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CAMBRIDGE:

METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

JULY, 1856.

ART. I. THE PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS.*

THE secession from the Friends which has taken the above name in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, has become sufficiently important to deserve notice. There is also something interesting in the fact of this development of Quakerism on its reformatory and progressive side.

The early Quaker movement was an extraordinary one. Consider how much it included in itself. It was the most radical enterprise ever yet undertaken, — a rebellion without parallel against Church and State. It was at once a spiritual movement, aiming at a loftier piety, - a theological movement, seeking a broader creed, a reform movement, aiming at the overthrow of war, slavery, and public evils, a social movement, seeking to inaugurate a better mode of life.

It would be easy, were it necessary, to justify this

1. Minutes and Proceedings of the Green-Plain Yearly Meeting of Friends, who have adopted the Congregational Order of Church Government. 1849-1851. 2. Address to Friends of Genesee Yearly Meeting. 1848.

3. Proceedings of Annual Meeting of Congregational Friends, Waterloo, N. Y. 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853.

4. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Friends of Human Progress, Waterloo, N. Y. 1854 and 1855.

5. Proceedings of Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends.

1854 and 1855.

VOL. LX. -4TH S. VOL. XXVI. NO. I.

1

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