Читать книгу Quaker Strongholds онлайн

12 страница из 35

I am now about to attempt to deal with those principles, not in the way of analysis or with any attempt at precision of language, but as a record of their practical working, as gathered mainly from personal experience. It is not, I confess, without some anxiety that I, as a new-comer, enter upon this task. In the preceding sketch of matters of fact, it has of course been easy to guard against any serious misstatements; but in the following chapters I must deal with matters less easily verifiable. It seems to me in some respects hardly possible that any one not born and bred in the Society should be fully qualified to unfold its principles and practices. There is, on the other hand, in the very fact of having entered it from without, a special qualification for the office of interpreting them to outsiders. It will, I hope, be remembered that I have no kind of claim to speak in any sense in the name of the Society. My object is to explain (so far as the experience of ten years’ membership may enable me) the secret of its strength and of its attraction for others; and for this attempt one brought up outside its pale, and speaking in a purely individual capacity, may well feel a special freedom. If I cannot pretend to possess the entirely correct accent of a born Friend, I may be none the less intelligible to those amongst whom my own Christian principles were imbibed and nourished until the years of maturity.