xix EPOCH OF QUAKER PHILANTHROPY 261 



think, that his spirit might be unsoiled. "In morals," 

 says Ruskin, " there is a care for trifles which proceeds 

 from love and conscience, and is most holy ; and a care 

 for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is 

 most base." 



Looking back across a period of a century and a half to 

 Fothergill's times, we shall probably find that his work for 

 education and for general philanthropy were his chief 

 contributions to his own people. The example of that 

 work deeply influenced the vSociety of Friends. There 

 can be little doubt that it did much to lead his fellow- 

 members to take their share too in the burden of the 

 world, and to enter on those labours in the education of 

 the poor, the abolition of slavery, the reform of prisons, 

 and other causes, which distinguished the society in 

 after days. Such philanthropy was distinctive of an 

 epoch in the history of British Quakerism. This is not 

 the place to trace the later course of the society ; of its 

 coming, early in the nineteenth century, under evangelical 

 influence, and developing a missionary activity, large for 

 its membership ; and of the revival, under the leadership 

 of independent minds, within the present generation, of 

 a Quakerism founded deep on the vision that came to the 

 early Friends, enriched and widened by modern culture. 

 It may be that the Society of Friends is being prepared 

 by discipline and suffering to bear a message to the 

 world after the present war. Some of its ways, particu- 

 larly the use of silence in worship, have been found by 

 those of other communions " to create an atmosphere in 

 which the sense of the Spiritual in man is set free." 1 



1 Rev. Cyril Hepher, The Fellowship of Silence, 1915, p. 19. Fothergill took 

 a generous share in building Westminster Friends' Meeting-House in Peter's 

 Court in 1776, subscribing 314, besides money towards clearing the site, and 

 advancing 1000 (W. Beck, Land. Frds. Meet. pp. 244, 259). A story is retailed 

 in the Westminster Magazine, Feb. 1781, that Fothergill, whilst a student at 

 Edinburgh, once walked through the High Street stripped to the waist, 

 denouncing God's vengeance on the inhabitants. No allusion to this can be 

 found in the letters of his student life which are extant. Such public signs 

 were not infrequent in the earliest days of Quakerism, days of a sometimes 

 fanatical enthusiasm, but the act would have been out of keeping with Fother- 

 gill's character as shown throughout his life. See M. C. Cadbury's Robert Barclay, 

 p. 36. There are letters from Fothergill on church matters in his brother's 

 Memoirs, in J. Kendall's Letters on Religious Subjects, and in MS. at Frds. 



