Pendle Pamphlet Impressions I (Selections from #18-120)

Pendle Hill Pamphlet Impressions

by Daniel M. Jensen

        Editor's Note:  What you will find on these pages are what impressed me most about the Pendle Hill Pamphlets I have read.  Most often that was segments of the text.  I had a profound experience at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center and religious school outside of Philadelphia, PA.  The pamphlets are an example of the thoughts and actions that can be inspired by Quakerism.  Pendle Hill is a place where Quakerism can be studied and experienced.  My pamphlet impressions are a moon’s reflection of the sun-bright wisdom to be found in the full-length pamphlet.  Who knows, they might affect the spiritual tides of a fellow seeker.

         The bracketed parts of the text are where I have encapsulated what the author said, or in rare instances have reacted to it.  

18. Anthology with Comments (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1942)

[About the Author]—Elizabeth Gray Vining or Elizabeth Janet Gray was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1902.  She earned a MS in library science from Drexel Institute and became a librarian at UNC at Chapel Hill.  She became a Quaker by convincement after her husband died and she was injured in a car accident.  She was an author of many children’s books, and tutored the Japanese royal family from 1946-1950.  After writing this pamphlet she went on to write PH pamphlets #34, 66, 167, 221, and #246.

PREPARATIONS—[Even though an earthly king may inspire all manner of preparation], “at the coming of the King of Heaven/All’s set at 6 and 7;/ we wallow in our sin/Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. We entertain him always like a stranger,/ And as at first, still lodge him in a manger.  CHRIST CHURCH MS.

The King of Heaven gives no hint of his visit beforehand.  Preparations for spiritual visitation consist of watching and praying, maintaining “alert passivity.”  Today the number of people who are able to assert and to prove their assertion by their transformed lives and shining faces that they have been visited by the Holy Spirit is small.  There are undoubtedly many who have had the experience but who are not willing to talk about it. 

[If their numbers are few], there are increasing numbers of intelligent and thoughtful people who are willing to enter upon preparation and spiritual training.  Albert Einstein, Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington find a spiritual force in the universe, though they may not call it God.  Pascal said:  “Thou wouldst not have sought me if thou hadst not already found me.”  [Maybe] the King of Heaven is taking a hand in such preparations.

[Ecstasy]…A rainbow and a cuckoo’s song/ May never come together again;/ May never come/ This side of the tomb.  W.H. DAVIES. Only a few people know ecstasy. [Here], I am thinking of “minor ecstasies”, bits of stardust which are for all of us. Something seen, heard, or felt flashes upon one with a bright freshness, & the heart stirs & lifts in answer. Fragments of beauty & truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing eye & the receptive spirit to become the stuff of minor ecstasies. [Poets are inspired by great & minor ecstasies alike]. 

[For me] an airplane, a great silver bird more rare then than now, coming out of the sunset [was a moment of ecstasy, and became my yard stick for future minor ecstasies.  Once in sorrow, I heard the] soft and playful patter of locust blossoms falling on the roof from the tree above, and my heart knew again the happiness that is of the universe.  It is well to recognize and cherish the moments when they come; it is an added joy to collect them. 

Writing them down saves them for us; it reminds us when we need it that we have had these moments and will have them again.  Exercising our faculty for minor ecstasies may actually increase the number of them we feel, though we must be careful not to let lust cloud our honesty with ourselves.  Minor ecstasies will light those [numerous] gray stretches like faint but unmistakable stars, if we but look for them. 

[Renewal]—… And now in age I bud again;/after so many deaths I live and write;/I once more smell the dew and rain/And relish versing:O my only Light,/ It cannot be/That I am he/On whom thy tempests fell all night.  GEORGE HERBERT      A mystic, he perhaps wrote of the Dark Night of the Soul, that arid and bleak time, experienced by most of the saints, when the Spirit seems to withdraw its presence, leaving the human soul in doubt and despair.  Most great mystics have described it as the necessary stage before the soul laboriously climbing the Ladder of Perfection reaches union with the divine.

[Sympathy for Animals]—A Robin Redbreast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven in a Rage./ Each outcry of the hunted Hare/ A fiber from the Brain does tear.  WILLIAM BLAKE 

I have heard just once the outcry of the hunted hare.  [My West Highland terrier chased one, caught it, and shook it to death].  The scream of the hare before death is almost human in its intensity, and a human cry is nearly animal in its abandonment to pain and fright.  It is part of the makeup of mystics that they feel a sympathy and a union with animals.  [Some are gifted enough to communicate the experience to others].

PRAISE OF CREATED THINGS—[After praising Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water, Brother Fire and Mother Earth Saint Francis continues with]:  Be thou praised my Lord, of our Sister Bodily Death/ from whom no man living may escape./ Woe to those who die in mortal sin./  Blessed are they who are found in thy most holy will,/ for the second death shall not work them ill.      SAINT FRANCIS

St. Francis’ Hymn of Praise of Created Things is [especially moving in its recognition of the beauty of the universe, it realization of our kinship with all it manifestations and its simple thankfulness.  Birds were dear to St. Francis indeed; they enter again and again into the story of his life.  [It is said he even preached to them; they listened reverently; awaited his leave to go; & left going in the 4 directions, singing praises to God as they went]. Larks, swallows, turtle doves, and falcons are the birds St. Francis knew, and about which stories were told. 

God’s Troubadour they have called Francis of Assisi, because he had that skill in his youth.  He would always show joy to the world and used his skill to sing praises in French unto the Lord Jesus Christ.  In St. Francis’ life, more than any other I know about, the stream ran not only humble and precious and pure, but joyful as well.               

THE ELIXIR—To do it as for Thee … A servant with this clause/makes drudgerie divine:/Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,/Makes that and th’action fine.//This is the famous stone/That turneth all to gold:/For that which God doth touch and own/Cannot for less be told.  GEORGE HERBERT

All life is sacrament. In preparing meals, the engagement is fought daily; no ground is taken. Brother Law-rence was famous for practicing the presence of God in the kitchen better than in the meditations in his cell. It takes a special double consciousness to achieve 2-fold success in meditation & cooking. Work can be looked on as sacrament, [with] making drudgery divine. [There must be] honest dedication to a Reality honestly believed in. 

[Thomas Ellwood]—The winter tree/resembles me/ Whose sap lies in its root./ The spring draws nigh;/ As it so I/ Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.      THOMAS ELLWOOD.

This is very bad poetry.  [Yet,] I like its humility, its hope, and its unconscious humor.  Where Herbert wrote joyously of actual renewal, Ellwood is looking forward in a sort of numb faith to the hope of spring.  Thomas Ellwood was the son of Squire Ellwood of Crowell, Oxfordshire.  [Following Quaker beliefs, the son refused to take his hat in his father’s presence, the father snatched it off, and did so until Thomas ran out of hats.  After further tribulations and imprisonment, Thomas went to live with the Peningtons at Chalfont St. Peter and tutored their children.  He was for a time Milton’s secretary. A meek, drab-skirted Muse [would be fitting] for Ellwood, as his personality was earnest, humorless, and faintly absurd.  He still speaks for many of us who dare to look forward to a time when we too Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.

[Faith]—Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine,/That lights the pathway but one step ahead/Across a void of mystery and dread./Bid then the tender light of faith to shine/By which alone the mortal heart is led/Unto the thinking of the thought divine.      GEORGE SANTAYANA

When I was in college, we had little use for faith, defined as “believing something you know is not true.”  It has taken me more than 15 years to know faith as the basis of action.  The higher and nobler the object or force on which one sets one’s faith, the more daring and effective the action. 

[Releasing Joy]—He who kisses a joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise.  WILLIAM BLAKE

One of the most effective and most necessary ways of overcoming self is learning not to lay one’s hot, possessive hands on the joys that one values.  The Cloud of Unknowing sees danger even in fastening oneself to mediation’s and contemplation’s joys.  

[Why does Evil Flourish?]—Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.  GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS

Gerald M. Hopkins poem is a paraphrase of Jeremiah’s previous complaint (Jer. 12:1) Though the thought of these 2 intensely religious men are similar, [there is a difference].  Jeremiah takes comfort in the prospect of the Lord’s vengeance.  The modern has come into full possession of his ego, [and asks for rain on his roots].

      [Patience]—Patience… suffreth debonairely alle the outrages of adversitte & every wikked word. CHAUCER

The Parson’s Tale is a sermon on the 7 deadly sins.  His practice of his own precepts has typified for us these 500 odd years the ideal country parson.  He describes fully sin’s antidote among the virtues.  Patience is a discredited value, [no doubt because as practiced today by heads of state is really impatience].  Patience characterized by grace and lightheartedness in meeting outrageous misfortune, is something different altogether.

 NIGHT—The sun descending in the west,/ The evening star does shine;/ The birds are silent in their nest,/ and I must seek for mine,/ The moon like a flower,/In heaven’s high bower,/ With silent delight/ Sits and smiles on the night.//…“And now beside thee, bleating lamb,/I can lay down and sleep,/Or think on Him who bore thy name,/Graze after thee, and weep./For, wash’d in life’s river, My bright mane for ever/ Shall shine like gold/As I guard o’er the fold.  WILLIAM BLAKE    His Songs of Innocence in 1789 was as revolutionary and significant as the 1^st snowdrop that pushes it head through the frost-hard ground, a wild flower in the winter forest. 

There is over all the Songs of Innocence an unearthly and ineffable shine.  [They are to words what Blake’s “Infant Jesus at Prayer” is to painting]. A.E. Housman writes: “Blake gives us poetry neat or with so little meaning that nothing but poetic emotion is perceived or matters.”   [Perception of poetic emotion is] allowing the active analytic surface mind to cease questioning, and the deep-self, which understands symbols [intuitively], to receive the full substance of the poem, [to feel it] and be enriched by it.  

[Death]—They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it...  Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas.  They live in one another still…  This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their Friendship and Society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal.    WILLIAM PENN

Very few poems have been written about death when it strikes those whom we love, a situation that urgently calls for the balm & stimulus of beautiful & comforting words. That is why these lines of William Penn’s taken from Some Fruits of Solitude, are so valuable. Penn had lost his beloved wife & son, as well as his loving, protective mother. Sorrow cannot be fought & overcome; it cannot be evaded or escaped; it must be lived with.  Somehow we must learn to meet it with courage and to bear it with serenity, which is a whole way of living.  We long to find in sorrow something that makes us stronger and better for the experience, [perhaps something immortal].

[LAST LINES]—Emily Bronte’s statement, these LAST LINES of faith in the God within [really] endures no comment:  No coward soul is mine,/ No trembler in the world’s storm troubled sphere:/ I see Heaven’s glories shine,/& faith shines equal, arming me from fear.//… Though earth & man were gone,/& suns & universes ceased to be,/ & Thou wert left alone,/ Every existence would exist in Thee.//  There is not room for Death,/Nor atom that his might could render void:/Thou—Thou art Being & Breath,/ & what Thou art may never be destroyed.

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20. Guide to Quaker Practice (by Howard H. Brinton; 1942)

         This guide is written largely with new Friends meetings in mind. . .  It will also be useful to new members in older meetings, and [as a reminder] to old members.  This guide may prove useful in supplying a summary based on Quaker practices ... prior to the appearance of [the historical branches of 19^th Century Quakers.]  The practices presented here went through a period of development from 1650-1750 and were formulated from 1750-1850.

         Practice and Belief—Quaker beliefs are those which condition Christian behavior in general and those which give rise to unique practices.  Friends have . . . the conviction that no form of words can adequately convey the living, growing truth of the Christian religion.  [Friends neither minimize Church history, nor underestimate the various interpretations of it.]  The Society of Friends accepts into membership a person who is willing to follow the Quaker method, based on belief in a God-centered spiritual universe, regardless of where it might lead.  The Quakers religious and social doctrines are subject to new interpretation as new more Truth is apprehended.  Neither the severe discipline of the 18^th Century nor the laxity of the early 20^th will meet the needs of today.

       Structure—The basic unit in the Society of Friends is called a Monthly Meeting, because its official business sessions are held monthly; as few as 2 or 3 persons constitute a meeting for worship.  Membership in the Society of Friends is through a Monthly Meeting, which may be part of a Quarterly Meeting.  Several Quarterly Meetings may join to make up a Yearly Meeting.  Individual members have the same rights and responsibilities in the larger groups [as they do] in the smaller group.  The individual may [express a concern to the Monthly Meeting, which will pass it upwards, or the individual may] express his concern directly to the Quarterly or Yearly Meeting.

         [Because of the historical branches of 19^th Century Quakers] some Monthly Meetings belong to 2 Yearly Meetings, or have individuals who claim membership in one or both Yearly Meetings.  The fluidity in the present organization of the Society of Friends is a sign of growth and development.  The larger bodies exist, not as an authority over, but as an aid in undertaking matters smaller bodies cannot easily handle.  The union of smaller bodies may take place on the basis of a similarity of views and practices.  The Yearly Meeting issues to Monthly Meetings Queries, Advices, and reports of its proceedings.  A Monthly Meeting may be set up or laid down only by the authority of a Quarterly Meeting.  An individual may appeal a disciplinary action to a higher meeting.  Meetings beginning under the care of an established Monthly Meeting are called Indulged or Allowed Meetings.        

          Meeting for Worship—Meetings gather monthly for business, and at least once a week for worship, [which is] the only Quaker practice which has existed from the start without [having] a process of development.  Quakers accepted the theology of their time, but they added . . . direct contact with the Divine Source [of] . . . the Sacred Book, the “Light Within,” “Christ Within,” “that of God in every man.”  It is the Absolute Value which is the source of all relative values, however imperfectly it may be comprehended by the human understanding.  The Light . . . affords knowledge of religious truth, the strength to act on it, and it inspires cooperation and unity [as Friends are “joined to the Lord, and to one another”.]

        What is peculiar [to Quakerism] is the type of religious worship based entirely on this experience . . . centered in the Divine Life flowing into and through human hearts whereby we commune with God.  The Society of Friends has never issued specific instructions regarding what the worshiper should do during the silence . . . that would limit the freedom of the Spirit.  Friends say that outward observances [i.e. sacraments] cannot carry more of Divine grace than is found in the inward baptism of the Spirit and inner communion with God.  [Audible] words should be the spontaneous outward expression of an immediate inner condition. 

         While the surface of the mind may be ruffled with passing winds of thought or fantasy, the deeper regions may at the same time be active in prayer and worship.  Useful exercises included: self-examination to remove obstacles to a deeper communion with God; repeating to oneself a Biblical or devotional passage; reviewing in imagination some event; prayer with learned words, one’s own words, or without words.  The worshiper’s path does not lie over a well-marked road, for in worship one is on the frontier of one’s conscious being.

         Prayer . . . imperceptibly passes over from a person’s outreach toward God to God’s answer.  Such experience is seldom attained by struggling, for it [may not be given a name.]  Friends . . . nearly all report intervening periods of dryness when God seems far away and meeting for worship is formal and unfruitful.  To the intellectual silent worship offers one essential ingredient of life that cannot be obtained through books, lectures, or sermons:  one [again becomes aware] of one’s roots in the deep, spiritual soil of one’s existence.  The experience which lifts us out of the world carries us back to it; we cannot know the God’s joy and peace without seeking to bring joy and peace to others [by] changing something on earth that it may more resemble the Kingdom of God.  

         The success of meetings for worship depends somewhat on preparation . . . a general preparation of life and character.  An important type of preparation for group worship is individual devotion.  The time immediately preceding First Day morning meeting is important in preparing for worship, [and should involve quiet reflection].

        No one should go to a Friends meeting with the expectation either of speaking or of not speaking.  As the worshiper sits in silence a message may arise which is recognized as one intended not simply for oneself but for the whole gathering. A peculiar sense of urgency is usually the sign of divine requirement.  The [vocal ministry] should contain some, if not all, of the following:  a religious focus (i.e. see the matter as God would see it); spontaneity; being an instrument through which the Spirit speaks; stating a message vs. arguing a case; simplicity; brevity; cease speaking when the message has been delivered; vocal prayer.  Friends are cautioned to be patient with themselves and with one another, to endeavor to perfect the instrument, or to allow it to become perfected.

         The best worship is achieved when the worshiper is unconscious of the passage of time, and is no way reminded of it.  The suitable length of a meeting was judged not by a [time limit] but by the judgment of two responsible Friends.  In recent years the First Day morning meeting for worship has tended to last about one hour.  [Daily meetings may be a half-hour long.  The room should be of satisfying size and proportion.  It should be plain, including only necessary equipment.  Friends should not be scattered about, but should gather in an orderly manner comparatively near to one another.  The traditional seating arrangement is 2 or 3 rows of raised benches along the longer side of the room facing the other benches, occupied by the older and more experienced friends.  The newer meetings have the seats drawn up in a hollow square or circle.

        One early type of meeting was the retired meeting, where a small number gathered before regular worship, and little or no speaking was expected.  The threshing meeting was held with the express purpose of convincing people of the doctrines of the Society of Friends.  The “opportunity” was applied to a meeting for worship which began suddenly and unexpectedly in a group assembled for social or other purposes.  Another religious exercise of great historical importance was the daily reading of the Bible in the family. 

        Very early in the Quaker movement certain Friends were recognized as qualified to have more responsibility for the good order of the meeting (i.e. Elders).  Elders or their equivalent, are still appointed by most meetings. . . [from a group of] tactful, discerning persons who naturally draw to them those in need of help.  The duties of elders are mainly concerned with promoting conditions favorable to the success of the meeting for worship.  [They encourage those reluctant to share ministry], and deal firmly with persons who abuse the freedom of the meeting with too much discourse.  Recorded ministers and elders still meet to consider the meeting’s spiritual life. 

         Meeting for Business—Every meeting should hold a business session at least once a month, preceded by a time of worship.  [Corporate] Guidance [is central to Quakerism and] is sought from the Spirit of Truth and Light.  In the transaction of business the meeting assumes that it will be able to act as a unit; no vote is ever taken.  The clerk of the meeting apprehends and records the decision of the meeting.  The business before the meeting is generally presented by the clerk, but it may come through a committee report or from an individual speaking under a sense of concern.  When the discussion [reflects] a fair degree of unity, the [presiding] clerk or [recording clerk] prepares a minute which states the judgment [or sense] of the meeting as the clerk understands it; the minute is read to and approved by the meeting.

        [Anyone] still unconvinced may remain silent or withdraw their objections. If they are not able to withdraw their objection, the clerk generally feels unable to make a minute, especially if the objection’s source is known for wisdom and experience.  If a strong difference of opinion exists on an urgent decision, the subject may be referred to a committee with power to act. . . it must be remembered that minorities are sometimes right.  A time of silence [may be called for in times of tense disagreement].  Theoretically, the clerk is not a presiding but a recording officer.  A clerk’s most difficult problem is to determine the right speed with which business can be satisfactorily transacted.  [Other concerns of the clerk include]: discussing one topic at a time; unfinished business; keeping discussion addressed to meeting as a whole; clarifying remarks or encouraging someone to finish theirs.

        Minutes are preserved and, for more important meetings, they are printed.  Such minutes of previous meetings as will aid the meeting in deciding what business should come before it should be read.  The meeting may employ a secretary to attend to keeping a current member list, notifying committee of meeting time and places and supporting their work, arranging lectures and hospitality.

         This method of conducting a meeting requires more patience and takes more time.  The Quaker method differs fundamentally from several other consensus methods; debate is out of place here.  The object of speaking is to explore as well as convince.  The Friends method of attaining results exhibits principles typical of organic growth . . . often obtained by a kind of cross-fertilization.  The early speakers on a subject affect those who follow; the process concludes with an expression by some individual as can be endorsed by the whole meeting. 

        Even if it requires years, this way may still be more expeditious than other methods in producing the right result.  It often happen that neither the majority nor the minority is right, in which case the Quaker way may provide time for the truth to become apparent.  Unity is always possible because the same Light of Truth shines in some measure in every human heart tending toward the same goal.  By prayer, meditation, and worship that goal gradually becomes apparent. 

        Subjects of the Business Meeting [Appendix of original content]—Committee members for special and less crucial purposes are nominated from the floor.  Key positions and standing committee members are nominated by a special nominating committee.  A Yearly Committee usually finds in convenient to empower an executive committee to for it on matters which cannot be postponed in the intervals when it is not in session.  Committee business is conducted by the same methods as in the business meeting.

          In most meetings shepherding the flock is assigned to the Overseers or the Committee of Overseers.  They are expected to visit all the families at least once a year, and more often in times of crisis.  If any member is guilty of acts seriously contrary to Society of Friends principles, the overseers should deal with them in a spirit of love in order for their help and the meeting’s reputation.

         All money needed for the work of the Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings is raised by the Monthly Meeting and entrusted to its Treasurer.  Application for membership is made to the Monthly Meeting by letter addressed to the overseers or to the clerk.  A [membership clearness] committee ascertains whether or not they understand the beliefs of the Society of Friends, and agrees to them, and intends to abide by them.  The Monthly Meeting grants the application with a minute made to that effect.  Children are welcomed into the religious community for the same reason that they are welcomed into a family; they come from the very beginning under the care and oversight of the meeting.

        If the meeting approves members to “travel in the service of Truth,” they are given a minute, which should be presented to the meetings to which they go, and turned in along with a report at the conclusion of their service.  The Meeting should be sensitive to the needs of its neighborhood and to the larger population around it.  Social evils of many sorts call for alert attention.  The interest which the meeting’s members take in the business of the Monthly Meeting will largely depend upon the variety and validity of the activities engaged in and reported upon.  New meetings should be regularly cared for by the parent meeting.

        Records of membership, removals to and other meetings, births, deaths, and marriages should be accurately kept.  Certificates of Removal may be granted to members wishing to remove their membership to another meeting.  Sojourning minutes are granted to meeting members attending another meeting.

Marriage of members or of others wishing to be married after the manner of Friends are under the care of the Meeting.  A [marriage clearness] committee is appointed to make sure that no obstructions appear.  After approval, a marriage oversight committee is appointed.  The union of man and woman in marriage being an act of God rather than of humans, it cannot be consummated by anyone other than the contract parties. 

        After the meeting is well settled, the bride and groom enter, arm in arm.  After a short silence, the bride and groom rise and repeat the ceremony.  The ushers bring forward the marriage certificate which is signed by the contracting parties.  This certificate which contains the words of the promises which the bride and groom have made to each other is then read aloud; later the certificate is signed by the guests.  The vows are followed by a meeting for worship.  Funerals or memorial meetings are conducted according to the principles which govern a meeting for worship.  In all matters pertaining to burial, simplicity is urged. 

         The Ministry of Teaching—The religion of the Society of Friends is based on an inward experience deeper than intellectual concepts, it cannot be taught in same way that subjects are taught in a school curriculum.   First Day (Sunday) Schools did not exist among Friends until recently.  Today Friends have for the most part adopted the usual Protestant form of Bible Teaching.  Many important facts about religion can be communicated by the usual teaching methods.  To be aware that one is part of a great stream of religious thought and experience flowing out of the remote past into the future is a necessary part of attaining insight into the problems of the present.  The Bible furnishes the language and figures of speech in which religious experience is expressed in the West.

        The Adult Discussion Group may be a part of the First Day School program or it may meet on a week day at some member’s home, in order to educate opinion.  A good leader will draw out the opinions of others rather than expressing their own, ask pertinent questions at appropriate times, and not be afraid of prolonged silence for reflection before, during, and after the discussion.  Lectures should occasionally be arranged by the Monthly Meeting to enlighten members and others; religious political, educational, and industrial leaders should be heard.      Schools were set up by many Monthly Meetings as the Quaker movement spread in the 17^th and 18^th centuries throughout the American colonies. With the coming of public schools, the number of Friends’ elementary schools rapidly declined.  The object [of the schools] was not to equip the pupils for success according to worldly standards, but to live according to the Quaker pattern.  A few of the boarding schools and academies became colleges.  The conference’s program consists of meetings for worship, lectures, and discussions.

        Adult Education is of peculiar significance in the Society of Friends because of the important duties which are shared by all its members rather than being laid on specialists trained in theological schools.  Woodbrooke in England was founded in 1903 for this purpose.  Schools at Haverford and Swarthmore colleges in Philadelphia filled this role from 1917-27.  These same efforts now focus at Pendle Hill, Wallingford PA, which was opened in 1930 as a center for religious and social study and for training persons for foreign work under the American Friends Service Committee.  Friends have always had a testimony against verbalism (i.e. emphasis on language skills, rather than the substance the words point to.

         The result of both the meeting for worship and the meeting for business depends to a large degree on the [social] inter-play of understanding, friendship, and love among members.  When a meeting succeeds in making persons of various races, [degrees of] education, and economic status feel genuinely at home it has come a long way toward [the gospel goal of having] “neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free.”

        Social Testimonies—People should begin the reformation of society in that area where their most immediate responsibility lies, that is in themselves, and work from there outward as the way opens.  The Friend with an uneasy conscience . . . can secure a measure of inward satisfaction by doing what he feels called upon to do regardless of results in terms of success or failure.  The Quaker appeal has generally been based on the spiritual harm wrongdoers were doing to themselves and the resulting loss of inward peace.  The ideal pattern of society should be incarnated in the meeting as a social unit in which the various parts are organically related so that it becomes in some degree the “mystical body of Christ,” . . . the feet and hands through which Christ’s work is carried on in the world. . .  The Society of Friends is still very far from discovering all the consequences of its religious premises.

        The Quaker social doctrines [is here outlined] under 4 heads: community, harmony, equality, and simplicity.  Community within the meeting becomes manifest as an attempt of the members to share with one another, spiritually, intellectually, socially, and economically.  A religious family, being larger, could have greater stability in sharing with each other economically.  Friends encourage the kind of social service [outside the meeting] in which the work is done with rather than for those who are helped [e.g. American Friends Service Committee, especially in the aftermath of war].    

         [When] in Harmony, those holding the peace testimony seek to reconcile individuals to one another so that ... cooperation replaces conflict.  These methods can be applied to the settlement of disputes in the world at large [without war, which] is a test of strength, not a search for truth and justice.  Quaker pacifism is based primarily on religious insight which often gives clear indication that certain actions are wrong irrespective of the results which may be humanly foreseen.  One must live up to one’s own conscience which reveals to one the highest moral values that one knows, whether this conscience leads one to fight or to refrain from fighting.  Friends have been pioneers in methods now universally used in dealing with [criminals], prisoners, the mentally ill, and children.

        Equality means that all have equal worth in the sight of God; equality was the earliest social testimony.  Equality in the ministry between men and women was recognized in the Society of Friends from the beginning.  [Outward] distinctions . . . should never be used either to flatter or humiliate.  Doing away with accepted usages based on social inequalities caused extensive suffering through fine and imprisonment. 

         The coming of religious liberty to England was a triumph of non-violent method after the then usual method of violence had failed. . .  Quaker tradition also exercised a powerful influence on the Constitution of the United States.  Work in line with the testimony of racial equality developed more slowly and has failed to keep pace with the need.  The doctrine of equality as far as it refers to economic status is as yet, largely undeveloped.  Friends today are groping for light on these difficult questions which are rendered even more highly complex by contemporary conditions.

         Simplicity means in general:  sincerity; genuineness; avoidance of superfluity.  In dress, simplicity first led dispensing with useless ornaments at a time when the dress of the fashionable was excessively elaborate.  Though [traditional] “plain dress” has largely disappeared, much ornamentation is still considered out of place.  In speech, simplicity means that the truth should be stated as simply as possible without affectation, excess words or rhetorical flourish; in business it meant a one price system in selling goods.  Making an affirmation rather than taking an oath falls under simplicity of speech.  “Plain language” included: the use of “thou” for second person singular; omitting titles such as “Mr.,” Mrs.,” and “Your honor”; numbering the days of the week and months of the year instead of using pagan names.  [Most of “plain language” is no longer used].  In behavior, simplicity means avoiding pretense or affectation, [and not] “engaging in business beyond their ability to manage.”

        Members of the Society of Friends are far from living up to what they profess.  They realize that they are partly responsible for the social evils by which they have materially benefited. They also believe [that] the power of God enables them to “get atop of” these things.  They seek [as best as they are able], to “Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

       The Queries—In early times the Yearly Meeting sent down to its Quarterly and Monthly Meetings a series of questions in order that it might keep informed as to the condition of its meetings and their members.  In the course of time the Queries . . . became a means of self-examination and evaluation as well as [their original purpose].  Most meetings today have kept the queries as a kind of Quaker confessional.  Queries in various forms can be found in Yearly Meeting disciplines.  The following revised Queries are [the most remarkable] ones formulated by the two Philadelphia Yearly Meetings in 1946.

        Is there a living silence in which you feel drawn together by the power of God in your midst?

        Is the vocal ministry in your meetings exercised under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit, without arrangement, and in the simplicity and sincerity of Truth?

        Are your meetings for business held in a spirit of love, understanding and forbearance?

       Do you seek the right course of action in humble submission to the authority of Truth and patient search for unity?

       Do your children receive the loving care of the Meeting and are they brought under such influences as tend to develop their religious life?

       Do you counsel with those whose conduct or manner of living gives ground for concern?

       What are you doing to ensure equal opportunities in social and economic life for those who suffer discrimination because of race, creed or social class?

        What are you doing to understand and remove the causes of war and develop the conditions and institutions of peace?

        What are you doing to interpret to others the message of Friends and to cooperate with other in the Christian message?

   Do you make a place in your daily life for inward retirement and communion with the Divine Spirit?

        Are you careful to keep your business and your outward activities from absorbing time and energy that should be given to spiritual growth and [your right share of] the service of your religious society?

          Do you faithfully maintain our testimony against military training and other preparation for war . . . as inconsistent with the spirit and teaching of Christ?   

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21. Reality and the Spiritual World (by Thomas R. Kelly; 1942)  

[About the Author]—Thomas Raymond Kelly was born into an evangelical Quaker family in 1893.  He graduated from Wilmington College in 1913 as a chemistry major.  He went to Haverford College near Philadelphia, PA where Rufus Jones became his mentor.  He came into contact with the mystical vein of Quakerism.  He worked with American Friends Service Committee feeding German children, wrote and taught on mysticism at Haverford  for 5 years, after receiving his masters of philosophy there.  He died in 1941.      

    FOREWORD—Throughout his years at Haverford College Thomas R. Kelly entered generously into Pendle Hill’s life. January 1941 he led a conference of Meeting workers on cultivation of the spiritual life; he died 5 days later. This pamphlet is made up of 4 addresses given during the winter of 1940-41. [Thomas Kelly had a] valid mystical experience which made so many of those loved Thomas Kelly as a Friend hearken to him as a prophet.
    The Inner Teacher, the Holy Spirit:  speaks within; teaches us things we can’t learn in books; makes vivid and dynamic formerly dead phrases; integrates us and leads us into new truths; lays on us new burdens; sensitizes us in new areas, toward God and toward all.  Thomas R. Kelly
    [Arguments for the Existence of God]—How can we be sure that God is real, and not just a creation of our wishful thinking?  If I could find a Mark worthy to be the aim of the bow of my life, I should be integrated freed, from internal conflicts, those confusions and tangles within which makes me ineffective, indecisive, wavering, half-hearted, unhappy.  Maybe the whole conviction of a Spiritual Reality shadowing over us all is a useful, [stabilizing] hoax as long as we believe it intensely.  If the Truth is that there is no real God, but only human craving for a God, then we want to know that, and adjust our lonely lives to that awful fact. 
    [First/Second/Third Arguments]—I asked a friend: “Why are are you so sure there is a Reality corresponding to your religious cravings?” [He said that since all other cravings are provided for in this world, the satisfaction of] profound craving for God is to be expected. At best his argument from analogy only indicates the possibility, [perhaps even probability] that there is an objectively real God, corresponding to his hunger for God.
    [When a devout Protestant was asked the same question] he answers, “The Bible tells me God is real, that in God we live and move and have our being.”  [I disagree that only one time and special men may provide divine inspiration.  He said that Bible is inspired because it says it is. The Bible saying that it is authoritative, and citing the belief of multitudes of people in God is not enough to prove that God exists.  The Catholic approach that the Holy Church guaranteed the reliability of the gospel suffers from a similar circular argument, where the 1870 Vatican Council pronounced the Pope infallible.  But only the Pope is infallible so the Council is not infallible in pronouncing the Pope infallible or the Bible reliable.
    [Then there is the amazing complexity and interdependence of the world]. And here am I, a complex being, of amazing detail of body and astounding reaches of mind.  My parents didn’t make me.  There must be a God who creates, maintains and preserves the whole world order.  But the argument rests upon only half the evidence.  The world is imperfect and you cannot argue from an imperfect effect, the world, to a perfect cause, God. 
    Other Arguments Indicated—There are also ontological, moral & universality of religion arguments [that I am not satisfied with]. The fact is that men experience God’s presence. In times of direct experience of Presence, we know God is utterly real; we need no argument. It isn’t enough to believe in God’s love, you must experience God’s love. It isn’t enough to believe Christ was born, you must experience Christ’s birth in your heart. 
   Let us notice that his experience of God energizes us enormously, in a way far different from arguments.  We love God with a new and joyous love, wholly and completely.  We are energized at the base of our being by a Divine Energizing.  It isn’t creeds that keep churches going; it is the dynamic of God’s life, given in sublime and intimate moments to men and women and boys and girls.  And the experience seems to come from beyond us.  It carries a sense of objectivity in its very heart, as if it arose from beyond us and came in as a revelation of a reality out there; we receive it.  For the person who experiences God, there is a certainty about God which is utterly satisfying and convincing to oneself.  The experience of God brings a new kind of meaning to the reality of God, vivid and doubt-free; it is not transferable to another. 
    The testimony of mystical experience is not absolutely logically free from flaws. Mere internal pressure of certainty does not prove certainty. Intense inner assurance that something is so does not make it so. We are assured that lives that have experienced God as vividly real are new lives, transformed lives, stabilized lives, integrated lives, souls newly sensitive to moral needs [& committed to action to meet those needs]. There is a logical defect in this pragmatic test. Logicians call it the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent.  This fallacy is shared with every scientific theory that is supported by experimental evidence; science rests upon faith, not upon certainty.   
     I am convinced that God is greater than logic, although not contrary to logic, & our inability to catch him in the little net of our human reason is no proof of God’s non-existence, but only of our need that reason shall be supplemented by God’s tender visitations, [& by God’s leadings which are] superior to any our intellects can plan.
    THE SPIRITUAL WORLD—[I am doing as Immanuel Kant did]—I am destroying reason to make room for faith. James Pratt’s 3 stages of religion are: [childlike] Credulity; [adolescent] Doubt and Criticism; Faith.  The 3^rd stage, Faith, is strikingly akin to the 1^st. It is the childlike simplicity of the truly great souls.  At this stage one can differ radically with other people intellectually, yet love them because they too are basically devoted to feeding upon the Bread of Life, rather than analyzing that Bread.
    By whom is the spiritual world peopled?  Humankind has peopled it with more than God; some have added angels, devils, the Devil, souls of the departed, Heaven and Hell.  How does the spiritual world behave towards us? [How do we decide in between conflicting views of the spiritual world], rejecting some and accepting others?  [The possible methods are]: reason; judgment of spiritually discerning souls; Bible writers; our own inner experience with God.  Each of these needs to be supplemented by the others.  [Quakers rely] upon the last test, the vividness and vitality of our inner experience and the inward Teacher of Truth.       
    This test, because of its privacy & uniqueness, would allow each individual’s insights to be final. A religious anarchy of private opinion would result. Quakers, among others, must face this difficulty. All men are taught within themselves, by the same light & source & teacher. Our knowledge is conditioned by the object’s nature. But it is also conditioned by the expectations & convictions of the experiencer. The already accepted & dominant system of ideas in the background of the mind of the experiencer is an active modifier of the report.  The vast cultural background in which each of us is immersed sets a broad pattern of expectation, & furnishes the material for interpretation, into the texture of which whatever we might call raw experience is instantly & unconscious woven. What one hears during inward listening, will be clothed in the system of ideas already current in the mind.
    It seems to me that some of the surprise elements in inner experience can be interpreted in terms of repressions which are released & genuinely seem surprising to the individual who had supposed that one’s daily round of conscious life & beliefs was the whole person. [We come to another kind of surprise, namely the difference between belief in God & the actual experience of God]; God experienced is a vast surprise. Expectations are broken down, discarded, made utterly inadequate, as God invades the knower, & opens to one new & undreamed of truths. We become new creatures as God breaks down the old, inadequate, half-hearted life-molds of religion & conduct.
    [After experiencing God], we find that we have a new alignment of recognition of important souls, and a powerful drawing toward those who have tasted and handled the Word of Life.  This is the Fellowship and Communion of the Saints.  [Those revealed to us in Scripture are also] a social check upon our individual experience, as a disclosure of kindred souls who have known a like visitation of God.   
    The Devil’s history in the Bible is fairly clear. It came from Persia, from the Zoroastrian faith, & seeped into Asia Minor, & crept into Christian tradition as an alien element from the outside, not an indigenous development. [So far as angels are concerned], I have always felt sure that God could deal directly with my soul, without sending intermediaries. The creative epochs of angelology came in days of belief in excessive transcendence [of God].   
    It seems to me plausible to believe there is a life after death. William Blake said that when I reach the time for dying, I am just beginning to learn how to live. I believe that there are amazing psychological phenomena, not yet  under the order of any known laws, which may at some time be more systematically ordered & controlled, as science. I should expect only additions to psychology to come from it, not to theology, & certainly not to religion. I believe God continues life after death, in a fellowship of which we have a foretaste of here. I believe that the Eternal Christ is in the world, seeking, knocking, persuading, counseling all to return to their rightful home. 
   PRAYER—Within us is a meeting place with God, who strengthens & invigorates our whole personality; fretful cares are replaced by a deep & certain assurance. Something of God’s cosmic patience becomes ours, & we walk in quiet assurance & boldness; God is with us. Dynamic living comes from years of inner mental habits.  There is a way of living in prayer at the same time one is busy with outward affairs of daily living. 2 levels are there, the surface & the deeper, in fruitful interplay; creative values come from the deeper into the daily affairs.
    One’s 1^st experience of Heavenly Splendor plows through one’s whole being.  The experience of the Presence of God is the fulfillment of ourselves.  How do you begin this double mental life, [outer and inner]?  [Read] these words outwardly. But within continue in steady prayer, offering yourself and all that you are to God in simple, joyful, serve, unstrained dedication.  The 1^st weeks and months of such practice are pretty patchy, badly botched.  Say to yourself:  “This is the kind of bungling person I am when I am not wholly Thine.  Take this imperfect devotion and transmute by Thy love.”  You become God’s pliant instrument of loving concern.  You become turned toward God, away from yourself; you become turned outward toward all.
    [A life of prayer includes 5 types of prayer; prayers of: oblation; inward song; inward listening; carrying; infusion.  The prayer of oblation is the prayer of pouring yourself out before God.  Offer God your triumphs and the rags and tatters of your mistakes; offer God your friends, pray for their increased awareness of God; [offer trees, creatures, and humanity to God].  At 1^st you make these prayers in words, repeating them in little sentences. [Eventually] you find yourself living in attitudes of oblation.  A gesture of the soul toward God is a prayer. 
     The prayer of inward song is inner exultation & glorification of God’s wonders filling the deeper level of mind. Inward fires should burn in the God-kindled soul, fires shining outward in a radiant & released personality. We sing & through us the Eternal Lover sings into the world where songs have died on many lips. Examples of songs of the soul include: the Psalms, A Chain of Prayers across the Ages, & Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ.
    The prayer of inward listening [reminds us that] prayer is a 2-way process. Creative, Spirit-filled lives do not arise until God is attended to, till His internal teaching becomes real. A listening life & a living silence is often more creative, more recreative, than verbalized prayers, worded in gracious phrases. When distracting noises come, accept them & weave them by prayer into the silence. The soul’s fundamental religious education the soul is conducted by the Holy Spirit, the last & greatest teacher of the soul, & not in church history [& Bible study].   I will speak of the prayer of carrying in [my closing words having to do with] the experience of group fellowship.
    In the infused prayer there come amazing times when our theme of prayer is laid upon us, as if initiated by God.  [Perhaps] there is a giant circle of prayer, such that prayer may originate in God and swing down into us and back up into God.  In the experience of infused prayer there seems to be blurring of the distinctions between the one who prays, the prayer that is prayed,and the One to whom the prayer is prayed.  I have tried in these words to keep close to the spirit and the practice of Brother Lawrence, St. Francis of Assisi, and John Woolman.  It is said of St. Francis that he became a prayer; such lives must be reborn today, if love and power is to be restored to God’s church.  [This moment of restoration waits for us to be really willing].
    FELLOWSHIP—When our souls were overturned by God’s invading love, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of wholly new relationships, enmeshed with some people in amazing bonds of love and nearness and togetherness.  Can a new [inward] bondedness be the meaning of being in the Kingdom of God? [New alignments with people take place], with those we had only slightly known, [but who have] been down in the center a long time, and with those we have known for years, but are not down in the center in Christ [and cannot] share life at its depth until they are down in the center of shared love.  Now we suddenly see that some quiet obscure persons, whose voices count for little in the councils of the church, are princes and saints in Israel. 
    Into this fellowship of souls at the center we simply emerge.  When we discover God we discover the fellowship.  [Fellowship is more than sociability].  You can’t build a church that is Christ’s church on mere sociability, important and normal as that is.  Where the bondedness of souls in a common enslavement [to Christ] is present though you meet in a barn, you have a church.  God does not respect the class lines which we so carefully erect.   
    Normal religious development cannot take place in a vacuum occupied solely by you & God. We need friends of the soul. The last depths of conversation in the fellowship go beyond spoken words. People who know one another in God do not need to talk much. [You can meet someone for the first time, & though the social & educational difference seem immense, if you both are concerned with the inner secrets of life at a deep level, knowing and connecting to one another is immediate and at some point words are unnecessary to convey thoughts].
    [I referred earlier to the prayer of carrying.  It] is an experience of relatedness with one another, a relation of upholding one another by internal bond of prayer. With some this awareness of being bonded through a common life continues almost as vividly when separated as when together. It is the sense that some people you know are lifting you, & offering you, & upholding you in your inner life.  Do you carry some small group of people who rest upon your hearts not as obligations but as fellow-travelers? These are are not a chance group of people. They are your special burden & your special privilege. Each person is the center of radiating bonds of spiritual togetherness.  For the sacrament of Communion, no outward bread and wine need be present, but inwardly we feed with our fellows, and meet one another in spirit.  This mystic unity lies at the heart of the church.  

    The Inner Teacher, the Holy Spirit:  speaks within; teaches us things we can’t learn in books; makes vivid and dynamic formerly dead phrases; integrates us and leads us into new truths; lays on us new burdens; sensitizes us in new areas, toward God and toward all.

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28. Barclay in Brief (edited by Eleanore Price Mather; 1945)

 PREFACE—This abbreviation of [Robert Barclay’s] greatest work, the Apology, is timely. 1^st, it offers modern Quakers an opportunity to become acquainted with a book of great historical importance. 2^nd, Barclay’s conception of the Christian religion’s nature & function is again coming to the fore. Barclay’s achievement lies in his extraordinary synthesis of the mystical (inward experience) & evangelical (outward history). Calvinism created an unbridgeable chasm between human & divine; modern liberalism as blurred it so that religion has lost its power. If man enters the holy of holies only to find himself there he will not come again. Religion now must lay hold on-to the belief that man’s can win through that of God in the soul. [That is Barclay’s religion].—Howard Brinton.

 INTRODUCTION: R.B. unto the Friendly Reader Wisheth Salvation—It was left to Robert Barclay to round Quaker beliefs into a religious system and present them as such to the world [in the Apology].  He inherited a talent for theological disputation peculiar to the Scottish people.  He came in contact with the Roman Catholic faith, and at 18 joined the society of Friends like his father David before him.  Besides putting into scholarly terms the new faith, he used his legal knowledge to aid fellow members who were hailed before magistrates. 

[He was imprisoned himself], though he could have easily obtained release through his relation’s with the royal court and certain rulers on the Continent.  Barclay never came in person to the New World.  He [received] “a charge from God” [and so] married Christian Molleson, a Quakeress of Aberdeen; they had 7 children.  He died in 1690 at the age of 41.  He was a lover of peace, but never hesitant to take up the weapons of spiritual warfare.  The Apology is the supreme declaration of Quaker belief, organized and set forth by a man who remained Quakerism’s only theologian up to the 19^th century. 

Today, scarcely a Quaker under 30 has read it.  We have prepared this condensation [in the hope it] will appeal to minds trained to the brevity of modern journalism; [who will hopefully] obtain the essence of a timeless spiritual truth.  We find his use of the term “natural man” hard to understand; for him it meant sinful man.  We are inheritors of Rousseau’s belief in the natural goodness of man.  The plain truth is that it is useless to say, “Lets’s be primitive”; humankind has long since passed from the Garden Innocence. 

Barclay knew that man was a very complex animal.  He has become self-conscious. And the only way by which he can be free of [the lonely, fearful, longing] self, is to lose it in the Spirit which is so vastly greater than he, to yield it up to the divine will.  Afterwards will come the resurrection of the soul, a rising of the new man or creature which Barclay calls the “Christ within.”  If man remains “natural” his course is necessarily evil and he will perish in sin.  With Barclay the term “natural” means sinful only when applied to the man who, after his eyes are opened, is content to remain a mere rational animal indifferent to the light of the Spirit; more is expected of him.  Where goodness is there is God, for good works are the inevitable fruition of a growing spirit. 

[The theology of Barclay’s age] seems to the modern mind to have placed more emphasis on man’s fall than on Christ’s raising him up again. The Quaker faith in man’s potential goodness was revolutionary heresy to the 17^th century Puritan clergy.  Barclay regarded [pessimistic] predestination as a hideous blasphemy against the mercy of God.  Barclay balanced the Seed of Sin with a Seed of Light.  [He protests against Charles II’s licentious court, the extravagant dress, the flattering of the King by addressing him with the plural “you,” rather than the singular “thou,” which filtered down through England’s upper class.

If 17^th century testimonies are outmoded, the spirit behind them are not.  Pacificism is as vital an issue today as it was then.  Barclay’s goal was a way of living where we may remain in [“the world”] yet maintain a life of the spirit ordinarily possible only in the cloister.  Barclay challenges both Calvinism and the fashionable World.  The Society of Friends sat in communal silence, led only by the Spirit.  [Barclay objected to the human will present in the pre-arranged order of service and the division of worshipers between laity and clergy.  [He had nothing but contempt for the clergy’s theological hair-splitting].  [He said:] “I judge the Christian religion to be so far from being bettered [by them], that it is rather destroyed.”

On the whole the space allotted to each major point is proportionate with its treatment in the Apology; more space has been given to the peace testimony because of its extreme pertinence today.  Barclay said:  “What I have heard with the ears of my soul, and seen with my inward eyes, and my hands of handled of the Word of Life, and what hath been inwardly manifested to me of the things of God, that do I declare.”           Eleanor Price Mather

BARCLAY IN BRIEF

I. BELIEF: Immediate Revelation—The understanding of the true knowledge of God is that which is most necessary to be known and believed in the first place.  The certain, spiritual, saving heart-knowledge of God may be obtained only by inward immediate manifestation and revelation of God’s spirit.  This truth hath been acknowledged by by professors of Christianity in all ages.  The true seed in them hath been answered by God’s love.  They find a distaste and disgust in all outward means.  The apostle [Paul] uses the comparison that as the things of a man are only known to the spirit of man, so the things of God are only known by the Spirit of God.  

Knowledge of Christ which is not by the revelation of his own Spirit in the heart, [i.e. gathered from the words or writings of spiritual men] is not properly the knowledge of Christ. The natural man of the largest capacity [using only] the best words, even scripture words, cannot understand the mysteries of God’s kingdom as well as the least & weakest child who tasteth them by having them revealed inwardly by the Spirit. The Scriptures do declare that God’s converse with man was by the immediate manifestation of his Spirit.  Christians now are to be led inwardly and immediately by the Spirit of God as the saints were of old, as it is positively asserted in scripture.

He [who says he is] ignorant of the inwardness of the Spirit of Christ, acknowledges himself to be in the carnal mind, which is enmity to God.  Whatever he may know or believe of Christ, he has not [become] a Christian.  Whatsoever is noble, worthy, desirable in the Christian faith, is ascribed to this Spirit.  [Christianity] could no more subsist than the outward world without the sun.  If any depart from this certain guide, it will not follow that the true guidance of the Spirit is uncertain [because it is rejected by] the weakness or wickedness of men.  Divine inward revelations are not to be subjected to the test, either of the outward testimony of the scriptures or the natural reason of man; it is self-evident and clear, forcing the well-disposed understanding to assent. 

The Scriptures—From these revelations of the Spirit of God to the saints have proceeded the Scriptures of Truth. [They declare the inward testimony of the Spirit primary & themselves secondary]. I myself have known friends [who are full of] divine knowledge of his truth, who were ignorant of the Greek & Hebrew & could not read their own language. They disagreed with an English translation that did not fit the manifestation of the truth in their own hearts, boldly affirming the Spirit of God never said so. [It turned out they were right]. [Translators will strain passages] to express their own opinion & notion of truth. God sometimes conveys comfort & consolation to us through his children, whom he raises up & inspires to speak or write a word in season. Mutual emanation of the heavenly life tends to quicken the mind, when at any time it is overtaken with heaviness. Seeing the snares the saints were liable to, & beholding their deliverance.  We may thereby be made wise unto salvation.   

The Condition of Man in the Fall—We confess that a seed of sin is transmitted to all from Adam.  [Man is not automatically sinful, but by sinning they join with the seed].  It is called death in the scripture, and the body of death; it is a death to the life of righteousness and holiness. Scripture makes no mention of original sin, [which is an] invented and unscriptural barbarism.  Many heathen philosophers [e.g. Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinus and others,] were sensible of the loss received by Adam, though they knew not the outward history.  [They used images of dark caves, wandering, dead coals, clipped wings].  We ascribe to paradise a mystical signification and truly account it as that spiritual communion and fellow ship which the saints obtain with God by Jesus Christ.

Universal and Saving Light—The knowledge [of salvation] has been manifested to us by the revelation of Jesus Christ in us, the testimony of the Spirit in our hearts.  The Light is not less universal than the seed of sin.  Hence Justin Martyr stuck not to call Socrates a Christian, saying that all such as lived according to the divine word in them, were Christians, such as Socrates, Heraclitus and others.  Some in those remote parts of the world where the knowledge of the history is wanting, may be made partakers of the divine mystery, if they suffer his seed and light.  Light communion with the Father and the Son [may turn wicked men] from the evil to the good.

This is that Christ within, which we are heard so much to speak of. We have said how that a divine, spiritual, & supernatural light is in all. As it is received Christ comes to be formed & brought forth. We are far from having said that Christ is formed in all men. Neither is Christ in all men by way of union. Christ is in all men as in a seed. Christ lies crucified in them by their sins. As they look upon him & repent, he may come to be raised, & have dominion in their hearts over all. This seed in the hearts of all men is the kingdom of God. As the whole body of a great tree is wrapped up in the seed of the tree, even so the kingdom of Christ is in every man’s & woman’s heart.    

The grace and light strives and wrestles with all in order to save all; he that resists its striving, is the cause of his own condemnation; he that resists it not, it becomes his salvation.  He that made us without us, will not save us without us.  Man’s heart, as it resist or retires from the grace of God returns to its former condition again.

Reason—This light of which we speak is distinct & of a different nature from man’s soul. Man may apprehend in his brain a knowledge of God & the spiritual; yet it cannot profit him towards salvation, but rather hindereth. Every such man has set up Anti-Christ in himself, & sitteth in the temple of God as God. We look upon reason as fit to order & rule man in things natural. As the moon borrows her light from the sun, so ought men, if they would be rightly ordered in natural things, to have their reason enlightened by this divine & pure light.

Conscience—It is that knowledge in a man’s heart, arising from what agreeth or contradicteth anything believed by him. The Light as it is received, removes the blindness of judgment, opens the understanding, & rectifies both the judgment & the conscience. We continually commend men to the Light of Christ in the conscience.

Justification by Faith and Works—As many receive the light, it becomes in them a holy, pure, and spiritual birth.  Since good works as naturally follow from this birth as heat from fire therefore are they of absolute necessity to justification.  Works of the law are preformed in man’s own will, in conformity to the outward law and letter; works of grace or gospel are wrought in conformity to the inward and spiritual law by the power and Spirit of Christ in us, pure and perfect in their kind.  Faith that worketh by love cannot be without works. 

Perfection—How far may Christ prevail in us while we are in this life? How far may we prevail over our soul’s enemies, in and by Christ strength?  We understand perfection as permitting growth, a perfection proportionable and answerable to man’s measure.  Those who attain a measure of perfection may still fall into iniquity, and lose it sometimes.  Though every sin weakens a man in his spiritual condition, yet it doth not so as to destroy him altogether, or render him uncapable of rising again.  Turn thy mind to the light and spiritual law of Christ in the heart, so that the life [of this world] may die and a new life be raised, lived henceforth to and for God.  Then thou wilt be be a Christian indeed. 

II. WORSHIP: The Church—The Church as it is used in the holy scripture, signifies an assembly or gathering of many into 1 place; this is the real & proper signification of church. God hath called them out of the world & worldly spirit, to walk in his Light & Life. [This church includes] whatsoever nation, kindred, tongue, or people as become obedient to the holy light & testimony of God in their hearts. [This catholic church includes] Turks, Jews, even Christians blinded in some things in their understanding, or burdened with superstitions & formality.

Group Worship—All true, acceptable worship to God is offered in the inward & immediate moving & drawing of his own [limitless] Spirit. All other worship is superstition, will-worship, & abominable idolatry in God’s sight. To meet together we think necessary for God’s people; there is a necessity for joint & visible fellowship. In their spirits the secret power & virtue of life refreshes the soul. Some meetings pass without one word; & yet our souls have been greatly edified & refreshed, our hearts overcome with the secret sense of God’s power & Spirit. 

When I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them. I felt the evil weakening in me & the good raised up; I became knit & united unto them. Our worship consisteth of a holy dependence of the mind upon God. There is scarce any in whom God [does not raise up one] to minister to his brethren. We judge it needful there be in the first place a time of silence, during which every one may be gathered inward to the word & gift of grace. Waiting upon God must be exercised in man’s denying self, both inwardly & outwardly, abstracting from all the workings, imaginations, & speculations of his own mind. The little seed of righteousness which God hath planted in his soul receives a place to arise, & becometh a holy birth in man. By waiting there he comes to be accepted in God’s sight, to stand in his presence, hear his voice, & observe his holy Spirit’s motions.

When many are gathered together into the same life there is more of the glory of God.  The good seed, as it ariseth, will be found to work as physick in the soul.  When the light breaks through the darkness, there will be such a painful travail found in the soul, that will even work upon the outward man, and the body will be greatly shaken.  And from this the name of Quakers was 1^st reproachfully cast upon us; we are not ashamed of it.  The great advantage of this true worship of God is that it consisteth not in man’s wisdom.  The natural mind and will hath no delight to abide in it, because they find no room there for imagination and inventions [or his outward and carnal senses].  This form of worship being observed, is not likely to be long kept pure without the power; there is nothing in it to invite and tempt men to dote upon it, [besides the power].  

Ministry—Those that the Spirit set apart for the ministry by its divine power and influence opening their mouths, and giving them to exhort, reprove, and instruct with virtue and power; these are thus ordained by God and admitted into the ministry by the free gift of God [as he seeth meet].  Every true minister of the gospel is ordained, prepared and supplied in the work of the ministry by the light or gift of God.  Those who have this authority may and ought to preach the gospel; those who want [lack] the authority of this divine gift, however learned, or authorized by men and churches, are to be esteemed as deceivers and not true ministers of the gospel.

All may speak or prophesy by the Spirit; some are more particularly called to the work of ministry & therefore are fitted of the Lord to watch over their brethren. There are also elders, who though they be not moved to a frequent testimony [with a] declaration in words, they watch over & privately admonish the young, take care for  widows, poor, & fatherless, [& see that] peace, love, unity, & soundness be preserved in the church of Christ.

We oppose the distinction of laity, and clergy, which in the scripture is not to be found.  [These] are educated at schools on purpose to learn the art and trade of preaching, and must see to get a place; then they hath a set hire for a livelihood.  The ministers we plead for, having freely received, freely give, and work honestly for bread to themselves and their families.  If they be called by God and the work of the Lord hinder them from the use of their trades, take what is freely given them by [those they minister to]; and having food and raiment be content. 

[They are sometimes illiterate, but] my heart hath been often greatly broken and tendered by that virtuous life that proceeded from the powerful ministry of those illiterate men, the evil in me often chained down, and the good reached to and raised.  Was I not also a lover and admirer of knowledge, and sought after it?  It pleased God early to withstand my endeavors, and made me seriously to consider that without holiness and regeneration, no man can see God.  Among these excellent, though illiterate witnesses of God, I, with many others, have found the heavenly food that gives contentment. Let my soul seek after this learning, and wait for it forever.

Prayer/Song—Our adversaries agree that the motions & influence of God’s Spirit are not necessary to be previous thereunto, therefore they have set times in publick worship & in private devotion, at which they set about performing their prayers. Prayer is both very profitable, & a necessary duty commanded, but as we can do nothing without Christ, so neither can we pray without concurrence & assistance of his Spirit.

Inward prayer is secret turning of the mind towards God, where it looks up to God, joins with [God’s seed], breathes towards him, & is constantly breathing forth secret desires & aspirations towards him [i.e. “praying continually”] Outward prayer is when the spirit receives strength & liberty to bring forth sighs, groans, or words. Such as are watchful in their minds, & much retired in exercising inward prayer are more capable to use the outward frequently. When many are gathered in watchful mind, God doth frequently pour forth the Spirit of prayer. Outward prayer depends on the inward, so we cannot prefix set times to pray outwardly. The case for singing in worship is the same as for preaching & prayer; it must arise from the Spirit’s direct influence, from what is pure in the heart. [There is] no example of artificial music by organ, instruments, or voice in the NT.

Baptism/Communion—The one baptism is the answer of good conscience before God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Infant baptism is human tradition. That the one baptism is not a washing of water is from I Peter 3:   21. Many baptized by water are not saved. [But as to] the baptism of the Spirit, none can have a good conscience & not be saved by it. The communion of Christ’s body & blood is inward, spiritual. Even they who received the [spiritual] substance used the breaking of the bread in the church for a time, for the weak’s sake. Seeing that they are the shadow of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance. We certainly know that the day is dawned, in which God hath arisen, & hath dismissed all ceremonies & rites, & is only to be worshiped in Spirit.

III. TESTIMONIES—Even by the confession of their adversaries, they are found to be free of those abominations which abound among other professors.  Our adversaries [insist on doing some things] which we have found to be in no ways lawful unto us, and have been commanded of the Lord to lay them aside.  The nature of these things distinguish us, so that we cannot hide ourselves from any without proving unfaithful to our testimony.

We do not intend to destroy the relations betwixt prince & people, master & servants, parents & children. We shall evidence that these natural relations are rather better established, than hurt by it. Our principle leaves every man to enjoy peaceably whatever his industry or his parents, have purchased to him. Would it not greatly contribute to Christianity’s commendation, & to the increase of the life & virtue of Christ, if all superfluous titles of honour, profuseness & playing were laid aside & forborne? [In those God has led out of such things], God hath produced mortification and abstraction from the love and cares of this world which was judged could only be obtained by those shut up in cloisters and monasteries.

Titles/ Hat and Knee—It is not lawful for Christians either to give or receive titles [for these reasons]: they are no part of that obedience which is due to magistrates or superiors; the apostles deserved [the titles of Holiness, Excellency, Emininence] better than any now who claim them; Christians are to seek the honor that comes from above, & not the honor that comes from below. [The use of the plural “you” began in Roman times]. It & the other titles of honor seem to have derived from monarchial government; which afterwards by degrees, came to be derived to private persons.  This way of speaking proceeds from a high and proud mind.  [With the use of the word “you,”] the pride of men placed God & the beggar in the same category.  We use the singular equally to all.   

Kneeling, bowing, & uncovering of the head is the outward signification of adoration towards God alone; it is not lawful to give it to man, [for] what [then] is reserved for the Creator. Men being alike in creation, do not owe worship to one another, but all equally are to return it to God. Many of us have been sorely beaten & buffeted, yea, & imprisoned for months because we could not so satisfy the proud unreasonable humors of proud men. 

Apparel/Gaming—We shall not say that all persons are to be clothed alike, because it will perhaps neither suit their bodies nor their estates.  [For a person of fine clothing], the abstaining from fine clothing may be in him a greater act of mortification than the abstaining from finer clothes in the servant, who was never accustomed to them.  What a country produces may be no vanity to the inhabitants to use.  The iniquity lies in a lust of vanity which [causes them to] stretch to have things that from their rarity seem precious and so feed their lust the more. 

[Gaming interferes with] having fear of the Lord, standing in awe of him, because this fear and awe is forgotten in their gaming.  [While the mind may need some] divertisement to recreate the mind, we are not allowed any time to recede from the remembrance [and fear] of God. The relaxation of the mind from the more serious duties, [is such that] even in doing these things the soul carrieth with it that divine influence and spiritual habit, [so that if even the wicked do the same] yet they are done in a different Spirit.  Innocent divertisements [include] visiting friends, hearing or reading history, gardening, geometrical and mathematical experiments, and such other things of this nature.  In all which things we are not to forget God. 

Swearing—It is no ways lawful for Christian to swear, whom Christ has called to his essential truth, which was before all oaths.  Neither is it lawful for them to be unfaithful in this, that they may please others, or that they may avoid their hurt.  Since Christ would have his disciples attain the highest pitch of perfection, he abrogated oaths, as a rudiment of infirmity and established the use of truth instead.

Fighting—The last thing to be considered, is revenge and war, an evil as opposite and contrary to the Spirit, and doctrine of Christ as light to darkness.  Through contempt of Christ’s law the whole world is filled with violence, oppression, murders, ravishing of women, and all manner of cruelty.  It is strange that men, made after the image of God, should have so much degenerated, that they rather bear the image and nature of [beasts], than of rational reason, [even] those who profess themselves disciples of our peaceable Lord and master Jesus Christ. 

This great prophet [speaks clearly in Matthew 5:38-48]. Truly the words are so clear in themselves, that they need no illustration to explain their sense. [Yet there are those who seek to reconcile violence & war with these words]. Whoever can find a means to reconcile these things, may be supposed to have found a way to reconcile God with the devil, Christ with Antichrist, light with darkness, & good with evil. Jesus’ words with respect to revenge command unto [would-be] disciples of Christ, a more perfect, eminent, & full [display]of charity, suffering & patience than was required of them [under] the law of Moses. [Early Christian were faithful to these words].

Almost all the modern sects live in the neglect and contempt of this law of Christ, and likewise oppress others who do not agree with them for conscience sake.  We have suffered much because we neither could ourselves bear arms, nor send others in our place, nor give our money for military [equipment].  We could not hold our doors, windows and shops closed, [in support of] the arms of the kingdom under which we live.  [Those] at war together have implored our God for contradictory, impossible things; both cannot obtain victory.  

If the magistrate be truly a Christian, he ought himself to obey the command of his master, & then he could not command us to kill them. To obey God is to exalt & perfect nature, to elevate it from the natural to the supernatural life. We deny not the present magistrates altogether the name of Christians, yet we may affirm that they are far from the perfection of the Christian religion. The present confessors of the Christian name are not yet fitted for [our] form of Christianity, & therefore cannot be undefending themselves until they attain that perfection.          

Liberty of Conscience—That no man hath power over the consciences of men is apparent; it is the seat and throne of God in him.  We understand by matters of conscience such as immediately relate betwixt God and man, or men and men that are under the same persuasion, as to meet together and worship God.  The liberty we lay claim to is to enjoy the liberty and exercise of their conscience towards God and among themselves.  As Chrysostom said:  “We must condemn and reprove the evil doctrines that proceed from Hereticks, but spare the men, and pray for their salvation.”

Of excellent patience & sufferings, the witness of God called Quakers have given manifest proof. They went up & down, as they were moved of the Lord, preaching & propagating the truth in market-places, highways, streets & publick temples, though daily beaten, whipped, bruised, haled, & imprisoned. They kept their meetings for worship openly, & did not shut the door, nor do it by stealth, that all might know it, & those who would might enter. When others came to break up a meeting, they were obliged to take every individual out by force, the worshipers not being free to give up their liberty at the others’ command. And unless kept out by violence, the worshipers return peaceably to their place. [They even held worship in the rubbish of torn-down meeting houses].

Thus for a Christian man to vindicate his just liberty with so much boldness will in due time purchase peace.  They greatly sin against this rule that in time of persecution do not profess their own way so much as they would if it were otherwise.  Yet, when they get the magistrate on their side, they seek to establish their liberty by denying it to others.  Our malicious enemies say that if we had the power, we would [likewise coerce and persecute others]; they only judge others by themselves.  If ever we prove guilty of persecution, let us be judged the greatest of hypocrites, and let not any spare to persecute us.  Amen, saith my soul. 

CONCLUSION—If thou consider this system of religion here delivered, with its consistence and harmony, as well in itself as with the scriptures of truth, I doubt not but thou wilt say with me that this is the spiritual day of Christ’s appearance.  As God hath prospered us, notwithstanding much opposition, so will he yet do, that neither the art, wisdom, nor violence of men or devils shall be able to quench that little spark that hath appeared.

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29. The Inward Journey of Isaac Penington (edited by Robert J. Leach; 1944)

        He that readeth these things, let him not strive to comprehend them; but be content with what he feeleth thereof suitable to his own present estate, and as the life grows in him and he in the life  . . . the words . . . will of themselves open to him.    ISAAC PENINGTON

        Introduction—The spiritual writings of Isaac Penington (1617-1679), [published in a large folio with an 80-word title], evoke a real response in our present war-torn world.  Their advice concerning the slow growth of inward comprehension speaks to our condition.  The lyric beauty of Penington’s free verse carries the reader along to the subject of public worship, in which Christ himself speaks.  The Inward Journey [explains how to] find the living virtue [and salvation] which Isaac Penington had himself discovered.  In 1658 the Peningtons . . . fully associated themselves with the then new Society of Friends . . . becoming consistent and fervent members of the new spiritual movement . . . and ministers of God’s holy word.

        Spring of Life—I never durst trust the spring of my life.  I set [knowledge of Scripture] over the springings of life in me, and indeed judged that I ought so to do.  I did not look to have been so broken, shattered, and distressed as I afterwards was.  I was in a congregational way.  We parted very lovingly . . . [I] promising to return to them again, if ever I  met with that which my soul wanted, and had clearness in the Lord so to do.

        I spent many years, and fell into great weakness of body.  And the Lord my God owned me, and sealed his love unto me, and light sprang within me . . . so that everything was sweet and pleasant and lightsome round about me.  But I soon felt that this estate was too high and glorious for me . . .  This was presently removed from me, yet a savor remained with me, wherein I had sweetness, comfort, and refreshment for a long season. 

       The Lord open my spirit, the Lord gave me the certain and sensible feeling of the pure seed . . . [so] that I cried out in my spirit This is he. . .  there never was another.  He was always near me, though I knew him not Oh, that I might now be joined with him, and he alone might live in me.  Having gone through a sore travail and fight of afflictions and temptations . . . [and] having met with the true way . . . I cannot be silent, but am necessitated to testify of it to others . . . [namely] to retire inwardly, and wait to feel somewhat of the Lord, his holy spirit and power, and draw [away] from that which is contrary to him, and into his holy nature and heavenly image.  There is one that stands in the way to this work of the Lord . . . by raising up a fear of being deceived and betrayed . . .so that I durst not close with what I felt to be of God.  The very yoke is ease and the burden light, when the mind and will is changed by the power, and helped and assisted by the Lord in its subjection to the power.

      The Lord is now gentle and tender, pursuing thee with his love, and following thee up and down with his light; . . .  he will slay the serpentine wisdom in thee, with all its inventions.  That wisdom must be destroyed, and that understanding brought to naught, and thou become a child and learn as a child if ever thou know the things of God.  These [who are grievously sick in soul and deeply wounded in spirit] are near the kingdom and are quickly reached to, melted, and brought into the sense in which with joy they receive the faith, and with the faith the power which bring righteousness and salvation to their souls.

        Faith—There is a faith which is of a man’s self, and a faith which is the gift of God.  A man may believe the history of the Scripture, yea and all the doctrines of them.  Man by a natural faith grows up and spread into a great tree and is very confident and much pleased, not perceiving the defect in his root, what all his growth here will come to.  A literal knowledge of the blood of Christ can only talk of it [but not feel it or live it].  In plain terms, you must part with all your religion which you have gathered in your own wisdom.  Know the silencing of the fleshly part, that the spiritual part may grow in wisdom, that so ye may learn in the spirit, and know the word of God and be able to speak it.

        Truth is of God and was with God, and in God before anything else had a being.  Truth remains the same that it was, keeping its pure, eternal, unchangeable nature, and is not, nor ever was, nor ever can be defiled.  The field is near thee, O man, which thou art to purchase and dig in, and must feel torn up by the plough of God in some measure before this pearl [of great price] appear to thee.  To the soul that hath felt breathings towards the Lord formerly I say:  Where art Thou?  Art thou in thy soul’s rest?  Dost thou feel the virtue and power of the gospel?  Dost thou feel the life and power flowing in upon thee from the free fountain?  Is the load really taken off from thy back?  Hast thou found this, or hast thou missed this?  Let thine heart answer.  Art thou in the living power, in the divine life, joined to the spring of life, drawing water of life out of the well of life with joy? Or art thou dry, dead, barren, sapless, at best unsatisfiedly mourning after what thou wantest?

         The Seed—The seed of God is the word of God; the seed of the kingdom is the word of the kingdom.  The pure, living, heavenly knowledge of the Father, and of his Son Christ Jesus, is wrapped up in this seed.  As the seed is formed in him, Christ is formed in him; and as he is formed and new-created in the seed, he is the workmanship of God, formed and new-created in Christ.

         According to Scripture, the seed of God or the seed of the kingdom:

1.       Is of an immortal, incorruptible, mysterious nature, though it may be as though it were dead in man.

2.       Is of a gathering nature, gathering that which is contrary to God unto God, wherein the soul should dwell,                and walk, and be subject.

3.       Is of a purging, cleansing nature, [both of fire and of water].  There is strength in this seed, and virtue in               this seed, against all the strength of deceit and wickedness in the other seed.

4.       Is of a seasoning, leavening, sanctifying nature.  It will go on leavening more and more . . . into the likeness           of the God of truth.

5.       Is of an enriching nature.  It enriches his heart [toward God] with that which is holy and heavenly.

6.       Is of an improving, growing nature, like a grain of mustard seed [growing into] a tree of righteousness.

          God will never leave nor forsake that soul which is joined to and abides with him in this seed; it shall be             kept by the power of God, through the faith that springs from this seed, unto perfect redemption and                 salvation. Amen.

       Doctrines—It is an excellent thing indeed to receive Christ, to feel union with him in his spirit, to enter into the new and holy agreement with God, into the everlasting covenant of life and peace, keeping his statutes and judgments, and doing them, so as to have union and fellowship with the Lord.  God advanced the state of a believer above the state of the Jews under the law.  Theirs was a law without, at a distance from them; but here is a law within, nigh at hand.  They need no man to teach them, but have the spirit of prophecy in themselves and quick, living teachings from him continually.  Moses’ dispensation of the law and Christ’s are one in spirit; and when he cometh in spirit, he doth not destroy either Moses or the prophets; the law is but one, although the dispensations of it have been various.  The thing of great value with the Father was Christ’s obedience.

         The Scriptures expressly distinguish between Christ and the garment [body] which he wore. There was the outward vessel, and the inward life. In Christ there is freedom; in his word there is power and life, and that reaching to the heart.  Christ is a perfect physician, and is able to work a perfect cure on the heart that believeth in him, and waiteth upon him.  Christ likewise bids his disciples be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect.  There is a growing in the life, even where the heart is purified . . .  for a state of perfection does not exclude degrees.         

        The Yoke—Christ’s immediate revelation of the nature of his Father is to his babes; not to the wise, not to the zealous, not to the studious, not to the devout, not to the rich in the knowledge of the Scriptures without, but to the weak, the foolish, the poor, the lowly in heart.  It is easy to take up a wrong yoke, in the self-will, self-wisdom, self-interpretation of Scriptures.  And if a man thus miss the way, how can he attain the end?  If a man begin not in the true faith, in the living faith, how can he attain the rest which the true faith alone leads to?  He that walketh in Christ’s path cannot miss of it; the rest is at the end of it; nay, the rest is in it.

         What is love?  What shall I say of it, or how shall I in words express its nature?  It is the sweetness of life; it is the sweet, tender, melting nature of God, flowing up through his seed of life into the creature.  The great healing, the great conquest, the great salvation is reserved for the full manifestation of the love of God. . . [which brings] the full springing up of eternal love in my heart, and in the swallowing of me wholly into it.  Oh how sweet is love. How pleasant is its nature.  How doth it believe, how doth it hope, how doth it excuse, how doth it cover even that which seemeth not to be excusable, and not fit to be covered. . . it carrieth a meltingness and power of conviction with it.  This is the nature of God.

        There is a voluntary humility, and a voluntary poverty, even of spirit, which man casts himself into . . . by his own workings and reasonings.  This is not the true, but the false image.  [The right kind of] poverty ariseth from God’s emptying the creature, from God’s stripping the creature; and a humility which ariseth from a new heart and nature.  And so the Lord of Life is only exalted, and the creature kept abased before him, and low forever; and is nothing but as the Lord pleaseth to fill, and make it to be what it is.

        Worship—They are to wait upon the Lord, to meet in the silence of flesh, and to watch for the stirrings of his life, and the breakings forth of his power amongst them.  They may [break forth in all manner of speech and music].  But if the spirit do not require to speak, then everyone is to sit still in his heavenly place, feeling his own measure, feeding thereupon, receiving therefrom what the Lord giveth.  And that which we aim at is that the flesh in everyone be kept silent, that there be no building up, but in the spirit and power of the Lord.

        Our worship is a deep exercise of our spirits before the Lord, which does not consist in an exercising the natural part or natural mind.  That fleshly part, that fleshly understanding. . . wisdom . . . will, which will not bow down, is chained down by the power of life which God stretcheth forth over it, and subdueth it by.  Give over thine own willing, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thy heart and let that be in thee.  [God], thy children wait on thee, they cry to thee day and night, that they may be preserved by thee in the well-doing, and in the pure holy, innocent sufferings for thy truth’s sake; until thou say “It is enough . . . suffer no more . . . reign with me and my Son forever.”

       He that would know Christ, and be built upon Christ, must find a holy thing revealed in his heart, and his soul built thereon by him who alone can raise this building.  The great work of the minister of Christ is to keep the conscience open to Christ, and to preserve men from receiving any truths of Christ [beyond what] the spirit opens [to those men].  Therefore, the main thing in religion is to keep the conscience pure to the Lord, to know the guide, to follow the guide, to not take things for truths because others see them as truths, but to wait till the spirit make them manifest to me. 

       He that makes haste to be rich, even in religion, shall not be innocent . . . [of] spiritual adultery and idolatry.  He that draws another to any practice before the life in his own particular [guide] lead him doth destroy the soul of that person.  Keep back to the life, still waiting for the appearance and openings of the life.  A few steps fetched in the life and power of God are much safer and sweeter than a hasty progress in the hasty forward spirit.  To feel Christ do all in the soul is the comfort of everyone that truly believes in him. 

Canst thou pray? How camest thou to learn to pray? Wast thou taught from above [or from] thine own natural part?  Wast thou ever able to distinguish the sighs and groans of the spirit’s begetting from the sighs and groans of thy own natural and affectionate part?  Prayer is the breath of the living child to the Father of Life, in that spirit which quickened it, which giveth it the right sense of its wants.  The Father is the fountain of life, and giveth forth breathings of life to his child at his pleasure. 

        Testimonies—The works that flow from God’s good spirit, the works that are wrought in God, they are good works; the works . . . of the new creature are good works.  Make the tree good, or its fruit can never be good.  Bowing to the majesty of the Lord in every thought, word, and action . . . is the true worship, and this is the rest or Sabbath wherein the true worshippers worship.  It is not the church’s nature either to receive or impose yokes of bondage, but to . . . exhort all her members to stand fast, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free.  The Lord will discover what is hurtful to the body, and contrary to the life of the body and lay yokes upon it. 

        The Lord is to be waited upon for the bringing forth of [unity] in the spiritual body; that, as there is a foundation of it laid in all, so all may be brought by him into the true and full oneness.  The enemy will watch to divide; and if he be not watched against, in that which is able to discover and keep him out, by some device or other he will take his advantage to make a tear from the pure truth and unity of life in the body.

         He which is born of God, he who is of the love, and in the love, cannot but be tender.  God’s free and powerful spirit is to be waited upon . . . and not any forced to act beyond, or contrary to, the principle of his life and light in them.  Yet the government of Christ and his kingdom is not opposite to any just government of a nation or people.  Christ’s government is righteous government of the heart of inner man.  [That of God] cannot be disloyal to [Christ] its king, to gratify the spirit of this world.  As government came from God, so the righteous execution of it depends upon God.  Will not the Lord assist the magistrate, who in his fear waits on him?  [Were it so more often] governments would not prove so difficult, nor the success therein so dangerous.  The answering and obeying the light of Christ in our consciences is what keepeth them void of offence.  Christ is the sole lord and judge of the conscience.  Christ giveth . . . [and] increaseth knowledge; Christ requireth obedience according to the knowledge given or increased. 

        Fighting in the gospel is turned inward against the lusts, and not outward against the creatures.  [Those overcome in the heart by the spirit] are not prejudicial to the world . . . but emblems of that blessed state which the God of glory hath promised to set up in the world in the days of the gospels.  Israel of old stood not by her strength and wisdom and preparations against her enemies, but in quietness and confidence and waiting on the Lord for direction.  The present state of things may and doth require [the use of the sword], and a great blessing will attend the sword where it is borne uprightly to that end.  Yea, it is far better to know the Lord to be the defender, and to wait on him daily . . . than to be ever so strong and skillful in weapons of war.  Too many hold the immortal seed of life in captivity under death, over which we cannot but mourn, and wait for its breaking off the chains, and its rising out of all its graves into its own pure life, power, and fullness of liberty in the Lord. 

        Conclusion—And so at length we came to witness . . . a new heaven and a new earth inwardly. . . [God] giving us to partake of the well or fountain of living waters in our own hearts, which spring up freshly in us daily unto life eternal.  Did we ever think, in our dry, dead, barren estate, to have seen such a day as this?  There is no way of receiving Christ into the heart and of having him formed there, but by receiving the light of his spirit, in which light he is and dwells.

        Faith causeth a fear and trembling to seize upon the sinner.  In this fear and trembling the work of true repentance and conversion is begun and carried on; there is a turning of the soul from the darkness to the light.  Faith through hope works righteousness, and teaches the true wisdom; and now the benefit of all the former trouble, anguish, and misery begins to be felt and the work goes on sweetly . . .  [with] patience, meekness, gentleness, tenderness, and long-suffering.  It brings [true] peace, [unspeakable] joy . . . full of glory.  Here in the light, I meet with . . . God’s spirit [and wisdom], which is infallible.  He opens an infallible eye [and heart], and gives to them an infallible sight of God, and the heavenly mysteries of his kingdom.

       I have met with:  the seed; my God; my Savior; the healings dropping upon my soul from under his wings; true knowledge; living knowledge; the seed’s father; the seed’s faith; the true birth; the true spirit of prayer and supplication; the true peace; the true holiness; the true rest of the soul.  I know very well and distinctly in spirit where the doubts and disputes are, and where the certainty and full assurance is, and in the tender mercy of the Lord am preserved out of the one and into the other.  

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31.  Quakerism and India (by Horace G. Alexander; 1945)

PREFATORY NOTE ON THE AUTHOR—Horace G. Alexander: Woodbrooke Lecturer at Pendle Hill; Spring Term 1945. History scholar of King’s College, Cambridge. Director of studies at Woodbrooke. [He visited] India from 1927-28 & has since followed Indian affairs constantly. He was Head of the Friend’s Ambulance Unit in India. His recreation is as an ornithologist delighting in the birds of Europe, Asia, & North America.  

I. Introductory—George Fox and his associates were filled with a zeal to proclaim “Truth” to the ends of the earth.  Within a few years they had penetrated as far as Constantinople in the East and New England [across the sea] in the West.  The bitter persecution of Quakers crippled these valiant efforts to take “Truth” into every land. [Besides English-speaking settlements], Quakerism took no root elsewhere till the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  In the 2^nd half of the 19^th century the Society of Friends or some Yearly Meetings (YM) established “Christian missions” in Japan, China, central India, 2 African islands, and the Middle East.   

The purposes of this pamphlet are to attempt an appraisement of the work undertaken by India mission during some 80 years, to note certain other recent Quaker contact with India, & to see if anything is demanded of the Society of Friends in this age by the growth of nationalism, [race feelings, & progress] in those lands. How do Asia’s poverty problems & of Asia’s [desire] to be free from Western control touch the Society of Friends?   

II.  Indian and Quakerism, 1850-1940—[The Society 1^st reacted to the situation in India after the Indian Mutiny of 1857].  Charles Gilpin, editor of the The Friend, [wrote of the Quaker’s] “profound sorrow and alarm [about] that spirit of sanguinary vengeance [from] our public journalists.”  He also said: “We hold as by a thread our supremacy in our vast, ill-gotten and ill-governed Eastern Empire.”  [In The Friend] he discusses the real causes of the outbreak: tortures of Indians by [English-sponsored] tax-collectors; “pride and hauteur” of English officers; [unethical] “disposition of our countrymen.”  In the January 1858 issue someone wrote about [the cycle of military occupation, commerce and “re-investment” in further conquest].  The Quakers John Bright and Joseph among others kept a close watch on Indian policy; John Bright spoke out in Parliament on India’s welfare.   

A small group of Indians were impressed by Quakers and started a small meeting for worship in Calcutta.  3 English Friends visited Calcutta from November 1862 to the summer of 1864.  For some years the Calcutta group continued.  Rachel Metcalfe went to India in 1866 with the support of the newly formed Friends Foreign Mission Association (FFMA); there is no record of her visiting this Hindu-Quaker Group.  The Calcutta group died out.  The Editor of The Friend wrote in 1869:  “As long as missionaries are sent out to establish their own sects and Churches … we have little faith in the forms of religion so planted.”  Rachelle Metcalfe went to Benares to help an Anglican Church missionary.  In 1869, she was joined by 2 American Friends, Elkanah and Irena Beard.  

In 1870, the three of them moved to Jubbalpore in the Central Provinces, and later to Hoshangabad. This pre-dominantly agricultural district has remained the “Friends district” ever since.   [The villagers] drawn into the new Christian community became dependent on the leadership offered by the missionaries.  Building an autonomous group was a laborious process [dependent on land ownership and a secure position in some hereditary caste].

Rachel Metcalfe was elevated to one of those pedestals Indians erect for the white man or woman whom they respect or love—or fear. Some refuse to stand on it, but such humility is an uncommon virtue. Most Christian missions blossom into school, student hostels, hospital & dispensaries. They were needed, but are they the main task of Christian missions? [For Rachel Metcalfe] not even the medical needs or the cry of famine orphans must stand in the way [of evangelism]. [Evangelists & institutional workers] tended to grow further & further apart.

In 1902 there were no fewer than 31 Quaker missionaries working in the Central Provinces; in 1945 there were only 8 or 10.  The total membership of the Yearly Meeting is under 400.  A hospital, 2 schools, a boys’ hostel, a girls’ boarding school, an experimental farm, and a few scattered relics of other Monthly Meetings are the total visible result of 80 years of the devoted labours of 50 men and women. 

Today, as always, the Indian Quaker community in the Central Provinces is severely handicapped by the economic struggle.  [Young men go away to the big cities nearby], and in the process they influence their [big city] neighbors to see religion in terms of daily life that is pure and true, rather than religious observance and ritual.  [Rather than growing] an Indian section of the Society of Friends, it influences the direction of the whole Christian church of mid-India towards practical mysticism.  Christian cooperation with concerned Hindu and Muslim neighbors is being developed.  Since 1890, the Ohio YM (Friends Church) has been responsible for a mission in the district round Nowgong, Bundelkhund, Central India.  Care of orphans, medical activity, and evangelism have been the chief phases of the work.  New England YM and other American Friends have given support to this work of Ohio Friends.

III. Emergency Relief in India, 1942-1945—Both M. K. Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore have shared some views in common with Quakers. The state of conflict between Indian Nationalism and the British Government has been a matter of increasing concern to London YM. [Quaker groups] sympathetic to Indian freedom have been formed. Individual English Friends were in close personal, confidential relations with Gandhi and Nehru and other political leaders. The Friends Service Council (FSC) [replacing the FFMA in 1926] recognized that India’s mystical tradition suggests a kinship between some Hindus and Quakers. It promoted contact between Quakers and Hindus in India and with Indian students in England. 

Men of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), having assisted with civilian victims of London bombings, offered to go to India to help with civil defense.  Horace Alexander and Richard Symonds contacted Gandhi, who said: “If you come to serve India, perhaps to serve under our leadership or direction, your arrival just now is especially welcome.”  The FAU in London had also recognized that it would be well to have women in the section in India.  Pamela Bankart went to work establishing contact with the tiny fringe of emancipated women of Calcutta, and helped organize with them a new Women’s Emergency Service. 

After bombings in December 1942, the FAU was in action for a time among civilians in Calcutta, on the roads leading to Bihar, and in eastern Bengal and Assam.  In October 1942 a cyclone of exceptional intensity and size hit the southwest corner of Bengal.  The storm-whipped tide broke the seawall in many places; some 850 miles² was inundated by the sea.   It was the medical need of the survivors that brought the FAU into field.  For over a month Jean Cottle and her colleagues worked hard at inoculating against cholera.  Milk distribution centers for children were started that continued even after food distribution ended in March 1943.  [At one point after food distribution ended] it was a heart-breaking business for the FAU workers and their colleagues to find themselves feeding small children with milk while the adult population began to starve. 

Indian volunteers were eager to work with the FAU in Midnapore. The FAU’s need for volunteers provided the outlet for a growing enthusiasm for social work that the educated middle-class girls of Bengal were feeling. Throughout the period of cyclone relief, it was FAU’s experience that voluntary workers were more often than not reliable, tireless, & efficient. By mid-summer landless laborers & their their families were dying of starvation.           

The 1^st act of the FAU in direct relation to the famine was to help in establishing a canteen for under-nourished children in Calcutta; before long it expanded to include [most if not all of Bengal].  The English and wealthy Indians gave generously to the FAU work.  The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) began sending workers, vitamins, and badly needed food stuffs.  In Calcutta in the summer of 1943 the mothers cooked the food and paid a farthing, something each day towards the cost of the meal to avoid the demoralizing effects of being on the dole.  The FAU kept the need for rehabilitation constantly in view.  3 industrial centers have been established near Calcutta for the widows and children without fathers.  The FAU centers are partially run by a working committee [in a relaxed and cheerful manner]. 

The FAU found that small, interest free loans could be made to [destitute craftsfolk] who could then buy supplies and implements, and get back into production.  A model-village reconstruction project was started in Hati-berya, Midnapore.  In all these activities Friends’ workers have been successful in getting all groups to work together harmoniously.  They were able to reconcile differences and to act as catalytic agents, with an effect that appeared to be more far-reaching than the results of the actual work done.  The FAU and AFSC had by example rendered various practical services to the province of Bengal.

IV. Estimate & Forecast—The differences between the FFMA & the FAU are as] instructive as the parallels.  [They both had the danger of becoming guardians for life of orphans].  Whereas the FFMA was ready & eager to turn Indian orphans into infant Quakers, the FAU had no such desire.  The FFMA believed in tending, fertilizing, watering a tiny patch of soil by intensive means.  The FAU has cast its bread upon the waters of a great ocean.

In China, especially in the remote province of Sz-chuan, the pioneer missionaries were mere “foreign devils.”  They had to prove themselves by demonstrating to a practically minded people that the Christians had brought something worth having. Today the Society of Friends, as it is seen in West China, is still an alien growth, with no roots in the soil.  Chinese intellectuals say that the Quaker style of religion is just the thing to appeal to Chinese, but there is no sign of them joining the Society or of starting a kindred religio-social society of their own.

[There are several “Quaker outposts” in China].  [There is also a] FAU and a group of the AFSC giving their services for the period of the war.  They are not trying to turn non-Christian Chinese into Christians or Quakers.  Can the FAU and the AFSC have a wider influence than any of the older missionary bodies?  At best you may find many Christian islands of hope and comparative prosperity amidst the fear and poverty of these great eastern lands.  But they remain insulated.  The non-Christians in general fight shy of organizations that are felt to be serving a propagandist cause. [The Christians’] spiritual imperialism is suspect.  [There is a certain futility about] improvements that do not win the intelligent support of landlords, administrators, or party leaders. 

The FAU & AFSC seem to be influencing the whole life of peoples & provinces in a way that few missions have done. To those who have experienced “walking cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every man,” & the richness that comes from this way of living, there is something almost mean in the desire to see one’s Hindu or other non-Christian friends “converted” to Christianity.  Not so does God’s truth enter people’s hearts.  The non-evangelistic work which the FAU have demonstrated in China and India seems to provide a pattern for a healthier relationship of eastern and western workers [sharing] the modern world with the disinherited.

[In the 1930s], Hilda Cashmore decided to launch an experiment in social welfare work among Indian villagers with the support of Friends’ Service Council; she did not want this to be mixed up with missionary work.  [She utilized] some disused Quaker buildings and acquired some land to settle some aboriginals and do horticultural experiments on.  After 2 or 3 years she persuaded Ranjit Chetsingh, an Indian Friend and his wife to join her; she eventually left them in charge.  [Handicraft/community schools were developed, as well as a reading room and institute.  The concept of a social settlement did not fit well with the background of old mission work. Ranjit and Doris Chetsingh moved to Delhi.  [Ranjit has widespread community support].  For the 1^st time a Quaker project in India is being shaped from the outset by an Indian mind.  If Friends can cooperate in India with seekers after truth of other faiths, they may do more indirectly to undermine ancient superstitions, bad social habits and communal bigotry than by any direct attack or partisan activity.

The demand for freedom from western dominance comes from India, China, Burma, Malaya, Java, Siam, Indo-China, Philippines, Korea, & Japan. The world needs the action of dedicated groups of men and women who will spend a few years of their lives in some eastern city.  India and the East needs a sprinkling of Quaker saints, preferably the kind that is quite sure they are not saints.  The similarities of Quakerism and Hindu mysticism include: the life of the spirit is the source of all right living; seeking the life of the spirit is not an excuse for escape from the world; communion with God becomes the spring and source of pure and selfless social action.  The West has much to learn from India:  the naturalness of religion; the world of the spirit is our natural home; God is a fit subject for daily conversation.  [Quakerism may provide a] channel through which the best traditions of western social impulse and Gandhian religion may flow together for the mutual enrichment of East and West.

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34.  Contributions of the Quakers (by Elizabeth Janet Gray; 1947 (Great Britain Copyright 1939))

Foreword—What are the contributions of the people called Quakers to the USA?  We are dealing with what cannot be measured.  Some things we will only be able to say “The Quakers saw this first,” or “The Quakers started this and others have carried it on.”  The strength of a country’s fabric lies in the mingling of the threads, [Quaker among them], and the support they bring to each other.”

What the Quakers gave to the US comes not from their numbers or from their material possessions, but from their ideals and the power which these ideals gave to their lives.  E. J. Gray

Religion itself is nothing else than Love to God and Man.

Liberty without obedience is confusion and obedience without liberty is slavery.” 

Any government is free to the people under it whatever be the frame, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws.”

I propose … to leave myself and successors no power of doing mischief, that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country. William Penn

PART ONE: THE QUAKERS

1. The Coming of the Quakers (Massachusetts)—The 1^st Quakers arrived in America July 11, 1656.  Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were ruling in England.  There were English colonies in New England, Maryland, and Virginia; Dutch colonies in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  The Swallow brought 2 Quaker women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, into Boston Harbor.  [2 days after they were deported], 8 more Quakers arrived; they spent 11 weeks in prison.  The Massachusetts General Court passed harsh laws against Quakers and any who helped them get to Boston, [finally sentencing any 2^nd offenders to hang].  [Still they kept coming], each time convincing some of the truth of their message.  None recanted or gave up the practices that marked them as Quakers; their numbers grew.  Though the good people of Massachusetts had the great idea of religious liberty for themselves, they had not yet conceived the greater idea of religious liberty for all.

1... (Rhode Island)—Quaker missionaries had gone to Rhode Island.  [Their message spoke to the condition of many there].  The 1^st Yearly Meeting in America was established at Newport in 1661.  [There were enough Monthly Meetings to gather into Quarterly Meetings, and enough Quarterly Meetings to gather into a Yearly Meeting.  Quakers took a large part in the government of the colony.  Until the 1750s, ½ of RI was Quaker.  From MA and RI Quakerism spread north, and to Nantucket Island. 

1… (New York)—NY received its 1^st Quakers with distrust and harshness, beatings and deporting.  Little Quaker groups grew up on Long Island and flourished there.  The English took over the colony and the Duke of York declared religious liberty, thus making New York safe for all, including Quakers. 

1… (The Southern Colonies)—In 1656 the Quaker testimonies went also to Maryland and Virginia; there were no persecutions in Maryland and in 1672 the 2^nd Yearly Meeting in America was established in Baltimore.  In Virginia there were penalties for: not going to church; unlawful assemblies (religious services); failure to baptize.  Quakers were imprisoned and flogged; some died and Quakerism spread.  In North Carolina there was no persecution to face.  Quakers were the 1^st religious group of any kind.  In Charleston, South Carolina a little meeting house was built; one of the early governors was the Quaker John Archdale.

1… (New Jersey)—When Quakers came to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, they came in large numbers to live there.  James, Duke of York was given what is now New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  Quakers were beginning to think longingly of the land beyond the sea [as a place to live] in peace and freedom.  2 Quakers bought West New Jersey (Pennsylvania) for £1,000.  Edward Bylinge sold his share to pay off a debt. 

Quakers bought the land and wrote the “Concessions and Agreements” by which it was to be governed.  John Fenwick sailed in the Griffin with Quaker colonists and land at a place they called Salem. The ship Kent brought 200 Quakers to a place they called Burlington. By 1681 there were 1,400 Quakers in West Jersey and a 3^rd Yearly  Meeting was established.  In 1702 the East Jersey government was surrendered to Queen Anne.  The Quakers of East and West Jersey continued to have a large share in the management of the province.  They were farmers and shopkeepers; they built ships on the Delaware and sent them out to the West Indies and to China.  Elizabeth Haddon took over her father’s land and came to settle in the wilderness. 

1… (Pennsylvania and Delaware)—PA was a planned, large scale colony. William Penn heard the Quaker Thomas Loe speak in Ireland, and had been convinced of Quaker doctrine.  He, with help & advice from experts, devised & wrote a Frame of Government intended to give liberty & responsibility to the people. He asked for & received a grant of land from King Charles II, who owed his father £16,000. On March 14, 1681 King Charles II signed the land charter. It was named Penn-Sylvania at the insistence of the King, over William’s objections; he feared people would think he named it for himself. He set to work making his Frame of Government & writing an account of the province of Pennsylvania that would give prospective settlers an idea of what the country was like. Other ships & settlers went before him. Late in October, 1682, William Penn himself sailed up the Delaware.

Penn was able to stay only 2 years at this time, but when he left, there was a growing colony behind him, some 7,200 people.  The Welsh came, and the Germans.  When Penn came again in 1699, there were 14,000 people, only about half of them Quakers.  For 70 years the Quakers kept control in Pennsylvania, and during that time it was the most prosperous and peaceful of all the 13 colonies.

1… (The 1^st Migration, 1725-1775)—By 1700 there were 6 YMs in America. New Jersey, Delaware, & Pennsylvania were mostly Quaker colonies. Quakers were politically strong in Rhode Island, Maryland, & North Carolina. Between 1725 & 1775, there was a steady tide of migration flowing southward & westward. Eastern Virginians moved to Western Virginia; Nantucket, New Jersey & Pennsylvania Quakers poured into North Carolina. Daniel Boone was the son of Pennsylvania Quakers. From North Carolina he led settlers across the mountains into Kentucky & Missouri. At the end of the Revolution, there were about 50,000 Quakers in America. 

1… (The Great Migration)—After the Revolution, Eastern & Southern Quakers swept into what became Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, & Michigan. By 1809 there were no Quakers in South Carolina & Georgia. The 4 main roads were the Kanwha Road, Kentucky (Cumberland) Road, the Poplar Gap & Flower Gap Road, & the Magadee Road. In 1835 the first Quaker in Iowa crossed the Mississippi. The 1^st monthly meeting was established in 1838; the Yearly Meeting of 5 Quarterly Meetings was established in 1863. The Street Family migrated from Salem, NJ, to Salem, OH, to Salem, IN to Salem, IA. The number of Quakers in proportion to the whole population has greatly diminished. Splits over matters of doctrine, disowning anyone marrying a non-Quaker, & an attitude of protecting rather than sharing their doctrine led to the decline. What the Quakers gave to the US comes not from numbers or material possessions, but from Quaker ideals & the power which ideals gave to their lives.

2. Who the Quakers Were—George Fox’s eyes were amazingly blue and full of fire and tenderness. Wherever he went people felt his power, goodness, [and inspiring leadership].  There were in England many Seekers, seeking a religion that would satisfy them.  They came from all levels of society.  The ones 1^st convinced were known as the “Valiant 70” or the 1^st Publishers of Truth.  They went out in pairs or groups to spread the good news.  Most were [around Fox’s age] about 25 years old.  The persecution which the 1^st Quakers had to meet bound them together with an intense feeling of unity, love, shared suffering, and white-hot sincerity. 

After the persecution passed, the Quakers changed. They no longer went into the world to spread their faith, but withdrew to cherish it. With war, hate, & terror now in the world on a bigger scale, the Quakers have entered a new phase. They are coming out into the world, living out their message by relieving wherever they can the suffering they find. What is the Quaker belief’s central core that finds expression in the Quaker way of life? 

War is wrong.   Any kind of violence and hate is wrong.  There is no need of a priest to mediate between God and man, or for a consecrated building in which to worship God.  God speaks most clearly in the silence.  All are equal in the sight of God.  The Quakers believe taking hats off to persons of high station was an insincere and flattering custom.  You could not be a Quaker in secret.  Quakers did all things openly, in the light of truth.  Quakers used thee and thou, the singular form, rather than you, the plural form to a person of distinction. 

Out of the Quaker regard for truth arose another “testimony”; they would not take an oath.  They believed it was misleading for people who had a tender regard for truth to swear on special occasions they were speaking the truth.  In times of persecution this refusal to swear was used by the authorities as a way to catch and imprison Quakers.  Quakers objected to the elaborate dress of the time, because they thought it wrong to spend so much on clothes, when some had far too little to wear, and because it was wrong to make so great a distinction between rich and poor.  Accordingly the Quakers insisted upon simplicity in dress.  Now they wear whatever is worn by others, avoiding spending a disproportionate amount of time or money on it. 

Truth involved a number of things for Quakers, from death for the sake of truth to a small revolution in commercial methods.  [Haggling and erratic pricing were a part of business in the 17^th century].  Quaker shopkeepers said this was not honest.  They set one price for everybody and stuck to it.  Friends often “quaked” with the intensity of their feelings when they rose to speak.  They called themselves:  Children of the Light; Friends of God; Friends of the Truth.  In time they adopted the name “Society of Friends.  Love, truth, sincerity, simplicity, faithfulness unto death: these are the virtues the Quakers hold most precious and most strive to attain.  And out of them their gifts to the US are given.   

PART TWO: The Gifts of the Quakers

3. Toward a Democratic Constitution—It has been said that Quakerism is a “bold application of democracy to religion.” The Quakers applied democracy to religion when they decided that they did not need a minister or priest to mediate between themselves and God, and allowing anyone to speak in meeting.  They were soon applying democracy to all their outward affairs too.  William Penn was the proprietor (owner) of Pennsylvania.  Penn and his successors could appoint the Governor, but the real power lay in the Assembly and Council elected by the people, not in the governor.

After the Declaration of Independence, all the newly independent colonies were very busy making themselves new constitutions, and all were influenced by PA’s Frame, and so was the Constitution of the United States.  In PA, religious freedom involved not having a state church and in expressly stating that all who believed in God were free to worship as they pleased and to hold office.  Another important feature of the PA Frame was that, if necessary, it could be changed.  A 3^rd feature was that in PA the Assembly broke up by law.  That is, according to the law, it met at a certain time each year and adjourned when it voted to adjourn.  Penn planned a league of nations in Europe 225 years before the world got around to trying it out, & he suggested a union of the American colonies in 1696, almost 100 years before the Constitution of the United States.  In 1787 the independent states turned back to Penn’s plan of union and took from it some of the principles and some of the actual wording.     

Except for William Penn, Governor Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island was the most important in politics and government.  He was one of the 1^st men to see the injustice of taxation without representation.  Rhode Island 1^st proposed a Continental Congress; Stephen Hopkins was a delegate to it.  Another Friend who helped lead the colonies towards democracy was John Dickinson.  He stood for the rights of the colonists, but he wished to win them by peaceful means.  He was a member of the 1^st and 2^nd Continental Congresses, and a Delaware delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787.  Both Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin were not Quakers, but lived among them and were influenced by Quaker thought. 

Among the Quaker ideals and principles written into the Constitution were: religious freedom and separation of church and state; Congress (Penn 1^st used “congress” in 1696) convened and adjourned by law; 2 representatives from each state and ⅓ of the Senators to be elected every two year for a 6-year term; the affirmation as an alternative to the oath; provisions for amendment.  The Quakers stood for and tried most of them for many years and found them to be successful.

4. Towards Liberty and Equality: The Indian Problem—Before he even came to the new country himself, William Penn wrote a letter of love to the Indians. He acknowledged the unkindness & injustice they suffered from white men; he promised he & the people he sent would be different. He refused to allow a monopoly on trade with the Indians, because if he had accepted it, he could not have controlled the trade. He wrote: “I would not so defile that which came to me clean.” He bought the land from the Indians, even though he had already bought it from the King.  What was new about Penn’s approach to the Indians was his friendliness & his tender regard for them as people, equals & friends. He dealt justly with them according to their ideas of justice as well as with white man’s justice. 

In the fall of 1682, Penn met with the Indians in the great conference he promised them at Shackamaxon, near the Delaware River under a great elm tree.  Good faith and good will was promised by both sides.  So long as the Quaker influence was strong in Pennsylvania, the treaty was kept.  For 70 years, Indian and Quaker relied on one another for hospitality; Quaker children were cared for by Indians.  [Even when there was a reported threat of 500 warriors attacking the settlement, Quakers responded by sending a party of 6 unarmed men to the warriors gathering place.  They found no warriors and only a minor dispute over unpaid money for land].  In New Jersey, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, Friends’ friendly policy ensured peace with the Indians. 

The Indians were exploited by William Penn’s son Thomas (a non-Quaker) in the Walking Purchase.  Tho-mas purchased as much land between the Nashaminy Creek and the Schuykill River as a man could walk in 1½ days.  The man ran 88 miles instead of walking the 30 miles that the Indians expected. The Indians kept the bargain, but felt they had been treated unfairly.  War broke out.  When the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania declared war on the Indians in 1756, Quakers withdrew from government and ended their influence in government.

They opposed war & refused to pay war taxes. They said: “We will give a much larger part of our estate [to make peace] than the heaviest taxes of a war can be expected to require.” They formed the Friendly Association for Gaining & Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures, [which inspired the trust of some influential Indians]. In 1763 John Woolman had a “concern” to visit a settlement of Indians. [Even though Indians were on the warpath, he traveled unarmed in the wilderness with 4 guides & 1 white companion, stayed 3 days after delivering a message of love & friendliness. [A Quaker couple at 1^st pulled in their latchstring (i.e. “locked the door”) but later put their trust in God & put the latchstring out; the Indians warriors passed over that cabin].        

In 1795 the yearly meetings began to appoint standing committees on Indian affairs.  Friends established missions and schools, and their committees tried to see that there was justice in the decisions which were made at Washington.  A Philadelphian named Thomas Wistar was a great advocate of this peaceful method; he had gone among them and made friends.  Friends formed the Associated Executive Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs, and the Indian Rights Association Philadelphia.  President Grant asked these concerned Friends:  “Give me the names of some Friends for Indian agents, and I will appoint them.  If you can make Quakers out of the Indians it will take the fight out of them. Let us have peace.”

Friends were given charge of the Northern and Central Superintendencies.  For the 8 years of Grant’s administration the Peace Policy and the Friends’ work among the Indians went steadily forward.  The agents made peace between the tribes warring with one another.  They taught them how to plow, plant, and harvest, generally advised them, and established schools for them.  President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed a new commissioner of Indian affairs who was unfriendly [to both Indians and] Quakers.  They met opposition at every turn and were forced to give up their government work; they kept their interest in the schools they started.  [Quaker interest in the Indian and seeking justice for him continues].  The Friends’ management of Indian relations has provided 1 more example of the practicability of a policy of love and friendship in dealing with races whom we do not understand and whose ways are not our ways.

4… The Freeing of the Slaves—One of the most important gifts which Quakers gave to this country was the initial impulse against slavery. George Fox 1^st saw slavery when he visited Barbados in 1671. He saw the fundamental evil of slavery even when the slaves were being kindly treated, & urged Friends to let their slaves go free after they had worked for a certain amount of time. He also thought they should “not go away empty-handed.”  Germantown Friends wrote: “There is a liberty of conscience here which is right and reasonable, and there ought to be likewise liberty of the body.”     

John Woolman, a Quaker tailor from Mt. Holly New Jersey was, more than any other, to put into words the wrong of slavery and to rouse people to work against it.  From the time he had to prepare a bill of sale for a Negro woman to the end of his life, he devoted himself to freeing the slaves.  He traveled all over the country and to England.  He talked of slavery and the wrong of it, and caused other people to see it the same way he did.  He also wrote the pamphlet “Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes” in 1746.  Another Quaker against slavery at the same time was Anthony Benezet.  He wrote on slavery to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Patrick Henry, John Wesley, and George Whitefield, and they wrote him back.  He was one of the pillars of the 1^st abolition society in America, founded in 1775; Ben Franklin was president. 

Gradually all Friends saw that it wasn’t right for man to hold his fellow beings in slavery. By 1780 the practice of holding slaves had disappeared among the Quakers. That same year the Assembly of Pennsylvania passed the 1^st law abolishing slavery in the State. By 1826 there 101 anti-slavery societies in the country, most of them in the South. The most important emancipation publication was Benjamin Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation; it aroused William Lloyd Garrison to the cause.  By 1827, slavery was abolished in the northern states.

Lucretia Mott organized a female anti-slavery society. She preached against slavery as a young woman & gave up things produced by slave labor [i.e. cotton & sugar]. In 1840 Lucretia & James Mott were sent by the American Antislavery Society as delegates to the London world convention. James could attend the convention; Lucretia could not. Meanwhile, the Friends in the South were having difficult times, for their ideas were very unpopular. Laws were passed forbidding people to set their slaves free. Some yearly meetings bought slaves & sent them to Canada or New England, where they set them free. Many Southern Friends pulled up stakes & went west. 

The Underground Railroad started its work as far back as George Washington’s day; the system was going long before it had a name.  When it became illegal to help slaves, many Friends obeyed the higher law of conscience when they broke the law against helping slaves to escape.  Thomas Garret from Wilmington, DE was one of the foremost men in the Underground Railroad in the East.  He helped 2,700 slaves to escape, and continued to do so even after court fines ruined him.  James and Lucretia Mott’s home served as a station, too. 

Vestal and Levi Coffin, North Carolina Friends who moved to IN were the great heroes of the movement in the West.  He was known as “President” of the Underground Railroad.  Levi and his wife were the Rachel and Simeon Halliday of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  The poet John Whittier Greenleaf also did great work against slavery, editing the Pennsylvania Freeman, writing pamphlets, writing inspiring poems.  After the War of Secession and the Emancipation Proclamation, a new problem was created, for 3,000,000 uneducated, untrained people were turned out into the world without property or resources of any kind.  The Philadelphia Association maintained 47 schools, attended by 6,000 colored people.  There is a vast amount yet to be done.

4… For Prison Reform—In William Penn’s day, prisoners were herded together in one room: sick; well; old; young; thieves; murderers; and innocent men.  What food they got they had to pay for, and there was nothing to do.  This was the punishment for small offense.  For nearly 200 larger offenses, people were hanged. 

Quakers saw 2 things:  even convicted criminal has certain rights (e.g. healthful surroundings, [separation from “hardened criminals”); the chief purpose of imprisonment is reform not revenge. They did not believe in capital punishment at all. Penn eliminated all but 2 capital offenses (treason & murder) in PA.  Nobody was imprisoned for debt. The prison was run & paid for by the state, & prisoners were to be kept busy, in good health, and trained.  A New York Friend, Thomas Eddy did much to establish the 1^st state prison in 1797 as a state senator; the 1^st board of governors were almost all Friends; politics soon put them out of governing prisons.     

4… Women’s Rights—In Friends’ meeting for worship women as well as men could speak.  This reveals a recognition of the equality of men women before God that spreads into all departments of life.  Women with a leading could go anywhere to carry the message of Quakerism.  They went as wives and mothers who had other duties to perform besides those at home.  They took an active part in the business of monthly and yearly meetings as a matter of course.  Lucretia Mott preached in Philadelphia meeting when she was still a young woman, and pled for the right of women to speak in 1835.

When she could not speak at the London antislavery conference as a woman, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton put together the 1^st convention on women’s rights, which took place in 1848.  The demanded the right to vote, the right to political office, equal rights to property, wages, custody of children, and making contracts.  [Women now have these rights, with the right to vote coming in 1920.  The roots of women’s rights can be found in] the generations of Quaker women before Lucretia Mott who took their place & responsibilities in their communities. 

4 … Care of the Insane—The 18^th century treatment of the mentally ill was cruel & inhuman, worse than the treatment of prisoners. It occurred to the Quakers to approach the mentally ill with kindness and love, using loving care, a peaceful atmosphere and easy, interesting work to do with their hands.  The PA Hospital in Philadelphia (1756) made an effort to cure the insane. While they were kept in the cellar, they were given occupational therapy.  Thomas Eddy, who worked with prisons, was treasurer and president of the NY Hospital. He established Bloomingdale Asylum.  Frankford Asylum (PA) was started in 1817. [Their efforts are proof of the power of love and kindness in dealing with troubled people].

4 … Education—Penn’s Frame of Government included the provision that all children, girls & boys, should be taught a useful trade. It included the poor as well as the rich. When the William Penn Charter School was established children whose parents could not pay were to be admitted free. Compulsory free education was not yet conceived of by anyone; Quakers prepared the way for it. In NY the Female Association opened a school for poor children in 1801. In 1805, the Public School Society was formed & soon had several free schools going.  Quaker elementary schools in NY, NC, OH, IN, KS did much to shape the public school systems as they developed.

Friends have continued to maintain schools for their own children, and children of like-minded people.  The ones still carrying on include: Westtown, George School, Oakwood, Germantown Friends School, Friends Central, and Friends Select in or near Philadelphia, as well as Friends schools in Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Haddonfield, Atlantic City, NYC, and Providence, RI.  Several colleges were also established. 

Quakers more than once have been the 1^st to see something that others have come to see later, have made a small beginning which others carried on to a great completion.  At Pendle Hill, near Philadelphia, a graduate school where students and faculty work together in true democratic way on social problems which the modern world is facing [was established in 1931].  Who can say what other schools may follow?

4… The Arts—So intent were Quakers on worshipping God & helping man that they overlooked the healing and inspiring power of great music and great art.  They did not realize that God speaks through a great symphony or a beautiful picture.  The story in the future may be different.  For 2½ centuries, Quakers have produced no great musicians or great artists.  Benjamin West and Joseph Pennell are 2 Quaker contributors to American art. 

Distinctive Quaker architecture, with its pent roofs and hooded doorways, has been much copied.  There was a certain art in their home furnishings, and the quiet, ordered, comfortable life that went on within it. It did not produce musicians, painters, sculptors, poets.  John Greenleaf Whittier was very much a social activist, as well as a poet.  His best-loved poem Snowbound tells of his boyhood experience shut up within a New England farmhouse in a snowstorm; “The Barefoot Boy” is another of his beloved poems.  Prose contributions include: George Fox’s Journal; William Penn’s Some Fruits of Solitude; and modern writings by Rufus Jones.  Quakerism produced the scientists John Bartram (botanist); Edward Drinker Cope (paleontologist); Thomas Godfrey (quadrant inventor).  [Perhaps the other contributions are enough]; perhaps we should not ask for artists, too. 

5. Toward Peace: They have Refused to Fight—Quakers have done [3] things for peace: they have refused to fight; they have tried to replace hate with love; they have tried to repair the harm done by war on both sides. While refusing to fight or pay war taxes, they gave more money than the taxes would have cost to the Friendly Association to make peace with the Indians. In the Revolutionary War Quakers did not fight; those who did, some 400 from Philadelphia, were disowned. Quakers were hated as Tories and pacifists; 17 were “exiled” to Virginia. 

During the War Between the States, a few Quakers in the South suffered imprisonment for their refusal. In the World War, a very few Quakers felt it their duty to join the army. Their meetings recognized disownment as a form of violence & did not disown them, but left the decision to individual conscience.  [One of the] great modern Quaker gifts to the cause of peace and love is the American Friends Service Committee [AFSC, founded in 1917].

5 … They have Sought to Replace Hate with Love—Friends must not love one side and hate the other; they may not take sides and feel triumphant when one side wins.  [The founding statement of the AFSC was]:  “We are united in expressing our love for our country and our desire to serve her loyally.  We offer our services to the Government of the US in any constructive way in which we can conscientiously serve humanity.”

Rufus M. Jones' book, A Service of Love in War Time, tells the story of those war days.  Quakers worked on farms in the US or on reconstruction in France.  After the war 3 AFSC representatives went to Germany.  English and American Friends provided money and supplies and directed the work, the Germans distributed the food.  By June 1921, more than a million children and mothers were being fed every day.  They left and came back in 1923, [when inflation drove the price of food beyond the reach of most families].  [The AFSC also went into Austria, Poland and Russia, to help with food, and to prevent tuberculosis from spreading].  Any enduring gift to peace [anywhere], however small, is a gift to the US.    

Quakers have tried to remove the causes of violence between the white race & the other races in the country by treating the Indians fairly & lovingly, by freeing the Negroes & opening up opportunities to them, & by helping those in prison.  They have not yet fully succeeded, but they have pointed the way and they are still working.     

Another cause of violence is lack of understanding between [wage-earners & employers]. [There is enough personal contact between employer & worker in small businesses that they can] make allowances & help each other. [The same possibility doesn’t exist in corporations]. The AFSC Home Service Section works for groups in the US, like out-of-work coal miners in PA, KY., WV., & TN.  [Communities such as Arthurdale, WV, Tygart Valley, WV, Fayette County, PA were set up to teach miners gardening & how to make & sell crafts.

Since 1934 Friends have been running Work Camps in the summers, to bring about understanding between people who otherwise would not know one another.  Work Camps of high-school and college age boys and girls settle in a community for 2 months and do a full day’s work 6 days a week on some improvement which the community needs and could not otherwise afford to have; [everybody benefits]. 

       The AFSC Interracial Section has been working for good feeling and understanding among the different races in this country.  In December 1938, 3 Friends went quietly to Germany to ask the cooperation of the German government in helping Jewish refugees.  [They could not have gone without the German memory of Quaker help given 20 years before]. Democracy is made up of the free gifts of free people working together for the good of all. 

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37.  Are Your Meetings Held in the Life by Margaret M. Cary; 1947

         When we think of the word relationship in connection with church or community we are drawn . . . to the word fellowship.  [Acts and Epistle verses cited: Acts1:14; 2:1, 42, 44, 46; 4:32; I Corinthian 14:26].  In Marius the Epicurean Walter Pater says:  “The Church was true for a moment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of profound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected the eternal goodwill of God to men.” [Or] as Thomas Kelly says, they were drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God, bringing them into a wholly new relation to their fellow Christians.  “The center of authority is not in man, not in the group, but in the creative God Himself. 

        It is an observable fact that this horizontal-vertical relationship tends to weaken as the groups increases in size.  One lives in a kind of circle interlocking with many circles, until the whole membership is permeated, [and a] network of love, [a reality of heart] for the whole meeting [is created].  Thomas R. Kelly says that continuously renewed immediacy—not receding memory of the Divine touch—lies at the base of this reality of heart.  Our relationship to the meeting must have in it reality of heart, newness and freshness. 

        To attain to a newness of relationship with all things, people, the meeting, our job, we must take time to enjoy and cultivate our very own real, vital, [and creative] interests.  We must get in fresh touch with the Eternal every day. The important thing is to keep creative urges as a beckoning light in the back of our minds, as a secret treasure to which we will return.  Young mother . . . student . . . volunteer needs to find in the meeting for worship . . . a gathered worship, a deep and spiritual inspiration, and perhaps a spoken message or prayer which will be a point of light throughout the coming week.  Some are lonely . . . some have outgoing love [to spare] ... some have great mental gifts . . .  Some of excellent judgment, wisdom, and executive ability will be ideal committee workers.  It is not the gift or talent that marks the worth of a woman to her meeting, but the willingness to share her treasure.

        Out of the real sense of need in several meetings, these are some of the questions that have come:  How can a meeting spread initiative and responsibility throughout its membership instead of overworking a small group?  How can a meeting absorb children who are growing up in the midst and give them those qualities which will later make for adult leadership?  In the light of the existing pressures in our lives how shall a woman apportion her time among home, meeting, and other activities?  To achieve unity in worship and in fellowship in large meeting, we suggest the necessity of smaller deeply functioning, worshipping, studying, or meditating groups.  [Whatever the focus of these groups, they] must at all times be conscious of and concerned for the meeting worship.  Whatever one shares deeply and joyfully and with reality of heart with another reflects itself in the possibilities of greater fellowship in the larger group.

          If through this circle-within-circle method, unity of worship is attained, ways of using every talent will appear.  Friends who visit those applying for membership should find out the special interests and abilities of the applicants and record these with the nominating committee.  Someone should keep closely in touch with new members until they feel integrated with the group as a whole. 

          The meeting should be a fostering group, a kind of matrix for its members, to which individual and other problems can be brought in faith and assurance.  First, [there is] the nurture of young people (14-22).  This nurture should include education in Quaker beliefs and testimonies, should spring out of young people’s classes managed largely by the young . . . but having one or more understanding men or women [with] a deep, committed, and enlightened concern that these young people shall be nurtured.  The second important group to need nurturing is that made up of young parents.  The growth and wise development of these parents towards the day when they will assume leadership of the Sunday School is a process that no meeting can afford to neglect.  The third section of meeting is that made up of the new members. 

        [As Paul said to] the young church at Corinth:  “When ye come together everyone of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation.”  Many of us find ourselves in the upper brackets of privilege . . . while much of the world is slowly starving to death, [without] health, shelter, employment, hope, light, or warmth.  As women, mother, wives, educators, this is enough to give us pause.  I believe that if we first fellowship with one another in and through God, come . . . with reality of heart . . . inner refreshment . . . we shall come to our meetings able to make wise choice as to our particular contribution to the meeting.  As Henry Cadbury said:  “Your performance must be according to your personal equation.”  [The overworked work-horses] need to lay down the burdens for which others have a genuine gift or talent now wrapped up in a napkin. 

         There might well be such joy, even a holy exuberance, if we each had daily contacts with Jesus Christ.  Then indeed the problems of a meeting, whether large or small, new or old, [but definitely a Blessed Community] would solve themselves.  We should [then] make full-hearted response to the challenge of the eternally youthful Christ:  “What do ye more?”

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39.  Christianity & Civilization (Burge Memorial Lecture (1940, at Oxford), by Arnold J. Toynbee; 1947)

        Introduction—In May of 1940, England was facing a crisis which was certainly not less formidable than the one that is confronting her now, in 1947.  The crises of peace are in some ways more difficult to wrestle with than those of war; in war everything is simpler and clearer to the public interest at stake.  It is as true in 1947 as it was in 1940 that nations like individuals can only be saved by themselves.

        The decline of Western Europe might still be as serious for the prospect of civilization as was the decline of Greece in the last century B.C.  Our secular life in this world is only a fragment of some larger life of higher spiritual dimensions, and there is no reason for supposing that the spiritual welfare of the kingdom of God is jeopardized by our temporal misfortunes in this world. 

        We are at grips with something that transcends the limits of human understanding and experience.  [Humankind cannot wait to act until they have attained that fullness of knowledge which is always beyond their reach.  Advances in our understanding of [the workings of physical nature do not] appreciably diminish the infinite expanse of our ignorance.  [It] has not been accompanied by any corresponding increase in spiritual enlightenment.  The universe as we see it through Western eyes is not the true picture of the universe as it is. From the eternal standpoint of God, we may be sure that it is no more than a mirage.  We have to shift our attention from the physical nature to the life of the spirit; from the creature to the creator.

        The motto of this university [is] Dominus Illuminatio Mea (The Lord is my Light).  If the truth about this University is told in those three Latin words, then we know for certain that the light by which we live will not go out.  My subject this afternoon is the relation between Christianity and civilization.  One of the oldest and most persistent views is that Christianity was the destroyer of the civilization within whose framework it grew.  In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon’s writes:  “I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion.”  I believe there is a fallacy in this view.  I think Gibbon’s initial error lies in supposing that the ancient civilization of the Graeco-Roman world began to decline in [the Age of the Antonines,] the 2^nd century after Christ.  I think it really began to decline in the 5^th Century before Christ [and] it died, not by murder, but by suicide.  The philosophies arose [in this decline] because the civic life of that civilization had already destroyed itself by turning itself in to an idol to which men paid an exorbitant worship.

         From his peak in the 18^th century Gibbon looks back to the Antonine peak in the 2^nd Century.  That view has been put very clearly by [Sir James Frazer].  It is the formal antithesis of the thesis . . . I want to maintain.  He writes:  “Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state. . .  All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions which [instilled] the communion [and salvation] of the soul with God as the only objects worth living for.  Thus the center of gravity was shifted from the present to a future life . . . a general disintegration of the body politic set in.  The ties of the state and the family were loosened.  The revival of Roman law, of the Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and literature at the close of the Middle Ages [1,000 years later], marked the return of Europe to native ideals of life and conduct, to saner manlier views of the world [and an ebbing of the tide of the Oriental invasion].”  I would agree with Frazer that the tide of Christianity has been ebbing and that our post-Christian Western secular civilization . . . is of the same order as the Pre-Christian Graeco-Roman civilization.

      A 2^nd possible view [is that] Christianity is a transitional thing which bridges the gap between one civilization and another.  After an interval [of decline of over 700 years] you find in 9^th Century Byzantium and the 13^th Century West . . . a new secular civilization arising out of the ruins of its Graeco-Roman predecessor.  [When you] take the other higher religions which are still living on in the world of today . . . you can see the role of Islam as a chrysalis between ancient Israel and Iran and the modern Islamic civilization of the Near and Middle East.  Hinduism seems to bridge a gap . . . between the modern Hindu culture and the ancient culture of the Aryas; Buddhism seems to play the same part as a mediator between the modern history of the Far East and the history of ancient China.

        If you look at the histories of the ancient civilization of South-Western Asia and Egypt, you find there a rudimentary higher religion in the form of the worship of a god and a related goddess.  I think you can see that this rudimentary higher religion . . . played the historical role of filling a gap where there was a break in the continuity of secular civilization.  However . . . this apparent “law” does not always hold good.  Between the Minoan and Graeco civilizations you do not find any higher religion corresponding to Christianity.  If you go back behind the ancient civilization of Aryan India, your find a still more ancient pre Aryan civilization in the Indus Valley . . . but you do not seem to find any higher religion intervening between the two.  It is between [the more recent] civilizations . . . that the intervention of a higher religion seems to be the rule. 

       A 3^rd possible view of the relation between civilizations and higher religion [is that] the breakdowns and disintegrations of civilizations [and the resulting suffering] might be stepping-stones to higher things on the religious plane.  The Christian Church has Jewish and Zoroastrian roots, and those roots sprang from an earlier breakdown of a Syrian civilization.  [Abraham and Moses] were precursors of Christ; and the sufferings through which they won their enlightenment were Stations of the Cross in anticipation of the Crucifixion.  The continuous upward movement of religion may be served and promoted by the cyclic movement of civilizations around the cycle of birth—death—birth. 

        Our own Western post-Christian secular civilization might at best be a superfluous repetition of the pre-Christian Graeco-Roman one.  We have obviously, for a number of generations past, been living on spiritual capital, I mean clinging to Christian practice without possessing the Christian belief—and practice unsupported by belief is a wasting asset. 

        Our present view of modern history focuses attention on the rise of our modern Western secular civilization as the latest great new event in world.  If we can bring ourselves to think of it as one of the vain repetitions of the Gentiles, then the greatest new event . . . will still be the Crucifixion and its spiritual consequences.  On the old-fashioned time scale [where] creation of the world [took] place not more than 6,000 years, 1,900 years seems a long period of time.  [On the longer geological time-scale] it is a very recent event. 

        At its 1^st appearance Christianity was provided by the Graeco-Roman civilization with a universal state in the shape of the Roman Empire, [which aided] the Christianity’s spread around the shores of the Mediterranean.  Our modern Western secular civilization in its turn may serve its historical purpose by providing Christianity with a worldwide repetition of the Roman Empire.  Just as Clement’s and Origen’s work infused Greek philosophy into Christianity at Alexandria . . . so the present religions of India and the form of Buddhism practiced in the Far East may contribute new elements to be grafted onto Christianity in days to come.  And if it is civilization that is the means and religion that is the end . . . then Christianity may be expected not only to endure [the end of West civilization], but to grow in wisdom and stature as the result of a fresh experience of secular catastrophe.      

        What is the relation of the Christian Church to the Kingdom of Heaven? As the primitive species of societies has given place to civilizations . . . local and ephemeral [civilizations] may perhaps give place in their turn to a single worldwide and enduring representative in the shape of the Christian Church.  If this were to happen, would it mean that the Kingdom of Heaven would then have been established on Earth?  Unless and until human nature itself undergoes a moral mutation which would make an essential change in its character, the possibility of evil as well as good will be born into the world afresh with every child.  Human society on Earth will not be able wholly to dispense with institutions [from which comes the binding power of] partly habit and partly force. 

       The institutional element has historically been dominant in the Church herself.  The Church in its traditional form thus stands forth armed with the spear of the Mass, the shield of the Hierarchy and the helmet of the Papacy.  I think that the institutions created, or adopted and adapted, by Christianity are the toughest and most enduring of any that we know and are therefore the most likely to last.  The institutional element in the traditional Catholic, however necessary it is to survival, [is of earthly origin] and keeps it forever [earthbound and] different from the Kingdom of Heaven. 

       The last topic I am going to touch [is] that of the relation between Christianity and progress.  Religious progress means spiritual progress, and spirit mean personality; religious progress must take place in the spiritual lives of individual personalities.  Are higher religions essentially and incurably anti-social?                 Are spiritual and social values antithetical and inimical to each other? 

The doctrine of the Trinity is the theological way of expressing the revelation that God is a spirit; the doctrine of the Redemption is the theological way of expressing the revelation that God is Love.  Seeking God is a social act   The human soul that is truly seeking to save itself is as fully social a being as the ant-like Spartan or the bee-like Communist.  The Christian soul is a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and therefore the paramount aim is communion with, and likeness to God. 

        Relations with fellow humans are consequences of, and corollaries to, one’s relations with God.  The social aims of mundane societies will be achieved much more successfully [in the Church Militant] than they ever have been or can be in a mundane society that aims at these objects direct, and at nothing higher.  The aim and test of progress under a truly Christian dispensation on Earth would be the spiritual life of individual souls in their passages through this earthly life from birth into this world to death out of it. 

       Until this Earth ceases to be physically habitable by Man, we may expect that the endowments of individual human beings with original sin and with natural goodness will be about the same as they have always been.  The matter in which there might be spiritual progress [in the long-term] is the opportunity open to souls, for getting into closer communion with God, and becoming less unlike God, during their passage through This World. 

         What Christ has bequeathed to the Church and what the Church has preserved for generations is a growing fund of revelation [illumination] as to the true nature of God and the true end of humankind here and hereafter, and the inspiration [grace] to aim at getting into closer communion with God.  Is the spiritual opportunity given by Christianity an indispensable condition for salvation?  If this were so, then innumerable generations of humans would have been born and have died without a chance of the salvation which is the true end of humans and the true purpose of life on Earth. 

        The hypothesis that individual human souls existed for the sake of society, and not for their own sakes or for God’s is repugnant and inconceivable when we are dealing with the history of religion,  where the progress of individual souls towards God and not the progress of society is the end on which the supreme value is set.  We must believe that the possibilities of learning through suffering in This World have always afforded a sufficient means of salvation to every soul that has made the best of the spiritual opportunity offered to it here.

       A soul which has been offered, and has [accepted] the illumination and the grace that Christianity conveys will be more brightly irradiated with the light of the Other World than a pagan soul that has won salvation by making the best of the narrower opportunity here open to it.  The Christian soul can attain, while still on Earth, a greater measure of humankind’s greatest good than can be attained by any pagan soul in the earthly stage of its existence.  It is individual spiritual progress in This Word for which we pray when we say “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”  It is for the salvation that is open to all men of good will—pagan and Christian—who make the most of their spiritual opportunities on Earth that we pray when we say “Thy Kingdom come.”   

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40. Quaker Message (extracts of Quakers belief & practice & present significance by Sidney         Lucas; 1948)

        The Inward Light--[Up to the mid-17^th Century] Theologians had turned away from the revelation of life for the world here and instead constructed a plan or scheme of salvation for another world.  Quakerism was a fresh attempt to recover the way of life revealed in the New Testament; to re-interpret it and re-live it in this world.  It was part of a wider movement to restore primitive Christianity and to change the basis of authority from external things to the interior life and spirit of humans.  Friends made the fundamental truth of the Inward Light the actual foundation for their whole religious system.  We believe that the religion of Jesus Christ is primarily spiritual in its essence, and that every follower [has available to them] direct personal intercourse with God through [God’s spirit acting] in the human heart.  Some may have looked on Quakerism as an exalted type of social service.  But it is our aim to call people back to the light of God in their own souls.

        William Penn said: . . . “Quakers lay down as a main fundamental . . . that God through Christ hath placed a principle in every one to inform them of their duty, and to enable them to do it.”  George Fox said:  “Your tea-cher is within you: look not forth; it will teach you both lying in bed and going abroad, to shun all occasion of sin and evil. . .  Preach freely and bring people off from these outward temples . . . and direct them to the spirit and Grace of God in themselves . . . [and to] Christ, their free teacher.”  The significant watchword of the new discovery was the Universal saving light.

        [Today] people may differ as to its explanation, but they cannot deny that there is something in human nature that responds to truth and beauty and love.  The victory [over departures from the true way of life] comes from the consciousness of a strength not our own.  The light that shines into the human heart is not of man, and must be distinguished from the conscience and the natural faculty of reason.  The Inward Light was a divine clearness which enlightened and gradually built up the conscience, and it taught an intuitive wisdom beyond reasoned argument.  The Moral Sense, the realization of a clear distinction between right and wrong and of an imperative to choose the former if one is to be true to oneself is the most distinctive feature of the divine life within us.  We speak now of the conscience as the faculty within us which discriminates between right and wrong . . . and we regard this faculty as constantly subject to divine illumination.   

         The doctrine of the indwelling of the spirit has been to Friends a practical faith embracing with its scope the whole of human life.  Hence, little account is made of the popular distinction between things secular and things religious; every employment that is not wrong may be accounted holy.  Obedience to the Inward Light heightens and quickens personality enlarges the power of perception, and renders possible things impossible before.

        With readiness to go forward there must also be willingness to wait.  The great tradition of guidance can only be maintained as we are enabled faithfully to wait on the voice of God.  We do need the individual interpretation of the facts of life, [but] it needs checking and criticizing and correcting by measuring it against the corporate community conscience.  “The Spirit of Truth, “God,” “Christ,” “the holy spirit,” “The seed of God,” “the Light” ([i.e.] the principle of good in all) are metaphors used to express something too deep for words.  We can make our faith in its existence the bridge in our approach to all whom we meet.

        Communion with God—The more our engagements multiply, the greater is the call to watch unto prayer [and communion with God].  We believe in prayer as a power in the world, and we need to pray in expectation of definite results.  Prayer does not need many words.  It is more often a case of an inner attitude, a lifting up of the work to be done and a surrendering of our will about it.  Silence [instead of grace] may check our thought amid the rush of outward life, and call us to an inward act of devotion, by which the meal may be made a sacrament. 

         It is important to recognize the difference between private and public worship.  The individual experience [is helpful] but not sufficient.  In the Meeting for Worship . . . a corporate sense of the divine presence is reached.  In a meeting for worship the worshippers are like the spokes of a wheel.  The nearer they come to the centre of all Life the near they are to each other.  Silence is one of the best preparations for such communion.  It may be sheer emptiness, an absence of words . . . But it may be an intensified pause, vitalized hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of reciprocal correspondence with God.  Though there be not a word spoken, yet is the true spiritual worship performed.  The function of a meeting is to bring a lift to life, a vision to the soul, a fortification for the tasks that are before us.  George Fox was always anxious to bring men to “sit under their own vine; to ‘fix their eyes on Christ their teacher’ and not to depend on himself or any other preacher or leader.

        True ministry is not simply the expression of views of truth or ideals of conduct.  We need to wait for that sense of call that comes to us from God through the fellowship of hearts that are bound into harmony by the flowing through them of the tides of God’s living presence.  We covet for our church, not only a ministry which springs up out of the life of the Meeting itself, but also the utterance of a message in apostolic power, which will triumph over spiritual deadness and opposition in the congregation.  Fox said, “If any have anything upon them to speak, in the life of God stand up and speak, if it be but two or three words, and sit down again.”

        The sacraments derive their origin from the Church and not from the mind of Christ, or from his clear commands.  In Baptism we have the change from the complete immersion of a convert, to the sprinkling of an unconscious infant.  In the Eucharist we have the change from a common meal to a solemn rite.  [The Biblical evidence for both sacraments are not part of the original gospel content, but were later insertions].   Quakers find from their religious experience that Communion and the cleansing and renewing baptism of his Spirit are possible without ritual.  [We see] ritual as leading to confusion between outward sign and inward reality.

       Neither a majority nor a minority should allow itself in way to overbear or to obstruct a meeting for church affairs in its course towards a decision.  We are unlikely to reach truth or wisdom if one section imposes its will on another [as in taking a vote.  We rely on] attaining a group consciousness of the course to take. 

       Our objection to forms is that they would confine us to that which is too little—they hamper and check the living exercise of the spirit which is necessary for real worship and inward growth.  Some theology and some practice in common there is bound to be, though it may be left fluid and welcome change.

       Conceptions of God—There is a vast difference between knowledge about God and knowledge of  God [i.e.] a recognition of God’s presence in the experience of [one’s] own heart.  The scriptures are unique and irreplaceable not because they are inspired as no other writings are, nor because they are preserved miraculously free from . . . error, but because they record the main stages in the discovery or revelation of the great truths of God.  Friends accepted the Bible as inspired, but they would not call it the “Word of God” because for them it was not the final rule of faith and duty.  Early Quaker testimony had: freedom from literal acceptance of the scripture; new ideas on pre-Christian and non-Christian people; true following of the New Testament Christianity.  We highly value . . . the Scriptures . . . but we believe that the Light of Christ alone can implement and interpret them.

         God cannot be ethically present in the unethical; God cannot be personally present in the impersonal.  God can only be entirely present in a being capable of containing and expressing God in God’s essential truth.  The essence of religion appears to be the recognition of divine purpose in the world, and the endeavor to make that purpose our own.  Faith is not being free of doubt, any more than courage is being free from fears.  Faith is a determination to act on something we are not quite sure about.  The center of faith is belief in ourselves [what we can do spiritually]; belief in God is only its reasonable unfolding.  Belief in God is an act of our whole nature by which we take hold of the unseen and the eternal and are able to have communion with it.

        [Our] attempts to express the nature of God [are best described by] Maximus of Trye in the 2^nd Century A.D.:  “God, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the sun or sky, greater than time and eternity, and all the flow of being; is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye.  But we, being unable to apprehend his essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures [of this world] . . . yearning for the knowledge of him, and . . . naming all that is beautiful in this world after his nature.”  The creative power is in the world . . . and it is ceaselessly active.  The God we have found is not omnipotent but evolutionary, progresssive, growing in power and revelation of God’s self.

       The central fact in the religious history of humankind is the life and personality of Jesus Christ.  The 1^st thing we need to know is that God is like Christ, not that Christ is like God.  [Some overemphasize Christ’s divinity; some overemphasize Christ’s humanity].  Jesus shows us the divine life humanly lived and the human life divinely lived.  The 1^st Christians were conscious of his present guiding spirit; Christ’s authority for them was internal not external.  Fox challenged his hearers: “You will say ‘Christ said this, and the apostles say this’, but what canst thou say?”  We shall believe many things because [Jesus] said them . . . But we must go on to something further if his work for and in us is to be completed; the Jesus of history must become the Christ of our experience.      

        War and Peace—Be faithful in maintaining our testimony against all war as inconsistent with the spirit and teaching of “Christ. Live in the life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars.  War and Christianity are contradictory ways of life.  We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever. . .  The Spirit of Christ . . . will never move us to fight and war against any man.

        The 4 fundamental grounds for opposition to war are: New Testament (external authority); Conscience (internal authority); Personality (transforming power of love and the supreme worth of personal life; Irrationality (insanity of war).  We do not rest our witness for peace on isolated texts; war is a contradiction of the message, spirit, work, and life of Jesus Christ.  It is not consistent for anyone to claim that his Christianity as a way of life stops him from war, unless he is prepared to adjust his entire life.  Fox proposed to live in such a spirit that no thought or word is sowing the seeds of conflict.  We probe into our lives, to search out the seeds of war, which may find nourishment in our selfishness or our clinging to material possessions.

        The man who compromises day by day with his religious ideals cannot easily stand out suddenly for them in the moment of crises.  When pacifism becomes simply a refusal to fight it has lost the virtue [and ability to convert an opponent].  It must be an active power that makes peace.  Our conviction that all war is unchristian prevents us from giving military service to the state, but calls us to serve our nation in others way even at the cost of much personal sacrifice.  There is a right and possible way for the family of nations to live together at peace.  It is the way exemplified in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.  
       There can be no great civilization, no enduring peace, no fellowship of nations . . . without the culture of the spirit and . . . the principles of life which lie at the heart of Christ’s message and way of life.  Quakerism recognizes that religion has a definite ethical principle . . . for the guidance of humanity, a principle which strikes at the root of injustice, and should eliminate all the causes of war—that of the infinite worth of all human personality.  We must care for the soul [by working] for conditions in which the spirit is free.

        Quakerism and Society—In your daily work, and in your social and other activities, be concerned for the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven upon earth.  While making provision for yourselves and your families, be not too anxious, but in quietness of spirit seek 1^st the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.  To be able to transcend money, culture, and color bars, and free of all dividing prejudices, is the function of a Quaker.  The foundation of the teaching of Jesus is the unlimited love of God to all.  Religion is man’s response to that love.

       The central thought in Quakerism, the thought of the indwelling spirit of God in all, must find an outward expression in service, [such as assuring] the opportunity of full development, physical, moral, and spiritual . . . to  the whole community.  True service is the outward form of true worship.  Finding the Will of God in relation to society and industry is [done by]:  stimulating members to experiment . . . with creating a standard higher than the conventional one; and educating public opinion toward a clearer understanding of the implication of the teachings of Jesus which have not yet been worked out in the [larger community].  The thing that matters in our social structure is human personality; we shall not allow ourselves to lose this essential fact in abstractions.  We shall go behind [them] . . . to the people who make them up and who are the only realities that give meaning to the words.

         The great task of the future [in industry] is to see that deciding what is produced shall be done in the consumer’s interest, for whose ultimate benefit both Government and industry exist, with the profit motive occupying a place of small importance.  We must accept our share of responsibility for finding a liberal, democratic, and Christian approach to the new society.  Friends in their work try to be constructive, and therefore have never just given charitable relief, but have tried . . . to help men and women to a creative activity of their own—to restore their self-respect and help them to feel that they are wanted.           

         Not by exploiting and impoverishing our neighbor, but by strengthening them economically will we be able to reap personal benefits. Every individual needs to make their own contribution to [solving social problems through making] changes in themselves, their environment, and their personal relationships. Jesus did not work for people; he became as one of them and worked with them.  Many evils arise from the inadequate systems for dealing with economic forces in industry.  The Society of Friends asserts that the [economic] evils around us are not inevitable; it is within human ability and power to order economic life on a rational and Christian basis.

        We ask friends to be considerate as to the extent to which they make others work on the first day of the week.  The First-day of the week should be a time for worship and religious service, fostering family life, rest and leisure, and intellectual and spiritual refreshment.  We believe that all forms of gambling and all merely speculative means of obtaining money are contrary to Christ’s spirit; it is also a symptom of unrest, of a craving for excitement and relief from life’s tedium. John Woolman’s chief objection to the consumption of spirituous liquors was that it hindered communion with God.  We believe that social drinking customs of the country are largely responsible for lapses into intemperance of many in all classes of society, who would otherwise be useful citizens.

       We recognize it to be our duty as Christians to inform ourselves regarding those of other races and nationalities within our own country, and regarding other nations having a civilization different from our own, [in order to] establish a high standard of conduct toward them.  Concern and cooperation with the American Negro’s full attainment of civil liberties is the current focus of our work.  No task is so fundamental or urgent as that of converting the brotherhood of man from a respected phrase to a living practice.

       The terrible sufferings of our forefathers in 17^th century prisons have given Friends a special interest in prison management and the treatment of crime.  Society is in measure responsible for the criminal, a fact which emphasizes the duty of meeting moral failure by redemptive care.  While condemning unrighteous acts, we should also seek to have offenders treated in a manner conducive to strengthening moral character. We have often expressed our objection to capital punishment; it fails as a deterrent.  Many crimes are closely connected with property; it seems to many that most crime is traceable to possessing private property and unequal wealth distribution.  Quaker principles applied to our life as citizens demand an unceasing care to see that the laws are good [and fair].

         Social service as a vocation can best be undertaken by those especially qualified by training.  But there remains for every individual an opportunity for service in daily life and at special times.  It is the duty of society considered a fellowship to help every citizen to gain the best life; it is the duty of each citizen to do his part to create, maintain, and enrich that fellowship.

         He is the truest patriot who benefits his own country without diminishing another’s welfare.  One who works to improve the civic, economic, social, and moral condition of his country is more truly patriotic than one who exalts one’s own nation at the expense of others or supports and justifies its action irrespective of right or justice.

      Friends recognize the obligation of obedience to the government or else of submission to its authority, as the Inward Light leads: acceptance of the penalties of disobedience where conscience does not allow conformity; efforts by non-violent means only, to change objectionable principles, practices, and laws.  The something of God in all is the final court of appeal and not the church, or the bible, or the state.

         A living religious community ought to be from its very nature in some respects ahead of the State of which its members are citizens; there is at times a conflict between the good and the best.  In political resistance emphasis is placed on citizen’s rights; in religious resistance the emphasis must rather be on duties.  Early Friends did not regard the State and its policy as a non-religious matter.  When called to serve in public office, Friends should consider the public good rather than personal preference and convenience.  

        Personal Witness for the Truth—Maintain that charity which suffereth long and is kind.  Put the best construction upon the conduct and opinions one of another which circumstances will warrant.  [When] it may be necessary to disclose the failings of others be well satisfied as to the purity of your own motives.  Our attitude towards life should tend to free us from the bondage of material things, and make us concerned to give the first place to the things of the spirit; such service is hindered by the love of money [and possession].                     Friends should seek to discern how much of their income or property can be spared and wisely distributed for the benefit of others.  Simplicity does not mean that our lives shall be poor and bare, destitute of enjoyment and beauty, but the possessions or activities that capture the heart and lessen our simple and steadfast devotion to the cause of the Kingdom of God must go.

        Business in its essence is a vast and complex movement of social service; however, some may abuse its methods for private ends.  Sincerity of speech is closely allied to simplicity and has an emphasis on essentials and a suppression of the corrupt or false.  Care is needed to avoid and discourage the insincerities and extravagances that are prevalent in the social world.  Regarding oaths, Pythagoras says: “Let no man call God to witness by an oath, no not in judgment; but let every man so accustom himself to speak, that he may become worthy to be trusted even without an oath.  We regard the taking of oaths as contrary to the teaching of Christ, and as setting up a double standard of truthfulness.

       The completeness of the response of Friends to the Inward Light led to exceptional sensitiveness to moral issues.  If we are possessed of a considerate and helpful kindliness, and by a gentle and graciousness which reflects the Christ life, our neighbors are at once made happier and stronger and more able to bear their own burdens. 

        Publishing the Truth—The aim of education is the full and harmonious development of the resources of the human spirit.  Seek for your children that full development of God’s gifts which true education can bring.  Be zealous that education may be continued throughout life, and that its privileges may be shared by all.  Education’s task is that of helping people at all stages of their lives to achieve an inner harmony, and a sense of wholeness which will develop the creative possibilities of the individual to their fullest capacity.  Quaker schools: provide for the education of children in a free and definitely anti-militarist atmosphere; give many opportunities for educational experiments; are an indispensable means of helping to maintain and spread our view of truth. 

        We come into the world endowed with a natural capacity for reaching out after all that is good, with an instinct for the things that give life and joy.  Truth being so much greater than our conception of it, we should ever be making fresh discoveries; complete knowledge is always beyond us.  We must not overstress one aspect of truth to the exclusion of other truth.

        George Fox wrote:  “Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing.  Spare no place, spare no tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God; go through the world and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample all that is contrary under.  Be patterns, be examples in all countries wherever you come.”  While the Truth is eternal, our understanding of it should enlarge, and our expression of it must change.  Often we have been too modest to preach Quakerism outside our own meeting, and so we preach Christianity, but a Christianity that leaves a place for a certain kind of war in the hearts of the people we convert.  The Christian missionary discovers not only God but also humankind.  In Publishing the Truth our service lies in a world of humans, every one of whom has the divine seed within them.  When noble impulses are stirred within, let us be quick to respond by word or deed.  [If not responded to] such impulses deaden the conscience.

       We hold that liberty of conscience is the common right of all men and essential to the well-being of society.  When, therefore, the Government requires of any that which is prohibited by one’s conscience, the duty of civil disobedience ceases.  Christianity requires the toleration of opinions not our own lest we should unwittingly hinder the workings of the spirit of God.

         Penn reminds us that the humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion [e.g. heathens, Turks, Jews, all the several sorts of Christians].  Man is only truly man as he receives and obeys the inner voice.  Many seeking men have experienced this throughout history, even before Christ.  We believe that Jesus’ revelation of God as Love is the highest conception of God possible.  Our conception of God and of Christ is distinctly westernized, and to that extent partial and limited; we are increasingly coming to see that the East has its contribution to make to the full experience of God in Christ.

          Can we not rise to the thought and the practice of a great Quaker brotherhood, organized to serve the world of God’s children by changing the unnatural anger and aversion which makes them enemies into that loving cooperation which will turn the whole world into a Society of friends?

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43.  Standards of Success (by Teresina Rowell Havens; 1948)  

[About the Author—Teresina Rowell was born in 1909.  She graduated from Smith College in 1929.  After extensive travel and studies abroad in comparative religions, she returned to the US, studied and received a Ph.D in comparative religion from Yale.  She taught the subject at many different colleges throughout the country.  She began her association with Pendle Hill in 1940, and became a Quaker the same year.  In 1942 they set up a work and prayer commune in nearby Chester, PA., where she met and married Joseph Havens in 1947.  In 1972 they started Temenos, a spiritual retreat in Shutesbury, MA.  She died in 1992.]  

INTRODUCTION—The dominant system of values of the culture-pattern as a whole dictates [who is] considered a success; [anyone outside that pattern] is regarded as a failure. In our society, most people try to succeed according to the conventional pattern. Some have begun to suspect the hollowness & unsatisfying nature of the goals they have pursued. Others of our generation, [seeing] other cultures, have been forced to recognize that the contemporary industrial world’s standards are not the only ones by which to judge the worth of a man’s life; young people no longer know what standard to follow. [This study is] undertaken in the hope that an understanding of other religions’ & cultures’ standards of success may stimulate us to re-assess & reformulate our own.   

 PART ONE—CHALLENGE:  

1. HISTORY CHALLENGES THE WEALTHY: ISRAEL AND CHINA—The prophets of both ancient Palestine and ancient China proclaimed fearlessly their conviction that God’s standards are the opposite of man’s.  They declared forthrightly that God will bring to naught those who achieve worldly success.  Are there many modern prophets who tell businessmen in an attractive suburb that God despises their mansions and will destroy them?  The worldly success of the few, likely at the expense of the many, is likely to mean failure as judged by the welfare of the many.  [Jer. 22:13; Amos 6:1-6; Is. 29:10-11 and Tao Te Ching cited].  Besides being a sin against brotherhood, the amassing of wealth at the expense of the poor blinds even the religionists so that they can no longer see the truth.  Equally disastrous is the pride which almost inevitably infects the outwardly successful.  [Is.2:12, 17; Is 23:9 and Tao Te Ching cited]. 

Chinese & Hebrew thinkers came to almost identical conclusion as to what true success is: it is precisely the opposite of what the world admires. As the Hebrew people experienced suffering & defeat, it was only this view which enabled them to face & transfigure their fate. It was a realization that redemption can come through the despised, the rejected, that worldly “failure” may be more creative than apparent “success.” [Is. 53: 3,5,12 cited]  

The identification of this “redemptive failure” with the criminal class is particularly significant. The one who suffers & bears punishment may make the greatest contribution in a spiritual sense. The respectable man at the top of society shares in the criminal’s guilt. The vitality of this principle, [also to be found in the Cross], has been discovered afresh now by conscientious objectors who went to prison rather than acquiesce in conscription. They see with new clarity how we all share the guilt of each one of us; they issue to our conventional society a challenge.     

2. DEATH’S CHALLENGE TO WEALTH: INDIA AND THE BUDDHA—In Vedic times the people of India, like their fellow human beings elsewhere, [and including religious teachers], desired long life, offspring, and cattle; [success was measured by these things].  By 500 B.C. some of India’s thinkers began to realize that these goods do not last.  There is a Death dialog in the Katha Upanishad and the Brihad Aranyaha Upanishad.  The immemorial question of India is:  “What should I do with that by which I do not become deathless?”  Poverty, asceticism, celibacy, pilgrimage mark the road, but the test of success is: Have you found God and realized the oneness of your soul with Cosmic Reality?  

Gotama, later known as the Buddha inherited this ultimate aim, and made it more dynamic and psychological.  [After admitting that extreme asceticism was working], he remembered how once he had transcended sense-pleasures and wrong states of mind; an experience of rapt contemplation had come to him spontaneously.  Only if it leads to inward growth may a brother judge that his outward manner of living is successful.  Wealth is not thought of as evil in itself, simply a hindrance, a distraction.  It is no “sacrifice” for the monk to renounce possessions, but a privilege, a way to freedom.  The criterion is in terms of attitudes, not garments:  “The Almsman who … has put greed from him … who …has put malice from him … who … has put wrong outlooks from him—of such an Almsman I say that he succeeds in treading the recluse’s path of duty.”  

The true test comes when the brother is attacked.  The Buddha was not afraid to use the language of success & failure. He was careful to warn the brothers against premature self-satisfaction. This wise spiritual counselor warns his disciples against the temptation to think themselves superior because of apparent success in their pilgrimage, [and perhaps fail because he stops growing].  In the little dialog entitled “In Gosinga Wood,” the Buddha poses “queries” to 3 brothers like: “Do you live together in concord and amity, harmony and unison, viewing one another with eyes of affection?  The dialog concludes with a statement of how the achievement of the 3 young men will benefit their family and clan and indeed the whole world, by showing men what they should aim at in life.  This became the Buddha’s own greatest contribution to humankind.  Thus the Buddha, like the Christ, becomes for his devotees the supreme Standard of success.  [Luke 12:16-21; Matt. 19:24; Luke 9:24-25 cited].  

3.  HOLY POVERTY AS CHALLENGE & CRITERION OF SUCCESS—From time to time there have arisen dynamic bands of men & women who have felt solidarity with the poor & exploited as keenly as the He-brew prophets, & have at the same time renounced the world in their quest for God. They challenge sharply the common notions of success as consisting in rising “above” other men. The Franciscans called themselves “Minores” to express their identification with artisans & peasants. Gandhi wore homespun & did the scavenger work of untouchables. Japanese Itto-en members wear the workmen’s rough uniforms. With their rejection of everything which doesn’t lead to the “World of Light,” they lead others to question the value of secondary goods.   

Most saints of both East and West have regarded the intellect with suspicion.  Tenko San of Itto-en wrote:  “I happened to be an uneducated man, and could conceive nothing for the way but to count my own errors and defects, so I came to establish this life of resolute repentance, prostrated before “The Light.”  These challengers exemplify at its highest the power of religion to change man’s desires.  They free others from the desires, the pride and the fear which usually drive men to pile up wealth.  By their own inner peace and freedom from harassing fear, these blithe apostles of poverty exemplify a fulfillment of life which the ordinary man longs for but does not believe possible.  [Luke 18:22; Matt. 6:19-21; 31-33; Luke 22:26-27 cited].  

PART TWO:  NORMS FOR THE LAYMAN

4.  EVEN-MINDED IN SUCCESS AND FAILURE: HINDUISM—What is to be the standard of success for most men and women?  The wise old religions have provided a clear and explicit answer.  [Success for layfolk] lies in performing ones function as conscientiously as possible, in a spirit of detachment and a composed mind.  The Hindu layperson was faced with 2 contradictory ideals:  withdrawl from action in the outer world; obligations of his inherited caste duty.  [For the Hindu peasant], the social system is not a ladder but a web, within which each finds his interdependent part.  [They ask questions like]: “Have I fulfilled the potential of my particular state?  Have I dedicated all my work to God?  To those who think in terms of inward realization, one’s position in the web is not the crucial matter.  Perform the caste-duty to which you were born, but offer it to God with the detachment and devotion of the monk, unperturbed by failure or success. 

Early in her religious quest India’s God-seekers began to realize the transiency of worldly aims.  True success lay in detachment from all desire for attaining them.  Time and history are but projections and “progress” a child’s dream.  Hindus regard joy and sorrow, praise and blame, beauty and squalor, as revelations of one ultimate Reality.  The absolute is beyond all duality, beyond all distinctions, embracing everything without exception. 

Why then, should one work at all, if all things, even seeming “good” and “evil,” are the same?  Man should work as God works, not to gain any particular end, but to hold the world together [Bhagavad Gita cited].  The Hindu imagination has created the symbol of the Dance of Shiva.  Shiva, personifying the cosmic divine energy under its destructive aspect, dances the evolution and decay of countless worlds through immeasurable aeons.  But his inmost essence remains unshaken [Bhagvad Gita cited].  True success from this superhuman standpoint is to act as God does in his cosmic dance. 

5. WHAT IS TRUE MAN?: CONFUCIANISM—Confucianism is pre-eminent among the world’s religions as the lay religion par excellence; it has no place for monks. Your 1^st aim in life is to be the best possible in your chosen role, more important than money, fame, [or power]. This standard of success was so high that Confucius felt he had not been able to live up to it himself. The Confucian principle approximates the Golden Rule as a standard of behavior [which has widespread effect from one man & his family, extending to the whole country]. 

Only if government leaders lead the people to inner self-government [as in the ideal family] can they be successful.  Confidence in the basic goodness of the cosmic order, and of man’s nature as a reflection thereof, is another assumption which leads Chinese thinkers to emphasize immediate relationships.  A good Confucianist could never consider himself as “successful” if he achieved large-scale “results”at the expense of his family or neighborhood relationships.  Both Hindu and Chinese agree that a person’s essential integrity of spirit is a more important criterion of the ultimate success of his life than what he accomplishes outwardly.  The Hindu principle is stated in mystical and theistic terms; the Chinese is more humanistic and social.  By the integrity of his own life and character Confucius exemplified for all later ages a compelling standard of what a “true man” can be.    

6. BEAUTY AND EVANESCENCE (fading away): JAPAN—From India and China the standards we have just considered found their way across mountain and ocean to the Land of the Rising Sun, where they have helped mold the lives and ideals of countless generations of Japanese children.  Before Indian and Chinese influences, the primitive Nipponese as artists probably had no conscious standard of achievement, but intuitively found their lives most worth living, when they felt themselves one with the cherry-blossoms and red maples. 

[Rather than being supplanted by outside influence, their intuitive lives] were given deeper meaning.  Love of form and politeness was given a cosmic rationale by the Confucian philosophy of ceremony and propriety.  The poignancy of quickly-passing things was given a metaphysical foundation by Buddhist teaching (Nō play Kantan cited].  The Buddhist ideal of inner awakening came to Japan in the form of lay-Buddhism known as Mahayana.  The ideal of enlightenment in the midst of the world rather than in separation from it, has governed the lives of [all classes and walks of life in Japan].  The feudal and Buddhist standards of success coalesced in Bushi-do.

Through the “Tea Ceremony,” the “Sacrament of Tea,” even factory girls in contemporary Japan are trained in a standard of frugality, cleanliness, order and appreciation of beauty in plain and natural things.  Figuires like the wandering poet Basho (1644-1694) exemplify for successive generations of Japanese a standard of success which cares nothing for money and is able to find Enlightenment through communion with the smallest revelation in nature.  During this same period Confucian ideals came more to the fore, fostered by the Tokugawa officials as a means of keeping the various social classes satisfied with their static position in the social scale.  

In the latter years of Tokugawa rule a somewhat different type of Confucian popular teacher developed, exemplified by Ninomaya Sontoku.  His life of frugality and complete sincerity enabled him to revive both the people’s and their economic life in many villages which he reformed.  Speeches like the following were made about his life: “… The job which was given me was charcoal-making.  When I thought of 50 years of doing this, I began to hate my job.  My 68 year-old grandmother said to me:  ‘…What will be the fate of Nagano Prefecture if all the people become Prefectural Governor?’ What a fool I had been to think like this and neglect my valuable work. When I thus found my real self, I abandoned my mistaken ideas, and began to work hard making charcoal.  [I] am a useful member of the State as long as [I] am earnest in doing my work.”

        For hundreds of years ordinary Japanese have been trained to fulfill traditional patterns rather than “express himself.” Typical Japanese were trained how to behave in prescribed circumstances; it failed to help them develop dynamic standards for new situations. The Japanese will have to learn to think for themselves, [to synthesize a new civilization standard; they aren’t alone in having to adjust to conflicting values of a competitive age]. 

7. PROTESTANTISM AND AMERICAN STANDARDS OF SUCCESS—In India, China, and Japan, the standard of success even for the layman has been essentially an inward one, based on the same ultimate assumptions of value as those held up for saint, monk, or sage.  In Medieval Europe, the other-worldly aims of monk and friar were expected to be the ultimate aims of the layman, though realized through sacraments, pilgrimage and minor penance.  When monasticism was abolished, the layman would no longer know what his own aim in life should be; he would more easily turn to this-worldly goals. 

Luther and Calvin tried to avoid this development, by sanctifying the ordinary man’s calling, expecting him to be as fully, daily devoted to God in his work as the monk was at his meditations.  But forces stronger Luther’s and Calvin’s doctrines were at work in the western world, undermining the whole religious framework of daily life and with it the Middle Ages standards of success. As Lewis Mumbord put it: “The 7 deadly sins became the 7 cardinal virtues”; it was a completely reversed standard.  Calvinism contributed to the dishonoring of poverty by its doctrine that worldly success in one’s calling was a proof of election. 

The dominant “makers” of the New World were heirs to this world view, which was supplemented by several factors: absence of alternative standards; apparently limitless physical potentialities; the necessities of mass-production. There was no established church or the prestige of birth to base a standard on. The frontier produced a new kind of [“rags- to-riches”] hero, the opposite of religion’s rich man voluntarily becoming poor. The price of this new hero’s “successes” came high, & is still being paid by the American people in forest depletion, soil, & subsoil resources. Success was judged in terms of size & number; without realizing it, the salesman [applies the same size & number standard to the church minister’s success or failure]. How are we to free ourselves from the subtle influence of this [size/number] standard, which continues to affect our unconscious judgment of our own worth? And the mechanistic science of the 19^th century continues to influence us more than we realize, & probably contributes to our faith in statistical surveys & numerical criteria of achievement, even in education.

PART THREE: NEW CRITERIA OF SUCCESS—[Can our modern culture find mental or physical health, creativity, and holiness without some criterion of success deeper than outward action alone?  Those seeking a solution to this problem approach it] from different angles.  All imply the need to measure success in terms of understanding, sensitivity, and inward growth. [Seeking only outward achievement leaves one with re-pressed sides of one’s nature, which exact revenge for repression with heart disease, stomach ulcers, & neurosis]. 

Depth psychologists are convinced that we must learn to release the undeveloped sides of our nature into creative expression, if we would avoid mental catastrophe.  Lewis Mumford maintains that the “deliberate amateur” is more successful as a person than the efficient executive or one-sided professional who has no leisure.  Many artists and writers are contributing to our search for new criteria.  Artists are driven by inner necessity to resist any pressure to “succeed” in terms of financial security.  The path to creative expression cannot open until one stops “doing” long enough to pay attention to what is happening within. 

[Our meager American culture] reflects our failure to believe in the reality and importance of the life of imagination and feeling.  For those who can no long act, action cannot be criterion of their success.  Failure may be more important for one’s spiritual growth than “success,” provided one learns through it.  If crises and failure force us to re-examine our norms of success they will not have been wasted.  The despised things may come indeed to confound the things which have been mighty, both in our civilization and within ourselves.      

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44. Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace (by Howard H. Brinton; 1948)

       Pressures of Past Years and the Quaker Way of Meeting Them—We are all suffering from a sense of pressure.  It is an astonishing fact that most of our labor-saving devices have not saved us any labor; they have merely increased the number of things we do.  [Yearly Meetings are busier].  For some reason we desire to be more active.  In former Yearly Meeting far more time was given to spiritual admonitions and silent waiting. 

        We sometimes hear a psychological explanation [that] . . . we are trying to escape from ourselves.  This explanation does not take us very far.  [Part of the answer] is that our interests are spread out over a number of fields in which the standards of behavior are inconsistent with one another. While in a given group we suppress the other groups’ standards, but we do not eliminate them.  Perhaps the more fundamental difficulty is our inward world.  As long as there is inward chaos, all outward actions will be contaminated by this chaos.

        Such inward references are typical of the teachings of Jesus.  For the Quaker, outward and inward combine in an intimate organic relation; the inward is primary.  A person in danger of being overwhelmed by outside pressures can meet them best by increasing one’s inner dimensions.  The Quaker way is so to order the inner life that outer pressures can be adequately met and dealt with.  In one sense we become independent of outer tumults, but in another sense . . . we must seek to reproduce in the world around us the inner peace created within ourselves.

        The Attainability of Inner Peace—Is inner peace, free from all sense of pressure attainable?  [The Quakers answered “yes”; the Puritans answered “no”]; humankind can never be free from sin.  It would be interesting to speculate as to how much of our modern restlessness is due to our Puritan inheritance which demands a perpetual tension between the real and the ideal.  By removing peace and perfectability from all things this side of the grave, the Puritans have doomed themselves to continual dissatisfaction and frustration.  [As George Fox wrote]: “it is a sad and comfortless sort of striving, to strive with a belief we should never overcome.”

        For the Quaker, perfection and its consequent inner peace can be reached when all of God’s immediate requirements as understood are faithfully met.  Robert Barclay calls this “a perfection proportionable and answerable to man’s measure whereby we are kept from transgressing God’s law and enabled to answer what God requires of us.”  Inner peace comes through obedience to the Divine Voice . . . as a friend complies with the wishes of one’s friend because the two are one in spirit.

        Perfection and Pacifism— The only person who can secure inner peace is at peace with the world around them even though the world may not be at peace with them. Love removes inner conflict which seeks satisfaction in outer conflict.  Only when the pacifist attains inner peace do they truly live up to their name.

        Inner Conflict and its Solution as Portrayed in the Quaker Journals—Job Scott writes of his 4 year struggle:  “I [often] returned home from my many meetings grievously condemned, distressed and ashamed, wishing I had not gone into such company.  But soon my resolutions failed me and away I went again.  My days I spent in vanity and rebellion; my nights frequently in horror and distress.”  There was no sudden change to a state of peace.  He came gradually to realize that “whenever [the true and living spirit and power of . . . God] is received and in all things thoroughly submitted to, a reconciliation takes place. . .  The one thing needful is real union with God, an actual joining with God in one spirit.  Nothing else can ever satisfy his soul or abidingly stay his mind.”

       Job Scott became aware of new requirements, which he must meet if he was to retain inward peace [e.g. vocal ministry; refusal to use the paper currency issued to support the Revolutionary War; a long religious journey] Job Scott frequently underwent periods of aridity, but the search for inward peace was a clearly defined process.  

        Conversion is the beginning not the end of a process.  When inward peace disappears it is a sign that the next stage of growth is at hand; peace can only be reached if that growth takes place.  [The call for] curtailment of business when the business has grown [so much] that it interferes with religious duties [is common to] almost every Journal writer.  Rebecca Jones, Catherine Phillips, Edward Hicks, John Rutty, and William Allen [gave up one of their creative passions in order to] attain integration of personality around a central, [religious] interest by reducing competing interests.    

        The Philosophical Basis—Inward peace is the result of inward unity, not just of ideas but of the whole person.  We are speaking of a unity of will, not of substance.  The Light in its wholeness shines into every individual, though that individual’s comprehension of it may be imperfect. The process of attaining unity is definitely a religious method requiring willingness to submerge individual desires and prejudices and to obey God’s will wherever it may lead. Conflict in the soul arises from refusal to accept the truth [and attempts to “reason” it away].

         The Place of Self-Surrender—“Self-surrender” is often misunderstood [as implying] a attitude of Passivity which is out of tune with our present age’s extreme activism.  In Quakerism . . . if the lower is quieted it is only that the higher may have opportunity to assert itself.  Thomas Shillitoe writes [that in the face of the overwhelming task before him]:  “Divine goodness appeared for my help with the animating assurance, that if I remained willing to become like a cork on the mighty ocean of service . . . willing to be wafted hither and thither . . . he would care for me every day and every way.”  In so far as Quietism means the surrender of the human or self-centered will in order that the divine may become active in and through the human, it is a universal Quaker doctrine.  George Fox lived a life of tireless activity, but this activity was rooted in inward peace and stillness.

         The Habitation of Peace—Quaker writers sometimes speak as if there were a calm area in the soul to which one might retire as to a quiet room.  George Fox, John Woolman, John Pemberton, and John Barclay write of this place, [which is] in Quaker philosophy, that area of perfect unity and peace that existed before all . . . strife.

         Getting Atop of Things—When Fox describes an encounter with an obstruction of any kind . . . he often ends with the phrase “but I got atop it” [(i.e.] many problems are not soluble on their own level).  We can get above the problem, look down on it, and find that it ceases to be a problem.  George Fox writes: “Whatever temptations, distractions, confusion the light doth make manifest and discover, do not look at [them] . . . but look at the light which discovers them . . . That will give victory; and ye will find strength; there is the first step to peace.  Allowing the light to shine and so permitting higher forces in the background to emerge and operate, there will arise . . . a new life . . . that will surround and overcome the darkness and center the soul in that which is above it.

       Inward Peace as a Test of Guidance—[The presence of] inward peace . . . becomes an evidence of divine approval while lack of it is an evidence that some divine requirement [some concern] is not being fulfilled.  The pacifist knows that one’s feelings are just as truly organs of knowledge for certain aspects of experience as is reason.  If inward peace is to be used as a test of guidance, the feelings must be sensitized through prayer, worship, meditation or other spiritual exercises . . . and the guidance of the individual must be checked with the guidance of others.  Only a very clear and strong feeling should lead the individual to carry out a leading [contrary to the sense of the meeting].  David Ferris writes regarding slaves:  “If the Lord requires thee to set thy slaves free, obey God promptly and leave the result to God, and peace shall be within thy borders.”

        The Return to Inwardness—The unique part of the Quaker method is that their meetings expose the soul to the Light from God so that peace is removed if it ought to be removed [signaling a new requirement], or attained if it can be attained [signaling satisfaction of a requirement].  Modern Quakerism has lost much of this inwardness.  Modern scientific skill has brought neither outer nor inner peace.  In recent years scientific skill has been largely used for [promoting] conflict.  Inner life is evaporating out of our culture . . . leaving outer force as a means of providing security and unity.  All men everywhere must come to realize that outer conflict results from inner conflict, that inner conflict can be healed only by that Power Divine that descends from on high.
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46. The Faith of an Ex-agnostic (by Carol R. Murphy; 1948)  

[About the Author--She was born in Boston, Mass., Dec. 1916 (died 1994).  After a childhood of home schooling in rural Massachusetts, the family moved to the Philadelphia area; Carol attended Quaker schools. In 1928 the family became convinced Friends. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 & earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American University in 1941. She began her association with Pendle Hill in 1947. This pamphlet is the 1^st of 17 that she was to write, & is the results of a search for a meaningful philosophy of religion, involving the failure of science, the nature of God, commitment, & redemption.

FOREWORD—My philosophy is not so much the record as the result & rationalization of an inward change which touched depths of personality unplumbed by conscious reasoning. [I needed a credible philosophy for a be-lief in God]. I had to restate religious ideas before I could return to traditional Christian language. I hope this philosophical essay may help troubled seekers to a view of the nature of things that will encourage their seeking.

      It was not logic that carried me on … It was the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years and I find my mind in a new place.  The whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it.         John H. Newman

    “… In its most characteristic embodiments religious happiness is no … escape.  It cares no longer for escape.  It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice—inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome.”        William Blake

CHAPTER I: Failure of Science as Saviour—[When we read of technology trying to outdo the German war machine, we know] all’s not right with the world.  We are frightened [of overwhelming mass-production, psychologists’ revelation of our darker side, and the genie of nuclear energy.  In this sad morning-after of our civilization, what shall we do? What are the characteristics, vital or lethal of our Western culture? 

Lewis Mumford says that the dogma of the religion of ultilitarianism “is the dogma of increasing wants.” Thus science served appetite under the guidance of reason.  Science, in conquering Nature for reason has imposed too great a burden of power on reason.  We [once] thought that nature could do us no harm when tamed to our purposes.  But nature is, Emily Dickinson said, “docile and omnipotent,”—and dangerous as well.  Henry Adams saw that “our power is always running ahead of our mind.”  We have pursued knowledge so hotly that we have almost forgotten that knowledge has its moral requirements, that knowing depends upon being. 

How long will scientific integrity last in this struggle for power fought with armies of ex-Nazi scientists?  The bent of our minds is away from those ultimate values which men must serve, which are ends rather than means, and their own excuse for being, [like Truth].  Science as a whole does not contemplate Reality as does the artist or the lover or the worshiper, for its own sake.  We feel we have to do something with our knowledge.  Here again the world has forgotten the importance of being.  Being itself is a kind of doing: a beautiful personality has a kind of radiant energy cast on all who are around.  How shall we persuade humankind to concentrate on inner growth?  The motive for self-improvement must be something more than self.  Altruism is the principle that will save us; perhaps morality can save us.

CHAPTER II: Failure of Simple Morality as Saviour—There are number of ways of explaining—or explaining away—human morality and the moral consciousness.   It is obvious that human conceptions of moral conduct have evolved, but this does not mean that there is no eternal truth which men increasingly perceive.  The commands of logical, mathematical, and moral necessity come to us with the same magisterial grandeur, and none are the invention of a society at times morally more obtuse than its best members. 

Can an unexamined morality long remain the motive power of human effort?  To make certain of the ultimate consequences of one’s act is to become paralyzed with conscientiousness.  If non-resistance means the victory of a military conqueror, how far away will eventual deliverance be, and how responsible is the non-resister for the intervening years of rapine?  All morality needs some further supplement, some more fundamental ground than anxious calculation to give men the courage for action. 

Another failing of secular morality is that it looks to the outward act rather than the inward man, from whom the impulse to act must proceed.  Lawrence Hyde wrote:  [The reformer] alternates between the dangerous excitement of working for an abstract aim, and the depression awakened in him through contemplating the features of a world which appears more ugly and sordid to him than it does to others.

While sense-of-duty has some motive-power, it is notorious that to the average man joy is divorced from duty; sin is fun, and morality is usually drudgery.  How are we going to put some pep into virtue?  The reasons why secular morality fails as a motive-power are that such morality is not clearly integrated with cosmic reality; there is no assurance of cosmic backing.  Humans, being rational animals, want to know the meaning of the cosmos of which they are a part, so they can work with the grain and not against it.

Our enthusiasm for others beyond our immediate circle of friends must be reinforced by a common bond of likeness, or a common task which draws us together.  Why should we love humankind?  Are we worth it?  What are we, anyway?  We need faith in our ideals, in the universe, and in ourselves; to obtain that we must look beyond morality itself. 

CHAPTER III: Beyond Morality—There are 2 ways of looking at the cosmos in which we live, move, and have our being.  One is naturalistic and the other religious.  Naturalism’s goal of moral effort is human happiness; whatever ministers to this is of value.  Happiness, once discovered and analyzed, might still be the goal of rational morality.  It is fairly obvious that what is sought is a quality of happiness; it is the quality, not the happiness, which is the distinguishing factor.  Naturalism is in a dilemma.  As long as it conceives values to be the products of natural desires, it can explain them naturally but this conception of values is inadequate. 

The naturalistic view of humans wavers between cynical materialism & starry-eyed humanism. The true view of humans will be one in which mercy & truth are met together; a view expressed in terms of present conditions & growth, actuality and potentiality, humility and hope.  Religion seems to provide the life and power that makes moral perfection possible.  Thomas Kelly says:  “It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busyness for the Kingdom of God … The mark of the simplified life is radiant joy.  Knowing fully the complexity of men’s problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to God.”  Religion can and does bring powerful aid to the moral struggle.  Its answer to the moral difficulties is that the motive power behind the categorical imperative is love; the supreme objective of devotion is Perfect Love.  The moving principle of the cosmos is also redemptive in nature.  Love is its own reward; it brings altruism naturally.

To submit one’s moral independence to another is to bow down before an idol.  Nor is a good cause adequate for devotion, [for a cause is concern for the welfare of human beings; it is hard to become devoted to humans en masse].  The religious person gives devotion to the divine reality which is conceived to be an end in itself; unlike a human personality, it is worthy of moral obedience.  The love given it enriches rather than displaces love for humanity.  All love adds meaning to life; it is not surprising that the religious life becomes totally meaningful.  The great religions have had faith in a creative element, a redemptive principle, a Way, Truth and Life which releases humans from the wheel of life, or forgives their trespasses, giving humans the assurance that they need not be limited by their past misdeeds, but can grow into blessedness.  The Buddhist Suttas declare “the truth [to be] lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, and lovely in its consummation.”

CHAPTER IV: Basic Philosophical Considerations—We must ask: Is religion true as well as well as useful?  Is the universe basically good, bad, or indifferent? Is it a divine creation or not? We cannot prove any final conclusion we may reach.  From [our] partial experience of the universe we try to draw conclusions as to the nature of the whole.  Meaning differs in the light of different presuppositions.  We must beware not only of bias, but of hasty theorizing. A waiting attitude is especially important in studying the many aspects of humans’ dim perceptions of cosmic and religious realities.  It is best to accept all the diverse aspects in their variety, no matter how paradoxical they may seem, as functions of an organic whole. 

We cannot be resigned to imprisonment in our own minds.  [So we have] the common sense, if paradoxical, feeling that we have both mental activity and direct contact with reality.  Mind and things interpenetrate, interact, in functional, organic relationship.  It has often been supposed that rational concepts and universal qualities belong to an eternal “realm of essence,” independent both of mind and temporal existence.  Surely qualities are not invented or imagined, but found in functional relation to existing things.  Until our ideals are realized, they appear to be only in our minds, and a gulf again threatens to open between mind and world.  Are ideals separated from reality, or are they real and acting on reality?  The ideal must be a possibility in the material; the purposer must be able to say, “It can be done.”  Bearing in mind both the norm and the need for change is the creative attitude and when applied to all it is creative love.  We ask, What growth or purpose is responsible for all this?  How was it possible?  What is the meaning of meaning?

CHAPTER V: Freedom & Self—Humans find it hard to believe in or understand their own marvelous existence; they waver [between being “All-Creator” & being a helpless puppet]. The selves we know have a mind/ body union; research shows many effects that mental states have on the body. There are reactions in the self deter-mined by physical causes & there are bodily events determined in part at least by laws of thinking. Does the self have any independent determining power of its own? What is its relation to its constituent parts & to its environment? The self both has & is its experiences; the thinker is more than the sum of the thinker’s thoughts. 

A self is a psychic organism, to some extent self-determining, whose unifying principle is immanent in and transcendent of its members.  The self has a power of self-government.  The self has the basic freedom to choose freedom, & sometimes the power to achieve freedom. The Dialogs of Buddha say that we can have our hearts in our power & not be in the power of our hearts. [Sometimes will resists itself]. How can fractured will pull itself together? Religion claims that there is a beloved Reality, such that service to it is the way to obtain perfect freedom. Human selves can achieve a certain originality of response, can act purposively, & can build systems of rational meaning or of value. How shall we realize that we do belong to a whole? Let us, like the mystics, look in-to ourselves, not to see ourselves as isolated miracles in a dead universe, but to find the Beyond that is also with-in. Study of the self reveals some power not ourselves but partially revealed in us in our most creative moments.     

CHAPTER VI: The Divine Activity—The universe appears to have a value-producing activity which can act through people or upon them.  It appears in evolution, history, and in the moral effects of prayer.  Life has been growing more adaptive, more sensitive, more fragile, more aware of values not instrumental to its survival.  Religious people call it Providence; non-theistic thinkers often conceive it more vaguely as a “dialectic” or dialog. Marxism has a certain religious sense, a metaphysical insight, but it is not metaphysical enough.  It does not link up with William James’ “vast, slow-breathing Kosmos with its dread abysses and unknown tides.” 

Beauty, truth & goodness are heightened & the worth of life increased by a creative synthesis which purely human efforts cannot bring about. Worship & prayer provide another channel for creative cosmic action. A certain attitude on the part of the worshiper, when sincere, always bring a certain result. Prayer brings the illumination of self-knowledge, it purifies the heart, & brings moral and strength. Selves are channels for a larger creative activity.  Is this creative activity only one of many forces, or an expression of the principle by which the universe exists & functions? We can no longer assume that the activity is cosmic but purpose only human.  God is both life-force and eternal ideal; God is the push from below and the pull from above.

CHAPTER VII: The Nature of God—If will is the unity of the self, then God must be a Self; but to what ex-tent can the Law of the Universe of which we persons are a part be said to be a Person?  Religious consciousness gives valuable insights which must not be ignored.  It insists that God is real, an insight that has received different emphases, from only Brahman is real (Hindu) to only God has perfect being (Scholastic teaching).  Religious intuition also insists on the paradoxical ultimacy and intimacy of Divine Reality. Many who have lost faith are those who imagined God as a distant, thundering Jehovah, a finite being moving around in the universe.

Because of these reactions, from a personal Jehovah to the Cosmic Law, the modern mind has great difficulty in thinking of God as at all personal.  The greater the personality, the less pettily “personal” and the more steadfast it is.  Though not a human, God has a conscious purpose and will; God is self-determining and so in the highest degree a self.  God has moral value, and only a person capable of possessing a good will is a locus of moral value.  God may be thought of as supremely real, both immanent and transcendent, a Self that differs from our Selves in being more integrated and in being entirely creative.

Creative insight into persons is creative love, which when communicated [by God] to its objects, brings a sense of hope & humility which gives persons strength to become their better selves. Prayer is when a person is most sensitized to God’s action, & when one receives God’s criticism & encouragement. God’s judgment is God’s mercy; moral law’s obligation is the drive of God’s creative love. The universal search, from meaning to the Creator of meaning, has ended in the God of religion, a Divine Reality of creative, redemptive love. 

CHAPTER VIII: The Redemption of Evil—The vivid realization of evil has prevented many from being able to believe in either a benevolent or a powerful deity.  The fact of evil, when faced, makes us search not only our hearts and our world-view, [but also the value and meaning of life].  Religion affirms that there is such a meaning, [though some call it wishful thinking].  The truest religion is a way of doing God’s will not human will.  The truly religious person sees that every act can be a sacrament, every thought a practice of the Presence of God.  This person thinks reality worthwhile enough to accept fully without protests or daydreams.

The 1^st step is to make only reasonable demands on the universe. The next step is to wonder whether our demands on the universe are just &, indeed, whether we should make any. Perhaps suffering is not always an evil, or perhaps it can be redeemed. It is crippling only if men have no freedom to make the redemptive rather than the natural & instinctive response to suffering. J.S. Bixler says: “[The mysterious] hints that certain things must be accepted on their own terms as contrasted with ours.” We & all creation are under the imperative to grow.

The 3^rd step is creative cooperation with the universe, and seeing evil as an impediment to growth, not a frustration of our desires.  With humankind rests the greatest responsibility for that refusal to grow which is sin. [Perhaps not all responsibility or freedom may be ours; small allotments of freedom may belong to animals].  Evil may now be defined as that which takes us away from God.  It is God who triumphs over evil by giving life all its meaning, the only meaning it can have.  Without belief in a Divine Reality, the problem of evil is insoluble. Given such a belief, one can face evil and be more than conqueror of it. 

This search for ultimate meaning has now come as far as words can carry it.  Our human minds are unable to supply all the connections, answer all the questions, or make sense, even of humankind; yet there is real value and order in the world. There is a Creator of value who is not ourselves; whose existence endows everything with meaning.  You who wish to find the ultimate assurance of worth must seek your own contact with the Source of all meaning, and trust to the eternally patient strength of redemptive Love.    

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47.   The Nature of Quakerism (by Howard H. Brinton; 1949)

       The Society of Friend’s primary doctrine declares that God’s Presence is felt at the apex of the human soul; humans can know and heed God directly without church, priest, sacrament or sacred book.  God is for humans immanent and transcendent.  The Divine Presence is “Light,” “Power,” “Word,” “Seed of the Kingdom,” “Christ Within,” “That of God in every man.” Human endeavor should be to merge one’s will [and actions] with the Di-vine Will, as far as they can comprehend; all human beings have experienced this.  The Society of Friends is a Christian society.  The Bible is considered a necessary but secondary source of religious truth since it must be interpreted by the Divine Spirit in people through which it was written.  Quakerism holds that present experience must be checked and tested by the experience of those who lived in the past.

       Quakerism’s secondary doctrine is meeting for worship and meeting for business.  In the meeting, a person aspires upward toward God and horizontally toward fellow worshipers; the divine-human relationship and the inter-human relationship blend and reinforce each other.  Worshipers wait in silence, making themselves as open as possible to the Divine Life and the still, small voice.  [Any message] is a simple, brief statement of insight born in the silence.  In the meeting for business, matters before the meeting are discussed in a spirit of submission to the Divine ordering until unity reached; there is no voting, no coercion of minority by a majority.  The search for truth and unity is sometimes long and difficult, requiring much love and tolerance.  The Quaker school endeavors to represent the world as it ought to be rather than the world as it is.

        All the Society of Friend’s social doctrines can be derived from the primary doctrines of Inward Light and the teachings of Jesus, which act as a check on revelation partly obscured by wrong thoughts and actions; social testimonies may evolve slowly. Actions seeming right today may seem wrong tomorrow in the light of further insight.   

        Community—Community is present in the meeting’s attempt to become a unified, closely integrated group of persons, a living whole which is more than the sum of its parts.  Monthly meetings join to form Quarterly Meetings; Quarterly Meetings join to form Yearly Meetings.  Community becomes a testimony which aims to increase the interdependence of people everywhere.  Friends have been engaged in some form of relief work for the past 3 centuries; in the last century it was the Friends Service Committee (England) and the American Friends Service Committee.  Today they seek by experimental measures to right this or that wrong as the way opens.

         Harmony—Peaceableness, harmony exists as a positive power by which an inner appeal is made to the best that is in humans, rather than as an external pressure by forces from outside them.  Harmony appeared at an early date in the refusal of Friends to take any part in war, and in finding non-violent and sympathetic ways of dealing with the insane and criminals.  They believe that civil disobedience may sometimes be a Christian duty, as the will of God revealed in the conscience must take precedence over the law of the state.

         Equality—Equality is represented in the meeting by the equal opportunity for all to take part in the worship or business.  Every opinion expressed must be taken into account according to its truth and not according to status of the person who utters it.  Equality as applied to sex, race, and class, was a doctrine which developed early.  Friends were fined, imprisoned, and died for religious liberty, and were prosecuted for not showing “proper” respect to the “upper” classes.  Equality does not mean that all men are essentially uniform.  It does mean equality of respect and that rights and opportunities of all should be equalized. 

        Simplicity—Simplicity can mean the absence of superfluity, or the use of simple direct statements unadorned with figures of rhetoric.   Judicial oaths, implying two standards of truth-telling, were not in accordance with “the simplicity of truth.”  Friends succeeded in altering the law to allow for an affirmation to be substituted.  Quaker merchants initiated the one price system.  Music, painting, drama, and fiction are no longer considered inconsistent with the simplicity of truth.  Simplicity is still needed in the attempt to less the increasing busyness and complexity of life.

       To what extent can a type of behavior, developed within a small community become a standard for action outside that community?  Before the 20^th century it was comparatively easy in isolation to draw the line at taking part in war or preparation for war for that limit could be clearly defined.  If we cannot be [as] consistent [as early Quakers] we can at least take an unconventional stand on some issues.  Each individual must answer this problem of consistency according to their own light and leading.

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48. The Society of Friends (by Howard H. Brinton; 1949)

         Distinguishing Principles—The Society of Friends formed the English Reformation’s extreme left wing in the mid-17^th century; it was neither Protestant nor Catholic.  [They believed with the early Christians that] the Spirit would be poured out upon the congregation ready to receive it, uniting the worshiping group into the Body of Christ.  This silent communion with God is perhaps the only distinctive contribution of the Society of Friends to Christian practice; individual inspiration is second in importance to group inspiration.  The Light Within, when unresisted, can permeate and transform human reason and conscience, bringing inner peace and serenity.

        Anyone may become a vehicle of vocal ministry, [which provides] spiritual guidance in prayer, meditation, and worship.  Because this Light is continually capable of revealing new and living truth, Friends use no written statement of belief which has the authority of a creed.  All, including ancients and heathens could be saved if they lived up to their own measure of the Light.  In the Meeting for Business votes are not taken, because decisions are reached on the basis of unanimity.

       Membership in the Society of Friends is obtained through application for membership in some particular monthly meeting.  For the consistent Quaker war is wrong because of the spiritual damage done to those who participate in it.  [Quaker] doctrine does not eliminate the use of force in law enforcement, provided that force is used impartially.  Their equalitarian doctrines brought upon the Quakers severe persecution by persons who wished to safeguard their status as superiors.  The doctrine of simplicity called for avoidance of all superfluity “in dress, speech, and behavior.”  The oath was objected to as recognizing a double standard of truth-telling and because it was an externally imposed religious exercise.  The arts are no longer considered superfluous and untruthful.  The Quaker-controlled colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Jersey and North Carolina supported religious liberty.

        History—The History of the Society of Friends falls into:  the apostolic age (1650-1700); conservation and cultural creativity age (1700-1800); conflict and decline age (1800-1900); modern age (1900-    ).  In the apostolic age, the first Quakers set out to bring all Christendom back to its primitive state.  The Puritans tried to keep them out of New England, and between 1662-1689 the severest persecution took place in England.  At the end of the persecution, Quakers emerged as a respectable sect.

       In the 18^th century, some of the early fervor disappeared, but there continued to be a powerful non-professional itinerant ministry.  Before the Declaration of Independence, members of the Society of Friends freed their slaves.  At the beginning of the 19^th century, the evangelical elements were accentuated by the influence of the Weslayan revival.  American Quakerism in this century was torn by divisions.  Elias Hicks, a mystic who attracted followers from the country separated over the issues of elders’ authority and the divinity of Christ.  John Wilbur and Joseph John Gurney became focal points of a separation over the authority of the Spirit vs. the authority of the Bible.  A majority of the meetings throughout the West, New England, and the South changed their way of worship to a programmed Protestant–like service.  Friends were slow in creating colleges because they did not feel the need for a trained and scholarly ministry.  Almost every meeting had an elementary school.

         The chief “Friends” are:  Friends General Conference is made up of 7 yearly meetings (Philadelphia, Baltimore, Canada, Illinois, Indiana, New England, New York).  The Conservative (Wilburite) group is made up of 4 yearly meetings (Ohio, Iowa, Western, North Carolina) along with some Canadians.  There was also the spontaneous growth of 200 Independent Meetings all over the US. The above meetings are unprogrammed.  Programmed, pastoral meetings from 11 yearly meetings have formed the Five Years Meeting (Baltimore, California, Canada, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, New England, New York, North Carolina, Western, Wilmington).  Five inde-pendent pastoral yearly meetings (Ohio, Kansas, Oregon, Central in Indiana, Rocky Mountain). Old distinctions are ceasing to have their former importance.  The London Yearly Meeting makes up The Society of Friends in England.  Groups of Friends also exist in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, China, India, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, [Kenya,] Costa Rica, [Cuba, El Salvador, Bolivia], Mexico.

        American Friends Service Committee was organized in 1917 and has headquarters in Philadelphia.  The Friends World Committee for Consultation represents all branches of Friends.  Under it is the Wider Quaker Fellowship, a group of several thousands persons who wish some affiliation with the Society of Friends, but who do not desire to join it.  Adult education institutions at Woodbrooke in England and Pendle Hill in America have increased awareness of Quaker history among Friends.  The old tension between mystic and Evangelical still persists.  The mystic tends to see some truth in all religions, and the evangelical tends to emphasize belief in the historical events with which Christian began; each has something of the other.

         Modern science has directed its attention to gaining power over the external world; this brings neither peace nor happiness.  Quakerism offers a means for obtaining inward peace and order, producing the only kind of peace which can propagate itself in the outer world.      

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49.  Christ in Catastrophe: an inward record by Emil Fuchs who found serenity through suffering (1949)

          Foreword—Emil Fuchs, a man who has passed through great suffering, has walked among us and lived among us.  He spoke to us as one who has seen Truth and heard it and felt it; even when he spoke of disasters his face was serene. Always the stamp of Truth was on him, and some part of what came to him spilled over . . . to those around him.  Emil Fuchs was born in Germany in the town of Beerfelden in 1874.  He was a minister in various places including Eisenach.  He became a Society of Friends member in 1925.  He was dismissed from his teaching job at Kiel and imprisoned.  He helped refugees escape; his sons and son-in-law fled Germany.  His daughter stayed behind and eventually killed herself [leaving behind a 4 year-old son].  Emil Fuchs did not talk of these things much.  When the past would come into his thoughts he would sit in silence for some hours and in the morning he would be smiling and serene.  This writing is the witness of a man who is both saint and prophet.  

         Winter of 1932—During the winter of 1932, the last hard struggle went on in Germany against the rising power of Hitler, against the worship of nation and the religion of arms.  The great question was put to us: Will our nation [Germany in 1932] become a stronghold of peace in the center of Europe, or would she open the doors of violence and war again?  In that year I was dismissed from my professorship in Kiel and imprisoned.  I dreamed my children were killed and a voice asked:  What do you want?  Shall they save their lives by losing their conscience?  And then Christ was in my cell in prison, saying [the Beatitudes].              One terrible question torments us when we see the mighty success of [the wrong]:  Are you alone right and all others wrong?  Are you mad or are they?  [People excused Hitler’s methods because of his success].  How high must the tower be from which we have to fall?  [Even] in the hour of [his daughter’s] burial the presence of God surged around us.

         [My seeing Christ] might have been imagination.  But no imagination can overcome the darkness in which you live when a person you love is handled with cruelty and forced into fits of fear and despair.  Only the overpowering awareness of an eternal love whose ways you do not understand, but whose reality you know [can do this].  So strong was this reality that [Jesus’ disciples] could cry out his message. . . without fear hindering them . . . [and] with a power that told other people of the same reality.  I wrote of Christ’s gospel and of seeing in it our own suffering.  Why did so very many, very clever and orthodox theological thinkers, scholars, pastors and leaders not recognize evil?  They were worshipers of nation and lovers of armies first, and Christians afterwards.

       2,000 years ago and today—The gospels are only the reflection of Jesus in the minds of unlettered people, but some of it begins to speak to our mind, to our condition and they challenge our inward being.  He challenges us, poor, finite persons that we are, that we may be men, perfect, pure in heart, hungry for goodness, yearning for peace, denying of violence.  The kingdom of God shall be built by those who can suffer and forgive and love, and overcome evil with good.  In every generation, the challenge comes to those who struggle to grasp a meaning of live, even amid the ugly, greedy, acquisitive world around them.  He stands before humankind, asking Will you destroy yourselves, or give yourselves to the grip of God’s power and find thereby a new life in which love, not greed or lust for power is the new dynamic?

         The Iron Yoke—[On the train home from Switzerland in 1947, I saw the faces of a bewildered Germany: offended faces; empty faces; blank faces; faces seeking to forget].  But where is there strength, where real life in forgetting?  I would like to say:  “Quite near is a man, a woman, a child, a human being suffering as you suffer; . . . be a comrade to them; if you cannot, be sympathetic.  In that helpful love you will experience the eternal God’s changing power.”  [And also:]  “We do not have the right to forget the disaster to which we brought the whole world and to which we brought ourselves.  We have to bear the iron yoke and . . . bear it with our nation.  Out of suffering and scarcity we create fellowship and peace and happiness for our children and grandchildren.” 

        Despair—[I met with] young soldiers on leave, civilians and women, once] enthusiastic followers of Hitler [who] longer have faith in Hitler.  [They asked] Can you say anything to us that will give us hope?  [I spoke of coming] back from the war.  You will find a broken down country.  Do you belong to those who in their egotism lament their misery and poverty and seek to find a way out only for themselves, or do you belong to those who see a way of help for others [not involving] outward power and armies?  If you do you will have great work to do and your life will have strength and meaning.

        Can there be happiness?—I say that we must find again the strength to enjoy, but not by forgetting what we have lost or what others have lost.  [From] the experience of Christ’s presence . . . it came to me that all joy and happiness are great gifts of God, his greetings, showing us something of the goal which will be achieved when love and truth are victorious on earth; all joy is holy.  [Take] the sufferings of your neighbors into your life.  The real happiness of family, of art and song, of nature and friendship and devotion will grow and become more real until they become that holiness in which they are a part of God’s presence in our lives.

        Love’s great help—[I was left alone with my daughter’s 4 year-old son].  [In] a time of helpless darkness . . . God gave me love for this boy, and I could be happy with him . . . and through him alive to the joy of other people.  If we can share other people’s joys and happiness, we find an important link uniting us with them.  If we cannot we will be separated from them—even if we do mighty works to help them.  When people have to go through really deep sorrow . . . they seem separated from other people by an intense pain that others cannot feel.  If love works its great miracle, it reaches through the invisible wall, and sometimes you feel the innermost reality and beauty of joy, the creative power that comes to you out of it.  Suffering and joy are in a miraculous way connected with each other in this world of God.

       Can these things be?—How can God be love, when all still happens that has happened in the world of men—and will go on happening in time to come?  It is not because God is far away, but because man in his hatred and selfishness does not reach out to him.  God asks us to be strong upright people who dare to give happiness and life for him and for his kingdom.  God’s love is in this, that God gave us a great goal.

       Christ re-crucified—[The great men of Jesus’ time were not impressed by his life and death].  Christ’s challenge is: How much of God may there have been in this your brother, your sister, whom you killed, starved, denied education and constructive living, or drowned in luxury?  We are fighting against our brothers insofar as we hinder them from finding their own constructive life.  We stand for them insofar as we stand for the rights of others, for understanding and peace and truth and justice, and insofar as we are prepared to sacrifice our comfort and our privilege for the lives and rights of our brothers.

        Experience & authority—God is too great a mystery for us comprehend.  We read the Bible to experience with men and women before us the way God spoke to them. [We do not have to argue about which church or religion is right].  What matters is that people heard the word and tried to live obedient to the light of truth, hope and love in which the living God showed God’s self. 

       Very often people say to me, “How can you dare to stand entirely alone?  I had to go through many struggles against church authority, tradition and prejudice.  No words of the church, no explanations of theologians made my way clear; Christ himself spoke to me [that] his goal is the truth.  For many good Christians, faith is so bound up with tradition that they never realize the deep sinfulness of custom.  Again and again the churches have been the last to see the injustices of tradition.  There are those who see this fact, this need, and are called to seek a new foundation for humankind’s life and work.  God gives them new visions, new thoughts, new outlooks—and perhaps the power by which eternal truth overwhelms the inward being of the millions.

        [There are] millions who cannot hear the message.  From both sides, [religious and political] the same gospel of despair: in this world you must fight, fight even for the highest purposes; [both those in power and the oppressed accept this gospel].  Both are so strongly dominated by unhappy experiences with other men, so involved in distrust, that they cannot see the human being [or that of God] in their opponent.  Jesus did not ask his followers to fight for him.  He went to the cross and suffered, certain that suffering love would overcome the world.  When will we be ashamed to call Christian those who trust in the sword?

        Is God real? Are we real?—If God is reality, then I know that I will never find a good way in the future, not happiness, not strength, until I find God’s forgiveness and God’s spirit to begin anew. While God is an [inner] belief of the mind, whilst in real life our chief aim is earning money and winning influence and power, we will never overcome the inward weakness that is servility [people-pleasing].

        What does it mean, this trusting in God?  I think it means that we are certain that spiritual power is life’s precious foundation.  We look back to those whom catastrophe destroyed, who could not live out their lives, and who gave them because they could not submit to that which was against their consciences.  They gave their lives because they had heard Christ’s challenge.  The living Christ’s challenge is behind catastrophe; it is in it, beside it, through it.  By hearing his voice—thus we become real.  Eternity is in our lives overcoming fear and hatred, and giving us this great vision: that we are Christ’s fellow workers on earth, united with him in his eternal being.

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51.  Worship (by John Woolman; 1950)

         John Woolman, American saint.  Born 1720 at Northhampton, New Jersey.  A merchandiser, tailor, schoolmaster and lawyer, who cut down his business that he might see more clearly the simplicity of Truth.  He held himself responsible for the world’s evil and he sought to clear his whole life of it.  He went to England to labor against the traffic in slaves and there died of smallpox in 1772.

          Foreword—Here [in this pamphlet] such parts of his writings are collected as bear on the problem, “What is worship?  How shall we have faith?  This is a record of that constant state of being wherein one can find “the simplicity of Truth.”  Hating evil, John Woolman loved evil men and spoke to them without bitterness.  Loving the exaltation of Truth, he hid himself in humility.  He found that to love God is the mightiest of social weapons.  Worship to John Woolman was [more than] First-Day meditation and deportment; it was a matter of every-day speaking and thinking and living; it was a way, a condition, a means to Pure Wisdom.  This collection tries in brief to catch the kernel of it.  John Woolman is not to be studied as history.  He is to be read and read again.  From him it is impossible to stop learning.  

         We have a prospect of one common interest [with God] from which our own is inseparable: to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes business of our lives.  The call goes forth to the church that she gather to the place of pure inward prayer; and her habitation is safe.  It is confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any where the heart stands in perfect sincerity.

        John Woolman is brought low—I humbly prayed to the Lord for his help, that I might be delivered from vanities which so ensnared me, and [the Lord] helped me as I learned to bear the cross.  [But] I still found myself in great dangers, having many weaknesses attending me and strong temptations to wrestle with.  We may see ourselves crippled and [desiring] pleasant and easy things, find it impossible to move forward. But things impossible with men are possible with God.  God is sometimes pleased, through outward distress, to bring us near the gates of death: [there] all earthly bonds may be loosened and the mind prepared for that deep and sacred instruction which otherwise would not be received.  In [keeping] “as near to the purity of Truth as business will admit of—here the mind remains entangled and the shining of the Light of Life into the soul is obstructed.

       In an entire subjection of our wills the Lord opens a way for his people, where all their wants are bounded by his wisdom.  As new life forms in us, the heart is purified and prepared to understand clearly.  Retiring into private places, I have asked my gracious Father to give me a heart resigned to the direction of his wisdom.  I must in all things attend to God’s wisdom and be teachable, and so cease from all customs contrary thereto.

        He does away with obstacles—My mind hath often been affected with sorrow [from the] spirit which leads to pursuing ways of living attended with unnecessary labor.  A query at times hat arisen:  Do I in all my proceedings keep to that use of things which is agreeable to Universal Righteousness?  My mind, through the power of Truth, was in a good degree weaned from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with real conveniences that were not costly.  The increase of business became my burden, for I believed Truth required me to live more free from outward cumbers.  [And] may we look upon our treasures, and [ask]: Do the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions?

       He pushes aside the wisdom of the world—The worldly part in any is the changeable part.  But they who are “single to the truth, waiting daily to feel the life and virtue of it in their hearts, these shall rejoice in the midst of adversity.”  The sense I had of the state of the churches brought a weight of distress upon me.                   Through the prevailing of the spirit of this world the minds of many were brought into an inward desolation, and a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed.  He who professeth to believe in [the Creator and Christ] and yet [loves] honors, profits and friendships of the world more, is in the channel of idolatry.  If I was honest to declare that which Truth opened in me I could not please all men, and labored to be content in the way of my duty.  Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered, but it is the duty of every man to be firm in that which he certainly knows is right for him.

        Doth pride lead to vanity?  Doth vanity form imaginary wants, [which in the end spreads desolation in the world]?  Doth Christ condescend to bless thee with his presence, to move and influence to action?  Dwell in humility and take heed that no views of outward gain get too deep hold of you, that so your eyes being single to the Lord, you may be preserved in the way of safety.  [Sincere followers of Christ have a weightiness in] their spirits that secretly works on the minds of others.

         John Woolman sees Truth—At a Friend’s house in Burlington, I saw a light in the chamber at a distance of 5 feet, about 9 inches diameter, of a clear easy brightness and near the center most radiant.  [A voice in my mind said]: CERTAIN EVIDENCE OF DIVINE TRUTH.  True religion consists in an inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator and learns to exercise true justice and goodness toward all.  I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believe that sincere upright-hearted people . . . who truly love God were accepted of God.  My heart was tender and contrite and a universal love to fellow creatures increased in me.

       In a time of sickness with the pleurisy I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name.  I was mixed [and merged] with a mass of human beings.  A melodious [angelic] voice said:  “JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD.”  I was carried to poor people, oppressed [by Christians]; they blasphemed the name of Christ.  [I was led to say:] “I am crucified with Christ.  Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me. . .  I now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”  The language, JOHN WOOLMAN IS DEAD, meant no more than my own will’s death.  I felt the depth and misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony; and I was crushed down under it.  Thou hadst pity on me when no man could help me.   

        We do not know what to pray for as we ought.  But as the Holy Spirit doth open and direct our minds and as we faithfully yield to it, our prayers unite with the will of our heavenly Father, who fails not to grant that which God’s own spirit asketh.  The necessity of an inward stillness hath under these exercises appeared clear to my mind.  In the desire of outward gain the mind is prevented from a perfect attention to the voice of Christ.         While aught remains in us different from a perfect resignation of our wills, it is like a seal to a book wherein is written ... that will of God concerning us.  To be active in the visible gathered church without the leadings of the Holy Spirit is not only unprofitable but tends to increase dimness.  In entering into that life which is hid with Christ in God, we behold the peaceable government of Christ, where the whole family are governed by the same spirit and, doing to others as we would they should do unto us.  A care attends me that a young generation may feel the nature of this worship.  [For] in real silent worship the soul feeds on that which is divine. 

       He is again brought low—Though our way may be difficult and require close attention to keep in it, and though the manner in which we are led may tend to our own abasement, yet if we continue in patience and meekness, heavenly peace is the reward of our labors.  I was made watchful and attentive to the deep moving of the spirit of Truth on my heart, and here some duties were opened to me which in times of fullness I believed I should have been in danger of omitting.

        He strives not to speak too much—I was afflicted in mind some weeks [for saying too much].  I was thus humbled and disciplined under the cross, which taught me to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his flock.  Wasting one minute of time among 300 people [in excess talk] does an injury like that of imprisoning one man 5 hours without cause.  It was my concern from day to day to say no more nor less than what the spirit of Truth opened in me.  To attempt to do the Lord’s work in our own will, and to speak to that which is the burden of the Word in a way easy to the natural part [of myself or pleasing to others], does not reach the bottom of the disorder.

         In the heat of zeal I once made reply to what an ancient Friend said.  I [later] stood up and acquainted Friends that I was uneasy with the manner of my speaking, as believing milder language would have been better.  Here luxury and covetousness appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent.

         He foresees great troubles—I have seen in the Light of the Lord that the day is approaching when the man that is the most wise in human policies shall be the greatest fool.  Thus the inspired prophet saith:  “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee . . . [for] thou has forsaken the Lord thy God, and fear of me is not in thee.”  Let us then in awe regard these beginnings of his sore judgments, and with abasement and humiliation turn to him whom we have offended.  The gloom grows thicker and darker, till error gets established by general opinion, so that whoever attends to perfect goodness and remains under the melting influence of it, finds a path unknown to many.

         John Woolman describes true worship—Wheresoever men are true ministers of Jesus Christ, it is from the operation of his spirit upon their hearts, first purifying them and thus giving them a feeling of the condition of others.  Deep answers to deep in the hearts of sincere and upright men, though in their different growths they may not all have attained to the same clearness.  Though there are different ways of thinking amongst us, yet if we kept to that spirit and power which crucifies to the world, true Unity may still be preserved amongst us.

        I have frequently felt a necessity to stand up when the spring of the ministry was low, and to speak from necessity in that which subjecteth the will of the creature; herein I was united with the suffering seed and found inward sweetness in these mortifying labors.  The work of the ministry being a work of Divine Love, I feel that the openings thereof are to be waited for in all our appointments.  I have sometimes felt a necessity to stand up; but that spirit which is of the world hath so much prevailed in many, and the pure life of Truth been so pressed down, that I have gone forth [feeling the need to carefully consider] where to step next.  

         The gift is pure; and while the eye is single in attending thereto, the understanding is preserved clear; self is kept out.  The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to hear eloquent orations.  If there is not a careful attention to the gift, men who have once labored in the pure gospel ministry, [seek eloquence] that hearers may speak highly of these labors.  In this journey a labor hath attended my mind, that the ministers amongst us may be preserved in the meek feeling life of Truth, where we have no desire but to follow Christ and be with him.\

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53.  The Power of Truth (by Herrymon Maurer; 1950)

        It is now mid-century of a time of violence, and there is no certainty that the torment of men has more than begun.  [The military advocates, statesmen covet and debate, scientists facilitate, intellectuals prevaricate, and publicists glamorize and elaborate, all in support of violent means to achieve “just” ends.]  There is still empty laboring after money and empty dreaming of fame.  Yet this surface activity fails to hide a secret unrest, [which arises] from an awareness of new weapons of destruction and of a general discord among persons and among nations.  At few times have men longed so desperately to be brothers; at few times have they found themselves to be such uneasy strangers.  Language has become so inflated as to lose currency.  Gibberish passes for sense.  Where is the simplicity of Truth?

        The end of the world—What may have been a symbol to the prophets of Israel and to the saints of early Christendom has now the force of sober fact.  Today we are cut off from the solace of the prophets; we are cut off from belief in the survival of a remnant of righteous people.  We compare ourselves not with what we are called to be but with what others have been in the past or with what others are now. . . we judge our own lives not by the Truth that stirs in us but by the behavior of people around us.

        When persons or peoples cut themselves off from the source of life, they cease to be alive.  It is essential to grasp the nature of the destruction that we may bring upon ourselves; a destruction of all places, all people.  For the torment of our times, for the evil in them, for our wars, for our fears, we are all responsible. There is no remnant.  If we do not seek to be joined in Truth with every living human person, we shall all be damned separately.

      Inward and outward—Conceiving high-minded plans or endorsing them or even working to bring them about, unless it springs from an inward reordering, only adds fresh confusion.  The thought persists that there must be some great [government program, organized philanthropy, global policy]—some brilliant ideas in the mind of man—that is bound to save everybody. 

        The trouble is not that the plans are outward.  The trouble is that they are simply outward.  We cannot be [truly] responsible as long as our futile outward schemes hide our own inward condition and the inward condition of those around us. It is the great heresy of our times to believe that inward evil can be overcome simply by outward action.  The heresy maintains that man is a robot, that he can be played upon by external controls and made to do what he should.  The responsibility that all persons bear for their confused and twisted life is a responsibility to know what is inward [Truth] and to make outward works mesh intimately with it.               There is nothing more real and powerful and compelling, nothing more primary to all life than Truth—the Truth which is of God, which is God—inwardly and sensitively felt.

        The Power of Truth—[In Truth there is] liberation from our own lies and fears and egotisms, and thus liberation from the outward pestilences provoked by inward ills.  Gandhi gave [this liberation] a new name, Satyagraha, the Power of Truth; it issues from the convictions that:

·            Every living person can know God as [well] as he can know a person in the same room with him.

·            Deity and Truth can be experienced as directly and as certainly as one can experience a table or chair upon which one can lay a hand.

·            Men and women and children have in them some part of Light, some part, so to speak, of Deity, and that they can actually dare to love God.

·         All persons have only to reach out toward Light to touch the divine source of energy and to be filled by it.

·         The Light, the Truth as it exists with all, is the only possible weapon against the evil with everyone.

Truth is the exact opposite of the world’s force, the antithesis of armies and schemes and great outward plans.  Jesus preached no outward salvation, put himself at the head of no organization, offered no outward leadership, no panaceas.  As his life was love and inward following of God, so was his death. 

        The weapon of the Power of Truth is an inward weapon.  It is the weapon of self-suffering, of voluntarily accepting injury upon oneself.  That which is of Truth in all is moved in some degree by voluntary suffering.  [The early Quaker’s England and India in the 1940s saw self-suffering put into practice].  This suffering is not long-faced; it is not a judgment of the righteous upon the wicked.  Truth is a weapon that can be used only by person who love Truth better than any results.  It demands a total allegiance; it demands a free gift of all outward attachments; it demands a person’s whole life and a sharp sensitivity to evil, [much like the 18^th century American Quaker John Woolman had].  The way of Truth is a hard way, but it the way of liberation, the way toward affection not simply for people who do good but for those who do evil.

        The Utility of Truth—Gandhi made his life one continuing experiment in the uses of non-violence.  [He] showed that the Power of Truth can be used by men and women, children or adults against the tyranny of fathers or of nations.  Required is that state of selfless mind which engenders no irritations and takes no offense at the slurs or odd humors of persons nearby.

        The method of silence is available, wherein one seeks for the power that will help heal others of evil by healing oneself.  Loving tears accomplish more than whips.  The thief is less likely to steal if he is given the cloak in addition to the coat than if the coat he has stolen is forcibly taken from him.  We all set the example of theft by seeking after more things than are really needful.  We can possess things rightly only to the extent that our neighbors let us possess them; forcefully preserving what we own is to compound evil.

        In strikes what is needed is a genuine concern for the person who does evil, for such a concern must lead to a will to relieve him of evil.  Personal inconvenience may result from [a boycott], but the Power of Truth cannot be effective unless he who uses it is more genuinely concerned for the plight of the persons who do evil than he is for his own comfort.  It is evident that there can be no true release from the evil of race prejudice until change is effected in the hearts of the persons who are prejudiced.  Laws by themselves have proved of little help.  In India the Power of Truth erased in many places racial issues as involved as any that existed in America.  [The untouchables protested non-violently the restrictions placed on them by the high castes.]  At the end of the year the high castes broke down and “received the untouchables.” 

         The Cold War and Truth—In India Gandhi went to jail [rather than being executed.  He said:] “The non-violent technique does not depend on the good will of a dictator, for a non-violent resister depends on God’s unfailing assistance, which sustains throughout difficulties which would otherwise be irresistible.”  This answer rests on the conviction that extreme evil and ruthlessness can be overcome by an extreme of loving self-suffering. 

        Either there is that of God in Russia’s rulers or there is nothing of God in anyone.  Either these men can respond to Truth or no one can.  It is necessary now, as it has always been, to gamble one’s whole being on the faith that life does have meaning, that Truth is alive and will act.  Unless it is possible to penetrate the dogmatic encrustation with which some surround themselves, there is no way of arresting the spread of a totalitarian system, short of waging total war.  [Such a penetration] is possible only by the Power of Truth, [which brings a transformation] from yearning for rank and position to yearning for equality and inward unity with others. 

        Seen in the light of Truth, the main problem of relations with Russia may be not so much Russia’s rulers as our own selves.  Looking more closely into our own evil, we would be more capable of discerning the evil of the Russian system and the manner by which it can be fought.  The Russian system does away with any talk of Truth and embraces the technique of the lie.  Force [is a first-resort], not a last resort.  The Russian system uses the heresy of the plan, systems of outward organization that try to change man through changing his economic life. 

        That these facts contain a partial description of our own heresies, however less extreme our own may be, should suggest that Russia’s rulers are in need of the same sort of inward regeneration that we are.  It is as necessary to fight with the loving weapons of Truth against the lie and the plan of the Russian system as it is to fight with weapons against race prejudice in the United States as it is to fight against Mammonism in one’s own heart.

        Truth is in fact liberation.  Violence, while it may overthrow the rulers of Russia, will not overthrow the deeply rooted heresies of the lie and the plan.  The force of Truth now gives one final chance to break the endless chain of evil bred by evil, war bred by war, the cycle of enslavement forged by our ancestors and by ourselves.

        Obstacles—We have been unable to choose between the unchangeable and the world; sometimes we have even become unable to distinguish between them; we find it difficult to seek the Truth completely.  Our inward being has become clogged with dust and cluttered with debris; it has become inhospitable to the inward visitor of Light.  We may not [seek the extremes of great wealth, great power, great fame, great pleasure, but we seek distraction in the moderate forms of these vices,] anything that does not charge us with Truth.  There is nothing that cannot be used to hide Truth, or twist inward awareness of it.  Immersion in hard work can be as great an escape as immersion in drink.  Prayer can become a talking to oneself, a noisy monologue instead of a silent readiness to hear the whispering of Truth.  It is impossible to lose oneself in worldy things and still lose oneself in Truth.       

        We know we must grow in Truth, but we are worldy even when we decry the world.  We know that Truth demands that we take responsibility and suffering upon ourselves, but we are reluctant to face discomfort and death. If Truth be banished to some place, [some time] else, there is no responsibility to fight with its demanding weapons,  and thus no need to battle against evil in the one’s own heart.  [Or evil may be overlooked and] rationalized into the appearance of good.

        What matters primarily is that men and women attend to the whole business of their lives: loving God and their neighbors.  They have to take the gamble that there is God, that the Truth of God is in fact the Truth of life.  At the root of all faith is a gamble against the world, a divine guess that there are hands of God ready to catch us if we throw ourselves into them.  [For] the power of God is greater than any of the powers of this world.  

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54.  Prophetic Ministry (Text of Dudleian Lecture at Harvard; April 26, 1949; by Howard Brinton; 1950)

         Foreword—The term prophetic indicates in a single word the basic theory of Quaker ministry.  One who appears in the ministry in a Quaker meeting is at least theoretically a prophet.  The most satisfactory ministry in the Quaker meeting of today arises out of a flash of insight, felt in the silence and delivered with brevity and a deep sense of concern.  We are not called to imitate our forefathers.  We are called to seek with consecration humility and patience the same Source of inspiration that was manifest in them.

        In the Christian Church [worship] there is ritual ministry, teaching ministry, and vocal ministry, expression of the Divine Word spoken in one’s heart.  The ministry of priest, seer, and prophet occur in some degree in every Christian group.  [Priesthood is emphasized in Catholic worship; preaching is emphasized in Protestant worship].  Prophetic ministry, to which the Society of Friends aspires, not always or generally with success, is not validated by priestly consecration, but solely by inward requirement, “the mighty ordination of the pierced hands.”  

         Demonstration, lecture, laboratory—[Teaching science may involve the lecture-demonstration, the lecture, and the laboratory.  These methods correspond to ritual, preaching, and Quaker meeting, respectively]. To say that prophetic ministry is characteristic of the Society of Friends speaks of the goal, of making it possible and encouraging this ministry, not necessarily of achievement.  Out of the depths of the worshiper’s soul arise thoughts, and feelings of widely varying value; some may be recognized as having divine origin.  Some of those divinely sent may be intended for others.  [Guilt comes if one does not share; God’s peace comes if one speaks].

          Primitive Christianity revived—Quakerism, like most other Christian movements, initially claimed to be a revival of primitive Christianity.  They extend from conservative to radical, proceeding from Catholic, to Anglican, to Presbyterian, to Independent, to Baptist, and finally to Quakers, who introduced the new element of prophetic ministry.  [Despite strong Puritan objection to the claim], the Society of Friends [held that] no true revival [of Primitive Christianity] could be without prophets and apostles. 

        These Quakers did not claim to be as good as or as great instruments of the Spirit as Isaiah or Paul, but there was no difference in kind.  There were Seekers who arrived at the conclusion that a church was impossible without prophets.  When Quaker prophets appeared and spoke, they accepted the man or woman as ordained of God.  [Even with their direct enlightenment], Quakers were powerfully influenced by the Bible.              Early Quakers also had teaching, “public friends,” men and women whose [spiritual gifts] enabled them to expound the faith to multitudes and convince some of them.  But convincement was not conversion; that happened gradually from within.

        Early Quakerism—The Society of Friends has not always held the same view of prophecy’s nature and of the prophetic call.  The 1^st age (1650-1700) was characterized by a fiery zeal to spread the message.  Preachers left behind themselves cell-like groups which met together to wait upon the Lord and to experience the Spirit.  In the 2^nd age (1700-1800) there was no change in theory regarding the nature of inspiration and ministry; there was more waiting in the silence for the moving of the Spirit.  Gradually the priestly type took precedence over the prophetic; the creator gave way to the conservator.  The “priest” performs an essential function [by] transforming the prophet’s oracles into a cultural pattern.  The priest becomes dangerous when he suppresses the voice of prophecy.  The prophetic type lasted longer in Quakerism than in the primitive Church.  
       Priest and Prophet—Early Christian documents indicate the waning power of the prophet and the growing ascendancy of the priest.  Someone in full charge of the 2^nd century church was needed to control prophets and their unpredictable and sometimes upsetting utterances.  By the end of the century the prophetic office had ceased to exist.  The Quakers [dispensed with visible sacraments and] held to the primacy of inspired utterance over Scripture, which led to the persistence of Quaker prophecy. 

      The Quakers took seriously Paul’s injunction to make the prophets subject to the prophets.  Friends who were more accustomed than others to speak in meeting where called ministers.  Permission to attend minister’s meetings was a form of recognition of ministry.  These meetings frequently issued written advices, frank counsel, but little or no stress on doctrine.  The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting agreed to have “two or more Friends out of each Monthly Meeting to sit with the ministers.”  These Friends came to be called elders.  On the whole our records show that more repression was exerted by the elders than encouragement.  Most inner calls to the ministry were resisted, sometimes for many years.  This phase of the development of Quaker ministry gradually came to an end in the latter part of the 19^th century.  When growing business interfered with religious duties it was the business which was curtailed.   

       Later Quakerism—The 3^rd age in Quaker history (1800-1900) was a time of conflict.  The elders’ attempt to regulate the ministers’ belief led to a breakdown of the mystical-evangelical synthesis which had lasted nearly 200 years.  It resulted in 3 bodies of Friends: 1.) liberal, non-authoritarian, nondoctrinal; 2.) evangelical, autho-ritarian, doctrinal; and 3.) “moderates,” conservators of early Friends’ traditions and called Conservatives between the first 2 groups.  The first group joined in the evangelical revival in the latter part of the 19^th century; its services became a pre-arranged form of preaching, prayer, and singing; there is little room for prophetic utterance beyond the professional minsters.  Two-thirds of Friends in America have now programmed their meetings. 

        The 4^th age (1900-   ) has seen the rise of higher education and the social gospel influencing the character of earlier prophetic ministry.  The early Quakers’ fears that ideas about religion might take the place of religious experience itself were overcome.  A new philosophy of the divine-human relationship has developed which is more akin to the Hellenic ancestor of Christianity than to the Hebraic ancestor [early Quakers used as a model].  Spirit has given place to intellect, prophecy to teaching.  The authentic voice of prophecy is occasionally heard.  The change is one of degree.

        The social gospel’s predominance [has affected how a particular social service is chosen].  The older social activity resulted from individual concerns which generally originated in periods of worship, when some quite unexpected sense of responsibility might arise.  The process at present is less conducive to originality, [and is likely to arise out of meeting for business as a result of a concern brought to and processed by a committee, which presents it to the whole meeting].  Rather than directing the worshipper to the divine Source of all solutions, modern ministry tends to be set in a secular, pragmatic frame of reference.

        Prophecy and secularism—This secularization is a product of modern life and has affected all forms of ministry throughout the Christian world.  Urbanization, science, and general busyness have contributed to the elimination of a truly prophetic ministry either in the Quaker meeting or the pulpit.  A new philosophy was needed to bridge the chasm between flesh and spirit so as to render religion acceptable to modern minds; but such a philosophy can go too far.  What then can we learn from these 3 centuries of experiment with an unordained ministry exercised by self-trained men and women?

         Prophecy and Christianity—Prophetic ministry serves a different purpose than pulpit ministry.  Spiritual direction in a Quaker meeting tends to [result from] a brief message which seems to grow out of the life of the meeting and which harmonizes with the silence.  Wandering thoughts may then become focused on the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Fox said:  “. . . it is not a customary preaching but to bring people to the end of all preaching.”     

       There are Seekers today as there were in the 17^th century.  Souls need help which will go beyond the mind to reach the springs of the will, [where] the meaning and purpose of life can be realized when [the Spirit is present and] the deep in one soul calls to the deep in another.  For such service there is no training save that of the Spirit.

        The experience of the Society of Friends would indicate that there are spiritual gifts in the laity which are lost through neglect.  The fear of weak, uninspired ministry, is denying us the freedom and opportunity to develop a powerful lay ministry.  A truly inspired prophet delivering his message speaks with freedom and self-surrender, aware only of the truth welling up from within.  It is on intuition rather than on deliberation that the prophet depends, on feeling rather than on thought.  Higher education may save the prophet from fanaticism, from errors of fact, from isolation from the currents of thought of his time.  But modern education does not develop religious insight and intuition.  There is no reason why prophet and scholar could not be integrated so that each would strengthen and supplement the other.

       Inward and Outward authority—Optimum conditions for prophetic ministry are realized when there an appropriate balance between outward authority and inward inspiration; too much regulation quenches the spirit and too little leaves open the door for unedifying utterance.  But outward and inward are not of equal value in religion; the Spirit is primary.  I think it can be shown that prophetic ministry has had the greatest driving power when it has been of a Christ-centered type.  Jesus called himself a prophet and prophetic religion is the religion of Jesus rather rather than the religion about Jesus.   Christianity was itself a revival of prophetic religion after a long period of priestly domination in Israel.  In the cultural barrenness of declining Greco-Roman culture it was a creative outburst of spiritual power among ordinary men and women engaged in humble tasks.  The present age presents many resemblances to that epoch in the declining Greco-Roman world when Christianity began.  Can we look for a similar outpouring of the Spirit?    

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55. The Pendle Hill Idea (by Howard Haines Brinton; 1950)
      About the Author (1970 ed.)—Howard & Anna Brinton arrived at Pendle Hill in the summer of 1936 with a solid background of academic achievement at the colleges of Mills & Earlham, & became co-directors of a new sort of education enterprise, a Quaker fusion of school and community. They retired in the 1950s & lived on campus as Directors Emeriti. Anna died in 1969; Howard continues to serve by lecturing, writing, and simply being.
       Introduction (1970 ed.)—40 years of failure and success have demonstrated, at least to some extent, what is possible and what is impossible in an institution like Pendle Hill. No 2 years of Pendle Hill experience have been the same; the character of each depends on the personalities of those in residence.
       Pendle Hill’s future will be different than Pendle Hill’s past, but there are certain fundamental principles which will remain unchanged. This pamphlet describes those principles. [It is because of all those who participated at Pendle Hill that these principles found expression].
        [Pre-historic & early education]—Pendle Hill, [among others] makes use of 2 basic Quaker principles involving the importance of: the small integrated, religiously centered community as a starting point for a social order higher than that of the world in general; immediate experience as a necessary supplement to beliefs & theories.
        The community is the oldest instrument of education, as old as the human race & older. Long before instruction through words began, primitive society’s youth watched their elders engaged in hunting, gardening, tool-making, & religious exercises. Humans have [most often] lived in small, closely integrated groups united by kinship, economy, moral code, & 1 religion. It is probable that communities varied in size from 50-100 persons. Presently, the family is too small, & the state too large to meet our needs, so we create groups such as church & club.
        The community small enough to permit every one in it to know everyone else intimately is by its very nature an educational instrument. From birth to death the individual is moulded by the group, not so much through words as through shared actions. Such an education pierces below the surface level of conscious thought to the springs of the will in the hidden depths of the soul. Religion is taught by participation in religious exercises.
        Such education may be too successful, resulting in conservatism & little change from 1 generation to the next. With words came conscious thought; with thought came rebellion against tribal patterns. Myth & legend, recited or sung, became an early form of teaching. They conveyed through symbolic elements a complete philosophy of life. Humans began to question old legends & traditions, beginning a long process [where education became] very verbal in character & affected only the surface of the mind, ignoring the [will’s inner depths & springs].
        The 3 arts—[Education in Europe’s middle ages began with proto-universities, which focused 1st on theology, with philosophy as ancilla]. The instruments of instruction were the Bible and Aristotle. There was also training in reason. The instruments of this instruction were the Trivium (Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric), and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). In the Monastery there was also training with the Hall and the Farm. The 3 levels were Chapel (Divine Arts), Library (Liberal Arts), and Hall (Useful Arts). Eventually Theology faded from the general curriculum.
        Today we find that Human (Liberal) Arts are giving way to the Useful Arts. In all but seminary the Divine Arts have either vanished or greatly diminished, and now concern only a few. The universe is becoming a mechanistic one, where there is no moral order, no ultimate purpose, no absolute truth. This stage in education is leading us to destruction by the very science which we have created to assure survival. [Humankind is becoming] a homeless, frightened wanderer, going nowhere.
        The 4th art—The early Christian groups were small communities, [similar to tribal communities in being educational], but they taught a universal religion independent of kinship. A tribal character fused with the universal [message], but the [original] primitive Christianity couldn’t be suppressed. The Quaker movement of the 17th century was evidence of this. The sense of the Spirit’s presence inspiring & uniting the group [was the central focus [in their efforts to educate]. To seek for & be inspired by the Spirit might be called a 4th art different from, but not excluding or limiting the other 3. There is no community more powerful in its educational effect than the God-indwelt society. This 4th art is in evidence in silent, expectant waiting for a sense of Divine Presence & Guidance.
        A complete, well-rounded education includes all the arts: the Divine, the Liberal, the Useful, & the Spiritual. The University of Kamazawa in Tokyo, Japan, belongs to Zen Buddhism. The university has a meditation hall; instruction is given in the use of silence. In Zen Buddhism education on its highest level has to do not with books, lectures or scientific apparatus but with silence & the immediate experience of Life. Zen won’t fit into our western culture, but it isn’t completely alien to scientific method or Catholic or Quaker meditative practices.
        Pendle Hill, an educational community—Now in its 40th year, Pendle Hill endeavors to supply a small intimate, integrated community and an education based on the 3 ancient arts, Divine, Liberal, and Useful, and the Spiritual as understood and interpreted by the Society of Friends. Other institutions outside the conventional educational system are Iona in Scotland, Sigtuna in Sweden, Cluny and Essertines in France, Dreibergen in Holland, Bad Boll in Germany, and Chateau de Bossey in Switzerland.
        Pendle is a small community; it numbers about 60 persons. Each person must have full opportunity to develop one’s unique personality as well as one’s communal personality. Pendle Hill is a community of the family type. [Some students bring their children; a few have brought their parents; we relate to & care for one another as in a family]. Pendle Hill is an integrated community; there is no formal distinction between staff & students. Decisions are on the basis of unanimity without voting. Pendle Hill is a representative community, including a variety of races and nationalities; it is not isolated from the world around it. Members are encouraged to undertake regular field work. Each year more than 100 persons besides the teaching staff have lectured and led discussions.
        In seeking to heal the inward confusion that is so much a part of the world’s disturbances, Pendle Hill pamphlets and bulletins further emphasize the ideals of Pendle Hill. The social studies are directed toward the present need for peace, industrial and racial as well as international. In an atmosphere of peaceful searching the road to truth, to justice, and perhaps even to love may be discovered. Psychiatrists agree to [the neurotic effects of] one-sided development, often of the intellectual at the expense of the spiritual. The normal length of stay at Pendle Hill is from October to mid-June. Hints for their lifelong self-education are what the seeker receives at Pendle Hill. Spiritual Arts= spiritual exercises toward union with God; Divine Arts=study of a religious philosophy of life; Liberal Arts=study of the human; Useful Arts=[creative] work and play in the physical world around us.
        Spiritual Life/Useful Arts and Recreation—The resident group at Pendle Hill gathers daily for period of meditation and worship each morning after breakfast [after the manner of Friends]. It is assumed that there is a Divine Life within and beyond, from which strength and guidance will come to the soul willing and open to receive it. Sometimes a thought will come with peculiar force which marks it as intended for the group. True worship enables the members to center down to that area of the soul [which is] that divine Spring of Eternal Life.
        The Physical activity in cooperative work & recreation is an important supplement to [the other aspects of life at Pendle Hill]. Each member takes part in the common tasks in the household, garden, grounds, office, or library. Work itself may be sacramental, the outward evidence of inward grace; work & meditation may go happily together, each aiding the other. Deliberate, self-conscious intention is not always as creative as an attitude of mind which permits the new to emerge unexpectedly & uninvited. Co-operative work is subordinate to study.
        Divinities and Humanities—These subjects are so inter-related that it is difficult to separate them. It is important to consider the courses at Pendle Hill in relation to the whole pattern of community life. [Ideas are important, but] the inward life which deals with human relation to their selves and to God is equally important. Education may be a 2-dimensional undertaking, concerned only with the surface of the mind, or it may have a third dimension of depth through which life acquires meaning and significance. [People come to Pendle Hill for many different reasons: personal problems; a satisfying religion; re-directing a life; renewal.
        Courses at Pendle Hill present a balance between the inward and the outward aspects of religion and society. Some of the most valuable projects have arisen out apparently aimless browsing in the library. Term papers often develop into publications as books, pamphlets, or less ambitious articles in periodicals. Some of these papers pass all the tests of scholarship. Others present a few simple but fundamental ideas of vital importance to the writer, thoughts sometimes arrived at after a struggle and accepted as a guide to life.
        Characteristics of Pendle Hill—The advantages of grades, credits, and examinations, however useful in the case of immature students cannot be supported in the case of adults. Students sometimes leave Pendle Hill wondering what they have gained, and have to wait for more life experience to evaluate their time at Pendle Hill. Time spent at Pendle Hill should be evaluated as a segment of life lived for its own sake, independent of results.
        The difference between organisms & mechanisms is often disregarded in education. High pressure production may succeed in industry; acceleration in education may prove disastrous. A healthy mind must grow at it own [individual], appropriate rate. Minds do not grow on facts; there must be meaning as well. Pendle Hill endeavors to afford each student an opportunity to spend the time they need in reading a book or writing a paper, [allowing more time for] a growing insight into fundamental values. The only requirement is that the time not be wasted.
        Pendle Hill [has a] minimum of procedures to free up the mind from attention to what might more properly be relegated to routine, [freeing up more time for the creative faculties]. Pendle Hill endeavors to stimulate self-discipline by facilitating recognizable achievement. The Quaker position appeals to the good in one but does not assume that such an appeal will necessarily be successful. At Pendle Hill many details of living are worked out by common consent in the weekly community meeting. Others are assumed as a result of experience. In intellectual & spiritual experiments, right result can only be achieved when right conditions are created & maintained.  

        The religious doctrine of the Society of Friends tends to make those who are convinced of it somewhat independent of external teachers. For this we wait together in corporate silence. Each student is assigned a staff adviser with whom he or she consults at least once a week. Pendle Hill may sometimes be the right setting in which to arrive at the resolution of minor complications or to find the way out of a quandary.  

        The integrating idea—[An integrating idea] operates as a field which produces in the group a certain pattern of behavior. It is not necessary that the concept be sharply defined. The power of the idea should reside in its potentiality rather than in its actuality. The integrating idea at Pendle Hill is that aspect of the faith of the Society of Friends which created Pendle Hill. Quakerism might be charactierized as a type of Christianity based primarily on experience and secondarily on historical events. The temporal comes to its full meaning through the Eternal, a living, moving Reality which cannot be caught and contained in a verbal formula or an intellectual concept. The curve of the spiritual life [is such that] human relations with God reinforces their relationship to one another. 

        Equality in an educational group means equality of respect, opportunity, sex, race, and economic status. Wisdom is a joint search in which all take part in proportion to their ability, experience, and dedication. Simplicity in education means absence of superfluity. Knowledge is sought for its practical contribution to a good life. Simplicity guards from excess of words, from exaltation of [speech-making] regardless of its value. 

        Harmony results from absence of pressure, psychological or physical. Life at Pendle Hill is largely concerned with the discovery of the means for developing peace among individuals, nations, race and economic classes. Community refers to all the ways and means by which human beings recognize and realize their interdependence. Pendle Hill is seeking to make possible within itself the kind of life which should prevail throughout the world. It tries to be a minority which has withdrawn for the very purpose of returning with greater power and knowledge.                     

        There are other educational communities like Pendle Hill, “watch towers,” where one can step aside, take bearings, and become aware of directions and goals. They afford time and opportunity to draw strength for one’s soul from the Inner Source of Divine Life.

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58.  Ten Questions on Prayer (by Gerald Heard; 1951)

        Prayer is a problem.  If we obtained exactly what we asked, I suppose it wouldn’t be; prayer is an education.

         1.      Is it valid for us to pray for others?—This is a question of experienced prayers.  Is it not unavoidable and an essential step, to pray for others?  When people have practiced prayer seriously for a long time, they make distinctions between prayer stages.  To recover from a state of atrophy is impossible without sustained and exacting effort.  As prayer is growth of spirit, growth of consciousness, it represents mental conflict.

         Prayer that does not raise as many questions as it answers, is a prayer which will be driven deeper by God’s challenging silence to its easy, obvious appeals for help; God wants first to question us.  We must confess both our ignorance and our very mixed motives.  Have our keenest prayers, perhaps the first we ever offered with whole-hearted intensity, been to know God better and to love Him more?

         Our wish to pray for others certainly assures a degree of selflessness, but not necessarily enough make our prayer fully efficacious.  The more we would understand others, the more we must learn of God; the more we would love and serve others the more we must serve God.  Catherine of Genoa said [to a maid asking for help for her dying husband]:  “The first thing you must know is that at this moment God is not alienated from him, and therefore cares for him more than it is possible for you or me at our very best to care for him.             [Asking only] “Thy will be done” is a greater service to the soul [than asking for] anything specific; sufferers are raised out of their accepted suffering, and attains to a new level of consciousness.

         How can God endure for God’s creature to be in this pass?  I do not think it is possible for us to grow in spirituality, in prayer in the life of the companionship of God without such crises and the necessary pain [that comes from them].  Is it not then an essential step in our knowledge of God and our trust in God to pray for others, and then watch God?  God will at times give the very reverse, give what we feared.  [And we may] finally admit “That was the best thing which could have happened, but it was superhumanly brilliant and cunning. 

      2.  Will praying for others be productive of constructive results in securing peace?—The Gospel of John says:  “Peace I leave with you, my peace, I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  “Without prayer there can be no “producing constructive results in securing peace.”  But what is peace?  There are 3 levels of peace:  peace in our hearts; [peace with and of God]; peace toward our fellows.  Below the critical, contriving, level of the mind is a great depth of those absolute assurances where the basic will resides.  God has made this [physical] world for us.  God has made us to come to God.   I don’t think God gives us to know what peace toward our fellows will look like politically or economically.

        God, because God is Presence and is always entirely present, is unaffected by the “fact” that there is a past which is irrevocably finished and done with, fixed and settled forever, and a future which is wholly unknown and non-existent.  If anyone wants to be free to do good, the first thing is for one to come close to God.  [Because] it never takes God any time to do anything, we are making [with our prayer], the deepest, most constructive and most instant results in securing [God’s] peace.  [People] of God know 3 things: God exists, infinitely wise, loving, powerful, and concerned; God wishes to be known; we do not know God.

         The great spiritual master Ruysbroek, said, “There are three stages of being: servant of God; friend of God; sons of God.  Servants of God do great good in home and business, but have no message to offer.  Friends of God produce a tremendous effect in their own society.  Sons of God change history.  A new epoch, a new age, a new civilization follows after their appearance.

         3.  How serious is the barrier presented by secular minds in the United Nations to our efforts to reach God through these men? 

         4.      Does prayer have any effect on the wills of men who are indifferent to spiritual values?—What has God created this world for?  God has told us that people can come to God; has told us that they are free, that free will is an essential part of their contribution of God’s plan.  So secular minds in the United Nation are able to be a barrier.  But by apparent failure [of Jesus’ ministry,] which ended in “defeat,” a new epoch opened not for Palestine but for all of western humankind.  If God has given us freewill, men may fight God to the end of time.

         Materialism is dying.  What we are witnessing in this decade is a battle between apt force (spirituality) and apt violence (to retain possessions). The Roman Church says some people pray for all humankind. They pray with constant intensity and yet for nothing and no one in particular; it builds up a capital of prayer, an enormous force.  The less we pray in particular, the more God can direct the place in time through which the prayer force comes. 

        God sometimes tears away the veil of what we thought was the good, the obvious, visible way of helping people, and then there is released this invisible radiation, out from the very heart of God’s Being.  The moment we can really attend to God, the moment we feel this terrible longing for him, distractions cease.  God says:  “You are not fit to pray efficiently and well, you shall pray at the level at which I choose you to pray.”  The Cloud of Unknowing says, go on repeating some simple word, such as God or Love, over and over again on your heart beat.  It costs a tremendous amount to pray for somebody who, one feels, is utterly wrong, but that prayer when it is prayed is forever to the credit of the soul waiting for it.

          5.      What can one do to stimulate the will to pray for others, in persons who ordinarily pray only for themselves?—The real truth is, as we know, there is no private salvation.  To the degree that you can love [God and others], you are saved.  You must be able to pray for others.  To answer the [above question], we must impress upon them the fact that God is totally present.  In response to those who pray and get “results” we may question them by eventually asking:  Do you feel happy about it?  Do you find your peace of mind has increased?  Do you get on better with others?  You may find that their “results” are not lasting ones.  I think that it is very important that people know to whom they are praying, and the nature of that Being to whom they pray.

           6.      Must we love someone before we can pray effectively for them?—[I make 2 lists]:  the people from whom I have had great blessings; the people to whom I have been a stumbling block and frustration.  I alternate between them.  [For the latter list], the 2 of us go into the presence of God together, and eventually one will cease to be an obstacle to the other person.  [In praying for the great evildoers of our age,] Can we despise [them] or what they do, and at the same time pray successfully for them?  If I were in their position, could I have done better?  We [usually] have only enough spiritual resources to keep evil in some check.  The evil in me, to a certain extent, made it possible for that person to perish. [And that] evil in me would drive me to the same place. The ego hates God and everybody but itself. It is held in some control by God’s grace and our religious exercises.

         Is it to be expected that our prayer life will force us into an active program in the political and economic field?  There are in this life people who: serve God through social service to others; have the intellectual love of God and learning/understanding; have a tremendous devotion to the person of God.  My word to you is to beg that prayer be made an expert study and that there be a center where study and research can go on.

         7.      What is the relation in effectiveness between intensity over a prolonged prayer time and repeated short prayers?  I have been able to study the great masters of prayer; [the repeated short prayer] was their prayer.  That is what they did the whole time; it shot through all their actions.  This practice does not disturb one’s occupation.  [But] you cannot push people [into prayer].  It is the hunger for God that leads them to do it.

        People, when they reach my age, suffer insomnia.  What are they to do with their hours of rest?  [They may not be able] to spend hours of the day in prayer, but there is not the slightest reason why they should not spend hours of the night in prayer.  [For me] the terrific sense that God is sustaining the world, that God is conscious thought through whom alone all thought is at all possible, becomes completely dominating only at night.  It is because at a deep powerful level we are cowards and disloyal that we cannot for so long command, when waking, the attention in prayer we would like to have.  You can lie in bed and quietly repeat the name of God and think of God.  And gradually you realize that God’s peace has come into your heart.  A man who prays very deeply at night will not have any difficulty praying in the day, and you [now] become distracted towards God away from the incoherence of the world.   

       Other questions are these:  Are the emotions involved in prayer?  What should the pray-er’s personal feeling be?  Is there too great an intensity of feeling?  I feel it important that people should be aware with their minds, as well as with their heart that God is Present, [even] when they feel nothing at all.  [And] the mind turns toward God, and offers life’s events.  Everything takes on meaning in that light.  Nothing is truly comprehensible seen otherwise. 

       8.      Is prayer more effective when the person for whom you pray knows that you are praying for them?—Prayer is a form of high attention.  If you are praying for someone at night, when your attention is high, you will probably very quickly get results, [and] the person may be aware of you in their mind.  But prayer is much more than attending to some other human being.  [In order that our ego not presume too much, we need to remember that] no person has ever helped somebody with prayer. One stands aside, and asks God; God has done the helping.     

         9.      Are many individual prayers more effective than a smaller number of groups meeting for intercessory prayer?—Both methods must be used.  The one whose prayer life is not deep is unlikely to be able to stand the austere strain of prayer in the presence of others.  And someone who lives an exclusively private life and never prays with others has an incomplete life.  [The words one uses in] prayer help to a certain point, and then, the moment style and phrase take the place of spirit and self-forgetfulness, then prayer stops though sound goes on.  Slow down until each clause, each phrase, is only introduced to bring back the mind as it begins to wander. [Focus on the spirit, and do not be distracted by the prayer itself.]

        10.  What bearing does the quality of one’s own life have on the effectiveness of one’s prayers for other?--We shall not know God unless we are pure of heart.  Without an Act of Contrition, who can go into God’s Presence?  And what are we doing as evidence of our contrition?  God’s grace will keep us from the mortal, [planned and proposed] sins.  But we are continually committing little sins of passion, dishonesty, arrogance, impatience, and [gossip]; those must be erased, because neglected they spread. 

        What shall we ask of those who respond to a call to prayer?  They must be quite certain that God exists. [Once they know this], all else will follow.  [Those who know God have been timid.]  God, the Holy Ghost, speaks to us through intelligence, through love, through purity of living, and through understanding the knowledge God is ready to give us.  [Mental health professionals will dismiss all prayer as autosuggestion].  This is nonsense; they do not know their stuff.  Low prayer is autosuggestion.  High prayer has nothing to do with to autosuggestion.

       What helps can be offered?  There are 3 things for which you must [give thanks for]: 1^st for the human body; 2nd for the wish to know God; 3^rd for the company of fellowseekers.  We must keep together.  If we are not doing that, we are not taking the benefits we were meant to have and we are not giving them either.  We help others, and they help us.  We cannot be saved without others.    

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59.  Quaker Stongholds (by Caroline Stephens; abridged by Mary Gould Ogilvie; 1951)

         Foreword—Caroline F. Stephens (1834-1909), a Friend by convincement, was a member of the prominent Stephen family; Virginia Woolf was her neice.  Both Caroline and Virginia made an independent pursuit of know-ledge according to their tastes.  In Quaker Strongholds (1890), Caroline Stephen seems to keep constantly in mind the points of view of both old and new Quakers, and makes a bridge between early and modern Quaker thought.  Her writings receive major consideration in the Pendle Hill Quakerism course.  This abridgement is confined to Caroline Stephen’s explanation of particular tenets she asserts to be cornerstone and foundation of Quakerism.

        Many people probably suppose that the Society is fast dying out, and the “silent worship” of tradition [to be] impracticable and hardly to be seriously mentioned in these days of talk and breathless activity.  On that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning, I found myself one of a small company of silent worshipers.  To sit down in silence could at the least pledge me to nothing; it might open to me (as it did that morning) the very gate of heaven.  It is in hope of making more widely known the true source and nature of such spiritual help that I attempt to describe what I have called our strongholds . . . which cannot fail whatever may be the future of the Society. 

        The Inner Light—A cornerstone of belief is that God does indeed communicate with each one of the spirits he has made, in a direct and living inbreathing of some measure of the breath of God’s own Life.  In order clearly to hear the Divine voice speaking with us we need to be still; be alone with God, in the secret place of God’s Presence.  The Society’s founders were not philosophers, but spoke of these things from intense and abundant personal experience. Early Friends were accustomed to ask questioners whether they did not sometimes feel something within them that showed them their sins; and to assure them that this same power would also lead them out of sin.  To “turn people to the light within,” to “direct them to Christ, their free Teacher,” was a Quaker’s daily business.

         In our own day the doctrine of light is usually spoken of as a mysterious tenet, indigenous only in Oriental countries, and naturally abhorrent to [the English.  The early Friend’s light] was not confined to that innermost sanctuary that none but a few mystic were aware of.  The religion they preached was one which enforced the individual responsibility of each one for one’s own soul, and their share in worship and meeting business. 

       The perennial justification of Quakerism lies in its energetic assertion that the kingdom of heaven is within us.  [Simply that and not] the abstruse distinction between consciousness and being, [etc], which it has been the delight of many of God’s most devoted followers to interweave with the simple expression “within you.”  That we may all experience inspiration if we will but attend to the Divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal rule of Quakerism.  How it will manifest itself will depend chiefly upon our natural temperament and special gifts.   George Fox and the other fathers of the Society were strongly mystical, though not in the sense [that] conveys a general vague dreaminess.  They were fiery, dogmatic, pugnacious, and intensely practical and sober-minded.

        Mysticism and Quietism—Mystics, as I understand the matter, are those whose minds, to their own consciousness, are lighted from within.  They have naturally a vivid sense both of the distinction and the harmony between the inward and the outward.  They may have the sight of an eagle, but they see by the same light as the bat. 

       The obvious tendency of a vivid first-hand perception of truth or light, is to render the possessor of it so far independent of external teachers.  It is easier to do this because of the mystics’ quietness and independence.  Mystics are naturally independent of authority and of each other.  The duty of looking for and of obeying the light, or voice, or inspiration is a principle that may be transmitted from generation to generation like any other principle.  [Quietism is present] because it is instinctively felt that it is only in stillness that any perfect reflection from above can be formed in the mirror of the human spirit.

        Conscience—Faithfulness to the light is the watchword of all who hunger and thirst after righteousness.  It is not the same as “obedience to conscience.”  Our consciences must be enlightened, and the light must be something purer than this fallible faculty.  It must be that power within us which is one with all the wisdom, all the goodness, all the order and harmony.

        I believe that to have our sense exercised to discern between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, order and disorder, the will of God and the will of the flesh is the end and object of our training in this world.  We must have settled it in our hearts that everything, from the least to the greatest, is to be taken as God’s language—language which it is our main business here to learn to interpret.  The Divine guidance is away from self-indulgence, often away from outward success; through humiliation and failure, and many snares and temptations, over rough roads and against opposing forces—always uphill. 

        Worship—That mysterious diversity which is interwoven with all our likeness, and belongs to the very nature common to us all makes it impossible for one to judge for another as to the manner of worship most likely to be vitally helpful to one.  Before long [in worship] I began to be aware that the united and prolonged silences had a far more direct and powerful effect than [unconditional freedom to] seek for help in my own way.  They soon began to exercise a strangely subduing and softening effect upon my mind.  The words spoken were indeed often feeble, and always inadequate; but, coming as they did after the long silences, they went far deeper.  I wonder whether some of the motherly counsel I have listened to would not reach some hearts that might be closed to the masculine preacher.      

        Silence—It is not only the momentary effect of silence in public worship that constitutes its importance in Quaker estimation.  “Silence of all flesh” [and mind] appears to us to be essential preparation for true worship.  It seems indisputable that laying aside all disturbing influences, is an essential preparation for receiving eternal truth.  Not only at the times set apart for definite acts of worship but also in all the daily warfare of Christian life. 

        I do not feel that ours is the only lawful manner of worship, or that it would be for all people and at all times the most helpful.  I do believe it to be the purest conceivable.  Let no one go to Friends meetings expecting to find everything to one’s taste.  But criticism fades away abashed in the presence of what seems to be a real endeavour to open actual communication with the Father of spirits.   Why cannot you be silent at home?  The worthy answer is that we meet together so as to kindle in each other the flame of true worship, and to show allegiance to the Master.  Travelling Friends can cause a stirring of the waters and keep up the sense of freedom to take part in the meeting.  Silent meeting [does not distract with liturgies or hymns, which may] stifle many a cry for help.  A silent [unproductive] meeting would not delude anyone into a hollow sense of having been part of a religious service.

        Prayer—I have been speaking of our public meetings for worship.  But our worship does not begin when we sit down together nor end when we leave them.  Where others speak of family prayers, Friends prefer “family reading,” and “religious retirement.”  When we penetrate into the inmost chamber of private worship differences of method can no longer be traced by human eye.  It is not possible for anyone to judge the practice of others here.

        Everything, all beauty and rightness, seems to turn upon a [gradual] right subordination of the outward to the inward, the transient to the permanent, in our lives and thoughts.  We must secure a space for that which to the devout soul is the very breath of life: the practice of prayer.  That prayer which springs from the depths of silence, both of lips and of heart before God, this deepest prayer has in it a power to melt all the barriers which may seem to divide one from another of the upward-looking children of the Father of Spirits.

          We meet daily with open denials of the reasonableness of prayer—communication with the Divine Being.  Few amongst us can have altogether escaped the paralyzing flood of unsolved and [“insoluble,”] moral problems.  Prayer [has become only] the asking for things, and a means of getting them.  The word “prayer” may be used in the restricted sense of making requests; but let it be distinctly understood that it is only part—the lowest and least essential part—of worship or communion with God.  Concentration on this lowest form: suggests a test which is not and cannot be uniformly favorable, [because some requests are not going to be granted]; and every heart capable of real prayer [will reject] the idea of using it only for obtaining advantages, be they of what kind they may.            

        Prayer is not really prayer—true communion with God—until it rises above the region in which willfulness is possible, to the height of “Not my will, but Thine, be done.”  It is not in “remarkable answers to prayer,” or in signs and wonders that the real power and soul-subduing influence of a Divine communication is most clearly felt.  It is the still small voice which overcomes, or ordinary circumstances which when combined, acquire the significance of a distinct message.

       To those who in any degree know His voice, it gradually becomes clear that prayer and answer are inseparable.  True worship implies inspiration.  While we separate worship and inspiration we can never think worthily of either.  Let us acknowledge that the simplest, inarticulate cry for help is as sure to be heard by the Father of spirits as the deepest prayer ever uttered by saint or martyr.  The one voice which is most sure to [be listened] to by the good Shepherd, is the voice of one who has strayed and knows how far [from God’s path] they are.

        Ministry—Our Ministry may be said to be free because: it is open to all; it is not pre-arranged; it is not paid.  The one essential qualification for the office of a minister is the anointing of the Holy Spirit, as much beyond our control as the rain from heaven.  It is not necessary that each congregation be placed under the spiritual care of a pastor.  It is the right of each Christian to approach the Divine presence in one’s own way; it is a right and duty to take one’s share in worship when called upon by the Head of the Church. 

[A wholly silent meeting] has not failed in its effect as an occasion of united worship.  No one should venture to break the silence in which inward prayer may be arising from other hearts except under the influence of “a fresh anointing from above.”  [Quaker worship] is a dispensation entirely spiritual in its nature; a state of enlightenment and true worship in which forms and shadows have passed away and substance alone was to be labored for.  Quiet meetings [can provide the truest sense] of the words, “baptizing into the Name . . . and the communion of the body of Christ.” 

           Cornerstone and Foundation—What is peculiar to us is our testimony to the freedom and sufficiency of the immediate Divine communication to each one, and our witness to the independence of true gospel ministry from all forms and ceremonies, all human  imposed limitation and conditions. 

        Two main currents have flowed side by side.  One upholds the doctrine of the inward light [and “waiting upon the Lord”], and especially the performance of acceptable worship.  The other throws themselves heart and soul into active efforts.  [Both point to early Friends] for abundant evidence [in supporting their position].  There are, of course, dangers in either extreme.  Both functions are surely needed.  The secret of the strength of our Society lies in its strong grasp of the oneness of the inward and the outward.

         [More popular attention is paid to] the Quaker tradition of “non-resistance” than to its resolute vindication of each one’s individual responsibility to one’s Maker, to God alone.  To experience in our own hearts the harmonizing, purifying, invigorating power of the Divine Will, that truth which alone can make us free, is to be at rest for ourselves and for others. 

       It seems to me that the framework of the Society has vigor and elasticity enough yet to be used as an invaluable instrument by a new generation of fully convinced Friends.  It is not judicious adapting of Quakerism to modern tastes, [but rather] a fresh breaking forth of the old, unchangeable power of light and truth itself which can alone invigorate what is languishing amongst us.  A measure of the ancient spirit is still to be recognized amongst our now widely scattered remnant.  [I would revive] amongst our own members and amongst others the Society of Friends’ experience of the power of an exclusively spiritual religion. 

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60.  Promise of Deliverance (by Dan Wilson; 1951)

       The promise of Deliverance is the assurance that there is a power, available to humanity, by which high disaster can be abolished forever.  But there is no promise that we shall not be in great danger, nor that we shall be delivered from war, institutional evil, or calamities.  There is no promise that western civilization can be delivered from the fate of prior civilizations.  The message of deliverance drives away fear; it is that God is real and that God acts for humankind’s deliverance.     

         Deliver us from the present—Time is running out.  We no longer feel an easy confidence that we can leave our deliverance to technological progress or to chance.  We yearn for deliverance from meaningless-ness.  But God takes too long; we dare not experiment with eternity.  War must be avoided, yet we find ourselves dependent upon [evil] tradition and habits that make war.  “Deliver us from the present” is our prayer.  The Promise is that we can be delivered from anxiety about our past failures, and from fear of future disillusionment. The present could hold all we could ever wish for, and more.  God is completely present.  Eternity is now. We can experience it now.  

        Deliver us from Christianity—Christianity’s doctrines and divisions, remnants of once vital religion, leave modern man cold.  Christianity institutionalized has spoiled the world for the gospel.  The materialistic element of western culture marks the failure of Christianity.  The limitation of the message of deliverance to fixed creeds and formal procedures diminishes its power to persuade men who are endowed with spiritual freedom.  Deliver us from a Christianity that does not feel the living and Inward Christ at its center.

        Deliver us from evil—The sufferings of life attest the reality of evil.  Can the overfed and privileged over-come starvation’s evils?  We have underestimated the power for evil—the assertion of self-interest without regard to the whole—in ourselves as well as in others.  Replacing God with ourselves at the center of the universe separates us from God, and [creates the most basic] evil.  The good, [when put in static categories] hinders deliverance as surely as does the evil.  Such legalism misinterprets the human’s free spirit.           It overlooks the necessity for moral action in each particular instance to originate from within.  If one is condemned if one chooses not to follow the law, this destroys the meaning of freedom.  The habit of thinking about man’s imperfection in legalistic terms is so fixed that our morality has become negative and uncreative.  How quickly we legalize God, so set are we upon capturing and imprisoning life as we know it, or as we wish it to be.  The only life truly guided and truly free is the life of constant prayer, the life continuously seeking for God’s guidance.

         God has performed miracles through humanity, when devotion has been centered on the source from which activity springs and not on the ends toward which it is directed.  Even Quakers are not available to be used freely to transform evil because so much effort is directed toward preconceived solutions.  Anxiety about our kingdom of plenty stands in the way of deliverance.  We are filled with fear because we are afraid of losing something we think we cannot live without.  We have looked hopefully to the United Nations for the power to preserve things as they are.  We look everywhere but to God, because we do not want to pay the price God asks for deliverance.  The Promise of Deliverance is not for us unless we deeply and urgently feel the need of deliverance.  Yet there are many hidden falsehoods which arise to justify privilege and elude detection.  Some are even considered virtues.

        Deliver us from man—If we are aware of the brutality and degradation of life that exists in the world and in ourselves, we shall not pass lightly over the judgment of [theologians] who want to return to a doctrine of man’s depravity. In a time of imminent crisis [and failure, the pessimist feels guilt, and even the optimist feels hopeless].  “Deliver us from evil, ego-centered, meaningless man” is our cry.  [The theologian Karl Barth says of humankind:] “Humans have stood, are standing and will stand in infinite opposition to what God is.” 

          In contrast to Barth, Nicolas Berdyaev’s interpretation of the Christian doctrine of the Fall is:  “Awareness of original sin both humbles and exalts.  Man fell from a height and he can rise to it again.”  He longs for a return to the blissful state of the unconsciousness of pre-birth.  He longs for power to overcome evil.  He longs for the transcendent and external God to come near, to fill man with God’s presence, to reassure man that he belongs to God.            

        The promise is a new man—There is no promise that man will be delivered from human status, because to be human is his high and creative destiny. [He cannot] return to a state of primitive bliss, he would then be meaningless.  There is the Promise that man can be delivered just as he is, frailties, suffering and all, into a certainty now of oneness with God.  The new man’s creation is the painful, joyful task of us all; it is not delegated to those known as saints or towering prophets and apostles.  The new humanity is made up of all the faithful—the faithful found within and without all forms [of religion, government, political systems, or profes-sional disciplines].  What the saintly, mystical, prophetic types discovered for themselves they believed to be true and available to all who love truth.  The truth is as near to you and me as to any others. The Promise is a new humanity made up of you and me and others who will believe (in terms of our own individual experiences of truth) and follow.

        We can listen to others’ doctrines and experiences, but we can learn little from them about God’s Promise held in our own nature.  It is conformity of mind and practice to the will of God, in all holiness of conversation, according to the dictates of divine light and life in the soul, which denotes a person as truly a child of God.

       Spiritual and Material—There is an invisible spiritual aspect and a visible material aspect of the same life; the spiritual and the material are inextricably one.  Each is to be known in and through the other.  Mysticism is the key to the whole, the recognition that there is a point of convergence of the material and spiritual qualities of man and the world.  [Prayer where I feel in control of the input and the outcome] will not bring God nearer.  Prayer as a cry when my [carefully] constructed world falls apart opens the way to God.  Prayer without form and with openness to receive contains the meaning and mystery of waiting upon God.

The Presence of God rarely brings specific guidance for behavior, but rather a quality of being, an exultation of belonging, a renewal of strength, and a power and justification for action.  We see that of God and the new man already in every man.  The discovery that the Light within, the inward intuition of God, and the spirit of Jesus the Christ, are one, is the most momentous of life’s experiences.

        The Christ has existed from the beginning, in man’s center as the seed, the germ, the life.  Once Jesus the Christ has won a deep intuitive response within us, it is inevitable that we project our apprehension of God into Jesus’ form.  The Church’s central challenge today is the reunion with the living experience of the historic and the inward Christ.  In a Friends meeting, a powerful and creative ministry is the product of a meeting that expects God to speak to it as God spoke to Jesus, and that expects to receive strength and guidance from God’s Presence.

        The promise is a new loyalty—There is no higher loyalty than this: to be faithful to that of God unfolding in every man.  God is acting in each to perfect an original masterpiece.  Rabindrananath Tagore wrote:  “The universal is ever seeking its consummation in the unique.  It is our joy of the infinite in us that gives us our joy in ourselves.”  Loyalty [to God] is the secret to open the way to joy in all experience of pain and heartbreak, success or failure, of doubt or assurance.  Each of us feels the pressure of [divided loyalties].  Until we have found a new unity within and without, our lives will be disorganized, and our hearts torn with conflict.  We look everywhere for a loyalty that will again claim our full and joyful obedience; everywhere except within ourselves. 

         The secret is available—In the quiet depths of our innermost nature, if we know how to find it, is the dwelling place of a loyalty for which we would joyfully die.  [The Quaker Job Scott said]: “God has made humankind universally sensible in degree sufficient for their various circumstances and allotments in life.”  As children [we sensed our connection] with all life.  [As adults] we lose this sense of the whole of things, and shape [the world] to fit [what] we know of fragments of it. 

         Many of us live as if we had no expectation of finding God.  Because we do not find God [only in a certain place] where others seem to find God we strive to content ourselves with lives of patient resignation.  [We should rather have] the immediate and constant Presence of God as our certain expectation.  Our apprehension of God’s presence is often unexpected; it breaks through when we are open to it.  Jesus was one of God’s masterpieces.  God’s expectation is that we should be like Him.  We look for “God in man” in every man.  But always, we recognize the Christ that we find outwardly because we first recognize the Christ within ourselves.

        The promise is a new community—In the Old Testament, through the power of a liberated spirit, a new community arises out of the deadness and fears of the old.  Yet side by side with these positive elements there is also the record of the accumulation and hardening of the law.  The Promise of the power of God, available to man is contained within each of us.  This seed of the Kingdom of God is a gift from God to persons. 

        [Although Jesus seemed lost forever to the disciples,] they discovered that He was still with them in their hearts.  [They found themselves] in a unity beyond what they had while He was alive.  Now he was truly and indestructibly alive among them.  They had known and loved the outward Christ.  Now they knew also that Christ was living with them.  This group experience [of Christ amongst them] was no mere pooling of separate experience of the Christ within.  Something more than the highest insight of any of them, or all of them, was available. 

       Membership in this community of the Living Christ was essential for the individual.  Our lack of experience of community prevents our acceptance of the Kingdom of God as a present fact.  [A close-knit community is essential] as a tangible experience of the love and care of God through one another.  Salvation for an individual or for the whole appears possible in proportion to the fullness of this experience of community.

       Germ cell of the new society—Do there exist now, visible nuclear communities, held together by an experience of unity so fundamental that the new society is emerging through them?  Could a community of individuals become so filled with the sense of belonging now to the Kingdom of God that they would suffer even their beloved community to be sacrificed in order to spread the promise of the Kingdom for everyone?

         The Promise is the assurance that there is a way to change suffering into joy; all men who respond affirmatively to the light as they receive it, shall know what God is like.  Early Christians were drawn together by the creative experience of the Kingdom present among them.  Without the aid of specialists, men can come together with all their blindness and limitation and suffering into a consciousness of the Presence of God.  Salvation, healing and wholeness, is the seed which God has planted in each person.  Salvation is never complete or final.  It brings with it no guarantee of infallibility, but it does bring the glorious freedom to experiment radically and creatively.

        The promise of deliverance—This, then is the Promise of Deliverance.  We can begin at once to help create the Kingdom—to translate love into political and social relations.  We do not have to commence retraining, or to expect new talents, or to go to a new place to begin, or to wait for a more opportune time.  Always God is giving God’s self without stint to help us accept our weakness, to overcome our doubts, to start over again and again.  Wherever we are, power equal to the measure of our need is available to enable us to follow as we are led.  Now all our gifts, including the gift of life itself can be given fearlessly, joyously and confidently.  The Promise of Deliverance is the promise in Christ, of God in man, loving, living, suffering and giving Himself to win each person and humankind from disaster forever.  

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64.  Of Holy Disobedience (by A. J. Muste; 1952)

         A. J.—Memory of a Man (by Alfred Hassler, Exec. Secretary of Fellowship of Reconciliation) What is there to say of [A. J. Muste]?  Perhaps “understanding” is [best].  Understanding of the motivations that led people to the violence, exploitation and oppression he hated.  And understanding of the needs of a young assistant in the midst of a political or organizational crisis.  I worked on his staff, and was deeply moved by his insistent focus on the humanity of those with whom he came in contact.  This attitude produced Of Holy Disobedience.  

        The Land of Propaganda is built on Unanimity (From Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone)—“In the Land of Propaganda, a man, any man, any little man who goes on thinking with his own head, [who says ‘no’ or writes ‘no’ on a wall at night] imperils public order. . .  Killing a man who says ‘no’ is a risky business because a corpse can go on whispering ‘No, No, No’ . . . How can you silence a corpse?”  

        George Bernanos from Brazil wrote in Tradition of Freedom:  “If some day, the increasing efficiency of the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction . . . but the docility, the lack of responsibility of modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree.”  This warning might serve as a text, for an appeal to American youth to practice Holy Disobedience, non-conformity, and resistance toward, Conscription, Regimentation and War. 

         Most believers in democracy and all pacifists begin with agreement as to the moral necessity of Holy Disobedience.  Should we not emphasize “[positive and constructive service]” rather than the refusal to fight?  Should young men who are eligible for it accept the IV-E classification or take the more “absolutist,” non-registrant position? (IV-E are persons who oppose participation in any war on grounds of religious training and belief).  Those who hold to one [side of the question] are likely to be very critical of those who take the other.  And while a minister should not pass moral condemnation on those who enlist or submit to conscription, we do not deduce that this minister should abandon his pacifism or cease to witness to it. 

         The choice confronting the youth of draft age tend to fall in three categories: Christian or human “vocation”; “the immature 18-year old”; the pacifist’s and citizens’ relation to conscription and the State.  The argument for accepting alternative service was:  “[When] the government under wartime or peacetime conscription requires some service of mercy or construction [unrelated to war] from us, we will raise no objection to undertaking such work.  We may even seek . . . the opportunity to demonstrate our desire to be good citizens.”

        Conscription and Vocation—The question of one’s vocation does not or should not arise [only] when Congress enacts a conscription law.  The committed Christian, [presumably following a vocation in agreement with the will of God, is nonetheless required to] render some civilian service . . . different from what they have been doing.  Was what they were doing then so definitely not meaningful and sacrificial?  [We should ask ourselves:  Is the rush to get into other jobs and to go to distant places motivated by fear of men and of the authorities, by a desire to be thought well of, or by a dread of social displeasure or legal punishment?

         The Normal as Meaningful—God calls men and women fundamentally to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion.”  To resist [war’s] breaking up of the orderly family and community life [called for by God] is one of the great services the people who believe in non-violence and reconciliation may render.  It may well be that the most challenging opportunity to display courage, hardihood and readiness to suffer will be found in the community in which one has been living doing ordinary things.  [Indeed] it is possible that some leave the home or college environment, yielding to the temptation to avoid hardship. 

        The pacifist may judge the action of a government’s alternative conscription 3 ways.  1^st, the government demands that conscripts temporarily abandon their Christian or true vocation for work to which they clearly are not “called.” The Christian’s only choice is to refuse to comply; one’s non-conformity becomes a true vocation.       

        The Role of Jehovah’s Witnesses—The 2^nd possible attitude is to say the government is competent to determine that the alternative service constitutes their Christian vocation for the time being. This position seems precarious and I question whether it can be maintained as consistent with Christian theology and ethics.  The position of Jehovah’s Witnesses that they cannot submit to conscription because they must always be free to “witness” to the faith, is in this respect surely a strong and impressive one, if not a clear and consistent, centrally Christian one.  Where, then, does the State get the competence, or mandate to determine a Christian believer’s vocation?

        There remains a 3^rd possible position, namely that the State is doing evil in taking the individual out of the work to which God has called them. Pacifists in general, and especially Christian pacifists have to ask:  Is conforming with any provisions of a draft law, [in reality] promoting war through conscription?  And it is important that pacifists not give the impression to the government of gratitude for the concession to conscience, after inflicting conscription’s evil on the people. If non-resistant pacifists get off the high ground of bowing [under] Caesar’s yoke, by letting Caesar inflict civilian conscript service upon them, they are immediately on the low ground, with little bargaining power.  The treatment of WW I’s COs influenced fairly liberal provisions for WWII COs.

       Two Miles or None—We [thus] have the choice of not going along at all or going 2 miles, not a skimpy [grudging] 1 mile.  There was not a great deal of this glad “second miling” on the part of conscript COs.  It was for many making the best of a bad business; [compulsion] colored this whole experience.  Service of others, fellowship with them, on the one hand, and non-cooperation with evil, witness against injustice, non-violent resistance, on the other hand are essential in every pacifist’s life.  “For some their witness was their service, for others, their service was their witness, or resistance.  No matter how “liberal” or considerate” the conditions for administering alternative service may be in the estimation of Government officials or the pacifist agencies, if alternative service is accepted [to any degree], it pose grave problems from the standpoint of Christian vocation.      

        And if one is allowed to remain in one’s job [while others do not, he does], to a degree benefit from discrimination.  It is hoped that [in the future] a good many young men will be “furloughed” to projects at home and abroad which will not be exclusively for COs, and which will have real social value.  It is my conclusion that the consistent attitude toward conscript alternative service is that which regards submission or non-resistance to the State’s evil as the Christian man’s vocation or duty, [rendered] joyously and with readiness to carry it the 2^nd mile.

        The Immature 18-year-old—There are 18-year-olds who have a strong aversion to war and a leaning toward pacifism.  But if left with the choice between the army and jail, all but a few will choose the army.  They could develop into a pacifist if they had a third choice (i.e. civilian service).  A counselor will want to avoid inducing a young man to take this or that course, while still making a particular young man aware of their own thoughts and feelings.  It is my impression that pacifist [laymen and] ministers will work harder to keep a young pacifist from [choosing to] go to jail rather than into civilian service, than to [have them] think seriously about not going into the army.  Why should they have this reaction?

         Army or Jail?—I should feel much deeper grief over having possibly had some part in getting a some youth to go into the armed forces than over having some responsibility for bringing a young man to go to prison for conscience’s sake.  Are the qualms people have about COs going to prison related to [the strong social disapproval of going to prison, and the strong social approval of becoming a soldier]?  Is it just possible that we older people are sometimes concerned with sparing ourselves [disapproval] when we think we are solely concerned about sparing teenagers?        

         The great mass of teenagers are going to be put through rigorous military training with all the hardships, and perhaps they will actually experience modern war at the front.  Is [the prison experience] vastly more terrible than this?  Do we have a right to [divert energy] from lifting the curse of conscription from the mass of youth into an effort to secure alternative conscript service for COs?

         The “Non-religious” CO—[Religious COs are eligible for the IV-E classification; non-religious COs are not.]  For the religious man it should surely be a central and indispensable part of his faith that discrimination, most of all where two men acting in obedience to conscience are involved, is unthinkable and that if there is discrimination, he cannot be the beneficiary of it.

       Advocacy of alternative service for the teenage CO is based on consideration relating to the future of the pacifist movement, as well as on the effect on the COs themselves.  It seems to me we have to decide whether our problem is to find shelter for COs or whether it is to find freedom and the opportunity for self-expression and service.  The draft now gets the young man at the age when it is difficult for him to stand out from his fellows.  The addi-tional number of pacifists recruited because of alternative service may turn out to be very small.  [There is a trend] toward greater conformity and regimentation.  There may be a time when army or jail may be the only choices. 

        The Nature of Conscription—Participation in alternative service is often defended on the grounds that our opposition is to war rather than conscription.  We are ready to render whatever service of a civilian character may be imposed on us.  The question with which we are dealing is that of conscripting youth in and for modern war.  Since we are opposed to all war, we should be opposed to military conscription, for the additional element of coercion by government enters in; young boys are deprived of freedom of choice in virtually all essential matters.  This is a fundamental violation of the human spirit which must cause the pacifist to shudder.

        Here I wish to suggest that even if the question is the conscription of non-pacifists, it is a fundamental mistake for pacifists to relent in their opposition to this evil.  The terrible thing that we should never lose sight of, to which we should never reconcile our spirits to, is that the great mass of 18-year-olds are drafted for war.  They are given no choice; few are capable of making that choice. 

         We need to ask ourselves whether conscription is really a lesser evil.  As soon as [the State has], by simple decree, created millions of soldiers, [it seems] proven that they have sovereign rights over [everyone], that there are no rights higher than theirs.  Where then, will their usurpations stop?  It cannot be successfully denied that totalitarianism, depersonalization, conscription, war, and the power-state are inextricably linked together.  As pacifists we can have nothing to do with war. I don’t think it’s possible to distinguish between war and conscription.

        Disobedience Becomes Imperative—Non-conformity, Holy Disobedience, becomes virtuous and necessary for spiritual self-preservation, when the impulse to conform is the instrument which is used to subject men to totalitarian rule and involve them in permanent war.  [It seems wisest] not to wait for evil to catch up to us, but to go out to meet it—to resist—before it has gone any further.  To me it seems that submitting to conscription even for civilian service is permitting oneself to be branded by the State.  A decision by the pacifists to break completely with conscription, to give up the idea that we can “exert more influence” if we conform and do not resist to the uttermost—this might awaken our countrymen to a realization of the precipice on the edge of which we stand.  

        The Reconciling Resistance—Thus to embrace Holy Disobedience is not to substitute Resistance for Reconciliation; it is to practice both Reconciliation and Resistance.  We are not practicing love toward our fellow-citizens, if, against our deepest insight, we help to fasten the chains of conscription and war upon them.  Our works of healing and reconstruction will have a deeper and more genuinely reconciling effect when they are not entangled with Conscript service for the [welfare] of the US or any other war-making State.  The Gospel of reconciliation will be preached with a new freedom and power when the preachers have broken decisively with American militarism.  [There may be fierce opposition to our message, but perhaps then they will see again [as Paul did] the face of Christ and the vision of a new Jerusalem. 

       To depart from the common way in response to a conscription law is one thing. To leave father, mother, wife, child and one’s own life at the behest of Christ or conscience is quite another.  We should understand that for the individual to pit himself in Holy Disobedience against the war-making and conscription is now the beginning of the core of any realistic and practical movement against war and for a more brotherly world.  [War continues and conscription continues because of the prevailing feeling that] “we have no choice.”  [In the face of this feeling], the human being, the child of God, must assert his humanity and his sonship again.  He must exercise the choice which he no longer has as something accorded him by society.  He must understand that this naked human being is the one real thing in the face of the mechanized institutions of our age.  [We need] “the kind of morality which compels the individual conscience, be the group right or wrong.”   

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70.  Science and the Business of Living (by James G. Vail; 1953)

      [Excerpt from] Sonnet—. . .  Bid then, the tender light of faith to shine

                                              By which alone the mortal heart is led

                                        Unto thinking of the thought divine—George Santayana

        Science has gained enormous prestige, earned by a conquest of the material world unique in history.  We have developed a great confidence in our ability to solve problems which, on their face, appear impossible, and to extend our mastery of matter into vast new areas.  How can the great accumulation of knowledge be interpreted so that what is known shall be available when needed?  What is the impact of our work upon our civilization?  Something has gone wrong with our modern world. Unrest and tension [rather than cooperation among competing] groups are not the exception.  Rapid accumulation of knowledge has often led to an assumption of something near omnipotence, and generates toxic substances which prevent further growth.  Our inability to assimilate [quickly enough] has tempted us to short cuts and nostrums which are very different from wisdom.  

       Science and the Business of Living—The man of science who is troubled about his role [and feeling responsible] is now heard from [more and more]. There is dissatisfaction with things as they are.  This is like the urges which spur people to new discoveries in science.  It has been said that science has no moral quality; in a literal, narrow sense this is true. [If something new] should decimate the human race, it will make little difference whether the research is “pure science” or not. The community will judge according to the consequences. Because science has removed barriers of space and time, the proximity of everywhere requires rethinking our social attitudes.

      Our new knowledge is pregnant with possibilities for good or evil, and we have not learned how to assure a beneficent direction to its development.  The earth’s population has more than doubled within the last century. Education and development of industry through applied science can, in the long run, reduce the pressure of population on the land.  The true scientist has evolved far from the beast and is inclined to humane and generous actions.  Democratic peoples are inherently responsive to human rights and human needs. 

         But the world community is frustrated, hungry, resentful, and disillusioned.  Are there some unifying principles comparable to chemistry and physics laws by which our complex relations as human beings come in-to an intelligible order and harmony?  The process of invention usually begins with the discovery of a clue which wakes the enthusiasm of the inventor who envisages great things.  In science and in human affairs, imagination, persistence, refusal to accept defeat, are essential elements of success.  Faith is a great releaser of energy.

        Science apart from people has no meaning.  [I have been able to befriend people from India, China, Islam, and Europe who could overlook those characteristic they found undesireable or offensive.  The experience has been one of mutual education, and both parties have found spiritual enrichment in the process.  Our needs, hopes, and fears are not racial or national—but human.  How can science help the human race to survive? 

       I have [learned] that in every human being there is a tender aspect.  It reaches across barriers usually regarded as impassable, [in the Spanish Civil War], between Moslem and Hindu, between East and West.  [The AFSC has proven its effectiveness in Western Europe including Russia].  To bring out the good will in people you have to make them trust you.  Their trust is something that has to be earned.  It involves rigorous self-discipline, and an honest effort to see through the eyes of the other person. 

       While the majority of humankind looks with longing toward the American way of life, wise and mature men see us as powerful, irresponsible, erratic and immature.  [We, on the other hand, must seek] with determination to release the unexploited resource of goodwill which experimentally we know is real.  [I know from experience that groups seen historically as adversaries can work in harmony with a sense of common purpose].

         It seems clear that the materialism which dominates so much of our thought and action is a very important cause of the unrest and insecurity that confronts us.  There is no easy answer, for it must begin with changes in you and me and [in taking responsibility to make a difference].  Every step of regimentation, indoctrination, or standardization of human beings, which relieves them of responsibility and relegates them to be units in a vast machine, is a step away from ultimate peace and order [brought] by the common consent of free people.

       It would be good discipline for each of us to ask:  Do the things on which I am working contribute to the well being of all around the world, or do they foster vices, prejudices, of fears?  Do I realize that [such a] course will be ultimately more satisfying since it has the approval of an inner monitor which distinguishes me from animals and represents the highest point in evolution?

        There is no security except in creating situations in which people do not want to harm you.  The temptation to use coercion will be great, but we know that coercion fosters resentment and produces results opposite to those intended. “Feeding your enemy” may mean applying science to create local production that they may have subsistence and self-respect. If the obvious step of a courageous waging of peace is impractical, what is the alternative?  Chaos.  Albert Einstein said that you cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.  [The high heroism and constant devotion required to wage peace] are latent in all.  Is there anything more worthy of our effort?   

         Challenge and Response—It is of the nature and use of peculiarly human characteristics that I wish to speak.  A letter from a Lord to a Professor speaks of a problem, on which he was working, as all beads and no string.  Search for the string is evident in every scientific meeting; arrangements of facts in sequence gives a sense of security.  Knots must be invested to prevent the loss of what has been organized.  What is our purpose in devoting our energy to an industry, church, government, or any institution in which many people are associated?  Is it to satisfy the urge to exert power on the part of a few, or is it to create a community?  Worthwhile work and the challenge of developing one’s best powers makes for a happy and cooperative individual. 

         Perhaps the fundamental string of which we need to get to get a hold in our thinking is the difference between things, which we have learned how to manipulate, and people, whose reaction are quite different and much less adequately understood.  To develop the possibility [of life in] a seed you must keep it alive.  You cannot hurry very much the processes of germination or alter greatly the sequences inherent in its ancestry. 

        As a professional people we have a live interest in education.  We can all agree that to meet the challenge of maintaining the advances already gained in science we must have people who are learned, vigorous, and motivated to spend great effort to advance the frontiers.  For the present purpose it is sufficient to recognize that the education we need is something which springs from an urge within a person in response to a challenge or inspiration.            

       I have found something that looks like a string [in] Arnold Toynbee’s 6-volume “Study of History.”  Of the 26 civilizations he identifies, 16 are dead and buried and the remaining 10 show varying degrees of disintegration.  The pattern he finds in common with them all is:  1) genesis in response to challenge; 2) growth from creative vigor; 3) failure of the creative minority and resulting breakdown; 4) time of troubles; 5) attempting a universal state to salvage situation; 6) disintegration.  The diagnosis is suicide—not murder.  Toynbee finds that growing civilizations extend their influence by radiation, the effect of which declines with distance across a vaguely defined zone. If this thread can help us to see our challenge and develop our response, it is to be welcomed.  

        The great challenge of our time is to put an end to war.  As Einstein said:  “if we fail to find an answer to this question, the answer to any other question is irrelevant.”  If each person or each national groups thinks themselves the center of the universe, conflicts will increase and the end of our civilization will be at hand.  Toynbee says that periods of growth are characterized by differentiation, decline by standardization.

There is a special challenge to those who have made these successes in technology to recognize the spiritual factors without which technology breaks down, and to prepare the type of thinking on which [a vital, living] peace [and not the mere absence of war], is based.  We have a lot of testimony on the value to distressed people of the warmth of human friendship.  When all else seems dark, the idea that other humans care comes as a ray of light. 

       The intellectual fortitude which sustains the scientist in the face of seemingly insurmountable barriers is needed for the creation of peace.  Why should it be too much for each of us working according to his special talents to contribute to a world in which the welfare of all is a serious objective?  The qualities of spirit which are the key to harmonious human relationships are seen in the personal lives and teachings of many great scientists.  Without the sense of the need of religious truth the string on which our pattern of history is related will have a loose end with chaos as the penalty. 

       Our actions seem to derive from [instinct, intellect, and the formless source of a qualitative response to life].  Some people are possessed of personalities which are centered on [service as a response] to trouble.  The spiritual part of life is a peculiarly human asset.  The power of growth through spiritual insight and action has created faith that overcomes insuperable obstacles.  When mind and strength are put at the service of the highest that each of can achieve we shall make our best response to a suffering and frustrated world.  We must seek faith and hope with a humble and a contrite heart for without becoming better people we are indeed insufficient to the occasion.       

      The Scientist, His Neighbors—and Peace—Peace is the great problem of our time.  Almost everybody wants peace but most assume that peace is impossible. Peace involves better conditions of health. [The global majority] needs a sense of belonging to the human family of which global communication has made them aware.  Every young person, especially the scientists [needs to be introduced to new language and approaches to learning].       

        When the problem of building and creating is grasped we shall have to invent methods and apply the new techniques not to dead matter, not in terms of force which does not move the minds of men, but in ways which work from the inside out.  Scientists are, whether or not they like the idea, a social being dependent on his neighbors.  The argument that they have no responsibility to neighbors will be hard to support. 

        Let us dedicate ourselves, each to make his contribution to reclaiming the spirit of men from fear, frustration, superstition, prejudice.  It is important to keep before everyone the basic ideas of freedom and responsibility.  To what extent can we leave to others the responsibility for the end use of our technical work?  It is a discipline first to understand and then to practice the responsible and, if needed, the sacrificial work which it entails.  To earn the right to freedom we must be the kind of people that behave without being coerced.  

       Horizons—One of the frustration of travel is the horizon.  At the farthest reach of every journey there is the call of the beyond.  We do not want to be satisfied with the insularity which results from failure to see the place we inhabit in relation to what is beyond the horizon [and beyond our expertise].  Difficult, important choices are usually made without expert understanding. 

        In larger affairs a community [bowing] to authority, accepting leadership uncritically, will lack the vitality possible to one with people who feel responsible even in the absence of a complete basis of decision.  The end of our civilization is in sight.  Much of the pertinent information is over the horizon.  But there are principles which we as well as the experts can use in directing the course of research and determining the validity of the findings.  National rivalries are the major cause of war, [and need to be dealt with by the United Nations].  Another problem we need to face is fear.  Most other nations today are afraid of the United States of America.  Fear can be dispelled by deliberate and sustained effort to create forces of trust and cooperation. 

         Have you ever pondered the teaching of history?  Each country is described as if it were God’s own and infinitely superior to the others.   Objective treatment of history on an international basis in our schools could be of immense value.  Peace depends upon the recognition of a moral basis of life.  Without living within the frame of moral behavior our great freedoms will vanish over the horizon.  Moral law is as inexorable as gravity.  A responsible attitude for each of us might include a determination to promote the discoveries we need for the urgent business of living at peace.  We can each resolve not to be part of the problem, but part of the answer. 

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81. Personal Relevance of Truth  (Thomas S. Brown; 1955)

      Prayer of Samuel Johnson:  O LORD, my Maker and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world, to work out my own salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which thou hast required.  When I behold the works of thy hands and consider the course of thy providence, give me Grace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways.  And while it shall please Thee to continue me in this world where much is to be done and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous inquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved.  Let me rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted, let me serve thee with active zeal, and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest, shall be satisfied with knowledge.  Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ’s sake.  Amen.

       We live in a twilight zone between the total darkness of pure chance and the light of truth. . .  “The Other” is not only our feeling of awe and relatedness, but also a sense of the incompleteness and the inadequacy of our efforts . . . We are suddenly faced with the fact that rejection of Truth means also the denial of any real difference between life and death, and that our living is therefore [all] . . . Emptiness, Meaninglessness, Nothingness. . .  [Quote from Milton]:  “A man may be a heretic in the Truth; and if he believes things only because his Pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing any other reason, though his belief be true, the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.” . . .  [Holding] that the search itself . . . is the good life [and] . . . the finding of truth is irrelevant . . . results in the loss of responsibility to the Truth.

        In my own search for the Truth . . . [there] came a release from the belief that Truth had to be “certain,” logical, self-evident, and publicly demonstrable. . .  Unimpassioned detachment on matters of death or life . . . is nonsense and immoral. . .  Truth is Reality appearing in time and space; it is Reality right perceived and com-municated among men. . .  Truth and Reality are one, and there can be no life, no existence without Truth. . .  [Quote from Socrates]: “I would rather die, having spoken after my fashion, than speak in your manner and live...  The difficulty, my friends is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness, for that runs faster than death.”  How long is our beloved country to survive?  She can be destroyed by inner untruth far more swiftly than by any other force.

        How can one explain the Unity of Truth in terms common to science, philosophy, and religion?  Justin Martyr . . .  found a universal philosophy in Christianity; it was for him . . . the all-embracing Truth about the meaning of existence. . .  [Christians] are simply granted an insight into Reality. . .  All those who have lived according to the Truth are Christians. . .  Christianity is not right and others wrong; . . . it is the all-inclusive interpretation of Reality, the universal philosophy.

       As the Creative Self-Expression of God, Logos has kinship with all the universe. . .  Because of our kinship with the Logos, whose creations we are, deep, valid religious experience is possible; through the Logos, we communicate with God. . .  [What sets Christianity apart is that] the Logos, the Self-Expression of God, the Creative Poser that brought this Universe into being, became . . . fully human. . .  This revelation of Reality in human, concrete, historical terms is the basis of Christianity.   There cannot be any Truth in [any religion] or science, philosophy, or mysticism, which cannot be received by Christianity.

       How shall I detect the true signals in all the noise and motion around me? . . .  I respond to [the signals] in my life because I have had a previous and meaningful relationship with the signaler. . .  I do have a previous relationship with Truth.  Since I am the creature of God, I can never escape relationship with God.  God became what we are, that we might become as God is . . . clearly and with directness.  Jesus promised that he would . . . be with us always.  His guiding spirit of Truth reveals to us here and now the inner intent of the Scripture. . .  [Through] the leading of his Spirit . . . there is the clearer perception of Truth and of its meaning for us in this age. 

      Why is it that I do not see the Truth in every situation with infallible clarity?  In the simplest terms, the cause of my error is missing key signals. . .  [Or] it may be that I behave as though a signal was given when there really was none; or I may want not to hear the signal.  Indeed, there is no knowledge [or acknowledgement] of the Truth where there is no commitment which results in significant action.  We are discovered by Truth, and are given the power by the Truth to light our souls; we can know and be known by the Truth. 

      Suffering remains as the recurring crisis out of which new life can spring, if the suffering is comprehended in the Light of Truth. . .  Suffering is that peculiar environment in which the love and power of God can shine most clearly.  We all live in the promise that we shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make us free.

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83.   The Use of Silence (by Geoffrey Hoyland; 1955)

       Religious knowledge and religious experience . . . must enter in the first place through . . . seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching.  [Even] silent prayer is never truly silent; it is full of noises remembered.   [From taking] the Eucharist to reading the Scriptures. . . a man’s faith is built up from the evidences supplied by his senses.  Self-awareness is the only form of knowledge which is not dependent of sensory experience. . . 

The really significant rejections of [sensory input] of the adult are those he makes because he distrusts his senses.  Jesus told his adult hearers that . . . they must grow beyond the phases of doubt and re-enter the phase of acceptance.  It is inevitable that the Christian should distrust religion, [which] is a product of sensory experience.  Can the Christian become aware of God in the same [sense-free] way that the Christian is aware of selfhood?  Once the senses have unlocked the door and Someone has come in, the senses are forgotten.

        [In] Professor William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, he is not interested in the various keys of creed, dogma, or ritual which unlocked the door. . . [but] with the inner experience.  In its essence it is neither words nor emotion nor action; it is pure silence.  Nothing in James’ conclusions conflicts with Jesus’ teachings.

        How many Christians can say that this inward spiritual communion is the core of their religious experience?  Is the vision of God reserved for a favored few?  The words of Jesus and Paul do not suggest a rare and fleeting experience to be granted only to a chosen few. We cannot receive God while we are talking to God...  We have to achieve a silence of mind and of spirit which is something quite different from the mere absence of noise.  [We must have faith] that God is waiting for us [as we turn inwards]. . .  There must be [humility], no thought of either sin or holiness in ourselves when we approach the Living Silence.   

       The man and woman who dares to go into the silence to meet with God must possess something of a quality of [enthusiastic] abandon along with faith and humility. . .  Communion with God in the deeps of the soul does not remove all conflict from life; in many ways it increases the strain.  The outer life of sense and action must be changed to conform with the new relationship within.  Communion with God in the Living Silence is not a substitute for “active” prayer and meditation, rather it is their crown. 

      This living communion of the individual Christian with God . . . has always presented her with a well-nigh insoluble problem.  It is impossible to deny to most of these heretics some measure of inspiration, [which contra-dicted orthodox teaching].  This perplexing dilemma has made the Church suspicious of her mystics.  You cannot enter into communion with God on the basis of [restrictions as to how God may approach you]. 

      [Freedom and humility is necessary in our approach to God.]  This humility must spring from a knowledge of the ways of God as of ourselves.  [For] God speaks to us by silences and it is often difficult to translate that experience into the words and thoughts of our conscious life.  [And] we may surely believe that the prism of a stern, relentless prophet [may have] distorted the “word” that arose in his mind as a result of his communion.  In the Living Silence God will give them, not words, but grace.  The grace will transform their very natures, recreating them and impressing upon them Christ’s image.  One must recognize that one’s own imperfect nature may well have distorted and misinterpreted the perfect will of God.  One must not be disobedient to the Heavenly Vision.

      The ideal is that the worshipers gather in silence, each offering one’s self to God in uttermost self-abandon-ment . . . sins and all.  They become one soul . . . because God has made them one.  [Afterwards] problems . . . have solved themselves even though they have not been consciously thought of during the hour of worship.  Does the silent worship of the Friends actually work out in this way, producing these results?  They gather in silence . . . but it is [often] not the Living Silence.  [To the extent that it is the Living Silence, a meeting is said to be “gathered.”] 

      First . . . silent prayer or meditation is not the same thing as the “Living Silence.” . . . Second . . . silent communal worship can only spring from a deep and overwhelming conviction that God is there in the profound depths below consciousness. . .  Third . . . worship in the Living Silence cannot be combined profitably with “sensory” worship.  Is it not possible that in the Living Silence lies the one perfect road to reunion?  [Here] priest and layman, ritualist and Quaker, male and female are indistinguishable when they are all alike held with the embrace of God.  The gateway to the Sanctuary of Silence lies open to every man and woman who will pay the price of entry. Is there any reason in Heaven or Earth why we should not all enter it together?

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86.   Blake’s 4-fold Vision (by Harold Goddard; 1956)

In one sense you must dig into William Blake as you would into a problem in integral calculus.  But in a deeper sense, you must just throw a kiss to him as he flies by.  ”I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball.  It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, built in Jerusalem’s [liberty’s] wall.”  Blake was a great believer in moments.  [The first of the four moments here was] when he was about 8 or 9.  He . . . told his parents he had seen a tree full of angels.  Obscure, almost unrecognized, often close to poverty, he went quietly ahead conescrating himself to his work as poet and creative designer.  [In the second moment] he distinctly saw his brother’s soul rise from his body . . . clap his hands for joy and ascend.  [In the third moment he ejected a drunken soldier from his garden]. . . It was [his patron] William Hayley in symbolic form that he ejected from his garden…

[Upon his death] he spoke words of love and unconscious poetry, he drew, he sang, he showed faith, he was silent.  Blake had the assets of insanity without the liabilities [i.e. genius].

Blake’s  life naturally falls into the phases of Innocence, Experience, Revolution or Rebellion, and Vision.  In each of his four phases Blake was prophetic.  Of modern industrial capitalism Blake wrote:”In every cry of every Man, in every infant’s cry of fear.  In every voice, in every ban, the mind fogged manacles I hear. [Blake had similar things to say about] war, [the organized church], the tyrannies of family life, and wrong conceptions of love and marriage.  Among modern occidentals Blake was the Columbus of the soul.  His Atlantic was Time itself; his Indies Eternity.

[In society] Reason was the god of the 18^th century.  To Blake, Reason is the Great Divider.  Divide those to be governed into factions and rule them, while they fight.  Mental despotism does the same.  The great instrument of the Great Divider is the abstract word. . .  If Blake detested the abstract . . . he almost deified the Minute Particulars.  “To Generalize is to be an Idiot.  To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.” 

Integrate the conscious and the unconscious is the modern psychological cry.  Marry Heaven and Hell, says Blake, meaning the same thing.  What can [marry] us with our lost underworld?  Blake’s answer [is] IMAGINATION.  [Excerpts from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]:  “To create a little flower is the labor of ages . . . Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. . .  You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. . .  The crooked road with Improvement are roads of Genius. . .  It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil’s account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.”  Blake accepts both [Milton’s Satan and the Greek’s Prometheus] and reconciles them. 

  Why doesn’t a seed decay like a bit of dead leaf, or go on lying there unchanged like a pebble?   The sun’s rays somehow or other penetrates to the seed buried down there in the dark.  Is there a tiny invisible sun inside the seed with a strange affinity between it and the great sun?  Or does the seed somehow retain a memory that it was once a water-lily?  It had faith.  The prophet Isaiah in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell says:  My senses discovered the infinite in everything . . .  All poets believe that [firm persuasion that a thing is so makes it so], and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains.”  Eternity is at one and the same time the principle of life with the egg and the state or region outside the shell.  “What is above is within.”  Blake was a pioneer.  He is unfinished.  [His] Prophetic Books are an immense allegory of the human soul, a concrete and symbolic psychology . . . the history of heaven and hell [and] his autobiography.

Reason breaks the [universal] harmony and falls from Eternity into Time.  Religion begins in revelation, and falls into dogma and the organized church.  Art begins in inspiration, and falls into slavery to rules and technique.  Education begins in love for the child, and falls into methods and regimentation.  Blake . . . recognizes five worlds or states:  
1.  Eden (Innocence) or Eternity, imagination,  creativity, Divine Love; symbol is sun

      2.       Beulah (nearest Eternity), sleep, dreams, and human love; symbol is moon  (reflecting the sun, Eternity, Divine love)

      3.       [Mid-region], Science; symbol is stars

      4.       Generation, Earthly Life (prison of the senses), physical love; symbol is Sex, unclear boundary between this world and the next which is

      5.       Ulro:  opacity, frigidity, contraction; symbol is Darkness, or Matter.

And a 4-fold vision is given to me; tis 4-fold in my supreme delight And 3-fold in soft Beulah’s night.

And 2-fold Always. May God us keep from Single Vision and Newton’s sleep.

Single Vision is simply ordinary physical eyesight; it is to 4-fold sight what blindness is to ordinary sight.  It is the belief that you can find the essence of things by measuring and weighing them.  Double Vision is [when one] realizes . . .  that everything around him gives back the image of one’s life:  the path; the unseen wind, the tree that is two trees (root and branch).  Poetry and Painting are images . . .  Simply thoughts that have come to life.  The moment images begin to interweave, interplay, form constellations, marry and beget new images, we have Threefold Vision.  [Here] beautiful thoughts are the wings of the soul.  Whoever has created a work of art and felt inspired at the moment he conceived it has an inkling of Blake’s threefold vision.

Fourfold Vision is simply dreaming, loving, imagining with such intensity that [the images] obliterate day-light as daylight ordinarily obliterates the dream. [Mundane sensations become sublime and beyond sublime.]  Blake says: “I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Sight any more than I would Question a Window concerning a [fourfold] Sight.  I look through it, not with it.  Put more [people] more often, into a more elevated state of imagination, and everything else follows.  Imagination uncreates not only anger, but all the other 7 deadly sins.  [Imagination proceeds from mitigating, to forgiving, to forgetting, to uncreating evil].

This is the clue to Blake’s tremendous emphasis on art, the language of the imagination, [the coin with which to buy Heaven].  ”The Whole Business of Man is Art.”  Force can only be overcome by a higher order of force [i.e. Imagination].  When the greatest [minds] of the ages [e.g.  Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky] agree [with Blake], if their agreement is not truth, what is truth?  Dostoevsky writes the following: in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”:  I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. . .  Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass, yet shall I go on preaching it. . .  The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the great thing, that’s everything.  [They say that] consciousness of life is higher than life. . . and the laws of happiness higher than happiness—that is what one must contend against.”

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89.  Scruples (by Gilbert Kilpack; 1956)

Scruples is not among the honored seven [deadly sins]; it deserves to stand at the head of a list of . . . “the seven subtle sins.”  Faber speaks of them as “sins under the pretext of good . . . little centers of spiritual death spotting the soul, a kind of moral [rash].  Have you not had an [unfollowed] God-given leading which . . . you feared you could not carry it through as expertly as you thought you should?  We stand in the doorway to the kingdom, but a stone in our shoe keeps us always limping, always about to move on in.

Theologically, a scruple is defined as a “vain fear of sin where there is no reason . . . for suspecting sin,”  A scruple as I use it here shall refer to . . . an imperfect or unbalanced conscience . . . unsupported by an equally strong faith.  Place the teaching of [universal responsibility] in its great setting, the great divine-human household where God is seen to enter into and share all joy and all sorrow.  With John Woolman [a scruple] . . . is his whole sensitive being, open . . . to new spiritual leading, which stops his going on in habitual and accepted ways. . . the inward “No, this I cannot do.”  His . . . are prompted by . . . an earnest desire that no act or omission of his own should add to the evil and misery under which the creation groans.

[An excess of scruples] is a deficiency disease.  It attacks where there is lack of grace.  Self may excuse self, but the Lord’s forgiveness is not only a release from the burden of guilt but the renewal of integrity.  It consumes much time and energy . . . [so that] there is . . . no time left for inspired acts of human creativity.  As long as the Gospel nudges our conscience and we resist, we must make it up with rigorous performance of numerous rituals.

The scrupulous man makes himself the slave of details, he is at the mercy of minutiae.  The strength of the genius lies in his command over details, his power to subject them to his vision and will.  [There are] people who are filled with nervous energy and active in many affairs. . . but . . . they are doing little more than running in circles and burning up energy . . . tepid and irresolute toward life and people.  The scrupulous man is a spiritual bookkeeper, and he must balance his books to the last scruple.  Perfect love is not a scrupulous love.  St. Augustine wrote “Love and do what thou wilt; whether thou hold thy peace, of love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, of love cry out; whether thou correct, of love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare.”   

[In] the Society of Friends in America of the mid-18^th century, being scrupulous in speech, dress, and manners became their distinguishing mark.  [There was] fearful self-centeredness, a meticulous care for self-cleansing; that freedom which blossoms in spontaneity and imagination seems to have been smothered in the cradle. All attempts at self-purification of the church by means of an outward code must inevitably breed scrupulosity.

I [don’t] know many [Christians] . . . who seem to have Christ’s air of freedom.  We do the right things, but without authority; our scruples limit our freedom.  Christ is never seen waiting for perfect people and perfect situations to accomplish his work, and thus Christianity becomes the religion of impossible situations.  Christ sees the need, he feels the divine compulsion, and the deed is accomplished.  He said, “The Sabbath was made for man; not man for the Sabbath. . .  You have a fine way of rejecting the commandments of God in order to keep your tradition.”  Jesus’ cry of woe to the Scribes and the Pharisees . . . is a curse upon a meticulousness [and] a neglect of the all important. 

Faithless ones hope to enter the Kingdom by their own endeavor and their own calculations.  We can calculate how not to hurt people, but we cannot calculate how to do great good.  [Jesus called for perfection, but] his . . . perfection is come into only by self-forgetfulness, the finding of self by the losing of self.  It is thus a perfection which is wrought only by love, an . . . exorcism of the life of moral bookkeeping. 

The perfection of the Christian life is not unlike the particular beauty of an early Gothic cathedral.  The old builders seemed to know the beauty of the “imperfect,” they knew that the perfection of the individual and of history is quite another thing from mathematical perfection. . .  The ugly gargoyles on these old churches, symbolize ever-present temptation which is necessary to our perfection.  There are many things in life which are worth doing which are not worth doing scrupulously well.  But I believe that those who live by faith do put them together.

The saints are not resigned to their distance from [perfection], but they accept it as the present condition of fact and rather joke about it than fret about it.  St. Paul had in his lifetime shaken every known scruple by the hand and earned every right to be their bitterest opponent. . .  We can appreciate Paul’s judgments, particularly when we realize that he continued all his life to wrestle with scruples.  Our attention is not to be given over to the judgment of any of our works; our attention is to be given to God and to Christ.

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90. Insured by Hope (by Mildred Binns Young); 1956

        [Quotes from William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experiences]:  “I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry . . . there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. . .  English-speaking peoples have grown literally afraid to be poor. . .  We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant. . .  It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”

         First as to my title: It struck me that the eternal succession of the seasons does in some real sense insure the person who works with soil and growing things . . . we can all be insured the same way.  The knowledge [that] “we are all one body in Christ” makes us whole.  I myself have come by slow, faltering, and partial steps to understand the relation of voluntary poverty to religious life, worship and commitment, wholeness and security. 

        It is now 20 years since we left Westtown School . . . and went south to work with sharecroppers.  It may seem hard to see any logic in the claim that [recognition of the oneness of all human life] prescribes poverty.  We started from no specific, religious convictions.  We worked for a summer in Kentucky coal-mining villages . . .  and the next summer we worked with unemployed men in North Philadelphia . . . who sought to help themselves.

         The first American work camp was held in 1934.  As the years have gone by, the work camp in its various forms has developed into an unparalleled instrument for educating young people in social problems.  We came to believe that poverty and physical labor are a necessary discipline [for the leaders of revolutions]. 

After we had been [at the Delta Cooperative Farm in Mississippi for] 3 years, the American Friends Service Committee sponsored us in a small project with white and Negro tenant farmers in western South Carolina.  We bought some large tracts of land and gradually sold it again in family-sized farms to tenants who had never had any secure tenure of the land they worked.  We felt more careful for the self-respect of our neighbors than even for their diet.  We wanted to cooperate and collaborate with our neighbors in making conditions better . . . and to not impose even improvements on them.  The things we wanted most for them . . . were not what they wanted.  

         While they [enjoyed prosperity] . . . we continued to live in a rather bare way.  [We felt that] we must try to show them how to be content with their new state without wanting to raise ever further.  For us, Poverty . . . means the strict limitation of goods that are for personal use . . . the opposite of the reckless abuse, misuse [and disrespect] of property.  Even children can benefit from living in graceful, orderly, [and simple] surroundings.

        For a long time I have preferred the word “poverty” to “simplicity” because I felt it was less ambiguous.  “Simplicity” is an advertiser’s as much as an idealist’s word.  But let us not confuse “poverty” with “destitution”; it is not possible to idealize “destitution.”  For most human beings, destitution is ruinous to the spirit as well as the body.  “Poverty” is better and more truly defined without adjectives.  Poverty may be voluntary with one who . . . believes that it could never be right for him to have plenty while there are destitute people.  Poverty can be taken up; true simplicity comes by the grace of God . . . only babes and great souls can be truly simple.  We may equate simplicity in this sense with the term “poor in spirit.”

        Poverty of material possessions . . . is not the same as this “poverty in spirit,” this simplicity, this purity of heart.  Multitudes spend their lives in poverty, or with moderate possessions, without ever receiving the gift of simplicity.  Paul Tillich has lately suggested that our high rate of mental illness is partly due to people’s need to escape from the pressure of responsibility for themselves, the pressure to succeed in the race for status & security. 

        There is another escape [from competition] . . . the escape into commitment to the whole of humanity.  We should know . . . that “the level above which a man’s goods become superfluous . . . goes up and down according to the needs of the poor.”  As the standard of living goes up, the fear of insecurity remains.  People . . . wear out their lives in the struggle to feel secure.  The full sharing of goods, as in the early Christian community . . . is now hardly seen except among such poor people [still unaffected] by modern enlightened social theory.  The attempt to make secure whatever standard one has attained . . . inevitably cuts one off from one’s fellows.

        Surely there can be no question that much of the dangerous strain between our country and other countries comes from our rich standard, which we are not willing to share, except piecemeal. . . out of our surplus.  If Americans could . . . do with less . . . in order that the poorer nations might have necessities, we might become the leader of a peaceful world.  What we can do personally is small but it is definite, and to do it can release us out of frustration . . . and into hope.

         In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoievski says:  True security is to be found in social solidarity than in isolated individual effort . . .  A man must set an example, and so draw men’s soul out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea not die.”  There is much help in going as far as we can with our particular gifts in our particular circumstances. 

         John Woolman had a dream in which:  “I was mixed in with [the mass of humanity] and [told] henceforth that I might not consider myself as . . . a separate being.  I heard a soft melodious voice: ‘John Woolman is dead.’ I perceived . . . that the language . . . meant no more than the death of my own will.”  He had come to that point by being first of all obedient to calls for very small sacrifices and duties, and then to . . . greater ones.  We can stand ever in sight of [the example of] Jesus [who] took upon himself the whole burden of hope; and laid on us … the burden of hope for humanity.

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93. Quakerism and Other Religions (by Howard H. Brinton; 1957)

  Quakerism and Christianity—Three types of relationship can be thought of as existing between Christianity in general and the non-Christian religions:  [Christian monopoly; equality of great world religions; Christianity as truest religion (but no monopoly on truth).  All three of these positions have been held by some members of the Society of Friends; the majority have adhered to the third position.  “Quakerism” means those beliefs and practices accepted during the first two centuries of Quaker history (1650-1870).  Two-thirds of the American Friends adopted Protestant characteristics in the third century.

Theological [and practical] differences helped to cause separation in American Quakerism in the 1800s; spiritual life was too low to achieve unity in diversity.  Early Quakerism [resisted the prevailing Protestant, Calvinistic definition of Christianity].  The [still-active] Spirit which produced the Scripture took precedence over the Scripture.  The Christ Within, whom men knew by experience, was more significant in overcoming evil in themselves than the Christ they knew through the book.  In silent worship they found the Christ Within, the saving power which regenerates, if man permits it to operate. 

The gospel of John permits both a mystical religion and a historical religion; one can choose both or either.  Because he is the Way [not the goal] we cannot expect the whole truth at once.  Because he is the Truth he will reveal deeper insights into the Truth.  Because he is the Life he can be known through life and not wholly apprehended through concepts or words. 

Worship, a Meeting Point—The sense of Divine Presence felt in the silence of a waiting worship is beyond expression in words, but it may result in the feeling that some act is required of the worshiper such as speaking in the meeting for worship itself or carrying out some duty or concern elsewhere.  Spiritual exercise, carried on in silence, is more characteristic of the non-Christian religions than of most forms of Christianity. 

Silent worship provides a basis of unity.  There is a philosophical basis for this concept which appears in every religion.  In Quaker thought it is the same Light shining in all; in Hindu Vedanta it is the universal Self; in Mahayana Buddhism it is the same Buddha nature in all living beings.  Christian theology, so far as it follows the Hellenic tradition, endangers individuality, for in union the human is merged into the Divine. 

Selfishness builds a wall between man and the world.  Man thinks this wall protects him but actually it imprisons him.  He can overcome this estrangement [and distance] through worship or meditation in which he consciously seeks union with the Divine through the upward pull of the Divine Life.

The Universality of the Inward Light—God and not a person in a Trinity, has shone in every man of every race and religion from the beginning, though it has generally been obscured by sin, ignorance, and weakness; the light is never wholly obscured.  The more learned Friends not only quote Scripture, but also the Church Fathers to support their belief that there is in all men a Light which is sufficient for their salvation.  The doctrine that the Light shone into men before the coming of Christ in the flesh was called Gentile Divinity, which is also the title of a book by the Quaker, John Bockett.  For William Penn “Christ was before the law, under the law, with the prophets, but never so revealed as in that holy manhood.”  Quakers discovered that the divine and the human were not so unrelated as to be incapable of some degree of union with each other.

The attitude of Friends toward Non-Christians—The condition of the world at the present time requires a more humble attitude on the part of the “exclusive” religions.  The so-called “heathen world” was made up of [Islam] in the East and American Indians in the West.  [Islam was more accepting of Quaker practices and character than of other forms of Christianity].  Relations with the American Indians were also based on the principle of the universality of the Light.  [Quakers found and noted the agreement in practice and philosophy with the American Indians of the colonies and further west].  In such attitudes as these toward non-Christians, Friends followed the example of Paul when he said to the Athenians “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him I declare unto you.”  George Fox [said]:  “Get the Turks’ and Moors’ language that you might be the more enabled to direct them to the Grace and Spirit of God in them which they have from God, in their hearts.”      

Similarities Between Quakerism and The Non-Christian Religions (Mysticism & Affinity with Science)—No general statement regarding the religion of over 100,000,000 human beings is completely true even with exceptions noted.  In Hinduism and Buddhism there are no definite standards of orthodoxy or generally accepted articles of faith.  The great religions’ mystical sects show more similarities to Quakerism than do other sects.  The Society of Friends’ vocal ministry is based on prophetism (God using a human being as God’s instrument in communicating Truth).  The term “mysticism” can be applied to that religion which seeks, in silent worship to attain direct contact with the Divine.  [Rather than “worship,” Friends] preferred the expression “to wait upon the Lord.” “Meditation” may include prayer, worship, contemplation, and adoration when these are done in silence.

The Sufis [Islam] seek mystical knowledge of God and union with him.  The Taoist mystic seeks union with the Tao (Way of the Universe).  The Hindu Bhagavad Gita describes 3 roads to mystic union: jnana yoga; bhakti yoga; karma yoga. Jnana yoga begins with elaborate physical and moral excercises and ends with mental concentration exercises; the guidance of a guru is essential.  By the 2^nd road, bhakti yoga, the mystic seeks through prayer and devotion a union of love and will with the human being whom he reverences as an incarnation of God.  The ultimate goal is complete identity with Divine Reality; all sense of self is lost.  The Christian may be said to follow a path like bhakti yoga.  Karma yoga is the way of works without attachment to results.  If good works are closely tied to results, they bind the devotee to this world of pain and trouble, instead of freeing him.  

Buddhism is closer to Quakerism than is Hinduism because it is not as dependent on ascetic denial of the world.  In northern Buddhism, the saint or Bodhisattva can be appealed to for help.  The Japanese Shinshu sect of Buddhism is based on the salvation doctrine through faith in Amida Buddha (Buddha of Infinite Light).  Zen Buddhism is the most similar to Quakerism.  In the Zen meeting, one may retire to a teacher who sits in his study nearby.  Like Quakerism, Zen seeks to quiet the surface or mind’s intellectual process so that the meditator can go beyond these to an experience which cannot be described in concepts.  Unlike Quakerism Zen provides forms and images for those who need them; Zen seek not God or Christ but “knowledge of one’s true nature.” Zen Buddhism endeavors to place the pupil in a state of mind and body where they will discover the truth for themselves.

In Hindu, Buddhist, or Taoist temples and in Shinto shrines the worshiper bows his head in silent prayer.  The immediate experience of the Divine or Absolute or True as distinguished from the relative world of sense and appearance is described similarly in all religions. True religion is more than mysticism. In every religion, traditional, historical, and rational elements are essential. For the true mystic of any religion the ultimate and the provisional, the infinite and the finite, the end and the means are never separate, though distinguished in thought.  The truly enlightened person, sees the infinite in the finite, the divine in the human, the absolute whole in the fragment.                 

Quakerism has a close similarity of its standard of truth with that of science.  Both science and Quakerism lay primary emphasis on direct experience rather than on authority, though neither ignores the importance of the past experience of those who have made great discoveries as a necessary guide and check on present experience.  A religion which neither is dependent nor ignores tradition and insight can be welcomed by the scientifically minded.

Detachment from Result—When Quakers argue upon political questions, they reason upon principles and not consequences.  The true Christian is “in the world but not of it” [i.e.] he is not concerned with conventional standards of success.  In Hindu religion, Krishna says:  “Let the work itself be thy charge, but never the fruit . . . yet be not inclined to inaction.”  In Chinese Taoism, in its doctrine of Wei Wu Wei, [there is] action with effortless spontaneity without concern for results or for conformity to some convention of behavior.  The Buddhist seeks to live in the present and eternity rather than in the past and future.  Quaker Journal writers often succeed in following what he believes to the spirit’s immediate guidance, regardless of present obstacles, past events or results. 

Quietism, the openness to immediate impressions from the Spirit, enabled men and women to undertake tasks which reason and prudence would have declared impossible.  Taoist or Buddhist quietism does not result in as vigorous an effort to reform existing abuses as does Quaker quietism.  Worship of God, the highest act of which man is capable, is not dependent for its value on results. 

Pacifism—All the texts of pacifism can be found in the sacred literature of the religions of Asia, including Christianity.  All great religions go further and condemn anger, hatred, and all the causes of violence.  Christians who hold that the words of Christ should be their practical guide to behavior can find in the non-Christian religions many adherents with whom they can fellowship in pacifist belief and practice.

Perfectionism—A doctrine which Quakerism shares with Hinduism and Buddhism is sometimes called “perfectionism,” [i.e. thinking] that man can obtain through religion a sense of absence of guilt and a resulting peace and serenity, [depending on the] willingness to accept and obey inwardly revealed Divine requirements.  Perfection in this sense does not mean the end of spiritual growth; it requires further attainment.  The Oriental religions hold that man can in his human life, reach a state of enlightenment or perfection.  The search for enlightenment’s final stage in Hinduism and Buddhism is carried out by specialists who withdraw from the world in order to devote their life to obtaining the goal; Quakers distrust all forms of professionalism and specialization in religion. Those who fall short of the Hindu/Buddhist goal in this life will have opportunities in subsequent incarnations.

Some differences between Quakerism and other religions—Unlike the Oriental religions, which are not based on history, Christianity derives from a crucial historical event.  The Light within is identified by Quakerism with the Divine Spirit incarnated in the historic Jesus.  We mean not only the historic Jesus, but the Eternal Christ, enlightening all.  In accepting Jesus as the “Word made flesh” the Society of Friends did not, for the most part, adopt a Trinitarian or Unitarian dogma.  Christ revealed not only the nature of God, but also the nature of man. 

In the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu), the Saddharma-pundarika (Lotus Scripture of Buddhism), and the Gospel of John, the Divine Life or Truth or Light becomes embodied in a man; the Gita has Krishna, the Lotus Scripture has Gotama Sakyamuni, and the Gospel has Jesus, the Christ.  They were all too humble to have made these claims themselves.  Quakers recognize that many people receive the light of God through other-shaped windows and recognize it as the same light and the same God.  But we can’t afford to dissociate ourselves from Christ in any way.                

Non-Christian religions do not have the concept of a God-indwelt society united into an organic whole by a divine spirit within as the soul unites a body.  The ideal of the Church as the Kingdom of God on earth, functioning as a divine-human society, Quakerism holds a doctrine which social as well as religious and which has a powerful, ethical drive.  Albert Schweitzer says that the dualism of Christianity deprives it of a consistent philosophical or theological system but gives it moral power.  Kaka Kalelkar makes an interesting suggestion.  Each of the scriptures of the great living religions could be considered in a sense an Old Testament to which might be added specific Christian doctrine.  Christianity could build on the truths of other religions. 

By the Quaker view of fixing attention on the good rather than on the evil, the evil may be weakened and the good raised up.  The higher forms of Oriental religion arose out of contemplation of a universe which is ethically neutral, while Christianity arose out of contemplation of a person whose will is to do good.  The Christian social dynamic is an important contribution which Christianity can give and has given to other religions.  The techniques of meditation so carefully worked out in Hinduism and Buddhism contain suggestions for those who are able to use them.  For either East or West it is usually better to graft a new insight onto the inherited religion than to uproot their own tradition and plant an alien seed.

The Area of Cooperation—The religions of the world, by concentrating on what they have in common, could work together without compromising the peculiar tenets which distinguish them from one another.  The common enemy of all religion today is materialism (the belief that man is essentially a biological mechanism, that he exists for the satisfaction of desires arising out of bodily wants) with its resulting secularism. 

The spirit of our age, with its dependence on science, is primarily concerned with means rather than meaning, with methods rather than goals.  The East is now seeking to adopt Western science and industry in order to enjoy the same material comforts as the West.  When not supplemented by religion, scientific method is apt to give rise to scientific materialism.  [The denial of spiritual life is not a product of science, but of scientific materialism]. 

Christian mysticism may have fallen behind that of the other great religion because Christianity has become absorbed in the activist and extrovert tendencies of Western culture.  After a century of enthusiastic expansion the Society of Friends was forced by the activist and non-mystical spirit of the time to retreat behind the walls of a rigid discipline.  As a form of Christianity which contains so many elements common to all the great religions, Quakerism may [now] play a vital role in helping men to be more aware of their true nature and destiny.   

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95.  Inner Liberty: the stubborn grit in the machine (by Peter Vierck; 1957)

         Between long intervals of dormancy, artists and writers suddenly buzz into the market place proclaiming:  “Look, everyone; we’ve stopped being Irresponsibles!”  Like every other citizen, the artist must be willing to “lay down his life for his country,” when freedom is at stake.  But let him savagely refuse to lay down his dream life for his country.  He can serve patriotism more permanently by deepening his insight and broadening his sensibility within his works of art.  In the long run, whatever enriches your inner sensibility with the unguessed surprises of beauty and love, is a moral act and even a political act. 

        In every country much of the fight for the free private life depends on the unadjusted imagination of its creative artists.  The Overadjusted Man knows only the public life.  Religious, aesthetic, and intellectual creativity are what the individual does with his loneliness.  The fight is to preserve anything playfully private [that does not smoothly fit into an efficiently, busily, useful society].  In certain moral crises the fight is not only for the private life but for the publicly embattled right to have a private life.

       The first characteristic of the well-adjusted good-mixer, the kind of student who [objects to lonely walks] is the refusal to read books.  Unadjusted Man is he who indulges in the vice of “over-reading.”  Unless outer material power is assimilated to inner spiritual laws, all our efficient mechanization is merely paving our road to hell with good inventions.  [This “good-mixer fetish” is even stressed on some college applications].

        To remain individual in an overadjusted society, start out by being an amateur at everything, never a professional.  This is true whether you are a poet, scholar, or political leader, whether you are an artist of life or of love or of billiards.  An amateurish life is [harmonious and] finds time to cultivate the complete human.  Ultimately freedom’s advantage over totalitarianism lies in the greater imaginative resourcefulness of the non-specializing free individual.  In one sense, only by not knowing how to write or think “too well” can the imagination get the insights needed for the highest literary, philosophical, or military achievements. 

         Without inner psychological liberty, outer civil liberties are not enough; it is a case of [both] “free from what” [and] “free for what.”  My unstreamlined advice [to students is]:  “Young lady, why not have the moral courage to be unadjusted, a bad mixer, and shockingly devoid of leadership qualities.”  The depersonalization characterizing the present trend is the goal of adjustment as an end in itself.  From being well-adjusted for its own sake, what a short step to becoming overadjusted, [publicly smiling, privately blank].

         The humanist’s, the artist’s, the scholar’s new heroism, unriddling the inner universe, consists of being stubbornly unadjusted toward the mechanized, depersonalized bustle outside.  They are heroes partly because without heroic pose.  Their values are not determined by a democratic plebiscite.  By revering the infinite preciousness of each individual soul, Christianity builds up a deep, soul-felt, inner shield against outer overadjustment.

        The unadjusted should not be confused with the maladjusted, the psychiatric; nor with the never adjusted.  The [truly] Unadjusted Man is more selective in not adjusting; they adjust to the ages, not to the age, [a choice] between lasting roots and ephemeral surfaces.  The easy conformity baiting of adolescent radicalism refuses to adjust even to deep and valid norms.  The dying words of Thomas More on the scaffold, [when modernized might be] “I die the state’s good servant.”  “Good servant” distinguishes not only More’s unadjustedness from the radical’s nonconformity but from the rootlessness of bohemia’s loveless, facile “alienation.”

        Western man, cannot misuse other worldly morality as a pretext for evading the moral choices involved in facing the material problems of this earth.  During some ultimate hour of moral choice between principle and expedient survival, the nonmaterialist, the Christian, the man with inner liberty, walks to his scaffold smiling and unhesitant.  What is new today is the more sophisticated ability of the Overadjusted Man to masquerade as an Unadjusted one.  So we must inspect closest the credential of those writers who proclaim loudest their nonconformity.  Genuine sensitivity, genuine humanity have nothing in common with the conveyor belt of culture robots who say “I am a real independent, nonconforming individualist, just like everybody else.”  To manicure our sacred humanistic and religious values into [popular] fads may kill them more surely than any invasion of open barbarians, torch in hand, burning churches, libraries, and universities.

       Nothing can mechanically “produce” unadjustedness.  The stress of many liberals on teaching ephermeral civic needs instead of permanent classics gave the anti-liberal demagogues their opening for trying to terrorize education into propagandizing for “Americanism.”  These pressures of overadjustment can be triumphantly resisted if the Unadjusted Man makes full use of the many available burrows of the creative imagination.  Such sane asylums for individuality need never degenerate into the inhuman aloofness of the formalist so long as they continue to love the America they criticize.                

       The concept and currency of “nonconformity” has become so debased that [a phrase like] “a nonconformist in the Marlon Brando tradition,” is common.  [Writing styles when new can be] weapons of liberation because they give their public what it does not expect.  The meaningful moral choice is between conforming to the ephemeral, stereotyped values of the moment and conforming to the ancient, lasting archetypal values shared by all creative cultures; archetypes [which] have grown out of the soil of history: slowly, painfully, organically.  The sudden uprooting of archetyupes was the most important consequence of the worldwide industrial revolution.

        Every overadjusted society swallows up diversity and the creativity inherent in concrete personal loyalties and in loving attachment to unique local roots and their rich historical accretions.  The creative imagination of the free artists requires private elbowroom, free from the pressure of centralization and the pressure of adjustment to a mass average.  In the novel and in the poem, the most corrupting development of all is the substitution of technique for art.  Most modern readers are not even bothered by the difference between an efficient but bloodless machine job and the living product of individual hearts’ anguish.  What then, is the test for telling the real inspiration from the just-as-good?  The test is pain.  In a free democracy the only justified aristocracy is that of the lonely creative bitterness, the artistically creative scars of the fight for the inner imagination against outer mechanization:  the fight for the private life.  

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110.  The Covenant of Peace:  a personal witness (by Maurice Friedman; 1960)

       We live in an age of compounded crises, an age of hot and cold war and the constant threat of total annihilation by the weapons that we ourselves have perfected; it is an age more and more bereft of authentic human existence.  In our age the great peacemakers Mohandas Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Martin Buber have emerged.  Gandhi, [introduced us to] satyagraha, “soul force.”  Schweitzer expressed a practical “reverence for life.”   Martin Buber found in the Biblical Covenant real reconciliation between conflicting claims.

        Pacifism and Social Consciousness—I was chock full of a Sunday-school morality of peace, brotherhood, justice.  These values, combined with the anti-militaristic slant of social studies in the 1930s, gave me an active social conscience which applied itself to problems of social reform and international relations. I [had] to tackle the extreme conflict of values that I experienced when I juxtaposed my hatred of the Nazis with my hatred for war.

        Most important for me then was a growing conviction that only good means can lead to good ends.  All of my studies combined to teach me that balance of power was not the way to peace.  The “war to end wars” only sowed the seed for future wars; the war “to make the world safe for democracy” helped bring on totalitarianism.  This new [“cold”] war would [bring] the very militarism that I feared. [The problem with using war as a means is that while we may] want this war to end war, along with the end we have in mind may come 6 or 12 equally important consequences which we do not have in mind.  The belief that the means must correspond to the end questions whether that end will be reached by any means that are not like it.

[I went through hypothetical cases and mathematical probabilities in trying to reach a decision].  My alterna-tives seemed to boil down to the choice between doing nothing [i.e. Civilian Public Service camps] and doing what seemed harmful [i.e.] taking part in a war that was likely to produce new wars; it was a choice between evils.  Morality is the tension, the link, the real relation between what in this situation I can do and what I ought to do.    

         Mysticism and Humble Love—When I wrote my statement for the draft board, the only religion I was able to claim was the conviction that the meaning of my life lay in doing good for others and that I was not willing to take part in a war that meant denying this purpose.  Pacifism for me became absolute and a way of life.  There were so many examples of an all-encompassing spiritual unity beside which the immediate goals of my social action days fade into obscurity. 

         Along with St. Francis and his Prayer to be an instrument of God’s peace, came the image of the Quaker saint James Naylor. Each morning when I awake [with] Kenneth Boulding’s sonnet [“I ... have seen the day with eastern fire cleanse the foul night away”] is with me and each evening when I go to sleep St. Francis comes to me with his prayer [“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace”].  In Dostoivsky’s Father Zossima, I found an image of active love, [humble love.  Zossima says:]  “Always decide to use humble love.  If you resolve that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. . .  If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. . .  And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.” 

        [Even] though my own grandfather was an adherent of Hasidim—the popular mysticism of East European Jewry, I had never even heard of Jewish mysticism.  And I was asked the question: How can a Jew be a pacifist in the face of Nazi persecution of the Jews?  I cannot dismiss [the extermination of 6,000,000 Jews] as an unfortunate detour of history.  [I am] no longer an absolute pacifist nor a believer in absolute non-resistance to evil.

       The Biblical Covenant—I entered Judaism through the door of Hasidism, with its ecstasy, its emphasis on inner intention, its joy, and its loving humility.  In Hasidism I found an image of an active love and fervent devotion no longer coupled with self-denial or metaphysical theorizing about unity with the divine.  It is to the Bible that I finally turned for a new foundation for my own witness for peace.

       No one can read the stark happenings of the Bible and the intimate mingling of the word of God with the violent conflicts of men without fear and trembling.  For all that, the God of the Hebrew Bible is not a God of war, and he must not be understood as such.  This God is the God of the historical situation, of the cruel historical demand.  This is the God of the covenant . . . the God through which Israel accepts the task of realizing justice, righteousness, and lovingkindness in genuine communal life that makes it a people.  This is the God of the historical demand, but also of compassion, whose covenant of peace shall not be removed from man. 

         On Israel is laid the task of initiating the kingdom of God, but kingdom itself will only come into being when all nations have come to Zion to receive the law.  The realization of the kingship of God means the realization of peace.  Isaiah’s vision of peace is an integral part of the historical covenant between God and Israel, an integral address from God to the people in a new historical situation.

       The Covenant of Peace—Out of the Biblical covenant grows the covenant of peace.  The Biblical covenant of peace is not a consolation at history’s end or an eternity above it; it is an integral part of history of the tension between present and future, the dialectic between comfort and demand.  A peace witness based on the covenant of peace cannot be an “absolute” pacifism, for in history there is no room for absolutes. The only absolute is God.

        The absolutist knows what is right before he reaches a situation; his action is something imposed on the situation.  What is [needed] is the most adequate response possible in a [particular] situation, which is always in need of redemption and never entirely redeemable.  Plato and the absolutist sets a timeless ideal that history is supposed to approach.  The result is [that] it becomes a temptation to impose the truth on the situation in a way that recognizes neither the possibilities of the situation nor the need for communication with those involved.

      The Biblical covenant implies risk—one responds without certainty as to the result—and trust—if one re-sponds as best one may, this will be the work that one can do toward establishing the covenant of peace.  If we succumb to the merely political, we shall have reinforced the mistrust between nations that makes them deal with each other in terms of [depersonalizing] political abstractions and catch words.  [Education on an issue] must be concerned about real communication with the people whom it approaches [and not with] imposing one’s truth.  We must confirm him even as we oppose him, in his right to oppose us, in his existence as a valued human being.

        “Nonviolence” claims too much. To claim that nonviolence is always possible ignores the facts of personal and social existence.  The violence lying just beneath the surface in so much of family life, civic and govern-mental administration, give glaring evidence of how much the alternatives “violent” and “nonviolent” falsify the concrete situation.  “Nonviolence” claims too little.  One may be nonviolent and still offer answers without listening to the other’s questions.  They may still be imposing truth on people, placing political abstraction above social realities.  [True] nonviolence is grounded in personal existence and genuine relation to other persons.

         Modern Biblical Morality and Reconciliation—[In applying modern biblical morality to the Jewish settlements of Palestine], Martin Buber wrote:  “I belong to a group of people who from the time when Britain conquered Palestine, have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab . . .  By a genuine peace we . . . infer that both people should together develop the land without the one imposing its will on the other.”  Modern biblical morality, between man and man and between nation and nation, means dialogue.

 Dialogue means the meeting with the other person, the other group, the other people—a meeting that confirms it in its otherness yet does not deny oneself and the ground on which one stands, [a meeting] that heeds, affirms, confirms his opponent as an existing other.  Conflict certainly cannot be eliminated from the world, but [it] can be arbitrated and led towards its overcoming.  Genuine reconciliation must begin with a fully realistic and honest recognition of differences and points of conflict, [and move towards] a meeting which will include both conflicting points of view.  The necessary first step toward reconciliation is recognition of the real claims and differences of interest.  Second is the realistic recognition of the difficulties of reconciling these claims (no objective arbitration is possible), and third is seeking new and creative ways of reconciliation.

 Under the Shadow of the Bomb—Self-preservation, the self-understood basic principle of the modern nation, no longer has much meaning where self-preservation means total domination or total annihilation.  Martin Buber wrote in 1952:  “The human world is today, as never before, split into two camps, each of which understands the other as the embodiment of falsehood and itself as the embodiment of truth.”  C.Wright Mills writes: “They search for peace by military means and in doing so, they succeed in accumulating ever new perils.  Moreover, they have obscured this fact by their dogmatic adherence to violence as the only way of doing away with violence.  We have to ask:  [War is] immoral, for whom?  What do we mean by moral? 

 I do not think we have accomplished very much by saying war is immoral.  Our real responsibility is not making moral judgment from some superior perspective but responding to the claim of the present situation.  America my country, a country which has occupied the stage as the world power but must now, more seriously than before, take into consideration the real existence of the “other” civilization, culture, values, political power.  A positive relationship to this hostile other is the only way in which we can continue to exist as a nation.

Means and Ends Reconsidered—A “good end” is the good that is created again and again in lived relations between persons, within and between groups.  A “good means” is the whole of the present situation as it leads into the future.  The purity of the means I use is less important than the faithfulness of my and our response.  This begins with awareness and responsibility, but it ends with trust.  I [went from] circulating petitions or organizing meetings to . . . renouncing all action until I should have achieved that spiritual realization which would make action “effective.” I set about realizing my spiritual unity with all men through resolutely turning away from them.

My present view of ends and means is thoroughly dialogical.  The “inner light,” the stirring, prompting, or leading exists in the between—between man and situation, between man and the message that “speaks to his condition,” between man and divine spirit, between man and “still small voice.”  We cannot cease to discover and proclaim what steps may be taken toward some relief of conflicts, some first step of communication and cooperation.  Though we live under the shadow of the hydrogen bomb, we stand under the cover of the eternal wings.     

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112.  Two trends in modern Quaker thought, a statement of belief (by Albert Vann Fowler; 1961)

        In this extrovert age we are apt to forget that what men do is conditioned and circumscribed by their faith.  [Jesus and Paul looked to people’s faith as the source of their healing].  There are in modern Quakerism two distinct varieties of belief: universal; and particular.  The universal variety accepts Christianity in its Quaker interpretation as but one religion among many.  [In a way it] stands apart from all religions and looks at them with an appraising eye.  The particular variety is inseparable from the faith it professes.  It accepts Christianity as the one divine life that is reproducing in the individual the character of the historic Jesus Christ. 

       A Matter for all Christians—While a Quaker issue, it is also of great importance to individual Christians outside the Society of Friends.  The universal and particular varieties are each the center of emotional viewpoints and convictions which need to be understood.  The universal is supported by liberals who think of themselves as tolerant, open-minded and in the forefront of scientific discovery.  The particular is supported by those whose lives are rooted in a common Christian experience and in the doctrines of Christianity.  They think of themselves as conservative and orthodox in the positive sense of those words. 

       The word orthodox is defined as “sound in opinion or doctrine”.  The term underwent a change until now it has taken on in popular usage the connotation of reactionary and conventional.  In the same way the word conservative has changed from a positive [i.e. preserving the good] to a negative term [i.e. opposed to all innovation].  There is a refugee psychology in Quakerism which pushes Friends away from the traditional Christian viewpoint. 

        Non-Christians as Members?—At the Blue River Quarterly Meeting, Arthur Morgan said:  “The inner feeling that the Christian faith is uniquely true, and is in a class by itself, different from all other religions, is not a harmless error.”  What should be done is to seek out the great truth underlying all religions, not the small truth in each of them.  Morgan also said:  “The Christian religion is a human product, an accumulation from many sources.”  The Christian religion should come to see itself as one of the great but fallible traditions.

        Arthur Morgan is convinced the time is coming when these provincial mythologies will have had their day. Non-Christians, he believes, look at the Christian attitude of representing the one true faith as exploitation, spiritual imperialism, bigotry, and arrogance.  The times are calling for a more universal vision of religious truth, which Quakers can help bring into focus. The belief in the inner light led early Friends to [carefully consider a problem] and then let it rest in the expectation that an opening would occur which might disclose truth.  It seems possible to him that committed persons of other faiths might have a stronger interest in what they find in the Society than do many who are born in that tradition and the lives of all concerned might be enlarged and refined.

      To contribute to an interfaith fellowship of fallible men trying to find a good way of life together is something Arthur Morgan believes Friends can do for world peace and for a deeper and more inclusive religious outlook.  His argument does not touch on the wide divergence of thought about the nature of God which is so characteristic of the universal variety.  It conceives God principally as an impersonal force, a prime mover, a first cause, and not as a personal God dealing directly with men in an intimate relationship. 

         [The picking and choosing of elements of religious faith from a variety of sources, can be done through] a rigorous, disciplined, and scholarly search for the truth, [or it can be done only to] suit one’s own tastes and needs.  [There is also the extreme of] the religion of pure personal experience, an interior monologue unrelated to any external facts or situations.  It is not personal experience that is important in the religious life, but what is experienced.  The universal variety allows for an almost infinite number of different [variations] of God, from the Father Almighty to theoretical [human] abstractions.  The Quaker’s particular variety strips the Gospel concept of God of dogma and outward sacrament to free the Spirit so that it could speak with equal authority at a later time.

       A Resurgence of Interest—There is a resurgence of interest in the particular variety of belief.  John McCandless quoted from the London Yearly Meeting Discipline of 1922:  “To us (the unity of Christians) consists in the one Divine life that is reproducing in them the character of the historic Person, Jesus Christ; which, while it is something far deeper that any definition of His Person, is for Christians the final manifestation of the character of God Himself.  Faith is not only a belief in truth but a surrender to truth.”  [The universal variety’s position] represents to John McCandless a widespread and unparalleled disloyalty to Jesus Christ. 

         The modern, tolerant, scientific, undogmatic view of Christianity as one of the outstanding religions of the world is untenable to John McCandless; he finds it impossible to know religious truth from the outside. He believes that to insist religion be tolerant or liberal means that we worship not God but tolerance or liberalism. He insists that the scientific attitude is maintained in invalid areas, and to unwarranted degrees, in order to indulge doubts that prevent man from coming to terms with Christ’s demands on him.  Early Friends believed the New Testament’s original vision had been revealed to them; it was their responsibility to demonstrate it.  McCandless said:  If Quakerism is . . . Truth, then it is universal and inescapable; if it is not Truth, it ought to be laid down.”      

       The Inherent Risks—The first risk inherent in the particular variety of Quaker belief is of a rigid formalism, a narrow fundamentalism, and [too much] reliance on the past as the source of inspiration and achievement. The gravest danger is that [in trying] to live it one steps out of the popular current of religious thinking and takes a stand against the tide.   

       Clear distinctions can be seen between the universal and the particular.  Universal emphasizes seekers and the search; particular emphasizes what has been found.  Universal mainly looks for something new; particular is centered on something eternal.  Universal is concerned with open choices; particular is concerned with the choice already made.  Universal love is a general concept unconstrained by particular detail; particular love is delineated in the life and teachings of Jesus and in his relations with God.    

       The clear distinction—For the universal attitude religious authority resides in the individual, the finite; for the particular attitude religious authority resides in Christ, God, the infinite.  For the universal, Jesus is one among many prophets; for the particular, Jesus is the divine’s unique revelation.  Freedom to the universal means lack of constraint in doing what one chooses. Freedom to the particular means lack of constraint doing what God chooses.

        A Third Group—[This group] acts to blur and blunt the distinguishing features and to keep the 2 varieties from clashing with each other, and to avoid another schism.  It mitigates and restrains differences that cannot be reconciled.  The third group is both a buffer and a sincere and earnest combination of both the universal and the particular.  This group sees in Quakerism a reconciling power between Christianity and the other great world religions; it has its counterparts throughout much of modern Christianity. 

       Modern Quakerism thus proclaims two quite different beliefs, with a third group trying to draw them together.  The resulting confusion is kept beneath the surface and is not openly acknowledged.  It has been easier to bring the two together on a basis of common work [e.g. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)].  Many convinced Friends have come through the universal door.  Many, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere. 

         A Continuing Conversation—This, one of the most important problems facing modern Quakerism, is left to personal debate instead of being considered soberly in public with concern for the sense of the Meeting and a minute to record it.  The universal argument is that [when] the figure of Christ is a stumbling block to someone seeking a religious faith, it is more important to remove the stumbling block than to obstruct one’s religious search. 

      Like Paul carrying the gospel to the Greek and the Roman world, the Society of Friends is reaching and nourishing the religious life of the unchurched against strong opposition within its own ranks.  It is also better to set aside a Quaker testimony than to turn the seeker away, in the hope that one will grow into acceptance of it.  Modern Quaker opinion holds that the wise thing is to stress the differences between Quakerism and traditional Christianity in order to keep from being swallowed up as just another sect.  Another universal claim is that the importance of Jesus’ sayings depends solely on their undoubted truth and not on who set them forth.

       An Anti-Christian Attitude—The motive behind western civilization’s and the universal’s anti-Christian attitude seems to be a desire to be free of Christian dispensation and discipline.  Men’s and women’s historic faith is giving way under pressure from the great storm of secularism which has been brewing for almost 200 years.  The most persuasive and misleading argument in this attitude is the claim that the Christian gospel must be tailored to fit the modern mind.  Those giving way want to believe that they are breathing new life and vitality into a religion that has lost its appeal to the present generation, rather than that they are betraying the figure on the cross.   Now that Robert Barclay’s interpretation (i.e. Barclay’s Apology) has been abandoned under the pressure of secularism, Quakers are free to indulge in imprecision to the full. 

        Butterfield’s Summary—Herbert Butterfield defends the view that the screen between God and man was torn and broken in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the divine stepped straight onto the stage and into the story.  Christian religion’s central idea is that divinity is made incarnate in a personality more human than the human one.  He makes it clear that if basic Christian beliefs seem out of keeping with the thought of the 20^th century, there are grounds for believing they must have been equally anomalous to the Roman Empire.

Christians make a mistake if they fear scholarship or if they believe too readily its infallibility and competence.           One of the terrible elements in history for Butterfield is the fact that the Church began a policy of perse-cution as soon as it was in a position to do so, and fought wars to preserve their persecuting power; this is a comment on human nature, rather than an argument against Christianity.  Sometimes the Church fought bitterly when the world stood for [what turned out to be the right cause, later accepted even] by the clergy themselves. 

         Butterfield wonders how many generations it will take to heal the deep-seated and understandable resentments against [past Church abuses].  [Looking at] the intimate life of the Church, and the spiritual labor of humble men, he finds the most moving spectacle that history has to offer, [where charity abounds].

         Secularism’s Advance and Openness to Truth—This discussion cannot be understood without some attempt to explain the advance of secularism in western civilization.  C.S. Lewis calls it “the unchristening of Europe.”  Lewis is quick to add there are a great many Christians in the world today just as there were a great many skeptics in the past.  But religious belief and practice was the norm; today, he believes it is the exception, and committed Christians in the minority.  The unchristening of the West which has probably not yet reached its peak, underlines the need of the Society of Friends to bring the conversation between universal and particular out into the open.  [Whether the universal path or the particular path is chosen], most friends want to have it grow from a common concern of the Society as a whole after the topic has been explored openly and at length. 

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115.  Mysticism and the experience of love (by Howard Thurman; 1961)

        Mysticism—In 1929, I was a special student with Rufus Jones at Haverford College.  He gave me confidence in the insight that the religion of the inner life could deal with empirical experiences of man without retreating from the demands of such experience.  Our times may be characterized by a general loss of a sense of personal identity.  There is a widespread disintegration of the mood of tenderness, [which hampers] our efforts to understand each other.  It seems that togetherness as a muted mass hysteria is more and more a substitute for God; in the great collective huddle, we are lonely and frightened. 

        It is the insistence of mysticism that there is within reach of everyone both a defense against the Grand Invasion and the energy for transforming it into community.  One can become at home within by locating in one’s own spirit the trysting place where God can be met. I have sought a way of life that could come under the influence of and be informed by the fruits of the inner life, [and that could withstand] the brutalities of the social order.   

There are four groups of mystics:

4.      Mystics in Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, who stand in a personal relationship to God.  The attitude of response is an intensely personal one.  
5.       Those in Logos, Tao, Spinoza, Cabala, and esoteric Hinduism who express a relationship of personal response to an Infinite intellectually conceived.  The attitude of response is one of contemplation.  
6.       Mysticism of the Light within, a knowledge from intuition, with a relationship directed to a Divine  Spirit regarded as resident within the mystic. The response is one of obedience and confidence.   
7. Those practicing the occult sciences, including communication with the dead.

        For our purposes, mysticism is the response of the individual to a personal encounter with God within one’s own spirit.  [For] the Society of Friends the witness in the world is an outward expression of the inner experience.  Mysticism may seem to be life-denying as over against life affirming.  One of the great words in mysticism literature is detachment.  A great emphasis is placed on silence, [to] “Be still and know I am God.”  God’s presence may not become manifest until the traffic of the surface life is somehow stilled.

          What then is it that the mystic claims was experienced?  1^st, the revelation makes no claim to be any private truth.  2^nd, it does not claim any novelty; [it is] the rediscovery of the eternal.  3^rd, the truth is to be won by impartiality, dispassionateness, sincerity, and a touch of reverence.  4^th, whatever truth the mystics have come upon it is not any particular truth; [it is] “the whole working essence ... the meaning of the whole.”

        The mystic cannot escape the necessity for giving some kind of “data content” to the experience.  [The form this content takes] reflects the religious, cultural, and social heritage in which one finds meaning.  We are face to face with what is claimed to be a form of personal communion between two principals; human and God communicate.  The mind insists that all experiences fall into order in a system of meaning.  What the mystic experiences within must somehow belong to that which is without.  The integrity of the personal response does not rise or fall by the degree to which the response is verified from the outside.  The mystic will see things, events, nature, and at a deeper level will see what was seen in the inner encounter.  The world now becomes pregnant with truth and literally God’s creation.  The mystical experience is only life denying on the surface.  It becomes in its most profound sense life affirming.  I may be exposed to the vision of God’s purposes and participate in them in Life.

       [The Experience of Love]—In experiencing the love of God, one senses that one is being dealt with at a center in one’s self that goes beyond all of one’s virtues and vices.  What one has experienced meets the deepest need of one’s life.  The need to be understood is a total need of the personality.  It is the need for love.  1^st, it is necessary to distinguish between love as interest in another person [i.e. interest with ulterior motives] and love as intrinsic interest in another person [i.e. interest in the person for their own sake].  In Philippians, Paul writes: My prayer to God is that your love may grow more and more rich in knowledge and in all manner of insight that you may have a sense of what is vital, that you may be transparent and of no harm to anyone.”    

       For an intrinsic interest, there must be a sense of fact where other persons are concerned.  The person is dealt with as the person is and in the light of the details of the person’s life.  A person’s fact includes more than plight, predicament, or need at a particular moment in time.  It is something total which must include awareness of the person’s potential.  The area of the other person’s fact is an expanding thing if such a person lives into life and deepens the quality and breadth of experience; this makes love between persons dynamic.  So much goodwill in the world is [not intrinsic].  It is uninformed, ignorant goodwill.  It does not seek facts.   

        Some interpreters of Christianity enjoin us to love humanity.  To speak of the love for humanity is mean-ingless.  [It is necessary to develop] acceptance of and openness towards others.  By openness I mean an inner climate or sensitiveness to the awareness of others.  Some who feel despised exaggerate self-love and become self-centered.  There are some people who have the quality of “built-in awareness” of others as a talent or gift.  How may such a quality be developed?  There must be developed a sensitive and structured imagination. 

       We are accustomed to thinking of the imagination as a useful tool in the artist’s hands.  But the place where the imagination shows its greatest powers as the angelos, the messenger, is when one is able to put one’s self in another one’s place.  We make our imagination corrupt when it ranges only over our own affairs; [it magnifies our faults and can terrorize us].  With imagination] we can make accurate soundings which when properly read, will enable us to be to them what we could never be without such awareness.  To be to another human being what is needed at a time of urgent need is to participate in the precise act of redemption.                        [Limitation], segregation works against the love ethic and is bound to make for an increase in ill social health.  The sense of the person’s fact must be total.  The individual is enjoined to move from the natural impulse to the level of deliberate intent.  One has to bring to the center of one’s focus a desire to love one’s enemy.

          Precisely what does taking the other’s total fact into account involve?  One has to understand that [the “evil] deed”, however despicable, does not cover all that person is.  Love means to place the particular deed in the perspective of the other’s life.  If I could see this person in the person’s context and get to the real center of the person’s life, then I would be able to deal with the person in a wholesome and redemptive manner.  If I can bring the person to self-judgment, then I must keep on loving and never give the person up.  I wish to be dealt with in an inclusive, total, integrated manner [and need to do the same to others].  To love is the profoundest act of religion, religious faith and devotion. 

         Sometimes the radiance of love is so soft and gentle that the individual sees themselves with all harsh lines wiped away and all limitations blended with their strength such that strength seems to be everywhere and weakness is nowhere to be found.  Sometimes the radiance of love blesses a life with a vision of its possibilities never dreamed of and never sought.  It may throw in relief old and forgotten weakness which one had accepted; one may then expect love to be dimmed [if love is seen as] based upon merit and worth. 

        But love has no awareness of merit or demerit.  Love holds its object securely in its grasp calling all that it sees by its true name.  There is a robust vitality that quickens the roots of personality creating an unfolding of the self that redefines, reshapes and makes all things new.  Whence comes this power [of love] which seems to be the point of referral for all experience and meaning?  There is but one word by which its meaning can be encompassed—God.  There is no thing outside ourselves, no circumstance, no condition, no unpleasant change in fortune, that can ultimately separate us from the love of God and from the love of each other.

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119.  Stand fast in Liberty (by James E.Bristol; 1961)

     Resurgent McCarthyism—I have never been persuaded that more than the “excesses” [of McCarthyism] lie behind us.  McCarthyism is grounded in a conviction that in the face of exceptional threats to our way of life we cannot be squeamish about the measures we employ to defend ourselves.  Although McCarthy is dead, McCarthyism still flourishes and moves on apace.  In the winter of 1960-61 the House of Representatives voted 416 to 6 to continue the House Un-American Activities Committee, [not because so few were against the committee, but because a vote against the Committee was “a vote for Communism”]. 

  The Committee put out the controversial film, “Operation Abolition,” dealing with demonstrations against the Committee during San Francisco hearings in 1960.  Neither the picture nor the commentary gives any firm evidence of Communist direction or control of most of the demonstrators, as charged by committee members.  The film, [with all its misinformation] has been shown in schools, colleges, and churches, service clubs, and other organizations around the country.  Those who criticize the Committee are either shrugged off or persecuted as “Communist dupes.”  We cease to think of [those labeled “Communists] as human beings in need of jobs, food and shelter.  Investigating committees cast their blight far and wide, relying upon each community they visit to ostracize and penalize the people they call up to testify, regardless of the outcome of the hearing.

This atmosphere of suspicion and fear is strengthened by groups like the John Birch Society.  [It is compiling] “the most complete and accurate files in America on leading comsymps, Socialists, and liberals.” The fear of Communism has led to a fear of social change and of people who question the status quo.  The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade holds schools and conducts lectures nationally, publicizing its activities and distributing its literature widely.  Under the impact of the anti-Communist movement some self-righteously patriotic groups have gone so far as to threaten the well-being of individuals and families who champion any other point of view.

 [The Supreme Court ruled in June 1961] that:  1. The Communist Party must register all of its officers and members with the Justice Department; 2.  Active Communist Party membership is a Federal crime if the individual is aware of the party’s subversive goals.  The dissenting Justice Douglas declared that in reality the decision outlawed ideas and thoughts.  In the case of both Raphael Konigsberg and George Anastaplo the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court upheld refusal of admission to the bar for failure to answer questions about Communism.  The dissenting Justice Black said:  “To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.  But that is the present trend . . . in almost every walk of life.  Too many men are being driven to become government-fearing and time-serving. . . This trend must be halted if we are to keep faith with the Founders of our Nation and pass on to future generation of Americans the great heritage of freedom which the Founders sacrificed so much to leave to us.”

 The Blame is Ours—To a greater extent than many of us realize, we all share in the guilt of McCarthyism, and all contribute to the growing repression that is sweeping the country.  The stark fact of the matter is that once we agree that to rid all walks of life of Communists is a democratic goal, we have, in the very process of trying to defend our democracy, surrendered it.  We are then well on the way to becoming a totalitarian state. . .  Once a group has been deprived of its freedom, all citizens have in reality suffered the same loss. 

 A decade ago [1950] the loyalty oath was a new phenomenon in American life.  Loyalty oaths are now a permanent part of the state apparatus.  Those who could not in good conscience take the oath have long since lost their jobs.  There is a great deal of compliance with measures with which people are not in agreement; they want to keep their jobs.    

 Why is it that many of us fall victim to the hysteria of our generation and are finally persuaded that we must abandon much of our precious liberty and adopt a fair measure of the tyrant’s mode of operation in order to prevent the seizure of power in America by a subversive tyranny?  It is a fact of human psychology that the more certain people are that they alone are right, the more frightened they become to listen to another’s convictions, [and the more extreme measures they take to avoid exposure to a hostile and critical point of view]. 

 The Castle Psychology—I approached Warwick castle, and found [myself] inside castle walls. [I thought:] “This is not far away and long ago at all. This is today . . .  It is America, trying by accumulation of great and massive strength to keep the enemy outside the wall.”  Always a few more [men] are needed [on the wall]; [but] one of these men may be a Communist. Our fear feeds upon our fear, until we find that our external defenses have made us feel less secure. And the whole interior of the country becomes honeycombed with secret passages; every facet of American life develops its own “eyes and ears” [i.e. loyalty checks and oaths, legislative investigations]. 

Walter Millis wrote: “[The] technical ability to massacre . . . millions of non-combatants [brutalizes] foreign policy, which must inevitably brutalize and poison internal life as well.”  Fear and suspicion have a deadly and corroding influence, and there is only one escape from them.  Only those willing to lose and spend their lives for others find peace and confidence and are purged of fear.  Should we be surprised if the no-God materialism which permeates American life today moves us in the same direction [as Communism]?  We must go deeper than a civil liberties campaign if we are to alter the climate which encourages McCarthyism.   

  What is Needed—What we need is a program, a movement based on what we believe in rather than the things to which we are opposed.  [We must stop “containing” Communism and “restraining” McCarthyism].  We must focus our gaze only upon human beings in need.  Under the impact of the Cuban defeat [i.e. Bay of Pigs], there was talk urging the [need] of using the devil’s tactics to defeat the devil.  [Even President Kennedy urged the press to use restrained and possibly deceptive news reporting].  The price for preserving our freedom is to renounce military might to defend us against our enemies.   

 [If we do renounce military might], we shall be very great fools to allow poverty, segregation, and economic exploitation to continue unremedied, for these provide [fertile soil] for the growth of a vigorous Communist movement.  [Relief of these problems done] because of our compassionate concern for others—are the steps that will make the soil barren for the seeds of Communism.  Reverend Raymond T. Bosler said that Communism exists because: 1. Christians have not recognized the Gospel’s social implications; 2. Christians are nationalistic, not internationally minded; 3. wealthy Christian states have not shared; 4. wealthy “Catholic” landowners have refused to share their wealth with the poor living around them; 5. Christians have failed to see Christ in the Negro, the Chinese, the Mexican.  I am convinced that McCarthyism and Communism alike will wither and die in a free, unfettered atmosphere where the physical and material needs of all are being met.  To defend the rights of every person means that we uphold the rights of Communists and fellow-travelers and of the John Birch Society alike.        

  Lay Hold on Courage—To practice liberty does not mean to ignore our fundamental disagreement with Communists and their aims. We can speak our convictions openly without being extremely concerned to avoid “questionable” people.  When we practice liberty we remember there is “that of God” in the Communists, and the Klu Klux Clanner, the white racist, and the House Un-American Activities Committee.  For many of us, the greater problem will be to “answer that of God in every one,” [through our words and actions of] love, peace, freedom and brotherhood. It is extremely difficult to be smeared and not to smear back, but here as in other matters we are called to love our enemies and to “stand fast in the liberty” our religious experience has blessed us with.

 “Standing fast in liberty” means forthright resistance to pressures for conformity, [perhaps in the form of] civil disobedience.  The commitment that equips a person to form part of the hard core of such a resistance movement does not come easily or without cost.  Such a movement in this country would take the form of refusal to sign loyalty oaths and loyalty statements.  It could require violating laws and a prison sentence.  [A German minister concluded his remarks about choosing between religious conscience and the regime in power] with:  “I wonder how soon the time will come when you in America will have to make that same grave decision.”

 One learns to resist enslavement by resisting every encroachment upon freedom at the very first point where it touches one’s life.  [To paraphrase an old adage]:  “Never put off until tomorrow what you can resist today.”  Procrastination [in resisting] ensures the eventual enslavement of the very people who today stress the necessity to bide one’s time.  There are times when the most positive and creative action one can take is what appears on the surface to be negative.  May we resist every outreach of tyranny that would deprive anyone of genuine freedom.  Thus only can we ever “stand fast in the liberty” which has been [over and over again] bought at great price by freedom-loving peoples who have gone before us. 

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