Let This Life Speak, The Legacy of Henry Joel Cadbury (review)

Abstract

126Quaker History the meeting a body blow which sent it reeling into the Wilburite separation of 1845. However, as John F. Kennedy once said, "Those who do not know the past are condemned to relive it." Byers's work is an excellent corrective in many areas. For once the Nantucket Indian gets his due, and the hitherto hidden proletariat looms with new importance. The "radical spiritism" which lay behind the founding of Nantucket is well portrayed, but Thomas Mayhew's charter to Martha's Vineyard is strangely omitted. Appeals from monthly meeting to quarterly meeting are overlooked, but not the appeal of the town to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1757. The history of city street illumination adds an important facet to the story of whaling, as does the story of the development of candle-making. Edward Byers's formulation of "secularized Quakerism" in the mid-18th century of the island is stimulating. He understands how women had a "nearly-equal" status. He notes that 69 Friends were disowned between 1776 and 1783 for sailing on armed vessels, but curiously enough he says that no Nantucketer was disowned for going to war. It is fascinating to reflect that the cobblestones, the upper Main Street mansions , all that is typically distinguished in present day Nantucket, came after 1820 when Quakerism, to use the island vocabulary, had "gone to seed." Morgins, Valais, SwitzerlandRobert J. Leach Let This Life Speak, The Legacy ofHenry Joel Cadbury. By Margaret Hope Bacon. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. 272 pp. + 17 illus. $27.50. Margaret Hope Bacon has so recalled the life and work of Henry Cadbury that they shine for us. From his earliest dedication to peace, throughout his career to the testimonies which filled his days even as he was approaching ninety, we see this remarkable man patiently standing for what he believed was right, sometimes seconded only by family and a few friends. Those of us who thought of ourselves as his disciples—and all of us were— saw in him the answer to the question he posed in an article he wrote in his seventies entitled: "What Makes a Good Quaker?" He defined one as a person who enjoys "a simple and genuine confidence in the capacity of all people to discover and respond to the divine call within . . . The peculiar combination of inner piety and outer serviceableness . . . collective silence and deeds of love." He embodied this ideal. But while he took it very seriously, he never took himself"too seriously. Engaging humor seasoned his outlook. Who else would have said, no doubt with the mischievous smile we'll always remember, "To match the well-known Book of Quaker Saints, I have toyed with the idea of writing a Book of Quaker Sinners. Very few of us could understand Henry Cadbury's Biblical knowledge, his part in translating the Revised Standard Version, or his study of the historical Jesus. To us he was simply the lovable, dependable spirit who invariably upheld the principles we couldn't always attain to, and who, for over half a century, steered the American Friends Service Committee into the channels where it was most needed. "For him," the author declares, "the path of religious expression was the path of action." While he followed this route he was patient and respectful toward everybody, listening carefully to what was said even when he disagreed radically. Book Reviews127 The biographer has been meticulous in discussing details of Henry Cadbury's life, passing from each one to something else in quick succession. In the earlier chapters we are given a grasp of his thought and activity, but little insight into his actual personality, perhaps because the author didn't known him then. But in the latter part of the book his boyish wit and attention to the funny side of a question came through. Pictures add a great deal, showing us a little of him at various stages of his life. George Williams, who taught with Henry Cadbury at the Harvard Divinity School, said of him, "His faith as a Friend allowed him to get through the white waters in his sturdy canoe . . . and to arrive at his destination with...