AN AFFECTIONATE JoAREWELL ADDRESS To FRIENDS IN NORTH AMERICA. BY GEORGE WITHY, PRO WIDE.W.C.E. - BEING about to return to my native land, I believe it will contribute to my peace, if I salute you in this way, and express a little of those feelings with which I have been often seriously impressed during my sojourning amongst you. Although I have travelled about five thousand miles, and attended a great many meetings in America, there are many settlements of Friends, and probably thousands who are members of our religious society, where it has not been within the limits of my concern to go, and whose faces, of course, I have never seen. Notwithstanding these circumstances, I have known no bounds to my solicitude, and frequent, earnest desire, that however my dear Brethren may be outwardly scattered over this vast continent, they may be all built on the one only true foundation, and inwardly gathered to the one Shepherd, and into the one only true sheepfold; that so, as a people, we may continue to be one in discipline, in faith, and doctrine; harmoniously labouring together, that the pure testimonies of truth maintained by our worthy predecessors, may be handed down unsullied to posterity; that so, ages to come and generations yet unborn, may be encouraged to build on the same sure foundation, Christ Jesus the eternal rock of ages; who by the inward revelation of his power, can and will, as we are obedient, and as far as is needful for us in the way and work of salvation, unfold, from time to time, the mysterious operation of his redeeming love and power. My mind hath been often deeply tried while my lot hath been cat it, this land, under the painful consideration, that there are many in our day, who are soaring with airy notions far above the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus, and who are endeavouring to climb up some other way than that in which the way-faring men, though tools (as to this world’s wisdom) shall not crt. But it remains a truth, that “he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, to but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” There is no way to the Father but by the Son, nor is there any knowledge of the Father but through the Sota, agreeably to our Lord's declaration—“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” This can never be comprehended by the carmal mind, which is enmity against God; and no marvel that those who are in this state are enquiring with one formerly, “how can these things be * The longer I live, the more I am confirmed in my belief, that if we are ever favoured to understand the mystery of the redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus, we must cease from our own works, and be brought into a teachable state, by the inward operation of the power of the Lord, and there learn the first rudiments of Christian experience.— These appear to me to be very simple, and it only wants simplicity on our parts to become proficients in this school. If we attend to the inwardly revealed power of him, who came to save us from the dominion of sin here, and from the guilt and punishment due to sin in an hereafter state, we shall have no need to go to man for instruction herein. If the sincere prayer of our souls be, “Lord, that our eyes may be opened,” he who is full of compassion will unfold to our understanding what our state by nature is, and how we may be delivered from the hand of our soul’s enemy. Here we shall be favoured to see that our “ Redeemer is strong, the Lord of hosts is his name.” “ He shall thoroughly filead our cause that he may give rest to the land, and disguiet the inhabitants of Babylon.” And for want of our coming under this awakening work, which a religion of tradition and education can never accomplish, many, I fear, are great strangers to themselves, and to the principles of pure religion; and although they may have known enough of the anointing to enable them to see “men as trees walking,” yet for want of a due submission of their wills to the divine will, they have taken up a rest short of the true rest, and so become dwarfs in religious experience, and are endeavouring to seek an easier way to the kingdom than by the cross; hence often arises vain jangling about words to no profit, and a propensity to dispute about, more than to obey, the precepts of the everlasting Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Those who have been truly awakened to a sense of their need of a Saviour, those who have been convinced of the necessity of repentance from |