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Let Your Lives Speak?

Apr 20th, 2005
by .

In the book­store today a cus­tomer called in and asked about “Let your lives speak,” a phrase fre­quently attrib­uted to George Fox (it’s the source of a book title, “Lives that Speak”). While a quick Google search finds lots of pages where peo­ple say things like “as George Fox said, you should ‘let your lives speak,’” no one actu­ally gives details of when and where he said it. The phrase seems to sit only by itself, with no pas­sages before or after it. A few sites claim it was part of his mes­sage on Fir­bank Fell but no one cites a source. Sit­ting on the same Palm Pilot as the Yard­birds MP3s is Fox’s _Journal_ (Jones edi­tion) and a key­word search doesn’t pick up “lives that speak” or “let your lives speak” any­where. Smells fishy, like another one of those too-good-to-be-true Fox quotes. Can any­one doc­u­ment that it’s real?
PS: I fly bright and early tomor­row morn­ing for this year’s “Quak­ers Unit­ing in Publications”:http://quip.Quaker.org/ meet­ing, in Ore­gon. I don’t know what inter­net access I’ll have so my apolo­gies if new com­ments have to sit for a few days.

Posted in: Miscellany.
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  • Jef­frey Hipp

    Per­haps that’s because the actual quote is to “let your lives preach,” which has since — for some pecu­liar rea­son — been toned down to “speak” by us silly lib­eral Quak­ers. Go figure.

  • http://esr.earlham.edu Stephen W. Angell

    A quick search in Earl­ham School of Religion’s Dig­i­tal Quaker Col­lec­tion (esr​.earl​ham​.edu/​dqc) turns up this in Fox’s epis­tle 200: “So let your lives preach , let your light shine, that your works may be seen, that your Father may be glo­ri­fied; that your fruits may be unto holi­ness, and that your end may be ever­last­ing life.” This epis­tle, enti­tled “The line of right­eous­ness and jus­tice stretched forth over all mer­chants,” is sig­nif­i­cant for pre­sent­ing in a clear way Fox’s busi­ness ethics, which were quite strict for the sev­en­teenth cen­tury and were sig­nif­i­cant in even­tu­ally help­ing Quaker mer­chants to become both trusted (because trust­wor­thy) and wealthy.
    It can be found in sev­eral sources, includ­ing both Fox’s Works, VII, 193, and Hugh Bar­bour and Arthur Roberts, Early Quaker Writ­ings, 1650–1700 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd­mans, 1973), 433–437.
    For Fox, lives also spoke, although he does not seem to have use the phrase “let your lives speak.” For exam­ple, one can find this in “For All the Bish­ops and Priests in Chris­ten­dom,” in Fox’s Works, V, 41: “[H]ow dare you say the scrip­ture is your rule, and that you are suc­ces­sors to the apos­tles, when your lives and prac­tice speak quite con­trary?”
    Steve Angell

  • http://maurers.home.mindspring.com Johan Mau­rer

    Jeffrey’s source expla­na­tion is right. How­ever (speak­ing as an evan­gel­i­cal Quaker — does that make me less silly?), I like both ver­sions, when con­sid­ered on their own mer­its.
    Bill Samuel reprints a Friends in Christ essay on “Let your lives preach” here. I like this essay because it links the var­i­ous ways our lives “preach” with spir­i­tual gifts and the mutu­ally respect­ful divi­sion of labor that hap­pens in a diverse meeting.

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Jef­frey Hipp, Stephen W. Angell and Johan Mau­rer respond­ing. Is this amaz­ing or what?
    Lives speak­ing is cer­tainly a good goal but why have Friends fal­si­fied Fox? Lives preach­ing is some­thing kind of dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing. Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion everyone!