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Instead of highlighting emotion or the miraculous, Hicks emphasized that revelation’s function was primarily to provide ethical guidance. He believed that people who wanted to live contentedly in their sin would never be able to because God would continually prompt them through the “Reprover” placed in every “bosom.” This Reprover was marked by the “self-evident touches of Light” in the hearts of people everywhere— urging them to repent of their sins. He had certainly witnessed the workings of the Inward Light to eliminate sin in his life. His first vision kept him out of trouble throughout his childhood. He believed the promptings of the Light helped him to quit dancing. He also wrote in his journal occasionally of situations in which he had fallen into doubt or sinful attitudes and the openings of the Divine Light enabled him to overcome them. Revelation then had deep moral significance for him personally, as it played central role in the development of his conscience.45 By describing numerous situations in which the Light
had changed his moral thinking, he not only outlined his particular ethical commitments, but presented himself as a model of adherence to progressive revelation.
43 Hicks, Journal, 176 44 Ibid 164
Hicks, for example, maintained that revelation taught him to value humane treatment of animals. He remembered that, as a young man, he and his friends “from wantonness of for mere diversion, would destroy the small birds which could be of no service to us.” They killed for sport and not from need.46 It was through “divine
meditations” that he reached the conclusion that he should not “take the life of any creature, but such as were esteemed really useful when dead or very obnoxious and hurtful when living.” Additionally, if it was necessary to kill an animal, it must be done “in the most mild and tender manner in our power.”47 The Light moved him to empathize
with the suffering of other creatures.
Although Hicks never became a vegetarian, nor did he advocate it publicly, he anticipated that one day the Holy Spirit might prohibit the consuming animals altogether. While at home in Jericho in 1813, he described the process of butchering a steer. When he was done, he thought about “the extraordinary change that had taken place”—how quickly the animal had gone from living to dead and into pieces—a “wonderful wreck in nature.” He wondered whether it was “right, and consistent with divine wisdom, that such cruel forces should be employed and such a mighty sacrifice be made necessary for the nourishment and support of these bodies of clay.” He hoped that a “more innocent and more consistent medium” could “be found, amply to effect the same end of man’s
46Ibid 6 47 Ibid 12-13
support.” He thought that one day this new way of eating would “become a duty,” “if not for the present generation, for those in future to seek it and employ it.”48
Though Hicks was wary of religious tradition, he claimed to support certain established Quaker practices such as plain dress based on his revelations. Early Friends had dressed primarily in dark colored clothes they thought demonstrated abnegation of worldly pursuits and social equality. The practice was called “plain dress.” This rule was strictly enforced in the early years of the Society. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, various Quakers—particularly urban, wealthy Friends— began to move away from it. Hicks’ revelations prompted him to speak out against these changes. As early as 1795, he spoke to a meeting in Nine Partners, New York where he noted that the youth “had almost all gone out of plainness.”49
Hicks’ revelations supported not only the idea that Quakers should live simply, but that they should exemplify simplicity to others. He worried that Quakers’ failure to adhere to plain dress would limit their impact on like-minded believers. As he traveled through Maryland in 1798, he attended meetings for worship run by a small sect known as the Nicholites. They were followers Joseph Nichols, who believed that an “Inward Director,” or light, guided people to do right.50 Hicks thought that the Nicholites
“appeared one in principle with” Quakers, because they believed in the “the
manifestation and influence of the Divine Light, inwardly revealed.” He observed that
48 Ibid 169-170 49 Ibid 62
50 On the history of the Nicholites see Kenneth L. Carroll, Joseph Nichols and the Nicholites: a look at
the ʺNew Quakersʺ of Maryland, Delaware, North and South Carolina (Easton, MD: Easton Pub. Co., 1962).
they all dressed completely in white, which he interpreted as a sign of simplicity and purity. Thus he was anxious that Quakers might be a stumbling block to joining in fellowship with the Nicholites, because they were not adhering to plain dress.51
The Inward Light also inspired Hicks to uphold the practice of abstinence from civil government. The Society of Friends officially adopted a pacifist stance in 1661, when they published the Peace Testimony to assuage King Charles II’s concern that the Quakers would plot against him. Yet Friends also became convinced of the holiness of non-violence.52 Despite this pacifist tradition, it was more difficult to persuade some
Friends to adhere to it when trouble came to their own homes—such as during the Revolutionary War. Hicks reported that some Friends in New York had rented space in a cellar to some of the king’s troops. Many Quakers in the New York Yearly Meeting objected to this practice, because it seemed to support the war. The conflict between those who had accepted the money and those who disapproved of their actions— including Hicks—was so intense that they eventually referred the case out to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.53
He wanted Quakers to maintain their traditional non-participatory stance, not only because it marked them as a separate people, but also because the Inner Light revealed it to him. Even after the Revolutionary Era, he spoke against participation in associations of various kinds and especially against participation in civil government. On various
occasions, he recalled that he “was led…to set forth the great danger…of Friends joining
51 Hicks, Journal, 68
52 Hamm, Quakers in America, 25 53 Hicks, Journal, 20-21
in with the spirit of the world, in taking part in the fluctuating governments, customs, and manners thereof.” He firmly believed that Friends’ “strength and preservation consisted in standing alone and not to be[ing] counted among the people or nations who were setting up partial and party interests.”54
Finally, Hicks’ revelations inspired him to take a stand against slavery. At a meeting in Pennsylvania in 1798, he reported being “led to expose the enormous sin of oppression and of holding our fellow creatures in bondage.” He believed that slavery was harmful both to slaves and their masters. In particular the children of slave-owners, he thought, were “brought up in idleness [and] were led into pride and a very false and dark idea respecting God,” ultimately making them useless to society and unworthy of
respect.55 Anti-slavery was the only topic that Hicks published about prior to the
Separation. In 1811, his pamphlet entitled “Observations on the Enslavement of the Africans and their Descendents, and on the Use of the Produce of their Labor” was printed. Although he appealed primarily to reason and wrote in an argumentative style in the pamphlet, he nevertheless addressed himself to people of “every enlightened country, and particularly…those who believe in revelation…” in his call to end slavery and to stop using products that resulted either directly or indirectly from slave labor.56 In this case, as
54 Ibid 73, 84
55 Ibid 74. Hicks’ criticism of slaveholders was of course not an uncommon view of opponents of slavery
during the late eighteenth century. Christopher Leslie Brown, for instance, argues that one of the reasons that British Quakers and Evangelicals opposed the slave trade was that it put a stain of corruption on their entire society. Christopher Leslie Brown, Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 26.
56 Elias Hicks, “Observations on the Enslavement of the Africans and their Descendents, and on the Use of
in others, his personal connection to the Holy Spirit supported his broader ethical vision for society.
To a certain extent, many of Hicks’ ethical considerations can be explained by looking at larger trends within the history of Quakerism. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Friends had entered a period known as “Quietism” in which they emphasized moral discipline and church order first and foremost. Friends became increasingly concerned with the need for certainty that they were acting according to God’s will. Direct divine revelation increasingly became associated with intense
introspection, and meetings became even quieter. They began to conceive of salvation as a slow process: the Inner Light was planted in a person and grew gradually. This process was characterized by periodic “baptisms” or periods of “suffering or depression.”57
Hicks’ revelations certainly followed this pattern.
During the Great Awakening of the 1740s and 50s, Friends reacted negatively to the idea of immediate salvation prevalent. They worried that they were becoming unduly influenced by worldly participation in government and in society at large. Some Friends in both the British American colonies and England had become wealthy due to their reputation for fair business practices, and rural friends were become more lax in their adherence to the discipline--marrying outside the Society, giving up plain dress and speech, and other issues. Reformers decided to crack down on these things by more
the Africans and their Descendents and on the Use of the Produce of their Labor (Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Chapman, 1861), 9-10.
strictly enforcing the Discipline, their code of conduct and morality. They disowned members who married outside of Quaker meetings, or married non-Quakers.58
The environment in which he grew up undoubtedly influenced Hicks’ individual ethical development. He always claimed, however, to base his beliefs on personal
testimony form the Light—a model he hoped that other Friends would imitate. In the case of activities like hunting for sport and dancing, he seems to have to come to the
conviction that these things were wrong primarily due to the visions and revelations that he experienced. When it came to slavery, plain dress, and abstinence from civil
government, the order of influence—revelation, then conviction, or vice versa—is less clear. Nevertheless, he professed to rely on revelation to support and strengthen his belief in those ethical positions and to know when those subjects would best suit the needs of his fellow Friends. In fact he argued that, as long his fellow Friends continued to attune themselves to the Light like he did, they would all eventually come to the same
conclusions and bind together as one spiritual community.