Our Society, like the United Kingdom, enjoys the elasticity resulting from the absence of any written constitution, and the precise working of its discipline is by no means easily traced. Its “testimonies,” though clearly recognized and notorious, are not formulated or defended in any authoritative document. The “Book of Discipline” consists, as I have said, of extracts from “Epistles” and “Advices” circulated from time to time by the Yearly Meeting. These are in the nature of brotherly exhortations, which assume our principles as undisputed; and though carefully worded, they do not deal in definitions or arguments. Our testimonies are, in fact, to a degree which is, I think, hardly understood outside the Society, the result of individual and spontaneous obedience to the bidding of individual conscience, and to the guiding of the Divine light shining in each heart, rather than of conformity to rules enforced or even precisely laid down by any human authority. They are collective, but unformulated; subjects for discipline, yet not prescribed or regulated; familiar and even notorious peculiarities, yet varying indefinitely in the degree in which they are maintained by individuals. The traditional reverence for individual conscience is still so strong that the precise nature of the obstacle felt by Friends to any particular course of conduct is apt to be shrouded in some degree of mystery. The phraseology of the Society, which is almost a separate language, vividly conveys this sense of an insuperable but (to outsiders) mysterious restraint. “Truth requires” that certain things should be done or left undone. A Friend “feels a stop in his mind,” or “is not easy to proceed with” some undertaking. Such and such a thing “appears” (to John Woolman, for instance) “to be distinguishable from pure wisdom.” There are, as is well known, individual Friends who have abundantly argued, on general grounds, the moral questions involved in our “testimonies.” Friends have never been wanting in pugnacity, whatever their scruples as to the use of “carnal weapons” or of violent language. But yet their practice has in the main been felt out rather than thought out; their testimonies are instances of problems solved by going forward rather than of theories built up through any speculative process; and in regard to each one of them every true Friend feels that to his own Master he stands or falls, and that there is but one Example to which he ought to look, and one Guide whom he desires to obey. As in regard of our public ministry, so in the lesser matters of everyday life and practice, we jealously guard our individual liberty from human interference in order that it may be the more unreservedly subjected to all Divine influences.