Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/44

Rh who sat in the gallery rose up and extended to each other their hands, which was the signal for the general breaking-up, and I was glad to get out into the open air. On Sunday I shall visit the meeting of the Unitarian Quakers, and see whether the Spirit is more alive among them. Here it was deep, perhaps, but it did not come out of the depth into the day. As discipline, these silent meetings may, in any case, be excellent. Of the undisciplined, who talk at random, without purpose or effect, one has enough in the world.

Sunday.—Yes, of a truth, the Spirit was alive there, and moved first a man and then a woman, and I heard the Spirit speak from the heart of Quakerism itself. The preacher, whose name I have forgotten, an elderly gentleman with an animated, yet serious countenance, admonished his hearers to keep the will and the mind in a state of integrity and purity. From this pure light, he said, light went forth through the whole life, directing all its actions. The discourse was good, animated, clear, true. But I thought of the words, “Man must be regenerated by water and the Spirit.” Here was the water, butnothing more. It was the human purification. The spirit of heaven, love, the inspiration of life, had nothing to do with it. After this preacher sat down, and all had been silent again for a time, there arose from her seat a short, handsome lady, with fine features and beautiful, clear eyes. It was Lucretia Mott. With a low, but very sweet voice, and an eloquence of expression which made me not lose a single word, she spoke for certainly an hour, without interruption, without repetition, and in a manner which made one wish her to continue, so lucid and powerful was her delineation of the principles of nonconformity (the Quaker principles), so logical and excellent was the application of these to the practical questions of life, now so much contested, and which the speaker represented as being peace, slavery, and the rights of woman. I listened