Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman (SRSC 12)

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Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting: Comments by an Aged Friend (1764)

Twenty-fifth of Ninth Month.—At our Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia this day, John Smith, of Marlborough, aged upward of eighty years, a faithful minister, though not eloquent, stood up in our meeting of ministers and elders, and appearing to be under a great exercise* of spirit, informed Friends in substance as follows: That he had been a member of our Society* upward of sixty years, and he well remembered that, in those early times, Friends were a plain, lowly-minded* people, and that there was much tenderness and contrition in their meetings. That, at twenty years from that time, the Society* increasing in wealth and in some degree conforming to the fashions of the world, true humility was less apparent, and their meetings in general were not so lively and edifying. That at the end of forty years many of them were grown very rich, and many of the Society* made a fine appearance in the world; that wearing costly garments, and using silver and other watches, became common with them, their sons, and their daughters. These marks of outward wealth and greatness appeared on some in our meetings of ministers and elders; and, as such things became more prevalent, so the powerful overshadowings of the Holy Ghost were less manifest in the Society.* That there had been a continued increase of such ways of life, even until the present time; and that the weakness which has now overspread the Society* and the barrenness manifest among us is matter of much sorrow. He then mentioned the uncertainty of his attending these meetings in future, expecting his dissolution was near; and,