252 FOTHERGILL AS A FRIEND CHAP. 



larger and larger experience." " Love of action," he 

 writes in a fragment of diary in 1751, " lessens the love 

 of silence and retirement. Yet this condition is the 

 safest, and insensibly would lead to stability and the 

 conquest of passion." Self-examination was a rule of 

 his life. 



He was very loyal to the Society of Friends, and from 

 the outset of his life in London gave time and thought to 

 its interests. He took his seat, as we shall see, whilst 

 still a young man, in the " Meeting for Sufferings." As 

 time went on he came to be one of the leading Friends in 

 London. Probably during the latter years of his life 

 there was no one whose judgment was so highly esteemed 

 by the society both here and in America. He does not 

 seem to have had any call to preaching, but was an 

 " Elder," and three times acted as Clerk to the Yearly 

 Meeting in London, viz. in 1749, 1764 and 1779, besides 

 serving in several northern counties on the Visitation 

 Committee of 1776. Fothergill was, we are told, an 

 excellent clerk, expressing much meaning in few words 

 in all he said and wrote multum in parvo. The Epistle 

 issued in 1764 over his signature recounts in forcible and 

 eloquent language the rise of the society and its essential 

 principle. 



It was shown in the last chapter that the spiritual life 

 of the Friends on both sides of the Atlantic had fallen 

 in Fothergill's period to a low level. Meetings for worship 

 were often held in entire silence ; and visiting ministers, 

 when they were present, would sometimes utter nothing. 

 Silent meetings were not unknown in earlier days, a 

 silence of heartfelt devotion and communion ; but habitual 

 silence could not be wholesome ; too often it was barren 

 of good thoughts, and due to a drowsy lifeless state. The 

 younger members were ill-educated, even according to 

 the low standard of those days. The congregations fell 

 off, and spiritual deadness bore fruit in lapses of conduct. 

 Slackness and disintegration threatened the very structure 

 of the community. The society had been organised in 

 1659 by George Fox and his coadjutors in districts, under 



