ELIAS HICKS.

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 inmost disease of our times, prob-
ably 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, com-
petition, practical life, and in cesser 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 doc-
trine that the ideals of character, of justice, of religious action,
whenever the highest is at stake, are to be conform'd to no out-
side doctrine of creeds, Bibles, legislative enactments, conven-
tionalities, 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 les-
sons 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:

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, invisible 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."

9

130

ELIAS HICKS.

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."

ELIAS HICKS.

132

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 consti-
tutional 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—unform'd 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 it-
self, 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 en-
gaged 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 him 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

ELIAS HICKS.

by 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, was 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 faculties 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 3d of 3d 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 fear-
ful 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 re-
corded 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 melt-
ing 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.

ELIAS HICKS.

thing 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 sufferance. 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