In one of the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a list of lessons or
instructions, ("seal'd orders" the biographer calls them,) prepar'd by
the sage himself for his own guidance. Here is one:
Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them that
they must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells
with the pure in heart, to whom it was promis'd of old that they shall
see God.
How thoroughly it fits the life and theory of Elias Hicks. Then in
Omar Khayyam:
I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell,
And by-and-by my soul return'd to me,
And answer'd, "I myself am Heaven and Hell."
Indeed, of this important element of the theory and practice of
Quakerism, the difficult-to-describe "Light within" or "Inward Law, by
which all must be either justified or condemn'd," I will not undertake
where so many have fail'd--the task of making the statement of it for
the average comprehension. We will give, partly for the matter and
partly as specimen of his speaking and writing style, what Elias Hicks
himself says in allusion to it--one or two of very many passages.
Most of his discourses, like those of Epictetus and the ancient
peripatetics, have left no record remaining--they were extempore, and
those were not the times of reporters. Of one, however, deliver'd in
Chester, Pa., toward the latter part of his career, there is a careful
transcript; and from it (even if presenting you a sheaf of hidden
wheat that may need to be pick'd and thrash'd out several times before
you get the grain,) we give the following extract:
I don't want to express a great many words; but I want you to be
call'd home to the substance.
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