There are certain points of Christian practice upon which we have been accustomed to lay a degree of stress amounting to peculiarity, although our “testimony” in regard to them does not involve any opposition to the beliefs of other Christian bodies, as does that which we have just been considering respecting the freedom of the ministry and the disuse of ordinances. The idea of “testimony,” or practical witness-bearing to a stricter obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ than is thought necessary by the mass of those who are called by His name, has been strongly impressed upon Friends from the very outset, and the persecutions which it brought upon them did but burn it irrevocably into the Quaker mind. The preaching of the early Friends was, above all things, a preaching of righteousness. I think I cannot be wrong in saying that a greater value has from the first been attached by Friends to practice, as compared with doctrine, than is the case with most other Christian bodies. Obedience to the light which convinces of sin was the sum and substance of George Fox’s preaching, and through his epistles and other writings there runs a vigorously practical tone which seems to have been responded to with equal vigour by those whom he addressed. The early Friends certainly did, as a rule, wonderfully practise what they preached; and their character for integrity was very quickly, and has been permanently, recognized. It seems to myself inevitable that the appeal to the witness in each heart should reach deeper, and bring forth correspondingly better fruit of obedience, when disentangled from all reliance on external passports to Divine favour. Not only the idea of any possible “efficacy of sacraments” as apart from righteousness of life, but also the idea of “substitution” as distinguished from actual experience of the transforming power of the righteousness of Christ, were vigorously rejected by the early Friends; and in this insistence upon the identity of righteousness with salvation lay, as I believe, the main secret of their strength. At any rate, there has been a remarkably steady endeavour to maintain a high and definite standard of Christian morality, partly by means of the discipline of the Society, partly by family tradition, discipline, and example. Certain “testimonies,” _i.e._ practices conscientiously adopted, inculcated, and watched over, have been handed down from generation to generation with a jealous care which, though sometimes overshooting its mark and tending to produce reaction, has nevertheless moulded the very inmost springs of action, and produced and maintained a distinct and somewhat singular type of Christian character.