Quaker Lives

The best-known anthology of Quaker lives, experience and insights is Quaker Faith and Practice. Here are some extracts:

"True Godliness don’t turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it: not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick."

William Penn, (1644-1718),
politician, courtier, theologian, prolific writer and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.

"Our life is love and peace and tenderness."

Caroline Fox
in 1841 wrote in her journal at the age of 21 of ‘the struggle through which a spark of true faith was lighted in my soul’:

"The first gleam of light ... dawned on me one day at meeting, when I had been meditating on my state in great depression. I seemed to hear the words articulated in my spirit, ‘Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee’."

Francis Pollard
"His integrity was such that when faced with something wrong, he did not adopt the easy course of saying ‘No doubt if I understood this I should pardon it’. He chose instead the more honest and courageous standpoint of ‘This I do not understand, and therefore I will not condemn; and yet it seems to me to be wrong.’ Such an attitude neither drove others into antagonism nor left them in complacency. It led them, in God’s good time and with God’s grace, to look at the matter again, in that Light which had illuminated both his judgement and his tolerance."

Luke Cock
a butcher by trade, and a noted singer, was a young man living in north-east Yorkshire when he became a convinced Quaker. In this extract from a sermon he gave in York in 1721, he describes the challenges he faced:

"I remember when I first met with my Guide. He led me into a very large and cross [place], where I was to speak the truth from my heart – and before I used to swear and lie too for gain. ‘Nay, then’ said I to my Guide, ‘I mun leave thee here: if Thou leads me up that lane, I can never follow: I’se be ruined of this butchering trade, if I mun’t lie for a gain. Here I left my Guide, and was filled with sorrow ... So I found my Guide again, and began to follow Him up this lane and tell the truth from my heart. I had been nought but beggary and poverty before; and now I began to thrive at my trade, and got to the end of this lane, though with some difficulty.

But now my Guide began to lead me up another lane, harder than the first, which was to bear my testimony in using the plain language. This was very hard; yet I said to my Guide, ‘Take my feeble pace, and I’ll follow Thee as fast as I can. Don’t outstretch me, I pray Thee.’ So by degrees I got up here.

But now I was led up the third lane: it was harder still to bear my testimony against tithes – my wife not being convinced. I said to my Guide, ‘Nay, I doubt I never can follow up here; but don’t leave me; take my pace, I pray Thee, for I mun rest me’. So I tarried here a great while till my wife cried,

‘We’se all be ruined: what is thee ganging stark mad to follow t’silly Quakers?’

Here I struggled and cried, and begged of my Guide to stay and take my pace; and presently my wife was convinced. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘now follow thy Guide, let come what will. The Lord hath done abundance for us; we will trust in Him’. Nay, now I thought, I’ll to my Guide again, now go on, I’ll follow Thee truly; so I got to the end of this lane cheerfully

My Guide led me up another lane, more difficult than any of the former, which was to bear testimony to that Hand that had done all this for me. This was a hard one: I thought I must never have seen the end of it. I was eleven years all but one month in it. .. I would fain think it impossible for me to fall now, but let him that thinks
he stands take heed lest he fall."

John Woolman
One of the best-loved Quakers is an 18th-century American tailor and apple-grower, John Woolman. He is famous for the loving tenderness of his approach to others, including the American Indians:

"Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life, and the Spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth amongst them."

"A neighbour.. desired me to write his will: I took notes, and amongst other things, he told me to which of his children he gave his young negro: I considered the pain and distress he was in, and knew not how it could end, so I wrote his will, save only that part concerning his slave, and carrying it to his bedside, read it to him, and then told him in a friendly way, that I could not write any instruments by which my fellow creatures were made slaves, without bringing trouble on my own mind. I let him know that I charged nothing for what I had done, and desired to be excused from doing the other part in the way he proposed. Then we had a serious conference on the subject, and at length, he agreeing to set her free, I finished his will "