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Mount Pleasant,

West Malvern, 1890.

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The actual organization of the Society of Friends is, I believe, by no means familiarly known outside its own borders, and a slight sketch of it may be neither uninteresting in itself, nor out of place as a preliminary to the endeavour to explain our general position. I propose, therefore, to give such an outline of our constitution as a Society, so far as I have become acquainted with it. The fullest details respecting it are to be found in the “Book of Discipline,” which is the authorized exponent of all such matters.

This book has been recently revised, and the edition of 1883[1] (a large octavo volume) contains the latest regulations on all points of internal government. The Yearly Meeting also publishes annually a volume of Extracts from its proceedings, a full statement of accounts and statistics, and a summary of the reports received from the subordinate meetings all over the country.

Every “particular meeting,” that is, every congregation meeting habitually for worship on the first (and generally also on one other) day of the week, is one of a group of meetings for worship (usually about five or six), which meet together once a month, for the transaction of business and of discipline, and which together form what is therefore called a Monthly Meeting. Each Monthly Meeting, again, is one of a group of probably four or five Monthly Meetings, which in like manner unite to form a Quarterly Meeting, at whose quarterly sittings matters of larger importance are considered, and the eighteen Quarterly Meetings of Great Britain form in their turn the London Yearly Meeting, which is the supreme authority in the Society. It may in a certain sense be said, indeed, that it is the Society of Friends of Great Britain, for every Friend is a member of the Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings to which he or she belongs, and is entitled to a voice in all their deliberations. The Yearly Meeting assembles in May, and its sittings, which are held, as they have been from the first, in Devonshire House, Bishopsgate Street, last generally about a fortnight. The actual attendance is, of course, small in comparison with the number of members. At the present time the Society in Great Britain consists of about fifteen thousand members, and the annual gatherings in Bishopsgate Street number perhaps from twelve to fifteen hundred.