have a few chapels in various
parts of London, but as the old worshippers die off no new ones appear.
At their last annual meeting Mr. R. Barclay, who referred with
satisfaction to the fact that all over the land, Sunday by Sunday, 1100
Friends were engaged in teaching 1400 children and 3000 adults, regretted
to find that no other Church had declined so much either in this country
or in America since 1720. In the United States 13,000 seats were closed
in the meeting-houses between 1850 and 1860. "If," said he, "other
Churches had declined as we have done, Christianity must have died out."
As regards the metropolis they seem to be in a little better condition;
the last statistics of membership show an increase of 95 in the year, the
whole number being 6608 males, 7286 females; total, 13,894; the births
exactly balanced the deaths. There were 121 new members from
convincement and 61 resignations, against 31 disownments there were 19
reinstated. The habitual attenders at the places of worship are 3803,
being an increase of 145. It was remarked by a senior Friend that the
resignations were fewer and the convincements more than in any year since
accounts had been kept; Mr. Tallack gave it as his opinion that the
Society was never more healthy, not even in the first years of its
existence; J. Grubb believed that there was a considerable change for the
better, both as regards public and private prayer. It is to be hoped
such may turn out to be the case. The great characteristic testimony of
the Friends, particularly against ecclesiastical pretensions on the one
side and against religious forms on the other, is as much requisite now
as ever; there is, as one of their official documents remarks, "a strong
tendency in the human mind to substitute the form of religion for the
power, and to satisfy the conscience by a cold compliance with exterior
performances while the heart remains unchanged. And inasmuch as the
baptism of the Holy Ghost and the communion of the body and blood of
Christ, of which water baptism, and bread and wine, are admitted to be
only signs, are not dependent on those outward ceremonies or necessarily
connected with them, and are declared in Holy Scripture to be effectual
to the salvation of the soul, which the signs are not, Friends have
always believed it to be their place and duty to hold forth to the world
a clear and decided testimony to the living substance--the spiritual work
of Christ in the soul