borders some room for modes and expressions of Christian belief which, for a time neglected, had been growing up outside its bounds.  It was so with Methodism; it was so also with Quakerism.  When Quakers found that its more reasonable tenets could be held, and find a certain amount of sympathy within the Church, it quickly began to lose its strength.  A remark of Boswell’s in 1776, that many a man was a Quaker without his knowing it,[493] could scarcely have been made in the corresponding year of the previous century.  At the earlier date there was almost nothing in common between the Church and a sect which, both on its strongest and weakest side, was marked by a conspicuous antagonism to established opinions.  At the latter date Quakerism had to a great extent lost both its mystic and emotional monopolies.  After a few years’ hesitation Southey concluded that he need not join the Quakers simply because he disliked ’attempting to define what has been left indefinite.’[494] The semi-mystical turn of thought which is most keenly alive to the futility of such endeavours was no longer a tenable ground for secession.  Or if a man believed in visible manifestations of spiritual influences, he would more probably become a Methodist than a Quaker; and the time was not yet come when to be a Methodist was to cease to be a Churchman.  In one respect, however, Quakerism possessed a safeguard to emotional excitement which in Methodism was wanting.[495] It was that notion of tranquil tarrying and spiritual quiet which was as alien to the spirit of later Methodism as it is congenial to that of mysticism.  The language of the Methodist would entirely accord with that of the Quaker in speaking of the pangs of the new birth, and of the visible tokens of the Spirit’s presence; but the absence of reserve and the mutual ‘experiences’ of the Methodist stand out in a strong, and to many minds unfavourable, contrast with the silence and self-absorption of which Quakerism had learnt the value.

    Then comes the Spirit to our hut,
    When fast the senses’ doors are shut;
    For so Divine and pure a guest
    The emptiest rooms are furnished best.[496]

Or, in the words of one of the saintliest of the mediaeval mystics, ’In the chamber of the heart God works.  But what He works in the souls of those with whom He holds direct converse none can say, nor can any man give account of it to another; but he only who has felt it knows what it is; and even he can tell thee nothing of it, save only that God in very truth hath possessed the ground of his heart.’[497]

It may here be observed that what has been said of Quakerism, so far as it was at one time representative of that mystic element which the eighteenth century called enthusiasm, will be a sufficient reason for passing all the more briefly over other branches of the same subject.  The idea of self-surrender to the immediate action of spiritual influence is a bond of union far more potent than any external or