360 JOHN GREENLEAP WHITTIER. 



"Are [Friends] careful to inspect their affairs, punctual in 

 promises? 



"Do they live within the bounds of their income? 



"Do they deal with offenders in the spirit of meekness? etc., 

 etc. 



"The children of Friends were early taught that there was a 

 still small voice given them by their Heavenly Father, which 

 would tell them when they were doing wrong.* 



" In most cases they were taken regularly to meetings for wor- 

 ship, — often to those for discipline, — where they had to sit still 

 on hard benches. They had no Sabbath schools, but in almost 

 all families on First Day afternoon the children were required to 

 listen to readings in the Holy Scriptures, and they were gen- 

 erally well informed in all Bible history. When Whittier was 

 a little boy he once remarked he thought David could not have 

 been a Friend, as he was a man of war. 



"Music and dancing were not indulged in. Novels were for- 

 bidden. But they all the more enjoyed Milton, Young, Cowper, 

 and histories when obtainable. It seems Whittier had none of 

 these, at which I marvel, as his grandmother, who lived with 

 them, was a Greenleaf, and they were literary people." 



Without actually quoting these notes so kindly sent me, I 

 could not have reproduced the effect they make on one who 

 carefully reads them. To restate in one's own words the ear- 

 nest faith they so tenderly express seems unsympathetic. But 

 in more worldly phrase than theirs, what Whittier was taught 

 and believed seems to have been this : — To all human beings 

 God has given an inner light; to all He speaks with a still small 

 voice. Follow the light, obey the voice, and all will be well. 

 Evil-doers are they who neglect the light and the voice. Now 

 the light and the voice are God's, so to all men who will attend 

 they must ultimately show the same truth. If the voice call us 

 to correct others, then, or the light shine upon manifest evil, it 

 is God's will that we smite error, if so may be by revealing 

 truth. If those who err be Friends, our duty bids us expostu- 

 late with them ; and if they be obdurate, to present them for dis- 

 cipline, which may result in their exclusion from our Religious 

 Society. And the still small voice really warns everybody that 



* This doctrine of universal conscience seems tlie fundamental one of the 

 Society of Friends. 



