The Quaker ministers are not distinguishable, when in their places of worship, by their dress.  They wear neither black clothes, nor surplices, nor gowns, nor bands.  Jesus Christ, when he preached to the multitude, is not recorded to have put on a dress different from that which he wore on other occasions.  Neither do the Quakers believe that ministers of the church ought, under the new dispensation, to be a separate people, as the Levites were, or to be distinguished on account of their office from other men.

The Quakers differ from other Christians in the rejection of psalmody, as a service of the church.  If persons feel themselves so influenced in their private devotions, [139]that they can sing, as the Apostle says, “with the spirit and the understanding,” or “can sing[140] and make melody in their hearts to the Lord,” the Quakers have no objection to this as an act of worship.  But they conceive that music and psalmody, though they might have been adapted to the ceremonial religion of the Jews, are not congenial with the new dispensation that has followed; because this dispensation requires, that all worship should be performed in spirit and in truth.  It requires that no act of religion should take place, unless the spirit influences an utterance, and that no words should be used, except they are in unison with the heart.  Now this coincidence of spiritual impulse and feeling with this act, is not likely to happen, in the opinion of the Quakers, with public psalmody.  It is not likely that all in the congregation will be impelled, in the same moment, to a spiritual song, or that all will be in the state of mind or spirit which the words of the psalm describe.  Thus how few will be able to sing truly with David, if the following verse should be brought before them:  “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”  To this it may be added, that where men think about musical harmony or vocal tunes in their worship, the amusement of the creature will be so mixed with it, that it cannot be a pure oblation of the Spirit, and that those who think they can please the Divine Being by musical instruments, or the varied modulations of their own voices, must look upon him as a Being with corporeal organs, sensible, like a man, of fleshly delights, and not as a Spirit, who can only be pleased with the worship that is in spirit and in truth.

[Footnote 139:  1 Cor. 14. 15.]

[Footnote 140:  Ephes. 5. 19.]

The Quakers reject also the consecration and solemnization of particular days and times.  As the Jews, when they became Christians, were enjoined by the Apostle Paul, not to put too great a value upon “days,[141] and months, and times, and years;” so the Quakers think it their duty as Christians to attend to the same injunction.  They never meet upon saints days, as such, that is, as days demanding the religious assemblings of men, more than others; first, because they conceive this would be giving into popish superstition; and secondly, because these days were originally the appointment of men and not of God, and no human appointment, they believe, can make one day holier than another.