FRIENDS. 



327 



meant to secure the equal rights of opinions 

 and conscience, there were sections of the Con- 

 stitution and laws that discriminated unfair- 

 ly against the rights of some classes of citi- 

 zens. These laws had, in many cases, been 

 outgrown by public opinion and were not en- 

 forced; but they were on the statute-books, 

 and might be, and sometimes were, resuscitated 

 in a way to work gross practical injustice. In 

 regard to the condition of liberal thought, the 

 committee observed that the reports were 

 "favorable to attempts of some kind toward 

 a more systematic organization of the liberal 

 sentiment of the country, without, however, 

 indicating the method for effecting this. IB a 

 few of the States the conditions are repre- 

 sented as thoroughly ripe for an organizing 

 movement, and all that is wanted is a few 

 leaders, to point the way and rally the people, 

 who are all ready to supply the material of the 

 new societies. The States where the condi- 

 tions are reported as most ready for organiza- 

 tion are, in the East, Maine, Massachusetts, 

 and the western portion of New York ; and in 

 the West, Michigan and Kansas. In the two 

 latter States there appears to be a special re- 

 ceptivity to religious ideas, and a good deal of 

 activity is already awakened in the direction 

 of religious organization ; in Michigan, largely 

 under the auspices of a very liberal form of 

 Unitarianism, and in Kansas under an associa- 

 tion recently formed, called the Liberal Union, 

 which is an attempt to solve the problem of 

 uniting in local work and fellowship all the 

 different phases of liberalism." 



FRIENDS. The reports of numbers in the 

 Society of Friends continue to show an increase 

 of members in some of the yearly meetings, 

 and a decrease in others, and, as a whole, indi- 

 cate only a moderate growth. In the New Eng- 

 land Yearly Meeting the accessions by twenty- 

 nine births and the reception of fifty-three new 

 members were nearly balanced by eighty-three 

 deaths. The reports of the Indiana Yearly Meet- 

 ing, on the other hand, indicate a very rapid 

 growth in numbers. In England the society 

 has appeared to be declining for the past twenty 

 years, except in London, where an increase of 

 about one thousand members has taken place 

 during that time. 



The New England Yearly Meeting met at 

 Newport, R. I., in June. The whole number 

 of members was returned at four thousand. 

 The slow increase by births was accounted for 

 in part by stating that as many as half of the 

 members married persons who were not in the 

 society, and the births from such marriages 

 were not reported. A Friend, in speaking on 

 this subject, said that his desire had been for 

 many years that the persons thus married would 

 ask the assistance of the Friends for their chil- 

 dren. He thought the difficulties in the way 

 of receiving converts into the Church ought to 

 be removed. Now, when at any meeting con- 

 verts came forward, they could not be received 

 into the society till after a delay for presen- 



tation to the next annual meeting. Another 

 Friend thought that the old method should give 

 way to evangelizing processes. The Friends 

 in Indiana held a series of revival services 

 during the winter, which continued for upward 

 of a month, and resulted in the conversion of a 

 considerable number of persons. The " Friends' 

 Review," in speaking of these and other simi- 

 lar meetings, says that the results of the revi- 

 val meetings in other churches had been scru- 

 tinized for years ; and that, in the desire to 

 revive the evangelizing power that character- 

 ized the apostles, it was thought best to insti- 

 tute revival services, and endeavor to teach the 

 converts that they would stand firm when the 

 warm influences of the meetings were with- 

 drawn. 



The subject of evangelistic or mission work 

 was also discussed with much pains at the Lon- 

 don Yearly Meeting. The matter was intro- 

 duced in the consideration of the results of a 

 conference on home-mission work and First- 

 day schools, which had been held in Novem- 

 ber, 1881. It was shown at the conference 

 that there were all over the country small, de- 

 clining meetings, or closed meeting-houses ; but 

 that where adult or ordinary Sunday-schools 

 had been established, evangelistic work had 

 followed, the neglected classes had been at- 

 tracted, and various classes had joined the so- 

 ciety. In one case the membership of a meet- 

 ing had been doubled in a few years. The 

 conference had decided that the work of ex- 

 tending mission operations belongs to the 

 Church, rather than to individual laborers or 

 voluntary associations, and asked the yearly 

 meeting to take upon itself the responsibility 

 of doing it. It was also the judgment of the 

 conference that some kind of missionary effort 

 was really needed besides the purely voluntary 

 labors of those who could afford to give their 

 time to such work, and that when Friends could 

 be found having a gift for the ministry, and will- 

 ing to give up their time to the work, some 

 provision should be made for their mainte- 

 nance. The last recommendation excited much 

 discussion in the yearly meeting. All the 

 Friends expressed active sympathy with the 

 mission-work ; but some feared to see the 

 society taking the responsibility for practices 

 which were not quite in accord with its usual 

 customs, and the idea of making provision for 

 ministers, or for persons doing any religions 

 work, was strongly objected to by many. See- 

 ing how easily " making provision " might slide 

 into payment for preaching, and depreciate the 

 ancient testimony of the society, that the min- 

 istry is a gift of God, freely received and to be 

 freely given, other persons viewed the proposi- 

 tion as a very grave one. The Women's Year- 

 ly Meeting, to whom the subject was referred 

 separately, approved the appointment of a com- 

 mittee to carry out the recommendations of the 

 conference. The Men's Meeting, after consid- 

 erable discussion, agreed to a proposition to 

 appoint a committee for one year, with a charge 



