At the root of our abstinence from all these generally accepted practices, there lies the one conviction of the all-sufficiency of individual and immediate communication with the Father of our spirits; and a profound belief that by His coming in the flesh our Lord Jesus Christ did, in fact, open a new and living way of access to God, which superseded and blotted out the former dispensation of rites and ceremonies, investing all believers with the function of “kings and priests” (calling them, that is, both to exercise dominion and to offer acceptable sacrifices in His name), and enabling them to show forth the nature and results of that worship in spirit and in truth, which was no longer to be in any sense confined to temples made with hands, and of that kingdom which is “not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” It was a bold thing indeed for the early Friends to break loose at once from the whole ecclesiastical system, with its venerable and long-established claim to be the divinely ordained channel of spiritual nutriment. In doing so, they no doubt took up an attitude of hostility towards the “hireling priests,” and their “steeple-houses” and “so-called ordinances,” which, however comparatively intelligible it may have been at the time, was yet not only highly obnoxious, but would even seem to have led them into some degree of injustice. After sixty or seventy years of severe persecution, however, borne with extraordinary patience as well as constancy, their right to carry out their own manner of worship was fully allowed; and by a strange result of changes, partly within the Society itself and partly in the surrounding mental atmosphere, Friends, from being regarded as peculiarly pestilent heretics, came to be looked on as the most harmless and least obnoxious of Nonconformists. I believe, however, that this can be the case only as long as we are content to acquiesce in a purely passive and dwindling state. Any attempt to promulgate our peculiar views must necessarily give offence. We may, perhaps, no longer think it a duty to denounce the institution of a separate clergy, and the observance of “so-called ordinances,” as positively unlawful or sinful. But to say plainly that we consider them as superfluous, requires hardly less boldness, and is scarcely likely to be more palatable. The fact, however, cannot be disguised; and in spite of the pain which, in these days of free and lively interchange of sympathy, is involved in taking up any clear ground of separation, no true Friend would desire in the slightest degree to disguise or to veil our ancient testimony against outward observances and their accompanying institution of a paid ministry.