I am now about to attempt to deal with those principles, not in the way of analysis or with any attempt at precision of language, but as a record of their practical working, as gathered mainly from personal experience. It is not, I confess, without some anxiety that I, as a new-comer, enter upon this task. In the preceding sketch of matters of fact, it has of course been easy to guard against any serious misstatements; but in the following chapters I must deal with matters less easily verifiable. It seems to me in some respects hardly possible that any one not born and bred in the Society should be fully qualified to unfold its principles and practices. There is, on the other hand, in the very fact of having entered it from without, a special qualification for the office of interpreting them to outsiders. It will, I hope, be remembered that I have no kind of claim to speak in any sense in the name of the Society. My object is to explain (so far as the experience of ten years’ membership may enable me) the secret of its strength and of its attraction for others; and for this attempt one brought up outside its pale, and speaking in a purely individual capacity, may well feel a special freedom. If I cannot pretend to possess the entirely correct accent of a born Friend, I may be none the less intelligible to those amongst whom my own Christian principles were imbibed and nourished until the years of maturity. CHAPTER II. THE INNER LIGHT. The one corner-stone of belief upon which the Society of Friends is built is the conviction that God does indeed communicate with each one of the spirits He has made, in a direct and living inbreathing of some measure of the breath of His own life; that He never leaves Himself without a witness in the heart as well as in the surroundings of man; and that in order clearly to hear the Divine voice thus speaking to us we need to be still; to be alone with Him in the secret place of His presence; that all flesh should keep silence before Him. This belief may be more precisely stated, explained, and as we think justified, by those who are competent to deal with it in a philosophical manner. The founders of our Society were not philosophers, but spoke of these things from an intense and abundant personal experience, which led them with confidence to appeal to the experience of all sorts and conditions of men for confirmation of their doctrine as to the light within. And they were not disappointed. The history of the sudden gathering of the Society, of its rapid formation into a strongly organized body, and of the extraordinary constancy, zeal, and integrity displayed by its original members, is a most impressive proof of the trueness of their aim.[3]