The answers, which have hitherto been given to the reader, may be considered as the statement of theory against theory.  But the Quakers, would say farther upon this subject, that they have educated upon these principles for a hundred and fifty years, and that, where they have been attended to, their effects have been uniformly beneficial.  They would be fearful therefore of departing from a path, which they conceive their own experience and that of their ancestors has shewn them to be safe, and which after all their inquiries, they believe to be that which is pointed out to them by the Christian religion.

I shall not attempt to follow up this practical argument by any history of the lives of the Quakers, but shall content myself with one or two simple facts, which appear to me to be materially to the point.

In the first place I may observe that it is an old saying, that it is difficult to put old heads on young shoulders.  The Quakers, however, do this more effectually than any other people.  It has often been observed that a Quaker boy has an unnatural appearance.  This idea has arisen from his dress and his sedateness, which together have produced an appearance of age above the youth in his countenance, or the stature of his person.  This, however, is confessing, in some degree, in the case before us, that the discretion of age has appeared upon youthful shoulders.  It is certainly an undeniable fact, that the youth of this society, generally speaking, get earlier into a knowledge of just sentiments, or into a knowledge of human nature, or into a knowledge of the true wisdom of life, than those of the world at large.  I have often been surprised to hear young Quakers talk of the folly and vanity of pursuits, in which persons older than themselves were then embarking for the purposes of pleasure, and which the same persons have afterwards found to have been the pursuits of uneasiness and pain.

Let us stop for a while, just to look at the situation of some of those young persons, who, in consequence of a different education, are introduced to the pleasures of the world, as to those, which are to constitute their happiness.  We see them running eagerly first after this object, then after that.  One man says to himself “this will constitute my pleasure.”  He follows it.  He finds it vanity and vexation of spirit.  He says again “I have found my self deceived.  I now see my happiness in other pleasures, and not in those where I fancied it.”  He follows these.  He becomes sickened.  He finds the result different from his expectations.  He pursues pleasure, but pleasure is not there.

[14]"They are lost In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d, And never won.  Dream after dream ensues; And still they dream, that they shall still succeed And still are disappointed.”

[Footnote 14:  Cowper.]