"The Imperceptible Arrows of Quakerism" Moncure Conway at Sandy Spring

"THE IMPERCEPTIBLE ARROWS OF QUAKERISM" MONCURE CONWAY AT SANDY SPRING By Warren Sylvester Smith* In many respects Moncure Daniel Conway seems the most representative of the Victorian religious radicals. Along with the current revival of interest in the entire fabric of Victorian London, some attention is inevitably paid to Conway. His writings, indeed, offer a significant guide through some of the complexities of the era.1 Virginia-born (1832) and Methodist-bred, he spent much of his life abroad, principally in London, where for two decades he filled the pulpit of South Place Chapel in Finsbury — a congregation of rationalist freethinkers who were not quite willing to be called Secularists or Atheists. Seemingly, from his Autobiography, he was something of a "namedropper ," but there is no doubt that he was really acquainted with the great names on both sides of the Atlantic and was well liked by almost all of them. He tramped around Waiden Pond with Thoreau, invaded Emerson's library, was received by President Lincoln (to protest against the President's timidity on the slavery issue), consulted abroad with Cobden, Bright, Carlyle, and Browning , and even spent a day with the aging Darwin in his garden — to present a very incomplete sampling! South Place Chapel, even before Conway's ministry there, had ?Professor of Theatre Arts, The Pennsylvania State University. 1 In 1952 Mary Elizabeth Burtis published the biography, Moncure Conway (New Brunswick, N. J.; Rutgers University Press). Conway's own rambling two-volume autobiography, written late in his life, is often less accurate and less well organized than Miss Burtis's study, but it preserves the charm of the man in the easy civilized prose of one who never stopped talking and writing. Unless otherwise indicated, parenthetical page numbers refer to Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway, 2 volumes (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company , 1904). 19 20Quaker History long been associated with religious radicalism. In his autobiography he recalls that the Society had originated "under the American apostle of universalism, Elhanan Winchester, during the French Revolution, which he interpreted by the Book of Revelation," and that during its seventy years of existence it had evolved to the "humanized theism" of his predecessor, W. J. Fox, whose retirement had left the pulpit vacant when Conway chanced to come by in 1863. By this time, he reports, "the old sacramental vessels were preserved only as relics, the communion-table was used only for the flowers set there every Sunday." Fox had worn a fine gown, but Conway discarded this too. There was a pleasant vestry in which was always placed a decanter of port or sherry for the preacher's refreshment. The high "pepperbox" pulpit and the straight-backed pews remained until 1876, when the whole interior was renovated. It is a building of excellent acoustical qualities with deep galleries, and can seat nearly a thousand. Though Conway, like many another religious radical of the period, had romantic notions of preaching to the working classes and liberating them from their old superstitions, he found himself discoursing to "middle class people of literary tastes" and the "veteran radicals," including some survivors of the old Chartist movement. (I, 39-40) He wrote entertainingly and voluminously, becoming ever more "advanced" in his ideas as his life wore on and ever more outspoken in his advocacy of a religious position beyond theology, arriving finally almost at complete skepticism. When the cartoonist, "Ion," in a colored sketch called "Our National Church," tried to arrange all the controversial religious figures of the 1870's in a single picture, and placed Conway in a little tent by himself on die far left, the subject expressed agreement with the artist. The "leftist" position, however, referred to theology, not politics. In the midst of tiie rising Christian Socialist movement, Conway remained ruggedly on the side of individualism. He notes that his isolated position as a minister, despite the asperities of a few Unitarians, was no martyrdom personally , and as a public teacher it gave me advantages. I looked on all the camps as equally struggling for error, and could weigh without bias the value of each for human happiness. For as the vision...