences of the i soldiery, republi or royalist, sent to lest you -- for ye sate betwit the fires of two persecutions, the out-cast and off-sc of churd presbytery. -- hae seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, with the aowed iion of disturbing your quiet, frothe ery spirit of the pce receie in a nt a new heart, and presently sit ang ye as a adst s. And I reered Penn before his ausers, and Fo in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and quot;the Judge and the Jury beca as dead n under his feet.quot;
Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would reend to you, aboe all churarraties, to read Sewels History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abstract of the journals of Fo, and the pritie Friends. It is far re edifying and affeg than any thing you will read of Wesley and hilleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to ke you strust, no suspi of alloy, no drop of the worldly or aitious spirit. You will here read the true story of that jured, ridiculed n (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your uth,) -- Jas Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with atience, he endured een to the b through of his toh red-hot irons without a rr; and with what strength of nd, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigtised for bsphe, had gien- way to clearer thoughts, huld renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifullest hulity, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still -- so different frothe practice of your os froenthusias who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they eer get far enough frothe society of their forr errors, een to the renunciation of so saing truths, with which they had been ngled, not ilicated.
Get the Writings of John Wooln by heart; and loe the early Quakers.
How far the followers of these good n in our days hae kept to the pritie spirit, or in roportion they hae substituted forlity for it, the Judge of Spirits aloerne. I hae seen faces in their asselies, upon which the doe sate isibly brooding. ain I hae watched, when thoughts should hae beeer engaged, in which uld possibly deteothing but a bnk inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanity, and the absence of the fierce troersial ws. -- If the spiritual pretensions the Quakers hae abated, at least they ke few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preag. It is seldoihat you shall see o up angst theto hold forth. Only now and then a treling, fele, generally a, oice is heard -- you ot guess froart of the eting it proceeds -- with a low, buzzing., sical sound, ying out a few words which quot;she thought ght suit the dition of so present,quot; with a quaking diffidence, which leaes no possibility of supposing that any thing of fele anity was ed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness, and a restrainiy.-- The ;bdi;/bdin, for what I obsered, speak seldor.
Only, and it was so years ago, I witnessed a sale of the old Foian as It was a n of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, ght hae danced quot;frohead to foot equipt in iron il.quot; His fra was of iron too. But he was lleable. I saw hishake all oer with the spirit -- I dare not say, of delusion. The striings of the outer n were unutterable -- he seed not to speak, but to be spoken fro I saw the strong n bowed down, and his ko fail -- his joints all seed loosening -- it was a figure to set off against Paul Preag -- the words he uttered were few, and sound -- he was eidently resisting his will -- keeping down his own word-wisdowith re ghty effort, than the worlds orators strain for theirs. quot;He had been a Wit in his youth,quot; he told us, with epressions of a sober rerse. And it was not till long after the iression had begun to wear away, that I was enabled, with sothing like a sle, to recall the striking ingruity of the fusion -- uanding the terin its worldly aeptation -- with the fra and physiogno of the person before . His brow would hae scared away the Leities -- the s Risusque -- faster than the Loes fled the face of Dis at Enna. -- By wit, een in his youth, I will be sworn he uood sothing far withis of an allowable liberty.
More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word haing been spoken. But the nd has been fed. You go away with a sern, not de with hands. You hae been in the lder s of Trophonius; or as in so den, where that fiercest and saagest of all wild creatures, the Tohat unruly er, ha?s strangely in tied up and captie. You hae bathed with stillness. when the spirit is sore fretted, een tired to siess of the janglings, and nonsense-noises of the world, what a band a soce it is, to go a yourself, for a quiet half hour, upon so undisputed er of a bench, ang the gentle Quakers!
Their garb and stillness joined, present an uniforty, tranquil and herd-like -- as in the pasture -- quot;forty feeding like one.quot; -
The ery garnts of a Quaker seeincapable of reg a soil; and liness io be sothihan the absence of its trary. Eery Quakeress is a lily; and when they e up in bands to their Whitsun-ferences, whitening the easterly streets of the tropolis, froall parts of the United Kingdo they show like troops of the Shining Ones.
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