The London Pulpit
Book Excerpt
It seems the mild, drab-coloured men, who call themselves Quakers, and wear broad-brimmed hats and square collars, and say 'thee' and 'thou,' of whom Belgravia knows but little, but who, nevertheless, are foremost when some great good is to be done, and some outcast class is to be reclaimed and saved, are but a feeble folk, as far as numbers are concerned. The 'youngest of the four surviving sects which trace their origin to that prolific period which closed the era of the Reformation,' they promise to be soonest extinguished. In 1800 they possessed 413 meeting-houses; in 1851 they had but 351. Mr. Low gives them 9 chapels; Mr. Mann but 4, with sittings for 3151. This latter number, small as it is, appears to be considerably more than is required for their s