Joseph John Gurney, 1788-1847 : Quaker Evangelist
[Born] at Earlham Hall, near Norwich, Aug. 2, 1788; d. there Jan. 4, 1847. He attended lectures for a while at Oxford, and was recognized in 1818 as a minister by the Friends. In 1837-40 he preached in the United States and the West Indies. He aided his sister Elizabeth Fry in her measures for prison-reform, and was the associate with Clarkson, Wilberforce, and his brother-in-law, T. Fowell Buxton, in their efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade. He was also a prominent advocate of total abstinence, and his temperance tract, Water is Best, has been widely circulated. Among Friends, he - led an orthodox movement both in England and America which profoundly affected his, branch of the Society, and in the latter country produced a separation.
"The Unitarians chiefly consist of the more refined and educated classes. They appeared to me to form in Massachusetts an aristocratic caste, quite as, much as a religious sect; as if it were inconsistent with the claims of polished intellect, and especially with the functions of public life, (to which many of them are devoted,) to be trammeled by what they regard as the superstitions of orthodoxy. As to Universalism, it may be described as a sort of heretical Methodism, in which an appeal is made, with no small measure of success, to a less cultivated part of the community. I have reason to believe that many low free-thinkers are embraced in this sect; and I fear that the leading tenet on which they are accustomed to dwell is spreading among the people. It is that the doctrine of eternal punishment forms no part of Christianity; that good and bad will all be ultimately saved. Thus the scriptural view of human responsibility is dangerously undermined, and the foundation of Christian morals shaken. Amongst too many the very notion of retributive justice in a World to come seems to be discarded, and the evil passions of human nature are let loose in proportion. The diffusion of this line of sentiment is one of the worst features of the present state of society in New England."