A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2 | Page 8

may be added, that if Quaker-men were to attempt to marry
out of their own society, they would not in general be well received.
Their dress and their manners are considered as uncouth in the eyes of
the female-world, and would present themselves as so many obstacles
in the way of their success. The women of this description generally
like a smart and showy exterior. They admire heroism and spirit. But
neither such an exterior, nor such spirit, are to be seen in the
Quaker-men. The dress of the Quaker-females, on the other hand, is
considered as neat and elegant, and their modesty and demeanor as
worthy of admiration. From these circumstances they captivate. Hence
the difference, both in the inward and outward person, between the men
and the women of this society, renders the former not so pleasing,
while it renders the latter objects of admiration, and even choice.

CHAP. II.
SECTION I.
_Funerals--Most nations have paid extravagant attention to their
dead--The moderns follow their example--This extravagance, or the
pageantry of funerals, discarded by the Quakers--Their reasons for
it--Plainness of Quaker-funerals._
If we look into the history of the world, we shall find, from whatever
cause it has arisen, whether from any thing connected with our moral

feelings, such as love, gratitude, or respect, or from vanity, or
ostentation, that almost all nations, where individuals have been able to
afford it, have incurred considerable expense in the interment of their
dead. The Greeks were often very extravagant in their funerals. Many
persons, ornamented with garlands, followed the corpse, while others
were employed in singing and dancing before it. At the funerals of the
great, among the Romans, couches were carried, containing the waxen
or other images of the family of the deceased, and hundreds joined in
the procession. In our own times, we find a difference in the manner of
furnishing or decorating funerals, though but little in the intention of
making them objects of outward show. A bearer of plumes precedes the
procession. The horses employed are dressed in trappings. The hearse
follows ornamented with plumes of feathers, and gilded and silvered
with gaudy escutcheons, or the armorial bearings of the progenitors of
the deceased. A group of hired persons range themselves on each side
of the hearse and attendant carriages, while others close the procession.
These again are all of them clad in long cloaks, or furnished, in regular
order, with scarfs and hat-bands. Now all these outward appendages,
which may be called the pageantry of funerals, the Quakers have
discarded, from the time of their institution, in the practice of the burial
of their dead.
The Quakers are of opinion, that funeral processions should be made, if
any thing is to be made of them, to excite serious reflections, and to
produce lessons of morality in those who see them. This they conceive
to be best done by depriving the dead body of all ornaments and
outward honours. For, stripped in this manner, they conceive it to
approach the nearest to its native worthlessness or dust. Such funerals,
therefore, may excite in the spectator a deep sense of the low and
debased condition of man. And his feelings will be pure on the
occasion, because they will be unmixed with the consideration of the
artificial distinctions of human life. The spectator too will be more
likely, if he sees all go undistinguished to the grave, to deduce for
himself the moral lesson, that there is no true elevation of one above
another, only as men follow the practical duties of virtue and religion.
But what serious reflections, or what lessons of morality, on the other
hand, do the funerals of the world produce, if accompanied with pomp
and splendour? To those who have sober and serious minds, they

produce a kind of pity, that is mingled with disgust. In those of a
ludicrous turn, they provoke ludicrous ideas, when they see a dead
body attended with such extravagant parade. To the vulgar and the
ignorant no one useful lesson is given. Their senses are all absorbed in
the show; and the thoughts of the worthlessness of man, as well as of
death and the grave, which ought naturally to suggest themselves on
such occasions, are swallowed up in the grandeur and pageantry of the
procession. Funerals, therefore, of this kind, are calculated to throw
honour upon riches, abstractedly of moral merit; to make the creature
of as much importance when dead as when alive; to lessen the humility
of man; and to destroy, of course, the moral and religious feelings that
should arise upon such occasions. Add to which, that such a conduct
among christians must be peculiarly improper; for the christian
dispensation teaches man, that he is "to work out his salvation with fear
and trembling."