We owe debts of gratitude to past generations who struggled for us, which we can never pay. We should not glory in their bequests, if we are not prepared to honor those struggles by which they were obtained. The past is full of impressive morals to us. It is full of rebukes of our sloth, or thoughtlessness, or selfishness. Nor is it for us to say that the great blessings which heroic strife has bequeathed to us would have been conferred in some other way. This we do not know. We must receive our most valued privileges at the hands of those whom God has sent to us. And if we would continue to enjoy such boons as liberty and general education and material benefit and popular rights, we should be careful not to condemn the only means by which such blessings, in the course of divine Providence, thus far have been conferred; nor should we weaken those influences by which the great mass of the people, in all ages and countries, in their weakness and degeneracy, have been most powerfully affected and stimulated to heroic struggles. What would have been the present condition of Protestant countries had not men defended their rights by the sword? Where would have been the progress of which we boast had all classes in former times, folded their arms, and submitted to injustice and ignominy? Let us repudiate the privileges for which former generations bled, or honor those by whose sacrifice they were bought.

Again Fox instituted his Society to be the witness of what is spiritual and universal against what is earthly and national. This itself was meant to be a peace society, and a Bible society, and an anti-slavery society. The idea of unity with the world. for the sake of promoting spiritual objects was never contemplated by Fox or Penn or Barcklay. Hence the Society, when consistent with its genius, was opposed, to worldly organizations to do good, and hence to those enterprises which we, in this age, call philanthropic. But here is a contradiction, apparently, between theory and practice, for, we rejoice to say that the good sense and benevolent sympathies of the Friends have prevented their isolation from those who would bear the great burdens of society. No class of men have shown greater readiness of sympathies, or more generous desires to ameliorate the evils of life. They are emphatically the philanthropists of the age.

They were the first to advocate the suppression of the slave trade. They have ever given their assistance to the abolition of all grievous evils. They have been the pioneers and panegyrists of progress, and popular freedom. They have been believers in the power of truth, and the majesty of ideas in the world's conversion, even as propagated by ordinary societies.

But we do not wish to dwell on any inconsistency between the principles and practice of the Friends, especially when we think that this very inconsistency is the purest type of intellectual improvement, and of a departure from that exclusiveness. which attracted notice in the reign of Charles II. Still less would we dwell on any degeneracy of which they have been accused of devotion to thrift, and physical comfort, and money making, which we can not believe ever entered into the mind of Fox, and which show as completely the worldly spirit, as the adoption of worldly institutions. For if spirituality is to consist in not being baptized, and not keeping an outward fast, and not offering up outward prayer, and not rendering titles of outward respect, and not having an outwardly ordained ministry, when the mind is absorbed in visions of California mines, and improvements in cotton spindles, and refinements in articles of domestic comfort; then, they certainly do not resemble the man who wandered about the villages of Yorkshire exhorting the people to repentance, with all the fervor of the ascetic Baptist when he preached in the wilderness of Judea. But inconsistency is the fate of all bodies of men. Degeneracy is the misfortune of all human institutions. In spite of inconsistency and degeneracy, yea, notwithstanding the errors and mistakes into which the Friends have fallen, or at least the departure from some of the noblest principles of Protestantism, as declared by the reformer of the 17th century, they have ever manifested some distinguishing virtues and have moreover declared some great truths, of which other bodies of Christians may be proud, and which have always secured the respect of mankind.

George Fox and his disciples have been ever distinguished for meekness and patience under injuries; they have never retaliated the wrongs done to them, nor inflicted any other injury than denouncing evil wherever evil was to be found, with plain

ness and without regard to persons. They would rebuke ruler as well as people, even the sovereign himself. They may have been severe, but they have ever been incorruptible. And they have been an industrious body, seeking independence as the greatest worldly good, frugal in their habits and unostentatious in their lives; temperate, chaste and honest. If they have loved money, they have been conscientious in the means of its accumulation; just, if not generous; performing all their engagements both as to the spirit and the letter of the law; hating fraud and dissimulation, and seeking in virtue itself a reward, not the praises of men. They have been peaceable and quiet citizens, taking no interest in the contentions of opposing factions, and performing their ordinary duties in an unobtrusive and inoffensive manner. They may have been too cautious, too non-committal, too calculating and too prudent, for, if all were to act on those principles, society could never be elevated. Here they differed from the Puritans, and in this respect have appeared at a disadvantage. The Puritans were willing to sacrifice their own interests to promote a great public good - to enlist in the defence of liberty and religion, or in relieving the great burdens with which the unfortunate have been oppressed. The Puritans therefore were men truly magnanimous and disinterested, and bestowed greater blessings on society, and lived more for society than the Friends, whose chief concern was to take care of their own souls, never to violate their moral obligations in doing so, and yet to leave the protection of truth to the God of truth. Their virtues therefore were more negative than would suit the impulsive and self-forgetful. They relied on the power of a good example, rather than active labor to influence other minds, out of their Society, who were responsible to God and their own consciences rather than to them. It is something, however, to show forth the light of a good example amid general corruption and baseness. To keep unspotted from the world is one of the elements of religion as much as to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction. Hence the Friends, by their peculiar virtues, will ever escape censure and call forth our respect, although they do not realize our ideal of life, or kindle popular enthusiasm. They appear as kind

hearted and well-intentioned people rather than as striking benefactors of mankind.

And still they were benefactors, if not by the quiet virtues which they practiced, at least by some of the great ideas which they defended, and more or less promulgated.

Among these may be mentioned the steady and consistent advocacy of the principles of peace. We do not believe, indeed, in their doctrine of absolute non-resistance, although it may seem to have so many reasons to support it from the maxims of our Saviour, and from his example in his last hour of martyrdom. We do not see how non-resistance, in any conceivable form and circumstances, can be harmonized with the duty of protection and the necessary functions of human government, which are to restrain the violence of the wicked, and punish offenders against the laws. The Scriptures everywhere bear witness of the unprincipled depravity of man which needs to be restrained; and all the experience of the human race, as well as natural instinct, goes to show that men will grasp, by any means, all the power they can, and consign the helpless and the unfortunate, unless they protect themselves, to slavery and degradation. Sad would be the condition of the world, and slow the progress of society, if men were to offer no opposing force to the violence of madness and the selfishness of tyrants. And it has generally been shown, that when men have yielded most readily to the encroachments of the base and the ambitious, they have been most deficient in those noble qualities which evince dignity of soul and energy of character; and, on the other hand, when men have been most ready to defend principles and interests dearer than human lives, they have made the greatest advance in civilization, and evinced the highest evidence of lofty faith and glorious self-devotion, those heaven-born qualities which save cities and kingdoms. It is one thing for a Christian to manifest a peaceable disposition, and quite another to live, as far as lieth in him, peaceably with all men ; a distinction which the apostle most obviously recognizes, and which was even made by Christ when,in indignation that the temple at Jerusalem should be made a house of merchandise, he drove out, with whips and

cords, those who sold oxen and sheep and doves. We honor the Society of Friends, not for their doctrines of passive obedience, but for their recognition of the principles of love in the intercourse of nations, and their persistent affirmation that they ought to settle their difficulties by mutual concession rather than resort to measures of civil retaliation, so sure to end in needless and wicked bloodshed. And their enlightened dissertations on the duty of mutual forbearance, on the general inexpediency of war, and on the dreadful evils which it everywhere entails, have done much to open the eyes of nations to its folly and inhumanity, as it has generally appeared. For war, though sometimes necessary and inevitable, is always based on wicked passions on the part of the offending side, and is certain also to produce them at last among both contending parties. In its general nature and practice, it has proved the greatest evil which can degrade humanity, as well as the most atrocious crime which the wrath of man can possibly perpetrate. If civilization be impossible when there is general acquiescence in degrading slavery, it is also quite as hopeless when wars of conquest or ambition stain the world with blood, and waft the names of mighty conquerors to the ends of the earth in the curses and imprecations of despair.

The Friends, again, ever have been among the most strenuous advocates of civil and religious liberty. They were not the first to declare it, and therefore the idea is not peculiarly their own, but they have embraced the most radical views of it, and have been the most fearless of its results. They were among the first to denounce the usurpation of Cromwell, they were among the quickest to perceive the inconsistency of the Puritans. They would carry liberty of speech, of thought, of government, of religion, to the utmost bounds. The only limitation to it was to be placed by the conscience of mankind. And this view of liberty, not in all instances, we fear, such as is supported by the word of God, was based on their unbounded trust in the power of truth and love. They had no apprehension of its abuse, for they believed that love would disarm the ferocity of the most brutal and ferocious enemies. Hence they would trust their lives with savages, when they were committing upon others the most barbarous excesses. They would