Imagine the darkness of 1650

“Imagine yourself back in 1650 England. For much of the year, it’s dark by 4 PM. Imagine walking to another Quaker’s home for an evening meeting for worship. Maybe the moon is full or maybe it’s absent. Maybe the moon is shining, but maybe its light is obscured by an overcast sky. Perhaps you carry a candle or an oil lantern, but its light isn’t very bright and it doesn’t extend very far. It’s very dark. It’s that darkness that’s key to understanding a major difference between how early Quakers related to the Light and how we do today.

Quakers in the 1650s had had almost no control over light, whereas today our control of light is virtually unlimited (unless there is a power outage). We can flick the lights on and off at our whim. This is a fairly recent phenomenon. The electric light bulb wasn’t invented until the 1870s, and rural electrification didn’t get started until the 1930s. So, throughout the whole 360 years of Quakers, only the most recent decades have seen universal, artificial light. Today, our night is totally lit up in most places. Even in the wilderness, we have flashlights, headlamps, and clickers to start our campfires.

Think about the last time your only source of light was a candle or a campfire. Remember what it was like to get up and walk away from that light. It was very black. The light from the candle or campfire extends out a certain distance, and then it gets very dark. You can look back and see a definite boundary between where the light stops and darkness starts. Early Friends experienced this every day of their lives; they identified light and darkness as joined together, side by side. Separating the two was difficult.”