Faith & Spirit Quote by Elias Hicks

Hicks is drawing a hard line between inherited religion and lived conviction, and he does it with the quiet radicalism of a Quaker. The sentence is built to strip away every external prop for belief: not argument, not tradition, not miracles, not national longing - "nothing then but" an inward "revelation of the spirit-of God". For a clergyman, that is a subtle act of rebellion. He relocates religious authority from institutions and texts to an interior experience that cannot be regulated by priests, creeds, or even popular consensus.

The immediate context is the charged Christian question of why so many Jews in Jesus's time did not accept him as Messiah. Hicks refuses the usual move of blaming ignorance or malice. Instead, he makes belief contingent on divine illumination. That sounds charitable, but the subtext cuts both ways: if recognition requires direct revelation, then those who claim certainty without it are performing faith, not possessing it.

This sits squarely in Hicks's broader project in early American Quakerism, where "Inner Light" theology challenged doctrinal Christianity and helped spark the Hicksite separation. His phrasing turns the story of Israel into a mirror for his own moment: a community can have scripture, leaders, and expectations and still miss the point if it confuses secondhand religion for encounter. It's an argument for humility - and also for spiritual independence - disguised as a comment on ancient misunderstanding.