And as they are not accustomed to consider their fellow-creatures as below themselves, so neither are they accustomed to look with enmity towards them. Their tenet on the subject of War, which has been so amply detailed, prevents any disposition of this kind. For they interpret those words of Jesus Christ, as I have before shown, which relate to injuries, as extending not to their fellow-citizens alone, but to every individual in the world; and his precept of loving enemies, as extending not only to those individuals of their own country who may have any private resentment against them, but to those who become reputed enemies in the course of wars ;-so that they fix no boundaries of land or ocean, and no limits of kindred, to their love, but consider Jew and Gentile, Greck and Barbarian, Bond and Free, as their Brethren. Hence neither fine nor imprisonment can induce them to learn the use of arms, so as to become qualified to fight against these, or to shed their blood. And this principle of love is not laid as it were upon the shelf, like a volume of obsolete laws, so that it may be forgotten,--but is kept alive in their memories memories by the testimony which they are occasionally called to bear, or by the sufferings they undergo by distraints upon their property, and sometimes by short imprisonments, for refusing military service. But while these circumstances may have some influence in the production of this trait of benevolence to men in the character of the Quakers, the one by preventing the hateful sight of the loss of his dignity, and the other by destroying the seeds of enmity towards him, there are others interwoven into their constitution, which will have a similar, though a stronger, tendency towards it. The great system of equality which their discipline daily teaches and enforces, will make them look with an equal eye towards all of the human race. Who can be less than a man in the Quaker-Society, when the rich and poor have an equal voice in the exercise of its discipline, and when they fill equally the important offices that belong to it? And who is there out of the Society, whom the Quakers estcem more than hu man? They bow their knees or their bodies, as I have before noticed, to no man. They flatter no man on account of his riches or his station. They pay homage to no man on account of his rank or title. Stript of all trappings they view the creature man. If, then, they view him in this abstracted light, they can view him only as an equal. But in what other Society is it that a similar estimate is made of him? The world are apt in general to make too much of those in an elevated station; and those, again, in this station are apt to make less of others beneath them than they ought. Thus an under- or an over-valuation of individuals generally takes place in society; from whence it will unavoidably happen, that if some men are classed a little below Gods, others will be classed but little above the brutes of the field. Their discipline, again, has a tendency to produce in them an anxious concern for the good of their fellow-creatures. Man is considered, in the theory of this discipline, as a being for whose spiritual welfare the members are bound to watch. They are to take an interest in his character and his happiness. If he be overtaken in a fault, he is not to be deserted, but reclaimed. No endeavour is to be spared for his restoration. He He is considered, in short, as a creature worthy of all the pains and efforts that can be bestowed upon him. The religion of the Quakers furnishes also a cause, which occasions them to consider man in an elevated light. They view him, as may be collected from the preceding volume, as a temple of the Spirit of God. There is no man so mean in station who is not made capable, by the Quakers, of feeling the presence of the Divinity within him. Neither sect, nor country, nor colour, excludes him, in their opinion, from this presence. But it is impossible to view man as a tabernacle in which the Divinity may reside, without viewing him in a dignified manner. And though this doctrine of the agency of the Spirit dwelling in man belongs to many other Christian Societies, yet it is no where so systematically acted upon as by that of the Quakers. These considerations may probably induce the reader to believe, that the trait of benevolence which has been affixed to the Quaker-character has not been given it in vain. There can be no such feeling for the moral interests of man, or such a benevolent attention attention towards him in his temporal capacity, where men have been accustomed to see one another in low and degrading characters, as where no such spectacles have occurred nor can there be such a genuine or well-founded love towards him, where men, on a signal given by their respective Governments, transform their pruning-hooks into spears, and become tigers to one another without any private provocation, as where they can be brought under no condition. whatever to lift up their arm to the injury of any of the human race. There must, in a practical system of equality, be a due appreciation of man as man. There must, in a system where it is a duty to watch over him for his good, be a tender affection towards him as a fellow-creature. And in a system which considers him as a temple in which the Divine Being may dwell, there must be a respect towards him which will have something like the appearance of a benevolent disposition to the world, SECTION |