Talk by David Britton, “Margaret Fell and the Next World” given to the QFAS Spring conference held at St. Pancras Church Hall, May 6th 2006

Margaret Fell, as we hardly need reminding, was one of the truly great founders of Quakerism. Her warmth and broad humanity reach us today, where the over-refining of Quaker culture in later periods can leave us feeling a little chilly. Her acute spiritual discernment was vital to the early movement, as was the “Liberty Hall” of her family home at Swarthmoor, a place of refuge during the years of persecution, and also a kind of secretariat for the Society.

It was her discernment which enabled her to see the special quality of George Fox at their first meeting. This, as she records, was not a detached “assessment”, but came as a profound shock, stirring her to the roots of her being, and setting in motion her dedicated life. As for Fox himself, the warmth of Margaret and her daughters was a blessing, giving him back his emotional life, which had been too much subsumed and repressed beneath his sense of spiritual calling.

Their humanity was not, however, a modern humanism, and this is shown in their easy acceptance of immortality and another world. Yet again, Margaret does not argue for it, but simply assumes it – which is actually more impressive evidence for the firmness of early Quaker belief on the issue than much argument would have been.

I would hope by now to have shown incontrovertibly, in my various articles in the Newsletters, that early Quakers all took the next world for granted. All that our modern Quaker deniers can now say is that in some things the early Friends were wrong. As a general principle of approach there is nothing unreasonable about this, but on such a huge issue as our eternal destiny, one cannot simply fault our ancestors without engaging in real debate. One cannot simply drop the “Soul”, without a word. For its absence makes a enormous difference to all our other attitudes and beliefs -- or would do had the other been faced. Not facing it has created instead a confusion that makes a queasy atmosphere in our Society. A deep Friend once wrote these words to me – “Woodbrooke -  such a puzzled place.” Exactly. For as the great Dostoevsky wrote in his Writer’s Diary, “ Without immortality not a single human problem can be solved.”

Margaret Fell’s confidence about the heavenly world is shown in several places in her writings, but in none more impressively than her Testimony to her second husband, George Fox, on his death in 1691. (She outlived him by 11 years). Here she said: “It has pleased God to take away my dear husband out of this evil troublesome world, who was not a man thereof, being chosen out of it, and had his life and being in another region ….. so I am now to give my account and testimony for my dear husband, whom the Lord has taken unto His blessed kingdom an glory ….. Now he has finished his course and his testimony, and is entered into his eternal rest and felicity.”

On another note is Margaret’s dialogue with a Ranter. The Ranter says: “What pre-eminence hath a man above a beast?”. Margaret replies: “Thou art as the beast which perish …..Thou knows not the spirit of a man that goes upwards … thy portion is with the beasts of the field ….”

In her 1656 Epistle to Meetings she talks of Christ giving “eternal life” to “his sheep”. Many modern Friends will of course say that eternal life is lived only in the here and now but this is not what early Friends believed, as is shown by Margaret Fell’s 1659 “Pastoral Letter to certain Friends” in which she writes: “the Spirit of the Saints in light savours the eternal life in all, and loves it in all, and sees and feels it in all.” She is here referring to the departed spirits of “the Saints”, and she goes on to say: “…. And so here is the resting place that you must all meet in where the true fellowship is one with another, which all the Saints in light was gathered into since the beginning, and all meets here from Eternity to Eternity…”.

And if there should be any doubt about her meaning, here is a passage from her 1656 “Epistle to Friends” – “Therefore, if you love your Soul, which is immortal, abide in the Light and live the Light and walk in the Light, where the Fellowship and the Unity is.”

In an interesting letter to the Jews in 1656, sent to Spinoza in Amsterdam, she writes “Our soul’s desire is that you might be gathered and come into the Covenant of Light and partake with us of the everlasting riches and inheritance that never fades away.”

Many things point compellingly towards an experience of what Anglicans and Catholics and Orthodox celebrate as their Communion of Saints. For early Quakers it was clearly a vivid reality, not least because of the many Quaker martyrs in that first generation. The presence of the departed in those early Meetings must have been very important, a comfort and an inspiration for those struggling against persecution on earth. This is something that has been neglected in Quaker historical studies. And what a loss it is to Quakerism that those living presences are no longer welcomed in Meeting for Worship or elsewhere. An openness to them would transform our Society.

Here are decisive passages from the Testimony of her children to Margaret Fell after her death in 1702: “And the blessed God of Heaven and Earth preserved her in a good understanding to the last ….. and we believe she is inheriting a Heavenly Mansion, prepared by the Lord Jesus Christ, for all His faithful followers.”

Even more telling is the Testimony of George Whitehead, in that it clearly reveals the sophisticated early Quaker understanding of the relation between eternal life on earth and eternal life in heaven: “She retained a sincere and constant love to all faithful Friends and brethren to the end, which was a true evidence of her being passed from death to life, while here [my emphasis] and her portion in eternal life and felicity in the heavenly kingdom…”

A phrase such as “passing from death to life” while on earth is of course eagerly seized on by modern “spiritual” Quakers as proof that the early Quakers saw no need for life after death. But Rex Ambler and others have read their Quaker documents carelessly and self-servingly and need to go back and do their work again.

In support of this there is a passage from Thomas Camm’s Testimony to her: “… and now she is rewarded with the full fruition [my emphasis] of eternal life and Peace with her God.”

A little before her death this was among the Sayings reported of her: “Oh! My sweet Lord, in your holy bosom do I commit myself freely, not desiring to live in this troublesome painful world. It is all nothing to me: for my Maker is my husband.