Hast thee read The Charioteer?

Apparently the author is actually one Francis Thompson

Elias Hicks "Sermon VII: Friends Meeting-house, Byberry, in Philadelphia County, on Fourth Day Morning, 8th of Twelfth Month, 1824." Sermon VII [Let Brotherly Love Continue] archive.org/details/seri...

I agree, but one thing hasn't changed: Friends who follow their truest calling will always exceed the bounds of corporate discernment. No matter which reformer you examine, the greatest Friends always became too good of a Quaker to be a Quaker.

Uh, tell me: when was our last truly authorized war, anyhow?

[1] Melivlle's readers knew Quaker pacificism did NOT generally extend to animal slaughter (exception: Elias Hicks and other advanced moralists). So what was Peleg and Bildad's "alien and heterogeneous modification?"

[2] Answer: "a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy ... poetical Pagan Roman[s]" - notorious sources of queer rhapsodies. Peleg, the Hicksite, was not hard to understand: "he deemed... serious things [=sins] the veriest of all trifles."

[3] Bidad, however, was a Bible thumping Orthodox, but one whom "unclad, lovely island creatures... had not ... so much as altered one angle of his vest [if you get my drift!]."

[4] Thus there was "some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Peleg." After all, he welcomed gay honeymooners aboard his ship and groused like Peleg's long-term spouse.

[5] How "the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but ... very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends."

In 1938, our greatest Quaker historian, Frederick B Tolles, proved that Enerson's doctrine of Self Reliance was the secularization of the Inner Light, as acknowledged by Emerson and some Friends alike

Uh, just to be clear, spellcheck mutilated "superlove" into "superpower." I. Hate. Spell. Check. In any event you can see I agree that the dramatic potential of this history is enormous.