Excerpt from The Quakers: A Study, Historical and Critical

In 1872 the writer of this book returned in broken health from a second period of missionary labour in China. Two years later some members of the Society of Friends invited him to become secretary of a Committee formed to agitate for the suppression of the Opium Trade between India and China. At this time he was totally ignorant of the history and religious belief of the Friends, unless the vague and hazy notions about them in the popular mind be called knowledge. Although association in philanthropic work, and much kindness received by him, produced in his mind a high esteem for their Society, strange to say, he remained in the same state of ignorance for nine years. The Quakers do not proselytize: and he was too much absorbed in other studies to enter upon an investigation which seemed of no practical interest. The study of the Evidences of Christianity, commenced in China for the sake of the heathen, had to be continued at home in the face of the rising tide of scepticism, which threatened to sweep away the very foundations of the Christian faith. A long and sore mental conflict he had to pass through, in the course of which he was sometimes reduced well-nigh to despair. But in the great mercy of God, he kept his hold on the faith, or rather the truth kept its hold upon him, until gradually a new conception of the Christian religion and its evidences was revealed to him.

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