QUAKERS 151 in the Book of Discipline, may usefully be consulted on this point. Organization and Discipline. The duty of watching over one another for good was insisted on by the early Friends, and has been embodied in a system of discipline. Its objects embrace (a) exhortation and admonition to those who walk contrary to the standard of Quaker ethics, and the exclusion of obstinate or gross offenders from the body, and as incident to this the hearing of appeals from individuals or meetings considering them- selves aggrieved ; (b) the care and maintenance of the poor and provision for the Christian education of their children, for which purpose the society has established numerous boarding schools in different parts of the country; (c] the amicable settlement of "all differences about outward things," either by the parties in contro- versy or by the submission of the dispute to arbitration, and the restraint of all proceedings at law between members except by leave ; (d) the recognition of ministers as such ; (e) the cognizance of all steps preceding marriage according to Quaker forms ; (/) the registration of births, deaths, and marriages; (g) the issuing of certificates or letters of approval granted to ministers travelling away from their homes, or to members removing from one meeting to another ; and (h) the management of the pro- perty belonging to the society. The present organization of the Quaker church is essentially democratic it has not and never had any president or head ; and in theory every person born of Quaker parents is a Quaker and entitled to take part in all the general assemblies of the body. The members are grouped together in a series of subordinated meetings which recall to the mind the Pres- byterian model. The unit is known as a " particular meeting"; next in order comes " the monthly meeting," usually embracing several particular meetings called to- gether, as its name indicates, monthly; then " the quarterly meeting," embracing several monthly meetings; and lastly " the yearly meeting," embracing the whole of Great Britain. Representatives are sent from each inferior to each superior meeting ; but all Quakers may attend and take part in any of these meetings. This system is double, each meeting of "men Friends" having its counterpart in a meeting of "women Friends"; and they usually meet at the same time, and join together in the devotional gatherings which take place before or after the meetings for discipline. The mode of conducting these meetings is noteworthy. There is no president, but only a secretary or clerk ; there are no formal resolutions ; and there is no voting. The clerk ascertains what he con- siders to be the judgment of the assembly, and records it in a minute. The offices known to the Quaker body are (1) that of minister ; (2) of elder, whose duty it is " to encourage and help young ministers, and advise others as they in the wisdom of God see occasion " ; and (3) overseers to Avhom is especially entrusted that duty of Christian care for and interest in one another which Quakers recognize as obligatory in all the members of a church. These officers hold from time to time meetings separate from the general assemblies of the members. This present form both of organization and discipline has been reached only by a process of development. The quarterly or general meetings seem to have been the first union of separate congregations. In 1666 Fox established monthly meetings. In 1672 was held the first yearly meeting in London. In 1675 certain "canons and institu- tions" were issued to the quarterly meetings. In 1727 elders were first appointed. In 1752 overseers were added ; and in 1737 the right of children of Quakers to be considered as Quakers was fully recognized. From these dates it is obvious that the last century saw a vigor- ous development of the disciplinary element in Quaker- ism ; it was probably the time of greatest rigour as regards external matters and of the greatest severity in punishing so-called delinquencies. In Aberdeen the meet- ing entered on their minutes an elaborate description of what was and what was not to be endured in the dress of men and women ; and York quarterly meeting was so disturbed at the presence of young women in long cloaks and bonnets that they were ordered to take advice before coming to York, and one monthly meeting directed that those young women who intended to go to York were to appear before their own meeting "in their clothes that they intend to have on at York." Of late years the stringency of the Quaker discipline has been relaxed : the peculiarities of dress and language have been abandoned ; marriage with an outsider has ceased to be a certain ground for exclusion from the body ; and, above all, many of its members have come to " the conviction, which is not new, but old, that the virtues which can be rewarded and the vices which can be punished by external discipline are not as a rule the virtues and the vices that make or mar the soul" (Hatch, Bampton Lectures, 81). The Quakers maintain that their system of church government and of discipline is in close accordance with that of the early church. That it has some great differ- ences cannot be denied, especially when we think of baptism and the Lord's supper ; that it has some import- ant points of likeness, especially in the care of each member for the others and in the maintenance of the poor, is equally certain. The portraiture of the early Christian church recently drawn by Dr Hatch in his Bampton Lectures is in many respects likely to recall the lineaments of Quakerism. Philanthropic Interests. A genuine vein of philan- thropy has always existed in the Quaker body. In nothing has this been more conspicuous than in the matter of slavery. George Fox and William Penn laboured to secure the religious teaching of slaves. As early as 1676 the assembly of Barbados passed "An Act to prevent the people called Quakers from bringing negroes to their meetings." John Woolman 1 laboured amongst the Quakers of America for the liberation of the slaves with the most winning tenderness. The Quakers were the first Christian body that purged themselves of the stain of dealing in slaves. As early as 1780 not a slave was owned by any Friend in England or America with the knowledge and consent of the society. In 1783 the first petition to the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery went up from the Quakers ; and throughout the long agitations which ensued before that prayer was granted the society took an active and pro- minent part. In 1798 Lancaster opened his first school for the educa- tion of the poor ; and the cause of unsectarian religious education found in the Quakers steady support. They have taken also an active part in Sir Samuel Romilly's efforts to ameliorate the penal code; in prison reformation (1813), with which the name of Elizabeth Fry is especially connected ; in the efforts to ameliorate the condition of lunatics in England (the Friends' Retreat at York, founded in 1792, having been remarkable as an early example of kindly treatment of the insane) ; and in many other phil- anthropic movements. One thing is noteworthy in Quaker efforts for the edu- cation of the poor and philanthropy in general: whilst 1 Woolman's Journal and Works are remarkable. He had a vision of a political economy to be based not on selfishness but on love, not on desire but on self-denial.
