I love Quaker ways and Quaker worship. I venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by an occurrence, the sight or quiet voice of a Quaker acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) “to live with them.” I am all over-sophisticated – with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetities are too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel; my gusto too excited.
The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption that they are more given to evasion and equivocating than other people. They naturally look to their words more carefully and are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand, in a manner, upon their veracity.
From: “Imperfect Sympathies,” by Charles Lamb, in A Book of English Essays, W. E. Williams, editor; 2nd edition (London: Penguin Books, 1952 [1948]), p. 98.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was a prolific English essayist. Whether the Quakers were or are Christians in any biblical sense has been hotly debated for several centuries now.
