The Faith of a Quaker Microform - Forgotten Books

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C. F. CLAY.Manson

NEWYORK t TRB I AC I I L L AN C0.

N KONTO THE I ACNHL AN 00 . OF

TOKYO t“ARUZBN-KABUSHI Kl -KAISHA

THE FAITH OFA QUAKER

JOHNW. GRAHAM,MA .

Principal of Dalton Hall. University ofManchester ; Author ofSw im?" andExpire ; TheDear-aim and

CAMBR I D GEAT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

DEDICATED

MEMORY OP

GEORGE FO!

PREFACE

Tans! pages have been written with definite reference tothe Society of Friends. but it is believed that they havemose than a denominational interest. One cannot touch

the foundations of Quakerism without touching the

foundations of all religion . our attitude to God andManand the Universe. So that this book has been bound tobecome not chiefly an in troduction to the position of asmall sect.but a statemen t ofmystical religion in general.I have had to push on to the point where my facultiesceased to act at the far door of the unknown .

The real in terest of the foll 'vwing work to studen ts ofreligious history generally is that it is a sketch of the on lyconsiderable adven ture in organised Mysticismwhich has

made for itself a permanent place in Christian historyduring modern times. Organisation and Mysticismmightbe regarded as sure tomake an incongruous combination .

Mystics are by their naturemore inwardly dependen t thanothermen and when they seek for fellowship they are aptto find it in the readers of their books, in a few ehosen

corresponden ts,or in privategroupsspon taneouslygatheredand not crystal lised in to institutions.

To all this the Society of Friends stands in con trast .It is the classical case of amystical society with a toughorganisation . The studen t of Church history may findinstruction in noting how it met, or failed to meet, theperils which accompany the benefits of an organisation .

How , in the first place, did the expression of the spiritthat bloweth where it listeth reconcile itself to fixed timesand places for publicworship? How could that worship beconducted with noresponsibility for its right conduct lying

viii PREFACE

at the door of any particular person ? Could the archi

tectural , artistic,musical, ritual side of public worship be

found to be hereditary? How would the question ofdoctrinal limitations be settled, or could communion beindependen t of theology? What would be this selectcompany's attitude towards the world and its socialcustoms? How would it deal with in ter-marriage ? Couldthe State be trusted to let such a body of idealists go theirway unhampered, or would they find themselves attackedby the Government on such subjects as a State Church,taxation for war purposes, ormilitary service?It is with the measure of success and failure in these

connections, andwith the causes thereof, that the followingpages are, in the second place, concerned.There arise also the insisten t questions which beset all

mystics, and which in Quakerism demanded a corporate,instead of an individual, answer.Was the light in fallible ?Was the claim to it an assumption of spiritual exal tation ,

What, above all , was the connection between divineinspiration andhuman faculty? What was the share of thein tellect in in spired min istry?Was there a special organin a human being receptive of Divine in timations, and so

al together differen t in nature and power from the rest ofa man ? What conceivable outward test could there beof what purported to be Divine in spiration ?Was it safefor an individual en tirely to ignore the combined judgmen tof contemporaries or of wisemen in the past ? What, lastly

to revealed religion ? These have been my problems.

This book was written during the few years precedingtheWar, and was already in the printers' hands in July,

191 4, when theWar carried 06 prin ters and stepped the

publication of such books as this. And ithas finally causeda delay of five years.

PREFACE ix

Since I wrote,Mr I-I . G.Wells has brought out a

Soul of 4 Bishop and The Undying Fire, which, theirreaders will notice, have much in common with someof the positions in Book I of this volume, though withmarked differences al so. It seems better to say that thesevery widely read booksandmine hadawholly independen torigin , and have reached separately the same or similartruths, so far as they agree.

The brief additions, notes and references added finestheWar will be easily recognised.

Francis Thompson ’

s poem “In no Strange Land ” is

prin ted here by kind permission of Messrs Burns and

Oates.

Book II should not be taken as a History of EarlyQuakerism, or as a full record even of the early teaching.

It consists of four separate essays, expounding the workof the four chief Quaker writers of that time, so far asis necessary for my purpose. That purpose is to be fairhistorically to the founders, and to correlate the ancien tposition to themodern one here presen ted. Had there beenno diflerences between our outlook and that of the

write such a book as this at all . The work had alreadybeen better done once for all . But it is idle to expect anysuch iden tity of forms of theological thought.We live in adifferen t Kosmos. Ourconnotation of “God and

“Manhas grown . Enough ifmy readers conclude, as I h0pe theywill, that under all diversities of forms of thought andexpression , the same truths, the same experience, the same

J .w.c.

DAL TON HALL ,

CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE FOUNDATIONS

4 . L eaves of aTree .—5 . Cells of the OrganismofGod.

6. The ing Christ the Blood of the Divine Circu

Paradox . Die to Live—to. Analysis of Personality inMan andGod—rr. Tennyson '

s faith—ta.Weakness ofGospel on the Logos.

—r7. Continuityof theGermPlasm.

I I . THE FATHER (APP L I CATI ON5 )r. The Law of Parsimony.

- z . TheAtonemen t—3. Fel

Evil —7. Divine Justice—8. The need for the Logos .

rr. Aspiration and Incompletenm — i a. Ketchu1 3.

“The Natural man .

”—ia. SomeMystical Testimoniee.

—r5 . TheMysticismof Paul .

I I I . THE SON

1 . Natural Rel igion —z. Saviours and the Saviour.

3. Union in Christ with God—4 . His Humanity.

5 . Son of God - 6 . The Son ofMan —7. The Trinity.

8. TheWordmade Flesh—9. CherishHis Human ity.

IV. THE LIVING CHRISTr. The ChristianMystery—2 . Early faith in a surviv

ing Lord—3. The Promise of con tinued Communion .

4 . TheQuakerTestimony .—5 . DrSanday

’

sChristology .

6 .Work of the Society for Psychical Research—7. Subliminal Christology.

-8. Con clusion : a Parable.

CONTENTS

BOOK II. THE FOUNDERS

GEORGE FO!

I I . ISAAC PENINGTON

and earlyCalvinism—3. A Socket—4 . Col lapse of Faith.

First hearing of

III. SOMEWRITINGS OFWILLIAM PENN

iv . BARCLAY’S APOLOGY

2 . Immediate Revelation —3, The Scriptures - 4 . TheDivine L ight and a Natural Light—5. The Universal

fesdonalMinistry —to. Non -liturgicalWorship— n .

III .

IV.

CONTENTS

BOOK III. THE SUPERSTRUCTURE

of Spw ch.—3. Of Brest—4 .Marrying out—5 . I ts evil

Methodists .—rr. Quakerismatax ingcult.

—ia. Attitude

to Politics.

ART AND EDUCATION

1 . Regulation s derived fromPuritanismfatal toQuakerism.—a. Friends not artistic—3.Music and Dancing .

THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC

Ascetic—o. A Hand-made Article .

MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH

—3. The Quaker Ministry of the New Testamen t.4 . The Church is the Congregation , democratic and withno grades—5 . House Churches—6 . Speaking with

Tongues .—7. TheMin istry ofWomen —8 . Business

notOmetala.—i r. The Apostles were theMissionaries .

Headship of the Church—1 6. The Church a. RelifiousClub—r7. The Pastoral Epistles .

— 1 8. Elders and Oversects—m. L ightfootand Hatch.

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join

xiv CONTENTS

I ! . BAPTISM

1 . An old and

! . ORGANISATION AND DISCIPL INE

Decision—i s .Meetinga onMinistry and Oversight.

BOOK IV. THE OUTLOOK UPON THEWORLDI . SOCIAL SERVICE

s. Quakerism. free fromdistractions, at liberty to keepthe human temples of God—z . The Philanthropy of

Bel la 's—i x.Wil liam Al len—i a. Joseph Sturge and

AdultSchooh—is. John Bright—1 4 . Others.

1 . The Teaching of Chfist—a. The Practice of Christ.

-xc. Quaker experience.—rr. The tragedy of the case.

rz. Is there aplace forForce i—r3. Oflensive and defen

sive wan—1 4 . The Soldierand the Policeman —1 5. The

Moral ity—1 7.WarasaMoral Tonie—i s. The UltimateVision—r9. Obstacle I z—The lack ofastrong democracy.

-ao. Obstacle I I —The ex istence of conquered nations.—ar. Obstacle III :—A wrong theory of conquest.

3 2 .Why we can not en list in a“

Just"wan—23. The

Relativity ofMoral Obl igation—4 4 . Preparing for the

III. REL IGION AND THE STATE

x.

‘

I'

he lin iits of State action—a. Out of place in familyandraligioualile.

—3. Barbarous orlgin of StateReligion.

IV. EVANGEL ICALISM

SMThe Society

'

sReturn .

CONCLUSION

STATISTICS

B IBLIOGRAPHY

0World invisible, we view thee0World intangible, we touch thel napprehenslhle, we clutch thee l

Doeathe fish aoar tofind the ocean ,

That we ask of the stars in motionI f they have rumour of thee there ?

And our ben umbed conceiving aoarsThe drift of pinions, wouldwe hearken ,

Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

‘Tis ye,’

tis your estranged taces

That miss the many splendoured thing.

But, (when so sad, thou canst not sadder)Cry, and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the trame of Jacob’

s ladder

Yea, in the night,my Soul ,my Daughter,Cry , clinging Heaven by the heme.

FRANCI S THOMPSON.

BOOK I

THE FOUNDAT I ONS

CHAPTER I

THE FATHER. (THESIS)

r.

‘

lhe Quaker search for God begins fromthe begin

found to be not muchbetter than wood,hay cr stubble,we shall even then be safe after its destruction , though

saved as fromfire ; for nothing . l:owever foolish, which

is based upm direct expeiience, can ever fall with so

overwhelming a destruction , or produce a desolstion so

hopeless, as that which is bawd not on the facts of life

fioors fiame, but through themwe shall fall down to the

will do as the wise old Pope in The Ring c' d theBook did

in his own heart, we will

Correct the portralt by the living face,Man ’

s God by God’

s God in the mind of man .

it on ly lumber? Tradition is a treasure house of accumu

enslavemen t to their thoughts, but by correcting and

extending their bequest to us.

The reader'

s indulgence may wel l be asked for in thishigh essay to tell in part what never can be told in full ;to hold out what little light fromthe eternal radiance has

called upon to sacrifice our individual claim in favour of

(on .1

a larger whole ; inMJ his may be described as the

central act of Christian practice.We muat fie to liveagain ; we are called to spend and to be spent ln service

for the family, for the Church, for social and national

causes ; and this we know to be the way to God and to

as individuab—we say that a Church is born , a nation

is in maturity, a cause dies ; the seven Churches hadWe speak of ourSuch units had once their own divinity ; to this poetic

and imaginative habit we owe the lovely personificationsof the Greek world.May we then speak of theWhole,rise thus from the many divinities to the one al l

embracingDivinity,andsay, fromthe fact of Consecration ,

that our God is the Soul of theWhole ?3. The writer of r Cor. xiii. tells us—if we study care

fully hisanalysis of Love—that the essence of the passionconsists in taking the loved one within the barriers of our

own personality ; or, shall we say, in finding aplace where

the barriers of two personalities may meet andmix and

melt, so that there is away through, and the two becomeone ? Nothing is more cen tral, nothing more vital,

to God, and it is the same the whole way to Him, whichwe know to be an ever widening community of feeling .We speak habitually of the sol idarity of the Church andof the race. May we not begin to believe. in obedien tsimplicity, that it is actually true that God is Love ?By lovingwe belong to theWhole indeed it is the ordainedway of making the Whole, for in the light of love we seethat the Whole is not amere total ity made by a numberof plus signs : we see that it is an organic un ity, that itselements do not form a mechanical mixture, but some

6 THE FOUNDATIONS [cm

likened to themysterious hereditary unity of the family‘.

5. Psychical research poin ts strongly to the beliefthat the soul, though certainly a unity—indeed the most

as is the body. Of our own personal ity we are morecertain than we can be of anything else ; some philosophers amuse themselves by saying that it is the on lything of which we can be sure. Our body is composite ;it consists of coun tless cells of active protoplasm, each ofwhich has a life of its own , struggles with,and cc-operateswith, other cells, propagates itself, destroys what is wornout, runs to the defen ce of the fron tiers, obeys a cen tralgovernmen t,andcon stitutes themarvellous republiccal ledthe body of a man . That the mental and moral personahty is also analysable into elemen ts is shown by

ality, and the great range of afiections formerly lumpedunder the word hysteria“. Unity under manifoldness,“ toil co-Operan t to an end, seems to be the constitutionof everything we know. May it be that we are like cellsforming a greaterWhole, en tering somehow in to the totalpersonality of God ?We the elements in His likenesswhich go to build up His being ?Moreover as the body is not formed of a number of

cells merely added together, stowed away in boxes ,un in formed by any single life ; so the un iverse is one

organ ism whose cen tre, God, is no more easily separatedor discovered than is the cen tre of the life of the humanbody. I n the body we kn ow that the blood which isthe vehicle of the life gathers round and pulses from the

heart ; we know that the nerves appear to be the seatof the deeper personal ity cen tring in the brain , but we

More on this later, pp. 25~-27.

P roceedings (x x x vols .) and J ourn al (x viii vols.) of the Society

for Psychical Research,passim.

x] rm: FATHER 7

find that the brair is after al l an organ ; and it still keeps

thesecret of its inmost potency. Youcannot separate outthe life fromthe body and show it in a test tube. Sheathis within sheath, nucleus within nucleus, without end.

The one life is everywhere, and it cannot be located inone place more than in another ; but that the whole

Something like this is, I ven ture to think, a spiritualfact also.We are all built up in

to God, but added

together we do notmake God ; He is to be found everywhere, but not discoverable, separated or enucleated, anywhere, yet in Him all things consist . This has been

From this metaphor of the cells in the body the wholeduty and happiness of human friendship and co-operationseem to follow as the condition of spiritual health . One

almost suspects the metaphor to be more than a meremetaphor, and to parallel in some real way the place ofman in God’s world. Friendliness is the first of dutiesand necessities ; dishonesty spoils the spiritual bodypolitic ; that we are members one of an other is axiomatic.

is the measure of vitality and well-being.

6. Will our parable find a place for Christ—for themystical, ever-living Christ, that is ? (We are in the

region now of psychology and not of history, so that thehistorical Christ is not in immediate question .)We shouldhardly expect a perfect paral lel, but how if we thoughtof Christ as the blood of the spiritual body of God, throughWhomcomes the life-giving circulation ,Who is the powerwhich cleanses and restores the worn-out tissues , the

1 Since these pages were written I have read a newspaperreport of an Address, andmore recently an article

'

in The Hibbert

J ournal , by Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he makes use of a somewhat similar metaphor, regardin g human beings as corpuscles inthe blood of the human body whichhe likens to theDivineWhole.

8 THE FOUNDATIONS [Cit

power-house (to change themetaphor) of themanufacturerof souls? Such we find Him to be to us, His Christian

followers,ant is as far st even further than a parablecan be expected to go. To return to the individual :

But that one ripple on the boundless deepFeels that the deep is boundless, and itself

For ever changing form, but evermoreOne with the boundless motion of the deep‘.

Thus we are drawn to an ever larger, more penetrating,and more universal thought of God ; as large, as penetrating, as un iversal as our conceptions can make it, and

yet with the consciousness at the end that our conceptionsare poor tools for conceiving the divine completeness ; thatthey grasp as much of it only as can be grasped by thestrain ing ten tacles of a human mind.

7. All this means that we have no view poin t fromwhich we can con template Him from outside. Viewedfrom outside indeed, as an object of in tellectual con tempiation , we cannot conceive of a personality withoutlimitation . This was Herbert Spencer’s difficulty. If weare to be outsiders to Himwe can not do better than fallback uponWilliamWatson '

s rathermelancholy thought of

The Somewhat which we name but can not know ,

Ev'

n as we name a star and on ly see

And ever hide him, and which are not he'

time upon a fact of common experience ; the fact of thevalidity, the effectiveness of Prayer.

No one whohas livedmuch in an atmosphere of prayerwill consider it to be the simple mechan ical action , and

equally mechanical reaction , to which it is sometimeslikened.We do not in practice find that it is as easilysuccessful as sending a prepaid telegram, or amessengerWordsmrth

’

sGrove, 1 .

x] THE FATHER 9

who has to wait for an answer ; still less is it like one of

the machines which, by turning a handle, or prwdng a

knob, produce at once the desired response. It is at the

time of our deepest need that the answer appears mostto seek ; it is the blackes t darkness which is hardest to

relieve, and the sorest need to which no help seems to

tells in the concluding verse of The Garrison of Cape Ann

I n the dark we civ like children ;

He does not end on that note, nor will we, but we will

Enough now to n otice that there seems to be some con

dition for the efiectiveness of prayer to be found in the

condition of our own mind, nerves , or even physicalhealth ; for it is probably in the weam ess and with theobscured faculties of sickness that pr: er seems often to

sluices between the soul and the Infinite Soul ; for, surely,if it were a ques tion of sending a line to an all-powerfuland dearly beloved friend, the answer would come the

Whilst it is clear, or as clear as such things canl

be,

that we are not the only agen t concerned in prayer, butthat there isan outward response, that there is someoneto pray to, some reserve of spiritual power not ourselvesthat makes not on ly for righteousness but meets our

other needs, yet it seems equally plain from the lessonsof experience that our own Spiritual faculties are essen tialto a communication which depends upon them for its

availing. The whole process is vastly more complicatedthan it appears, say , to a child.

All this need not cast any discredit or doubt upon the

to THE FOUNDATIONS (cu.

fact itself—upon the fact of the validity of prayer. It isenough testimony to this to point out how constan tly theinstinct has asserted itself in useless ways, in prayer forvictory in war, for success in busines s, or for fine weather.

It may safely be said that no prayer of this kind has

ever been of the least avail outside its purely subjectiveefiect upon the devotee or its telepathicmem ge to someother mind ; yet men have gone on doing it because theycould not help it. Again , the lack of the inward prayerhas constan tly led to the preparation of outward subetitutes in prin ted forms of ritual devotion . These cannot besaid to be themselves prayers ; they are stimuli, suggestivethoughts,a framework upon which prayermay build itself,

then , is natural to us, an in stinct that cannot deco.

Once more, then , as over and over again , we are led

to the belief in an indwelling God nestling at the back ofthe heart of man ; and on ce more we cannot say where

What a curious phen omenon is vocal congregationalprayer. It is addressed to God ; but it is uttered in thehearing of the audience,is reallyaimingatin fluencing them,

and however genuine itmay be as individual communion ,

it fails un less it takes the hearers with it. Its con tentsare so general as to be fit for common aspiration ; theyshould meet the needs of some one or of some group,outside the speaker. Our own personal prayers wouldbe profaned by publicity. If public prayer did not exist ,and exist most helpfully, we should be tempted to sayd prion

'

that there could be no such thing. Whereas itis and always has been everywhere. Can the explanationbe that we are notaddressing our prayers in twodiscrepan tdirections after all , but on ly in one, that in reaching theharts of the hearers through their ears, we reach Godwithin them, by setting them individually praying? Thecongregation as one man has commun ion with the One

1 ] THE FATHER rr

lndwelling God.We do not pray in to space, though itlooka like it to the unknowing . God is not to be reached

by way of the sky .

At the end we know , when all the anthropomorphismhas been washed out of the purity of our conception ,

that it is a Person that we wan t ; or, to Speak morecarefully, that it is a human like relationship with our

humanity that we seek,“A heart behind creation beating.

”

Nor is this a blind cry of the emotional nature on ly, anun justifiable “

will to believe.

”The highest we can touch

through the personal faculties must be personal ; it can ,

at any rate, be nothing smal ler or simpler ; how muchlarger and more complex it may be we have no facultyfor discerning . The things of a man are cognisable bythe spirit of man , and the things of God by so much of

the spirit of God as can dwell within him. In prayer weare turning naturally to that out of which our soulswere made, to the home to which by our nature webelong.

How , then , shall we conceive of the Divine, so vast,but yet so close and personal ? How shall we combin ethe God of our philosophy and the God of our prayers ?

—it is religion in exercise. Toput it in the simplest terms ,

wemust have a divine Being who reacts upon us as prayerreacts. Here is the crux of our inquiry.We cannot prayto “

the unconditioned Whole ” and we cann ot think ofGod as ultimately less than the Whole. L et us try toexamine in to the nature of Personality.

8. The hopelessness of any attempt at a rigid definition of Personality comes out very clearly in the

by Miss E. M. Rowell of the Royal Holloway College ,

in The Hibbert journal for April, 191 1 . It is far frommy in ten tion to quote them for the purpose of making

i s THE FOUNDATIONS [cm

game of thsm, though they are little inore than the

statemen t of a puzzle ; and the last quotation shows

that the authoress herself agrees with me. The most

increase our personality, not by what we get, but by whatwe give. Is not that what we should expect if we existand exercise function , not for ourselves or for our own

growth, but as subservien t parts of a larger wholeas a cog in amachine ? In this case it is not amachinebut a great personal Whole, made up of Persons. And

our importance in that Whole is measured by the numberand forcefulness of our reactions upon , or relations with,

other Personal elemen ts in the Whole, by the value , thatis, of our contribution to the service of God andMan , not

by any aggrandisernent, extension or personal wage wemay be said to acquire for it.

Letus quote some still passages fromthisHibbertarticle.

The sel f is nought ex cept by the medium of the not-sel f.A man is himself in so far, and onl y in so far, as his in terest and

being extend beyond himself. Personality is a comin g out of

onesel f, a mingling with the world, a losin g of one'

s soul , which

results in the saving of the same . A man ‘

s en vironmen t—his

and though it is true that you do not destroy the sel f, yet theself is more or less mutilated thereby ; and if you proceed to

divest aman more and more of his possessions you will probablyreach a limit when you will be hard put to it to main tain thatthe man is still himsel f.

Bradley says of the sel f that its conten t is n ever one withits being : its what always is in flagran t discrepancy with its

that."A man is not what he thinks of, and yet is the man he

is because of what he thinks.

The sel f thus becomes as it were a cen tre of attraction , round

teristic form according to the law of attraction .

The lesson which the modern world has still to learn , aftertwenty cen turies of Christian ity, too, is that there is no such

thing as self-realisation ; that the sel f has no kingdom of its

1 4 THE FOUNDATIONS [cm

All these declare unmistakably that to enrich the

personality you must expend it, that all its getting is

it is more like a tool with unseen Power behind it thanlike a store of anything which is exhausted by use ; that,in fact, the l.aw of the Conservation of Energy can only

behind'

the lifi le persmalmganmnd by reahsrng’

bewilder

that a person is more like an electric engine fed by a

current that does not fail , than like aboiler full of steem ;more like a nerve centre than a bag to be filled. So that

its characteristics are all of them those of somethingwhich is a part of something greater, a part of an

Infinite Personality with which it is in touch, and of

which it is an organ , andupon which itcan draw forpower.

This is exactly what we find in our own experience.

Our lives are on ly enriched by the love, friendship, orservice that we give, not by absorbing the gifts of otha

'

s

A person of ample means and indulgen t habits, whoselife is a succession of “ pleasures,

”who sits listening to

other people act or sing or play, who watches cricketmatches and eats dinners, with whom to hear a good

boredom is only averted by meeting charming people , or

by taking a foreign tour, such a one does not know the

real joy and power of which humanity is capable. Suchpleasures in measure are necessary, or at least desirable,

them; but they are not by themselves enough to makeaman or woman either great or efficien t or happy. Our

best happiness is in the work that we do, in having thestrength to do it, and in the pleasure of its achievemen t.John Bright

'

s definition of happinessWi s having a con

genial task andmaking progress in it. The more a manis in active and helpful touch with a large number of his

i] 1 3

fellow creetures, the larger is the personality of the man .

lessly sbsorbed in the care of your health or in the

avoidance of fatigue, by becoming attached to some un ~

till it becornes a tiny and un loveiy thing. So-and-so is

these things are as they are unless we are a part, an

organ , of the Personality of God.to. Of the fact of our own personal eidsfence we are,

as l said, sure. I t is the fact on which all our other per

ourselves, and we cannot get outside it to look at it, anddescribe it. And the terms we might try to use wouldfail, became it is explicable by n one of them. They arederived from it, not it from them. It is primary and

un ique.We may, however, sketch some of its distinctivequalities ; and I shall try to show that these, addedtogether, constitute the highest created product ; butone at every poin t imperfect, and irres istibly poin tingto some unattained pattern or idea] , which would thusseem to be the Inmost Thought of the Universe ; morepersonal than we are, not less.

And I smiled to thin k God’

s greatn es s flowed around

As persons we are more complex than most animalsbecause ourconsciousness includes thefuturc’. Andwe value

think particularly of the future, allow for it. safeguard

1 E . B. Brow n in g, Rhyme of the DuchessMay .Mostofwhat follows nex twas suggestedbyreading TheNMoreof Personality ,lecturesdeliveredatOx fordbyRev .Wil liamTemple,then Headmaster of Repton .

1 6 THE FOUNDATIONS (ca.

it, fear it. But we are perpetually pulled up by our

imperiect knowledge of the future. Foretel ling is a

rare pom , though l myself befieve that it occasionally

to be creatures of !repulse momen tary, passionate, evenblind.We move, at our best, in an ordered sequence,

beginning in a purpose and reaching a goal ; we desire

on ly joy in harmony with the quiet landscape of happiness and peace which culminates in peaks of joy . Our

children '

s developing Personality wemark by their stagesin steadiness and self control . But we are only imperfectPersons after all : a poor copy of our pattern which is

sometimes shown to His servants in the Moun t ; one whoseWill looks like soulless law , but really knows no variableness nor shadow of turning, because it is always right,and cannot be bettered by change.

Again : as Persons, no longer beasts or passive Things.

not en large on this trite and obvious Nineteenth Cen turytheme. The greatest men in some directions are the

great conquerors of Nature—the great inven tors. Thisall leads our thoughts up to a Personal ity of infiniteknowledge of Nature ; whose Thoughts are Nature

'

s laws.

The distance between this infinitely endowed Person , and

the greatest of our researchers, is ameasure of the finiteness of man ; the distance between Edison and a savagemeasures a portion of his infinite path.We aim, again , at being free. The control of our ownactions is a condition of our complete personality.Weclaim it by the deepest of the instincts of our manhood.

Freedom is obedience to a law which is within ; it is ameasure of self-determination . But it does not stop there

i] THE FATHER r7

Full-orbed frwdom is freedom from the inward tyrants,

powerful central government aithin .We measure thedignity oi ourpen onal character by this quality of steadyorderly emancipation from sin and temptation .

when we fail we cry

And ah ior a man to ariee in me,

That the man l ammay cease to be l '

On this line the archetypal Personality, then , is one

poten t will.We are made, in this as in other ways, inthe image of God, but are not yet made perfect .The faculties of love and sacrifice, too, are treasures

of our personality, developed out of. but far beyond, theparen tal instinct in animals. Ceaseless love and service ,

then , must be at the heart of things, if our upward pathis ordained by any consisten t Will . From beyond thestars we hear—“Oh heart I made, a heart beats here.

”

Browning's Arab physician , Karshish, was led by hissudden discovery of Jesus andhis teaching to a conceptionof Love en throned as God. Saul, another of Browning

’

s

inspired creations, saw the vision of Christ from the loveof David. The lines are well known and often quoted.

’

Tis the weakness in strength, that l cry for l my fleah. that l seek

I n the Godhead l I seek and l iind it. O SauL it shall beA Face like my face that receives thee ; aMan like tome,

Thou shalt love and be loved by. for ever : aHand like this handShall throw open thegates of new life tothee l See the Christ stand l

Through men of love we are led with Saul to believe intheMan of Love, through Himwe moun t with Karshish,

by a e cond induction , to a God of Love.We pass fromtheknown to theunknown . It isen tirely experimen taland

personality to God’s. But theories which appear reason

Tenn yson ,Maud.

is THE FOUNDATIONS (on .

We need guidance. and above all practice, practice of theand leader of those of us whose masters are

greetVictorim lelt the need.

Our dearest ialth; our ghaetlieet doubt

He, They , One, All ; within , without ;The Power in darkne-v' m we gueee

I found Hlm not in wor-lo or ana,

Or eagle’

s wing , or lnsect’

s eyoz

Nor thro'

the questions men may try ,

l l e’

er when falth had fall’

n aslerp,

l heard a voice “ believe no more

That tumbled in the Godless deep

A warmth withln the breai ‘ would meltThe freezing reaaon

'

s colder-part.And like a man ln wrath the heart

Stood up and answer'

d “ I have felt.

No, like a child in doubt and fear :

But that blind clamour made me wiseThen was l as a chii ‘ that cries,

But. crylng. knows his father near ;

And what I am beheld againWhat is, and no man understandsAnd out of darkness came the hands

Tennyson himself comments thus in his publishednotes on this passage : “ I believe that God revealsHimself in every individual soul, andmy idea of Heavenis the perpetual ministry of one soul .0 another.

”

Take away belief in the self-conscious personality of

My most passionate desire is to have a clearer and

I nMemoriam, cxx iv .

I] THE FATHER 19

fuller vislon of God. The soul eeems to be one wlth

God. how l cannot tel l . l can sympathiae with cod inmy poor little way.

There is a remarkable paseage in the Fourth Goepel

(x . 34-36) whichputs clearly all that this chapter pleadafor.

l l he called them godmunto whom the word of

God came. say ye of him. whom the Father hathsanctified and sent in to the world.

’

l‘

hou blasphemest ;because l said. l amthe Son of God?

”Thoee

“untowhom

the word of God came ” doee not mean thoee who heardpreaching—thatdoes notmake men godlike atall timwbut those to whorn the l nwardWord came. He called

thoee gods who had touch with God, who had en tered

the unity of the eternal .

xz. So we too, even thus helped. may find it hardto realise the personal qualities we need in One in whoee

organismwe are but cells. But by trying so to do. ”

are on the road to the truth, ever approximating. if

our religious experience, and as the world passes themin its quest.are awarrant that there is a goal . that truth

and so does the child. But he should grow out of this,

simple human like conception ; aboveall , notpress it. I relygreatly on the word “

omnipresen t . Any one who willmeditate on that, will I think go the right way.

If we confine " personality ” to creatures like ourselves.the on ly

“ persons” we kn ow , it is not difi cult to see howinappmpriate such a simple and unqualified use of a

well-known word becomes. when applied to the Infinite.

Even the passion of love and guardianship which we al l

agree to attribute to God, as the very cen tre of His being.was apparen tly felt by those who wrote the thirty-ninearticles of the Church of England to be inappropriate.


For the first article says that it is a fundamen tal truththat God is "

without body, parts, or passions. It is,however, when we come to such feelings or passions aslaughter, pain , grief, regret, or anger, that our difficultiesaccumulate.

Take laughter. A sense of humour, the capacity forlaughter, is a part of our personality, which only increasesas our faculties become more sensitive andmore complex .

The Psalmist had no difficulty about it, but sang “He

that sitteth upon the heavens shal l laugh. The Lordshall have them in derision .

" It is from the Psalmistsand their fellows that we have fortified our an thropomorphic conception of the Divine. I will laugh at yourcalamity. I will mock when your fear cometh,

”says

the Divine Wisdom.We are struck by its irreverenceand its impossibility. The sen se of humour implies a

sudden perception of incongruity, which certain ly couldnot arise in the un limited In telligence which reconcileth

all . Hen ce the poin t of the humorous story of the prayerwhich began “

Paradoxical as it may appear to TheeOh God .

”Or laughter may arise as Plato in Philebus

said it did, from the sight of an other’smisfortunes, whichlook ludicrous. Hobbes on the same lines spoke oflaughter as a sudden glory rising from the suddenconception of some eminence in ourselves, as comparedwith the infirmities of others.

" This touch of veryhuman personality is clearly inappmpriate to the MostHigh. 50 is the laugh of triumph in the mouth ofOne in whom we also say there is no struggle nor

change n or triumph. It is clear that this feeling of humouror hilarity inheres only in a personality of limited range

But on the other hand if we think of Him as the

pervading spirit in all that is best in ourselves, then thesense of comedy, the joy, themerriment , the incongruitiesproper to our fin iteness, the innocen t mockery at a


of the worshippers. And themocker smiles andcriticises,saying that man made God in his image. Clearly we

must find some reply to a hal f truth like this—a pestilen terror in effect , as I think. So that in fact the IndwellingGod comes to His own all the time, under all savage or

gentle, ascetic or joyous, military or mercan tile, forms .

Whom they ign oran tly worship, Him declare we un tothem as the permeating, irrepressible, mastering DivineSpirit in man . The God who can be worshipped at anyepoch is of course a God akin to and comprehensible tothe men of that epoch. For He is in them.

1 4. But besides being simple the true God must beinfin ite must in His completeness be beyond all our

conception . He cannot be a phenomenon we can get

phenomen on is too smal l . Wide as our need Thyfavours fall.” The arrangemen ts of human and Divinelife must be such as in fal libly couple endless need and

endless grace with what looks like automatic precision .

A good illustration is given by Ruskin in his Ethicsof theDust. A child dabbles its fingers in a basin of water,a quite small, finite and accessible portion of liquid. But

the child talks to it as though it were the great infin iteocean , water of sea and river and sky . And so indeed itis.We can al l drink a little water, and do so fromcradleto grave ; but we cannot conceive properly the total massof water on the planet, though we can talk about it.

Must not God be as un iversal and immense as the

water ? Yet an authentic portion of it, in every wayas good as any other portion , is at our daily and hourlydisposal . But this analogy from the homogeneousness ofwater must n ot be pressed, and can only roughly fit . Itis always risky to venture on an in organic parallel to anorgan ic fact , and still more to a spiritual one. I do notregard the Divin e Spirit as anything like a homogeneousliquid ; rather as a highly organ ised Being, with parts and

1] THE FATHER 23

functions differen tiated for its varied purposes. As the

world inhabited by man—e laborated in his tame animal sand tamed acres, in his fruits and fiowers, in hismachines

and his vivid and penetrating imagination—is more richand diversified than Nature

’

s un touched forest, so is theworld of the spirit likely to be capable of becoming farricher and more diversified still ; full of conscious agen tsprobably, as thematerial world is full of unconscious ones.

andneeding nopictorial fancyto people itwith principalitiesand powers, angels and archangels and all the heavenlyHost ; though we cannot follow , nor really glow withadoration , over the Eastern imagery of the alabasterfurniture and golden paving stones of the ApocalypticHeaven .

1 5. There is a fine passage in Origen , from whosewritings themodern thinkerwill rarely turn disappoin ted.

The L ogos was the larger personality inWhom the world

of rational beings ex isted in a man ner similar to that in which

distinct ideas ex ist in the mind of man . Aa tbe nd is active

through its ideas, and is nothing apart from them, so the L ogos

them, has no ex istence apart from them.

God lives throughHis Logos andHis Logos in'. ) IV08 a spiritual

world of rational bein gs, who again live by strivmg to know theirsource and to act consisten tly with their know ledge of Him.

Origen sought to explain the possibility and the

actuality of the Incarnation on the basis of the essen tialiden tity of human personality with the Divine . The

human spirit was a fin ite image of the infinite personalityof the Logos. The reason ing power and the will of manare the offspring of the essential attributes of a Divinepersonality. The spirit of man is a spark from the

infinite fire, a ray from the Divine Light. Its limitationnot its substance produces the difference between it andits source.


1 6. The author of the fourt g ospel gives us in hisfirst chapter a statemen t of his own doctrine of God andman , and a wonderft tight-linked unity he makes ofit—complete in that short sequence of verses. He beginswith the Absolute, where it is notunnatural that grammarand logic should fail him, as they have failed everybodywho has tried to express ultimate reat or ultimateexistence or ultimate life or whatever word is preferred .

He begins “The Word was with God, and the Word was

God.

”The merest child can see the grammatical con tra

diction between beingGodandbeingwith God,butthemore

you know of the subject the more it seems to be all right .However, we will begin with the statemen t that The

Word was God,"and he goes on to describe the Word as

the creative power, as the transmitted life of God in theregenerated soul, giving such souls power to become sonsof God. Then he declares that the Word was made fleshand was iden tical with Jesus of Nazareth ; this was thegreat novelty, doubtless, of his writing ; but he does notst0p there ; he proceeds to say that

“ of His fulness haveall we received.

” That is to say God was the Word,

the Word was Christ, we also have received of Hisfulness and of such Divine grace that we are also fairlydescribable as sons of God. It is a tight-linked un ityindeed. It leaves no room for the system-maker, whoknows how to lay down the boun daries between God andChrist and the Holy Spirit andHumanity,andcan arrangethe edifice of an in tellectual conception , with itsmain linesand its partitions and its doorways from the Divine tothe Human , from the unmanifest to the manifest, fromthe eternal to the pres en t . Such schemes are utterly out

of place in this last and greatest thought of the Apostolicage, concerning the nature of its Lord . How can we

explain this permeating iden tity ? Surely it is a life, acommunicated life, con tinuous from the beginn ing to theex tremity of a living organ ism. As a bud at the edge of

1] THE FATHER 25

a twig partakes of the life of the twig, and the twig of

the life of the branch, and the branch of the life of the

trunk and the root, so we are a part ofGod and our lifeHis life. No one has ever yet penetrated to the heartand cen tre, the secret poin t of origin of the life in the

trunk of a tree ; it is everywhere but it is n owhere ex

elusively ; and so with the Divine life of which we have

1 7.Wehave spoken so far,in language thatdidnotclaimto bemore than metaphor, of the eternal One of whomour

fleeting personalities are temporary and local outgrowths—we have spoken of ourselves as flowers or leaves on thetree of God—as cells in the body of God.

But if we are not averse to being taught by Biology,not afraid that its teachings are sure to be paths tomaterial ism, and to the loss of religion altogether, Ibelieve we may go further and learn more. Biology isan unwelcome teacher to some ; but to others itmay give

All that is in man came, then , through the potencieshidden in a microscopic germ cell. which has gatheredmatter round it, and subdivided over and over againtill it has become an adult human being, a thousand

physical and men tal peculiarities, al l our heredity, camethrough that tiny speck of living something, (I hardly liketo call it matter) is past our realisation , though we arebound to accept it. But at this poin t we, in this book,must demandmore of it. The Divine Indwellermust havebeen there too. For al l that has happened to us since

is but the increase ofmatter, chemical elemen tsmade in toorganic compounds. It is not more material istic to findGod in operation in the germ than in the man it has

The Divine powerworks through the process of growthand in the plan of the collection of organic matter. It is

26 THE FOUNDATIONS [cn .

not to be found located in any special portion of the

physical frame, such as the brain or the heart, it is in the

whole, everywhere . It comes in fact through the original

But what do we kn ow of this mysterious entity, thisunexplored home and source of life? It seemsboth spiritualand material, a true vehicular»: Dci, the nearest we can

come to the secret place of the Most High.

The answer is that Biology tells us that it is eternal.The continuity of the germ-plasm is auniversally accepteddoctrine, and has been for a generation ‘. It is not the

product of the organismwhich conveys it in each generation . The germwhich grows up is accompanied from the

beginning by other germs which do n ot change, but

retain their character, and find their place in the embryo,and go out with it in to the world, and so pass on un

changed, to an other generation , they and their germprogeny, so long as the race lives. Thus each generation islike a flower which is born and dies on a stock that is permanen t, and the reality hidden behind every genealogicaltree is a branching development of the one mysterioussource of life, bearing ever its sequence of fruits in Godinspired human lives. Moreover in this we find the causeof our onenesswith all othermen , the human bond we feel.For it appears that this germ-plasmis accurately the sameas has come down through all other families.We are

thus al l made in God’

s image :we are very closely iden tifiedwith our brothers and sisters, less closely with moredistan t and ever more distan t cousin s ; but the bondbetween all the families that have inhabited the samecoun try for dozens of generations is very real and close .

This is the biologcal discovery of a common humanity,wherever there has been a common ancestor.We are

“members one of another, as Paul tn ilySinceWeismann '

s observations in 2883 and his larger work

in 1 898.

1] THE FATHER 27

divined; unselfishness is the law of the self we bear fromthe foun t of our being, whilst selfishness is just “

the

law in the members,”in the individual that has grown

up here for the uses of the Creator upon the earth. If aphysical justification for Altruism is wan ted, it is here .

Mankind is one organism, and demands the loyalty of itsparts.

This gerrn-plasm has been our dwelling-place in al l

generations. It can not be offered as a solution of themystery of God, for it IS indeed itselfamystery ofmysteriesand carries inquiry Beyond, but it satisfies the conditionsneeded by our religious instincts. How much deeper andhow much '

simmer now does the saying of the Apostlebecome, that

“God is Love.

"And we may ponder too,

on the idea of “The Spirit that quickeneth (or giveth

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giverof Life. The writers of these words knew nothing aboutgerm-plasm, but they recorded an in tuitive experiencewhich, knowing what is now kn own , we can scien tificallyendorse andjustify

l.

NOTE

The foundation on which the edifice of this chapter and this

book is built is the reality of the three experiences ofConsecration,of Love, andof Prayer; leading on to conclusions on the nature ofPersonality. Few will deny that these are,in one form or another,

universal and real. But those who carry in their minds the

This biological paragraph is bm d on Dr G. F. Nicolai’

s

Biology ofWar, pp. 392-6 . This book was written in a Germanfortress during the war. The author, the leading heart specialistin Germany, was Professor of Physiology in Berlin , and was

dismissed and confined and reduced to poverty for opposing thewar. After man y hardships he escaped by an aeroplane to

Denmark. His book, 506 large pages , is published by Den t forzr/ and is a standard work on Peace, an immense store of

in formation .


evolutionaryhistory of these experiencesmsy say thstthey are not

is on ly the herd instinct ol’

gregarious animsls developed. Lovewas originally on ly the means of reproduction by ses Prayer is

the instinct of the savage in fear of calamity, helpless beforeunknown t

'

orces. A book on Quaken smis not the place to treat

this issue at length; but it may briefly be said that if, to save

argument, all this be granted. and thus a glimpse of light be

thmwn upon the creative proeesa and a sketchy outline ot'

its

story be made visible, the promes itself remains the wonder. I t

is in that that the Divine mystery dwells. oWhat made simplelowly instincts turn in to such glorious gifts ? Further the ex

periences themselves are not less real, not less in accordance withthe human and Divine nature which we are out, starting fromthem, to investigate, than if, as our ancestors thought, they hadbeen produced full grown by a special act of creation.

30 ms FOUNDATIONS (cu.

us now into insanity or hopelessness or blank con fusion .

Ourperceptions would give way before it

So with our perception of God ; to our faith it is

proportioned. Faith is the soul's grasp of God. Nomighty works can survive in a cold, unresponsive atmosphere. Nothing was clearer to our Lord

'

s mind, andin his experience , than this.We have just as much of

God with us as our needs demand and our facultiespermit. Emmanuel—God with as—grows as we grow .

The law of parsimony holds. By living up to and usingthe Divine afilatus we have, we grow in to use of thedoubled Talent, and come nearer to the joy of the Lord.

If we could fiy to the sun we should be burnt upbut we have just enough of the sun to give us the risinghope of dawn on the day

'

s work, to ripen our craps at

noon , and to cover the moun tains with the smset gloryof evening. God is with us enough to make life hopeful,ripening and glorious, but not enough to make us throwcommon things to an un timely burning.

a. This conception of our unity together in God

makes clearer many difficulties which fail to be made

Atonemen t . The mission of our Lord was to reunite

peace in the Father’

s house, replacing the communionmarred by sin . Sin is separation from God ; and He

came to conquer sin . Sin is the self-assertion of the fleshand of the mind of the flesh—the undivine self—whichshould on ly be the instrumen t, the necessary clothingand vehicle of the soul ; and needs to be volun tarilysubmitted in a heaven ly obedience, and to con form tothis cen tral Divine Order with which our souls haveorgan ic union . Every theory of the Atonemen t breaksdown which assumes the separateness of God andMan ,

I I] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 3x

as twO parties to a bargain . Therein Christ is mad to

be the victim of a colossal injusfica -discreditable to

the other two principals in the transaction . But it is

all needless—a lawyer’

s scrupulous quibble—the resultof an ignorant people accepting primitive teaching. If,however, the mission of Jesus was to restore, wherever

His Gospel penetrated, a un ity of purpose, a harmonyof motive, a Divine obedience, in the heart of thebeliever,—the At-one-men t , the reconciliation , is therein

3. Again ,—to check our theory by practice—it is

instructive to notice that we find that fellowship comes

is a poor afiair where the worshippers do not know one

another ; it is a failure where they disapprove of or hateone another. On the otherhand true communion betweenkindred souls melts in to worship either in a

“

place ofworship ” or out of it. Fell owship and worship are twowords for the same communion . How often have we

heard the prayer : “As we come nearer to one an other,

Lord, we come nearer to Thee.

" This well-known fact

4. What is the bearing of this thought of God uponthe doctrine of the Light within , which was the Specialmessage of Quaker-ism in the seven teen th century, butis now widely and livingly held, and is a subject of gen eralreligious interest ? It is indeed, broadly, the mystic

’

s

faith. There has, throughout Quaker history, been someuncertain ty and con troversy about the Light thatlighteth every man that cometh in to the World. The

adversaries of early Quakerism not unnaturally retortedupon their plain-speaking critics that they were assuminga blasphemous claim to in fallibility and that tailors andshepherds should not claim to be wuser than bishops andChristian Fathers. Indeed, the first generation of Quakerapostles had not passed to its rest before misgivings had

3: rm: FOUNDATIONS (cu.

men ts implying their practical unity with orthodoxChristians on most poin ts began to be uttered. EdwardBurrough, John Camm, Francis Howgill and IsaacPenington had died

—had died too young, after manyimprisonmen ts—before the first flush of the glorioussense of immediate revelation had been checked by the

cold hand of authority.

The diversity thus presen t from all days except theearliest has never been finally adjusted among Friends.

There have been those on the one hand to whom individualenlightenmen t and personal freedom of conviction havebeen as the breath of life ; and on the other, those whofelt lonely when outward supports were taken away, whoneeded and valued the help of outward authority, indwd,

who lived upon it. That is, no complete and harmoniousphilosophy of Divine Guidance and its limits exists amongall who hear the name of Friend with general agreemen t .Does not this point to some original weakness in the

premises, poin t to there being something imperfect inthe ideas of Divine and human nature with which theseven teen th cen tury faced the problem? It is someerror in preliminary assumptions which causes argumentsto lead into a blind alley. Let us anxiously scrutiniseour data. The seven teen th cen tury had not reachedcan I venture to suggestP—such a thought of God and

ofman as is even possible to us now—poor andunworthyas ours doubtless is. Nevertheless, George Fox was here,

as elsewhere, in touch with future thought where he says,that though he read of Christ and God he knew themonly from a like spirit in his own soul .It would have been well if this simplicity had been

retained in its fulness in Quaker thought ; but that couldhardly be. To have stated in plain terms that God’

s

dwelling-place was not in a remote heaven but in the

hearts of men would have been impossible in the days of

n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 33

the Commonwealth; it would have been equivalen t to

Atheism in the popular mind ; and the early Friends

were already sufiiciently suspect of that, through their

denial of the power of all ecclesiastical persons and

man a sufficien tly comprehensive entity to be in touchwith God, just as normally as he is in touch with the

the last thirty years, as a serious andexten sive intellectual

The early Friends had al l been born in to a world inwhich “ fallen man ,

"with his weaknesses, and especially

his helplessness, was the basis of thought—a world fullof con trasts and of opposites—God and man , righteousness and sin , the spiritual and the natural , the heaven lyand the earthly kingdom, the soul and the body.Wedo not deny these con trasts, but we are able to recognisethe deeper unities out of which they spring and to whichthey belong and return .

In harmony with this general line of thought, then ,

the early Friends insisted that the spirit of God was not anatural light ; they made a too absolute contrast ‘. Perhaps itwas in theirmin istry that the effect of this wasmostobservable. Believingministry to be an almostmiraculousproduct not to be produced in the will of the creature, it

became confined to the few persons who possessed therequisite sensitive psychical temperamen t,and itproducedan unconfessed feeling of in fallibility, which itwas impossible to main tain and irreveren t to deny. But we maynow recognise that theministry is adivine pr oduct becauseit is a human product, and that it is a human productbecause it is a divine product, and that like the musicof earth, heavenly harmonies sounding through our wordsare bafiled by our poor technique, and are dependen t onan orchestra which is never perfect . The doctrine of the

See Book 1 . cap. iv . 54 .


fall of Adam had therefore a paral yzing efiect uponQuaker theory‘. But this can now be restated.

The doctrin e of the l nward Light is on ly a way of

saying that we are, as l have pleaded, a living part of a

living God—the God, to use Edward Caird’

s favouritephrase, fromWhomwe come, in Whomwe live, to Whomwe go. But we do not claimto be a perfect part of l

-Iim,

or in perfect communication with perfect agen ts on theother side. I n the subject matter of Biology and Psychology there is no perfectness ; it is enough if there is life,health and growth ; a passing from less to moreb fromthe simple to the complex . There is an everlasting flux,but no mechan ical in fal libility or flawless perfection , asa circle or a square may be perfect . There never was aperfect rose, n ever a perfect face, never a perfect soul.But the loveliness of the nose, of the face, and of thesoul, surpasses the loveliness of the square.We claim

no square or round perfection . Indeed the errors ofreligious people are plain , andwrong guidance has workedthe worst ruin . If we have to be checked by our friendswe need not ascribe the error to God, nor believe that ourfaith is vain . The wheat field must wave in the sun ;

though many ears are misshapen , we shall not cover itwith a roof, and only exotics with glass.We can not dowith any ecclesiastical in termediary of glass, thick or

clear, between ourselves and ourselves, the man in Godand the God in man . It is unthinkable.We rather say,

with the exultation of faith :

Speak toHimthan forHe hears,andSpiritwith Spirit can meetCloser is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet' .

5 . One question will be sure to arise in the minds ofthose whose training lies among these subjects. I meanthe familiar difficulty as to whether we are to credit God

i I am indebted to various passages in the writin gs of RufusM. Jones for the general thought above ex pressed.

3 Tennyson ,The Higher Panther

’

sm.

1 1] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 35

with evil as well as good. Such a questioner might askYou have described God as the metaphysical absolute,do you consider Him the ethical absolute al so ? If not,

ultimately to Monism? Put in to simpler language thismeans that if God is not to be credited with causing evilmoral character, who is ? And is there in the universe a

the God I am feeling after is not the power for evil , but

wholly the power for good. The conflict, with whichexperience makes us familiar, between good and evil isthe conflict between God and his opposite. Am I, then ,

driven back upon Dualism as a final theory ? I shouldreply that I am not a dogmatic Dualist, on ly that I don ot see my way clearly to Monism ; that is, I do not feelable to reconcile all things in to a harmonious Whole,though always moving in that direction . For practicalpurposes I am a supporter of good and an enemy of evil ;but I avoid an acceptance of ultimate Dualism on the

very excellent ground of sheer ign orance. I sometimesallow mysel f to speculate, in accordance with our usefulhabit of drawing parallels between what we do understan dand what we wan t to understand, between the physicaland the moral— to speculate in this way .

The refuse in the drains of a great city is to thatcity wholly evil ; it is the typical example of physicalevil and danger on a large scale. It must be shunn edlike the poison it is. But what is it? It is the worn out

and used up; it is the once serviceable remnan t of whathas been valuable ; thes e are the cast-off husks ; they havebeen essen tial in their time to what is healthful and good ;they are not evil in themselves, they are only evil wherethey are ; their evil isrelative to time andplace. Further,hereafter theywill be restored by the action of the healthfulpowers of bacteriological nature to usefulness, fertilityandanew generation . Of the good andthe beautiful they

3—2

36 THE FOUNDATIONS [cu.

are an essential part ; in fact they belong to the great

scheme of the renewal of life. They are as essen tial toit as are old age and death to the eternal youthfulnessof the world.

useful ancien t passion out-of-date, selfishness used upand superseded, the craft, the violence, the unbridledegoism of the brute and the savage. And just as cepiousweeds and copious crops come from the same rich soil,

the Divine cleansing stations in the human heart, becomesSpiritual power, visibly sohere, presumably sohereafter.

On these lines, therefore, we may hold the door opentoMonism, to the “ far 06 divin e even t to which the wholecreation moves.

”But this is speculation , and I do not

aim at going beyond experience .

6. Will this kind of thought help us to face the

con stan tly recurring calamities blindly falling upon us ?

A strong and good man , a friend and travelling companion of mine in our holidays, with his feet on the

rungs of the ladder of municipal activity in his nativetown , serviceable and competen t, able to devote most

Meeting and the Adult School, the only son of his agedparen ts, now sinki ng in to weakness after beautiful lifetimes of service, a recently married husband and fatherof a young child—this man was kn ocked down and

killed by a motor-bus in London in a momen t withoutblame to anybody. I attended and spoke at the greatOpen-air fun eral where all his native town was moved,and hundreds waited on our words. Could I tell thepoor wife and pde and tottering paren ts that this blindand wretched acciden t was simply the Lord’s doing ; doneunder arrangemen t or permission directly given by theFather— the father of al l fatherhoods, represen ted in willandcharacterbyourLordJesus Christ ? I couldnot. I wes

33 THE FOUNDATIONS (on .

7. What a host of difi culties does this thought ofa World Soul remove ! The query about Divine justiceis for ever rising upon the lips of men .Who indeed hasbeen treated with the kind of justice which one wouldascribe to the action of an infinitely just and omn iscientexternal poten tate ? What of our inherited diseases orfaults of temperamen t ? What of the upbringing of ourcity

of San Francisco earthquakes and fires and Titanic

arise the old question about those on whom the Tower

The justice that there is in the world, on which wehabitual ly rely, is not the justice in Nature, which hasno justice, no kn owledge of it nor care ; but the justiceslowlymaking its ex tending way in man . Human nature,goodhuman nature, is just ; andwe are labouring tomakeitmore just al l the time . That, at any rate, is a foun tainof justice, which, though far from pure, has great possi

to be the Ultimate Law, is working its way through men ,

its in strumen ts, and it has no other way .

8. It must, one would think, have been this miseryof the world, and the pain of ascribing it to a singleindividual God,which led PhiloatAlexandria to elaboratethe doctrine of the Logos, with which we concluded thelast chapter. Philo was the heir both to Greece and toJudaea. The reverence of the Jews for the one Universal

nor pity nor mercy nor humil ity grow to perfection .

Nor n eed we hesitate to believe that there is a Hereafterwhere the innocen t suflerer may find restoration and perhaps“the far 06 interest of tears .

I t is on ly after all these thoughts have been found to be not

a complete answer, and when the problem of sin is added, thatwe ask concern in g God the question in the tex t.

1 1] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS)

Himthe One of the four letters, JHVH, the Tetragrarn

maton . With them the conception of the divine VVIsdomas an active emanation of the ultimate being of God had

become common , had become ahnost personified in the

Book of Proverbs‘,the Book ofWisdom,andEcclesiasticus.

Among the Greeks I-Ieraclitus had first, so far as our

underlying principle of the universe ; with the Stoics theLogos was the soul of the world, building it up accordingto its purpose. Then there was the Platonic doctrineof Logoi as the primal images, ideas, or patterns of things

At the University of Alexandria, the meeting-placeof the Greek and the Jew , Philo, born from ten to twen tyyears before our Lord, combined these already harmoniousthoughts in to the great doctrine which was afterwards tobe adopted in to Christianity. Indeed Christian n o lessthan Greek and Jew felt the nee d of some such conception ,

and we feel it as much to-day .

The doctrine of the Logos was the means of givingweighty and reasoned expression to this need of our

the God of battles andalso for Omnipotence for wherethere is omnipotence there can be no battles. The Godwhom we find in practice is evolutionary in method,which is on ly another way of Sir .

\g that progress andvictory over a more or less in tractable environmen t, isthe method open to Him. It is

all around us here

As if some lesser god had made the world,

But had not force to shape it as he would’.

0. chapters i- ix . Since the passage above was written RendelHarris in his book en titled The Origin of the P rologue to Stjohn

’

s

Gospel has tracedthe Logosdoctrine directly to thisHebrew source,

apart fromPhilo or the Stoics. I t is of the deepest interest.Ten nyson , The Passing of Arthur.


It is en ough if the spiritual life within us, which is ofHim, is active and progressive, if the spirit which has

entered into the flesh is gradual ly making that flesh a

fitter home. In face of blind acciden tal ruin , livesdamaged with no apparent reck or care, we are thankful

if evil is not, as it sometimes is, triumphant, and if good

servan ts, whose organ s, whose vehicle we are. In His

name we serve in a cause which never has enough

servan ts.

It is doubtless, as I have noted,anecessity of thoughtthat theremust be in the absoluteOne Infin ite andEternal,without progress or change, abiding in calm where SpaceandTime have nomeaning,in achangeless exrstence,wherethere can be nothing which can be called a procas s or

a developmen t, which is never acting here more thanthere, nor nowmore than then ,where there can be neitherright nor wrong, victory nor defeat . Such is the eternal ,to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday,

"and

the isles but as dust in the balance. But as thought

from the human heart , and from the needs of men . Noman hath seen God at any time. Far other than thisis the Divine Power that we really know , and to whomwe pray as to a Father that is in Heaven .

I s not His love at issue still with sin ,

Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? ‘

He is, to al l appearance, far from all-powerful now . He

has His victories and His defeats. He needs our help.We are thankful for every little record of permanen tprogress in righteousness that we can coun t up.Webattle “ for the Lord against the mighty. He is one who

needs soldiers in His army and friends by His side .

Such is God in action as distinct from God in essence.

Browning, A Death in the Desert.

I I] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 4x

Suchis the purpose, the wil l , the activity of God. This iswhat thinkersmeant by the Logos, andwhat we generallynow describe as the Holy Spirit . It is His communicatedlife that we have. A religious soul that begins withexperience, and bases its thought thereupon , can find in

Him a home . It is neither cowardly nor disingenuousto say that fin ite faculties like ours cann ot pretend toexplore or to explain all the mysteries of Being, nor

accoun t for that age-long conflict in which the Word ofGod cal ls upon each one of us to play our part, mostaudibly of al l in thewords of Jesus Christ , through Whomwe have received Divine Grace. It would, indeed, beabnormal if our faculties extended to a cognisance of theAbsolute God. For they do not ex tend to the Absoluteanywhere. Al l ourknow ledge is partial,and limited by ourfaculties , playing on such parts of reality as our senses

and our in tuitions Ohar as material for them. Some

is not real . Neither of these doctrines about deceptive delusion have I personally room for, and such negations donot lead far, but nobody can actual ly prove that one orthe other, or perhaps both, may not be true. They arebeyond proof or disproof .We need not be troubled thatthe Absolute is utterly out of our beat.

9. How does the process of Creation fit in with thisthought of God in man ? The first kn owledge whicheveryone has is that he did not create himself to beginwith, that he is a product of the will of a creative power.

He is conscious of being in the grip of a great schemegoverned by principles which it is his business to learnand to obey.We begin , that is, with the consciousnessof a Creator. Yet we are constan tly modifying ourselvesall the time by purposive eflort.We train the mind toevery possible degree of fineness, or we pout a lip inrecurring evil temper, or our faces become plain signalsof peace within ; we are, in all our peculiarities and in

43 THE FOUNDATIONS [cu.

every one of our organs, the net permanent product of

race is, in a true sense, creating iteelf. Even the processes

which are now unconscimrs and habitual , like those of

digestion , were once purposeful efiortsmade by the simfle

generation , adding to or subtracting from the sum ofour organs and faculties . The mouth is a very mobileorgan . In judging a face l think it is not a bad rule to

ourselves to a large exten t. We present a case like

up stalactite, just as the living Spirit of God, and theliving purposes of our wills, build up our bodies and our

minds, and if the will is bad or weak, correspondinglyspoil or weaken them. But the stalactite as it standsis the result of ages of the same process, God

'

s building,the hardened product of what we speak of in ourselves as

ancestral habit. The conscience is thus an inherited product, which accoun ts for its curious warps, divergencesand gaps. Our duty is to make our own con science morepowerful and more symmetrical in our lifetime, and so

hand it on ‘.I know of no aspect of the relation between God

and man more helpful than this creative relation , in

predetermined for us by the great Thinker at the backof all thoughts, but His thoughts are carried out by ourthoughts, which are of Him. My Father worketh up

1 Even to those who fol lowWeisman n in denying the inheritance of acquired characters, there is left the large region of

imitation , education and environment . The statemen t in the

tex t, though weakened, is not destroyed.

n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 43

till now and l work. True it is, in the familiar wordsof F. W. H.Myers, that

Never a sigh of paeeion or of pity,

Never a wail for weakneee or for wrong,

Has not its archive in the angels'city ,

Finde not lte echo in the endless song .

But the archive is in the city of our own organism,

the endless song is the voice of human society. Whatbetter angels

’

city or endless song can there be than these

when the creative work is perfected ?To. The audacity of the statement that we are a

part of God can on ly be made acceptable to experienceby a clear statemen t of the real ity also of our weakness

that we are dust . But not dust only.

Really we are outposts of the Kingdom, fron tierstations every one of us of the Imperial Power workingthrough us to extend and con solidate its dominion .Weare the seat of war, of absorption , of pacification . Our

which is not itself.

rock, encroaching upon it along all its edges, abmrbingit and turning rough mineral to the bloom of flowers.We are each like one of those creeping flowerets, buildingq od. How if it be the task of this life to adapt one

soul, our own , to His Will, fit it for His service, makewar and two-mindedness to cease within its bordersand so be ready for further work hereafter, nearer the

heart of the Eternal harmony ?No words of humility or abasemen t jar, if it be only

remembered that besides being the chief of sinners, a

poor worm with a body of humiliation , aman is nevertheless the vehicle, however unworthy, of the very life

44 THE FOUNDATIONS [cmWhy does sin make suchamess of aman ?Why,whenit has become habitual , is the degradation so ruinous?

scatheless, though as from fire (I Cor. iii. His

opinionsmay veer absolutely round, but no disin tegrationof his personality occur. But let him lapse in soul ,

become a moral wreck, false at the bottom, or a victim

helpless weathercock of gusts of temper, and the creaturebecomes a festering mass of a corruption that is capableof spreading, as a living thing spreads, not easily cleaned

up like a heap of inorganic rubbish. Is it not that the

corruption of the best is the worst ? And it is becauseman is the home of God that this desecration of Histemple is sacrilege, the on ly real sacrilege. An inroadhas been made upon the Kingdomof God.

I am also inclined to believe that when this thought

of God has become customary in any of us, the terribleconsequences of sin will also become a customary thought,consequences not to be artificially avoided or compoundedfor, but so ruinous to the whole structure of our beingas to bring now and in the future a disaster whose limits

1 1 . Why are we never en tirely satisfied with our

selves or our experiences? Not only Alexander weptbecause there were no more worlds to conquer, not onlydo all the greatest monarchs ever labour to increasetheir power, the wealthiest men desire more millions,but on quite other lines of effort and en joymen t thecry is always "more.

"The man whose writings or

utterances have hadmost influence desires still to work,to teach and to in spire his fellows. The most popularperson is never quite at the end of his or her conquests.

The veriest sain ts we have known have deplored theirshortcomings. Of course this tendency becomes in many

46 THE FOUNDATIONS (cu.

conservative Englishbody ,wouldhave translated it the

unspiritual man ,

”if they had been allowed to do so.

Look at the process of converfion or spiritual awakening,

which is so undoubted a fact of common experience.

l t most commonly and most happily oocurs in u rly

years , when it comes gently, naturally (if l may use theword), ae a great access of aspiration and of happinees,

a new revelation of the meaning of life and a joyfulacceptance of loyalty toGod.When tbe hardened sinnerof later life is converted by a revivalist or otherwise, he

has already caked over his spirit with layers of the clayof the earth, and the bursting through has to be ca:a

strOphic, and a definite tmn ing round andretracing of thepast. But it is, all the time, awiping out and a destruction of that which sin has brought, and which was no

part of theman ’

s endowmentatbirth,howeverpronouncedthe hereditary weaknesses may have been which haveplayed the traitor to his nobkr sel f. But they are

happiest who know that their spiritual awaken ing wasbrought about by a still small voice, rather than by theearthquake and the storm. And such is the normalexperience with young people Of good heredity and care ful

1 4. It would be easy to increase the size of this bookby voluminous extracts from the writings of the Mysticsin many languages. Others have already done that, andit is not my immediate Object to quote from secondhand testimony. Of modern writers in harmony withthese ideas one may however men tion Walt Whitman ,

whom I value not as a literary craftsman , butas aMysticand Edward Carpenter in his Art of Creation , where Ihave been delighted to find many of the ideas in thisbook somewhat Similarly exmessed. The last threechapters in that book, explaining the reality and detailingthe method of Communion with God, are an authen ticscripture of the race.

u] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 47

Charles Kingsley, in his Preface wr-itten in 1854 toMiss 'Winkwor'ths translation of T Com m ,

felt it desirable to show that theMyst a of which that

book is a aimple andpopular type was to be found in themost orthodox quarters. He quotes Athanasius himselfas saying of Christ,

“He became man that we r

'

night be

mede God,”and Augustine , the orthodox founder of

Latin theology, who said“He called men Gods as being

deified by His grace, not as born oi s substance.

”

famous Fathers ; and probably their schemes of thoughtdo more harm than good in the world to-day ; but theywere devout men and knew what they mean t when they

And I will permit myself one more quotation , fromMeister ECkhard, one Of the leaders of the Friends of

God in the fourteen th cen tury, who said :“The eye with

which I see God is the same eye withwhichGod sees me .

My eye and God’

s eye are one vision , one recognition ,

one love .

1 5. Only in the light Of this Indwelling can we catchthe drift of all that is most significan t in the Epistlesof Paul. Take for instance the passage in 2 Cor. iii. I 7,

I 8, where the Apostle has been dwelling upon the en

slavement of the Law, and the veil that once was uponthe face of Moses and is still upon the hearts of thehearers of the Law . He proceeds : The Lord is theSpirit : andwhere the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all , with unveiled face reflecting as a mirrorthe glory of the Lord, are transformed into the sameimage from glory to glory, even as from the Lord theSpirit." The passage is barely grammatical ; as proseit is far from lucid. The phrase “ Spirit of the Lord "

follows immediately the statemen t that the “ Lord is theSpirit,

” that is, grammatically, the spirit is the spiritof itself. This merely shows that the truth is beyond

48 THE FOUNDATIONS [ca u

the language which has been formed to express smaflertruths, and language cracks audibly when it tries to tellall .What exactly is the mirrm' ? Are we the mirror,before whom the glory of the Lord finds itself reflected,or are we the image reflected in the mirror? So muchfor literary criticiu . But the meaning is plain and

glory, and the statemen t that man is the glowing imageof God, could not be putmore forcibly.

One cannot but feel that this truth should be thekey to the thousands of studies of human personalitywhich constitute the flood of fiction in the presen t day .

All other preoccupations are secondary with us to thestudy ofmen and women , if wemay judge by the numberof novels and tales prin ted every mon th. Much of thisdenies this Divinenes s abWutely, and in the hands ofa genius so piercing as that of Thomas Hardy how poten tbecomes the Gospel of despair. I am thinking of one

of his books of poems‘. Love, it appears, is a temporarydelusion , nature is reckless of man , God is distan t andcold, or absolutely cruel, human nature mostly an imalafter al l , Sin redeemable in the long run if you give ittime,aspiration adelusion , andall of us

“Time '

s LaughingStocks.

”But if we accept the faith of Paul it follows

that love is eternal, that it is at the heart of nature,that God is so near that we cannot get away fromHim,

tion its proper activity. And there is no one behind to

Tim ’

s Laughing Stocks.

CHAPTER I I I

THE SON

1 . The Apostle Paul asserted that the world had

for God manifested it un to them. For the invisible

be without excuse (Rom. i. 19,

doubtless, but also surely most of all , in the moral worldwithin . In the eye and hand of frlendship, in labour

and patience, in the happiness of youth and the joy of

life, in family aflection , and most of all in all love ; in

to all grace and truth within ourselves. But the Roman

served the creature rather than the Creator ; and so

had been “ given over to vile passion s,"and to idolatry,

which the apostle puts in the same indictmen t . Theyhad got no further than Jupiter and Venus—than Isis

is the great task of religion , as insistent as ever and as

the flesh we know and love ; we know on earth of no


and to love and worship, a soul of all souls, the EternalSoul, the One behind all man ifestation , not in human

is the result Of terrestrial evolution , and fitted for successin the battle of terrestrial life just here and now , at a

certain cosmic momen t .We stretch lame hands offaith without reaching a satisfying in tellectual conception of the One Spirit . Hence the need for the great actof Faith. The in tellect cann ot work it out because it hasno superhuman experiences or perception s wherefrom tobuild. It is " the righteousness Of God revealed from faithto faith that we have to grasp.

2 . But He has not left Himself without a witnes s.

Throughout human history there rise men of strangereligious power, organs of the Divine in an unusualdegree ; and if they have the outward gifts neeM,

prophets, Messiahs, Saviours. Wonderful is their gift .They seem to speak the authen tic words Of God. Greatis the gratitude and deep the reveren ce we give them.

Richard Hubberthorne, the Cromwell ian soldier, who

died in Newgate a martyr to Quakerism at thirty-four,writes to George Fox , his leader, a young man likehimsel f The eye being opened which was blind now

those rivers in which thou swims. So it has been withthese Shepherds of Souls, always, and still is. The

greatest prophet now alive is perhaps Abbas Eflendithe leader of the Bahais in Persia ; if indeed, the war,which must havemade havoc among the peaceful Bahais,has spared him. Thes e leaders reveal something Of the

And for us Christians, all these modern prophetslook back to one Saviour and Redeemer, the Founder

I I I] THE SON 51

of our Faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. He too must have

slunk ofl and leftHimand the woman alone . At another

soldiers sent to arrest Him in the Temple, stayed instead

to listen , and reported to their employers that Neverman spake like this man .

”Even as He merely wal ked

on the road to Jerusalem, the disciples were“amazed ”

and fel l behind whispering . In Gethsemane, at His firstword, the party with swords and staves backed and fell

to the ground. Crowds followed Him everywhere. AtNazareth He passed in dignity through the mob of Hisneighbours with stones in their hands.

one another, mixed together in debateable proportions,the Divine spoiling the comfleteness of the human nature,and the human limiting the infinity of the Divine ; notpurely human , yet

“ laden with attributes that make not

if we on ly knew—powerful without hesitation—self

say I will give you rest —Leave houses andlands “

formy sake —“ Everyone thereforewho Shall con

fessmebeforemen ,himwill I alsoconfessbeforemyFather.

”

There needs to be no compound of human andDivine,and there can be no antithesis ; for they are of the same

larger andmore perfect a man’

s humanity, the larger and

more perfect his share in divin ity too.

3. I hope that this thought of Personality, Divineand human , and their connection , may be a theologicalreconciler.

“As thou, Father, art in me, and I in the ,

4—2

52 THE FOUNDATIONS (ca.

that they also may be in us z that the world maybelieve that thou didst send me. And the glory which

may be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and thou in

me.

“I am the good shepherd ; and l know mine own ,

and mine own know me, even as the Father-knowethme , and I know the Father.

”Thesewords are Johannine,

but l do not therefore doubt that they expressed our

but owning allegiance to a Spiritual Order, in which vows

and friends of human ity, leaders of the long waveringline ” ? Are we not hindered by this or that? Something does not get liberated within us.We are fearful ,or conven tional , or pruden t—or we are, or wan t to be,

hug a reputation—or we are very proud or very set in

Revival preachers have hold of a spiritual truthwhen they

4. I f we have reached the conception of an Eternal

of a physical Divine paternity, foll owing herein the

Divine spirit- the not very happy con trast between the

compromises and contrad‘ctions cannot be on right lines.

First of al l , there can be no doubt that Christ was at


a gleam of the other, shall we easily see both God and

6. That we be not too vague ahd gena al J et us

our Lord’

s life and the key toHis greatness,—His treat

men t, I mean , of the purpose which centres round the

words Son ofMan ”and

“Kingdom of God.

”I f we

Lord’

smind and career‘.

Jesus rises out of the silence intervening between the

to our knowledge of the Gospel than the light which

always with the Jews, is Closely dependent upon the

With the passing Of Judaeaunder the rule of An tiochusthe Great, King of Syria, in 198, there began a periodof aggressive Hellenization of the people of Jehovah,

which under his son Antiochus Epiphanes, who came tothe throne in 1 75, hardened to a bitter persecution ,

waged to the uttermost against everything sacred to afaithful Jew . The people were weakened by a Hellenisticparty within the priesthood itself. The war

'

waged by

deuce will always remain one Of the great Chapters inthe history of the world. To encourage the people inthis patriotic struggle the book of Daniel seems to have

1

to The I nterpreter, April , 191 2 , under the title TheMind Of the

Son ofMan ,

”and are reprin ted by kind permission .

II I] THE SON 55

been written ; and the passage, Dan iel vii. 1 3—1 4, is thekey passage to all that follows.

Behold, there came with the clouds of heaven on e like un to

a son of man , and he came even to the ancient of days, and

dominion ,and glory,and a kingdom, that al l thepeoples,nations,

domin ion , which shall not pass away, and his kingdom thatwhich shall not be destroyed.

The title the Son ofMan , which had hitherto onlybeen used, so far as we know , by the prophet Ezekiel,in a perfectly natural way, was here taken up in to the

modest ; it appeared to mean simply the typical man ,

a represen tative man . Son of consolation ,

” “son of

thunder,”or

“son of a swine ” are not in Eastern phrase

strict patronymics. NO prosecution for treason could bebuilt out of so innocen t an expression . Such was themethod Of the apocalyptic writers ; but to those who

a national military deliverer, who should restore the

throne of David, dominate the neighbouring coun tries

The story of the peOple continued to be ful l of turbu

lence and slaughter ; the Maccabean dynasty degeneratedas dynasties do. Pharisees were slain by thousands bythe Court and the Sadduwe

'

s, and about the year 80the fourth part , in order of time, of the book of Enoch

(capp. 37-71 ) called The Similitudes of Enoch, expressed

in apocalyptic form the indignation and the hope of thePharisaic or national religious party. This book adoptedthroughout the title “

Son OfMan to describe the comingdeliverer. In this book for the first time the wordMessiahwas used in its techn ical sense . An edition with translation of the Book Of En och has been published in two


volumesby ProfessorCharles,but in the following psssagesI have used a paper on

“

JewishReligious 0pinions”by

DrMarshall in the volume of“Manchester Theological

According to Enoch the Son ofMan will be“the

Light of the Gentiles,”and

“the hOpe of those who are

troubled of heart.”They will

“drink of the fountains of

wisdorn , and be filled with wisdom.

”The Son ofMan is

“much better than the angels.”He is

"the righteous

one, the chosen .

"He existed “

before the sun and stars

were made.

”He sits on God

’

s throne which is cal led“the throne of His glory.

“He has the appearance

of a man and His face is full of gentleness.” “

The

glory of the Son ofMan is for ever, and there is a daycomingwhen al l the elect shal l standbefore I

-Iim.

” “ They

that Son ofMan , and will pray toHimand beg formercyat His hand.

”The day of final judgment is called

“the

day of the Ebct One.

”the

earth will give back those who are treasured in it, and

shall also give back that which it has received. The

Elect One shall sit on my Throne and all the secrets of

He shal l sit on the throne oi s glory and the sum of

judgmen t is committed un to Him; and He will causesinners and seducers to pass away from the earth."“He shall judge Azazel and al l his associates,

”and

Rings, with those who are mighty and exalted, willbe ten ified when they see I-Iim sitting on the throne of

His glory.

”

Parallels in the New Testament to each one of theseto every reader. They need not be

It will'

be plain that the book of Enoch must have

‘ There was published in 191 7 an edition of a translation of

Enochwith useful notes by Prof. Charles,

I II] 57

been familiar to our Lord, that from it He took the titleSon ofMan , and into the groove there laid down He

fittedthe consciousness of aMesnanicmission as itdawnedthat this work, then comparatively n ocht,may have been

atany rate to fulfil its prOphecies.

But He was too great for that role. He had withinHim a Divine perception that to found and rule over the

kin Oms of the earth, and to have the glory of them,

was equivalent to bowing down and worshipping Evil .

He was tempted, as He tells us, in the wilderness, forthe story must have come fromHim, by the thought of

by the aid of a Jewish army to the throne of the Caesars.and, not con ten t with liberating the chosen people,made

conquering law of the wm'ld. He turned aside from it,

norHis caning, todrenchthe fields withblood,toMate

thousands of homes, to leave the heart un touched whilstthe knee bowed, to found one more in the h0peless

succession of Orien tal despotisms of which history isfull. He chose instead the career of a spiritual teacher

and lrberator of the soul. It is on ly when we real ise

the atmosphere and the expectations oi s youth, the

hOpes of the pious ones, amongst whom it seems thatHis paren ts were included, whowaited for the redemption

debt whichwe owe to Him for seeing throughand beyondit. Itis in decisions like this that l find the evidence of His

Divinity. So He lived the unpreten tious life we know of.

the Son ofMan was shortly to be revealed from heaven

in glory, that there was to be some catastrophic end of

58 THE FOUNDATIONS [CH.

the age, in whichHis Father was to be glorified and He

Schweitm and others one cannot deny the force of such

Ye shal l not have gone throwh tbe cities of l srael ,Thie v es

district about as large asWales. It points very charlyto an early consummation .

“This generation shall not

pass away, un til all these things be accomplished”

(Matt .

lyptic chapters, immediately precedes the description of

unwillingness to think thatany of our Lord'

s anticipations

have not been realised that has caused us to postpone

to an evermore distant future whatwe call the judgmentDay . It is ever more and more al ien from any genuine

an ticipation , and those of my readers who honestly lookforward to it still must be few. To ourminds the etherfilled spaces of the astronomer are no longer the scene

of the manifestation of the Son ofMan ; and the Be ye

also ready,”and the paraMe of the Ten Virgins imply an

urgen cy whichcouldonly have been in place on the hypo

time He stated (Matt . xxiv. 36, Mark xiii. 32) that He didnot know the exactday Himsel f. Then there is thepassage

(Matt . xvi. 27, 28, Mark ix . 1 , Luke ix . 27) where Hesays that some of those standing there should not tasteOf death till they had seen the Son ofMan coming in

follows this passage, cannot be regarded as the revelationof the kingdom ; indeed itwas a singularly fit preparationfor it. The two great prophets of Old, Moses and Elijah,who came to encourage Him in an ticipation Of the comingcrisis,andspeak toHimofHis

“exodus,

”

His departure,”

in ] THE SON 59

which He was ahout to fulfil at Jemsalem, had each of

themmade an unusual departure from the world. The

strange word"exodus

”harmonizeowith this pecullafity

of theirs. They had neither of them, in jewish story,

died as other rnen : they were hoth believed to have

heen taken upmiraculously into heaven , and they eameo aid one who was to be similarly distinguiahed—onea)

Ascension is an expectation fitting the Transfigurationstory.We neednot argue the historical truthof the Transwe are simply inquiring into the mind of the l l aster and

Hisdisciples,andwemay take the record as a faithful copyof that. It seemedto then i fitting that those whohadhada similar experience should speak to Himacmss the agee.It is also clear thatHis followers were all of the opin ion

that there would be an early heavenly manifestation .

‘

l'

he view of even the outer ring oi s followers, ex

pressed on the road to Emmaus—“We trusted that itroused by the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, and

soothed hy the second, pm'

nt to a belief which can onlyhave been derived from our Lord Himself.Mthoutattempting to expound the apocalyptic chapters withlucidity, we may ven ture to gather from them that thekingdom of the Son ofMan was closely connected w:?hthe fall of the Jewish hierarchy, and that there need be

no longer a puzzle as to which part of those prophecies

refers to the last judgmen t and which part to the siege

of Jerusalem, for the two an ticipations were the sameanticipation . I am, it will be seen , ascribing the materialof these chapters to Our Lord Himself, or to those underHis immediate influence.

60 THE FOUNDATIONS (cu.

It is ln hsrmony with all this thst we find our lmd

Sm of David with pahn bn ncbes strewn in His wsy,an act whlch in itself was enough to rouse the priesthood.

At the h st Supper, and in thst portion of the nsm tive

suspicion at being Pauline, our Lord stated that Hewould dfink nomore of the fruit of the vine till He drsnk

therefore,was to come before long.

I do not imply that our Lord had not a previsiou of

martyrdom. Seversl paseages in the Gospels. which we

will discms, show that some an ticipation of it hns left

The first passage describes, taking the for-m in Hark

viii. 3t h” the talk at Caesarea Philippi.“He bq un to

and after three days rise again ,

"and then in v . 38 in the

same conversation He tel ls them ‘t osoem shsll be

ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterom aud

sinful generation , the Son ofman also shall be ashamed ofhim,when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the

to say that this shall happen

before some standing by shall“tasteof death.

”Thewhole

close together in time (cf. Matt. xvi. I 3, and Luke ix .

way up to Jemsalem, and is so full of detailed prophecythat itmay be held to bearmarks of the reflection of the

even t upon the prediction .

“The Son of man shall be

delivered un to the chief priests and the scribes; and they

the Gentiles : and they shall mock him, and shall spit

upon him, and shall scourge him, and shal l kill him; andafter three days he shall rise again "

(cf . Matt . xx. 1 7,

Luke xviii. But our Lord's actual words must have


that. It had become clear to Him that there was to be

ofthe phrasewhichispreeerved forus in theFourthGospel,“Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorifiedin him.

”That phrase had been used in the upper room

much upon it, it falls in to line very naturally . But now

it appeared that there was nothing before Himbut deathby torture, the apparent faihn

'

e of I-Iis ministry so near

its beginning, the end of an earthly career hardly mature.

There would be no theophany. His little circle of

infiuence seemed to be cracb d to its centre, even His

to keep awake. An other friend was an actual traitor formoney. It was borne in upon Him that that which He

had willed was not to be, but something quite difieren t,and in agonyand bloody sweat Hemade His choice : Notmy will, but thine, be done.

”And for that choice, for

the second time, we owe Him an inextinguishable debt.In that choice, if He could have seen it in the hour ofdarkness, He was really climbing the last pinnacle of Hisgreatness, and bringing gifts for men . He surrenderedagain , through that divine in tuition of His, to the unex

pected will of His Father.

But one can see how Hismindwas running . Thinkestthou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shal l evennow sen d me more than twelve legions of angels ? ” Thisidea of an angelic rescue was the al ternative to submission

working, andwas working probably not for the first time.

That thought of the twelve legions of angels was probablyan echo of His habitualmind, part of its furniture. How

happy for Him and for us that the sacrifice was willingly

whatever may be mean t by the twelve legions of angels .

But it would be too great a simplification to suppose

1 11] THE SON 3

that our Lord, at the time of crisis, reached a conclusion,fixed and unchanging, at a given hour. Such is not the

In hours of refiection and loneliness the soul turns in

public, and in the presence ot the foe, courage and faith

may return .We find our Lord tel ling the High Pr-ios t

(Mark xiv . 62)“Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at

the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of

heaven . We have no fair reason for doubting the

authen ticity of this passage. It is indeed represen tedto be the immediate cause of His condemnation . Nevertheless, I cannot but think that He had sight of the truth

when , in the garden , He made the great sacrifice :“ Not

my will, but thine, be done.

"

But this was not the end. There was the Resurrection

unseen world, freed from the physical body, He was ableto communicate several times with His disciples. He

told them that it had not been a iailure after all ; thatHe was not dead, but alive ; and that He would be withthemunto the ages of the ages as they carriedHis Gospel

to the nations . And in the strength of that they did it,still hoping that He would come again fromheaven duringtheir own lives—“Then we which are alive and remainshall be caught meet the Lord in the air.

"But

this never happened ; all things were as they had been

from the beginning ; and they looked up year after yearto irresponsive skies , till one by one the apostolic menhad departed. But did they fail and surrender the hopeof the Kingdom? No. They had little need to, for theyknew that they had the Kingdomalready in their hearts ;they had en tered in to a new and better life ; they hadbecome masters of their temptations ; they had en teredinto human brotherhood and Divine communion , and

that which, in spite of the extreme eschatological critics

64 rm: FOUNDATIONS (on .

must have been the main trunk of our Lord'

s teaching ,

was the secret of their abiding faith. And here for the

third time we owe Him an incalculable debt. He had

taught that before you could become a citisen of the

that the Kingdom of God is within you.

did, for there is a more endming fitnem about the title

than that due to its origin , and l think that our Lord

its plain meaning ; for His Gospel in its purity has alwaysbeen the Gospel oi ordinary humanity , a rnessage of glad

tidings to commcmpeople, a denial oi the claim of any

privileged race or class or priesthood or profiesm’

on to

hinder the life of the ordinary man by extortinn or

oppression ,ortheden ial oi liberty,orof the righttodevelopa ful l life. OurGospel is the Gospel of the Son oiMan .

the Trin ity in its complete theological frmn . It is betterso. The doctrine of Nicaea may have been a useful

thought ; and I doubt the usefulness of the wamed out orattenuated forms of the doctrine in which triplemanifestations of some kind can be noted or discermd in God.

These are really on ly more polite and less dangerous waysof denying the old conception . This reduced doctrinereally darkens counsel, and rs tomost people unin telligible,though it is doubtless convenien t to keep the traditionalword, even if you alter itsmeaning. It has, of course, nomore authority than a Roman Emperor and a ChurchCouncil under his presidency and con trol can give it. Itwas no part of the thought of Jesus nor of Paul. The two

11 1 ] ms SON 65

doctrinal type—the onehrxJOhn ,now deleted,con fessedly

so ; the other, the baptismal formula in the last words of

Matthew’

s Gospel ,held so by a large consensus ot scholars .

But the doctrine represents one of thosehardand fast lines

mere ternporary use as scafiolding, and are real ly in their

8.We turn with pleasrn '

e fi‘

om this conception of a

later century, when the early glory had passed from the

Chmch,tothechristology in the nobleprologuetotheFourth

The writer there forges ameliminary link withwhich

thought in the Greek world to which he was appealing .

creation , transmitting His life to those who received Him,

who thereby became sons of God ; He was life, and He

was for ever shining like a light in the dark pleces ot the

spirit with the spirit of Jesus. TheWord became fieshand dwelt among us,

"revealed truth and exhibited grace

in contrast with the law which came byMoses, hadpersonal magnetism and was able to transmit the samespirit to His followers—

“For oi s fulness have we all

received.

”Treating Jesus thus, as the incarn ation of the

find their lives enriched by en tering in to thought andcommun ion with our Lord, which is also commun ion with theWord, the thought or purpose of the Eternal.

For the story of the growth of this famous fancy, see RendelHarris , TheOrigin of the Prologue to J olm

'

s Gospel , p. 49; apiece ofresearch which should do something to liberate the human spiritfrom one of imburdens. The Early Friends always objected toiden tify themsel ves with the schoolmen

’

s doctrine of the Trinity.

v. I saac Penington'

s paper addressed to the Boston court,Works, 1 . 264 , 5 .

c . Q.

66 THE FOUNDATIM [cm

isolated and sepau te He is fronr-other m-otfi -

spirit,though srnal ler stature, the more is He awarentl y to be

We are apt to do about Him exactly what the Jews did

trained in the law, were sons of Abraham; not seeing

of the tme stock and sequence of Abraham; that Christand those who fomwed Him were of Abm rs seed,

and heirs according to the promise. Paul fl ed the Jews

and in Gen tile con verts.We ought to recogn ise the faithChristmust be inclusive ; theremust be no fencing of the

Table.

" What really differen tiates people is only that theygrasp less or more of the vital store of the Universe .

Jesus is not beyon d our sufficien t if incomplete compre

We only degrade Him by idolatry . But we may safely,

we ..are capable. It is historically true that His is the

shal l bow , and shall con fess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

to the glory Of God the Father.

Of this wonderful human personality—un ique in

our knowledge—we can harcny make too much. Some

Christian s are very nervous lest too little hon our be

day ; look tl n for strength, for calm,

al l toBis sad I-Ie is mine.

CHAPTER IV

THE LIVING CHRIST

r. It is remarlrable that Paul should constantly speakof the Gospel as a

“mystery.

" It is one of the unfortunate results of using a tranalated book, that the English

reader of theee passages, of which there are twenty in the

Epistles, is almost sure to think that the Apostle refers

and when he finds the doctrine of the Trinity or of the

Atonemen t presen ted to him in incomprehensible form,

he probably thinks that the reference is to this..But in

fact the wordMystery was one of the greatcommon wordsWhat was Paul’s idea of the Mystery Of the Gospel,

had now been revealed in Christ to simple souls ? Morethan one feature of the Christian Gospel was part of the

Mystery of Christ, but a cen tral passage is in the Epistleto the Colossians (i. where he states the Mystery inseven words. He says it is “ Christ in you, the hOpe ofglory .

The first plain teaching of the Gospel was that God

was to be found not on ly in sacred places or through

ecclesiastical persons, but in the human life and deathOf a Gal ilean workman , in

“ Jesus Christ and Him cruci

fied”—that “ in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead

bodily.

” This part of the Mystery has been easilyacceptable ; but not so easily the next phrase “

and in

Him ye are made full,”or in other words, words from the


Unseen .

'

l'

he Lord is the Spirit. Their taith was at

timee reheshed by vision . The day on the roed to

Dam m left Paul in liielong oertainty about it. And

five or six mesuges or vfi om,more or less directly tromChrist, carne to helphimat need‘.

‘

l‘

he vision deecribed

of the origin of many of them, treated as mere imtanceeotthe dramatiaimfaculty of the Subliminnl Selt. While

grmfing in some cases the intm-psychieal ofigimit is

nevertheless fi fi'

ciflt to say at what exact time between

His people or went too iar away to be acoessible. The

I SH

I ad the l"

Cl‘

l of ll'

not to be aseerfi d as a permanent truth. It is morein accordanee with johamrine thought at any rate to

theWord when He returned to whenoe I-he came. In

our mouths an attempt at distinctim between the Lord

unedifying’.“ ‘

Caught up even to the third heaven Con e over imeoMacedonh , and help us ;“My etrmgth ls made petfi ct in m k

ness”;"Spenk, and hold not thy peaee

” “Fear not, Paul, thou

maet stand beiore Caeear.

' I n the prologue to the Goepel of john we have the expr-eedon

the on l y begotten Son .

”l t oecun twice here and twice again

in John iii . 1 6, x8, and in r John iv . 9. I t was , according to

m uvmc cnnrsr 7x

3. Jem hn lett ur the promire that He would beoenfl mahy withHirpeople. He also sald thet the Comtqrter would eome ; “ I willM h made betweensending the Comiorter. All thls is moet seriously dgni

it over as a beautiful bu'

t rather

andmumed, perhape without our realising how deepanin let that opens into the spiritual world. After a human

who was of like paasions with us,"tempted in all poin ts

like as we are,”nnd whom we believe to be our best

gfide in the things ol the sphit, tel ls us thatHe will still

trom the fleah. There will be personal identity, personal

of that personal influence, too. I will send, as wellas

“ I will come.

”We have in theee sayings every reu onable ground for thinking that the comtitution ot the

fromhimnlong with hhm al doctrine of the l n goe, whorn he

deecribed by this edjeotive.

toa oepels, pe¢ee z4 md 23. poinu out how m y much more

ot the esme nature with thm, indeed, it would be an appmpriete fiflng to u y otthe incem hdm Itcannot be aw ted

thet thir is the clu rical mean ing ot the word, but it would

certain ly rid one of whnt ia now a curioul and troum e

conception if we eeeeptedTol-toy 'ropinion . In etymology ,thongh

But fi ie rmrane in l’hilo meantto indude in the la gm an the acfivifiu of God. It is not mex ciusive but m inehaive idea and in not Chrisfim in origin .

Remu Harris dc ivel it like the re-t otme pmlogueJ rom the

m um a m ox . hWid om oj Soa fi zz,Wisdom is eaid to be an od y Begotten Sp’

ric e on e repoeitory ,

thatmoi the DivineMindmd Powet. (Origin of ProL p.


thatwemay in prayer still addrees our Lord JesuaChr-ht,

the everlasting Paraclete ? It h not ours to penetrate

into the hiuamhiee oi the Um ner to lay down the

things under Him, thatGodmay be all in all .

was still active ior their helpupon earthmnd they hadl l isdefinite wornise

“ Lo, I amwith you alway, even untothe

ages of the ages.

the centre of Pauline teaching, under which the Christian

was to die and to rise again in a manner analogous to theexperience d his l p rd,whomhe was to fonow in cruciiyingMMwith the afiections and hn ts, and riaing into a

new life which defied the grave. The belief in the ChristWithin is held in the Society of Friends to-day with the

At the same time l do not lmow ol any attempt atwhatmight be calledan explanation of the iden tity of ahumanlife lived in history with a universal spiritual influenceacting in al l ages and places. To many minds the finalwords of promise

“ l will be with you alway”explain it

all . At the same time one ieels always the need of sometheory of the matter, some explanation which will fitin to the rest of our theological conceptions. Such a

faith would be greatly strengthened if it could be based

on something more verifiable, nearer to experience, thana single text. The conception of the actual terrestrial

personality of Jesus still surviving with conscious con

disciples still, is on e which need not be incredible to any ,

and which strongly appeals to me personally, but weknow how perilous is the history of tex ts, and how facilein early days was the insertion oi edifying passages to

support curren t doctrine ; so that whatever be our happy

with the thought of a permeating Godmaking l-l is home

in our souls.We must have no chaarn betwu n the

human and the divine. There are no such chasms in

We shall loolr then to the deeps of personality to find thenatm'

e both of God and of man , and in the personality

to find the link between the personality which we call

God and the microcosm of it which we call man.

5. Dr Sanday. lormerly LadyMargaret Professor of

Theology at Oxford, has been for a long generation

a chief pillar of reasonable orthodoxy in England, and

has represented in critical con troversies the conaervative

position . His chief work of late years has been a series

hemade a suggestion whichcannot but be of deep interestto those who cling so far as is possible to old forms of

thought. This suggestion has arisen out of the studiesof the last thirty-eight years in itiated by the Society forPsychical Research. The late F. W. H.Myers's conception of the subliminal man , lying beneath the thresholdof consciousness at ordinary times, but occasionallymanifesting in telepathy, v

'

s ion , ecstasy, and other psychicoutbreaks, has been fruitful in many directions.Wehave come to believe that the greater part of our personality is sub-conscious, and that we only use for curren t

purposes so many of the resourcas of the sel f as have

been found terrestrially useful. It is through our sub

liminal capacities that we have touch with God ; theyare the source of inspiration and the foun tain of genius,the organ of prayer, and the scen e of the experience of


the mystics. Dr Sanday suggests that in this mysterious

under terres trial evolution , just like ours, but that in

to cherish in our thought of Christ .6. Those of us who have been members of the Society

W. H .Myers began his series of articles on the subject

for other readers it may be well to en large a little on

as the organ of thought-transference, and then in an

or organ . Under it were not unnaturally placed the

typical cen tral outbreak or expression of the subliminalman given by Nature, and that experimen tal form of

difficulty, iden tified with it. A long step from somnarnbuliam brought us to clairvoyance, and then from the

'

strange lucidity for things distan t in space but presen t

1 The formal series of papers began in 1 89rand thefirstis tobefoundon page 298ofVol . vrrof theProceedings,8 . P .R. ; but itwas

preceded by a series of earlier articles, and was finally elaboratedin his great book Human Personal ity and its Survival of BodilyDeath, published first in 1903 in two vols and afterwards in a

single vol . with much less illustrative matter.

76 ms FOUNDATIONS [cm

seeking, of an es sen tial unity after all between the Divine

and the Human , so that one whose outward supraliminal

not so difierent from our own as todestroy His fellowshipwith us, but yet pure and right and divine withoutkn own defect. No one would wish to claim that this isthe last word that will ever be said upon the subject,for the subliminal region is still largely unmapped and

welcome the influen tial support and enhghtened judgmen tof a scholar so earnes tly religious as Dr Sanday in supportof a view which those of us who held it have had but

having in past years, and even yet, really mastered theWe thus have in Jes us Christ a personality fallingin to the same general framework as our own , as the

bodies of all animals fall into the same general schemeas our bodies ; but whilst the divine subliminal endow

a subliminal soul to whom the Spirit is given withoutmeasure, one whose meat and drink was to do the willof His Father, one who was able to say at the hardestcrisis of His life,

“Not my will, but thine, be done,”on e

the Son ofMan , and if our thought of God be broadlycorrect, we have a Son of God too in a soul so endowed.

The gospel of Paul, and the Quaker gospel of the presen tday, then , unite in teaching us that our object must be tobe filled with the nature of Jesus Christ, that our littleframework of self is n ot a rigid framework of bars, butexpansible, and that itmay be our privilege to learn so

much of our elder Brother that our nature may become

rv] THE LIVING CHRIST 77

like His nature ; so that in that sense the divine worker

within us is endeavouring to have Christ born in us.

Thence arises an identity between a life that was livcd

under Syrian skies and the life of the sain ts in all ages ;

so, final ly, we may ven ture to speak of the Indwelling

After all, neither the Apostle Paul nor the Early

thinking of any characteristics of a Galilean carpen teror of a man of Jewish habits in the Roman period.

and local in the historic Jesus, not thinking of the curren t

They were thinking of the deeper qualities oi s person

ality, of that which was essen tially himself, independen tof place and time. They were thinking of what we have

the Apostle was struggling to have born within his

converts, so that in speaking of the Christ within us we

are extending our conception of the presence of a certain

historic personality in to that of a spirit, of which thatpersonality was ' the archetype, the classical example,and for us historically the source.

8. On experience, and not on the details of thehistorical life of Jesus,was built the Gospel of theApostlewho firs t taught of the Christ within . Paul never

teaching nor authority fromany miracle. Moreover thismystical experience is widespread even beyond the

nath Tagore speaks of it in the unmistakable accen ts ofveracity, t it without our Christian vocabulary. Is it

beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm;to be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of thisfearful joy ? ”We are here tapping a treasure house

78 THE FOUNDATIONS (on . rv

open always to the spirit of man ; we are dealing witha universal potency of the soul.With the pre-Chrhtianoru

' dwelling place in all generations.

Let us try a Parable.We often think of the Divine

Life coming in to us as a stream comes. The currents

of the water of life mfresh us .We thirst for God.Wedrink oi m as of a river.Where a river approaches

amill where it is to be utilised, it is divided. The mill

the other streamflows over a weir in a waterfal l, visible,picturesque, full of lovely detail, plung ng into a pool

the wagtail . Down below the streams reunite ; they

consists of the water both from the mill-race and the

cascade. How, then if, in Jes us of Nazareth, the quietriver became a waterfal l—a divine spiri t poured out in a

ferns and the birds, like the many varieties of beautifulinciden t recorded in the Gospels, found their home wheretoo the rocks and the pools are. To be sure what turns

stream,with a long quiet course above and below, becameat that weir, for the time, something to be heard and seen ,

scape confined by theweir andthe rocks,plungingdown to

service of the river. When we think of the place as a

landscape we think of the waterfal l, first and last. It iswhat the artist would emphasize, as the engineer would

about it, though onemay be called an evangelical andtheother amystic.


but if they are not, the alternative subliminal theory is not

The only alternative in the field is that the subliminalself of the lateMrs Vem ll oi Cambridge, a lady oi the

utmost veracity and keenest in tellect, a patien t scien tificobserver, and formerly a clasfical lecturer at Newnham,

—that some part of her, un lmown to her, and contraryto her wish, not on ly personates Myers, Sidgwick and

Hodgson and writes in their style and handwriting, butis able to influence hal f a dozen other subliminals at

times, and one or two constantly, to write in unkon with

or wish of the ladies who own these, or belormto these,active and conscious, but non-moral ised subliminals.living as far ofi as l ndia andAmerica‘.

There is a groping theory among psychical re

but with occasional revealing phen omena of the tele

the unplumb’

d, salt, estranging sea. Coral islands arehowever just the tops of a vast submerged coral reef,

the air and sky and furnished with lovely growths

personality is much the bigger bulk of him; and it has

i As one strong case of cross correspondence, one of forty orfifty casee, l would recommend inquire“ to read TMEcr ofDionysius byGeraldW. Bal four, being Part Lxxmoi the S. P . R.

Proceedings,March rgr7.

THE PERSONALITY OF MAN

as the coral reef extends under the sea. Indeedmin ing

oi the coral islands knew how to mine.

a. To a mind accustomed to these ideas, there isno difiiculty in accepting both the pre

o existence and the

con tinued presen t life of one so remarkable on earth as

Jesus of Nazareth.

“Before Abraham was I am"—“ Lo,I amwith you alway, even un to the end of the world.

”

healing—oi apparen tly supernatural knowledge or pro

to a psychical researcher’s mind. Neither does the

Resurrection , understood as BishopWestcottl and Prof.Lake’andothers understand it,as the raising of a spiritual ,

not a fleshly, body. On this view the parallel drawnby the apostle gains its validity—

“I i Christ rose, then

we shal l rise.

” Otherwise the apostle's parallel fails.

3. Does it not remove needless difi'

rculties of thought

earth has also hands of agents in the Heaven lies thatare so near?

Heart ofMidlothian Jeanie Deans, in face of the great

upto see the King in person . Negro chiefs presswith theirgrievances to the King in Windsor Castle. Out in Indiathe laws are taken to be laws oi the great white King.

The governmen t of India is to its simpler subjects not thevast complicated organismwe kn ow ; its acts are the directacts of a person—the Rajah behind the Raj. But we

know that a governmen t oragreat railway company is anaffair working by organised agen ts, an elaborate edifice of

i The Gospel of the Resurrection .

The Resurrection of J esus Christ.

82 ms FOUNDATIONS (on .

living stones, each in a place fitted to its shepe : you

come into touch with it through some subordinate wbo

works the wiresmnd your businees pessee on ly so iar es ienecessaryupthehierarchyofomcials. Somewhatanalogousis the operation oi God

’

s laws aswemow themin outward

business oi tbe rainfall in hand, though to the child it is

God wbo sends the rain out of the sky, and He can be

approached on the subject in simple iashion , as a person

might be written to.

less highly organised, not la s manifold, or less varied

in service, than a government or a greet businees ? The

agents in that Kosmos will not be heat and cold and

water vapour, but spirits not al l unlike ourselves , angelministrants, friends oi man and messengers of God

ieel sure that we are surrounded by, and are living in ,

The dwellers therein have, it may be or it may not be,

unmanifested and unflagging.We are not cognisan t ofthem as persons, to us they have no personal iden tity ;it may be that they are too much absorbed in God as

to do His will ; the Eternal Will behind the veil. What

these need not be difi cult, no more difi cult than the

use of the telegraph instrumen t which so wonderfullyconveys our words.

4 . It would be un like nature, once more, if therewere to be any great chasm, any serious breach of con

84 ms FOUNDATIONS (on.

buttreeeee thet which cannot be ehaken .

5.We have thue dwelt on tbe com unicebleneee of

human beinpmn tbeirmany pointeof contactwithothere

viction to al l. And it ie not neceeeary tbat tbey ehould.

For the common everydey play oi pereonality crlee aloud

in the eame etrain that we are but celh in eome greetorgankm, or, in warmerphrase, pulsations fromthe beartof God.

That cell metaphor, to which l return , is so cloee

tin t it may be, as already once euggeeted, more than a

metaphor. Every man , animal or -plan t, was once but

double fertile cell ; a cell , by the wey, the scene oiactivity

interaction of its double nature. There seems room ior

there,when somuch is potential in so little ; and the seed

which is the least of all mds may grow into a tree where

’

l'

he oxygen of the soul is love. That is the atmosphere

All life and all society reeound with this truth. Earthand Heaven proclaim it. In all its forms, friendship,aflection , pity and sympathy, as wel l as in its keenerand mightier play, it is

“the green and gold of life.

"

I return to the thought with which l began the first

that the life of the world is in our life, and that our life

loses its loyalty to the life of the world. Through the

a refrain the repeated statemen t that in the pure soulthere is to be no more “ I andmine andme.

”

THE PERSONALITY OFMAN

, alweye open , and that the mutual reectione are real .And to clear away the rubbish of sin which clogs thoee

passages, and checks the intercouree between God and

the children oi God, came our Lord in l-Iis miseion of

Mr J. Arthur Hill in the final chapter oi his book on

ofGodas the Soul oi thisplanetwhichisHisbody. Itmaybe found a helpful thought. And he adds the suggestion .whichis in a language underetoodof psychical researchers.

that the working, striving Godmay bear to the infinite

to the subliminal in hurnan personality . By those who

understand the terms this will be appreciated. It is the

most daring fiight oi speculafion that l have met, and to

CHAPTER I

GEORGE FO!

1 . The Quakers arose as the mystical wing of the

Puritan movemen t in the days of the Commonwealth, andcon tinued, in face of persisten t persecution from the

Anglican Church, to grow rapidly during the Res torationperiod and after. The Society apparen tly reached its

it drew its membership neither from the gen try nor from

classes or the dregs of the people, but always from the

tion , but out of the very beat of the most earnestly

illumination which began with the revolt fromRome.Wyclifie and his Lollards had indeed gone far on theand that Of the early Friends, particularly with regard towar, the avoidance of the use ormanufacture of luxuries,

2 . But, as is well kn own , the course of the Reformation in England in the sixteen th cen tury had beengrievously hampered by its close connection with Governmen t, with the divorce of Henry VIII, andwith robberiesof Church property, by the personal tastes of Elizabeth,andby the theological limitations of Calvinism. Puritanism

90 THE FOUNDERS [cm

hadbeen driven by the episcopacy of Elizabeth and Jamesand the real Romanism of Charles I to erect a rivalbattlemen t of theology and church governmen t. The

Presbyterian claims for absolute correctness in teaching,and for ministerial authority in the Church, could not

afiord to be any less definite than those of their Catholicopponen ts. A “ Reformed Church ” was an exactlydescriptive title. The result was a form of clericalism,

whose democratic foun dation made it more, rather thanless, powerful than the Catholic hierarchy ; and a systemof doctrin e, whose newn ess and completenes smade it, inpractice,agreaterburden upon the soulwhosuiieredunderit. than the more primitive andmore easy-going Catholicsystem. The situation was summed up in Milton

’

s wittyand famous phrase : New Presbyter is but Old Priest writlarge. Brought up on the Westminster Catechism,

believing in the literal scien tific truth of every word in theBible, with the fear of Hell ever presen t to his spiri t, ifthat spirit happened to be sensitive or imaginative, withthe execution on Calvary regarded as an expiation and anequivalen t for the sins of the world in the eyes of the on lyGod he had been al lowed to hear of, with all his pro

pensities to pride and hardn ess of heart gratified bybelieving that he was on e of the elect, and that themajority ofmankin dwere doomed to everlasting burnings,the Puritan , with al l his strength of character and his

tended to choke charity, really denied universal love, anden slaved the spirit of inquiry. Yet the coun try was keen'bout religion to an ex ten t we can hardly realise now .

rmons were even ts of the same order of importance asfootball matches are to-day ,andthe execution Of the Kingwas decided upon , not after con sul tation with in ternational financiers, but after a three days

’ prayer meeting.

3. With the soul of the nation so alert and yet socramped by an imprisoning framework, the times were

92 THE FOUNDERS [cm

once more. Sitting by the fireside in the vale of Beevor

of God.

the life of George Fox no suggestion that conviction of sinand anxiety for his own salvation ever en tered his head.

His work was to bringmen out of that systemof thought

He was now a preacher and a prophet, but still awanderer, and for five more years he wen t about, largelyin the Midlands and in Yorkshire, preaching that

“the

Lord had visited His people,” that the days of apostasy,

that is of all established churches and formulas,were over

out fromall sorts of extemal isms, defiedministers in theirchurches , appeared to his enemies to speak disrespectft

occasional ly stoned and often mocked at; buthe gathered

chiefly about Nottingham and Mansfield and in the

West Riding of Yorkshire. But for those five yearsthere was n o Quaker congregation , no gathered Meeting.

There were a number of friendly individuals in occasional

4 . Now comes the experien ce which justifies the state

travelling the same path . I n 1 652 fromthe top of PendleHill, in the north eastern corner of Lancashire,after a longfast and earnest spiritual exercise, George Fox had a

vision . As he looked over the ranges of hills which led theeye from fell to fell in the direction of Westmoreland,avision of a great people in those dales to be converted tothe Lord came to him and sure enough there in 1652 he

founded Quakerismas an organised body. Forhe found in

x] GEORGE FO! 93

Westmoreland agroup of congregations cal ling themselvesSeekers‘. Their centre was at Preston Patrick,a few milessouth of Kendal, and they had congregations atGrayrigg,Sedbergh, Underbarrow, Kendal, Hutton , Kellet and

Sedbergh on fair day at Whitsun tide in 1 652 and was

sermon , apparen tly because George Fox was sitting at thebottomof the chapel. Then GeorgeFox arose andpreachedwith power, so that some hundreds were convincedThes e Seekers were themost earnest and devout of the

Puritans. They were very largely youngmen ,andwith the

claims made by the Anglican and Presbyterian communions. Like al l Puritans they were devoted studen ts ofthe Bible, andhad been able to perceive that the historic

natural course of endeavouring to get right back toprimitive practice, to be like Christ and His apostles, anddo as they did. It was a genuine religious experience thatdrove themon this quest. They al l , in their life story, tell

in the next chapter, is a very typical one, and the Seekersin Westmoreland roughly corresponded to the groupwhichthe young Puritan gen tleman in London helped to found.

But after al l this was on ly a purified outwardness. Theystill relied on history and on externals to some ex ten t,though the externals were better. I n fact theyhadcome tothe endof what areligion , based on belief in outward facts,

1W. C. Braithwaite'

s Beginn ings of Quekarism, chap. xv . and

his paper in Friends ’ Hist. Socy . journal , v . 3—ro.

FirstP ublishers of Truth, p. 244 .

found the centre of religious experience in tbe lnward

which they still practised, and he encouraged them to

inward experience. W. C. Braithwaite quotes1 froma tract by Francis Howgill . on e

,

of the Westmorelandleaders, called

“Lamen tation for the Scattered Triaddressed to his former friends, the Seekers, in 1 656, as

I f you build upon anything or have confidence in anythingwhich stends in time and is on this side etemity and the Being ofbeings, your foundation will be swept away, and night will m e

upon you, and all your gathered-in things and taken -on and

yourselves with the sain ts’ words , when you are ignorant of thelife ? Return , return toHimthat is the first love, and the firstbornof every creature,who is themghtof theworld. .Return home towithin : sweep your houses al l , the groat is there, the little leavenis there , the grain ofmustard-seed youwill see which the Kingdom

into a corner, but presen t when you are upon yourbeds and aboutyour labour, con vincing , instructing, leading . correcting, judging ,andgiving peace toall that love and follow fl im.

The Seekers had aminister, Thomas Taylor, who was

At themomen t of Fox '

s arrival he was in Yorkshire, andhis connection with Westmorelandhad dropped. He joined

5 . Then George Fox wen t to Swarthmoor and had thememorable in terview with Margaret Fell andher daughtersand servan ts, in which they also became his beloved

a messenger wen t off to meet Judge Fell as he returned

p.97

96 rue FOUNDERS (cu.

fil ls one with wonder. TheMilitia Christi gives a hard

train ing to its generals. The readiness and extent of the

ultimate response is, in itself, sufiicien t testimony thatthe thoughts of many earnest souls in the Puritan movemen t were prepared for the message ; that is, they must

likeness. Doubtless during the baffling years of inquiry ,

from 1643 to 1 647, the young reformer is likely to havetalked with somemystics, andmay have acquired by thispersonal conn ection some of the words and ideas of JacobBoehme. Books, except the Bible,he does not appear tohave studied,andwemay be sure that hewas the consciousdisciple of noman . He andhis friends believed that theyreceived all they had by the direct teaching of God. In

the main they were right, although like others they werethe vehicle of something in the time spirit .

7. In the middle of the seven teen th cen tury, Englandwas in a state of religious fermen t . Fermen t " in thechemical sense is the right word : the temperature was so

and inevitable . Protestan tismhad not yet found its feetit had not organised itself in to what are now its historic

Fox preached had lived through the Marian persecution .

The English Bible was part of curren t literature, not anancien t classic , itwas a comparatively new book,as bookswen t then .When George Fox was born , it was about as

Halt are now .Men called their sons, not Arthur and

Lancelot, but Jacob and Eliezer. Their minds were

undistracted from religious problems by those in terestswhich fill our newspapers. There were then no newspapersand there were no n ovels. There was no British empireto speak of, and what there was of foreign politics hadwholly to do with religion , with the wars of Spain and

r] GEORGE rox 97

Gustavus. Men ’

s thoughts did not circle round Evolution ,

but round Calvinism, which was ss fresh a subject asEvolution is now. The nation wasachurch,orafratricidal

bandofchurches ;andmen in terestedprofoundly in religionwere as common as are nowmen profoundly interested ingolf. Into an agricultural England George Fox came—tomen accustomedtopure weather and sunshine undirnmedby smoke, men undisturbed by art or literature, commerce or empire, but profoundly moved about theirsouls and the hereafter. Oliver, at a critical point in his

history, took one of his generals aside in the precincts ofParliamen t, and talked to him for an hour about thehundred and eighteen th Psalm, a subject not often mentioned in the Palace of Westminster to-day. To suchmen

more full of hope and of sense than anything else then

of seeking communities. There are signs that th e e werecommon ; as literary and debating societies are n . The

hour and the man hadmet.

But the strong efiort by which our forefathers drewsome sixty thousand of their fellow-coun trymen out of the

ofages ,andmoulded by gradual experience to fit the nee ds

us to-day . Something seems to have gone fromthe nation .

When one talks to themodern farmer or tradesman ,or to

the modern clergyman or landowner, it is difficult tobelieve that nowadays such a stringen t self-denying ordinance as Quakerism could arise.

The acceptance of the Quaker reform by so manyPuri tans after 1 660may have been helped by the fact that

a kingdom in the outward, and from their noisy and

c.g. 7

THE FOUNDERS (cu.

pugnacious clergy, to the voice which called them to an

Inward Kingdom, to the victories of suflering, to the

power and freedomof man ’

s unconquerable mind, which

Puritans under the Restoration must have been tenderedby sufiering and turned inward like the Jews under the

8. Howmuchof the religious stormin whichQusker-ism

was born still survives in strong currents of energy ? Howmuchisaspentwave? Howmuchindeedhasthrown upbuta legacy of wreck? Tragic, pathetic, butmost natural was

had the on ly way out of the City of Destruction . But wedonot thinknow of this earthasthe

“City of Destruction ,

"

and ours is no day for an“ only way.

”We can followBrmyan well enough when he is on lines of commonexperience, where Doubting Castle and the Valley of theShadow have to be passed on the way to the Delectable

Moun tains. But I am not sure that we are not a littleimplicated in what Bunyan might have called Van ity Fair,andwe no longer thinkof sin asaburden on the backwhich

we need the sightof the crossmagically to lose—we regardsin rather as a law in themembers fromwhichwe are to beredeemedby being crucifiedwithChrist to the lusts whichwar against the soul .

Of all the great voices of the seven teen th cen tury few,

with evolution and with modern scien tific conceptions .We Friendsmeet thes e with joy. No destructive cri ticismof externals can really destroy a faith whose home iswithin , and a God fromwhom we cannot es cape till we

9. The greatness ofGeorge Fox has been obscured bythree causes. First,his illiteracy andhumble station in lifegave himno place among those favoured by circumstances

1 00 THE FOUNDERS [cm

full of religious generalities or the practical busineas of the

lived and cared for little else. Least of all would theyglorify the creature. It is instructive to see how the greatclaimwhichtheymade for George Fox,andwhichhemadefor himself,as themessenger of God,didnot lead to reverence for personal detail, nor any idolatry of the creature.

Herein lies its dign ity and its veracity. Nevertheless wewould have given much for such a life of Fox asMrAylmerits seven teen th cen tury or its twen tieth cen tury form, to

men great. Non e of the ordinary attributes which makestrength and courage, wisdom, tenderness, humour, intellectual acuten ess or organising power, all of whichGeorge Fox had in abundan t measure, seem en ough toaccoun t for his brave,victorious, fruitful and unblemishedcareer. One can on ly understand the record of his cruel

personal persuasiven ess and gathering power, the utter

his commanding presence andhis piercing eyes,his statesman like grasp of a new movemen t in a turbulen t age, by

union with God so consciously close that there was no

room and probably little temptation to cowardice or

hes itation , but on ly an ever en larging love, built on the

pardon , conscious weakness, repen tan t retracing of error,are wholly absen t either in his times of darkness or of light .

1 As he rode throughahow lingmob of tagging undergraduatesin Cambridge streets, they shouted

“He shines, he glistens.

”Wemeet many other referen ces to the power of his eyes .

l ] GEORGE FO! xor

He says :When l cam; to eleven years of age l knew

pureness and righteousness, ior while l was a child l was

taught how to walk to be kept We have here athe creation , to use a phrase of Fox and in whom the

con trol from the beginning was where it ought to be.Wemay be quite sure that if there had been a period of sin

and itwould have affected his gospel ; butdo we hear the cry

“Who will deliverme from this bodyArnold hails as comrades of his own father in the last lines

Then , in suchhour of need

Of your fainting, dispirited race,

Radian t with ardour divin e !Beacons of hope, ye appear !Languor is not in your heart,Weakness is not in your word,Wear-in ess not on your brow .

Ye alight in our van ! at your voice,

Ye move through the ranks, recall

Order, courage, return.

Eyes rekindl ing, and prayers,Follow your steps as ye go.

Ye fill up the gaps in our files,

Strengthen the wavering line,Stablish, continue ourmarch,

On , to the bound of the waste,

ofGeorge Fox ’

s journal a long Preface still valuable as anauthoritative accoun t of the principles of the Society at

Jam al , fol . edns.Vol . 1 .p. z. Thewhole passage is of deep interest.

1 02 THE FOUNDERS [on

its foundation ,and of the character of its founder.Wewillquote a few ex tracts fromthis considered judgmen t of one

He was aman that God endued with a clear and wonderful

depth, adiscemer of others'

spirits, and very much amaster of hisown . And though the side of his undersmnding which lay iiext tothe world, and especially the expression of it,might sound uncouthand un faahionable to nice eais , his matter was neverthelea vesyprofound; andwould not on ly bear to be often considered, but themore itwas so, themore weighty and instructing itappeared. And

as abruptly and broken ly as sometimes his sen tences would fallfrom him, about divine things, it is well known they were oftenas texts tomany fairerdeclarations. And irideedit showed,beyond

all eon tzndiction , thatGod sen thim; that no arts orparts had anyshare in the matter or manner of his min istry ; and that so manygreat, excel len t, and n ecessary truths as he came forth to preachto man ldnd, had therefore nothing of man ’

s wit or wisdom to

recommend them; so that as toman he was an original , being no

man ’

s copy . Andhismin istry andwritings show thatthey are fromone that was not taught of man , nor had learned what he said

practical truths, tending to con version and regen eration , and the

extraordinary gift in opening the Sciiptures. He would go to the

marrow of things, and show the mind, harmon y, and fulfilling of

But above al l he excel led in prayer. The inwardness and weight

behaviour, and the fewness and fulness of his words, have often

with consolation . The most awful , living, reveren t frame I everfeltor beheld,

life, no busy-body, nor sel f-seeker, n either touchy normeek, con tented, modest, easy, steady, tender, it was a pleasureto be in his company. He exercised no authority but over evil ,and that everywhere and in all but with love, compassion , and

long-suffering. Amostmerciful man , as ready to forgive, as unapt

to take or give an offence. Thousands can truly say , he was of an

excellen t spirit and savour among them, and because thereof, themost excel len t spirits loved him with an un feigned and un fadiiig

truly, I must say, that thoughGodhad visibly clothed

CHAPTER I I

ISAAC PENINGTON

1 . William Penn tells us that of al l the early Friends,Isaac Penington was the highest in social rank. If therewere an exception no doubt it would be William Pennhimself. The fact is, that as Admiral Penn , the father ofWilliam, was high among the soldiers, so AldermanPen ington , Isaac

'

s father, was among the chief civiliansof the Commonwealth . I n 1 638, the year of the ScottishCovenan t,he was High Sheriff of London . He repres entedthe City in the Long Parliamen t, and was the I

“

. f‘ischild

of the Roundheads. When money was wan ted in the earlyyears of the war, application was generally made to theCity through Alderman Penington . If the Houses wereshowing courage and faithfulness to the Cause, theAlderman promised money, and once offered a guard of

300 citizens ; butwhen compromise about Strafford was inthe air, the money was withheld. Penington was Lord

a danger of peace being made in 1 643, itwas hewhoas

Lord Mayor helped to organisemob violence to terrify thepeace party. When the House found it necessary for itssafety against Army plots to have the Tower in trustykeeping,Alderman Penington was made its Govern or. He

was amember of the High Court of Justice who tried theKing . He was knighted by the Speaker, and became amember of that Council of State which undertook thedifficult organisation of the in fan t Commonweal th. He was

what was called a“Parliamen t Grandee,

"one of the

revolutionary nobility for twen ty years, and aman wellatl : to push the fortunes of his son Isaac Penington theYounger, had the latter been minded that way.

cu. I I] ISAAC PEN ING’

I‘

ON 05

Butour Isaac Penington was n o politician . Aman whocould write a political tract, and say of royalty thatDoubtless it hath its advan tages above any otherGovernmen t on one hand, as it hath also its disadvan tageson the other band,

”could have noactive service in aperiod

of heated partisanship. He goes on to say that he lookedfor the liberty and progress which they were all fighting

ness, rather than to the substitution of one formof governmen t for an other. Religion was ever the pre occupation ofhis spirit and the region of his activity.

2 . He wrote in later yearsMy heart frommy childhood was pointed towards the L ord,

whom I feared, and longed after, frommy tender could

not be satisfied with the things of this perishing world, which

naturally pass away ; but I desired true sense of, and un ity with,that which abideth for very earnestly desired the knowledge oi the Scriptures, but was much afraid of receiving men

’

s

in terpretations of them, or of fastening any in terpretation s on

themmysel f : but waited much and prayedmuch, that from the

Spirit of the Lord I might receive the true understanding of them.

I was exceedingly en tangled about Election and ReprobaRom. ix . etc fearing lest, notwithstanding all my

desires and seekings after the Lord, He might in His decree havepassedme by ,and l felt itwould be bitter tome to bearHis wrath,

and be separated from His love for evermore : yet, if He had so

decreed, it would be, and I should (notwithstanding these fair

Formany years this Calvinist horror haun ted him, as it

had haun ted most of the early Friends before they joinedGeorge Fox in his mighty revulsion from it,

’

and from the

accompanying ex ternalism in religion .

3. The hopeless misery of this Calvinistic dread brokedown Isaac Penington

’

s health .We nex t hear of a tem

porary reaction .When my nature was almost spen t, and the pit of despair

was even closing its mouth upon me, del iverance came and lightsprang within me, and the Lordmy God own edme, and sealedHis


love un to me, and light sprang within me ; whichmade not on lythe Scriptures, but the very outward creatures glorious in my eye :so that everything was sweet and pleasan t and lightsome round

He felt that this joy was too great forhim to bear, andprayed for amoremoderated sense of the Divine presence.

This came to pass, and the experience remained as a

pleasan t memory, though he had not reached a perfectand stable relationship with God.

I looked upon the Scriptures to bemy rule, and so wouldweighthe inward appearances of God to me by what was outwardlywri tten : and durst not receive anything from God immediately,as it sprang from the foun tain , but on ly in that mediate way .

Herein did I limit the Holy One of I srael , and ex ceedingly hurtmy own soul , as I afterwards felt and came tothat in mewhichkn ew notthe appearances of the Lordin my spirit,butwould limitHimto words of Scriptures formerly written—thatproceeded yet further and would be raising a fabric of knowledge

out of the Scriptures, and gathering a perfect rule (as I thought)concerning my heart,my words,my ways,my worship.

On this basis of literal Biblical in terpretation he says,I fell ahelping to buildupan Independent Congregation .

"

4 . This was one of the evanescen t religious organisations of which that fervid generation produced manyit was in tended to be a zealous and purified Calvinism.

But in the midst of it, sudden ly, the whole of his edifice

again st the religious system which he had inherited hadproceeded to the bitter end ; but there was n othing as yetto take its place. I had lostmy God,my Christ,my faith,my knowledge,my life,my all .

”He wondered whetherhis

desolation were apun ishmen t for some sin ; buthecould nothon estly think it was. He could not then see, we cannotat such times, that the complete loss of traditional beliefwas but ameans tomake room for a richer inheritance.

With cordial feelings of regret he left his Independen tfriends, as a man no longer believing in anything . He

con fesses in another place that they had gone in that

1 08 THE FOUNDERS (ca.

of a prayerful life, and to know no answer, no satisfyingconsciousness of the Divine presence. In time she heard

genuine prayer,and she used to go somemiles to hearhim

followed, and the motives of the orphan heiress werecruelly misconstrued by her guardians ; butWilliamSpringett, then a law studen t in London , heard of it, andcame to her rescue. They had been playmates fromearlyyears, andhad been brought upunder the same roof. Henow took his childhood’

s friend under his protection bymarrying her at the age of eighteen .

“My heart cleaved tohim for the Lord’

s sake,”she says. He, too, had become

an opponen t of forms. The young people ceased to usehymnsztheir songs as well as theirprayerswere tobe theirown . When their first child was born , the young aristocratic father of twen ty-one caused excitemen t among thecoun ty families byrefusing to have itbaptised by the priest,but had it carried five miles to the suspended Puritanpreacher, and held it to be baptised in his own arms amida great concourse of professing people from ten milesround, who had been invited to the occasion . He died ofdisease, after the capture of Arundel Castle, but before hedied he had abandoned both ordinances altogether, andlittle Gulielma Maria, the future wife of William Penn ,

born a few weeks after her father's death, was neverbaptised . This tes timony appears to have been borne bythese young people totally alone. George Fox had not yetbegun his mission .

Afterher husband’

s death in 1 643,LadySpringettwen t

and experience, and finding everywhere much talk and

volumes of theology, but not the Presence of God. Thenshe tried the gay world, in despair of the religif us one, andher strongest emotion was hatred of being too “ pious .

”

A violen t reaction hadset in against the outward profession

n ] ISAAC PENING‘

I‘

ON 1 09

of religion . She became what is now called agnostic, andvery miserable. She would fice at times with only Guliand hermaid into coun try seclusion . there to give way to

background of her gaieties. One stand-by alone remained.

The first text she had ever really cared for seemed to holdlike an anchor Blessed are they that hunger and thirstafter righteousness, for they shall be filled .

"And now and

then , in a dream, or in answer to a quiet waiting forguidance, she could feel herself still in the hands of InfiniteGoodness. She was an agnostic whose honest doubtcarried great faith in solution , a scepticmade by revulsionfromdogma. She had dropped prayer,

“because I fearedI could notcall God Father in truth, and I durst notmockHimas with a form.

Isaac Penington ; and the two solitary wanderers, too good

apparen tly in the worl d, yet not of it, set about theirques t for God hand in hand. They would have to do

6. They shortly heard of a new people called Quakers,butas in later days, the in tellectual presen tmen t which ourSociety made of its faith did not commen d it. MaryPen ington heard of them as a people in the North, whoused thee and thou,

"andshe saw abookwritten about

the plain language by George Fox, which, she adds,“ I

thought very ridiculous .

"She wished, nevertheless, that

slie could slip in to one of theirmeetings unknown ,and thenshe would kn ow by their prayers whether they were of theLord or not. Isaac Pen ington , referring probably to thesame writings, said he cast a slight eye upon them and

disdained them.

“Thee and thou” was indeed a heavybaggage to carry,andalwayshas been ,attached as we noware to its in timate family use, andprecious to us now as is

its unique significance.

i io (ca.

Then came the first in terview with aQuaker. In Mary

One day, as my husband and l were walking in apark, aman

us eshe rode by, in our gay vain apparel . He spoke to us aboutour

pride. at which I scofied, saying,“He a publ ic preachermdeed l

preaching on the highway l”He turned back again , saying he had

a love formy husband, seeing grace in his looks . He drew nigh to

thegates,andspokeof the lightendgraceof God thathadappeared

to all men .My husband and he having engaged in dlscourse, theman of the house coming up invited the etran ger in . He was but

young, and peiceiving my husband was too able for him in the

fieshly wisdom, said he would bring aman next day who would

better answer al l his queations and objectiom.

(How greatmight have been the loss to the world had notthis unknown andinconsiderable youngman been immediately faithful to a sense of duty.) He tried to bring GeorgeFox , but was only able to get hold of Thomas Curtis andWilliamSimpson . Theirsolid andweighty carriage struckadread overme, for they came in the authority andpowerof the Lord to visit us . Thomas Curtis impressed uponthemthe truth,

“ If anyman will doHis will be shall lmowof the doctrine. This struck on Mary Penington

'

s

conscience, she believing that she would have to give upmany of her practices before she would be able to receiveand unders tand what they laid down as their principles.

7. Thus was the chink made through which could beseen the full blaze of en lightenmen t to be had when thedoor was open . And the open ing was dependen t on theold condition , Do all you kn ow .

” It is an awesomecommand. She had a terrible time, but she dare not butobey. Here came in the glorious and sufi

'

icient reward forherprevious spiritualwrestlings. Shewas alreadya trainedspirit, and fell in to the word of command when it wasplain ly heard. But forman y mon ths the struggle lasted.

Her duty called her, apparen tly,“

to abandon her socialhabitsandher friends,andcross thewishes ofher relations .

m THE FOUNDERS (cu.

and coascience. openln¢ my state as in ths presencs of the bord.

but l feltme dead quichened. the seed ralssd. inasmuch thatmyheart (in the certalnty of light and clearns-of tme ssnse) ssid,

waited for and sought after frommy childhood. who was always

nearme.aud had often begotten life in my heart, bet l hnew himnot dlstinctly , nor how to recslve him, or dwel l with hlm. And

then in thls senae an themelting and lmakings of my spirifi wasI given up to the lm

'd. to become l both ln waiting for the

further revealing of l'l ls Seed ln me. am. to serve I-l im ln the life

lastmet with? I answer, I have met with the Seed. Understand

thisword,and thouwiltbe satisfiedand enquire no further. I have

metwlthmy Godzl havemetwithmy Saviour. and I l e hath notbeen presen t withme without I l ls salvation . but I have felt the

with the true h owledge. the knowledge of have met withthe Seed

'

s Father, and in the Seed I have fel t Himmyhave met with the Seed'

s faith, which hath done and doth that

which the faith of man can never do. I have met with the truebirth. with the birth which is heir of the have metthe true peace, the true righteousness, the true holiness, the true

rest of the soul , the everlastlng habitation which the redeemeddwell in ; and I know all these to be am capable of nodoubt. dispute, or reasoning in try in ? «i. about them.

9. I have felt bound to let Isaac Penington tell thestory of this crisis and redemption in his own words ; yetthey are words not easy, as words, to follow . They cannottell you their secret, these mystics, though they try.

“ Ihave met with the Seed.

" It requires a knowledgeof the subject matter, as well as of the tongue of thecoun try, before we can translate Isaac Pen ington in toterms of our own experience. Nor will their words dofor us. The words recording our story will probablybe quite difierent.We speak, for instance, of beingworried by pessimism. Isaac Penington puts it “

The

cruel oppressor roared upon me, and made me feel thebitterness of his captivity, while he had any power yea,

n ] ISAAC PENINGTON

the Lordwas far frommy helpand from the voice ofmyroaring.

”

struck. in the lntimate presence of its own spiritual nature,and of aspilitual nature greater than its own . it tells ever.in its own way.of the same path to spiritual illumination .

All themystics tell us thatway is in the submission of ourlower appetites to our higher nature. in the plasticity of

the rawmater'ial of the selfishanhnal to theArtisthand ofthe great Craftsman .

By the“Seed

”IsaacPenington andGeorge Fox meant

what Drummondmeant by Biogenesis. They taught thatreligious experience is really a iife and a growth, that we

are not most correctly regarded (say) as cisterns to be

filledoras roughsurfaces tobe smoothed,butasplan ts ofaheaven ly plan ting, organismswhoabsorb sun lightandrain ,

and needto beprunedandtended,andhave our seasons of

Autumnal harvest andWin ter quietude, of the constan trebirths of Spring,andof Summer

’

swarmthof sunshine andwealth of fiowers. The breakings up and the painful re

developmen t may be likened to the breaking of the clods,the relen tless straight line of the ploughshare, the fi ner

humiliation s of the barrow. and above all . to frequen tweeding. Weeding is the essen tial characteristic whichmakes agarden agarden , and our cal l is to weedalways

dawn ing power, and all through Summer’

s flowering. The

analogy of the seed is instructive too, inasmuch as seedsmust notbe dug up to findwhether they are growing, andwe must allow ourselves the quiescence of recuperation ,

away in a desert place to rest awhile. Nor must we'

fret

organism could bear the strain for long, nor feel the joy.

Nor, again . are we helped much in our own growth bybecoming authorities on spiritual horticulture ,

on the

Ge Qe

xx4 THE FOUNDERS [cm

agricultural chemistry of souls, nor on the laws of heaven lymeteorology. All such learning is, in measure , in terestingandhelpful, but it is bookishness,notvitality ; it is science,

not life.

Such, then , expanded in modern fashion , was the

burden of all Isaac Pen ington’

s works . The en lightenmen tof 1 658 lasted him the rest of his life—twen ty-one yearsspen t in enduring hardness in the outward. He neverswerved, n ever doubted again . His special work after thiswas to poin t out to religious people, outof the fulness ofhisown experien ce, the insufficiency of the theological andthe ritual part of organised religion , the essen tial importance of the inward life, and the reality of the inward light.This we find to be the ever recurren t assertion of all livingreligions, filling their varying doctrin es with whatevermeaning they may have.

1 0. Isaac Penington , un like other early Friends, wasnot an itineran t evangelist. He rarely travelled, but whenhe was not in gaol stayed at home and wrote—wrote toreligious professors . His work forms a very cen tral, verytypical , body of Quaker teaching, as his experience wastypical of that of most of his friends . They say fully andrepeatedlywhat Quakerismhad to say about the organ isedChurches, about the Bible and about theology, in connection with their cen tral teaching described above.

(a) Some of his expressions about the organisedchurches will hardly bear reading aloud n ow ; as, for

instance, in his Baby lon theGreatDescribed. No doubt theywere written in love. I am sure they were, and yet theiruse of the imagery of the Book of Revelation as to theScarlet Woman andherdeeds is pressedhome to the clergywith such fulness of detail andsuch persisten t iteration thatwe find itdifficult to associate itwith the high-minded andgracious gen tleman whomwe know thewriter to have been .

It was the manner of the time, and must be allowed foras such, just as we allow something to the Bishops

and what doth not agree therewith is not of God, and that ourforefathers in the faith w ere led to batter the superstitions andidolatries of the Papists by the testimony of thewe bel ieve the Spirit to be a touchstone beyond the Scriptures, andto be thatwhich giveth ability to try and discover no

t on ly words

but Spirits.

This commonsense view of the Scriptures , whilst itmade Friends ready to appeal to them as against the latercorruptions of the Church, left them free from any con

ven tional en slavemen t of spirit, and is the reason whyFriends reached in tuitively some truths now generallyrecognised in the fuln ess of time by the slower progressof Biblical research.

(c) I n theology in general , Isaac Penington u serts

that he and his friends had no new doctrines to preach .

They protes ted that they were as orthodox as otherChristians. With the one exception of Robert Barclay,they were not systematic theologian s . As they acceptedthe seven teen th cen tury notions of science and history,they accepted also the scheme of Divine things whichharmonised with them.

1 1 . Butall this was, in their view , quite in ciden tal andsecondary in presence of the reality of religion ; and thereality was experien ce, not words . They perpetuallyinsisted on the perfect uselessness of orthodoxy to the soul ;and on the essen tial importance of personal in timacy withGod, of having the seed of His nature sown in the heart,and growing up in His likeness. So the grc..i doctrinalterms of Christianity acquired in their writings an inwardben t. Salvation,

”for instan ce, was to be realised here

after, doubtless, but do not forget, they urged with al ltheir power, that itmust be experienced here, and that thefunctions of HellandParadise are now active in this nation .

The flesh and blood of Christ were to them what theliving soul feeds on and drinks of. The “ Kin gdom” ofChrist is composed of Kings and Priests of the Church

n ] ISAAC PENINGTON 1 1 7

Militan t ; and that Church is not an organisation , nor a

building. I ts census is beyond our data, and its roll-callsounds further than Christendom itself to every race

among whom the Holy Spirit vibrates .

Forgiveness with the early Friends was not an

outward transaction , but an inward experience of reconciliation with God ; and he who has this experience neednot be over anxious about how he came by it. Finally,the founders of Quakerism press home the truth that thepresence of Christ in the heart is themeans by which alonewe are able to perceive the essen tial chazacterandmean ingof His outward revelation in the flesh.

1 2 . The outward even ts in the life of Isaac andMaryPenington after their new birth to joy and power need notdetain us long. They moved in 1 658, the year of Oliver

’

s

death, fromLondon to the Pen ington estate at the Grange,Chalfon t, among the lovely woods of Buckinghamshire.

It was at this momen t that Isaac Pen ington held a

pathetic correspondence withhis father,who the 'ht thathis son had strayed far from soundness and se; The

lettersmust have been trying forboth. The son wrote withmuch affection but in great plainnes s, about the weaknessof his father's religion , which, he said, began e

‘the wrong

part, that is, in the fear of Divinewrath. Til t Alderman ’

s

troubles were thicken ing. Now that Oliver was dead, theparty was going to pieces, and ended by committingsuicide in pure militarism.

When Charles II returned the Alderman was one of theregicides who surrendered on the faith of a king, and wasslowly done to death in the dungeon s of the Tower overwhich he had once been govern or. The property of thefamily was confiscated, and the Grange was given to theDuke ofGrafton l ,who,however, for some reason unknown ,

perhaps for a ren t did not dispossess the Pen ingtons till1 665. A series of six imprisonmen ts now fell upon Isaac

Son of Charles I I and Barbara Palmer,Duchess of Cleveland.

1 1 8 THE FOUNDEI? c [cm

Penington . Between 1 661 and 1 672 he spen t four years andthree quarters in gaoi, usually at Aylesbury but once atReading,whitherhehadgone to comfort Friends in prison .

Amagistratehearingof it,thought itamusing to incarceratehimalso . The gaols weremiserably cold anddamp, so thatmost of the time when he was out of prison was spen t bythe sufferer in long illnesses consequen t upon his privation s. His tenderly nurtured life had il l fitted him to resistlack of warmth and fresh air, and prison food. Once they

put him in gaol, kn owin g that the plague was raginginside. This was done by military order of the Earl ofBridgewater, duringwhose pleasure IsaacPen ington wasto be confin ed. His ofience was that hehad notused to thisnobleman the customary forms of deferen tial salutation .

Hewould notsay MyLord,

”and Yourhumble servan t .

”

He used n o mean s to defend himself against such an

illegal imprisonmen t . The inciden t throws light upon thecharacter of English justice under the restored Monarchy.

The prisoner's letters to his persecutor, the Earl, fromAylesbury gaol are precious documen ts : distilled drops ofsain thood .

Thatwhich thouhast don e tomehathnotmademe thy en emybut, in the midst of it, I des ire thy true wel fare ; and that thoumayest so carry thysel f in thy place, as n either to pmvoke codagainst thee in this world nor in the world to do not

desire that thou shouldst suffer either fromman or fromGod, on

my accoun t, but that thou mighmt be guided to, and persevere,in that whichwill bring sweet rest, peace, and safety to all who aresheltered by it, in the stormy hour in which the Lord wil l make

Two of his imprisonmen ts, one of n inemon ths and oneof eighteen ,were the private actof thisEarl of Bridgewater.

Finally, one of his wife’

s relations procured that he shouldbe brought to trial, and naturally hewas at once released ;buthe steadfastly declined to prosecute for illegal imprisonmen t.


in kindneu fin tendern eu in love ina preuible to the relation as a

wife. Next to the love of God in Christ Jesus tomy soul , was hislove precious and delightful to me.My bosomon e l that wu myguide and counsellor ! my pleasan t companion !my tender sympathisin g friend l as near to the sense of my pain , som w, grief. and

trouble as itwas poodble. Yet this greathelp and benefit is gone ;

and I ,

with many infirmitiee, through mercy let him go without an

unadvised word of discon ten t, or inordinate grief. Nay , further ;such was the great kindness the Lord showed tome in that hour,that my spirit ascended with him in that very moment that hisspirit left his body ; and l saw him snfe in his own mansion , nnd

rejoiced with him, and wu at that instant gladder of it than ever

I m of enjoying him in the body . And from this sightmy spiritreturned again to performmy duty to his outward tabernacle, tothe answer of a good conscience .

This testimony to dear I saac Penington is from the greatestloser of all that had a share in his life. Many a ucrox .

This was written at my house atWoodside, 27. 1 1 . 1 680,

between 1 2 and 1 at night, whilst I was watching with my sick

child.

1 5 . Isaac Penington left behind hima large number ofpamphlets, which were duly collected in to a large foliovolume. TheWorks, apart from the letters, occupy 1 400quarto pages in the second edition of 1 761 . They are, I amafraid, dead, except for the studen t.It seems to be a law of taste that nothing written ,

literary form and thes e works are chaotic.Style is not

asuperficial trick easily acquired by apressman . Itmeansa great deal. It in cludes con tinuity of expression as a

vehicle of consecutive thought, with repression of al l distracting matter, it demands a definite beginn ing, a clearanalysis of the subject, and a defin ite and prompt end.

Throughout, the appropriate words need to be carefullychosen and fitted in to the edifice. For we must build apiece of architectui s in words, not leave a loosely piled

1 1] ISAAC PENINGTON

heap of stones . Andalbeit in Isaac Penington’

s casemanyof the stones are jewels , and al l are admirable buildingmaterial, yet the jewels have to be hun ted for, and thewhole abounds with repetitions and excres cences. He

never wrote with an edition of CollectedWorks in his eye ;he relieved hismind pretty completely of his criei QuakerGospel in each of the short works ; and so, no doubt,reached his con temporaries by iteration more thoroughly.

But for our purpose n ow , a summary would be betterthan the 1 400 pages ; and justice may be fully done to hiswritings in a book of Selections‘.

See Bibliography.

CHAPTER I I I

SOME WRITINGS OFWILLIAM PENN

Will iam Pen n has been the subject of many books, and his“HolyEx perimen t," in Pennsylvania, togetherwiththe storyof thePilgrimFathers and of Rhode I sland, furnish the NewWorldwitha heroic age, and are for the Un ited States what the tale of thewanderings of Aen eas was forRome. Here we are con cerned on lywith three of his writings, viewed as expositions of his Quakerfaith'.

1 . Two of these were written in the year 1 668, whenEngland was under the domin ion of a restored and

vindictive Anglicanism. Pen n was then in his twen tyfourth year, and was beginning his public ministry.

Bein g sent of God to teach others what himselfhad learn tof Him, commissioned from on High to preach to othersthat holy self-den ial himself had practised ; to recommendto all that Seren ity and Peace of Conscience himself hadfelt ‘ Walking in the Light, to call others out of Darkness ;havmg Drunk of the Water of Life, to direct others to thesame Foun tain : Having tasted of the Heavenly Bread. toinvite allMen to partake of the same banquet : Beingredeemed by the Power of Christ,hewas sen t to call othersfrom under the Dominion of Satan ,

in to the Gloriousliberty of the Sons of God, that they might receiveremission of Sin s, and an inheritance among themthat areSanctified, through Faith in Jesus Christ. One Workmanthus qualified, is able to do His Master

’

s Business farmoreeffectually, than Ten Bold In truders, who undertake toteach a Science themselves n ever Learned.

” Thus his

See for further treatmen t the author’sWill iamPenn (Swarthmore Press) or other biographies.

m w e FOUNDERS [cm

justify the wicked. Nor is right reason behind in itsrein forcemen t to his argumen t that three cannot equal one,that each unit of the three must, if separate, clearly befin ite ; withmuch other verbal hammering.

I n dealing with his second poin t, against the doctrin eof plenary satisfaction , we have such argumen ts as these

Because if Christ pays the debt asGod. then the Fatherand theSpirit being God. they also pay the debt. I f Christ has satisfiedGod the Father, Christ being also God, it will follow then thatHe

has satisfied Himself, which cannot be. But since God the Fatherwas once to be satisfied, and that it is impossible He should do itHimsel f, nor yet the Son nor the Spirit, because the same God ;it natural ly follows that the debt remains unpaid, and thesesatisfactions thus far are stil l at a low .

Against the doctrin e of an imputative righteousness,we have the argumen t : It renders a man justified andcondemned, dead and alive, redeemed and not redeemed,at the same time ; the one by an imputative righteousness,the other by a personal unrighteousness.

”

Whilst perforceadmitting the cogency ofhis argumen ts,and the vividn ess of his presen tmen t of truth and errorin unshaded black and white . the modern thinker cannotbut feel that the rou -hewing craftsman , building hisfoundation in the days of Quaker pioneering, is not quiteso fitted for the needs of the twen tieth cen tury as for thoseof the seven teen th. He is too prematurely systematic,deal ing sledge-hammerblows atdelicate fabrics of thought ,without shadow , andwith no gen tlemerging of opposites .

It is always day or night. There is n either sunrise nor

sunset, and never any mist . The writer has completeconfidence in his use of such words as God and man ,

righteousnes s and sin , body and spirit, saved and lost,n ever recognising any difficulty about definition of these,

or of the other con trasts and opposites in which the

polemics of that day took much stock. William Penn ,

however, judged by curren t standards, was on strong

m] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 1 23

ground. The little bmk was very difiicult to gainsay,except in the way that was always open to the EstablishedChurch of the time, vim—by the imprisonmen t of itsauthor in the Tower of London , where he was closelyconfined and den icd the visits of his friends. The Bishopof London declared that he should either publicly recan tordie a prisoner, to which the youngman replied :

Al l is wel l z l wish they had toldme so before.since the expectingof a Release put a stop to wme busin ess zThou mayest tel l myFather, who I know will aek thee, these words : “

Thatmy prisonshall bemy grave,before l will bndge ajot ; for l owemy conscien ceto nomortal man ; I have no need to fear, God will make amendsior sl l z They are mistaken in mez l value not their threats nor

resolutions ; for they shall mow l can weary out theirmalice and

peevhhnessmnd in me shall they al l beholda resoludon above fear ;conscience above cruelty ; and a bafl e put to all their design s, bythe spirit of patien ce, the compan ion of al l the tribulated flock of

the Blessed Jesus, who is the Author andFinisherof the faith thatovercomes the world, yea, death and hel l too : neither great norgoodthingewere everattainedwithout loss andhardships. He thatwould reap and not labour, must faint with the wind, and perish

in disappoin tmen ts ; but an hair of my head shall not fal l , withoutthe providence of my Father who is over al l .

Verily thes e were men who could foun d a religion .

2 . His next work was a complemen t to The SandyFoundation Shaken and was in tended to remove the

aspersion which was cast upon him through his denial ofthe Trin ity, that he did not believe in the divinity ofChrist. He therefore wrote “I n nocency withherOpen Face,presen ted by way of apology for the book en titled TheSandy Foundation Shaken . To all serious and enquiring

by WilliamPenn , Jun . He that uttereth a slander is afool, and a false balance is an abomination to the Lord,was the title page motto.

I n this book he asserts the un ity of Christ the Saviourwith God, and the reality of sal vation through Him. It is

196 rue FOUNDERS (cs .

butabdef w rk,but the kw pages wemsuihcient toundo

the gates oi the‘

l‘

ower for the author.

present a Christology which is coherent and satisfactory.

and the reason for that is the same as the reason for the

Friends did not realise what we now call the lmmanenceofGod

"

; they—along with the age in which they livedalways thought of God as separate, though visitingmenthey never darcd to say thatman wss apart of aDivine

Thus, though Penn was easily able to criticise the

Athanasian Trin ity,he sets upno successful substitute forit. It would be open to aTrinitarian to say that the unityor even iden tity of Christ with God which he asserts inI nnocency wilhher Open I-

‘

ace gives them al l they reallywan t ormean . The Bishop of London took this view in

liberating the author. Penn would, however, demur. He

would say“ I have asserted the unity of Christ and God

what I deny is their separateness.

” So far true. But he

had only reached half the truth . He must also find theunity between God andMan before he can accoun t forChrist as one with bothz—as true God because true man ,

not in spite of being true man ; or les s epigrammatically,that the very perfection of humanity in Himmade Hima

perfect represen tative of God—because we are al l , in

imperfect measure, organs of God and so part of theDivine. We hold more of God who gives than of Histribes that take.

”AndHis was the pure Divine Spirit in

come to think of the spirit of eachman as a cell in the

spiritual organism of God, the Incarnation ceases to be amatter of con troversy or difficulty. This subject is morefully treated in Book I .If the separateness of God andMan is affirmed, then the

separateness of God and Christ follows as the Athanasian

1 28 ms FOUNDERS [cm

The next chapter is on The Unlawful Self, a largesubject which leads the author in to protests against

His next chapter turns to the errors of Protestan ts,who are ofmore refined belief andmactice, but, none theless, have a self-measing rather than a cross-bearing

so en ters upon a defence of the Quaker mode of worship on the basis of silence .

He then turns to Pride as the great an tithes is to the

chapters. It will be expected that religious pridewill comefirs t under his lash. The pride of priesthood, which is,indeed, the final insolen ce of our domineering race, is

debited with its fruits in slaughter and persecution :Almost every history tells uswithwhat prideandcruelty ,

blood and butchery, with what unusual and ex quisitetortures they have persecuted the holy

“

members of Christout of the world. The pride of power comes next . Hetells the story of aman who when accused of piracy by

was the greatest pirate in the world. The chapter on pride

testimony again st vain titles . This testimony, which costour early Friends much, has also been among the les spermanen t of their achievemen ts, and has now beenaban doned ; con ven tion has washed out of titles much oftheir personal fiavour, and most of us use them in the

ordinary way of politenes s. But itmight do us n o harmto readWilliam Penn on pulling off the hat, bowing the

body or kn ee , andgiving people gaudy titles and epithets ;a true democracy, and a reverence for humanity, pulsethrough his protest, and his passage on the true nature ofhon our is very fin e. He suggests that such expres sions asMy Lord Peter and My Lord Paul are not to be found

m] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN

in the Bible, still less Your Holines s or Your Grace,and the passage " They loved to be called of men Rabbi

”

is prin ted in large black letter.

The next chapter is on the plain language, the use ofthee " and

“ thou” to one person . It throws a curiouslight on William Penn

’

s mind that one of his argumen tswas that God spake to Adamin the Hebrew language, in

Frankly, this testimony appears to me to have beenerroneous fromthe beginning, and I should have ex pectedaman of William Penn

’

s education to have risen above it.

It has , doubtles s, en riched the Quaker vocabulary bymaking us able to convey a certain meaning, not to bemisunderstood, by the use of the old tender pronouns.

Some of his argumen ts are amusing.

“Why shouldchildren be whipped at school for putting you for thou ’

as having made false Latin , and yet that we must be

propriety of speech An other argumen t is that as

thy speech bewrayeth thee was acharacteristic of Peterand the Galileans, so it might suitably be of Christ

'

s

followers here. His n ext object of attack is the pride thatleads people to excessive value of their persons . Hencefollows much sound writing, very applicable in many

moremercilessly pul verised. He then turns to women anddeals with the personal pride of those who have “

anypretence to shape or beauty.

”He says it would abate

their folly if they could find in their hearts to spare one

half the time to think of God and their latter end, whichthey must spend in washing, pain ting, perfuming, patching, attiring and dres sing.

” “ That which aggravates theevil is that the pride of onemight comfortably supply theneed of ten . Gross ingratitude it is that a nation ’

s prideshould not be spared to a nation ’

s power. The sun itself,the blessing of heaven and the comfort of earth,must not

6 . Q. o


shine upon them les t it tan them, nor the wind blow forfear it should disorder them. Oh impious n icety l

”He

thinks that those adommen ts make many hasty and

unhappy marriages . With married people the sin is

aggravated, for They have none of right to please butone another, and to affect the gaiety and vanity of youthis an ill sign of loving and living well at home ; it looksrather like dressing foramarket.” He then turnswith evengreater severity to the fan tastic decorations of those whomhe calls the oldandhomely. He concludes by des cribingthe proud man as "

a glutton upon himself.”

He now turns toAvarice,on which he brings numerousillustrations from the turbulen t history of man , and setshis beloved Society on that lofty path on which ithas, onthe whole and with exceptions, kept its footing eversmce.

After pride andavaricehe turns to Luxury,anddelivershis whole soul against it in three fiery chapters.

4 .

“ Plainness of dres s, behaviour and apparel”is one

of the official phrases which were familiar to all Friendsfrom their use in the Queries in the past. The existenceof this testimony and its ultimate corruption are alike

It arose froma sense of the real importance of the souland the inner life, and the real unirnportance of outwardshow , and consequen tly of the wisdom of cen tring our

atten tion on walking in the narrow but themoun ting path,undistracted by frivolity and pride, the lust of the fleshand the lust of the eyes . I n origin , then , itwas spon taneousand natural,anditmight have led, from the best of origins,to an un conscious good taste : an outward and visible signof inward and spiritual grace.

Like the monastic attempts at a conscious simplicity,it led to the adoption of a peculiar garb neither better norworse than that of other religious orders . It led to theexaggeration of trifles, to a wrong valuation of conduct,


allowing that word a large and liberal sense. That is, noindulgence beyond that can have any sure defence. Itmay

justification ,andwill alwayschallengecriticism.

growing corn ormaking tools gives steady employmen t tolabour. Thes e things are always wan ted. But people who

left penniless.

Again , there is no worse endowmen t for children thanto brin g them up in luxury ; thus establishing a standardof expenditure which it may be diflicult for them tomain tain without undueabsorption in business. As Carlyle

put it, we are rich if our numerator exceeds our denominator. And this can be achieved by diminishing the latter.

NoCross,NoCrown con tains “a second part, being an

accoun t of the living and dying sayings of men eminen tfor their greatness, learning or virtue, and that of diverseperiods of time and nations of the world, all concurring inthis one testimony, that a life of strict virtue, viz ., to dowell and to bear il l is the way of lasting happiness.

” Therethen follows a really wonderful collection of great sayings,which are as in teresting now as ever they were.

First come testimonies from eighty-seven great menand women among the heathen ; that is, chiefly fromGreece and Rome. En tering nex t the Christian ages, andbegin n ing with Christ Himself, we have a collection of thesayings of Christian Fathers—nineteen in number. Thenthe history of theWaldenses is worked out for an example.

Then come dying testimon ies to the number of thirty-nin e,leading up to the author

’

s own time,and including a pioustribute to his own father. He concludes his great pleafor righteousn es s with the followingprayer :

O LordGod l Thou lov est l loliness, and purity is'

l'

hy delightin

the earth; wherefore l pray Thee, make an end of sin , and finish

m] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 1 33W md bring in Thy Everlu fing Righteoumu-to the

that Thm t Namomay be lifted np in al l nationr, and Thysalvafion renowned to the ends of the world. For Thino ie the

as apicture of themes sage ofaQuaker founder, these earlyworks are all we need here. The curren t form ofNoCross,NoCrown ,ofwhich therewere twen ty-fourEnglish editionsbefore 1 860, is the second edition , issued in 1 682 ,correctedandgreatlyen larged,including for instance the tribute tohisfather,whowas still living when the first edition came out.It is thus, as here summarised, amature work, if thirtyeight be regarded as a mature age ; and was much de

difliculties at the age of tw en ty-four. The book is still ofgreat in teres t ; though its style is expw sive, hortatory and

CHAPTER IV

BARCLAY’

S APOLOGY

1 . No book which aspires to be an Apologia for

Quakerismcan fail to provoke an in quiry as to what needthere is for such an attempt when there still exists a farmore vigorous and comprehensive work, the famous

This has been assuredly one of the great andmemorablebooks of the world, the single and authoritative text-bookof Quaker divin ity, a book still hon oured, though it hasceased to be read ; but. one which was, for two cen turies,a living book, read by serious-minded Friends and the

armoury of texts for thousands of sermons. It is a bookwhich belongs to the same shelf as Calvin

'

s I nstitutes and

the works of Richard Baxter. In style and in volume, itwas in tended as a systematic and scholarly reply to themanuals of Puritan theology. William Penn , indeed, feelsit n eces sary tomake some apology for its learning.

“The

method and style of the bookmay be somewhat singularand like a scholar, for we make that sort of learning nopart of our divine scien ce, but that was not to show himself, butout of his tendern es s to scholars, andas far as thesimplicity and purity of the truth would permit, in con

descension to their education and way of treating thosepoin ts herein handled ! " It is full of references to thewritin gs of the Early Fathers in main tenance of the Quakerclaim, which modern scholarship has on ly fortified, thatthey were going back to primitive Christian ity. There isa full half-page, for instance, of closely packed references

1Wm Penn ’

s Preface to the Reader ” prefix ed to Barclay'

s

CollectedWorks, r6g r, p. xx i.


Friends’ libraries, and for a cen tury the question most

with the con temporary writings of William Penn , but

posdbly more influen tial than they were, it gave to thegospel of George Fox and his illiterate Evangelists a

standing in the world of thought as strong as that of anyof the proudest Presbyterians or Anglicans. It wasin tended as a reply to the Westminster Confession on the

right hand, and to ward ofl the Socinians on the left, withmore distan t blows at Popery behind. Nordo we now wishto retire in essen tials fromitsmain res ults , thoughwe reachthem by a very differen t path . The philosophy of thePuritans,which theApology assumes, is the very an tithesisof the plea for human andDivine un ity, which constitutesBook I of this volume. Making due allowance for thechange in atmosphere in two hundred and fifty years,particularly for the change in what may be cal led thevisible universe during the last half cen tury, we still holdby the deductions of the young Scottish laird who wasenabled in themansion atUry, in what George Fox calledhis quiet corner of the land, to write hismemorable book.

His father, Colonel David Barclay, had been amember oftwo of Oliver's parliamen ts,had opposed his adopting thetitle of King, had fought in the wars, defeated Mon trose,

andhad held the North of Scotland with his troops duringpart of the Civil Wars . His mother was a Gordon , granddaughter of the Earl of Sutherland, andadistan t cousin ofthe Royal House of Stuart . Colonel David Barclay turnedfromtheworld to devote the rest ofhis life to religion , and

looking about the coun try he foun d in the storm-tossedranks of Quakerism the nearest approach he could findto the presence of God amongmen . His son , the Apologist,was then a boy studying in Paris in the Scots’ College, ofwhich his uncle was the rectoraLIt is curious that PennandBarclay, the two trained theological leaders of Quaker-i

rv] BARCLAY’S APOLOGY r37

came home from Paris at the age of eighteen , in spite ofthe offer of great wealth as his uncle '

s heir if he remained.

He shortly adopted his father’

s new faith, which he heldthrough barbarous imprisonmen ts tillhis death atthe earlyage of forty-two.

The Apology begins with a dedication to KingCharles I I , which combines habitual deference to royaltywith a dign ified plainness of speech. He regards the

Restoration as a marvellous even t , which can only beexplained because it is the Lord

’

s doing, marvellous inour eyes ,and sufi cient to overthrow atheism. He regardedthe Puritan magnates as having begun to do those things

hands were found full of oppres sion . The Puritanstruggle was not the last war for a n oble cause of which

cessation of Quaker persecution .

2 . The first proposition states the necessity of theknowledge of God.

great importance. He compares inward revelation with the

Moreover, these divin e inward revelations, which wemake absolutely necessary for the building upof true faith ,

neither do nor can ever con tradict the outward testimonyof the Scriptures, or right and soun d reason . Yet fromhence itwill not follow, that these divine revelations are tobe subjected to the examination , either of the outwardtestimony of the Scriptures , or of the natural reason ofman , as to amore noble or certain rule and touchston e ;for this divin e revelation , and inward illumination , is that

rss

which is evident and clear of itself, forcing, by its ownevidence and clearness, the well-disposed understandingto assen t, irresistibly moving the same thereun to ; evenas the common Principles of natural truths move and

incline the mind to a natural assen t ; as, that the whole

neither be both true, nor both false.

theBibleby thePuritans,weseethattheg0spel of immediaterevelation had tochallenge that position in away no longernecessary. Barclay suggests a new and curious reading forcertain tex ts if you substitute the word “

scripture " forthe word “

spirit ” : “To another the gifts of healing by thesame scripture.

" This is exactly in themanner of Ruskin ,

who plays in the same way with the meaning of the word“church .

” “ Unto the angel of the external institution ofcertain forms of worship of Ephesus Barclayalways speaks with respect of his great opponen t Calvin ,

and quotes at this poin t a passage from the l nstitutes in

support of his own position , but covered over with otherdoctrines by the ordinary Calvinist . Barclay poin ts out

that it is not said “ It shall teach you how to understandthose things that are written ,

”but It shall teach you all

things .

"And in paragraph 1 2 in Proposition rrBarclay’

s

exposition of the text that “ the same anoin ting teacheth

you of all things, and is truth"is ahnost iden tical in words

with theexposition of the same subject by IsaacPenington .

It will be seen that Robert Barclay's argumen t, though itplaces the Scriptures in a secondary position to the lightwhich gave them forth , places them still in the authoritative position in which they were generally held by hisfellow Christians. He and his friends had no idea of anysubversive criticism beyond such errors as might haveslipped in through copyists or translators .We shall recurto this poin t later. His excellen t illustration in 5 1 8 of

1 Notes on the Con struction of Sheep/alas, 5 2 .

1 40 ms FOUNDERS (ca.

authoritativedivine life inman , towhichthey saw that the

Scriptures owed their origin ,and upon which theydepend,

notmen of the twentieth century in regard to historical

higher criticisrn , and they never thought of impugning inpractice the authority of the Bible, even although Barclayexpres ly declares that he sees no reason why there shouldnotbeasupplementary Bible,written then orhereafter. Hesees no reason why the canon of Scripture shouldbe closed.

But we are bound to admit that in this exceptional

passage Robert Barclay admits the fallibility of theinward in tuition ,buthas no test to provide for it. It is nothis fault . There is no test of in fallibility in the world, andno in fallibility to test.Now , which of these positions of the early Friends is

a permanen t gain , and which is a temporary qualificationof it? If we try to think a little about it, the famoussen tence about doing anything con trary to the Scripturesbeing a delusion does not take us far.We hardly knowwhat meaning to assign to it, for we know that theScripturesdo not speak with a single voice on either faithor practice. Theirmorality is progressive, and so is theirfaith. They are notabook written systematically to coveracertain grormd andmeet the needs ofaflock forguidance,as was the Koran . They are the literature of amixed race,

extending over eight or n ine hundred years and recognisably Hebrew or Greek in their origin . They began withprimitive and barbarous proceedings, and with equallyprimitive science and history. They were not written toform parts of any single volume, and they do not constitute a book, but are the anthology of a great religiousexperience.We cannot go to the Bible to find detailedguidance, easy of apprehension , on monogamy, on the

bringing up of children , on total abstinence, on war, onreading frivolous literature, on gambling and speculating,

sancu ws APOLOGY w

s of Sunday,to say nothing oi such issues as the cure of poverty ,

individualisrn , or socialism, or the rights of women to

share in the franchise or themin istry. On all these points

we are thrown back upon spiritual enlightenmen t, able to

turn to the Scriptmes the same en lightenment guides usin the help we can select from them, guidance which an

en lightened spirit will have no difficulty in finding there

on t subjects. But the unen lightened, as we know.

have found there texts to support every formof obsoletetyranny and cruel evil.Wemay anddo, therefore, acceptBarclay’s principle of secondary authority and proceed touse the Scriptures in the oniy way nOWpossible to us.

In spite of Barclay'

s theoretical acceptan ce of theauthority of Scripturem con troversiesbetween Christians,it is noteworthy that nearly all the points in whichQuakertheory and pn ctice diverge fromthe current theories and

letter of the Bible. From the beginning, in fact, Friendsallowed themselvss as much liberty as they required in

dealingwithScripture passages, in obefi ence to the dictatesof the divine en lightenmen t within them. Had they livedin these days in which the Scriptures are better understoodas literature, they would doubtless have exercised a

correspondingly larger freedom. It is, then , noteworthythat the Quaker rejection of episcopacy and pastorate wasin spite of the bishops, priests and deacons

” of the NewTestamen t, andaltogether independen t ofmodern inquiryin to what was really behind those titles .

“ Each one of

you bath a psalm did not preven t them abandoningsinging in Meetin gs for Worship. They frankly regardedas inoperative the Apostle Paul’s comman d that womenshould notpreach‘. Sometimes they tried to justify this byarguing that “ I sufier not a woman to speak in the

1 See Book m. or iv . § 7.

Church mean t that he forbade talking and discusdon ,

but in reality they knew in tuitively that however suitablemay have been Paul

’

s views of female decorum in the

Mediterranean coun tries in the first cen tury, they were

con trary to experience and to right feeling in England in

meetings, Quaker women have had a large share, and fora long time back an absolutely equal share with men intransacting our aflairs. Very few committees are con

The tes timony againstWarwas based on no direct anddefin ite command even in the New Testamen t, and itfrankly threw over the example and the precept of the

of the Lord's Supper was carried out in face of the apparen tly direct command of our Lord, by apeople who were

wholly unaware that the words “Do this in remembranceofMe are an in terpolation in to the text of Luke‘. Theuniversal practice of the Christian Church with regard toBaptismwas also overridden bymen who had no idea thatthe concludingwords of the Gospel of Matthew were a laterin terpolation ! The doctrine of the Trinity was, from the

temporary value,and the text in the first Epistle of John ,

on which it was based,had not at that time been removedfrom the Bible, nor the final text in Matthew been discredited. The curious thing is to notice how right these

pioneers of thought and practice were, how wisely theirillumination led them to defy passages of whose authoritymodern scholarship has now disposed. There remains.

of course, the Apostle Paul'

s assertion of Predes tination ,

the condemnation of the innocen t through the forekn owledge of God, in Romans ix . This great fortified keep ofCalvinism they boldly ignored, and the greater part of theChristian Church has come to agree with them. Itmay be

See Book in . cap. viii. Book m. cap. xx .

Fall , and most of it is therefore of little value to-day ‘.

Barclay takes pains, however, to den y the Calvinisticconclusion of the damnation of in fan ts in the Fall. Hisnatural human ity causes him to say that

“ this evil seedis not imputed to in fan ts un til by transgression theyactually join themselves therewith .

” This propositioncon tains acon trast between the divine light and a naturallight, belief in which he calls aSocin ian andPelagian error.

So far as he means that the light of the rational in tellectis a differen t thing from divin e in tuition he is quite right,and in most of his references it seems plain that this iswhat is in his mind. The study of Psychology has, it is tobe hoped, made progress since his day, and we are now

able to realise more clearly,or at least to emphasize morestrongly, the unity of the whole spiritual and in tellectualbeing of man and that it does not do to depreciate one

part of him rn order to glorify another. Barclay was,however, not unaware of this unity, as his illustration ofthe sun and themoon shows. He regarded the in tellectual

1 I left this poin t thus briefly put on on e side, thinking it

seemly as writer of amodern Apology for Quakerism not to en ter

intomore con troversy than I couldhelpwithmy great predecessor.

But since I wrote the above RufusM. Jon es has contributed, in the

form of an I n troduction (pp. xx x to x lv ) toW. C. Braithwaite’

s

forming a destructive criticism of Barclay, and cen tring his gun s

on this conception ofMan as ahopelees sin ful creature. Re showsto what serious evils this theory led, in darken ing the thought ofGod, weakening the intellectual test of truth, and plungingQuakerism into a too rigidly passive Quietism,

particularly in itsdoctrin e ofministry. Rufus Jones regrets that aScotsman train edin the School of Knox , rather than on e of the con temporaryCambridge mystics, became the systematic formulator of the

livina akerGospel . The whole passage is of the deepest in terest.With it should be read chap. x iv. of the book itsel f, The

more ful ly , on similar lines, the theological positions of l saac

iv] BARCLAY'

S APOLOGY 1 45

lightas the lightof themoon whichis ultimately the samelight as that of the sun , to whose direct rays he likenedthe indwelling light of God. (Propositions v and VI ,

he himself did.

5. Propositions v andvi , concerning the universal and

saving light, are treated together.

“God hath so loved the

ever believeth in him should be saved ; who en lighteneth

every man that cometh in to the world.. .Hence it well

been saved, so alsomay now some (who by Providence arecast in to those remote parts of the world, where the

knowledge of the history is wan ting), be made partakersof the divin e mystery, if they receive and resist not

(I Cor. xii. 7) that grace, amanifestation whereof is givento everyman to profit withal.”

all kinds of men , as some vain ly talk, but for every one,

extended to suchwhohave the distinct outward knowledgeof his deathand sufierings, as the same is declared in the

to be very profitable and comfortable, but not absolutelyneedful un to such fromwhomGod himself hath withheldit; yet theymay bemade partakers of themystery of hisdeath, (though ignoran t of the history), if they suffer hisseed and light (en lighten ing their hearts) to take a place.

"

This claim for the sal vation of the heathen is in theforefron t of the Quaker gospel, was one of its noblestin tuitions, has been more and more confirmed as our

has now taken possession of the minds of the most en

1 0


lightened men in the foreign mission field. The proof of

and is cen tral. He begins by attacking the Calvin istic

he traces the beginn ings of it to the later writings ofAugustine.We need not now spend time in slaying theslain . It was, however, both the great task and the greatattraction of Quakerism that it relieved the human mindand the name of God from this abominable teaching .

6. Barclay discusses 1 6) the difierence between thehuman conscien ce, which is liable to twists and errors,and the divine light, which is necessarily free from error.

Barclay likens the conscience to the lan tern , within whichthe. light of Christ shines . Hismetaphor cannot be greatlybettered.We speak now of the conscience as the facultywithin us which discriminates between right and wrong,as the taste in the mouth discriminates between the sweetand the bitter, or the ear between harmony and discord,andwe regard this faculty as constan tly subject to divineillumination .We may regard the conscience as the solidbuilt-up result of previous illuminations received by ourselves and our ancestors, and since human evolution has

the conscience is a natural faculty, always available, thedivine illumination comes and goes and cannot be had atcall. Yet noman is left without it, and our duty is not toresist it when it comes. This experience has lost nothingof its freshness since Barclay wrote it down .

7. Proposition Vii concerns Justification , which istaken out of all commercial and legal associations and

metaphors,andputupon its scriptural ground.

“Asmany

as resist not this light, but receive the same, in them is

produced a holy, pure, anu spiritual birth, bringing forthholiness , righteousness, purity, and all these other blessed

1 48 rm: FOUNDERS (on .

bothpraises,prayers,andpreachings,whichman setsaboutin his own will , and athis own appointment,whichhe csnboth begin and end at his pleasure, do or leave undone

as hirnself sees meet, whether they be a prescribed form,

as a liturgy, or prayers conceived extemporarily by thenatural strengthand faculty of themind, they are all but

sight of God, which are to be denied, rejected, and separated from, in this day of his spiritual arising.

”

arm the Lord’s Supper. He appeals in both from the

shadow to the substance‘.

against the power of the Civilmagistrate.

peculiarities,agreatpartofwhich is now apast testimonyin its actual con ten ts, but is as much needed as ever in

this Proposition , his belief in the authority of the Old

Sowe part with reverence fromthis greatbook. I thas

been themeans of preven tingFriends,long debm edfroma

faith. No one except a historical scholar will now read it,but that is not because its conclusions are un sound, butbecause our whole thought of God has moved, and theprocesses of the divine life are working in other parts ofthe field . Probably the Apology was the last of the greatargumen tative theological folios and quartos of theCalvinistic period, as Quakerismwas the last outgrowth ofthe Reformation movemen t. I n the conflict with Romeunder James II which ended in the Revolution of 1 688, in

1 See Book ii i . Chapters viii. and ix .

iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 1 49

the outwardpeace which followed the Toleration Act, and

in the general abatemen t of theological in terest whichcharacterisedthe reign ofAnneand the eighteen thcentury,

a book which was, in the first place, difficult to attack.

that it could not be reganded by anybody as subversive ofthe essentials of religion . I t had also become plain thatthe Society of Friendswas notgoing to become the religionof the nation ,as seemed atone timepossible,andthe clergycould sleep in their beds, whatever Barclay had said.

Two cen turies is a long life for atheologcal book. It is

useful to the Friends who welcomed it. I t was the voice

of their age.

and tohis sacrifice,was outof accordwiththeEvangelical

theory of the Atonemen t, and has caused the Apologyto be banned in certain circles. I t was attacked on this

groundby theseparatists GeorgeKeithand IsaacCrewdson ,

andat one time its circulation was forbidden as dangerousto the children of Ackworth School.

CHAPTER I

SEPARATE momTHE WORLD

r. Of all the avoidable causes of the Society’sweakness under the testof time the greatestwas the errorof separateness from the world. It is not, of course, thefirst time that s religious communion has made this

desperate attempt at a short cut to holiness . Such efiorts

coumes of action which, thoughwe are bound to condemnthem, we cannot help regarding with a certain sympathy.

In the case ofFriends the causes whichbroughtitabout

itself from them. They were outlaws frompublicworship,

accoun t of their refusal to take an oath they were excluded

portion of their adult membership of both sexes had beenin gsol , they were accusedof being deniers of the authoiityof the Bible and said to be in league with the s uits.

ably strict than other Puritans. The army and the

magistracy, as well as the Church, were their enemies . Itis no wonder that they gathered themselves in to a select

themudof the world—oi the world of 1 700 .

a. Certain outward peculiarities, utterly trifling inthemselves, if not in defensible, constituted obviousmarks

of language in ways which, if he hadbeen better educated,

1 54 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (cu.

hemighthsve escapedmndhis better trsinedfonowers didnot correct him. l t seemed to him un truthful to sddress

a single person with the plural pronoun "

you,

”not

realising thst a plursl pronoun habitually used in the

less this peculiar crotchet was intended as a protest

sgainst tbe artificial manners of a profiigste age. and itwould have been wel l if ithad been allowed todiezbut it

in the populsr conception of aQuaker. l t has donemuchto neutralise any Apologis . Incidentally it has made us

us away of addressing our fsmily and our intimates by a

recognition of that intimacy ; but on the whole ithas beenasoliddisaster to the Society tohave these easily available

passwords. Along with " thee” and “ thou” may go thecmious objection to the use of the names of the days of the

3. The peculiar dremm even more damagingJ or itwasmore conspicuous. I tonly became peculiarwith lapseof time, by sheer conservatism. The dress of Friends upto about r7oowas the ordinary dress of aquiet

-manneredPuritan ; on ly notable for the absence of finery. But eachnew fashion was felt to be " fashionable”—and avoided.

the beauty of colour was poin ted out to me thirty-five

years ago by John Ruskin as the cause of the decay of

the Society.

“ Your early Friends,”he said,

“would have

carried all before them if they had not been false to that

love of colour. Allowing for exaggeration there is much

1 56 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cm

and practised with great ual , which hath often grievsd myheart‘.

Changeable colours as the hills are”is a fine phrase

and natural to one who had lived a long life in that lovelylandwhere thehills change their colour fromthe summer

'

s

varied greens to the brown-red bracken of winter, al l the

way from Fairfield and the OldMan of Coniston , dowu

by hazel coppices and evergreen firs to the sands and the

sea at Swarthmoor.

the Society's rule against intermarriage with anyone

and society. I have read the earliest Minute books ofSwarthmoor Mon thly Meeting. They are extremelymonotonous reading, dealingmon th aftermon th with thereport that Friends have been walking consisten tlywith their testimonies, broken here and there by the tragicand significan t en try that such and such a Friend hadmarried one of the world’s people, and not having beenwilling to exprss s his or her regret was, after having been

earnestly deal twith,disowned frommembership. MargaretFox ’

s name occurs regularly as being presen t at thesemeetings, theMinutes ofwhichwere signed byher daughterSarah Fell, as Clerk, and we may take it that they aretypical of the procedure of business meetings in coun tryplaces generally at that time. There are also a few patheticdocumen ts carefully collected in a book, consisting ofstatemen ts of regret made by the ofiender previous tolater reinstatemen t. In time, human nature arid goodfeeling became too strong for routine,and these expressionsof regret, particularly as curren t in Philadelphia in the

n ineteen th cen tury, often mean t that the Friend regrettedhaving had to break the rules of the Society, without

(Quoted frommanuscript atDevonshire House , on page 198ofMorgan : Fox a] SwarthmoorHal l by Helen G. Crosfield.)

1] SEPARATE FROM THEWORLD 1 57

stating that he or she regretted the marriage, whichwas

probably the last thing in the world they had any desire

some years after themarriage andworded variously , often

Friends, andwritten with the concurrence of the outsider,the otherparty to themarriage.There is no doubt whatever

as well as many whose membership had become merely

5. I ts desolatin g effects numericallymay be estimatedif one realiseshow immensely significan t aratio ofdiminution becomes when applied several times over. Thus, ifwe assumed that in any family, half the children who leftdescendan ts at al l married out of the Society, and half

hal f of the next gen eration in membership. In the secondgeneration on ly one-half of that half would remain members, that is one-quarter of the total descendan ts of the

remain Friends, and in the fourth only one-sixteen th ofthe total ofispring of the stock.We have now accoun ted

the Society survived as aremnan t of one-sixteenth, on our

that period, not as many as one-halfmarried out. If onlyone in three married out, the Society would have beenreduwd, in four generations, to sixteen eighty-oneths,or about one-fifth of its possible inherited membership.

The process of disassociation must have destroyed theloyal ty and blighted the religious careers of many soundFriends. The separation was almost invariably done in a

kindly manner and with expressions of profound regret,and in numerous instances where the expelled retained


tions would have been in valid. At the presen t time, atthe requss t of the paren ts, such children may be admittedas infants, should theMon thlyMeeting agree to do so,

and it is general ly forward to do so in all suitable cases.

The rule aboutmarrying out was abolished in England inthe year 1 859,main ly through the efiorts of the late JosephRown tree of York. It had long been found con trary tothe facts of life and human nature in the middle of the

nineteen th cen tury. Each case was thenceforth “ visited "

and taken on its merits. If the newly founded family

The practice of in termarriagewithin the Society,whichstill prevails to a large ex ten t amongst us on natural lin esof choice, combined with the education of boys and girlsat our own boarding schools,has resultedin theproduction

of amarked type ofmind and of social habit.

The objection to marriages with those of the outsideworld was not pure selectness . It was closely connectedwith our cen tral testimony against priestly pretensions .

To undergo“Marriage by a Priest was yielding to the

most osten tatious of all sacerdotal claims on human independence, and Friends

'

rejection of it was opposed bythe clergy with special bitterness.

simple, the most beautiful and the most dign ified everdevised by man . It may be used by any one, whether inmembership or not; andFriends are glad tomake it freelyavailable. Itmay be valued bysome who dislike repeatingformulas after a third party, or who cannot follow the

160 THE SUPERSTRUC’

EBRE [cm

I n former days, up to about the middle of the nineteenth

Al l thiswas aconsequence of FM’

concentration on

the spirit, and lack of reverence for the body when its

looked with confidence to the happiness, the service, the

love of the dwellers in the Unseen . where the dead had

based on spiri tual sensibility, is on the lines of goodtaste.

7. One would have to go to the East or to the Easternhabit brought in to Europe by the Jews, to examine on a

munity. I n the Quaker case it has not, so far as I know,

ever been resen ted by outsiders, as it has often in thecase of the Jews . This is a testimon y to the fact that ithasnot weakened Friends' sense either of national ity or ofhumanity, and that ithas been kept fairly free frompride .

As a set-off to its final condemnation on e need not be blindto its advan tages . It has es tablished a

“ Freemasonry"

among Friends which has been and ismost effectual in theready provision of help in adversity . No poor Friend isever allowed to come upon the Poor Law ; relief is always

there are in some

The Society has al so been able to act efficien tlyas a un it when sudden ly required . At the time when wewere engaged in befrien ding the persecuted Doukhoborsin Russia, the Czar

'

s governmen t, with characteristicfatuity, offered to let some thousands of themmigrate toCanada if they, out of their destitution , could produce alarge sum as passage money at once . The late JohnBellows, E.Wright Brooks,and others raised fromFriends

1] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 1 61

by telegram within twen ty-four hours, and the

able to write to some reliable Friend in every importan tmunicipality in the coun try to find outwho were themost

Cm ittees, Medical Officers of Health, and others . I

was less helpless than an isolated individual. If it isa question of fighting Conscription in Australia or in

England, the Society of Friends is already a perfect

organisation for the purpose. It formed the rallying poin tof the conscien tious objectors to military service in the

late war ; being at first the on ly organisation ready to act.8. Our riches t source of in formation concerning the

habits of life of Friends of the eighteenth cen tury is to be

by Thomas Clarkson , the abolition ist . The origin of thebook ismost curious . The author explains that in his workfor the freedom of the slave he had been brought in to an

and he regarded it as a responsibility to describe them totheir fellow coun trymen , on the ground that though thetask was great and be was very busy, there was nobodyelse in the coun try outside their own borders who hadanything like a similar kn owledge of them, and that in allprobability there never would be anyone in the future towhomsuch in formation would be likely to come . Here wehave amost ex traordinary revelation of the separatenessof the Society, if it be a fact that there was on ly one manin England, outside its borders , who knew enough aboutit to write a description of it. The book was highlysympathetic and laudatory, and it had great vogue inFriends’ libraries for two generation s at least . It is prolixandnow old-fashioned,butofunique value to the historian .

I t is not un in structive to n otice that Clarkson’

s definition

r62 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cm

o uakerismmakes no reference to the doctrine of the

less it is suggestive thathe regardsQuakerismas apractice

Quakeriammay he defined to be an attemptmnder the divine

influence, at pn ctical Christianit-y, as far as it can be carried.

Those who profess it consider themselves hound to regulate their

to give upsuchof the customs or fashions ofmenmowever gmeralor general ly approved, as militate, in any manner, against theletter or the spirit of the Goepel . Hence, they mix but little withthe world, that they may be less liahle to imbihe its spirit. HenceGeorge Fox made a distinction between the memben of his own

society and others, by the difieren t appellation : of Friends, andPeople of theWorld. They consider themselves also under an

obligation tao follow virtue, not ordinarily , but even to the death.

For they profess n ever to make a eacrifiee of conscience ; and,

think to be con trary to the divine will , they believe it right not to

submit to them, but rather, after the'

example of the Apostles andprimitive Christians, to sufier any loss , penal ty, or incon venience,whichmay result to them for so doing . This then in a few words is

9. After all that has been said against the policy ofseclusion from the world, we may still ask the questionwhether the Society would have survived at all withoutthis armour of peculiarities ; whether it might not havemerged so freely in to its environmen t as to be whollyabsorbed or transformed . The narrowing banks at least—it may be pleaded— kept the stream from being lostin a swamp of liberal-mindedness .

The answer to this depends on

(i) Whether the truth Friends had to tell was trueenough and strong enough to hold its own in open competition with other forms of truth then active. And

164 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE (cu.

and freely in termarrying would, indeed, have been betterable than itwas to resistthe canker of popular sin creeping

a strange broad-brimmed hat, and a collarless coat, who

touch with the Society as not being a consisten t Friend

fel l necessarily into the arms of the gay world as the on ly

within the Society itself, a lamentable amoun t of moral

ness. Drinking habits in vaded the Friends'

farmhouses

general ly got drmrk in those days. In reading theMinuteBooks of Fylde Mon thly Meeting in Lancashire, I foundthat in the twmty-five years from 1 775 to 1 800,

record, as John Grifi th dd in his ]m sl , greatweakness

lax that a stern rev ival of it was ordered by the YearlyMeeting in r738 and carried out by stmng deputations.

xc. It has soMmes been said that tbe failure of

Quakerism to reach the masses led to the ground bein g

timr, widespread and popular as his teaching has become,could not have done his particular work through any

Quakerismtrue to the name.Wesley did not like Quakers as such, though personallyhe was friendly withmany of them, and they had often

r] SEPARATE FROM THEWORLD 165

full of farh, and dead-alive, and altogether out of his

thatof the ordlnances separated them fromhimzand he evenwrote a pamphlet against the sect called As Apped toMa o/WNW. He advisedacorrespondent“not to go near the tents of those dead formal men theWe can forgive all this now. l t on ly shows

thst the divergence of the two schools of thoughtwas real

andwentdeep. The country needs both.

xx. But itwas noton ly the faults of the Society, itwas

also its virtues, thatkept it frombecoming a large popularmovm ent. I t is not an easy cult.r5elf-reliance is attrac

tive ; but it is taxing also, and most people do not care

topay the tax . Think what itmeans tohave no one to berelied upon to preach to you, no one to sing to you, no f

music in your worshipmo aesthetichelpin carved column"

or stain ed glam, no one to tell you what to believe, nocreed to cling to, no Saaament to sokmnise you, no

clergyman to look after you in pastoral fashion . EveryFriend has to take a share in al l these things for himself.rYoumust be ready to preach if inwardly called, to teachif you can , to visit the sick and the poor, to attend to allthe extensive business of the Society . And a Friend's

be to hima time of idle vacancy , but of commum?on , with

enjoy this. I f there be excellences in Quakerism, let it be

Wesley andHism ,by G. Holden Pike, Chap. xrrr.

166 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [crr.

own , andmakes amighty appesl to what is good in the

of secluaion from the world showed itself most harmfullyin the abstention of Friends frompolitics. Both JosephSturge

‘ and john Bright had to face very considerable

reformer. John Bright 's corresponden ce with hismotheria-law,Mrs Priestrnan , on the subject , is very typical'.In 1 843 a sen tence in the Yearly Meeting

’

s Epistle eon

tained the words“We trust Friends may always be found

amongst those who are quiet in the land. This by no

means describedthe attitude of theAn ti-Corn Lew League,wfi ch was then in the full blast of its work, and Johnm'ight sprang to his feet in defence of his action , and

appeared to carry theMeeting with him in an audience

theYearlyMeetingof 1 836includedthefol lowingparegraph.

which well expresses the Society’

s thought at the time :

have rendered themeligible for civil oflices, frorn whlch they have

long hon eacluded, has eacited our concern .We are not about tocilanourage any on e from taking his proper ahare in thoee servlees,Mas amember of the commun ity hemay be rightly cal led to

performand which do not require or involve acunpromise of our

youn elves,dearFrienrh, that it iamerely lawful ; butalaoascertainwhether it is for you eapedien t. Beware lest you be infiuenced by

not to yidd to fire tm ptation of indulging the love of distin ction ,

t joscfl r SW: His L ife m tWork, by Stephen Hobhouse,p. 17.

See 0 .M. Trevel yan ’

s L ife of 1 alm Bright, pp. roe, 3.

CHAPTER I I

ART AND EDUCATION

deplored was carried out. as we have seen , by means of

generally regulated is a lapse irom the original iiberty of

the Sm'

rit, a forgetfulness of our first principles. It has

might fly—fear of temptations of the senses in the Arts,fear of dan gerous speculation in the in tel lectual life. All

not peculiar to Friends ; but would that freedmn from it

I t'

is not quite obvious at first sight why the Societyretain ed from Puritanism its regulated, drab, unimaginative ways, while rejecting much besides . There were

whowas an artist too. I n later life he abmdoned chapels,

between himand Thomas Ellwood.

Puritan theology must have con tributed to the cheerfuln ess of Quaker households .We know enough to feel surethat this was so, and that much of the placid quietnesscharacteristic of their home life followed from their con

oi all His creatures. The penetrating thought of God

1 70 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (cu.

Friends had admitted the other arts, little loss would have

these are foundtobe notall bad,but like other things both

badandgood.We now draw the line somewhere in regardto these recreations,justaswe dowithregardtobooks and

nervous attitude of solicitous sensitiveness is common , but

individual cases , I do not think ethical scruplehas said herlast word to these arts.

The Quaker maidens of the past had to lose muchbes ide these. Dressed to be un like others , they made

hours. Only by learning poetry and by reading it beauti

en trance. A romance in verse was admitted where a

quite absurd on reflection . It is perhaps in the eclipse ofmusic that reading aloud really well has always beencommon among us. Music is no longer in eclipse ; quite thereverse. The absence of music as a part of worship is notbecause of the music, but because of the worship.

A discussion of this rejection of hymn and organ inpublicworship will be found in the next chapter.

The arts of pain ting, sculpture. architecture, all kindsof desi gn , the writing of poetry, and the writing and

speaking of prose, have all now been practisedas freely and

n ] 1 71

earnestly by Friendsas by others for threegenerations,bothas professionals and as amateurs. No remnan t of theancien t limitation survives. But there is one artwe mustsee thatwe do not lose, in this day of wider sympathiss .

4 . The art of conducting life, the craft of conduct,has always had the first place in Friends

’ practice. For

there is a fine art of living. I t is achieved as other art

have to be eliminated, in ferior ones put in to cold shadow .

The cen tral subject, the meaning and purpose of it, mustnot be obscured. There is composition , light and shade,

is Preraphaelite . The method of impression ism does not

seem suitable at any rate. The artist is the IndwellingWord of God. And themodel is Jes us Christ . In times of

5. It must be admitted that, on the whole, the earlyFriends stood in the place of the un learned. The Un i

Quakerism, and imparted to the men of the firs t gen era

Penn , Isaac Penington , John Archdale, Lady Conway,Sir John Rodes andDavid and Robert Barclay, andwhen

Not on ly the Universities but the Grammar Schoolswere in the han ds of the Church, along with such attempts

back upon private schools, and even there they had toresist the persecution of the Church, which made everyeffort to forbid a Frien d to keep a school at all . A . N .


keeping aschool after the Toleration Act‘.Long after thatAct, when liberty of worshiphad been

wrung frorn parliament by a long generation of resistance,

it appeared that the liberty of keeping a school was still

forms of persecution . In time, however, this wore out

also, and Quaker schools had liberty to exist. But there

to accept the pittance paid to the schoolmaster in thosedays. John Taylor, the father of the founder of TheManchester Guardian ,was brought in 1 795 fromthe southto teach the newly-founded Friends’ School in that town .

I n many parts of the North of England schools were

attached to theMeeting Houses. Survivals of thes e schoolsare in erdstence still atLancaster,Yealand andWyresdalein North Lancashire,and atNewton-in-Bow land, just overthe Yorkshire border, also at Long Sutton in Somerset.It was at Newton-in-Bowland that John Bright receivedthemost significan t part of his education .

Two early Yearly Meeting Minutes run

As the want of proper Persons amongst Friends qual ified forSchoolmasters hath been the Occasion of great damage to theSociety in many places, as thereby wel l-disposed Friends,deprivedof oppertunities for the Education of their Children in amannerConsistent with a Religious con cern for their welfare, have been

necessitated to send them to those of other perswasions wherebythe TenderMinds of such Children have been in great danger of

1 See journal F. Hist. Soc. rv . r3r, v . 63, vrrr. 1 07as, also

references toEpiscopd Visitation , 1 . F. H . S. tr.98,m. 28, rv . 30,

v . 77, 78, vr. r69, vrt. r9, L ife of Richard emerge, and CentenaryHistory of Sidcot School , p. r3. The case of Richard Claridge in

1 708 whichwen t against the clergymay have ended this attempt.

1 74 [03

but little to tradition , and so had almost everything to

University, and in which the eflorts of the management

to ece the new institution , and on his return the Friends

pletely than has Ackworthitself.

7. Ackworth Schw l was followod at later dates bysimilarSchon lson asmal ler scale,nianagedby local Friends,at Sidcot on the Mendips, and atWigton in Cumberland.AtSaflronWalden in Essex there is now settledaschool of

fromthe “Workhouse established inClerkenwell under theinfluence of John Bellers‘. Boarding Schools of amore ele

between Manchester and Liverpool, at Rawdon , between

in N. Yorkshire, and at Sibford, in the bosom of ruralOxfordshire. These schools were all for boys and girls ; and

Ackworth has found it best not to go very far in that

York—and at Leighton Park, Reading. These are, likethe less ambitious ones already men tioned, excellen t

of conven tion'

and uniformity as sometimes limits hisindividualityand in tellectual developmen t. Their ran ge ofstudies is wider, and consequen tly less oecialised. The

‘ See Book IV, Chapter r.

ART AND EDUCATION 1 755

for by a small college called the Flounders Institute,whichwas fomded at Ackworth in 1 848 ; and during its later

atanyUniversity . All our schools are on ly partly filled byFriends . At the Moun t, York, there is avery well-known ,

even famous, school for girls—a sister school to the boys'

school atBootham. Ithas a departrnent for the trainingof teachers. In l reland there are schools for boys at

Waterford and for girls atMoun tmellick, Queen’

s Coun ty,of the Ackworth type, and others, of amore elemen tarytype, at Li s and Brookfield in Ulster.

about 1 881 ,and to Oxford later. Before that time very fewcould be foundateitherplace. The teachersbelongedtothe

University of London . The Universities Tests Act on lydates from 1 873. No denominational college or hostel has

an attempt would be seriously out of place. Butattachedto the strongest of the modern Universities is the Dal tonHall of Residence, founded in 1 876 by Friends atManSecretary, an annual educational sitting of the YearlyMeeting, and an annual reunion of the Teachers' Guild,keep some cohes ion andaclose sense of acommon purpose,among this little band of Schools, which are almost aswell defined an imperium in impede in the educationalworld as the Society itself is among the Churches .

8. Whatever value Quakerismhas is due to the factthat its min istry has always been unpaid and open to all ;but un fortunately unpaidmeans un trained profes sionally.

The absence of ministerial train ing colleges has had a

disastrous indirect efiectupon the education of the Societyat large. The training of the clergy has been largely

(cu.

responsible foreithertheorigln orthemaintenanceofmanyancien t Universities, and if the Society had

-needed s sest

of learning for itsministry,that lnstitution .by sll the laws

clearly by contrasting the Puritan and the Quaker settle

preachers,thereforeHarvardandYalecame intoexlstence.and have been the mother Universities of America.

Pennsylvaniarequirednotrainedminister's,andtheWilliam

Penn Charter School represented the highest eflort of the

colony in the way of education . The result is that the

Boston ,andnotatPhiladelphia. SotheSociety in England

has had no intellectual centre suchasManchester Collegein all its wanderlngs has provided for the Unitarians . The

train ministers even nombut we ofier to young men andwomen periods for the study of Biblical and theological

subjects, so that theymay,whilst retaining an entirely lay

teaching fall to them. They often stay on ly one or two

way ai stimulus, but the tendency is for the period of

residence to lengthen , and the influence of the institu

wherever it penetrates.More than hal f the students are

women , which shows how difi cult it is formen to break

men ts. Many come from fordgn coun tries, so that thereare now missionaries o uaker thought to be found in

Hol land, Norway, France and North America, who havebeen trained atWoodbrooke. I n addition to its theological

CHAPTER I I I

THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC

1 . Doubtless the total absenceof hymns orof choirand

No Church whose chief object was to attract numberswouldhave adoptedour ascetichabit. But l take towards

it noapologeticattitude. I claimitas asign of reality anda source of spiritual strength. The issue goes deep down

in to the very heart of human nature. It is not a triflingfashion or a temporary expediency. Fmbetter for worse,silenoe as thematrix of worshiphas rnade us whatwe are .

z. I believe, then , that aesthetic sensibility appertainsto a level of ourbeing diflerentfrorn and nearer the surface

and that when the former is used to stimulate the latter,as itmay, it is apt to be mistaken for it, or even to takeits place. I believe further that this process is bad for the

soul and demoral ising to character.

To examine this position it will be well to take awide

Churchin Rusda is themost ornate and splendid in ritual

andin music. It is alsomuch the most degraded. Politic

I t has carried on a series of religions persecutioaStundists, Doukhobors and others, not in the in terests ofreligion or of truth, but by Pobiedonostsefi

’

s own con fes

sion , for political , that is ultimately formilitary,reasonsto main tain the uniformity desired by themilitary tyrantof Holy Russia. Everything that is excellen t and of goodreport in Russia is in arms against the Church, whoseclergy are ign oran t and immoral, and whose source ofpower is pure superstition . But itsmusic is famous .

cu. to] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC x79

andmmicalds oonsideredby l’rotestants to be a long way

the soul. l share this view. butdo not propose to oocupythesepageswithan attack on the Papacy.

“Leclericalisrne

c'

est l’

ennemi” is the inmost conviction oi the mostilluminated smrits in Catbolic oountries. l t is beyond

doubt,too, thatRomanismhas its chief strongholds amongthe less developed European peoples. But it is keenlydevoted to Churchmusic.

Among the less or more musieal of the ProtestantChurches 1 am ill qualified to draw distinctions and

are chiefly oonoerned with the quality rather than the

irequency orurgency oi themusieal appeal.Asking. finally, how it has fared with the 50ciety oi

Friends, who have done without music in worship altogether—I do not think any cfidcswouldaccuse us oi beingeither irreligiom or demoralised, as comparedwithchurch

of the hlissful or adoring instincts which are called into

sensation by musical servioes, if they are to be made thedoorway to God. The eflect of lovely organ music, ofanthems sung by white-robed boys and men , under

ing angels, -all this produces the kind of efiect nowadaysloosely but inaccurately called hypnotic. It raises the

round of detail ; it is beautiful and restful. But it stops

there. One'

s favourite sins retain theirhold. Render unto

beauty cf sense the things that are hersmut they are notknown by their iruits to be the same as the thhgs thatateGod’

s.

3. I f we carry our inquiry beyond Christianity we find

rs—a

1 80 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (on .

emancipation , in wine and song. Bern ard Shaw, inMajorBarbara, speaks of the Salvation Army as Dionysiac.

This is a half truth, or is even less than half true—butthe Army drums doubtless appeal to this same subliminalregion as other less loud forms of sensational appeal. Thewhole machin ery of revivals is built up out of hymns ;such revivals are not really what they appear at the time,and their con verts, (a solid remnan t always excepted),areunstable, and less easy to reclaim for religion after theirconversion and lapse than they were before.

Musicians,musicteachers,choirmen ,singers in oratorio,are not better than ordinarymen . They have of course atouch of what we sympathetically call tl ze artistic tem

perament. The costly and elaborate training of choirs,and the provision of instrumen ts disillusion me. Whyallthis financial fuss and al l this shopping?What has this todo with prayer and commun ion ? One sees through theillusion too easily. Much is lost from worship, even ass

thetically. Few things are so impressive to a stranger assitting in the silence, a silence filled with even ts, of aFriends’ Meeting. The silence may last hal f an hour -a

half hour of peace, not of fidgeting for something tohappen . I conclude thatmy thes ishasmuch to commend it.

4 . At first sight there may not appear to be muchdifference between a thought expressed in word or in song.

But in practice there is. I n the sixties, at a time when themorearden t spirits in the Societywere breakingaway fromour ancien t seclusion ,and desiring to learn fromothers,theYearly Meeting laid it down that any Friend might singa solo hymn on his or her own initiative if it felt right todo so . But it is n otdon e,has notbeen done bymore thantwo or three people. The artist is too much in evidence,the performer is therefore shy and self-conscious. The onlyway to have singing is to have hymn books about , and forall to join . Not perman en tly, either, will a congregationtolerate the haphazard giving out of hymns by an irre

1 84 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

with efiectual faith,when he knows that next time he willsay without reserve that he has done those things whichhe ought not to have done, and left undone those things

which he ought to have done and that there is no healthin him. Whither has simplicity and sincerity gone ?Crowded out by words pre ordained by the clergy of

have themerit of initiative and, within limits, of variety .

I know that they are agreatburden anddifiiculty to someofmyministerial friends. And nowonder. Atafixed hour,

or without it, twice or three times in the day,often twicein a service,theman has tomalse himself the thinker andthe speaker of amiscellaneous compan y in their approachto God. He, of all men , cann ot call his soul his own .Wehave n one of us the right to call our souls our own ,

where our duty is to have a priestl y function to one

another, unofi cial and volun tary ; but it is an iron-boun ddevitalised communion that has to be voiced, just forconvenience, by a particular man , who earns his livingthereby, at a certain poin t just after the Bible reading.

The need for comprehensiven es s leads in some Churches to

All this does not preven t us en joying Churchmusic asan aes thetic stimulus, and ben efiting from it, as we wouldfrom an opera or a serious play. Even now there reverberates many a tin ie in my Qualrer ear

-s from the days

of college chapels the ancien t chan t : “ Glory be to theFather,and to the Son ,and to theHolyGhost as itwas inthe beginning, is now,andever shall be,world without end.

Amen .

”

7. Letme indulge in another remin iscence.

Aftern oon service is going forward in Wes tminster

sounding beyond the radian t windows, glowing with theafternoon sun , up to the dimroof far above. All is ancien t

I I I] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC 1 83

and honourable and at peace. To be sure the words of theservice do not matter—are indee d hardly audible, anddifficult for aQuaker listener to follow . He has come for arest from very practical duties outside, with which thisintoned ceremony appears to have little te do. It belongsto another order of things from the moral issues beingfought out in the white light of day in the Houses ofParliamen t and the stately oflices round about where thegovernmen t of the Empire is being carried on , with all itsfreight of good and evil. There would seemnot to be an ymoral value in the service ; but there is an undoubted

and rest, by the tired stranger in the stalls. He thinks,ashe leans back there andtries to look upas far as the roof,

of those plain meeting houses where he andhis fellows, inmuch poverty of the outward, are trying to achieve the

Howmuch,he reflects,we Friends give up.What astore

find, in their ritual, satisfaction for the aes thetic cravings

and drama of themonk l .” Formerly we abandoned both .

Some few Friends now never go to the concert room, or

the theatre, or the ball room; others go but sparingly,andn ot as part of their regular routine of recreation . Alonganother line of indulgen ce, again , the decanter does notoften adorn our tables, and some amon gst us have givenupthe use ofmeat and tobacco as well. Assuredly the list

What do we get in exchange? I s it al l worth while?Are we right in not satisfying every taste of our nature as

to lie with us, who separate ourselves from the common

8. There can be nodoubt that either of two thingsmayRuskin ,Modem Painters, part l V. chap. iv . 5 19.

1 84 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE (en .

intellectand feeling,harshin judgment,bigotedin opinion ,

and victims to spiritual pride ; more and more despisingthe judgmen t of aworld over whichwe have less and lessinfluence. Or, on the other hand, wemay acquire a sensitiveness of perception , a delicacy of feelingfwhich comesfromthe sedulous purity of the ascetic who has refused tobe charrned by the actress, or to build his amusement onthe damaged life of a chorus girl.Wemay have an acuteand direct sympathy with actual pain and need, becauseour instincts have not been blun ted by too frequen t

preserve a clear eye for truth, because we have never

whichmean t nothing to us, and religious teachings whichwere incredible.Wemay be able tomain tain aconsciencevoid of offence, inasmuch as neither the drunkard nor

(with some) the slaughtered beasts owe any part of their

I n what then do the sain t and the bigot difler? Why

loss to the other? I believe it is because in the case of the

with his habit of mind ; if we become proud of our

from the ordinary run of mankind, wearespiritually the

worse for the exercise. That character'

rs only too familiarin the rel igious world. If we can keep out spiritual pride,thinkwe shall find itno low butreally great gain to en terthe simpleQuaker life.We can still findouren joymen t

in that lovely outdoor world of water, wood and sky, of

and butterflies,in whichwe are, I believe, in tended to findan un limited recreation and an undiluted joy. Moreover,the world of poetry ,dramaand fiction is richly ours ; so ismusic, and so are all the plastic arts ; we need not starveour taste or our imagination . A beautiful statue nwd not

1 86 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [crr.m

the enjoyment of certain beautiful appeals to the eye andthe ear.Wherein lies the prOper beauty of worship, the

beauty of a simple Friends’ Meeting? It lies in fellowship,in communion in God, felt and authen tically known . but

disturbed rather than evoked by the organ pipes. Beautyis notput in to the Quaker service ; it comes out of it.A Friends’ Meeting is, to an ordinary ritual service,

very much what a hand-made article is to one made bymachinery. Machinery can produce things much morecheaply than they can be made by hand, andmuchmore

handicraft has everywhere failed beforemachinery. In the

article made by hand the threads may not be perfectlyuniform, the dyesmay run a little, the carving is wan tingin perfect uniformity ofWee and in smoothnes s of

hand-made article,and also adurability,whichmachinerycann ot give. The craftsman hasgiven ithis personal touch ;it is in more direct association with humanity ; there is in itgreater room for variety of des ign and freedom of invention , there are the marks of loving care upon it, and as arule itwill long outwear the product of themachine. Evenso in a Friends’ Meeting. The ministry is varied and

irregular, both in its occurrence and in its quality,andthepersonal hand of the craftsman is apt to show itself in a

lack of un iform excellen ce and succes s, but it possesses asubtle arcina of spon taneous expression and real feelingwhich to usmore thanmake upfor its hand-made qualities .

It is,again , costly anddifficult to be an active and faithfulFriend, and much cheaper to join in the elaborate ecclesiastical machinery which is provided for the public; butwe claimthat itwears well,and that ithas for us a charmthat we would not aban don , in comparison with whichthe ordinary worship of the churches is asmoon light un tosun light and as water un to wine.

CHAPTER IV

THEMINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH’

1 . Inasmuch as religion is a relation between the souland God, anything of a Church constitution , of outwardlaws, and the precedence of one man above another inChurch office,anything of external ritual,have atfirst sightnothing to do with it. Atthe same time, these institutionshave always existed, and we may be thus led to suspect

the outward man and the inward voice of God is not a

complete accoun t of the matter ; for we have universallyfelt the value of communion with others,and the great help

opportunity for the public utterance of the common faith,and for the giving of help to tl . :se whomay be at a weakpoin t in their career. Public worship is desirable as a fly

dead poin t . Also the valuable check which the presence andcriticismof others give to whatmight become the vagariesof an isolated religious history is n ot to be safely avoided.

Moreover, Christian feeling works itself out in mutualhelpfulness in outward things, in financial assistance as

well as in moral support ; and these have to be arranged for.

It seems as though fellowship was an essen tial part ofworship, and that in commun ion with other people we

I n this and the nextChaptermy indebtedn ess toDr Lindsay’

s

The Churchand theMin istry in the Early Cen turies, 1903, is greatand continuous. I have gained little by turn ing to other authori

ties ex cept Harnack . The Christian Church and the Society of

Friends in particular owe a great debt to the Un ited Free Churchof Scotland for this work by the Prin cipal of their Glasgow

College.

1 88 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

get in to closer touchwith the spirit of God than we could

alone ; in fact, that if itbe true that theDivine Spiritfinds

by getting in to right relations of helpfulnws and lovetowards men we are doing just that same thing towardsGod.We dwelt upon this in Book I, Chap. 1 .

dangers to the pmity of our faith. Spiritual pride has

within and those without. Attendance at worship has

deadened the life of the spirit. Orthodoxy has raised itshead in pride andsanctified its own ign orance. The private

with ; and, finally, the autocracy, the ambition and

Christianity. It is plain ly our task to value the organisation far enough tomain tain itandto be loyal to it in lovingfellowship, but, at the same time, to keep it simple, fluid,elastic, unprofessional. That is to say, we must careenough for our Society to be regular in the attendance ofourmeetings,and to bewil ling to take in simplicity avocalpart in them, or they will, on the one side, either vanishaway in to helplessness, or, on the other, become fixed inoflicialism. It will therefore be the next natural task topass to the early developmen t for good or evil of thisinstitutional tendency in the Christian Church.

Churches is fully recorded for us, in away that admits ofnomistake, in the First Epistle to the Corin thians. Eachone had a song, or an exhortation , a revelation , or apiece

manymembers of the congregation that itwas neces sary tospecify that on ly one was to speak at once,andcaution hadto be given against supposing that everyone could possess

x90 [03

ment was passed upon the conduct of Peter at Caesarea

of the Church at Jerusalem. The whole commun ity (seez Cor. vii.) had the duty of exercising discipline upon the

It was, in fact, it Friends' Mon thly Meeting.

There is in the New Testament no sign whatever ofany specially holy times, places.or persons. Dr Lightfoot,in his Commen tary on Philippians.says that the Christianshad aholy season extending all the year round—a templeas wide as the world, and the priesthood of all believers.

to the middle of the third century at least. Dr IJ ndsaysays “

the conception of amutilated sacerdotalism, whereone pm of the Christian worship is alone thought of as thetrue sacrifice, and a small pa tiou of the fellowship—theministry—is declared to be the priesthood, did not appear

un til the time of Cyprian , in 250 A.D., and was his inven

It may be noted that Cyprian is a very favouriteChristian father with Anglican divines. I n Cyprian

'

s timethe Bishops became the rulers of the Church, and hiseditor has no need to allude to the historically troublesome Epistle to the Corin thians. On the other hand, the

moral corruptions of the Church were not yet striking or

back for support to the first cen tury, it is natural that theAnglican churches should look to the third and fourth.

5. Christiansmet foralongtime in one another’

shouses .

There are man y references to such house meetings in theActs of the Apostles and in the final chapter of the Epistleto the Romans . The church of St Pietro in Mon torio, nearthe Colosseumin Rome,has in its foundations the remnan tof the earliest extan t Christian church, and the presen tchurch,which succeeded it, is itselfmodelled on the atriumt The Church and theMinistry in the Early Centuries, p. 903.

xv] nmrsrnv mm EARLY CHURCH 19:

a Christian architect was asked to design a church. he

modelled it upon themeeting room towhichhe hadbeen

accustomd. The remarkable domesticity of it all comesoutwel l in the rubric cal led

“The Liturgy of StClement,”

where, before the Lord'

s Supper was to be celebrated. the

al lowed to run about at the solemn moment. So that thedrawing room, or even the big kitchen ,was the on ly holy

scribed in the Book of Revelation is pr-obably modelled

upon the Christian worshipof the author'

s time,butsuch aninference seems tome a very dangerous way of using the

vision should not be derived from the temple worship ofthe Jews, or coloured by the con temporary worship of theGreek gods as much as—or more than—by the simple

the older faiths presen ted a better model for a glorious

Christian worship ; the apostle does not say whether theywere recited or were sungmut fromother pawages in the

New Testament it is plain that the singing of hymns didtake place. From the words "

each one hath a psalm,

"it

is to be concluded that the singingwas individual,and thatif there was joining in by the congregation it was spontaneous, notby an organised choir. I ammuch indebted to

suit his acquired ideas beyond what I should haveexpected.

193 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (on .

6. Speaking with tongues is another early hature

explain it ss dlsjoiuteduttersncemoteasy to understand.ruggedand ejaculatory, give avery insufi cientaccountofthe phenomenon . l twas reproducedamong the lrvingitestwo generstions ago, and the records of revivalisrn furnish

preachers or of preaching mediums give the real clue to

nornenon . One would say that in ordinary edification ,

lecturing or teaching,the faculties of the outwardman ,his

ministry, which is a revelation of divine truth fresh every

of spiritual power, which is nevertheless under the control

of the will , is checked by the intellect, is submitted toreason , is expressed comprehensibly, audibly and ih

telligen tly, and so constitutes a blend of the inward andoutward faculties,whichis, surely , themost efiective formof ministry possible to the combined. the in tegrated,faculties of a man . Beyond this comes that ecstatic

be, the work of the spirit, of the soul, of faculty which

psychical researchers call “subliminal,

"has taken pos

session of the whole man and speaks unchecked by the

outward faculties which are, for the prwen t, in abeyance.

Here impulse riots unchecked, and the speaker, as a rule,does not know what his lips have been uttering, un less hehappens, as Paul says, to possess the gift of in terpretation

Speaking with tongues then was an emotional ecstasy.

showy and wonderful, but really a smaller thing than the

messages of prophecy. Paul declared it of no value as arecommendation of the faith to the outsider, only usefulamong the speaker

’

s friends and fellow sain ts, and then

194 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

meaning of life, and unaccustomed to organised worshipitmay even have con tain ed a number of cranks and rebelsagainst al l order.We kn ow , at any rate, that the excitemen t was often such that careless visitors who came as oulookers sometimes fell down to the ground on finding thesecrets of their hearts revealed by the-propheticministry.

At the love feasts the congregation met for a socialmealin memory of the Last Supper. There were also churchmeetings, congregational business meetings, which dealtwith arbitrations, with certificates of removal to otherchurches, with themovemen ts of travelling preachers andtheir expenses, with disownmen t or milder forms ofdiscipline, with collections , with sufferings under persecution . TheApostle Paul’s letters are neveraddres sed to anyauthority con trolling the church from above. There were,of course, those who were elders, and to whose guidanceand con trol the Apostle urged the congregation to befaithful. There will always be leading and influen tialFriends, but it was, as I hope it still is with us, a case inwhich service and leadership wen t together.Men badinfluence because they deserved it, according to the

excellen t Christian principle that the greatest among us

9. The first step in organ isation that occurred in theChristian commun ity was when the seven deacons wereappoin ted to serve tables,attend to thewidows,andundertake the con trol of the commun ity in its practical affairs.

all through the apostolic period, and can be traced in thesub-apostolic writings, such as the Didache, the Pastor ofHermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apology of justinMartyr,and the writings of Irenaeus it is also foun d in theChristian literature which does not belong to the mainstream of the Church’

s history— among the Gnostics, theMarcionites and the Mon tanists. The distinction ceases tobe an essen tial one, or one inheren t in the very idea of the

xv] MINISTRY IN"

LE EARLY CHURCH 195

ministry, when we get down as far as Tertullian , A.D. 200,

but it does not cease en tirely . Among the various difi cult,con troverted and doubtful poin ts , this is agreed.

I O. This great distinction was between the prophets

overseers or Episcopi, and deacons . These three latterclasses were the oflice bearers in the church—smallmeetings’ committee, non-members

’

committee, collectioncommittee,meeting-house committee,elders andoverseers.

The prophets,on the other han d, exercised aministry suchas is perfectly comprehensible to us,butwhichDrLindsay,less well in formed, states has never occurred—or anythinglike it—since the end of the third cen tury. The prophetdelivered a message, he expounded a revelation , sometimes he had a vision to tell—sometimes he explained in

at all times he gave his soul and al l he had to his work.

If successful, he brought with him light, stimulus, conviction . The prophets were officials of no church ; manyof them were wandering ministers held in high honour,

mouthpieces of the Lord ; but not more official, and not

to-day . Itmust nothowever be supposed that though theirfunctions diflered, they constituted an en tirely separate setof individuals from the local officials . A man might beboth a prophet and an episcopus or overseer ; but the twoqualifications were separate, just as a recorded ministermay be on a finan cial committee. The localministry alsoincluded even from early days some teaching and exhortation -probably the holding of Bible classes and the dutyof presiding at the Eucharist in the absence of a prophet.

n . This prophetic ministry, for the preservation ofwhich the Society of Friends now chiefly existsasaseparateChurch, con sisted of three classes apostles ,prophets andteachers .

”The prophets were simply those who were

r3—z

196 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cm

specialised functions. Their service wasmostly within theborders of the Christian communities ; but there were twospecialised types of the propheticministry,theapostlesandthe teachers.We must rid our minds of the idea that inThe word apostlemeans onewho is sen t forth itmean ssimply amissionary. The apostles were those who brokefresh ground in the surroundingmass of heathenism. Theylaid the foundation and others built thereon .

” They werenot appoin ted to an office in the ecclesiastical sense of theword, butdevoted to awork ofmissionary activity.We will examine the use of the word in order to justifythis statemen t. In the first place our Lord declaredHimself to be an apostle or

“one sen t from the Father,

and as the Father had sentHim, so He sent others in I-Iis

Name to be His apostles. First, we have the twelve whowere sen t forth to the villages of Israel ; then we haveMatthias, who was dedicated to the same “

service and

sending forth with the eleven . Then camePaul,an apostlecal led by inward vision .We n ext have a class sen t bythe Christian communities as apostles of the churchestranslated messengers of the churches in the text,under

gives the Greek word (2 Cor. viii. Barnabas also wasan apostle (Acts xiv . I 4 ; Gal . ii. I n the las t chapterof the Epistle to the Romans Andronicus and Junia aredescribed as of note among the apostles, which mostnaturally means notable apostles . (I have used the termJun ia"

instead of Jun ias ” on the theory that she wasawoman ; so if this be correct we have awoman not on lyas a prophet but as an apostle.) Silas andTimothy appearto be classed as apostles who had not been burden some tothe Thessalonians, andApollos would seem to be in cludedwith Paul in I Cor. iv .9. Epaphroditus is cal led your


passages in the New Testament which deal with theirsupport . They were worthy of great hon our. but, asDr Lindsay happily remarks, the word was} means not

on ly honour but honorarium. The passages therefore inwhich the Apostle Paul claims his right to amaintenance,

fromhome, and whollyabsorbed in his work‘. He saw its

which he could achieve by tent-making,whilst at the sametime admitting the rightness of the main tenance of themissionary by the converts. There is n othing throughoutthe New Testament which gives any sanction to thepaymen t of residen t clergy. The beginnings of such aplanare to be found in the Didaclw, about 1 35 A.O .

But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy of

his support. Likewise a true teacher, he also is wortby , like the

workman , of his support. Every first-fruit then of the productsof the win e-press and the threshing-floor, of oxen and of meep,

priests . But if ye have no prophet give it to the poor. I f thoumakest a baking ot bread, take the first ot it and give accordingtothecommandmen t. In likemanner al sowhen thouopeuest ajaroi wine or oil , take tbe flrstotitand give it to the prophets ; and ot

seemright to thee, and give according to the commandmen t.

This paral lel to the high priesthood is a fatal case of theinfluence of Judaism upon Christianity. Christian priestshave been modelled upon Jewish ones. But this priestlythought was not realised and acted on till the time ofCyprian , 250 A.D. As yet the prophets were in the pofitionof

“ poor Friends,” like the widows and con fessors under

The one check on the great influence of the prophetsvas that they had to be tested by the witness of the spiritin the congregation . Paul asked them to apply this test

Treatedmore fully in Chapter vx. 54 .

IV] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 199

in his own case. The test of the genuineness of the gift

appears to have lain main ly in whether it echoed the spiritof Jesus and was loyal to Him.

“ Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.

"

This principle of fidelity to the Gospel was doubtless soundand needful in an age where the dying system of theOlympian gods was everywhere giving way to many a

ferven t Eastern faith.

1 3. Little need be said about the third division ofthe prophetic ministry— the teachers, but their inclusionwith the apostles and the prophets among the inspiredformders of Christianity is to me matter of deep encouragement. One is apt to draw the very true distinctionbetween that which appeal s to the head, purely by way ofknowledge and argument, and that which appeals to theheart by way of stimulus, devotion and faith —betweenthe cold dry light of in tellect and the white heat ofmoralpassion we draw habitually a clear distinction . And theyare distinct ; but here we find the in tellect tran sfiguredand glorified by feeling ; we find instruction wal king inheavenly places ; we find doctrine illuminated by hope ; wefind in reasoned thought cogen t sanction for themoral life .

That is to say, that we who to—day would follow in the

footsteps of the prophetic ministers of the first century,we who feel that we have in the public Friends " of theseventeen th cen tury their clear descendan ts and our

equally clear forerunners, we al so need not fear puttingour brains in to our preaching. The material s of teachingmay be driven home with hammer blows of conviction ,

with the penetrating power of a gospel message. On ly letus take heed that our material is ignited, that we do notofler to our Friends the well-laid combustibles of a firenever lighted, that we be no mere hewers of wood andbeavers of coal to apeople whowan t to be warmed‘.This combination in the first century has, I think,

See later Chapter onMin istry in Practice.

200 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE

often been striking examfles of this combined power, andthe Evangelical revival was full of it also. 50 is liberaltheology now .

Nothing is more remarkable than that this great forceof prophets—men personal ly held in the highest venerationin the early Church and in real con trol over it through theirpersonal qualities—never became its oflicials, and are notthe ancestors of its bishops.

It was not without good reason that these Christianpreachers were cal led by the name of prophet, the namefamiliar—central indeed—in the history of the Jews. Theywere, in fact,the successors of the Old Testament prophets,whose light had long been lost, who lived in the greatdays from the eighth to the fifth cen turies before Christ .We see the continuity better now that we have ceased toregard the prophets as main ly concerned with foretellingthe Messiah,andrealise that theywere bearers ofamessageof righteousness, of punishmen t or of hope to their own

age, and that their predictions were of the same natureas thosewhichapreacher thunderingagainst sin in nationalcrisis or in exilemight predict to-day . Over against themstood the ever-presen t, ever-aggressive priest . The story

choked ofi its prophets. Our indignation , however.should n ot be concen trated upon the priests individuallythey gain their power from a demoralised or unspiritualpeople, who will not think and cannot worship without

1 4 .We now begin the story of organisation which is tolead us far. It begins,as we have already n oted,with theappoin tmen t about the year A.D. 34 of the seven deacon sto serve tables.

“Look ye out therefore, brethren ,from

among you seven men .

It is pointed out by Lindsay that the Hebrew villagecommunity used to be ruled by a small corporation of

203 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [crr.

and, as the Epicureans said, in a perpetual flux . and we

have none of usmucb thatwe have not received.

r6. In like manner the Christian Chur-ch took its

place as one among many religious fraternities or clubs,among which already the synagogues of the Jews of the

Christianity never was ; it appears to have been firstrecognised in Rome by the authorities as a licenwd burialclub. These religious clubs bad, of course, presidingoflicers, amanaging committee, a treasurer and secretary ;they called one another brotbers and sisters ; they kept a

register ofmembers ; they included women who took part ;they had common meals, sometimes of a Bacchanaliancharacter. On this ground they were suppressed by JuliusCaesar ; so that when the Government began to findoutthedifference between Jews and Christians, the latterhad no

assured legal position . There is little doubt that the

or overseer who acted as treasurer, arose in the mostnatural way in the Christian fraternity. It

'

rs not necessaryto suppose that there was any conscious imitation of theearlier clubs, simply that if you are organising a com

r7. I n any case, no timewas lost in forming the neceSo

sary organisation by the appoin tmen t of amanaging committee. On his secondmissionary journey Paul appointedelders in Derbe,LystraandIconiurn ,andwefind that one of

the appointmen t of elders. The pastoral epistles are of thefirst importance in our inquiry. Titus and Timothy werenot permanen t “ bishops,

”in the modem or in any sense,

of the Churches of which they were in charge, they weretemporary deputies of the Apostle ; youngm

isionaries set

to do a piece of work for which Paul himsel f—the seniormissionary—had not time. Their words do not give anyearly sanction to episcopacy, which would be as wholly

outof date in thefirstcentury asthe StandardOil Comm ywould in the business of the Middle Age.

critical view is that they were , for the most part, notwritten by Paul, but were compiled in his name at some

on the diflerence of the vocabulary from that in Paul’sother epistles, and in the allusions to amore developedorganisation than is otherwise believed to have existed inthe time of Paul. It is not amatterwhich can be definitelydecided either way : I always myself feel that, on the

whae, the epistles are likely to be the work of Paul, withemendation s in later days so as to fit his advice to latercircumstances. The exact date, however, does not concernus now, for the picture that they give us of early Churchorganisation is, at any rate, a true picture, whatever itsdate ; it describes the situation which existed near the

diflerence of time is not very importan t.1 8. The leading oflicers of the Church bore the title

elders or presbyters, wpcefiri-n poc. The same men werealso cal led woman or pastors, and Jar-te em or overseers.

The title of pastor or overseer was descriptive of theirfunction ; elder was descriptive of their status, just as analderman might be chairman of the Watch Committee

there is no sign of any special presidency by any one

EpiscOpus or overseer over the council of elders. The word“elder” is a common title of a person in authority, justas the word "

alderman among the Saxon s and the word"senator” among the Roman s had the same referenceto age.

The early history of the mean ing of the word preshyter ” shows plain ly that his frmctions were main lyadministrative and judicial , rather than that of edifying

304 ms sm asraucruae (ca.

by word or doctrine. The elders of a city throughout the

Old Testarnentwere the judges of cases and the representatives of order.

'

l‘

he elden of the city had to deliver upthe wilful murderernhey had to ded with the accidentalhomicide. It was before thern that Boaz undertook the

illmtrations might be given . Throughout Jewish historythere was not on ly the synagogue for worship but the

Court, the cw 68pwv or Sanhedr-in . which was the seat

of the elders ; it met in the synagogue on week days

courts were sanctioned by Rome and were in full servioe

Christian , it kept naturally the old organisation and the

old name.

Among the Greeks, too, there had been a similar

seniority ; the senate of a Greek city was a Gerousia.

There is n othing unnatural in a Greek Christian societycal ling itsmanaging committee by the name of elders. Al etter fromPolycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to a presbyter orelder at Philippi deals wholly with administration and

In modern days the relief of the poor of acongregationis a small matter relatively to its other activities, and isdone quietly andin privatewhere it is done atall . But theearly Christian Church was very largely an organ ofmutual

exceedingly numerous among them. It is always the case

than the rich. Those of prominen t rank and station havetheir reputation—and often their business or profesdonalin terests—bound up with their way of worship. They

306 [cm

to be ransomed. l t was thought better and higher that

widows should not re-marry ; and there was a tendency tolook upon marriage in any case as a second-best statw All

this ledtothe increase of the numberof virginsandwidows

the prephetic preachers when they were travelling from

place toplacemnd neededhelpanf' .tertainmenton theirway. Any Christian strengerwaswerwmedintothe familyof the Lord on his travels, aplan which in time of courseled to abuses and to the en forcemen t of certificates ofmembership. Some oi the Church omcers also came in aspoor Friends. All this lent great impedance to theEpin epi or Episcopuswhowas the almoner. He probablybecame the almoner by presiding when the gifts were

offered at the Eucharist.

The views concerning the constitution of the Churchin the firstcentury whichl have above expressed,are those

of the most recen t writers ; Dr Lindsay in Scotland and

to show which of the conclusions that I have given are

general ly accepted among scholar.,and which are still

19. Ever since Bishop Lightfoot published in 1 868his

essay on the ChristianMin istry in his commentary on

the Epistle to the Philippians, ithas been generally agreedamong all critics with a historical mind that the governmen t of the primitive Church was by acommittee of eldersand overseers—the latter called Episcopi who were on lyofficial in the same sense as our Society’s elders and overseers are to-day . The theory of Dr Lightfoot, the earliestof modern critics of the period, agrees with that of thelatest which I have expounded here, in believing that theelders and the episcopi were exactly the same people.

and that the terms were descriptive of their standing andtheir functions—ii indeed they were not used indiscriminately—but that they were in any case the same

rv] umlsrav mrm: EARLY cannon 307

in veneratlon and influence.were the propheticministers,

as l have described.We have. in fact, a parallel to theministers, elders and overseers of our own Society. l t ls a

curious fact also, and an uninten tional imitation of theearlyChurch. that aQuaker recordedministerifhechangeshis abode does not cease to be a minister; that is, he isnot local in his service and status, whereas an elder or

an overseer loseshisappointmen tif hechangeshisMonthlyMeeting, that is, his district .

appearance of the pmphetic ministry during the second

century,andaboutthe emergence,asweapproachthe yearaoo, of a single episcopus as the pastor of the community,and of the existenoe during the third centm

'

y of the three

fold ministry—bishop, elder and deacon . But there ismuch difierence of Opinion as to the origin of the words

EpiskOpoi or overseers, and Presbuteroi or elders, and alsoabout their relative functions, and we cannot say that wereally know the causes which changed the episkOpoi intoa single episkopos and elevated him above the elders.

Criticismbegan ,as I say, with Lightfoot in 1 868. He tookthe word Episkoms as a Greek word for overseen and

Presbuterosas the translation of aJewish word foran elder,and showed that theymean t the same thing, fromActs xxin which the same people, the elders of the Church at

Ephesus, are called elders in the seven teen th verse, and

bishops in the twenty-eighth verse. I Peter v. r, 2,uses the

word " overseeing for elders, though the text is disputed.I Timothy iii. 1-7, and 1 74 9, uses bishops and eldersapparen tly for the same people also. In Titus i. 5-7, theyare specifically described as the same people. and in theFirst Epistle of Clemen t to the Corin thian s about A.D.95,the same iden tity is observed. These meanings, howewere so completely forgotten that the fathers of the for; -:L


cen tury, when they began to examine primitive records,had to rediscover the original meanings, and Dr Lindsayand others tell us that Jerome, Chrysostom, Pelagius,Theodore ofMopsuestiaandTheodoret, all recogn ised thatthe twowordsmean t the same people. Surely a conclusivetestimony.

In 1 881 appeared Dr Hatch’s famous lectures on theOrganisation of the Early Christian Church,

”which

produced a great sensation andhad enormous influence inEngland and Germany. They were violen tly attacked byAnglican clergy. I remember innocently suggesting tothe Dean of my college that Hatch ’

s book would be a

suitable subject for us to take on certain Sun day eveningswhen he was kind enough to hold gatherings in his room

student like myself had little insight in to the clerical mind .

What,”he replied, kindly enough,

"he reckons that

Bishopswere originally only treasurers, I understand. I don ot think that it would be a suitable boo .

Dr Hatch difiered from Dr Lightfoot in so far as he

believed that the episcopi were en trusted with financeand organisation , and the elders with conduct andmoralinfluence, and that the two were not the same people. He

believed that the name episcopus came in to Christianityfrom its use in the Roman religious clubs or fraternities,which were common in those days. That is to say, theywere what we should call Club Secretaries or presidents,or treasurers, or al l combined. The poin t can never bequite settled, and it is not at all essen tial to be clearwhether the two were iden tical, or were co—ordinate at

first.

Dr Hatch ’

s original , eloquent and learned volumeattracted enormous atten tion in Germany, and caused

DrHarnack to translate itin to German withlong commentsof his own . He agreed with DrHatch that the two officesof episcopus and presbyter v . distinct in their origin ,

CHAPTER V

THE DECAY OF PROPHECY

transformations, both of them of the deepest significancefor us. First, the prophetic ministry passed away. Notthat by the end of the second cen tury therewere absolutelyno prophets left—there were ; but the prOphetic ministryhad lost its power andwas greatly diminishedm numbers .

Secondly, one man—an episcopus—was put at the head

of the Council of Elders as its presiden t, as the conductorof services, the distributor of the Lord

'

s Supper, and theadmin istrator of alms.

It is well that we should study the fall of the prOpheticministry with the help of all the very slight knowledgewhich is available in the little-kn own period of the secondcen tury. Propheticministry has, as a rule, failed to persistfor generation after generation ; itcan only have lasted forsomething over acen tury in the early Church— lasted, thatis, on any great scale. There has never been an age of theworld in which some prophetic ministry has not beendiscoverable in most Churches. There was a great revivalof it among the Albigenses in southern Gaul at the end ofthe twelfth century, an other when the Franciscans werefounded shortly afterwards in the thirteen th century inItaly, and the Domin ican s in Spain . The Lollard preachersin Englan d and Bohemia in the fourteen th and fifteen thcen turies repeated the sign s of the first Christians ; theReformation of the six teen th cen tury had its prophets.

How long shall we say that the prophetic min istry of theearly Friends lasted ?

2 . Asa large general movemen t itseemsto have begun tofade slowly away about 1 720,afterwhich the Society began

cu. v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY an

to diminish in numbers. That is, it lasted as an extensivepopular impulse about seven ty years. It did not en tirelygo, but it was practised by a con tinually diminishingnumber of individuals during the eighteenth century,particularly by adiminishing number ofmen . The greatersusceptibility of women resulted

'

in a great preponderanceof women ’

s ministry during the eighteen th cen tury. Atone time there were five women ministers to one man ‘.The type and the tradition , however, survived as part oftheQuaker system. Theministers spoke at greater leng thas they became fewer ; they travelled ex tensively, andwerehighl y regarded ; the streamofministry had a strong flowcorresponding to the narrowness of its bed. The nameswhich have come down are those of mighty and faithfulwitnesses. Most of the sermons of these Friends would beunreadable now . Theydidnotcon tain much thought ; theywere the expression of unregulated emotion , the utteranceof simple powerful personalities on simple powerfr i hemes.

From this criticismone must except the names or SamuelFothergill in England and of Job Scott in America. JobScott as a religious thinker has been too much forgotten ,

and I think from his Remains that Samuel f athergill ofWarrington may have been the most eloquen t ministerthe Society has ever had.

3. The history of the second century is very obscure,and though themosthas been made of the scan tymaterialswhich exist,we cannot pretend thatwe have alivingpictureof the Church, unless more of its writings come to light .Our authorities for theministry are three . (1 ) TheDz

'

dache

or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which dates fromtheearly part of the cen tury ; (2) certain fragmen ts which aresources of the Apostolic Canons, which belong to the endof the century ; (3) the Epistles of Ignatius of An tioch,which al so date fromnear the beginn ing, 1 1 6A.D if theyare genuine.

J . S . Rown tree .

rq—z

are THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cm

The Teaching of the TwelveApostlcs is an early Book ofPractice and Discipline in sixteen short paragraphs. Itexhorts to Christian conduct, gives directions aboutbaptism, fasting, prayer and the Lord

’

s Supper. l tadvisesabout the treatmen t of prophetic min isters, the conductof worship, and the appoin tmen t of officers. The Churchwas still verymuch what is shown in the Pastoral Epistles.

Con trol rested with the community as awhole. With themlay the testing of prophets and the distribution of relief ;and the office-bearers were still on first century lines. The

propheticministry is still honoured ; if a prophet is presen the is to preside at the celebration of the Supper, and is topray and give thanks as much as he will ; that is, theprayer was to be impromptu. But a fixed form of prayerwas provided for the ordinary cflice-bearers to use, in case

no prophet was presen t, showing the growth of humanarrangemen ts for something to fall back upon whereinspiration failed‘.We catch the growth in the act. Simplearrangements were made for the main tenan ce of suchprophets asmight be staying among the people. Here wehave n o salariedministry,but the necessary provision foratravelling gospeller. But if the prophet asks formoney ;if he does not practise more than he preaches ; if he hasnot the ways of the Lord, then he is a fal se prophet and isto be sen tWe al so find that the local oflice-bearers, the bishopsand deacon s,were to be uprightmen , for they render youthe service of the prophets and teachers ; therefore neglectthem n ot, for they are your honoured ones along with theprophets and teachers .

”Harnack, San day and Lindsay,

all poin t to this passage as significan t, showing a stageby which the regular routine service of the elders and

overseers came to supplan t a fading propheticministry'.

4 . In the second documen t, the fragmen ts which wereafterwards incorporated in a later law book called the

L indsay, p. 1 74 . 1 6. p. 1 75 . I b. p. 1 76.

214 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cn .

guards brutallymaltreated him, and the churches of AsiaMin or sen t himmessages of comfort on his way, to whichhe replied in these letters. I quote a description of themfromLindsay‘ who believes some of themgenuine .

They exhale the fragrance of a sain tly and impassion ed Christian life . They dwell on the n eed that the sin sick children ofmen

have for the one great physician of souls. The Christian preacherof the second cen tury lives in them stil l , embalmed there and

treasuredup fora life beyond life.We find in themburetaof poeticfancy : the Lord was a Star which shon e forth in the heaven aboveall stars ; and its light was un utterable ; and its strangen ess causedaston ishmen t ; and all the rest of the constellation s, with the sunand themoon , formed themselves in toachorus about the star but

the Star itsel f far outshon e them all . They abound in simple butstrikingmetaphors, suchas the lyre and its strings, the athlete andhis training ; the chorus with its keynote ; the wheat ground in thebandmil l .We find quain t emblems ; Ye are ston es of a temple,whichw ere preparedbeforehand forabuilding ofGod,being hoistedup to the heights through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is theCross, and using for a rope the Holy Spirit ; while your faith is yourWindlass, and love is the way that leadeth up to God. Sometimes the words seem insensibly to take the form of a propheticchant, and have a rhythmic caden ce al l their own . Throughoutthere is that taste of Orien tal ex travagan ce which makes them so

natural .

The writer was a great advocate of the power of thebishop. His testimony was all to unity and obedience, andhe certainly pleads for the full-blown threefold min istryof the third cen tury underbishops, presbyters anddeacons.

The bishops established in the furthest parts of the worldare in the coun sels of Jesus Christ .” “ Every one whomthe Master of the House sendeth to govern His own household we ought to receive, as Him that sen t him. Clearlytherefore we ought to regard the bishop as the LordHimself." Those who “ obey the bishop as Jesus Christ "

live a life after Christ. “ It is good to kn ow God and thebishop ; he that hon .

-ureth the bishop is honoured of Cod ;pp. r87-8.

v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY

he that doeth anything without the kn owledge of the bishopserveth the devil.” To obey the bishop is to obey “

not

him, but the Father of Jesus Christ, even the Bishop ofall ,

” while to practise hypocrisy towards the bishop is“n ot to deceive the visible one, so much as to cheat theOne who is

If these Epistles are genuine, it is clear that AsiaMinorhad been more developed on ecclesiastical lines than Romeand the West. But they belong in order of developmentso much more to the end than to the beginning of thesecond cen tury, that Schmiedel says they cannot be earlierthan 1 50 A.D. and are therefore spurious. Their author

such heresiesasDocetismwas the great need .We have notyet reached Sacerdotalism; we might say that the thirdcentury and its threefold ministry is up to 250A.D. morelike Presbyterianism than anything else that we kn ow .

Christian s were during this time forbidden to baptize or tohold a Love feast without a bishop, his consen t should beasked formarriages,andthepoor lookedtohimtodistributerelief. He was the presiden t of the court of discipline.

6. All through the second century we must rememberthat churches were easily organised, for very few placeshad buildings to erect and n one had salaries to pay. The

cihoe-bearers were still men who worked at trades or inbusinesses ; bishops were shepherds and weavers, lawyersand shipbuilders, and Hatch quotes regulations from the

approving the practice. The 87th of the Canons of Basilsays that none of the clergy are to engage in merchandise,but they are to learn a handicraft and live on the labourof their The only case in which the clergyreceived paymen tswaswhen they could be classedamongstthe poor, in the position of the widows and orphans.

The change during the second cen tury to the threefold

L indsay, p. 193. 1 6. p. 203 n .

2 1 6 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ca.

ministry which was dominan t throughout the third c uturycame gradually and without opposition ; we can onlysurmise what its causes were. In times of warfarh and

that was practically the character of theMmment by a committee leads to divided counsels. The

Christians were not accustomed to democraticmethodsparticularly in Asia Minor—and the old sequence : “ tohim that hath shall be given ,

" must have been of frequen tapplication . As the Lord

’

s Supper became the formalhanding round of a purely nominal wafer, it required a

presiding officer, and thismay have hadmuch to do withthe emergence of a single Bishop.

Parallel with the growth of the bishop wen t the decayof the prOpheticministry. The change during the courseof the second cen tury may be shown by two quotations.

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles says Every prophetwho speaketh in the spirit ye shall neither try n or judge,for every sin shall be forgiven , but that sin shall not beforgiven .

" Irenaeus at the end of the period says that thetest of the true prophet was obedience to the elders. Herewe have a revolution , in the overthrow of the propheticministry. The spiritual enthusiasm of apostolic days hadgone, and the obvious inconvenience of aministry thatcould be less and less coun ted upon no doubt drove theChurch to lower ideals.We have not to strain our imagination s unduly in trying to realise the sad story of the secondcen tury. As with other clericals the attack upon heresywas one of the functions of the official pastors.

7. It is necessary to give a brief sketch of the circumstances of the Church in the world before we can properlyaccoun t for its ofiicial developmen t and spiritual retro

Those who have ever dabbled in Theosophy will havesome idea of what Gn osticism was. It imaged a wholecelestial universe, full of abstractions which it personified ;circles, and epochs, and periods of repose filled a fan tastic

and Silsnce,Wisdom and Powsr. Christianity ceased to be a

rsligion and became a theosophy . I t ceased to bs a doctrine and

became a Platon lc posm. I t ceased to be amle of life and becamea system of the universe. It was transferred from the worid of

human action in which it had sesmed to have its birth into a

supersen suous world c un imaginablem tness, and its truths were

no longerfiaed facts of faithand life.butths gorgeous,and shiftlng,

8. There was another and amuch nobler revolt fromorthodoxy led by a great religious thinker and organiser

to harmonise the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Godof all compassion , whose name was Love, with the cruel

proceedings of the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and,

what is more serious and difficult, with the miseries andhorrors of life throughout the history of the world. He

was troubled in the modern manner by the problem of

pain . .He therefore concluded that the Creator of thegroaning and travailing universe, and the Jehovah ofancien t Israel, were the same, or, at any rate, very muchalike ; whereas the heavenly Father revealed by JesusChrist, was rather an Opposing than a harmonising Deity.

He therefore rejected the Old Testament and some partsof the New also, and appealed to a pure Christianitycen tring in the Epistles of Paul . This man , at any rate,knew what he believed. He gathered round him a rivalChristian Church, which stood in its own eyes for reformand purification . Its weakness was its too hasty rejectionof the Creator of the outer world. The world being fullof evil and sin the only thing for a wiseman to do was tostand aloof from it all and to practise asceticism. He

frowned upon mamage ;.

no married person could ever

possess full membership in his Church un less they con

sented to adivorce ; andwhen areligious body does that itis doomed. As we go through the ages and read these

tragedies of loftyen thusiasms,we cannot but bemoved byOrgmisd ion aj lk Eu Ib risfien Chun k s, pp.9:-3.

v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY

the pathos of it all , and led to h0pe that those noble

causes which use up as well as conseczate the lives of

the best of mankind, will increasingly be broadened andliberalised. so that theymay stand the brunt of experience,because they realise that nothing human is alien fromtheircomprehension and their sympathy. The Marcioniteslived simPly.rejoiced in sufferingsandin labours,welcomed

movement, doubtless increasing its reputation for cecentricity with the surrounding pagan world.

9. In the face of Gnosticism and the Marcionites,Irenaeus,c. 1 80-202 A.D.,became the cen tre of the Church

’

s

reaction against heresy. Let us get back, he said, to thehistorical Christ, to the fixed truths concerning whatactually happened. But he was faced with the tendencyeverywhere to find allegories even in the Gospels. It iswonderful to read of this allegorizing when applied to theOld Testamen t . The Epistle of Barnabas deal s with theverse in the first Psalm“

He shall be like a tree plantedbythe rivers of water. To Barnabas the tree mean t Christand the watermean t baptism. He says these words irnply“Blessed are they who place their trust in the Cross, and

have gone down in to the water. The Platonists treatedHomer in much the sameway, so that anythingmight cometomean anything.

Irenaeuswas driven fromtrust in the records to actualoral transmission .

“ I knew aman , who knew aman ,who

knew an apostle,”is his claim, and these beliefs are sure,

for they have been handed down andare still testified to bymen still Asasummary ofwhat this tran smissionvouched for he gives certain sen tences which are the basisof the Apostles’ Creed. (The Apostles

’ Creed in its earlyform—the Roman Creed—can be traced back as far as

1 50 A.D.) He therefore pointed Christians to the personalhistorical knowledge handed down by the bishops of the

Lindsay, pp. aar ct seqq.

THE SUPERSTRUCTURE

Churches as a sure ground. The otlice-bearers who are

the recipients of this tradition are therefore to be the

judges of orthodoxy . This was not apostolic succession ,

thatmonstrous fancyzit was simply a reliable vehicle of

historical tradition . Here, oncemore, we have a standardof authority handed to the ofi ce-bearers to uphold,whichrelatively exalted them still further above the propheticministry, with its un limited freedom and its claim to

orthodoxy of the prophets, and it began to be suggestedtentatively that there was a veritable charisma”—agrace-given truth—attaching to the authorities. of thecongregations ; a suggestion which had in it the threatof much future danger. This movemen t towards officialauthority was associated with the name of Irenaeus, butit is protable that it had been acted on before he wrote.

1 0.We now come to an other fact in the situation .

revealed to us by the writings of the ApologistsQuadratus, Aristides, JustinMartyr, Miltiades, Melito.Tatian , Athenagoras. These books were appeals from the

Christians to be regarded as ordinary fellow citizens in the

empire ; as reputable, creditable people, holding upa highmoral standard, rather helpful than otherwise to society,and free alike from treason and from madness. Theycorresponded to the documents issued by George Whitehead soon after the death of George Fox, in which heendeavoured to show to the orthodox Churches thatQuakers held al l their essen tial beliefs.

But the time for making an Apology is not the timewhen new inspiration is being poured forth. Christianswere now mingling with the large life of the world ;men ofal l classes and of every kind of attachmen t to the governmen t were in themembership.and since the rescript of theEmperor about 1 84 A.O. toleration had been the rule . NolongerdidChristians standaloof fromthe world and professthemselves citizens only in heaven . Christianity, in fact,

222 ms: SUPERSTRUCTURE (on .

than , he says,“in regard to the Spiritwhich is earthly and empty

Spirit exalts himself, and wishes tohave the first seat, and is boldand impuden t and talkative, and lives in the midst of manyluxuries and many other delusions, and takes reward for his

prophecymnd if he does not receive rewards he doee notprophesy .

Can then the Divine Spirit take rewards and prophesy ? I t is not

possible that the Spirit of God should do this, but prophets of this

character are pomessed of an earthly spirit. Then it never

approaches an assembly of righteousmen but shuns them. And it

associates with doubters and the vain , andprophesies to them in acorn er and deceives them, speaking to them, according to their

desires,mere then ia the mode of life of boththe prophets . Try by his life and by his deeds the man who says

that he is inspired. But as for you, trust the Spirit which comesfrom God, and has pow er ; but the spirit which is empty and

earthly trust not at all , forthere is no power in it; itcomee fromthe

1 2 . The years fromabout 1 70 to 1 80 forman epoch inwhich three things occurred similar m spirit, and all dueto the conflict with the Gnostics and the Marcionites, viz.

the elevation of certain apostolicwritings to forma Canonof the New Testamen t on the same standing as the OldTestamen t ; the rise of the bt p as the presiden t of theassembly ; and the beginning of the expression the

Catholic Church.

"Schrn iedel con siders that the represen

tatives of traditional Christianity fell below the Gnostics,in tellectually and otherwise, and so it was all the moren ecessary for them to have a rule of faith—a can on ofScripture—and a strong man to hold the rein s ; but thatthe stress of these necessities has saddled Christianity withalien elemen ts which could notbe purifiedaway.

1 3. To depreciate prophecy was then the efiect ofGn osticism, of Marcion , of the renewed emphasis upontradition , of the reconciling aim of the Apologists, of increasing con formity to the world. But these did not havetheir way without opposition . The change whichmade the

great split of theMontanistawhowere the Quakers of theto the Epistles of Paul,andaskedwhether the Churchwas

created the Christian Church? Had it not the signs of a

divine origin ?Was there not all round us to be found

an increasing worldliness? And so in the coun try districtsin themoun tainous region of Phrygia, far fromgreat cities,among old-fashioned people, there arose a movemen theaded by a presbyter named Mon tanus. Moun tains arethe homes of prophets. The valleys of Cumberland andWestmorlandwere the Phrygia of Quakerism,andwemaynote that oddly en ough the capital city of that provinceis named Philadelphia.

The movemen t in Phrygia itselfwen t, asmovemen ts ofre action are bound to go, somewhat farther than the truthitwas trying to serve. Mon tanists believed with the earlyChristians that the end of the world was near at hand andthat they represen ted the last generation of prophets andthe last effort of the Heavenly Father for the salvation ofthe world. They believed that theyhadin the fullest sensethe abiding of the Paraclete—the actual presence of theFather and the Son . Not they, but the Spirit within thempreached indeed. Their oracles were uttered in the firstperson , as though God through their lips was saying,“ Behold, I stand at the door and kn ock,

"and even from

the mouth of a woman , masculine forms of speech wereuttered. This was ecstasy ; it was the gift of tongues overagain . The outward man was so completely absorbed bythe inward power, that he no longer became more than anin strumen t . Mon tanus himself put these words in to themouth of the Spirit, Behold, the man is as a lyre, andI sweep over him as a plectrum; the man sleeps and

I wake.

”


Mon tanistministry in other parts of the empiredid notgo to these extreme forms ; it was simply the restorationofNew Testamen tmethods of preaching,anditwas voicedby Tertullian , the greatest Christian of the beginning ofthe third century, who was converted to Mon tanism. He

flourished from200 to 21 7A.D., and it is tohis volumin ouswritings that we owe all that we have that is writtensympathetically of this revival . Their discipline also wasa restoration of primitive simplicity and separation from

bishops, presbyters, and deacons, but the Mon tan istsinsisted on the supremacy of the prophets, the Catholicsin sisted on the supremacy of the bishops. There was nochange in the nature of Christian prophecy. Justin Martyrabout 1 50 A.D. says “

the prophetic gifts remain with useven un til the presen t time.

" Irenaeus at the end of thesecond century— 1 804 02 a rm—says that “ some cast outdevils, others have kn owledge of things to come, see visionsandutterpropheticexpression s. Tertullian ,theMontanist,describes the ecstatic vision s seen during the time ofworship by a certain sister, who

converses withangels,and even withthe Lord. She can read somemen ’

s hearts and can heal the sick, and at the conclusion of the

service she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever

There are in the Pastor of Hermas similar statements,and Ignatius of An tioch tells how the prOphetic gift cameupon him when preaching to the Philadelphians and

caused unpremeditated utterance.

1 4. When the Church made its final peace with theworld on the conversion of Con stan tin e in 31 2 A.D no

peace came to the Mon tanists. The Catholic Church, nowarmed with secular power, in tensified its persecutions.

The Christian Emperor— (thinkwhat an innovation such atermmeans)—pursued themwith severity, andMon tanists

226

orders of the heaven ly Host, although they en joy beatitude and want nothing to the sumof felicity , still revere

the glory of apriest,wonder athis dignity , yield tohiminprivilege, honour his power.

" History goes on to tell howthe Bishop became a priest ; but it is not our subjectnow .

In fact the priest was lurking there all the time, in thematrix of the minds of men , waiting till the spiritualshiftlessness of the mixed multitude should call himout.

The Catholic Church tool: the common path trodden bythe other curren t faiths of the time. Christian priests withtheir ritual and doctrine took their place beside those ofMithras andOsiris, of Attis andHercules , of Dion ysusandAesculapius,andfinallyabmrbed them,without demanding

these was regarded as a Saviour of men , born of aDivinefather an d a humanmother or otherwise human and

Divine . All sufiered death for the good they did, but rosefrom the dead and were taken up in to heaven . It wasres erved for a succes sion of heretics, age after age, to turnwith con viction and a new joy, back to Christ .

CHAPTER VI

MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION

r. The most daring act which the founders of theSociety performed, was in deliberately doing away not

the distinction between clergy and laity. Every earlyFriend felt himself so near to God that no priest couldcome nearer, and they determined to organise theirSociety in line with the words of Peter, that

“Ye are all

priests un to God.

"But their destruction went further

than priesthoods. They knew of aministry whose outflowcame so directly fromGod, reached fr

-om the deep in one

heart to the deep in an other, was so considerably independen t of the will or purpose of the speaker for itsinitiative, and had so little to do with academic prepara

they would arrange formeetings on a basis of silence, giveliberty to all to speak, andwait for the sult . The resulthas been the production for 27o years of aministry which,

of. It is like no other preaching in its combination offervour and restrain t, its comflete absence of artificialeloquence, its possession of the weight that comes withsincerity. This is the ideal ; bt uakers are nomore idealthan other people, so that weak and even foolish ministryhas always existed among us ; cases in whichmen have notbeen able to forget themselves,and have given way to theairing of Opinions ; or have thought that the inward impulse to speak freed them from the intellectual trouble ofSpeaking clearly and connectedly, and sitting down when

rs—z

228 rm: SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

they had done . Considering the whol ly amateur characterof our preaching, and that it is Open to everyone underthe impulse of the momen t, it is marvellous that wehave not fallen more than we have

have been preserved so much as we have, is due tothe sense of discipline in our meetings, to the influenceof a reveren t and in tensely critical congregation ; infact to the restrain ing power of the Holy Spirit over thegathering.

Friends have elected to run these risks rather thanadopt the necessary evils of a professional ministry.Weare the one religious body which is not organised in to apastor and a flock. Our idea is of brotherly help, not ofprofess ional service.We recognise that ourpower to preachis not at our own beck and call, that itmay on any Sundaymorning be absent or be presen t—that, not knowingwhence it comes or whither it goes, it cannot be arrangedfor beforehand.We decline to preach by salary, though werecognise the many influences which have caused mostpeople to find it convenien t to do so. People being as theyare, perhaps the separation of men for pastoral work,however imperfect, may be the best course for a publicin England and America, so little self-relian t, so careless

and selfish as it is. Congregationsmight have noministryat all if they did not pay for it. Democracies in politics,we may be too idle and helpless to avoid bureaucracy asa church . All that we Friends say is, that we know a

better way—we will risk lack of training that we mayobtain simplicity and independence . Those who preach tous shall depend for their living neither on their popularitynor their orthodoxy ; and we will meditate in silencerather than have platitudes rolled out to us by a manwho may be weary or dull, simply because the sermonmust begin at hal f-past eleven , even if it has to be ham~

mered out.

33° (ca.

Their faculties are not sufi ciently calledout ; their sense of

responsibilityis taken away. Thingsare lefttotheminister ;it is his business.

everywhere ; but the spiritual life and the help of our

brethren is not an aflair for a specialist ; it is what nomancan aflcrd to lose, and what noman should assume for hisbrother. Our eating, our breathing and our exercise, ofbody andof spirit,wemust each do for ourselves.Socrates extended the Quaker idea even to teaching.

! en ophon (Man . i. 2, 6) says that Socrates considered a

money payment between teacherandpupil

aanothing less than servitude, robbing the teacher of al l free choice

between teacher and pupil to that between two lovers or two

intimate friends, whichwas thoroughly dishonoured, robbed of its

in the teaching profession cannot be general . because menmust spend capital and all their youth in its preparation ,

and all their days in its practice ; and if we will have

services from the clergy at all anal ogous in specialisedskill, we must pay for them albeit the real specialisationcomes from a University beyond fees, in the heavenlies

that are round about .

4. All the above seems to run counter to the famouspassage in 1 Cor. ix , in which the Apostle Paul asserts hisright to amaintenance 1 . It is to be noted first that itwasa right of which he preferred not to avail himself. Corinthwas a city full of dishonesty, and doubtless con tainedreligious as well as other charlatans, andhe preferred tobe

Chap. rv . 5 1 2 .

v1] MIN ISTRY AS A PROFESSION a3r

above suspicion and to earn his own living . He claimed,in fact, a lay position . Dean Stanley comments upon the

In an ags or in a aociety, where the minds of men are dispol ed

of an order of established clergy . But in a time of unaettlemen tor

own , the authority of a layman in religious matters is usually farhigher than that of a clergyman ; and for this reason , that everysentimen t which he utters on auch suhjects ls regarded as apou

caneous, disinterested, and unprofea ional , to a degree not fel tin the case of the mgular and established organs of instruction .

Sueha lay position , if on emay-oapeak, theApostlehere labourato

vmdicate for himsel f‘.

The immrtant poin t, however, is that the Apostle wasa foreign missionary ,and that the passage has no reference

Christian coun tries of men as pastors, who have no other

no such men in the Church in Paul’

s time, or in hismind.

in a country in which his ordinary means of livelihood

unavailing, and if he be as itinerant as the Apostle Paula settled livelihood is out of the question . Moreover, his

He is a schoolmaster or a doctor or an agriculturist or a

against the separation of men for duties like these.

Organisers, secretaries, district visitors, lecturers,must al lbe paid, by the nature of their work. It is on ly in the

applicable to this particular issue. He compared the work

The Epistles to the Corinthians, pp. i 6a~3.


andpay of themisdonary tothatof the soldierfihe planterof a vineyard, the keeper of sheep, theploughman and the

has a share in the proceeds. Now in the harvest of souls,

what is ashare in the proceeds?Whatispaymentin kind?Is it not that the reapers may have souts for their hire ?The love and gratitude of rescued humanity , the joy of

the workrnan in his work, and in the fmit of his strivingsthese are the rewards fitting to these illustrations. Thatthe author of the Pastoral Epistles was in the habit ofusing these words in their exact sense is clear fromrTim.

v. 1 7, 1 8,“Let the elders that rule well be counted

worthy of double hon our, especially those who labour inthe word and in teaching. For the scripture saith, Thoushalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn .

And, The labourer is worthy of his hire.

” Here it isclear that the true reward for spiritual services is puton the spiritual plane,where alone it ought to be‘. WhenPaul says that the humane provision ,

“Thou shalt notmuzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn ,

’ ’

was not

writtenMcause of God’

s care for the oxen , but as a text

to be used in a quite different connection , one recognisesa faulty Rabbinical in terpretation of the paw . Whenhe says

“I fwe soweduntoyou spiritual things, is itagreat

matter if we reapyourcarnal things ?"we can on ly say that

this is a dangerous and undesirable arrangemen t . His lastargumen t is derived fromthe Hebrew priesthood who eat

of the things of the temple.

” This is indeed a disastrousparallel, and the history of Christianity supplies abundan t

ordained that they which proclaim the gospel should liveof the gospel. The only extan t passage to which this canrefer is Luke x. 7 which speaks of a mere invitation to

But see also Chap.W. on this.

234 (cu.

originality, upon genius. shrivels upand finally dies, even

if maintaining a name that it liveth. under the restraintoi that benevolent systern.

l iere, and everywhere, the mult oi oentralising and

organising seems to be to turn out a rnoderately passablearticle, but not the best. l t sacrifices the best, and aimsopenly at a good average. But, alas l what a tasteless

result is a fair average in art, in poetry, above all , in

ministry ; for among Friends, ministr-y is naught ii it bl

~

not an original product, something inapired. The technical

skill required to weach pan ably is hardly worth mentioning ; in fact, one may say that most men , and manywomen , could-easil y do it ii they tried. Itmust be sorrowfully con fessed that sermon-making is one of the easiest

ministry, they cannot command the Spirit that blowethwhere it listeth, and the fatal fact is that the Spirit listethnotmuch to blow in an organised way. l i we cease to

expect the shy angel oi inspiration to come and troublethewaters,sad do notwait forhercoming, she

“

isapt to giveus up, and cease her visits ; yet congregation s which are

not happy without a sermon are likely to get what theywant, in spite oi that, as amatter oi expediency.

Great are the triumphs of organisation in the worldof business ; and great, often too great, are its financialrewards. One cannot but admire even so common an

example oi it as is iurnished by a great factory, where

buildings and steampower, andmen andmachinery, and

sit, and world-wide communications, combine to producewith increasing cheapnessmiles of cloth. But the humanunits, who are parts of the great machine, are productsnot altogether so perfect and beautiful . The factory doesn ot exist for them, they exist for it. Contemflate the girlstepping about with her bare feet on the oily floor. She

has learn t to piece threads, but not to become a man’

s

vil umm ? as Amom 335

helpmeet and the mother oi children. For moet oi herwaking hours she is prirnarily amill-hand, and after thatam ; andall berhumanity,hergirlishjoysandhopes,her charity and religion ,her personal liie, in fact,have to

struggle on for a stunted career outside her monotonous

or less oipain andsacrifice, tothe greatorganisedmachine.

So itis in religiousorganisations.“l would,indeed, like

Salvation Army othcer,whomedtocall on me for subscr-iptions at somewhat frequen t “annual ” intervals ; buttheyhave setme to this canvassing work, l suppose because lused to be in business, and l have to obey orders.

”The

man '

s eyeswere moist, and l saw what a cross this highlyorganised army was laying on the individual shoulders.

went froma little northern town to be a captain ; but he

was founduseiul as an unpald legal adviser ; and the ardent

missionary sat on a stool all day as of old, and died of

weariness, over-work, and scan t bodily comforts. “You

havenobusinesstosendthese twodefencelessyoungwomento wear themselves out as pioneers in Darlington , and be

amark for rufi an hostility,” wroteMr Stead to General

Booth. The reply was that to win victories a general

must not spare his soldiers. Itsounds cruel , but it was, in

fact, a blunt expression of the necessary law under which

those live who form part of a highly organised militan t

The Catholic Church, with its celibate clergy, affords

A friend of mine, who is the Brother in charge of a largeinstitution managed by the Brothers of the ChristianSchools,

” told me how, in training for their order, the wil lhas to be broken in the early years of the novitiate. Is

thereany duty youwould partit“ larly dislike to perform?

said the superior to an acolyte . The lad men tioned a


loathsome task. Then that is what you shall do, repliedthe stern represen tative of church order.Men so trainedwill, in after life, relinquish uncomplainingly influen tialprofessorships and congen ial society to go and teachelemen tary cl asses in small towns, or to live in hourlycon tact with the Brother theymost dislike.We cann ot butadmire all this misplaced self-sacrifice, and are consciousof the power of the great machine so formed ; but if therebe one jewel more than another, which the Society ofFriends exists to preserve, it is the spiritual liberty and thesacred freedomof eachman andwoman under the Directorwho rules within .

6. An en terprising syndicate has putupon themarketa cheap method of University Extension teaching, bywhich type-written lectures prepared by some competen tteacher could be distributed and read aloud by anybody,who, it was thought, though a stranger to the subjecthimself,might act as the mouthpiece of a lecturer whomit was too expen sive to engage personal ly. By generalagreement this method of teaching is a failure, inasmuchas there is no play of thought by the in tercourse of oneliving mind with another.We describe it as wooden ,

lifeless, and mechanical . I n an in tellectual process themind should apply itself with clear-cut defin iteness and

delicacy of perception to just those fine distinction s ofthought which cannot be pmphesied beforehand, and

which cannot be deal t with in amass.

How, then , can a ritual service, not arranged even forthis year or for this town , but the same for cen turiesand world-wide, fail to be intellectually inappropriate,

indeed to lose its in tellectual value? Such we find to be thecase . It is in sermons rather than in rubrics that we findhelp towards our thinking. It is rare for any committeeor Board to be able to agree on a form of words which, intheir attempt to satisfy al l . do not lose incisiveness andcharacter and col our, and acquire instead the safety of the

238 (cu.

They are under servitude, sometimes a light yoke, but

be popular, not only because their living is at stake, but

is never above, and often below, that of the average goodman . Nor can this be avoided so long as the system is

retained.What a twist this need for popularity gives tothe single eye.

Again all preaching which counts, means that amanunhares his soul. His deep religious experience, his mostprivate self is exhibited for the help of others. This is ,indeed, in itself a glorious function—this is the truepriestly act, communicating divine things. But to exploityour personality like this for a living ! I don ’t likethe idea, and the true and honest preacher forgets it if

There is an other besetmen t which is never far fromall

who in an y way live by exploiting personality. Actors andactresses suffer fromit in theirmore external way. Graceandbeautyare spiritual,aswell as physical,and those who,by gratitude, or cornpliment, or flattery, are made awareof the appreciation they receiH any of these callingshave needof sobrietyandhumility. EveryQuakerpreacher,every public speaker, ismore or less subject to the temptstion of vanity, if he sucm dsmuch. But those whomaketheir living out of their personal attraction or superiority,and who do n othing else, are in the worst danger, thoughthey can be saved, as by fire, the fire of sincerity and

7. In Sunday Schools, which are not for our own

children , butare the juniorwing of homemissionary effort,hymn sare freely sung. TheFriends

’ Sunday Schools ledtheway in the modern movemen t among such schools foreducational immovement. They have elaborately gradedcourses of lessons,extremelyinterestingandwell conceived ;

MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 239

an active cen tral organisation ,andatWest Hill, Selly Oak.

of Sunday School teachers, formerly the most un trainedof all the world

’

s callings.

At all Boarding Schools, and in most families wherethey sing,

” hymns are in free use and generally valued .

Some Friends have recently issmdaHymn Book foruse inthese connections, called the Fellowship Hymn Book.

Among the hundreds of hymn books in the world, I mysel flike this the best of all .Imust nowmake something ofacon fession . During the

atter half of the nineteen th cen tury aggressive“gospel

. hey nearly always adopted a simple type of n onconiormist congregational worship for Mission meetings.

wished to attract expected and liked best . Much good has

Society. I n a few places people have, through the missi onmeetings, taken ultimately to attending the Friends’

meetings and been admitted to membership. There has,however, been no great stream of tendency. Nor haveMission meetings been transformed gradually in to Friends

’

meetings. I know of no such case, thoughh0pe used to be

en tertained that such a change might be induced. But

it was never a well-grounded hope. By starting aMissionmeeting on ordinary Free Church lines, one attracted fromthe beginning those who liked that sort of meeting. One

adopted, from aQuaker poin t of view, a wrong principleof selection . People came to what suited them. It mighthave been wiser, in the long run , to have had more faithand courage, Opened Frien ds’ meetings and taken the

con sequences. I kn ow of successful cases of this methodof action .

240 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cn . vi

At present, then , this subsidiary kind of meetingexists, though diminished, con trolled by unofficial cornmittees, and attracting a smal l working class audience.

More often than not it is held in a separate building. The

atten f an ces have been falling off seriously of late years‘.

I twouldhave been arelief tohavehad nomore toadd by wayof con fession or apology. But it would be misleading not to tell

the reader that there are in the employ of a HomeMisaion and

Ex tension Committee of the YearlyMeeting less than a score of

men who redde in struggling or decaying meetings, pracficallyas pastors of a fiock too weak to feed alon e, and who becomein practice paid residen t pastors, leaders of mission meetings,organisers of Adult and other Schools, and frequen t visitors at the

amodest maintenance, in order to preven t ameeting dying out,or to keep up aggressive work which Friends, through deaths orremovals, cannot con tinue. The causes which have produced the

the same religious type as those who feel a call to other pastorates.

They difler fromthemin isters of other denomination s in that theyare un train ed,have no fixity of ten ure , and do not lead thought orabsorb the whole service of the ministry. They have themselvesgenerally come into the Society from the outside, and so have not

the Quaker tradition and upbringing . The in troduction of this

type of worker has been a chiet cause of con troversy in our

Society of late years , and no general agreemen t has been reached.

For man y years the subject has been al lowed to slumber, as no

immediate danger of a transformation of the Society or of the rise

of an in fluen tial class of officials appeared. But if ever a period ofidleness or lethargy came upon us, the microbe of clericalism is

there lying in wait, and capable of rapid mul tiplication .

On the otherhand, it is a reasonable hope that the arrangemen tis temporary and shows little sign of vitality The sign s poin t to


naturalman . Grudges and hatreds come upfor judgmen tand prayers for patience are put up. Often humility andpenitence cover the wholeman .Wemake con tact each forhimsel f with the Real and the Eternal , and thereby gainstrength over temptation and sin . In the distractions ofdaily life, in the crowded multiplicity of detail, we mayfail to see the wood for the trees. Here we are able to look

at ourselves and to look from ourselves. How superficialis the view that in silence there is nothing going on . Thisis what Friends call a living silence. Few can usefullypractise such athletics of the soul for longer than half anhour. In a good meetingministry often in tervenes about

stimulating—and with in terval s of silence the ministry ofthree or four may follow, often in unexpected unison ofthought. Out of the silen ce rises theministry.

z. The belief expressed in this chapter is that Ministry,as understood by the Society of Friends, is not simply afunction of the outward will or conscious purpose, norrepresen ts on ly the thought of the ordinary superficial

of our being, has its origin in and derives its piercing and

convincing power from a level of personality deeper thanthe streams of current consciousness.

already treated in Book I, Chaps . IV and v . Something sofundamen tal naturally occurs more than once in a booklike this.We often have to remember that we are greaterthan we know, and that we cannot hOpe to explain al l the

things that happen to us by supposing ourselves en tirelydescribed as possessors of the particular faculties withinthe ken of our consciousness, which our evolutionaryhistory has given us for the preservation of the sp eiss and

for the conveniences of life on the earth. Readersmay not

m] SILENCE INWORSHIP 243

Research, in the contributions of the late F. W. H. Myers,

gifts of the imagination which bubble up in some of the

most favoured of the sons of men , thoughts, pictures andwords,

“whose echoes roll fromsoul to soul,

”and become

the permanent inheritance ofmankind. Allied to these arethe Daemon of Socrates, the Visions of Francis, and theInnerVdce whichspolne toand spoke throughGeorge Foxand the early Friends. This “ hidden man of the heart,

"

this underlying part of ourselves. is the vehicle of theWordof God. He is known—that Imay claim, though there is noroomhere to prove it—to be the vehicle of thought transferred from man to man ; that is, he is susceptible of

the five senses ; and it is our reasonable hope thathe is the

vehicle of Divine Thought, too ; that“The word is nigh

thee, in thymouth, and in thy heart (Rom. x.We do not know what the landscape may be on the

further side of this bright gate in to the eternal ; we knowlittle oi s fronded palms, His golden pavemen ts, or thecity set four-square ; I reck notmuch of these ; but Imeanjust the same as those apocal yptic seers mean t, when bytheir lips the sense of the Divine glory had to be told in

such words andmetaphors as they kept in store. En oughforme to kn ow the beginning of the way ; to hold one endof the golden thread reaching up to the Eternal Unity ;to find that we have a faculty, an actual organ itmay be,where God meets man—the one Holy Place or shrinewhich ever was or can be.

If our ordinary personal ity may be likened to thecovering crop of green grass, made up of multitudin oustrifles, blade upon blade, found everywhere and havingnogaps ; then the bright flowers that stud ithere and there,deeper rooted, growing from below the sod, owe theirbeauty and their bloom to a seed sown in subliminal soil ;

to—4

344 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

It may be thought thatthis isaone-sided overestimateof the share which the inwardman has in ministry. I canon ly plead that it is the result of the experience gained

first-hand through some thirty-five years ofministry, andthat it is cmfirmedby the large body of greater experienceto be found in the writings of Friends of all epochs, oftensubtly desciiptive and helpful , if the archaic phrases can

be tranalated into our own terms.If preaching is an affair of the unaided self-purpose,

form of worship is calculated to give scape for the worst

pofi ble kind, the most haphazard in quality, the mostun tutored, the most self-appoin ted and egoistic.We canon ly regardaFriends

’meeting as awel l cmceivedadaptation ofmeans to enda if the impulse to speak comes fromthe unconscious part of ourselves, so that it cann ot bearranged for and paid for beforehand; and our pm is to

gather our souls together in silence and wait, leaving the

Holy Spirit, moving here and there, to do the rest. Ourmeetings aremuchmore than a convenientplan by whichtheministry of severalmay be substituted for theministryof one ; they are awell-considered provision for the silenceof the outward, inasmuch as that is a condition for theinward to find a voice. Friends’meetings have never beena failure when there has been activity of the Inward

Secondly, how do typical Friends tell their story?George Fox ’

s Journal abounds with narratives ofmeetingsin which, he says, the message reached the deep in hishearers’ hearts, because it came fromthe deep in his own .

Again and again , from all branches of Quakerism whichretain its character, there is the testimony of ministerswho go in to meeting in physical weakness and wearin essand men tal helplessness, totally unable to produce a

346 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cr'

private needs. From thsse sometimes the live coal frorn

ofl the altar is brought, sudden ly and unexpectedly, and

speech fol lows. Sometimes it does not. Again. there

times when the initial thought stiikes in of itself fromthel nnerHan beyond the will . Theseare times tobe thankfulfor. Often two or three of the thoughts that have struck

horne during the week are woven together in unexpected

ways.When the fire is kindled the blaze is not long.

In flve minutes from its inception , the sefl non is there,

the heart beats stronglymnd up theman must get. How

and fruitful minutes, when the whole scheme is unfoldingitself. andflashing itself upon the brain . There are the flve

or six main points, the leading sequences of thought are

there,the introductory expository teaching, the generaliention , the illustrations, the flnal lesson and apped , they fan

into place. The sermon ismade, but I, the slow compiler,did notmake it. Now for the human qualifications to all

I advise no one to rise withhismind a blank sheet, orwithon ly atext,notknowing whither itmaymeanderinglylead. That is notamethodwhich, it seems tome, tends toedification . I tis better far toflnd fromthe inwardmonitorto whomyou have lent your mind, before rising. exactlywhat you think you have to say ; you ahould have your

you are going to stomand even if you are led away fromyour plan , keep that as a harbour, to come quickly hometo. I believe that the facultieshave enoughtodowhen you

have in tended to say , without commdng new matter as

Do l then always say what l intend and no more?

influence of the Guide stOpsmy saying all I hadmeant, orhalf mean t, to say ; and, what is more, rarely have I

vn] 347

regrettedthe omissions. l amgenerally thankful for them.

They have meant cutting ofl what is superfluous or of

due to faults in the intellect, to forgetfulness, nervousness,

haste tositdown ; butnotwholly so, or the omissionswouldnot be so beneficial u they generany are.

Again . does one never expand when one is speaklng?

Yea. verily. But mind youe de here. This practics

needs particular caution. Do not limit the spirit to its

utterance, particularly if you have been in the habit of

4.’

I‘

here are two slightindicationsbesides those l have

mentioned,whichgive support to my view that an underlyingman isatworkin theministry ; one is,thataconscious~nessofmw lfmf one's own position standing there in frontof an audience, an incursion on the scene of the ordinaryself, if it sudden ly breaks upon you whilst in the exercise

ot rninistry, brings con fusion to the mind and silence to

the lips. Hard is the case.

“Get thee behindme " has to

cmm quich or one is lost.

thatattimes,in oldage,whenmost of thefacultiesare dulledor gone, the ministry seems to have an independent life,and to remain as brightas ever. I have known at leastone

I have then , to sumup thus far, oflered support to thisviewofministry fromthe veryconstitution of ourmeetings,fromthe impersonal character and quality of the preaching, from our feeling of being pouessed by the rnessage,

of its being a gift to us, and from several minor indica

5. If we turn now to the dangers and common faultsof the minister, we shal l flnd that they al so give strongtestimony to its impersonal character. For they will beseen to consist of various ways in which the conscious self


intrudes into the work of the Divine man within and

earnest selflessness in tbe work.

There is flrst the fault of undue length. ln one'

s early

years,when feeling one’

sway. trying toflndby what signs

one ought to speak and when not, when the innerman is

untraiw d tohis part, sel f-conscious, fearful about appearing to set himself above his fellows as thoughbetter thanthey, doubtful if his career be worthy of his message,

frightened unduly by such a standard as l have raised in

this paper, perhaps dealt with early by Elders who do

not understand, who may possibly never have preached

themselves in these years speech is dimcultn ilence an

remember yourself sudden ly,getcon fused, sit down in the

But in time the organism becomes fltted for its oft

repeated task. Thoughts andwords flow easily on the tidal

the range of the ' idal wave, and then they on ly cast up

material, oldwell-used utensils ; they are oflence to us. Inmid-life and after, our danger is to speak too much, nottoo little. The elderlyminister who remains brief and tothe poin t isaglorious product of disciplined and chastened

may be aman who speaks at great length, whose lengthis

ameasure of the greamess of his inspiration ; but l havenevermet himin England or in America.

The question of length is not one of wordiness on ly,

however, butone of amoun t ofmaterial. My advice wouldbe tO pile on all the fuel you can ignite, and no more.

Frommemory and from thinking comes the material forthe Inspirer to breathe upon . Bring in your theology, yourliterary allusions or quotations, your . illustrations from


to our in trusive self-love, they become dangerous. This

preferment, is the bane of all to whom preaching is a

profession . ButweFriends alsoneedtobe on ourcontinual

guard. I do not plead against grave, thoughtful, discriminating encouragemen t to faithfulness, and testimonyto the value of the service renderedmfiered to theman asa faithful steward. The minister must never try tomakea fine sermon , or think that he has made one, or that hewill not speak atall un less he can speakwell . Hemust bea fool forChrist

’

s sake. He will do nogoodtill he comes tothatand stays there. That is the expulsion of the Ego that

have to b ep watch on this til l our lives end. We are

emptied of self, but self returns.Allied to this danger is the astonishing claim to some

thing like in fallibility, to a command fromGod which noElder orMeeting of Elders ought to criticise,which one has,at rare intervals, heard of ministers making in years now

The InwardMan is in touch with God, but he is notposseswdof al l l

-l is counsel . I believe thathe ismoreproneto error than the outwardman who has learned h'

om the

rules of experience. But l amsure little needbe said on so

7. The above teaching leaves large swpe for the service

of the faculties of the outwardman .We ought to educateourselves for theministry if it should come, by cultivatingevery in tellectual and vocal gift, by training and storingthe mind through books ; by the study of religion in itsmanifold outpouring. Particularly should we study theBible in an in telligen t way themodern methods have leftit fuller than ever of spiritual help. The intellect and thememory are the tools, the engine, by which the work isdone ; though an engine does not provide the power. Our

duty is to keep itclean , oiled,upto dateandin repair. This

vn ] SILENCE INWORSHIPduty has been toomuchneglected in the past. As priests

ourselves, we ought to aim at being as well educated asthe clergy .We should not prepare sermons, but we shouldprepare ourselves to be ready to preach when bidden todo so.Al l thisdoes not point to formal preparation of sermons.

That is ajudgment to which I more andmore incline . I n

my first year or two ofministry, I did prepare agooddeal ,always savingmy honour by not preaching un less hiddento do so at the time ; adifi cult path to fol low . But I lessand less believe in it, andhavemany years ago abandoned

tice. I feel free to make an exception in the case of

weddings and funeral s,where there cannot convenien tly beany long period of silence. They are occasions by them

silence beforehand. But on the whole I think the VoiceWrthin is best left tohis spontaneous devising at the time ;this is the spirit of thematter. Butthere shouldbe nohard

and fast line. All thismay bealittle oned ded,perhaps ;buteven if it be, itis on the side given toFriends toemphasize.

8. Next aria s the question whether all vocal ofieringsmust be of this type ? Can there be none on amore confessedly outward footing? To assert a negative, to makeaprobibition in a religious organiaationds full of dangerbutmust sometimes be faced; and I think there is but little

place in meetings for worship for conversational , purelydidactic, speech, made up for the occasion in the will of

and by the inven tions of the speaker. It is apt to Spoilthe gathered, inward-drawn sense of the meeting. Itdistracts and scatters, and in practice we suffer greatlyfromit. There may be special occasions,and theremay bemeetings peculiarly constituted ; theremust be exceptionalcases and places. Quakerismabhors a hard and fast rule,buton the whole I think that kind ofministry is best foundunder other denominations, who can do it much better.

[cm

There should be other times and places found for the giftof teaching ; an important subject, but not the one justnow in hand.

9. Ie t it not be supposed that any sp cial intonation

or mannerism accompanies rninistry from the deeper

source. To give or to intend to give impressiveness byintonation is abesetment of the Quakerminister. But not

of hirn on ly. It has been frankly adopted by the users of

liturgies ; and is actual ly, in the form of organ andanthemandintcmed prayers,a principal attraction to the churchesaround. Among us it is often due to mere nervousness.

Sing-song rules the voice when the will cannot. This is

probably why women , to whonr preaching is a greater

effort than tomen , often fall into it. Itmeans aweakeningof the instrument; we may all drop into itwhen saying a

A caution may be given against supposing that the

co-operation of the thoughts. This may become a snare,

a sermon may go on for ten minutes or for an hour with

I o. I tn rst that nothing here said wi11 0perate as a

ministry is to be laid upon them. The Lord is nigh unto

all that call upon Him. A soul that is striving for purity,one whose spiritual life is notwithout fruit in thought andidea, who has teachings and in terpretations, aspirations,missionary impulses, and a love for souls , and who has

enough literary workmanship and faculty of utterance togive reasonable expresdon to them, is not likely to be leftuncalled. These things constitute the materials of a call ;and the proof is needed to show why a call is absen t .There is nothing arbitrary, esoteric or semi-miraculous

CHAPTER VI I I

THE LORD’S SUPPER

x. Our disuse of Sacraments is due to our distrust of

sign which begins by promising to make more real mdvivid an inward and spiritual grace, ends by obscuring it,by limitirg it to the range of the outward sign , and finallyby asserting that it cann ot be en j oyed without the dueceremonial.We obtain in fact the conception of theval idity ofasacrament.This line of testimony to pure inwardness and to

universal grace was taken by our early Friends in theseven teen th cen tury in spite of the pm age in which itappeared to be ordained by our Lord.

But in our time historical criticismhas come to the aidof their spiritual in tuition , and it will clear the ground forthe positive Quaker position if we first of all plead thatno sacramentwas ever ordainedby our Lordatall .

2 .We have four narratives of the Last Supper ; onecommon to Matthew and Mark, one in Luke, one in John ,

and one in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The narrative in John makes noallusion atall to the BreadandWineinciden t, and need not be further referred to. The other

passages are these :Mark xiv . 22—25 . And as they were eating. he taook bread,

Take ye z this is my body . And he took a cup, and when he had

given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he

said un to them This is my blood of the covenant, which is ahed

formany . Veril y l say unto yoq il l no more drink of the fruit

of the vin e, un til that day when l drink it new in the kingdomof

ca. vn r] THE LORD’S SUPPER ass

The account in l latthew xxvi. 26-ag is for our present

purpose the same as this,and neednot be quoted.

Lube n ii. r7-ao . And he received a cup, and when he had

for l say unto you, l wil l not drink from henceforth of the fn rit

of fi e vin e, un til the ldngdom of God shan come. And he took

bread, and when he had given thanks, he brahe it, and gave to

in remernbrance of me. And the cup in likemanner after supper,saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that

which is poured out for you.

3. Atten tive readers will have noted that there is anaddition here, the passage from which is given for youto the end. This addition is, however. absen t from someancien t manuscripts, viz. from the Codex Bezae and fromsix of themost ancien t Latin version s. Most of the passageis also omitted from the very ancient Curetonian Syriacversion . Copies without it were therefore very widelycirculated in the ancien t world It is abmnt from all the“Western texts, as classified by Westcott and Hort . Itis an awkward addition , too, inasmuch as it brings in thecup twice, and is therefore at once under suspicion ofhaving been put in later from some other source. If so,

there will be no doubt what that source was to any one

who compares these added words with the narrative in1 Cor. xi. 23

—25. Paul writes

For ! received of the l n rd thatwhichalso l delivered un to you,

took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said,

This is my body.which is [brom for you : this do in remembranceojm . I n l ihem m alsom cupmfin sum , saying , This cup is

m m mom in my blood:Wm of m . (Ital icsmine.)Margin RV.

The last part of this passage is clearly the same as theawkwardlymade addition to Luke . Eitherthe Gospel musthave taken it from the Epistle , or the Epistle from the

256

Gospel, or bothfromacommon source. Butas the Epistle

tion of theWJ he Gospel has clearly owed the passage

to the Epistle, or a tradition clowy akin to the Epistle,most likely, of course, to the Epistle itself.

Testamen t are Professors Westcott and Hort . They wereChurchmen . DrHort was the Regius Professor of Divinityat Cambridge. Dr Westcott was the Bishop of Durhamand before that the most influen tial theologian in Cam

keen ly devoted to the Church of England ; yet they sayclearly, on ordinary critical gr

ounds, that“ there is no

moral doubt that the words in question are absen t fromthe original text of Luke.

"

(See their edition of the GreekTestamen t, SelectReadings, p.

That many conservative critics of an earlier day didnot recogn ise this is not strange. To con fess that somuchdoctrine and ritual are not in the Gospel required greatcourage, and must have been an instance of pain fulobedience to the laws of critical hon our.

Now it is this passage and this passage alone which

con tains the command to repeat the ordinance, the famouswords of institution : “Do this in remembrance of me.

”

Neither Matthew nor Mark nor John thought it necessaryto put in any such command. Yet, had they believed thecommand to have been given it ismoral ly certain that theywould have handed it on . This is a case in which the

argument from silence has validity. And now the one

passage in Luke is transferred to Paul , and we are face to

face with the startling fact that the original Gospelscon tain no ordination of the Lord’s Supper.

The same view is taken byWendt, i i . 235, 3r7. Also, I

understand, by Paulus, Briggs, Percy Gardner, Grate, Immer,Julicher,Mensinga, Pfleiderer, Spitta, Titins andWil lichen .

Opposed are Scriven er, Schnl tzen and Hoffman .

253 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE [cn .

this do in remernbrance ofme. In hkemann er also the cupmftersupper, saying. Thil cup is the new covenant in my blood : thisdo, as oft as ye drink it, in rernembrance of me.Wemight call the former of these passages the “

xingdorn ” passage, and the latter the

“ Covenan t ” passage .

pation of theKingdomofGod,wordswhichwere constantlyin themouthof ourLordfithas noEucharisticsiMficance,and there is no suggestion of a permanent rite.

covenan t, and men tion s the blood of Christ . It con tainsthe idea of the bread being mystically iden tified with thebody ; it is in harmon y with the teaching about the new

covenant which runs through the Epistle to the I-Iebrews

and the Epistle to the Galatians, and it is in harmony withthe passages about the blood of Christ which are common

But the con junction of references to the remission of

the Syn optic Gospels or, with significan t exception , the

Acts, except in l fatthew'

s form of this very passq e under

nan t words, which we think were pat in to the Gospel of

Luke out of r Corin thians, were also put in to the other

gospels, and formno part of the apostohc trafi ion or the

inward revelation to the Apostle Paul.Mr Tuker accoun ts for the absence of both narrativesfromthe accoun t of the Last Supper in the Fourth Gospel,on the theory that by the time the Fourth Gospel waswritten the Pauline tradition was established everywhere,but it was no part of the memory of the writer or of his

disciples ; there fore, n ot wishing to open a nd ese con

troversy , or unsettle current practice, he omitted his own

259

The non-Eucharistic character of the description of the

arose either in Egyptor in Jerusalem,places outside Paul'

s

influence in the eariiest time.

In the Sacraments of the Churches the idea of the

Kingdomhas been supersededby the ideaof the Covenant,solemnised by participation in the body and blood ofChrist, in whichman rnakes his covenanted reunion withGod.

‘

l‘

his complete victory of the Pauline narrative is in

part due, no doubt, to the fact that it was established bythe Apostle, not only in Asia Minor but also in Rome,

All this ismerely apartof the developmentof Chr-istianthoughtwhichappears to be due to the fertilemind of theApostle of the Gentiles.We have, in the establishmen t ofthe Lord’

s Supper as a sacramen t and a covenan t. thenatural, even the inevitable, outward expresdon of that

Christ, al ike in His Cru&x ion and in His Resurrection ,

which formed the cen tral thought of the Apostle’

s preach

5. It wfll be well to explaln the ideas connected with

the word“covenant

”in the minds of the early Pauline

disciples. They wouid catch at once the Jewish idea. Let

us try to follow themas theirminds wen t back along theiraccustomed ruts to Exorhrs xx iv . n , where, to ratify the

seven ty of the eiders of l srael had gone up toMou t Sinai,

had beheldGod, and did eat anddn’

nk. That is, tb y had

a sacriflcial meal with G-od to ratify the Covenaut. This

the rather later Jehovistic accoun t of the same inciden t

260 ms svpsasrrwcrvns (ca.

denote the twelve tribes of lmehhadsscrifices ofieredand

divided the blood, hal f of which he put in to basins to be

qrinkledon the peoplemndhalf he sprinkled on the altartoGod. Then he read the Covenant aloud, and the people

To appreciate all this we mquire to know that in the

East the original form of a covenant of brotherhood was

for each party to orien the veins of the other. and taste

of his blood. But in general, in covenan ts, a cm crated

victim more convenien tly took the place of the man

thatm uoses and the Elders of lu‘

ael are recorded

in one account as having ameal in presence of the Lord,

and in the other as saaiflcing anddividing the blood The

Now we can return to the words used at the Supperas understood by Paul . This was theirmeaning .

“Mineis the blood of the new Covenant. By psrtaking of my

God ; partaking ofmy nature you getholdofGod’

s nature

piece of bread and this cupof wine as though it were mybody and blood, to be shed tornorrow.

”

partaking oi the Christ nature .we are thereby broughtinto

close touch with God’s nature, and that Jesus at the

Supper as reported by Paul was speaking oi msel f asthe link between God and man—to a jewish mind the

and its Creator. To us, naturally, this expression Bloodof the Covenent

”does not carr-y more weight than that of

a significan t analogy, based on the customs of primitiveraces. Our tasir is to appropriate its spiritual significance,

SeeW. Robertson Smith, Religion 0 the Sm iles, 31 4f t sen , on the Blood Bond.

I Pp

262 ms SUPERSTRUCTURE (on .

eleven Apostles. In the fifteenth chapter he summariseshis teaching thus : I delivered unto you first of all that

which also I received,”viz. the facts of the Lord

'

s death

Church.We note that he does not say received of theLord,

”and its absence is significan t, for the whole subject

ofhis indirect and late apostleshiphad become a sore poin t

sought to depreciate himon that ground.There remains, then , the al ternative that in some

upon him. He was,wemay presume,aware of the commontradition about the Supper, now preserved in the Synapticnarrative, and of the frequen t recurren ce to that traditionin the minds of the believers when they broke breadtogether,aswas their habit in one another

’

s houses.

7. The tendency to combine a meal and a religiouscelebration was already presen t in Corin th and elsewhere,

Paul preached there‘. The Priests when on duty inJerusalem, away from their homes,hadmeals in common ,

usually on festival s or Sabbaths, and the schools of thePharisees carried out an imitation of this in private life.

The Essenes , the monastic communities who of all the

asceticmeal s as amean s of fellowship. The Greeks alsohadnumerous private religious clubs which habitually metanddined together. The Therapeutae orWorshippers of Egypthada sacredmeal of bread andwater every 50 days’. Theregular orthodox services at the heathen templesincludedal so what is described in the first Corin thian epistle as“sitting at meat in an idol’s temple.

”The Thiasoi or

Trade Guilds had solemn repasts, with homage to a sain t

Stan ley, Christian I n st. pp. 53. 54 .

Con ybeare, pp. a7r-3. v . Personal Rel igion in Egyptibefore

Christian ity byMore Petrie.


after the riot in this very city of Corin thhadcome with thewords, Be notafraid, but speak,andhold not thy peace.

"

In the midst of the storm, the promise of safety had beengiven , when

“ There stood by me this night an angel ofGod whose I am, whom also I serve, saying, Fear not

Paul ; thou must stand before Caesar.

”And lastly, there

was the inefiable vision when he was taken up in to Paradise and heard “

unspeakablewords,which it is not lawfulfor aman to utter.

” There can hardly be any doubt of themeaning of thewords

“l receivedof the l n rd

”in themouth

of a man so spiritual ly con stituted, meditating on the

organisation of an in fan t community. So that the soleauthority for the ordination of this great act of Christianworship appears to be in some form of vision , or directin timation to the Apostle Paul.

9.We have so far treated thematteralmost independen tly of the external influences of curren t religious ideas.But the case is enormously strengthened when we find

that the best of the other religions of Greece andAsiaMinorhad a ritual of their own , similar in character and inmeaning to the Christian sacramen ts. Union with theDivin ity was the mling religious idea of the best of the

citadel of Corin th, there were celebrated every year, and

lived at Corin th, in the greatest temple in all Greece, thesolemn mysteries of Demeter. To take part in themwas

the deepest experience of the old religious world. If

prayersand sacrificeswere the ordinary ritual of theGreeks,and purifications and the like their special services, theMysteries were their sacramen ts.” “ Justin Martyr,

”as

Prof. Percy Gardner says, somewhat naively observes

munion in the Mysteries of Mithras. But one naturally

vm] THE LORD’S SUPPER 265

the new . Later, we will try to follow the late Dr Hatch1

later developmen t of the Communion , and are its truehistoric an teceden ts ; but at this poin t we can on lyreasonably con jecture that the sacred cakes eaten by theinitiated in the ceremonial at Eleusis as ameans of communion with the gods may have suggested to Paul’swakingmind the wisdom ofmaking the habit of breakingbread from house to house in to a religious function and

increasing its solemnity. The con trast is indeed actual lypresen t in the very passage under review, between the

Lord and the table of demons ; the cupof the Lordandthecupof demons acon trast impossibleunless therehadbeenaheathen ritual of table andcup. Paul eagerlyadapted forthe service of Christ the habits of thought which he foun d.

To the Greeks he became as aGreek, that he might gainthe Greeks. He adopted the Unknown God whose altarhefound at Athens as the very Divin ity he came to preach.

The Isthmian games, celebrated outside the gates ofCorin th, suggested the idea of the athletics of the soul,

1 0. TheRev .H . Bulcock,in his little bookTheTranslation of Faith

’, argues forcibly in favour of the view that

the sacramental teaching of Paul, with the accordan talteration in the accoun t of the Lord's Supper, dates fromthe period of his long residence for some three years atEphesus, during which time he came in to in timate friendly

the Asiarchs (Acts xix . 31 ) and other influen tial citizens,and thus became familiar with the best thought connectedwith the religion of Asia Minor. It was from Ephesus andat this time that he wrote the First Epistle to the Corin

3 Hibbert Lectures, x . r888 .

James Clarke and Co. rgr3 .

266 [cm

common meal . The vision of the original supperhowever

sionary j ourney. It may however have been deliveredto them either by ietter or on the short visit referred toin a Cor. xiii. r at some date nearer that of the Epistle.

u . I Cor. x . showsus very clearly how theseMysteriesaflected Paul, both by example and by revulsion . Theywere of several kinds, always associated with religiousaspiration andaiming atecstasy . They seemtohave been ,

as arule, connected with the worship of ancien t Chthonianor Earth divinities, surviving behind the state worship ofZeus and the Olympian gods. There were very numerousMysteries in honour of Cybele, Mother Earth, the sourceof fertility. Others belonged to the gods of the netherworld. There were the Mysteries of Dionysus, the god of

meal of raw flesh, and there were the exciting Phrygian

religiouadrama in the death and resurrection of the belovedAttis.

of our Easter, and FirmicusMater-nus reluctantly con fesses itsresemblance to the Christian celebration ‘.

a common meal at the god’s table or by the devotee beingcovered with the blood of a slain bull, or by ordinancesoi

'

immersion , or by a ceremonial imitation of amarriage.

Tounderstand the qual ity andinten sity of the impressionproduced, we should borrow something from the modern

L . R. Parnel l , author of Cults of the Greek States,”in

occurredattheMysteries is given by EdwardCarpenter-in chap. xv .

of his Pagan and Christian Grads, rgzo.

268 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (on .

belongmostly tothe nextage. The Christians in theirfinal

triumphdestroyed all the books ofMithraism that theycould findzotherwise we should know more about it.Paul revolted fromthe idolatry thathe saw in all these

things the worshipofthe creature rather than the creator,and he regarded the gods themselvss as spirits of evil .

to demons,andnot to God :and l wouldnot thatye shouldhave communion with demons. Ye cannot drink the cupof the Lord, andthe cup of demons : ye cann ot pMake ofthe table of the Lord,and of the table of demons. Or dowe provoke the Lord to jealousy l are we stronger than

he?”

(I Cor. x . 20

But like his fellows, in®ed like the saints of al l ages,Paul must have a communion al so, a purified communionwith his beloved Master.

“The cup of blessing which we

bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ ? Thebread whichwe break, is it not a communion of the bodyof Christ ? seeing that we, who are many, are one bread,one body : for we al l partake of the one bread. BeholdIsrael after the flesh : have not theywhich eat the sacrificescommunion with the al tar? (I Cor. x. 1 6 He evenfel t it necessary to defend himself fromappearing to givean in ferential support to the heathen anal ogues byestablishing the Christian communion (see 1 Cor. x .

The position here taken that there was no rite instituted byour Lord at all , and that the early disciples con tinued a commonmeal from natural and obvious reasons, without any direct

instruction to do so, is now the accepted conclusion among manyGerman cn

‘

tics . A summary of the views of Harnack, Jul icher andSpitta on this point may be i t ~und in The Expositor for July andAugust, 1 898. Differing in many of their ideas and suggestions,theyagree on themain critical position here adopted. DrMcGiflert,in his History of Christian ity in the Apostol ic Age, states that it isnot certain that Jesus in stituted any Supper, and that the earliestChristians regarded every meal as a Lord

’

s Supper (pp. 68,and had n o special communion meal of any kind.

vm] rm: LORD’

S sum s 269

1 3.Wewill now inquire whatwas the kindof functionwhich the Apostle at first established at Corinth, and

probably in his other churches. It is described as one to

m other early comers even to drun lnenness, and in which

gluttony and badmanners of several kinds prevailed ; thelast comers found nothing left, and the poor weremade tofeel asharned of their poverty (x Cor. xi. 20 Itwas a

common meal, a congregational social evening, badly conducted. There was no priest to perform it, indeed, therewas n othing to perform. l ts closest modern analogy is asocial tea, followed by a time of devotion .

14 . Now comes the first stage in its developmen t. InthisFirstEpistle theApostle

'

s instruction is that theymust

were to become purely formal , but the religious part ofthe service was to survive. Greater solemnity was to begiven totheAgape.

"For as often as ye eat this bread,and

drink the cup, ye proclaimthe Lord’

s deatb till he come.Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cupof the Lord unworthily, shall be guil ty of the body andthe blood of the Lord. But let aman prove himself, andso let himeat of the bread,and drink of the cup. For he

that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgmentun to himself, ifhe discern not the body

”

(I Cor. xi. 26

The exact meaning of these words is not clear to me,but it is plain en ough that it was to be a celebration of aprofoundly sacramen tal character, and those who took itfrivolously were not " discerning the body.

"

This change occurred as debauchery or excessivefestivity became scan dal ous here or there, un til what was

need was felt, however, the regular meal was retained asthe Lord

’

s Supper.

“This was still the case in Syria andAsia Min or when the Teaching of the Apostles and -the

Epistles of Ignatius were written , and in Bithynia in the

m w e svpansrnucruns (ca.

time of Pliny, but in Rome when JustinMartyrwrote hisApology the l n rd

’

s Supper was attached to the regular

disappearedGradually, everywhere, the common meal was prohibited.The excesses to which its too festive cbaracter gave rise,aided the victory of Sacramentalism. So that it ceased to

be the feeling thatevery meal was the occasion ior feedingupon Christ and pMcipating in l-iis liie, as it had beenin the earl iest days when they broke bread. Ordinarymeal s were distinguished from the Lord’s Supper. Thefirst enthusiasmhad faad; eating and drinking becametoo frequen tly very un consecrated acts.So was drawn once more that disastrous line between

things sacred and things secular whichit is to-day the task

of saints towipe out. It is significant that this distinction

was begun by an abuse, and den otes amoral standard notthe highest.

1 5. Though it is not our concern to trace carefully

great engine ofthepriesthoodreachedthe developmen twith

the process was aided at every point by the example of

the Greek Mysteries. Whether they suggested to Paul thefounding of the common meal at Corin th, can be only

The ceremony at Eleusis and elsewhere was one for

initiates on ly. Similarly the Sacramen t became one for

fullmembers of the Church only, those who nadundergoneBaptism and the long preparation for it. In early days

in the darkness of night outside the great temple where

What follows is fromDr Hatch’

s Hibbert Lectures, x .

273 ms supansrnucruns (ca.

Constitutions we flnd that the Sscrament was pr-ewdedby aproclamation—

"ls there any one who has a quarrel

with any ? la there any one with bad feeling ?” This

practice may, however, have come, with or without the

example of the hfysteriea fromthe famous words of jesus :“l f therefore thouartd ering thygiitatthealtarmndthere

rememberest that thybrotherhathaught against thee,leavethere thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, tirst bereconciledtothy biothermndthen comeandoflerthy gift.

”

In the same book of the “Apostolic Constitutions”we

find that the unbapt and peniten ts wen t out, as theuninitiateddid,before theMysteries began .

The Communion table became an altar in the latter

half of the secondcentury,amost significantchange whoseechoes sre withus still .

Later, we find the elements themselves known as

Mysteries, and the priestly attendants spoken of as

“mystery leaders,”Mam et, the technical term at

Eleusis. The thing was cowdered a sort of ChristianMystery by everybody, andmodelled accordingly.

1 7. Bets is adescription of the Christian Commun ionby Dionysius AreOpagiticus at the end of the fifth cen tury,

P 303)

consummation and crown of all the rest is the participation of himwho is initiated in the thearchicmysteries. For thongh it be the

common characteristic of all the hierarchic acts to rnalre the

initiated partahers of the divine light, yet this alme imparted tome tha vision tk ough whose mystic light, as itwere, l amguidedto the con ternplation of the other sacred things. (The ritual is then

upcu thealtar.) Then the sacred hierarchinitiates the sacredprayerand an nounces to all the hol y peace, and after al l have saluted

each other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists is completed. The

hierarchand the priests washtheirhands in water ; he stands in the

midst of the divine altar, and around him stand the priests and

vm] ms man 's supprza 373

ths chossn rninlsm ‘

l'

he hisn reb dngs tbe pn isa oi ths divine

ot the symbols whlchm n crsdly sst iorth, hs bdnfl into open

vldon the thinp oi whichhe h gs the pn hes. And whsn he has

shown the gifts oi the divhs worhit e hhnssl f comes lnto a

sacred communion with them, and then invms ths m t. And

having both partahsn and given to the othm a shm in the

thm chic commun ion , he snds with a u cred thmh givtu . and

always by ths thearchic sptrit, is led in apriestlymanner, in purltyof his godlihe frame oi mind, thm gh blessed and spiritual con o

Such a description would almost do ior Eleusis, withbreadandwine added. Itwill beplain thatwehavemoved

bread fromhouse tohouse. In theCopticChurchin Egypt,

gathering, in which friends move about and talk to one

another in familiar intercourse,andthatchildren are freelyadmitted; a solitary survival in a land where fromage to

age but little change bas come‘.1 8. It is one of the irodes of history that the Apostle

Paul , so much of whose strength was spent in liberating

another ceremonial whichwas to be, for good or evil , the

mightiest ritual in the history of religion . He could see

quite plain ly the idolatrous elemen ts in the rival faithswhich he rejected. It was not given him to see how evenChristianity itsel f would become paganised when it cameto have a world-wide vogue, and that humanity, whichloves an idol and a priest, would elevate the host in to theone and theministering brother into the other.

To the Quakermind, which it is my task to describe,the fact that theApostle Paul was led tohisdoctrine of theunion of the believer with Christ, alike in His Crucifixion

See, inter d id, Stanley's Christian I nstitutions, 53


to the flesh and in His Resurrection to an immortal life,hy the exampleand permeating influence of neighbouring

universal Fatherhas no orphans in any age or race. Whenthebestreligionsof themostadvancedcountriesof the timetaught the believer

'

s union with his God, itgives an addedassurance that the Apostle, in making that the cen tralexperience in Christianity,may be themore safely followed.But when it comes to Christianising pagan ceremonial

which was calculated

Tomake wealmess weakAndmelt the waxen hearts of men .

The very fact that idolatrous ceremonial is a part of allancien t religions shows its value in the childhood of therace. That it degenerated in tomagic and served the endsof priestcraft shows that its usefulness was a temporarything, and that indulgence in it carried an in tellectual andmoral blight. It is a calamity to Christianity that themagic eflicacy of the instrumen ts of the Mysteries shouldhave been extended to the Christian Communion , for toassert that only by aid of a priest in the apostolicalsuccession standing in a consecrated place can a certainspecially full access to the Divine be experienced, is puremagic. Validity " is a word from the vocabulary of themedicine man . Our Lord’

5 reply to itwould be “Behold,I sfand at the door and knock : if any man hearmy voiceand open the door, I will come in to him,andwill supwithhim, and be with me.

”

The Christian Eucharist has, therefore, the sameancestor as the corn baby at the old-fashioned harvesthome. Both alike are derived fromthe primitive worshipsconnected with craps and fertility andthe return of Spring,

276 rm: SUPERSTRUCTURE [ca

vision , remodelled by hirn in his Epistle under the stressof abuses fmther shaped on the lines of theMysteries,and finally become the dearest friend and deadliest foe inChristian conflict ; having, therefore, no more authorityoverus than the command to abstain fromthings strangledand from blood, to anoin t the sick with oil , to kiss all

members of the church, or to wash one an other'

s feet, wehave still one argumen t of adifierent kind tomeet. This :that as itwas human weaknesswhich originated at Corin ththe special service apart froma solid meal, so always theneeds of a not too strong human nature have been and are

tion , because it supplies a real need, and would not havecome in to existence if ithad not been useful, according tosome standard of utility. Destitute as we have shown itto be of the sanction of our Lord’s command, it can bedefended on the ground that itmeets the tastes and needsofmen , that it does people good.

That defence we Friends meet with the thought thatbeautiful and helpful as special days are, they are apt to

one '

s efiort and spiritual energy , and leave agreater desert

spiritual stimulant, and we believe that on the whole it isbetter to do without stimulan ts. This is the ground of theQuaker preference for an everyday life of communion , a

Our general idea is well put inWhittier’s poem, TheMystic’s Christmas, concludingBut judge not himwho every mornFeels in his heart the l n rd Christ born lWe Friends have done without thismeans of grace for

over two cen turies and a hal f, and I know of nothing toshow that our spiritual privileges have been less than thoseof our fellow citizen s. The Divine Presencehas been and is

vrrr] ms LORD'S SUPPER 77

died unshriven in our communion and still do so.Weappeal toexperience. Ourcase is easrer in thatrespect than

that of our early Friends. They had the hardihood to

abolish venerable ceremonies with no experience behindthem, and not kn owing that the judgmen t of biblical

these two poin ts our testimony has been strengthened bytime, and by the growth of kn owledge, and the testimonyitself is not less, but rather more necessary now than

to stand aside, and we believe that the only safe ground

theory is to be found in the Christianity of Christ.

be a nearer analogy to liken it to the other great prirnaryemotion , that of sex which has its spiritual and itsphysical side. These passions are variable and occasional ;but hunger and thirst obey a very brief rhythm. They

momen ts is on ly occasional ; it could not be borne as a

constan t experience by the physical tabernacle nor by themen tal. Its rhythm is a long one. So also are the greatmomen ts of the saint . No soul could endure the Presenceof God in vivid consciousness ex

cept at epochs. Ecstasyis an unspeakable, a rather rare, experience. No road goesovermoun tain taps all the time. Doubtless, as there is the

as distinct from the great red letter days, so there is thequiet consciousness of walking in the light day by day,

sensations of the Divine Presence we must wait for thereturn of the rhythm.

But people have not always been conten t with this,

278 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (03 .

in any of their appetites or passions. They have tempted

artificial drinks. They have played with sex . And they

elevated emotion ; as it seems to the subject at the time.

Akin to all these is the religious stimulan t, the opiumand

the alcohol of the soul ’s desire. Such were the Mysteries,such are the Sacramen ts. It is better to wait for therhythm. Our souls grow strong in patience. In no regionof our faculties is artificial sensation , unnaturally stimulated, good for us as ahabit. Excess is down an easy path,

andis responsible formost of the chronic ills ofman .

The comparison of the religious stimulus in the Eucharist to the physical stimulus of poten t drugs may not

unreasonably appear exaggerated. It might be pleadedthat the mild and comparatively harmless cup of coffeewas a truer parallel than an in toxican t . I agree that inpractice this is the case,andthe plea fair. Every stimulan t

It is only in theory, or in rare instances, that the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ rises to ecstasy.

But these experiences are them arden tly desired, and forthem the more poten t drug is a fit analogy. The Quaker,however, is an ascetic in religion and prefers to do withouteven the cup of cofiee in this connection .

2 1 . The chief theological problem of the inner lifeamong thoughtfulmen to-day is how to possess a thoughtof God not unworthy of His myriad universe, grown so

vast to us in space and time, and yet a thought not toovague and vast to appeal to heart and conscience ; howto unite, in fact, the two conceptions con tained in the twowords “Omnipresen t Father.

”But what can more surely

and fatal ly localise, provincialise, nay, materialise Godthan the “miracle ” of the mass? What more absolutely

satisfy us, than an y sacramental theory of His special or

CHAPTER I !

BAPTISM

1 .With regard to the ordinance of baptism, there is

very little in con troversy,and notmuch to be said beyond

equally to all ritual .Ceremonial washing is as old a habit as ceremonial

bathed the whole body in a running stream, which the

before eachmeal. It was the work of John the Baptist tolink together the ceremonial notion of clean and unclean ,

repentance or cleansing in the heartwhichwas ; and itwas

most natural that the Christian s should use for their rite

revival on which the teaching of Jesus supervened. Christian baptism added a conception of endowmen t of theSpirit to the conception of repen tance which John hadadded to that of ceremonial uncleanness. It is perfectlyplain that throughout Christian history, from the veryearliest days. converts were baptised on en tering the

Church. After Peter's speech in the Book of Acts, three

the same at Samaria and with the eunuch . Saul wasbaptised at Damascus, and Cornelius and his friends byPeter. Lydiawas baptised at Philippi,and the Philippianjailor also ; and there even appears to have been at Corin tha custom of being baptised for the dead.

cu. xx] BAPTISM 281

2. It is curious, however, that our Lord Himself didnot baptise anybody, though He permitted it, and thatPaul , after baptising the first few converts whomhemadeat Corin th, ceased the practice himself, saying that it wasnot in his line of duty.We can on ly guess at the spiritualfact behind these strange exceptions. Can it be that theApostle Paul—and to a still greater degree his Masterhad little personal sympathy with solemnities of thisformal kind, and took but little in terest in them, whilst

mended by their followers and permitted by them in a

spirit of toleration ? One cannot but feel that if Jesus had

difierent fromwhat was usual withHim. It was hardly forHim—the reformer of all forms—to begin or to emphasisea new formof His own . During His lifetime the baptisingwhich was done by His disciples was not connected withinitiation in to a Christian Church which did not yet exist ;it was, doubtless, analogous to the baptismof John ,which

3. It is al so significan t that modern inquiry hasrelieved us of the command which used to stand inMatthew xxviii. 19,

“ Go ye therefore, and make disciplesof all the nations, baptising them into the name ofthe Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghostteaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.

” This is, of course, one of the two passageswhich used to stand in the Bible as supports to thedoctrine of the Trinity. The other text about “ the threewitnesses " in I John v. 7 and 8, vanished, bygeneral consen t, about themiddle of the nineteen th cen tury and doesnot occur in the Revised Version or even in itsmargin . Itrs a

' Trinitarian in terpolation in serted at the time of thegrowth of the Trinitarian doctrine . This text therefore isnaturally suspect on the same ground. Dr Gardner te

cognised that it was “ little in the manner of Jesus.

"


Dr Martineau says that the passage betrays itsel f byspeaking in the Trinitarian language of the next cen tury.

"

Harnack pron ounces the text as “no word of the Lord.

thinks that we have not here got the accurate words of

Christ, but that of the Church and the Evangelist’

s own

But the real destruction of the text was the work of

of Eusebius to seehow the text stood in Greekmanuscriptsduringhis time, from300 to 340 A.D. Eusebius was bishopof Caesarea, and he lived a long and learned life in the

greatest Christian library of that age,collected atCaesareaby Origen and Pamphilus. Most of the manuscripts ofearlier days which now survive come from that collection .

Conybeare says that in his library Eusebius must have

hundred years than the earliest of the great uncials that

we have now in our libraries. He was also familiar withthe commen taries of Origen and Clement of Alexandriaand others, andhe spen t his life in study.

By readinghis voluminous works, Conybearehas foundeighteen citations of this passage,and fromall of thembothbaptismandtheTrinityare absent . Thewords in Eusebiusare

“Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in myName, teaching them to observe al l things whatsoever Ihave commanded.

" This eviden tly was the form in whichthe treasures in the great library of Caesarea had thepassage. But before he died orthodoxy laid hold uponEusebius. He visited Constan tin ople and attended theCouncil of Nicaea in AJ ) . 325 in his old age, and there he

learn t the new and more orthodox reading, and incor

porated it in two of his latest con troversial works and'

m

eyes ; the method by which the Bible has been made tosupport the doctrines of the Church ; what we should call

384 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE (cu.

forgotten by most of ua who accept the interpolated tsxt

text in the latterhalf of the fom'thcentury.when acertainMacedonius and his followers were called “pneumatomachi.

”or fighters against the Holy Spirit, because they

refused the‘

l‘

rinitarian formula and deuied that the New

Son and Holy Ghost. This was, of course, soon after the

conversion of Eusebius to the Catholic text.We have noGreek codex older than the yearm ami f asold and from

and shown that they had been doctored by the dominant

party,viz. the SinaiSyriacandtheoldestLatinmanuscript,the psges are un fortunately gone which con tain the

are no words of Christ ordering the rite of baptism.

4.We ought, in saying this, doubtless, toconsider theNicodemus in the third chapter of John , where it says"Except aman be born of water and the Spirit, he can~

not en ter in to the kingdomof God.” The word “water"

portan t pasmge the rekrence is to the Spirit on ly. Thatwhich is born of the Spirit is spiri .

”Withthe tendencyto interpolation in the in terests of curren t orthodoxy.whichwe have occasionally been able todetect,we cannot

lay stress upon the verbal accuracy of this conversation .

The Fourth Gospel is,in any case,alate, though a valuableproduction ; and if we take the conservative view that itwas edited about the year 1 00 A.D. frommemoranda ofreminiscences furnishedby the agedApostle Johu.wehave

not only no certainty of the verbal accuracy of conversations, but a practical certain ty that no long conversations could be verbally accurate. The historians of thosedays habitually dramatised their characters in speecheswritten under the influence of a historical imagination

ml 385

long afterwards. So that l conciude that the practice

produced the textmot the text the practice.

5. This ceremonymay take rankwith the other sacrament in having introduced enormmu evils in its train .

Once set'

up an artificial difierence between those who

have, and thou who have not, been subjected to an out

ward rite, which can carry with it no spiritual value, and

you have nride and fear walldng in mutual suspicionunder the cloudy darkness of superstition to bloodshed

and toatheism. The doetrine of“baptismal regeneration

”

is a piece of magic and nothing elsmit is one amongstthe tickets taken to heaven at the booking afi ces ofmedicine men in savage tribes all the world over. Solong as itremains enmeshedabout the feet of Christianity.the Quaker testimony will still be needed.

6. The Baptists began , not with the assertion that

in fan t baptism, with the ac. panying doctrine of baptismal regeneration , was an ab u se and a superstition . Totestify against it they established the conspicuous rite ofadult baptism as a ceremony of entering the Church on

New Testamen t hnea not somuch for its own sake as a

protest against its corruption . It is not unin teresting to

has been the more efiectual . To the majority of peopleBaptists existto show the value and importance of adultbaptism, and their testimony appears to me to have beensomewhat obscured by their too obedien t imitation of theexact practice of the early Church. If, on the other hand,we have been able to show through two cen turies and a

half sain tly lives lived by the unbaptised, we have, I think,been able to hold the bannerfair. This,itmaybe remarb d,

Baptist friends, who began , like Quakers,with an en tirely

the sexes in meeting. It was the lack of intellectual ability

THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [cmlx .

which led

to hsve been the


These extreme children of the spirit that bloweth whereit listeth would have no fixed times and places ofmeeting,nogovernmen t of the Society,and curiously enough, aboveall things, nowomen

’

sbusinessmeetings. Butthe practicalquality ofmysticismprevailed,and George Fox, supportedheartily by all his leading followers, Isaac Penington ,

William Penn , Robert Barclay and Thomas Ellwood,established from 1 672 onwards a scheme of businessmeetings, which has stood in its general outline to thepresen t day. This durability and practical effectiveness isa sufi cien t reply to those who believe that either creedsor pastors are necessary to good order, and shows that theman who derives his strength from secret in tercourse withthe Unseen is the man who comes forth to face the detailsof life with the best equipment . He is willing to build allthings according to the pattern shown to him in the

moun t.

3. The Mon thly Meeting is the unit which exercises

executive and disciplinary functions. It generally includesa few neighbouring congregation s and a few hundredmembers. In most cases it stillmeets once amon th and ispreceded by ameeting forWorship. It is held on a weekday in themorn ing, afternocmor evening,asmay be foundlocal ly convenien t . It concern s itself with the receptionof new members, the dropping by disassociation of oldones who have ceased to attend Meeting, and the

occasional disownmen t of members for gravemisconduct .Its more ordinary function s are, however, those ofmanaging endowmen ts, raising subscription s, disseminatingdocuments sen t from headquarters, and sending up toheadquarters Minutes represen ting “

concerns " of localFriends. Its duties as the general local executive are

manifold, its committees numerous. and its meetingsgenerally last from one to three hours, and are open tothe wholemembership. The Mon thly Meeting arranges foradvising Friends annually on the subject of keeping

x ] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 289

revision of their wills. It appoin ts committees to arrangefor the gran ts in aid of the education of the children of poorFriends. It receives and transmits certificates of removal.

on the list of members in their new abodes. All sorts of

propagandaandaggressiveworkmay come before it.Each settled congregation has a Preparative Meeting,

whose function s are strictly local and subordinate, andare confined to sending up local matters to the MonthlyMeeting, to which itappoin ts represen tatives. PreparativeMeetings generally deal with the repairs,main tenance, anderection of Meeting Houses. Sometimes they have localfunds to administer and local collections to make. Theyhave no disciplinary power. They are briefmeetings heldat the close of a Meeting for Worship on the Sundaymornin g prior to the Mon thly Meeting.

4. Some half dozen Mon thly Meetings are groupedin to a Quarterly Meeting, which originally occupied inmost cases a coun ty area, but in the years of the declineof the Society neighbouring coun ties were joined .

These gatherings are large and interesting occasions,

They are more hortatory and less administrative than theMon thly Meeting . They last for a whole day or for two

days,include at leastoneMeetingforWorshipandveryoftenconferences at which prepared addresses are given on the

Ministry, on pastoral work, on Home and Foreign Mission s,on Social Reform, Temperance,War or other subjects.

These Meetings often apply themselves with practical

5. One importan t feature of the Society's scheme are

rst. What is the religious state of your Meeting? Are

you individually giving evidence of true conversion ofheart, and loving devotedness to Christ ?

0 . g .


and. Are your Meetings for Worship regularly held?andhow are they attended? Are they occasions of religious

solemnity and edification , in which, through Christ,our ever-living High Priest and In tercessor, the Father is

3rd. Do you wal k in love, as ChIist also hath loved

us”? Do you cherish a forgiving spirit ? Are you careful

of the reputation of others? and do you avoid and discourage tale-bearinganddetraction ?

4th. Are you individually frequen t in reading, anddiligen t In meditating upon,the Holy Scriptures? And areparen ts and heads of households

'

In the practice of readingthem In their families In a devotional spiri. , encouraging

waiting upon the Lord, in everything by prayer and

supplication , with thanksgiving, making your requestskn own un toHim? Anddo you live in habitual dependenceupon the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit ?6th. Do youmain tain areligious life andconversation

formity to the world, against the love of ease and self

concerns to the hindrance of your religious progress and

or others under their care endeavour, by example and

precept, to train them upas self-denying followers of the

7th. Do you main tain a faithful allegian ce to theauthority of our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Head of the

al one must come the true call and qualification for themin istry of the world? And are you faithful in yourtestimony to the freeness and spirituality of the Gospeldispensation ?8th. Are you faithful in main taining our Christian

393 rm: SUPERSTRUCTURE (ca.

Meeting,where the case is heard judicially. The individualor the Mon thly Meeting against whom the QuarterlyMeeting decides has a further right of appeal to the YearlyMeeting, the body next to be described, which treats it

appeals are extremely rare. In my lifetime l have only hadto deal with one in a Quarterly Meeting, and there have

about half a century. The only irnportant appeals therehave ever been have dealt with charges of heresy in theperiod of evangelical influence.

7. The YearlyMeeting gathers in London towards theend ofMay in each yearand sits for nine days. As arule it

It receives from Mon thly, through Quarterly, Meetings,minutes and suggestions for public action , or for changesin the Society's mles, and whilst it is not obligatory it isin practice usual for even small alterations in procedureto come up, not on themotion of individuals, but throughaQuarterlyMeeting. It used to spendadayon theconsideration of the state of the Society, in which any

“concern ,

”

the otherhand,thewholeMeetingmightconcen trateon somevital need or discovered weakness among us. This practicehas recen tly been modified, and the subjects more definitelyapportioned byaProgramme Committee . TheYearlyMeeting main tains correspondence with Yearly Meetingsin America. It receives reports from the Foreign MissionAssociation , the Mission and Ex tension Committee, theFriends’ Temperance Union , the Tract Association , the

Friends ’ First-Day School Association . It has under itsdirect con trol the two importan t schools at Ackworth andat Leighton Park, Reading, and it devotes always one fullsitting to education . The other schools are owned and

managed by Quarterly Meetings. The Yearly Meeting

x ] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 3

in Norway, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand. Muchtime is also spen t devotionally. One morning is devoted,when the pressure of business permits, to Meetings forWorship. held in a number of diflerent rooms, and eachbusiness sitting is opened by a short devotional period.Very frequen tly a Special religious meeting for YoungFriends is held. Early devotional Meetings are held each

condition and activity have been sen t upby the Quarterly

third of the coun try each year. This plan has now beengiven up. Peace andsocial questions and kindred pol itical

8. The Yearly Meeting’s Epistle is one of the featuresof the Society's life. It is read twice in the year in every

Meetings ; it endeavours to embody, and notably succeedsin doing so in moving and dignified words, what may becal led themain concern of the Yearly Meeting, themessages

It is a pastoral epistle expressing, in a documen t whichhas to pass the scrutiny of committeesandsub-committees,some of the main exercises of the Yearly Meeting. It iscirculated all over the world. It is necessarily, in its firstdraft, the work of one writer. Care is taken that thiswriter shall not be the same fromyear to year. Actuallyit is of very composite authorship.

9. The Yearly Meeting, like the Mon thlyandQuarterlyMeetings, is open to the attendance of all members, menand women ; and all have an equal right of speech. Thissimple democracy could only obtain with a body of smallsize. If we were five or ten times our presen t number, some

women meet together the compan y may reach twelvehundred, of whom two-thirds are women . A few sittings


Friends have the time and money to spare to corne to

London for ten days. With certain small exceptions

the plan is real ly asdemocraticasdelegation withexpensespaid would be. But in fact there are no questions ofaristocracy and democracy among us : n one which aflectthe richman diflerently from the poor man , and we are

wel l con ten t as we are.

to. The Yearly Meetinghasan executive kn own as theMeeting for Suflerings, which meets mon thly in Londonand consists of represen tatives sen t up by the QuarterlyMeetings. Recorded ministers have al so a right of memhership in this body,which generallyhas an attendance ofover a hun dred Friends. I ts quain t name is derived fromthe fact that its earliest function s were the relief of thefamilies of irnprisoned Friends, eflorts for their liberationand their restoration to health and home on their release.

“Suflerings

”did not cease with the Toleration Act of

1 689. There were still distrain ts for tithe and Churchrates. The Meeting is still for the relief of suffering, butsuflering in a wider circle. Con stan t attendance at thatMeeting brings home to one how persisten t is the pain fulcry ofmankind. TheMeeting organ iseswar victims

’ funds,relief to Armenian s, to starving Russian peasan ts, and tomen anywhere over whom the trail of min has passed .

During thewaragreatmany youngFriendshave oncemore

objectors and' their in terests have formed a ceaseless

established. The Friends’ Service Committee, and the

Quaker Chaplain s ” Committee, have been at work all

the three dismal years, 191 6-1919.

Either the Meeting for Sufierings or the Yearly Meetingitself has the function of liberating Friends oflicially forforeign service eitheramong Friends’ Meetings in America,

formerly calledMeefings ofMinkters and Eldermof late

merged in theMonthly, Quarterly and YearlyMeetings.Their titles sufiiciently show their duties, but their selectness has constituted a really insoluble problem. The

in timacy of a Meeting consisting of a small number oflike-minded Friends, the pillars of the Churchand active

in its service, led to a frankness of expression impossiblein a large OpenMeeting, but no attempt to draw the linebetween those who were and those who were not fit forany such select Meeting has ever been successful. The

The following Queries and Duties are now generally readand considered in Open Meeting and describe plain ly thefunctions of these former Meetings.

I st. The religious condition of the particular congre

gations within their limits, and whether the Meetings forWorship are held to edification and to the shour of

and. The counsel, encouragemen t, and help of thoseengaged in the work of the ministry, especially of theyounger andmore inexperienced.

3rd. The making of arrangemen ts for attending, t omtime to time, the Particular Meetings within the limits

or noministry is exercised.

4th. The visiting of the infirm, the sick, and the

amicted.

sth. The religious care of the children andyoung peoplewho attend our meetings, and the promotion Of theirreligious and scriptural in struction .

x l ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 397

6th. The propagation of the Gospel in the district, as

rst. Are you engaged to watch un to prayer, that youmay yourselves be preserved in humble dependence upon

of sinners,and for the edifying of the body in the faithand

hOpe of the Gospel ?and. Do you occupy the spiritual gifts en trusted to

you, faithfully, and to the hon our of God ?

3rd. Do you overcharge yourselves with trade or

other Outward engagements, to the hindrance of your

4th. Are you careful to rule your own houses well?And do you endeavour, by example and precept, to trainup your families in a religious life and conversation con

I 3. Men tion has already been made of Ministers,Elders and Overseers. It is well kn own that the ministryamong Frien ds Is not an office, and that it is Open to al lpresent In aMeeting to take vocal part with equal freedom.

The practice of “recording" ministers has, however,

recorded itself, but from a date soon after the Societyquietly settled down in peace. The theory was that whena Friend had spoken frequen tly and acceptably for a fewyears in our Meetings, he or she should be

“recorded ” for

encouragemen t, and for such status as sitting facing theMeeting provided. In former days al so itwas only Friendswho had been so recorded who could be liberated for

for service within its own Quarterly Meeting and the

The same psychological difliculty which has made select

298 ICH

theMeetings onMinistry and Oversight has operated torender the recording of ministers also very irregular. Itmay be said to be a decaden t institution , although a

special con ference on the subject,heldatYork some yearsago, decided to con tinue the practice ofi cially . It is,

executed in otbers, so that at the premntmoment the listof recorded ministers gives no idea whatever of the

numbers of frequen t speakers anywhere. This irreguhrsituation cannot be said to be just or satisfactory. The

practice of recording is not very harmonious with the

Quaker idea and is sometimes the reverse of beneficialto the Friend recorded. It has been con tinued for itssupposed practical value. Now, however, that ministerialconcerns can be and are ratified by Meetings whether theFriend isrecorded or not, there seems little that is practicalleft in favour of such recognition . The recorded ministershave never,however,approached aclerical order nor shownany sign of developmen t in that direction .

1 4. Eldersare the Friendswhoare appoin ted to adviseand encourage rrrinisters and to check undesirable utter

holding of Meetings for Worship. One of them now

usually sits at the head and breaks upMeeting by shakinghands with his neighbour. Their work is done privately,is often of a delicate personal character,and requiresmuchtact and sympathy. Elders are by no means alwayselderly people. In practice they are more quiescen t than

to the expresfion ofministry or prayer by anyone presen t,whether amember or a stranger, such an Office as that ofElder is essen tial .

I 5. The Overseers are concerned with the conduct andwell-being of the membership. They advise in times ofbusiness difficul ty, they deal with misconduct , with thearrangemen ts for seating in the Meeting Houses,with the

goo [ems

ln the earlier part of thh cbapter. The latest edltlon wasMin ion .

Outdde thls ofilclal organisatlon there eaist a whole

underaseparateBoarduntfl ayearor twoago,whenMfor the studv of religious and economic problem have

the first Summer School held at Scarborough ln 1 897.“Young Frlends

”have a little organiaation of their own .

the country ismanaged by theWoodbroohe Council . It

may be safely believed that every known department ofphilanthropic eflort has a branch working within the

Society but without direct ofi cial connection with the

durable. But for the last two generations it has been

and formalism for a long period, and the oversight of thedetaHs Of pef s

-mal drers anddomesdchabitswascu iiedtoan in tolerable degree‘.

Address, Journal Friends'Hid . Son , July , r9r4 , andW. C.

304 THE OUTLOOK [cm

come with unclouded appeal Pure religious service andundefiled. . .is this, to visit the fatherlessandwidows in theiramiction , and to keep himszlf unspotted from the world.

"

and social service in the widest sense is the prime religiousduty ofman in the outward. And this has turned out tobe the case. Whilst we have been denominationally afailure, measured by statistics of membership, the worldwhich has passed us by as a church has decided that we

need not be ashamed.

'

Let us rid ourselves wholly of the idea that mysticismis a faith for the recluse in the desert or the monk in hiscell. Mysticism is the well-spring of philan thropy : itgives the word of command for the service Of man . It isnot by chance, but it is artistically fitting, that WilliamPenn was put in to Newgate for writing amystical book,TireSandy Foundation Shaken , andwhilst he was there for

Crown , which is the central writing of the early Friends

2 . It is in harmony with all this that we find primitive Christianity revived ” among Friends in the matterof simrrlicity of life andthe right use of weal th. Hamack,

in his book 2he Expansion of Christian ity in the First

Three Centuries, has shown in numerous illustration s thatthe

'

early Christian commun ities were relief agencies, anddevoted themselves in a remarkable degree to works ofcharity. For instance, he quotes the testimony of thepagan Lucian who says

Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all

brethren on e of become incredibly alert when

an ything of this kind occurs, that afiects their common interest .

On such occaaions no expense is grudged.

And Tertullian Observes : " It is our care for the helpless,our practice of loving kin dness that bran ds us in the eyes

I] SOCIAL SERVICE 305

of many Of our opponen ts. Harnack gives an otherin teresting ex tract fromTertullian

’

s Apology .

Even if there does esrista sort of common fund, itis notmade upoffees, as though we contracted for our worship. Each of us puts ina small amoun t one day amonth, or when ever he pleases buton lyif he pleases and if he is able, for there is no compulsion in thematter, everyon e con tributing Of his own free w ill . These moniesare, as it were , the deposits of piety. They are expended upon no

banquets ordrinking-bouts or useless eating-houses, buton feedingand buryin g poor people, on behal f of boys and girls who haven either paren ts normoney, in support of Old folk unable now to goabout, as wel l as for people who are shipwrecked, or who may be

in the min es or ex iled in islands or in prison—ao long as their

distress is for the sake of God’

s fel lowship, and they themselvesen titled to maintenance by their con fession .

Themain tenance of the widows and orphans who wereleft after the storm Of persecution , was the begin ning Of

a widespread system Of relief Of the poor. The ApostlePaul set an early example i t the fund which he raisedfor the poor Christian s in Je. ,alem fromamong the moreprosperous Gen tile Churches which he founded. Alongwith this there was widely felt through the early Churcha horror of luxury and outward pomp, and a lean ing towhat we should call a Quak erly simplicity of life.

3. It was, therefore, quite in harmony with the strongspirit Of Christ which was within him, that George Foxthe founder Of Quakerismearly took sharp notice of socialabuses . He exhorted the American colonists among whomhe travelled to deal with the In dians as children of acommon Father, be appeal ed to Parliamen t again st thepenal lawswhich putaman to death forcattle ormoneyand pleaded with the House for an effective Poor Law toprovide for "

the poor people, the blind, the lame and thecrippled, in this nation .

”

You that are called Christians, he said mindChrist's doctrines .Wan t often brings themto steal . They that are richshould preven to.9. so

306 rue OUTLOOK (on .

temptation , or take the. in to some employmen t. This shows thenobility of Christ’s love .

"

This trait was his fromthe very beginning. In his yearsof doubt and darkness, while abstaining from weddingfestivities, he would visit the newly founded home and

give money where needed. At Underbarrow, at the verycrisis Of the fate Of hismission , when making alliance withthe Seekers, his Puritan friends refused aid to somebeggars ; but he ran after them a quarter Of amile,

“ likethe wind, and gave themmoney.

George Fox never attempted any socialistic alterationin the frame-work Of society, but he was closely akin insympathy to Gerrard Win stan ley, the leader of theDiggers, whom the Council Of State in 1 649found troublesome when they established their community of cultivatorsat S. George

’

s Hill in Surrey. The Inward Light wasWin stan ley '

s doctrin e as it was Fox ’

s, and it was usualthroughout the seven teenth cen tury to taun t the Quakerswith being no better than Levellers. Coomber, Dean ofDurham, wrote Of these latter in 1 678: And what thisman writes oi— levelling men ’

s estates, of taking in ofCommons, that none should havemore groun d than he wasable to till and husband by his labour— proving un

practicable by reason Of so many tough Old laws whichhave fixed property ; yet it is pursued by the Quakers asmuch as they well can , in thouing everybody, in denyingTitles, Civil Respects, and terms Of distinction amongmen ,

and at first they were for Community.

” There is no

Quaker evidence surviving, that I know of, for this laststatemen t, which may be regarded as untrue’ .

But Friends were constructive too, in their safe and

1 Passages collected by Joshua Rown tree in his SwarthmoreLecture of r91 3, Social Service, its P lace in the Society of Friends,amost valuable recen t work.

weal th, by Lewis H . Berens . SimpkinMarshall , 1906, p. 49.

308 rue OUTLOOK (on .

aclearandbeautiful life. Therearemanymodern andeasilyaccessible editions. The economist of to-day does nomorethan support, by organised facts andargumen ts, the beliefin the evils and losses of luxurywhich John Woolman saw .

5. There is no doubt that Friends have a tradition oflarge charity and personal simplicity ; it is proverbial andneed not he insisted upon . Rather is it useful to inquirewhat were the causes of their surplus wealth,which is also

Being excluded from the un iversities, and being ineligible for the Army and the Navy and the Church,having little Opportunity of influence leading to prefermen tin the public service, and little liking for the proceedingsof governmen ts, they became traders, manufacturers andmerchan ts. They largely created the ba king business ofthis coun try in the eighteen th century. The Quakertradesmen became the trusteddepository ofhis neighbours

’

savings in coun try towns all over England ; in that waythose numerous coun try banks were founded which evenin their modern amalgamation s still retain the Quakernames Of Lloyd and Barclay. Friends have at one time oranother been influen tial in the shipping in terests of theTyne and the Mersey. One of them founded the Cunardline of steamers , an othermade the pioneer Stockton and

Darlington Railway ; another was the first Chairman of theMidland ; and another produced Bradshaw '

s Guide. I n

the days before the Temperan ce Movemen t they werefamous brewers. A Friend founded the chinaclay industryin Cornwall ; and in many provincial cen tres the Quakergrocer, or tanner, ormiller, carried on busin ess which ledto a comfortable competence. Mean time no Friends wereallowed to fal l in to poverty, and no children were allowedto go uneducated. The education provided at Ackworthand its sister schoolswas of a plain and business-like kind ;it was a good preparation for a life both mercantile and

x] SOCIAL SERVICE 309

Expenses mean time were few . Fashion coun ted fornothing in the dress of the women . Neither the theatrenor the wine bottle drained the pockets of themen . Musicwas not played, nor picturcs bought . Moreover, they hadnoministers to pay ; no Chmchmusic to provide ; no costly

been the Cheapest form of religion extan t ; consequen tlyit is al so themost laborious form, the one whichmost taxesits adheren ts in the way of personal service. I ts cheapness,however, should not be lost sight of in any anal ysis of thecauses which led to the popular impression that all Friendsare rich or well to-do, and that most Of themare bankers.

6. Turning to the Quakerismof to-day,we findthe oldorder seriously modified. Friends are now increasinglytaking to the professions. The list Of artists and authorsamong themis arespectable one. Theyare numerous in themedical,and not uncommon in the legal, profession . Theirteachersman a set of schools of a valuable and distinctivetype . Indeed as the typical Quaker of former days was agrocer, it is not un likely that the type will be professionalbefore long. On the other hand the adult schools, homemissions,and otheractivities andattractions of the Societyduring the last half cen tury have brought in numerousmembers from the working classes, who though theymay

Of the yeomen and artisans who formed the Quaker bodyof the seven teen th cen tury, are at any rate at presen t of adifferen t type from the cultivated gen tlemen , who in the

finest Of drab broadcloth, took their wives, plainly Cladin faultless satin , to the Yearly Meetings of the eighteen thcen tury.

It would be safe to say that the number of Friends whouse theirwealth for purposes of display or of tyranny, or ofexcessive luxury, is few ; and it may still more safely besaid that in these few cases the time is not far away whenthese people or their children will leave the Society and

31 0 THE OUTLOOK [cm

nominally join the Church of En g land, as somany of theweal thiest Frien ds have done in 1 re past .It would, of course, be foolish to imply that this large

hearted philan thropy is in the least confined to a tiny bodylike the Society of Friends. The idea, in fact, that divineservice largelymean s social service is in the air, just as thecharacteristicQuaker doctrine of the immanen t God is alsonow a living and widespread faith. By throwing over thecause of the peasan ts and supporting that of the Germanprinces, Luther and his friends deprived the Reformationof the strength itmight have had as the supporter of thecause of the poor. TO-day it seems as though EnglishPr‘otestan tism g enerally was entering upon its longneglected inheritan ce.

7.We are living in an age in which,with extraordinaryrapidity, Opinion is forming in the direction of publicaction to deal with the aged, with underfed children , withdying in fan ts, with wage

-earning mothers, with unemployed men , with the drink trade, with the land questionin its bearing upon dwellingsandrural depopulation ,withsweated wages an t. a miserably inefl

'

rcient education l .

Philan thropy,that is to say ,can hardlybe as individualisticas it was even in the days of John Bright and JosephSturge, and it is inrpossible that the Society can pretendto hold an even balance between political parties, so longas political parties represen t what in practice, whenreligious issues have n ot in tervened, they always haverepresen ted in al l coun tries—a struggle between propertyand the poor, between the rights of those who have, andthe claims Of those who have not. This, of course, leavesa large number Of questions open , question s of methodand Of degree, of the ideal against the opportune, but theattitude of Quakerism towards politics must always bein spired by a con sciousness of the value Of human souls,

This was written before the war; but by an ex ercise of faith

31 2 [cm

affected by the Evangelicalmovement, with its tendenciesto asnmilate to ordinary Noncon formistworship ; that thistendency did not finally prevail ; but that the Societycounted for little after the twen tieth cen tury, being partlyrbsorbed in to evangelical mission churches, and, for the

world in the spirit of the world. SO it remains a beautifultradition , but amost discouraging chapter in the historyof religion , recording the even tual failure of a sane and

liberal form of mystical Christianity to hold its own .

9. There seems to have been not a day’s delay on thepart of George Fox and his friends in applying theirdoctrine of the Indwelling God to the reform of abuses inGod’s husbandry,God

’

s building.

” It was in 1 648,beforehehadgathered asingle congregation ,andwhen hewas on lyfour-and-twen ty, that he pressed throughmanydifficultiesto an in terview with the Justices atMan sfield to speak tothem"

not to oppress the servants in their wages,”andhe

exhorted the servan ts to do their duties and servehonestly.

” About the same time hewrites 1

I was sorely ex ercised in going to their courts to cry for justicein warn ing such as kept public houses that they should not let

people have more drink than would do them good. I n fairs alsoand in markets l was made to declare against their deceitful

merchandise, cheating and cozen ing .

Passages on social need of various kinds are thicklyscattered through his occasional writings collected in

his book called Doctrinals. It appears to have been theexample of Friends which in troduced fixed prices in toretail dealing in this coun try. Sooner or later fixed pricesalways come where commerce is carried on on a large scale.

Business must then be able tomove without friction and

prices settle at a level as a fluid settles. But Frrends

appear to have been in strumen tal in crystallising this

l Journal , Bicen ten nial Edition , p. 39.

r] SOCIAL SERVICE 31 3

tendency, perhaps before itwould otherwise havematured.In George Fox

’

sDoctrinals we find the words

upon the things you sell or exchange than what you wil l have.

I s it notmore savoury to aak nomore than youwil l have for yourcommodity, to keep to yea and nay in yourachild shall trade with you as aman becauae of the equity .

This practice became known and led promptly to thegrowing prosperity at Friends’ shops. The habit ofhaving abad light in drapers

’

shops does not seemto havebeen peculiar to our own time . Fox writes

Some traders have a bad name which deceive. the coun try peoplewho deal with you with your dark back windows. This is to hang

gold on the back and let the legs go bare. You are all membersof oue body, the poor as well as the rich, for consider what abun ~dance of riches is in this city,and what good youmight do with it,for that will be for your honour and renown .

This side of their work was so prominen t that it hascaused awell-in formed German historian ‘ to come to theconclusion that it was the cen tre of the whole matterwith them, and that their religious position was a merecover for communism; that we have, in fact, in the Societyof Friends the ethical socialists of the time, though they donot advertise the fact in their writings. Our Germanfriend was doubtles s not so much alive to the spiritualimpulse as to its social consequences. He mistook theeffect for the cause . But his friendly testimony greatlystrengthens the immediate point’.

It is only overwhelming profusion of material whichprevents this subject being treated here more completely.

Always social work has been done quietly by unobtrusivepeople whose names have not survived, or who are only

E . Bernstein in chapters on the rise of Quakerism in The

History of Social ism, 2 vols. 1 895 .

See JoshuaRown tree, pp. 91-93.


neighbourhoods. But by way of giving substance to thischapter, we mustmen tion a few conspicuous names.

1 0 . That of John Bellers, who immediatelycthe earliest generation of Friends.anddied in 1 723.has onlyrecen tly been rescued fromoblivion ‘. He pressed formanyyears a scheme for colleges of industry which were to beboth educational and industrial. Friends acted upon hisadvice and founded such an institution in London . Bellersheld that his colleges would help to do away with “

al l

useless trades, lawyers, bad debts, beggars, and muchnow wasted house room. He appealed to the Lord Mayorand Common Council of Londs n on behalf of the hooligan sof their city, who would assuredly be found con frontingthem at the Last Great Day of Accoun t . He an ticipatesourmodern Acts again st electoral corruption , our modernin surance against ill-health, and he elaborated a proposalfor a supreme court for in ternational disputes. He urgedthat “Mohammedans are men and that beating out theirbrains to put sense in to them is a great mistake . He

actually proposed an amicable con ference of al l religiouspersuasions on the sensible ground that “What is prayedfor of God above.men must be in strumental to accomplishhere below . there being few, if any, who believe He willmake His angels visible to do it.

”He understood long

before his time the theory of Free Trade and currency,and supported the then unpopularmachine production .

1 1 . The life of William Allen is entombed in threeconsiderable volumes which are, however, very in terestingreading. He may stan d as a type of the best men of histime. He foundedthe chemists’ firmof Allen andHanbury,was Presiden t of Guy’

s Hospital a lecturer at the RoyalInstitution , and he combined with his study of Sciencedevoted charitable labours. He accompan ied Stephen

1 By Edward Bernstein and JoshuaRown tree . There is a stil lfuller account of himin The SecondPeriodof Quaker

i

sm, chap. xx .

3r6 THE OUTLOOK (on .

has become, by some chance, much better known to thepublic than that ofmany other Friends, and need not bedwelt on here.

1 2 . The career of Joseph Sturge of Birmingham has

always seemed tome tobe theprototype ofthemodernwellconcemed Friend. He did his best to guide the forcesof Chartism to a gen tler issue he worked nobly for Peaceand against slavery, he felt it his duty to be an activeRadical politician , seeing that themiddle and lower classesof Eng land were at that time starved and exploited by aprivileged order ; andhe founded the Adult School movement, perhaps the most fruitful of all his undertakings.

The Adult Schools deserve a chapter to themselves, forthey represen t the most signal service which the Societyhas ren dered to the nation in the latter half of the nineteenth cen tury, and con tinues to render to-day . An AdultSchool is the simplest form of religious, social and in tellectual fellowship that could be found. A group of mensit round an amateur teacher, study the Bible, and are

possessed with the spirit of fellowship. The spirit offellowship works themiracle. It is like an early Christiancommunity before the evolution of the clergy. Commen tis free , question s shower in . The teacher makes no

assunmtion of superiorkn owledge or standing ; themethodsare endlessly elastic and varied ; the atmosphere is one ofprayer and devoutness the theology is as many-colouredas the Pied Piper and every kind has to meet criticism.

Nobody is shocked at anything honestly and sincerelysaid ; the Socialists have theirfling, andal together horizon sare wonderfully enlarged for the hard-working men whofind there at once their church and their un iversity.

Ordinary learning has also a place. Friends began byteachin g the illiterates of the mid-Victorian days how toread and write. Now lectures are given on

“all things

civil and useful in creation ,

"on Science, History, Politics,

Natural History, travel, books of every kind. The Adult

SOCIAL SERVICE 31 7

mon thly organ One andAll . Their lessons are now care

fully arranged, and n otes for teachers are provided byexperts. Simple forms of evening worship have beenadded to the early morning class. It is not too much to

the lives of workingmen that has occurred in our time.

Not unnaturally themovemen t has spread extensivelytowomen also, and in some places classes are mixed. The

the Christian spirit have been very great. A class has itsbore to endure, its quarrelsome man to placate, its bigotto be tender with, its occasional drinker to redeem; indeed

for their fellows as members of the same class can hardlybe over-estimated.Not least among the services rendered by the Adult

School movemen t is its breakdown of class distinctions.We Adult School teachers have the privilege of havingamong ourmost in timate friendsmembers of the workingclass of whose society we should otherwise have beendeprived. It is to be feared that over the human landscapeof our land there stretches a thin level cloud such as

may gather after sunset over a Swiss valley. Among the

ing snowfields, but the line of level cloud, so thin and

impal pable, is enough to place in shadow the valley below,

with its dark pinewoods and just visible cascades. Suchis the line between the manual worker and the brainworker or idler in England, and the Adult Schools havegone far to break up that mischievous film of class dis

31 8 THE OUTLOOK

one of another. The Adult Schools will retain their valueand their vitality so long as they keep out any test ofmembership, social or theological , and al l con trol claimedin a clerical spirit or by virtue of a clerical position . Thisdoes not mean that it may not be posdble for a rightminded clergyman , by divesting himself of his authority,tomake acapital Adult School teacher. The Adult Schoolmovemen thas now been extended beyond the limits of theSociety of Friends, andhas reached proportions too largefor us to handle unaided. The movement is now managedby a National Adult School Council, run by Friends,but unsectarian in character and without proselytisingaim. Among the many facts of the momen t which causedepression among patrioticmen , is that the Adult Schoolmovemen t seems now (1919) to be diminishing in numbers.

1 3. Of the same type as Joseph Sturge, but touchedwith a power and genius all his own , is the great name ofJohn Bright, the Quaker cotton spinner of Rochdale. His

political labours were for him always a piece of social

and for the welfare of the common people of the nation .

He belongs just now to that dimperiod which is no longercon temporary, nor yet far enough back to be establishedin ordinary history, a period in which also Gladstone andRuskin and Tennyson and George Eliot are experiencin ga temporary eclipse of their fame, so that many of us inthese days do not know either fromour personal memoriesor fromhistory the great services of Bright . Theymay beread in that most delightful of biographies, the L ife byG. M. Trevelyan . It is not the least ofMr Trevelyan '

s

successes that he has clearly shown how typical a Friendin his every characteristic John Bright was. If anyonewan ts to know in a concrete example what the Quakerspirit is they could not do better than read that book.

1 4. I n the generation in which we live new forms of

320 THE OUTLOOK [cu.

which is directed, beyoud al l material ends, to the growth of

3. The opportun ity of full developmen t, physical, moral andspiritual , should be assured to every member of the community,mau,woman and child. The developmentofman

'

s ful l personalityshould not be harnpered by unjust conditions nor crushed by

4 .We should seek for away of l ivin g thatwill free us fromtheno barrier between rnan andman , andwill put no ex cessive burden

of labourupon any by reason of our superfluous demands.

5 . The spiritual force of righteousness, loving-kindness and

trust ismighty because of the appeal itmakes to the best in everyman , and when applied to industrial relations achieves great

6. Ourrejection of themethods of outwarddomination ,and of

theappeal to force, applies not on ly to international affairs, but tothe whole problem of industrial con trol . Not through antagon ismbut through cooperation and goodwill can the bestbe attain ed foreach and all .

7.Mutual service should be the principle upon which life isorganised. Service, not private gain , should be the motive of al l

8. The own ership ofmaterial things, such as land and capital ,should be so regulated as best tomin ister to the need anddevelopmen t of man .

I should recommend the reader not to regard thesestatements as platitudinous, or cheap. Anything that hasto pass a large assemblyhas to be general ; but every wordherehas been weighed,andis in tended tocarry its full cargoof meaning. The minute which adopted this statemen taddedWe remind Friends that this shoul d be no formal act, but that,havin g expressed approval , we should continually test our l ife,individual and corporate, by the prin ciples embodied in them,and

The Committee itself, when its seven points were

remitted to the local meetings, added notes to explain anden force them,most of which are here prin ted, to show how

r] SOCIAL SERVICE 32 1

a body of Friends, less hampered by responsibility thanthe Yearly Meeting, and more expert and progressive,desires its principles to be understood.

Un iversal Brotherhood.

take them as basic, and so apply a diflering standard ofwhat is needed for agood human life? Are we prepared tomix with al l sorts and conditions ofmen in the same spiri t

Life itself is the importan t matter, and not the accu

mulation of material things, and it is towards developinglife that all social order should be directed.

Are the following condition s compatible with this

(a) The presen t position of domestic servants in most house

(b) The payment to any workers of such wages that their

I . For spiritual manhood, there must be real sel fdirection . Bad housing, grinding poverty, perpetual

and an unin telligen t and irresponsible part in productionall tend to spoil personality for the worker, his wife andchildren , and are a spiritual loss.

2. There must be full educational opportunity for all .An all-round developmen t is essen tial for the realisation of

Are the lives of the following types cramped and

spoiled in this way ?

(a) The working mother who has to keep house on an inade

(b) The child who has no introduction to the love and beautyc . Q. a:

323 THE OUTLOOK [ca

(0) The golf caddie,who spends his youthministerlng toenjoyments he ls not pesmitted to share .

merely in amaximumoutput of things“made to sel l ,

”instead of

things ior the serviee of me wholesome liie (e.g . badly msde

houses, etc ).

(a) The man or woman in an ofi oe, handling mechan ically

(I ) The worker in lead or other dangerons trades .

Trust and sympathy andan understanding relationshipare essen tial to all engaged in acommon undertaking. The

same is seen in any association , a community or a school.The best results are obtained, not by compulsion , but by

educator.

The George Jun ior Republic and other reformatory experi

ments have in a large degree illustrated this truth,and indicate theline of advance.

A study of Knopotkin'

sMutual Aidwould be found helpful, ashuman beings which has always existed side by side with the

struggle for existenee.

Strife is always den and wasteful . Domination spoilsthe personal ity ofall whoeithersufierorexerciseit. The roots of war are in our presen t social order : theappeal to fome is on ly necessary because we are unwil lingto accept the rule of right doing.

The dictatorisl atiitude of aTrade Union may be as bad in thisrespect as that oi a body ot employm , andmay hinder its proper

324 THE OUTLOOK [ca r

selfishness is toteachandentrenchselfishness in thehuman

Should not the freedom of our ministry help us to

see that perhaps our healing and teaching and advising

wepreparedtoriskall in founding it?

The nineteenth cen tury saw the Society of Friendsren ounce its peculiarities in the matter of dress and con

versation and enlarge its range of social intercourse. Has

it any example for the twen tieth cen tury in the directionof a less artificial simplicity? Are we willing to limit oursuperfluous demands for the sake of a fuller life for al l ?Arewe even willing to examine cl osely in to ourpresen t wayof life to ascertain what is real ly superfluous?

CHAPTER I I

WAR1 . No lengthy proof is w ded to show that the

Christianity of Christ is actively hostile to all war. Godis Love is the theological sanction to Christian conduct,and so excludes war. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy,peace, long-sufiering,gen tleness,goodness, faith,meekness,self-con trol. How would these do as nine standards fornine divisions of an army? No amoun t of genial allowancefor poetic exaggeration or orien tal epigramcan change thecommand to turn the other cheek and to love your enemiesinto amaxim formilitary tactics.

“The Soldier's Pocket

Book” is an elaborate and detailed denial of the GoldenRule.

This hostit to war is no mere acciden t. It followsfromthe Christian conception of God as revealed in Christ .It follows from the Divine Presencemman , from humanbrotherhood. from disbelief in force, from the wholespiritual doctrine of human life.War blowsaway and foulsthe soul in reckless tempest.

Throughout this book the Christian Evangel has beentreated as the proclamation of the presence ofGod inMan—that was the message which evoked the love and joy,and provob d the upheavals, as Paul and the othermissionaries preached it in the cities of the Levan t.Against it rose every vested interest in temples like that

it was that killed Jesus. He said he would destroy thistemple in three days.

” To declare that God was revealed,not in any Oracle, hoary and remunerative, but in the lifeof aworkingman of Nazareth,acitywhichhadnever been

326 ms oun oox (on .

namedasholy,was in&edtobring lightand frcedomintoa dim and oppressed world; and the oppressors felt it.

Paul , preaching in the city beloved of Athcna. on the hill

ofAres,andclose to the cave oi theEumenides, tos peoplesuper-religious, told them that God dwelt not in ternplesmade withhands, but hadmade of one hlood all nations

of the earth, and had appointed the bounds of their

habitation ,

" that they should seek God, if haply theymight feel after him, and find him. thw gh he is not far

from each one of us.”The connection of thoughthere is

common Father, all might seek Him in their hearts.Mystical religion followed close on Internationalisrn.

obliterated between Jew and Greek, barbarian , Scythian ,German or Turk. All might join it. There was no specialabode ofGodeitheronMountGerizimoratJer

-usalem. God

—a Spirit—was to be found in the spirits of men . Therewas in Jesus a great en thusiasm of equality.

“ Call noman Rabbi—among the Gentiles their lords are cal led‘benefactors,

’

(a fine satirical touch), Let it not be so

amongAgainst this assertion of the Divinity ofman under the

equal fatherhood of God, standsWar.War denies everyelementary right toman . It slays him, and only cares forhis death as a loss of “man-power.

” It wounds, blinds,maddens, neglects, the child of God. It drills him in to amachine. it corrupts and deceives him. Lies are of theessence of war. Deceit is the oil which makes its wheelsgo round. And the lords are still there to be called “ benefactors,

”and themultitude of titles andhonours is beyond

It is becauseWar is the organised, elaborate contemptand destruction of humanity, that the Christian ity ofChrist is for ever hostile to it.In examining the words of our Lord it is not necessary

328 rue oun oox (on .

handed,we are not to spendour strengthin worrying over

themeans of life, but are to live with some of the careless

gladness of the birds snd the lilies of the field: we are

togive out themelody of the birdand the colourandscentof the lily, instead of being overwhelmed by grinding care.

The expression “Resist not evil," then , must be subject

to the same canon of interpretation . There are, in fact.

two contrssted ways of resisting evil—the way of con

version , by love, and the way of force, by hatred.

make our Lord’

s teachingmean the exact opposite of whatit says .

“Love your enemies ” cannot by any possibleexegesis come to mean “Hate the enemy.

" “Do goodto them that hate you

"cannot be translated into “Slay

theirmen , starve their families,andbombardtheirtowns.

"

The wholemeaning and spirit of the teaching is irreconcilably hostile to all war.We cann ot imagine Jesus

The Gospel, taken as a Gospel, as a single messageandadoctrine of human action in society,had as itsmaindrift to call men away frompractices based on coercion ,

bringing forth fruits of death and destruction , in an

atmosphere of hatred and fear—to methods of attractionand persuasion , based on love and a harmonious will.Christ wouldwin men ,notconquer them;He would disarmtheir mind and purpose byHis indomitable suflering andobstinate goodwill—rather than disarm their bodies byforce. He would not try to turn enemies in to corpsesbut in to friends. That was what He believed to be inaccord with human nature and the will of the Father.

'

l'

his aimcould not be missed or mistaken by any of

His disciples. It was no isolated command which bade theChristian love his enemies, do good to those who hatedhim, bless those who cursed him, pray for those who

persecuted him. It was the standard method of Christ ;

n ] WAR 329

it made with the res u oi s teaching am sonable and

coherent whole. In harmony with it were our Lord'srefusal to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritanvillage,His rescue of the woman talnen in adultery,His ap

peal to the best in ZaochaeuaHisgeneral way of friendshipwith the hated tax-gatherers and despised prostitutes. He

exorcisedby love the spiritof fear fromthemaniac amongthe Gadarene tombs. That spirit went into the swine,who

fledin panicdown the steepplace.according tothe beautiful

rendering given “By an Unkn own Disciple.

” By givingthe cloak also to him that had taken the coat. by goingtwice the distance of the servile journey demanded. or byacts done in that spirit, Jesus believed that robbery andtyranny would slink away ashamed. He believed that thegentle would inherit the earth. AndHe carried His faithto the ultimate, in suffering on the cross. He thereinmain tainedHis life-long principle, in the faith that throughHis apparent failure His death would draw many to thegospel of loving-kindness. “ If I be lifted up, I will drawallmen untomyself." AndHemaintaimdHis spirit wholeand pure till the end, when His forgiveness went out toHis executioners.All this He frankly con trasted with the ways of the

world.

“The kings of the Gen tiles lord it over them; but

it shall notbe so among you. If youwould be greatest, bethe servan t of all, as I am—even to the giving of my lifefor the freedom of many.

”The authority of Christian

leadership has been great—that of Jesus and his apostles,andmanygreat Christians since . But so far as ithas beentruly Christlike ithas not depended upon force. nor upon

This Gospel of the power of suffering love and endlessforgiveness was absorbed by Paul—or, more truly, itabsorbed him.

"Why go to law, why not rather takewrong? “ If thine enemy hunger. feed him; if he thirst,give him to ”ink—for so thou shalt make him feel a

330 THE OUTLOOK (ca.

burning shame. That was exactly the Christian methodwith evil. “

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evilwithgood.

” “Theweapons oi ourwarfare are notcarnal .

”

“Our warfare is not against flesh and blood.

”

TheChristian scheme was nomere scheme ofabstinenoefrom violence . I t was a constructive policy for a far moreefiectual overtbrow of evil, by undermining its very

would youhave douc in 191 4? the answerwould be thatourmethodwouldhave begun long before, if the rulers and

our Lordwouldhave applied this principle to the dealings

of nations with each other no one could doubt . Nor is it

2 .We have. as it happens. a definite case in whichas usual ly in terpreted, the alternative of war and peso ;

towards a career even of the most moral and benefioentconquest. I al lude to the inciden t in theTemptation wherethe devil is recorded as having taken Himup in to a high

moun tain andshown Himall thekingdomsof theworld,and

the glory of them.

“All these things wil l l give thee, if thou

wilt fall down andworshipme.

" Jesus had taken the title”Son ofMan ,

”a technical termwell known in the curren t

deliverer. I f war for Jewish liberty and a world ruled in

righteousness rmderJesus Christwas athing tobe rejected,

European Powers to safeguard their in terests cannot be

were occupying partof the Holy la nd, andclaimedarival

Particularly in the Fourth Book of Enoch, which is full of it.

The earliest use of it in thia sense is in Dan . vii. x3-r4 .

332 THE OUTLOOK [cm

andthatis exactly whathe finds in regardtowar. Texts”

in fact have been found to throw at reformers on everymoral question . A reference to Timothy's stomach wasgood enough for teetotallers : the domestic habits of theOld Testamen t have been quoted to defend slavery inAmericaandpolygamy in Utah.

“Thepooryehave always

with you,

"has sometimes seemed a sufficien t answer to

those who would attack poverty as a wrong thing in a

Christian land ; the Apostle Paul’

s views on women havehad to be discoun ted bymodern champions of the equal ity

to appeal to the spirit of the Gospel, rather than to we

letter of the Bible.

In fact the Books Of the New Testamen t were all whatmight be called “ occasional ” writings, evoked by an

immediate need. Neither the Lord nor any ofHisApostlesever sat down to write a text-book, like the law of Moses,or the Koran Of Mohammed. There exists no apostolic“Treatise on Christian Duty.

”We may be thankful thatitis so, for thewritten word remainsunchangeable,whereasthe spirit is adaptable to every need. A fixed detailed

obsolete, and so have discredited our whole faith, or it

There aremany great blanks in our system of conduct still,so that a code of Christian moral ity issued even at this

en lightened date would hereafter become oMete.We arestill too comfortable about the existence of poverty, wehave hardly moralised our empire and the exploitation of

It is therefore as well that we have no word, Thou shal tnot make war,

”if it implied a fixed code. Neverthdess,

we havean analysis ofwar,sufficien tly damaging. Whencecome warsandfightings among you? come they not hence,even of your lusts that war in yourmembers ? Ye lust,and

n ] WAR 333

have not: obtain : ye fight andwar ; yet

ye have

4. The early Christians did not set out by attackingthe established institutions which they found in the world.

They were loyal subjects of the Roman Empire’, though itpartook of the evils of all military rule. Theydidnotmakeany attack upon slavery. The Apostle Paul returned therunaway slave Onen

'

mus to his master Philemon . The

question of warwas not apressing one in the age of Christ.Men lived under the shelter Of the Roman Peace. In fact,our Lord lived at the one signal pause in the story of

perpetual war which ancien t history records. It is therefore no matter for surprise that cen turions were treatedwith friendliness and that soldiers were told by the Baptistto be con ten t with their wages, not told to disband. Thatthey were also told to do violence to noman shows thatthey were real ly keepers of order: in practice they did thework of policemen in Pal estine.

The Christian treatmen t of all evilswhich were inwovenin to the tex ture of society and governmen t, was the on lysensible, even the only possible, one . It is an illustration

and that the framework of the State has got to be madeout Of the conviction s of the people, as surely as the

honeycornb ismade hy the secretion of the bees. The lightof the Gospel and all other beneficen t light comes not likedestroying lightning, but like the silen t spread Of sunrise .

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation .

”

Nevertheless, as surely as Christianity has so acceleratedthe growth of the moral sense, that it has very largely

putdown slavery,polygamy, torture, cruelty to the in sane,to the criminal, to the child, to the woman , so surely wehave Christ on our side in the waragainstwar

‘.

James iv . r-z.

On the existence of moral standards relative to tbe person ,

see 55 ta, 1 3, 1 4 , 23 below .

334 THE OUTLOOK [ca

5. There is one puzzling passage, the one about the

two swords‘. It has had a strange history. In the MiddleAges it was the proof text of the spiritual and temporal ,that is the double, power of the POpe. It has been a

stumbling block to the advocates of peace, and appearsin flatcon tradiction to ourLord

’

s other teaching,andmoreparticularly to the words which follow a few verses later,where the use of swords is reproved—“

Sufier ye thus far.

All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

”

hy the fact that our Lordwas in verses 35 to 38 reversingthe whole of an earlier instruction-J When I sen t youwithout purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing ?And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But

now,he that batha purse, let him take it,and likewise hisscrip : andhe that hath no sword, let him sel l his garment,and buy one. For I say un to you, that this that is writtenmust yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned

have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are

two swords. And he said un to them, It is enough”

the irrelevan t reference to a fulfilmen t of prophecy mayperhaps have been due, as fulfilments Of prophecy haveoften been due, to the Evangelist, not to our Lord. The

presence or abmnce of such reference does not affectthe in terpre tation seriously, though it has induced therevisers to al ter the .A.V. tex t and tran slate the ordinaryevery-day Greek word for

“end

” by “ fulfilment,”rele

gating what is confessed tobe themeaning of the“ Greek ”

to the margin . This has obscured the meaning of thepassage. DrMoffatt’s new tran slation has it, Yes, thereis an eno to all that refers to me.

” This carries the rightsense of rim , and connects with the prophecy also. It is

Luke xxii. 35-38.


modifications, all in the direction of emphasizing theDivine at the expense of the human Christ‘. This was in

attributes as opposed or con trasted, and not easilyreconcilable. Christians of the age after Christ did not

not able to rejoice equally in the characteristics of both.We may to-day, however, liken His divinity to the scen tgiven ofi by the flower of His humanity, and rej oice in thevigour of the flower. The result of this steady pressure

of early opinion on the text is to make us value all the

The word mo. translated and may be paral leledwith the kindred word ref in e-ms translated It isfinished,

”uttered at the end on the cross'.We cannot tell

what was in the mind of our Lordwhen Hemade that lastcry :

“ It is finished." I have heard it described as triumphant, and have even heard it quoted to support what iscalled “

the finished work” of Christ . But there is no

evidence. It may have been a cry of grief . No one wil l

ever kn ow . Probably the right clue may be gained fromthe other sad word on the cross,

“My God,my God, whyhast thou forsaken me ? ” Have we ever imaginatively

the strenuousday, this sense of desolation must have been a

Thia does not appeal to me personally ; but it also implies no

warrant for the use of swords.

John x ix . 3o. Matt. xxvii. 46,Mark xv . 34 .

n ] WAR 337

lonely blank unspeakable. The Father hadassuredly notforsaken Him. Butthe human bodyand brain were broken ,had ceased to act normal ly, could neither know nor

respond. In face of this undoubted experience, thereshould be no difliculty in accepting the analogous accessOf darkness the even ing before, with the words,

“The

things concerningme have an end.

” That is, these wordsin troduce nothingmcongruous withwhatwe kn ow alreadyin

“ It rs finished,"and the

“ forsaken "cry

‘.

The abiding attitude taken by our Lord at this crisisOf His self-sacrifice is that, believing that He had at His

service, with a mere word of prayer,“ twelve legions of

angels,”He saw that self-defence was not in the line of

His duty ; and deliberately chose torture and ignomin y.

tary loss Of hOpe under the prospect of horrible torture ?Tome itmakesmore real the human suflerings of ourLord.

liable, but in all poin ts tempted and tried as we are, Hegainsall themore upon our loyal tyandaffection by toucheslike this. If at this dark momen t our Lord could haveforeseen the multitude whose spin ts He would liberate,whose souls He would save to repen tance and service, Hewould hardly have been baptised with a baptism so

How many of the n oblest and best ofmen have, itmaybe in the weakness of old age which comes before death,suffered fromwhat we gen tly call depression , and do notwish to probe in to further. Butdepression means just thiskind of feeling, just this loss of touch with God,with hOpe ;just this sense of failure.We put it down , rightly enough,when it occurs amongst our own family and friends, as a

l I have not thought it necessary to en ter on the region of

literary criticismin regard to the words of the Paseion .

e . g .

338 THE OUTLOOK (cu.

failrue of the bodilymachinery by whichthe soul expressesitself.We do not blame the aged Christian for ih butwesay thathis nerves are worn out, that the strain upon him

the soul works . And so in this our Lord’

s final strain

andagony, in this passion andbloody sweat, it is not hardto realise that for amomen t He thought that the thingsconcerning Himhad come to an end‘.6. That the whole Christian gospel of trust in the

appeal of indomitable love to the hearts of men , was

handed down in its purity to the succeeding generationsof the Church, is plain from the writings of the preNicene Fathers, that is those Christian leaders who preceded the Council of Nicaea over which Constan tine theGreat presided in 325A.D.

’ Christian ityactedasa fermen tw orking through a greatmass of dough, penetrating as faras itcould, butstrongest atthe beginning.We should realise that military service was not a

practical issue in the early days. Jews and slaveswere bothexcluded fromthe Imperial army, andeven the Christians,who were Gen tile and free, we not in practice under

conscription ; for though the Experors could en force it,

as sanction ing the use of arms ; but their ways out are more

ofler, nor hasW. E . Harnack inMil itiaChristi says the sword was ametaphor for steadfast resistance to persecution . But that is unwarranmd and no real relief.The interpretation in the text must stand or fall without thesupport of any authority I know of.

publication of Dr Cadoux’

s valuable research The Early ChristianAttitude toWar (Swarthmore Press) in 1919. He has given us, for

the first time, an unbiassed and detailed statemen t, with documen tary evidence, of this complicated and difi cult issue. I have

donemy best to summarise the eviden ce and the conclusions. The

references are Dr Cadoux '

s.


men ,delugedthe fieldswithblood, rr rd infectedriverswith

it,isadmittednotonly intoa temple,buteven to

murder. It may centre our quotations if we take the

prophecy of l saiahandMicah' about beating swords intoploughshares and spears into pruning hooks :

“nation

shal l not iift up sword against nation , neither shall theylearn war any more,

"and note how a series of early

Fathers comment on it'. They all claim that it is beingfulfilled in Christianity. Justin , in his Apology (r. xxxix.

I ‘

3la says"That this has happened. ye can be persuaded. For

from Jerusalem twelve men went out into theandwe,whowere formerly slayers of one another, not onlydo not make war upon our enemies, but gladly die, confessing Christ.” Irenaeus, the leading Christian in Gaulfrom 1 80 to 202 A.D. just preceding Tertullian , says that“ this is fulfil led by Christians who know not how to fight,but when they are struck ofier the other cheekTertullian points out to Marcion Here too thoumayst

learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but

a bringer of0rigen , Bishop of Alexandria, by far the greatest, one

may say the mostmodern , Christian thinker in the earlycenturies, and a support to Quakerism on many sides,who wrote between 228 and 250 A.D., filling the periodbetween Tertullian and Cyprian , is one of the most outspoken .

“We no longer take sword against a nation , nor

dowe learn any more tomake war, having become sons ofpeace for the sake ofDr Cadoux (p. 67) very sensibly remarks that the close

Divine I nstitutions, 1 . xviii. 8-1 o.

I s. ii. 3 6 . andMicah iv . 2 8 .

Cadoux , pp. 60 3 .

rv . xxiv . 4,AgainstHa rries (an . 1 81

Cadoux , p. 62 . AgainstCali-as, v . 33.

obeyed their Lord ’

s precepts to universal love and non

resistance is a good answer to those who argue that theywere on lymeant iorapemct society, (where ol course theywould have no scope), or apply only to the inwardmind.not the outward actions,or only to private and not publicconduct . Hemight have added that the action oi the earlyChristians ior three centuries runs deadagainst the theorythat they were merely an “

in terim-ethic,”amakeshift to

last only till the imminen t end of all things.

Origen asks“h0w it would have been pod ble for this

peaceful teaching, which does not allow its adheren ts evento defend themselves against their enemies, to prevail.un lees at the coming oi jesus the afiairs of the worldl

had

everywhere changedintoamilderstate"under the peaceiul

rule of Augustus‘? In another placehe says itwas allomdto the Jews to fight, theref0re since the Christian could not,it was plain that he was oi a dfi erent origin

'. In another

passage he emphasizes this difierence between the jewish

0ne time 0r place,may not be rightatanother. See § z3 inWe now turn from the exhortations of the leaders tothe actual practice of Christians. When , and forhow long.

to be soldiers? The evidence is not purely negative‘, for

the Christians in 1 78A.D. urged the Christians to help the

AgainstCeltics, 1 1 . 30 . Celsus,m. 7.

Celsus,Wt. 26. Cadoux , p. 81 .

‘ There are of course the N .T. caees of Cornelius and ot the

gaoler at Philippi, who w0uld be a l oldier. But we do not know ,

their acceptance of the coapel led them to abandon the army orto try to do so. They vanishout ol the story .

34: mm: 0111 10 01: (cu.

Emperor with all their strength, and to labour with himin maintaining iustice, and to fight ior himand serve as

soldiers with him, ii he require it, and to share nfilitarycommandwithhim.

”Celsus argued that ii everybody did

u the Chfistiau tlie Emper-or would be deserted and the

empire be conquered by barbarians‘.

I

We have heard thisargumen t often during the lateWar. I-Iarnack in his

and torture ordered by the law courts, which soldiers wh0

were als0 p0licemen had to infiict, the h'

equent sacrifices

to the Emperors as gods,and the whole nature oi the work,it is not surprising that Christians did not volunteer for it.

Difiiculty arose when men already in the army becameWe now come tothe evidence irom‘

l‘

ertullian thatin the

early years of the thirdcentury there were some Christiansin the army. The body was now large, and probably includedmany who, fordomestic or local reasons,had takenthe Christian name.

InDeIdotolctria(198-zozA.D.) theauthorasks whetherabelievermay turn tomilitary service.

” This is theearliest

have occurred by that time.

In De CoronaMil itis (2 1 1 A.O.) Tertullian defends a

Christian soldier whohad reiused towear agarland on the

Emperor's birthday. Buthe tackles the prior question

Whether military service is suitable ior Christians at all . DOanother master atter Chr-ist, and abjure tather and mother andevery it be lawful to occupy himsel i with the

perhh byme sword? And shall the son of peaceJ or whom it winbe unfitting even to go eo law, he engaged in a battle ? And shall

Cadoux , p. 1 04.

344 THE OUTLOOK [cm

profound admiration for their courage and self-sacrifice,

memory when dead. Those who realise how difiicult is

attainmen t it is to be trm to its unperturbed faith will

be the last to find fault withthose who do not reach it.

Origen wrote in z48 a.o. his reply to the attack on

Christianity by Celsus seven ty years before. Origen ,

fol lowinghis Opponen t'

s order,devoteseight chapters,closeto the end of his book, to a defence of the Christian

’

s

that everyone " includes the barbarians themselves ; andin that case there would be perfect security. This replyis val id to-day . If one-third of our own nation had been

pacifists one cannot suppose that a nearly corresponding

modern world moves all together, in spite of an enemy

people being always, for the time, in the main a bad lot.

(See our forefathers’ opinion of the French in 1 800 and the

Rusdans in So, on any probable estimate of thedevelopmen t of Peace views, there would have been no

Origen says further, that the patriotic work of theChristians may be found in their availing prayers for thetriumph of the right, and in the improvemen t in publicconduct due to their example and teaching. He poin ts outthat the priests in the temples do not fight, but keep

al l Christians to priests—a sound Quaker doctrine . Origenrealised that there ismore than one outlet for patriotism.

I n fact, his hope is our hope, that true Christianity will.step by step, so conquer thehearts ofmen , that wars willfade away of themselves. Neither he nor we expectWarsuddenly to vanish by magic from a world so easily

ri] WAR 345

stimulated to it as ours.We do not propose chaos or

anarchy, we propose a reas0ned and potent remedy, andrecognise that in the past some wars have been unavoid

able , given the conditions that prevailed. That wasOrigen '

s line.

It may be added that he never refers in his words tothe end of the world being imminen t, and was there forenot influenced by that. Nor was he by the other collateral

Quotations to the like efiect from Cyprian (250-258and fromAmobius and Lactantius (305 A.D.) are omitted

Towards the end of the third cen tury, when undoubtedly there were some Christians in the army, we meetwith the martyrdoms of those who refused the service .

Maximilian , a young Numidian , perished in 295 A.D.

pleading his objection to war itself, not referring to thematter of sacrificing to the Emperor. Marinus, acen turionat Caesarea, perished in 260 a n . because he would not

sacrifice. Marcellus in 298 in Morocco, took both grounds ;Cassianus, the clerk of the court which condemned him,

protested against the sen tence and sufiered death. There

which may have con tributed, Dr Cadoux thinks, to theoutbreak of the terrible persecution under Diocletian in

Such is the story of the Operation of the pure ChristianSpirit. But the Gospel en tered the world through the gateof Judaism, and retained thereby many primitive ideas,which, in every departmen t of the Church's thought andpractice, have weakened and wasted its force. Jewishtradition wasmilitary.

The Scriptures of the Old Testament certain ly taughtthat Yahweh had ordered and blessed wars and givenvictory. The great secession under Marcion was on thisand kindred poin ts. His followers renounced the God of

346 ms oun oox (on .

kept in a differen t compartmen t of consciousness, was

laid by Christ’s gospel. But if, atany time, that high faithfailed or was questioned, there was always this sub

consciousness of “ the wars of the Lord ready toplay thetraitor to conscience.

strophic destructions,and its visions of the war of angels,

These imaginings, a bad inheritance, were also ready tosupport en terprises like C“

i nstantine’

s, when faith hadfaded.

Again , the Fall of Jerusalemwas believed to have beenprophesied by Jesus in His apocalyptic utterances, and toconstitute the Divine punishmen t on the Jews for the

the Christian pacifist‘.

The doctrine of evolution , of progressive assimilationof Truth, had not yet come to his help.

by our Lord and His Apostles. It did not apparen tlybecome urgen t till about the begin ning of the thirdcentury, as a practical issue . So that the Christians of thatday were not fortified by precedent, when the crisis came .

To appreciate their men tal outlook we need also toremember that they followed the Apostle Paul and the

Apostle Peter in loyal ty to the Empire and acceptance ofthe civil governmen t as ordained by God. This imperialgovernmen t was harsh and brutal . It extracted evidence

by torture. Its methods were rough and its punishmen tswere terrible . Doubtless it needed the recognition of thenecessity and fitness of a sub-Christian standard somewhere ih the world, for the purpose of main tain ing publicorder, to preserve loyalty to legalised force.We are

See Cadoux , pp. 1 70 3 .

348 [cm

cmnpronfising pmsages Dr Cadw x has founi show-rg theuse of the civil power by Chr

-istians, are where Jusfinasks the governmen t to punish merely nominal incon

expelled the hereticPaul of Samosata fremthe Churchand

in z7a n . .o (p.

I f we examine our own curren t words and ideas we

shall find that we all rec y acknowledge this variety ofstandard. How otherw

’

me isaQuak r schoolmaster to teachabout the Battle of Marathon or the Battle of Marston

therefore, as to whether any particular warhas been fig ht,such as the Italian Risorgimen to, the American CivilWar,or the first BalkanWar, should always be taleen in con

nection with the inquiry, for whomwas it right ?

The question whether such a war was wise. or was

avoidable, or was futile, or ruinous, is of course mother

question altogether.We come now to the question of the actual efl hnent

of Christians in the army. The story of the ThunderingLegion under Marcus Aurelius in A.O . x74, though no

miracle, inclines one to surmise that there might beChristians in the army at that date . The Twelfth Legionwas overcome by heat and thirst, and about to be attachedby the enemy. The story goes that in an swer to the prayersof the very numerous Christians in it heavy rain fell, thesoldiers car.

~ht the rain in their helmets, and the bar

barians fled at the noise of the thunder, and that in con

sequence the Emperor ceased his persecution of theChristians. As a matter of fact the Emperor himedicredited Jupiter with the thunderstorm, and the greatpersecution at Lyons three years afterwards discredits thestory of the decree of clemency ; but the tale comes throughEusebius froma Christian Apology , published by Claudius

Apol . x vi . r4 (r53 A.D .)

rr] WAR 349

the end of an ) . 1 74, so thathe doubtless heard it from thesoldiers. The story is discredited by the fact that the

Futm’

nata) ever since the time of Augustus. But we haveto accoun t for a story told by a con temporary Bishop‘.There is a pasmge inMarcus Am'

elius, quoted byBarclay, which seems to imply that there were Christianswith the army, but not as fightingmen .

" I prayed to mycoun try’s gods ; but when I was neglected by them and

observed myself passed by the enemy, con sidering thefewness of my forces, I called to one and en treated thosewho with us are called Christians, and I found a great

number of them. And I forced them with threats whichought not to have been , because afterwards I knew theirstrength and force . Therefore they betook themselvesneither to the use of darts nor tru npets, for theyused notso to do, for the cause and name of their God which theybear in their consciences.

”

against the practice. Hewould not have done this withoutcause . In 197AD . he wrote’ :We are people of yesterday, and fill all your places, cities,islands, forts (w alla), free cities, market places, and your verycamps .We sail withyou and serve with you as soldiers’ (mililmnus).

See Neander, vol . 1 . pp. r57-r6o. Clark'

s ed. I t may bethat the soldiers hoaxed the good Bishop by telling him a pious

story for his book. I t was an excellen t yarn at an y rate, and

Apology , 37. Adam s Nation s, 1 . i. Themean ing of w hile

is uncertain . Dr Cadoux says itmay mean on ly villages.

A901. 42 .

(on .

In his Dc uMih‘

tis m have a defence

of a soldierwho refusedtowear a laurel garland in honour

of an imperial largess, but whose conduct, in so refusing .

was disapproved of by his fellow Christians in the army,

beginning of the thirdcen tury then ,there is some evidenceof the commencernent of the breakdown of the Christian

testimony. All through that cen tury the leaders wrote

it;— but there are signs that it grew slowly, in spite ofTertullian and Origen , Cyprian , Arnobius and Lactantius.

militancymight be aChristian occupation ‘ (1 80-are A.D ).By the middle of the century the numbers of Christiansoldiers seem, from the scan ty allusion s, to be stil l small,but at the end of the cen tury to have been multiplied.

of the army or the Church . The great persecution ofDiocletian in 303 A.D. fell first upon the Christian soldiers .

pro-Christian generals who fought by the side of Con

stantine, many Christians en tered an army which woulddeliver them from that terrible bath of blood.

I n 31 2 an) . Constantin e, under the sign of the Cross,defeated Maxen tias at the Battle of theMilvian Bridgeand became aChristian Emperor.

The third cen tury was the time when the Church wasin other ways ceasing to be characteristically like itsFounder, was adopting a priesthood, creeds, and sacra

mental mysteries. After the catastrophe came, in the

momen t of apparen t triumph with Constan tine, we find

the Church begin ning to support the Empire in its wars,Cadoux . p. 232 .

353 [cm

These two edicts date with useful accuracy the ofi cin l

fall of apure Christianity.

passages against war in later Fathers,tom, Hieronymus, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, andwith much variety and contradiction, even in Augustine.

He remarks that the same Fathers who Oppose judicialoaths, of whomhe gives a long list, also owomwar. Thisis another instance of the truth that Quaker testimoniesare no fortuitous concourse, but are the revival of a singlecoheren t system of conduct taught by our Lord.

7. After Constan tine the protest against all war isheardmain ly fromreformers andheretics. It is essen tiallya criticism of the State by the conscience, and when theChurch, the organ of the corporate conscience, is itselfabsorbed by the State, such criticism becomes impossible,or very difi cult, because of the Spokesmen of the Church

with maintenance and position ), by the State, which hasnever yet felt that it could do without war.

But, though aband by the Catholic Church, theteacfi ng of Christ has neverwte ceased out of the world‘.

'

m thought and mrongly oppeeed to the sacerdotal bier

archy. They had, in fact , got back to Christ'. Theyincluded the Cathari,

'

the Patarines in Ital y in the eleven thcentm'

y and after, the Albigenses to some exten t, the

See CIm‘

st rmdWar byW. “Voices in theWilderness .

”

’ Full accounts of tbese bodies may be found in smdiss mMystical Religion , by RufusM. Jon es .

n ] WAR 353

nonites, and the Family of Love founded by HenryNicholas. A like view was common among the Sociniansat the time of the Reformation. Nor have the Quakersstood alone in our own day. Testimony, costing martyrdom and imprisonment, has been borne by the Donkhobors in Russia, and during the later and principal partof their history by the Bahais in Persia. These are saidto numberabout amillion , and it is to be feared that theyare now havingmuch hardness to endure. It would appearfromall these cases that a determined hostility to war isnot an isolated peculiarity which may cr0p up anywhere,but is found to accompany a pure mysticism, and to bepart of acertain spiritual tone and habit ofmind.

8. In all the camp ignaof the founders of Quakerism,

the flag they flew was inscribed, Primitive ChristianityRevived.

”Had theirmethods been those of the Salvation

Army, this actual banner would have been un furled inevery market place in Engand. It formed, in any case,

the burden of their plea and the con stan t appeal in theirwritings. They were hostile to the pagan elements whichhad corrupted the original gospel of Jesus, and this theyinterpreted byHis living word within them.

What were such reformers to make of the universal

necessity, and even that in many respects it was rather afine thing ? A few years passed by before the Society as

a whole taw d the’

usue . Although in the popular mind

single thing, Peace was not the heart of the Quakermessage. It was on ly a very prompt deduction from it.

gathered together, from 3652 onwards, there was somevariety of utterance . Barclay puts Peace in to his last

moving the hat, takiman oath, or going tom theatre .

He treats it with extreme brevity in his text . and does6 . Q. 23

354 THE OUTLOOK [cu.

noteven men tion it in the proposition itself. Latergenerationshave foundthat itmustholda larger relative place.

Quite early in his history, when lying in Derby gaol

in 1 650-1 . under the Blasphemy Act, George Fox wasinvited to become a Captain in the Commonwealth army.

He dechnei saying thathe lived in the virtue of that life

andpower that took away the occasion of all wars. So helay among the felons, filthily, for six mon ths more. He

thus rang true from the beginning. Nevertheless, manyreligious teachers might go so far, might declare that ,for themselves, they were out of the spirit of war,withoutseeing their way to formulate any testimony against itas a part of practical citizenship. In later years whenWilliam Penn con sulted George Fox as to whether heought to con tinue to wear his sword as part of the dressof a gen tlernan , he replied humorously,

“Wear it as longas thou canst .” This exactly expresses the podtion . Itwas an early and very general deduction from the con

sciousness of the indwelling Christ. On the other hand, we

find Fox upbraiding the Protector for not carrying out amore vigorous Protestan t foreign policy :

0 0liver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the

deceit.the l-iollanderhad been thy subjectand tributary,Germanyhad given uptohave done thy will , and the 8paniardhad quivered

like a dry leaf wan ting the virtue of God, the King of France

withered as in win ter. the’

l'

urk in al l his fatnesa should have

smoked, thou shouldst not have stood trifling about small things,butminded the work of the Lord asHe began with thee atfirst‘.

Edward Burrough wrote, in 1 659, an Epistle to theCromwellian garrison at Dunkirk, urging them to

“set up

their standards at the gates of Rome,"and

“avenge the

blood of the guiltless through all the domin ion of the

Devonshire House, Parchmen t-bound book in Portfolio 9,p. 79. Quoted byW. C. Braithwaite in TheBeginn ingso uaken

’

sm,

P~ 440 °

356 THE OUTLOOK [cm

God. George Fox had no vocabulary of psychologicalanalysis,hismindwas strong anddirect rather than subtle.

(We are indeed left to guess what it was exactly thattroubled his soul from 1 642 to But when he rosefromhis bed at Reading and wrote an Epistle on factionand on war, we need not hesitate as to the subject of hisstruggle‘. It is my belief that each man for himself wil lhave to go through some similar struggle for light on thisgreat question . The same thoroughness with which Foxfound the Indwelling Word destructive of an order ofclergy, caused himto find the law of love inconsisten t withthe military profession . This Epistle is so epoch-makingthat I will quote part of it :

All Friends, everywhere, keep out of plots and bustl in g, an dthe arm of flesh; for all these are amon gst Adam

'

s sons in the fal l ,where they are destroying men

’

s lives like dogs, beasts, and swin e,goring, reading, and biting on e another, destroying on e another,

but fromthe lusts ? Now al l this is in Adamin the fall , outofAdamthat n ever fel l , in whom there is peace and life. Ye are called to

peace, therefore follow it and that peace is in Christ, not in Adamin the fall . Al l that pretend to fight for Christ are deceived ; forhis kingdomis n ot of this world, therefore his servan ts do notfight.Fighters are not of Christ

’

s kingdom, but are without Christ’skingdsin His kingdom stands in peace and righteousn ess, but

fighters are in the lust ; and all that would destroymen’

s l ives, are

n ot of Christ'

s mind, who came to save men ’

s lives . Christ’

s

kingdom is not of this world; it is peaceable : and all that are instrife, are not of his kingdom. Al l that pretend to fight for theGospel ,are deceived ; for the Gospel is the power ofGod,whichwas

before the devil , or fall of man was ; and the gospel of peace wasbefore fighting was . Therefore they that pretend fightin g, are

ignoran t of the gospel ; and al l that tal k of fighting for Sion , are

in darkn ess for Sion needs no such helpers . Al l such as pretend

The sequen ce in time may n ot be so close as this. NormanPenn ey, in his notes to the journ al , vol . 1 . (Camb. poin ts out

that the historical order in the journal is con fused here. But the

alterations in the E llwood edition were probably made w ithsome know ledge of the true sequen ce.

358 THE OUTLOOK [cm

Declaration is still prin ted in the Book of Discipline, inVol . l l . of the curren t edition , p. 1 39. From that position ,

now definitely reached, there has never been any official

9. Near it is prin ted the paragraph issued in the

Epistle of 1 804, during the Napoleon ic war, which, in itsmotive and circumstances, the nature of the coun try’sdanger, and the state of public opinion , resembles not

It runs as followsWe feel bound explicitly to avow our con tinued unshaken

persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plainprecepts of our Divin e Lord and Lawgiver, and with the wholespirit and tenor oi s Gospel ; and that no plea of necessity or of

policy, however urgen t or peculiar, can avail to release either

owe untoHimwho hath said, Love your en emies. To carry out

such a profession con sisten tly is indeed a high attainmen t, but itshould be the aimof every Christian . I t is a solenmthing to standforth to the nation as the advocates of in violable peace ; and our

testimony loses its efi cacy in proportion to the wan t of con

sisten cy in any amongst us.

Friends at that time, however, were con ten t to maintain a passive attitude, and to eschew propaganda; forin the Epistle of the following year, 1 805, Friends are

advised not to make the war a topic of conversation and

to be peaceful themselves in words and actions. At thesame time they paid theirmilitia fines and wen t to prisonwhen necessary. Pitt exempted themas a body from con

scription . The Friends' family of Fox , at Falmouth. who

were shippers, came, through no action of their own , in topossession of a quan tity of French prize money, and

devoted much effort to find out by advertisemen t inFrance towhom theymight return itas its rightful owners.

This piece ofunusual con scien tiousness attracted the noticeof certain kindred spirits in France . The result was thatsome bodies of separatists fromthe Catholic Church joined

n ] WAR 359

the Society of Friends, and main tained for two or three

Congen ies in the South of France. These little bodiesfinally faded out. Conscription drove theiryoungmen fromthe coun try.

It is noticeable that to-day Friends are by no meansminded to seek seclusion in time ofwar, butare using everyeffort that the press and public meetings place at theirdisposal to influence the nation in favour of a moredemocratic foreign policy, of justice, and friendly feel ingtowards the populations with whomwe have been at war,and of a permanen t settlement which would produce a

in aEurope divided on principles of nationality and n ot ofempire‘.

1 0. My readers will naturally desire to know how the

testimony has fared among Friends for two hundred andfifty years, and whether experience has shown it to be atenable position . In England, for the most part, Friends

’

faith in ithad notbeen greatly tried un til 191 6. It has beena simple matter to avoid joining the army or navy,militiaor volun teers or territorials. On ly in the days of thepress gang and the compulsory capture of sailors for our

fleets in the Napoleonic wars has any difficult testimon yhad to be borne. It has been nobly borne when requiredboth then and in early days’.

In Ireland a critical time arose in the rebellion of 1 798,when the Catholic rebels and the English troops werescattering terror and massacre through the coun try.

1 From a return presen ted to the YearlyMeeting of i g r5 , it

seems that over 300 PeaceMeetings were held in the first n ine

months of the war, withman v meetings al so on Christ andWar.

3 For Richard Sel lar'

s case see Besse’

s Sufim’

ngs of the People

cal led Quakers, vol . 1 1 . p. 1 1 2 , and amodern pamphlet by JoshuaRown tree (Northern Friends

’

PeaceBoard,ThirskRow ,Well in gtonStreet, L eeds) . For Thomas Lurting seeW. C . Braithwaite, TheBegin n ings of Quakerism, p. 52 1 .

360 [cm

sporting purposes, and left themselves absolutely nu

protected. Not a single one of the solitary Quaker homeswas molested : not a single Friend lost his life, except onewhohadputon aun iformandused arifle. They shelteredand fed the refugees from both sides, and were helpful inthe restoration of peace. The triumph of the law of Christwas real andmemorable‘.America was the scene of the most extensive real test

of Quaker principles in early days. The story of Pennsylvan ia is, of course, the classical case, the

“ holy experi

men Throughout the fron tier wars against the Indians,not only in Pennsylvania, but elsewhere, the policy of theQuaker colonists was never to carry arms, nor even to bolttheir doors, and it resulted in their possessing a securitywhich fire-arms could not give. This was strikingly thecase in New England, in 1 704, where the Irish experiencewas exactly foreshadowed. The Indians left the Quakerfarms alone, devoting themselves to killing Presbyterian swho had killed their people and taken their lands’.Regarded as an examme of a State existing without

war andwithout soldiers, the holy experimen t was not

decisive, inasmuch as the province was a part of theBritish Empire and was defended by its armies and fleets .

The British colonies were frequen tly involved in war withthe French on their northern border, and the safety ofPennsylvania from conquest was ensured by the defencemade by New York and New England. Demands for a

Governmen t on the Assembly of Pennsylvania and con

stituted a difficulty of principle. Thematterwas generallysolved by a vote of supply to the Governmen t for generalpurposes, the responsibility of its application being thusleft to the home authorities. The amoun t was al so

i

See Journal of Thomas Chalkley, pp. 40-46.

362 rm: ourroox [cir.

towards the corruption often associated with modernPennsylvanian politics. Thus the suppression of the mosthopeful political element in the American Colonies waspart of the price we paid for the conquest of Canada.

If the advice of such colonial statesmen as James

taken , the troubles arising out of the Stamp Act mighthave been ended without war, a calamity brought on bythe hotheads in Boston Harbour“. A small body ofFriends who felt free to fight in 1 775 separated from the

general body in Philadelphia, and started a single MeetingHouse of their own on this question , but this body of“ Free Quakers ” was too small to survive’. The Societymain tained its principles and practices in tact throughoutthe revolutionary war. When the CivilWar broke out

in 1 861 the difficulty was real and even insoluble. Friendshad devoted themselves formany years to the freedomofthe slave ; they had formed the backbone and the handsand feet of the Abolitionist party, and to man y of themthere presen ted itsel f a choice of evils. To fight mean t toabandon one dearly-loved principle ; not to fight mean tnot to raise a hand for the maintenance of the un ity oftheir country and the freedom of the negroes. In thesecircumstances a considerable number of young men wen tto the war. Their disciplinary treatment by the Societyvaried from complete forgiveness to disownmen t . The

question of membership is a local question with Friends,decided by the Mon thly Meeting and Monthly Meetingsdiffered. In the East, the rule again st war wasmain tainedwith more severity than in the Middle States, and on the

whole rather more severely among the Orthodox thanamong the Hicksite Friends.

It must, however, be admitted that we have here to

See I saac Sharpless, The Quakers in the Revolution .

This branch was organ ised in 1 781 and held meetings till1 836. Sharpless, The Quakers in the Revolution .

11 ] 363

record a partial departure under very difl‘

rcult circumstances frorn the absoluteness of the testimony against allwar. It is probable that in this tangled ww ld itmay beimpossible at all times to main tain any definite rule ofconduct without exceptions. At times the best one can dois to choose between two evils. Let thom who have not

been similarly tried refrain from passing judgmen t.Friends in the Southern States bore the full brunt of areally savage persecution for refusing the Con federatecon scription . They were at times driven in to the line offire, but refused to shoot . Their thrilling story istoldin

Southern Heroes inWar Time.

The recen t world war brought the problem again tothe fron t more urgen tly than ever. In the United Statesa denominational exemption from military service wasgiven—and mostly accepted. But in England and

AustraliaandNew Zealand no such privilege was gran ted.

It was repudiated by English Friends, though apparen tlythe governmen t would have gran ted it. But Friendsdesired no soft privilege, and would not desert the othersoutside their own body, who declined to serve as amatterof conscience . Ultimately 32 per cen t . of the availableyoung men in the Society, j oined the forces‘. Thesewere nearly all Friends by birth, and their Quakerism,

in many, though not in al l cases, was more traditionalthan personal . The remaining two thirds of themen liableunder conscription served their coun try in the Friends’

Ambulance Unit, theWar Victims’ Relief Work, theEmergency Committee for the relief of foreigners in distress,

“work of national importance under Tribunal s, or

in prison . There were in prison 279Friends andregisteredAttenders, of whom 1 34 accepted the Home Office Scheme.

Thus, to sum up, the Society has had to bear itstestimony, in face, n ot only of dubious wars like those inthe Crimea and South Africa, but of the most righteous

Official Recordmade by theMeeting for Suffer-ings.

364 ms ourLoorr lea.

wars waged by the most single-mindedarmies whichhaveever fought. The Society learn t its in fan t steppings, atfirst shaky, in the shadow of the friendly presence ofthe Ironsides. The very existence of European nationsagainst Napoleon , its own cause of freedom for the

hegemony of Germany, have had to be considered by this

of a pertinacity which has needed to be well founded onfaith, and on the whole has not failed.

1 1 . The situation now and in all the above wars hasbeen truly tragic. A tragedy is not a mere calamity, nora struggle between good andevil both con fessed, but thereis tragedy where good is pitted against good in hopelessconflict, or where we are in such a case that our choice lieson ly between two evils, as was the case in most Greektragedy.

“Our citizenship is in heaven ,

”butwe have one

on earth also. They call in differen t ways. Happily in thiswar, un til conscription came, a solution was found andvigorously followed up in ambulance, hospital , and otherrelief work, and in the many forms of national servicewhich were needed at home. Though we cannot fire, wedid not keep out of the firing line .

In morals there can be no claim like that of a preferential creditor who must be completely satisfied before

peting for ourallegiance, our testimony for peace can claimno such isolated and privileged position . It must haveweight al ong with other duties, relying only upon its

natural strength. Claims to an overwhelming absoluteness

the crimes which have been committed by good men .

Loyal ty to the Roman Church produced the Inquisition ,

and obedience to revealed truth as understood by theProtestan t led Calvin to burn Servetus. A one-sidedpatriotism has much bloodshed to answer for in many a

366 rue oe oox (cu.

unifiedgovernmentanda nnifiedjusticen uchaaamid allthe bloodshed. remainedat the back of the idealismwhichlooked to the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See forthose blessings. It looked vainly for the most part, butstill the thought of peace nnder a single empire and underthe sway of a single spiritual potentate never quite diedout of the world till the power of those who held so un

worthily thou great offices was destroyed by the Reformation .We have since then relied on little but force forliberty, security and empire ; though happily there are

exceptions to so general a statemen t.Eumpe has obeyed the maxim, I f you want peace

prepare forwar," that is, rely for securitywhollyupon fear.

The nation s of EurOpe must reform, if not absolutelytogether, at least not independen tly of one another.Wedid not succeed by our press andour diplomacy before thewar in immsing a bettermin-J upon the militarism of thethree European Empires. Nor are we ourselves quite fitto be saved for Peace. Our presshas definitely con tributedto the European strain ; our armamen t interest has beeninfluential andwe have hadour Imperial ist periods.We, of this time, have been witnesses of the reasonedworship of force. Themind of the conquerorhas ruled,andEurope has lived under pride and fear. It has surelybecome plain at last even to the fighting lords that theattempt of every nation to be stronger than every othernation rs an arithmetical impossibility , and the way topolitical destruction . Themaximthat If you wan t peaceprepare for war,

”has been for ever discre dited, and an

object 10.sson has been given on avast scale that forEurope,as formen ,

the only safe rule to obey is Keep thy heartwith all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

”The

Spirit of war has led to the fact of war. A long course ofpsychological inflammation has finally broken through theskin and discharged its vile products. The idea of power,profit and welfare obtained through the use of force must

u] 367

henceforth be discrediwd, and the minds of the nationsbe given to an organisation of Europe whichwill prevent

into villages, tribes, provinces, nations, poin t to a further

empires has turned out to be a false stepmade over andover again in all parts of the world. Never has an empireremained finally stable . All military empires have fallen ;nations have survived. It lies with the British Empiretobecorne an empire on ly in name, in spirit a con federacyof autonomous nations, or it too will follow in the wakeof the long succession of failures, without evolutionaryvalue.

The mind of the governmen ts before 191 4 expresseditself in armamen ts ; and these, rising higher and higher,finally toppled over. For the mobilisation of armaments,

would risk losing a day’

s advan tage.

1 2 . Our testimony against all warmust not, however,be extended to a universal testimony against all use offorce. Force isalwaysapoor andun satisfactory expedien tit does not make for settlemen t and stability anywhere.

Nevertheless it still has a lowly and dimin ishing place inhuman affairs.We use itwith horses and dogs, and in thelast resort with children .We use it with drunkards,criminals, lunatics, and with all son s of Belial : we live incomfort under police protection , we prosecute offenders.

In uncivilised countries we might even have to meetcriminal violence more directly than we do at home.

Friends have never taken up the position of Tolstoy , who

was against all government . Even in the schoolswhich heestablished forvillage children nochildwas obliged to learnanything or to behave in a schoolroom manner. Theymight and did ldck in a heap on the floor when they werenot interested. All Tolstoy’s in tellectual position s are

ultimate ones, properly called ideals. They rarely have

368 THE OUTLOOK [cm

their bases fixed in the firm ground of experience. Theyare akin to the cloud-capped towers, the dream worldsof the imagination . He was a great creative artist, living

scored the minds of his readers deep with the impressionshe has brought thence, in the light that neverwas on seaor Ian

But when his imaginative ethic had to be realisedwhen Coun tshad to become peasants, authors had to haveno property in their books, when Russian Liberal Governmen ts andHague Con ferenceswere held to bemere tain tedcompromises, then even an affectionate disciple realisesthat hemust go to Tolstoy forhis boiler power, but not for

Therefore it is only roughly true to describe Friends’

attitude as one of n on-resistance, common as it is to do so.

Besides the resistance against violence which we all makeofficially through the police, it is not difficult to imaginecases in which the lives, and more than the lives, of ourfamilies, or of helpless people, the aged, or women , or

children , dependen t upon us could be saved only by a

sufiicient use of force upon the criminal aggressor. It isnever wise to enclose a positive principle in the form of anegative prohibition . A definite command, exact to theletter, that no force should ever be used in resistance toviolence and wrong, is too mechanical tomeet every case.Wemust, then , expressourChristian duty by some positivelaw,adaptable to circumstances ; and I findthat in the Lawof Loving-kindness. Ifwe keep that as our cen tral motivein dealing with all our fellow creatures and persist therein ,

we shal l have a sufficien t guide.

If we seek for some defin ite poin t below which forceis proper, but above which it should be avoided, it mustbe foun d by considering the psychology of the person to becoerced. The lunatic, the criminal , and to a less ex ten tthe animal or the child, have to be coerced just so far as

370 [CH

scientific knowledge and literary research, industry, a

sense of duty, soun d family life ; all the qualities whichneed self-con trol and adevotion to the service of a family,an employer or the state. Their faults weremainly due toover-governmen t,adespoticstate, an aristocraticorganisa

violence without the people being criminal s. This is quitetrue. The crimes of Governmen ts abound. Statesman seemto justify their sins by ascribing them to the pressure of

coun try’s, or even your party’8, good have so muchal truism in them, that they seem to become sanctified.

But, when all is said, a criminal State surrounded byinnocen t and in jured States does not represen t theEuropean grouping. All break treaties ; al l divide upotherpeople’

s property ; all make secret arrangemen ts at theexpense of a third, weaker, party.

Let us not suppose then , that the civilised nations of

call. I n daily life in al l coun tries they behave themselves

all . This is clearly a region in which the appeal to forceis no longer appropriate . There is something better thanforce to appeal to in al l coun tries, and there is no reasonwhy themorals of the average individual should not, in thelong run , be represen ted in themoral s of the Governmen t .

as lunatics. This is the cen tral reasoned foundation of ourtestimony against war, while we admit that force cannot

than the level which human nature in civilised lands hasreached. What wan ts mending is the bad mechanism ofGovernment . The nations are still organiwd on lines Of

war, with armies and navies, general s and admirals,

n ] WAR 37x

emperors andWar Ofiices. The next stage is to establisha mechanism built to man ufacture peace. It would fitthe modern world. l t may be said safely that now no

Democracy will fight of its own accord for aggression , but

on ly when it believes that it is fighting in self-defence.

military oath resigned in to the hands of his superiors suchnaturalmotives of humanity as would weaken his fightingefi ciency . Brute forcehas resumed its sway on both sides.

For non-combatan ts in danger from hostile troops the

The obedience of the soldiercannot be avoided if we areto have military action at al l . Any emancipation of hiswill is a dangerous idea to play with. I f the soldier is to

exercise his judgment,he and not the civil authority rulesthe coun try.We are landed at once in amilitary dictatorfailed even in the noble hands of Cromwell.

1 3. The distinction in many people’s minds betweenofiensive and defensive war is so decisive that we cann ot

would say that they whol ly disapprove of aggression , but

that to defend their hearths and homes is a difierent

thought is carried so far nowadays that no nation avows

plain such may be to other nations and to the more in

to be persuaded that the war of the momen t is strictlya war of defence: so that now every war becomes a “

war

of defence ” on both sides. There was no single one of the

claim to be on the defensive,and to have been driven in towar by the necessity ofmain taining their homes or theirmanner of life. This is something gained. It was not

24—2

372 THE OUTLOOK [crr.

have insulted him if they had suggested that he was

anything but a mighty conqueror. NO such scruples

laureate poet bade themalways spare the conquered andwar down the proud.

” Such was Virgil'

s forecast of thedestiny of Rome 1 . TheTreitschke school of German writers

tion .We shall not be able therefore to accept at their facevalue all defensive wars. The rivalries of EurOpe con tainan elemen t of attack on both sides. I n the strife of Slavand Teuton we cannot discover a wolf and a lamb. The

BoerWar, which looked like an attack by a great empireupon a small free nation , was more accurately a con test

had any particular right to be where it was. Wars Of puredefence were, however,much commoner in the past, when

1 The sonorous lin es are in Am id vr. 847-853.and are part ofthe wel l-known speech of Anchises to his son Aeneas in re

'

ference

to the fnture city :

Excuden tal ii spiran tiamol lins aera

(Credo equidem) vivos ducent de marmore vultus.

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

(Others wil l mould with gen tler touch the breathing bron ze(so foron e I believe) andwill draw fromoutthemarble living faces.

They wil l speclr z.tar in the courts, and will measure with a rod

themovemen t. 3 sky, and name the stars as they rise . Thou,

to spare the con queredandwar down the proud.)

Thus did the Roman poet compare the Greek spirit with thatof his own people.

374 THE OUTLOOK [crr.

have saved their lives. In the actual sack of eastern

Belgum, they wouldhave had no such selfish temptation .

The Society of Friends then , as a body, has nO place

take lines of their own . The immrative law of the purified

soul , on which the lineaments of Christ have been im~

pressed,must prevail, where it conflicts with what wouldotherwise be the imperative cal l to national or local co

but we can on ly change the pattern by refusing to use it,and if need be by suffering for doing so.

The recen t warwas not to be accoun ted for asasimpledisagreemen t between Germany andGreat Britain . It wasthe outbreak and the resrrlt of a bad systern of interna

ou fleets and armies, and the amoun t of force behind anambassadorwas what gaveweight tohis views . The wholesystemof Europehas been distrustful, full ofambition andfear ; al l foreigners have been regarded as poten tial enemiesun tilmutual self-in terest turns themin to allies ; theworship

We Friends are hostile to al l this from its beginningto its consummation . In so far as our own coun try hasbeen a partner in it, as it has, we are isolated from our

own coun try also. This is true, even though it has not

been thought possible for a single coun try to isolate itselffromthe system. When , therefore,the systemexplodes,we

disapproval , and in spending our strength in working fora better order. The claim of the nation is no longer thehighest with us, because it has denied the highest .Nevertheless we recognise that the fleet and the army

rij WAR 375

feel it necessary at al l times to condemn our government

the late Caroline E. Stephen , in her well-known book,Quaker Strongholds (page 1 20, cheap edition ; page 1 35,original edition), as follows

To abstain , on mese grounds, frorn al l participation in warfare

theory as to the un lawfuln ess of war. I own that it does not

appear to rne to be right or wise to blame those who are actingin obedience to their own views of duty, hom ermuch they may

to ignme the force of the w nfidm fious by whichm appeau to

many people to be justified. I would rnyself even go further, and

in whichmen may be actually bound tofight in what they believetobe ajust causen lthough it does not l believq fol low that everyindividual wouldbejustified in taking part in suchwarfare.Wouldany on e say that at the time of the l ndianMutiny the GovernorGeneral of l ndia ought not to have permitted the use of arms forthe protection of the women and children ? I doubt whether anyFriend won ld be found tomaintain this . But it is equal ly to be

remembered that no true Friend could well have orz'rpied the

beginning of itshistory been thoroughlyChristian could, I suppose,have found itsel f in the position which we occupied in l ndia in

3857.Were al l the world, in the true and full sense of the word,

Christian , such events obviously would not occur. Had we been

must have been differen t, and would (as we Friends believe) have

I 4. The difference between military action and policeactionwas early faced by Friends. IsaacPenington ,alwaysa leading spokesman for the Society, wrote a pamphlet,Som

'

ewhat Spoken to a Weighty Question concerningthe Magistrates’ Protection of the This work

i I n his CollectedWorks.

376 THE OUTLOOK [cm

deals carefullywith the relationship of the forcible coercionof criminals to the Christian law of love. Peningtoncon templates the case of those who “

are forbidden by thelove and law of God written in their hearts to fight forthemselves ” even against criminal violence. He says that

fighting is not suitable to a gospel spirit, but to thespirit of the world and the children thereof. The fightingin the gospel is turned inward against the lusts, and not

outward against the creatures.”In reply to the criticism

that under this scheme n on-combatan ts are yet receivingthe benefit of aprotection to which theydo notcon tribute,he poin ts out that the path of moral advance must begradual, andmust begin with individuals.

“This blemdstate which shall be brought forth in the general in God’sseason must begin in particulars, and they therein are notprejudicial to the world, but emblems of that blessed statewhichtheGodofGloryhathpromisedtosetupin the worldin the days of the gospel.” This argumen t is not nowadaysparticularly needed over the question of police protection ,

on which general agreemen t exists, but one has often tomeet it concerning the protection afforded by the Armyand Navy, fromwhich the man of peace cannot help, as

population is represen ted by a long andwavering column ,

pushed back and forward, and the whole nation can on lyactatorbehind the centre of gravity of the column . Nevertheless those who are working at the head of the line for

better things are the greatest helpers of the nation . Isaac

of a nation and the seed of God the support of the earth,then where-righteousness is brought forth, and where theseed of God springs up and flourishes, that nation growsstrong.

”In the course of this paper he says : “ I speak

not against any magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign

'

invasion ormaking use of the swordto suppress the violen t andevil-doers within their borders,

379 [cm

(x)When the Governmen t insisted on attendance at

the services of the Church of England Friends endured a

bitter persscution for a whole generation for refusing to

They bore the brunt of the Nonconfor-mist battle in the

(a) They refused to recog’

nise marriage by a priest.

and the law in reply refused to sanction their marrisges

therefore, illegitimate to begin with, but as early as r661

the Law decided in their favour, and Friends ceased to

which began in 1 689and ended in 1 888.

(4) They refused to pay Church rates and tithe to

tions, un til the latter hal f of the nineteen th cen tury , theysubmitted to the distraint of their goods in consequence.On Church rates they won in 1 868, but on tithe the

the Government has won its battle by putting the tithenot upon the tenan t butupon the landlord, as a tithe rentcharge. In any case, the selling value of the land was lower,

ithad been bought cheaper because of the liability to tithe ,

so that the Friend actually found himself endeavouring intheory to make an illegitimate profit out of his refusal ;though in practice distrain t and law are not cheap. The

matter has now settled down and payment is regularlymade, it being felt that the landowner is not, and neverhas been , the owner of the tithe ; and that al l landhas beenbought and is held subject to it. The landlord is only thevehicle of paymen t . These four examples seem to poin tto where an individual can , and cann ot revolt .

n ] WAR 379

On the other hand Ffiends pay war tm and the

of our tax whichgoes forwarpurposes and thatwhichdoes

not, and even if we could find aproportion and only pay

accoun t for war charges, we have no. reason for believing

bound to support.

Secondly, the tithe analogy holds here. All business

payments are regulated on the basis of taxation as it

stands. Every bsrgain talnes atax intoaccount. Indirectly

to pay would in fact be attemt o get an unfair

advantage, inasmuch as full paymen t has been alreadyal lowed for in our financial arrangements.

were no longer liable to taxation , whilst not an argumen tto be pushed to the end nor sufiicient of itself, does

resistance which, even if spiritually justified, wouldcertain ly be economically futile.

Fourthly, we are compelled to receive the protectionwhich the Army and Navy provide,and it seems a naturalcorol lary fromthat that the payment for it should also becompulsory. Yet beyon d all question the surest condition

and fleets.We can be embarrassed in practice or in argumentif youalteroneon ly of the conditions,butifwehadourway al together, no one can gainsay its practical excellence.

On the whole, then , in stepping from conscription to

me oe oox (on .We may fairly gomuch further along with our fellow

citizens in a country in which we have a share in tbe

government than we need go under an autocracy . In this

coun try we ourselw s are the governing order; and afterwe have given our vote it is right, un less in very extremecases, to abide by the nationalMon un til it actuallytouches the sensitive places of the inwardman . l iwe lived

under a despotisrn , we should be much less responsible

for the actions of the State and so be muchmore free todefeat them if we could.

1 6. Why the moral law should not be binding uponStates as upon individuals, to use the famous principleuttered in the ears of the nation by John Bright. I havenever heard. nor can any reasoned answer be given ;nevertheless the most extraordinary diversities betweencorporate and individual ethics do exist . Take, forinstance, the curren t conception of national hon our. The“ honour” of an individual works at times in away almostoppodte to the

“ honour” of anation . An honourablemanis one who declines to take any advantage over his neigh

hour,eitherby violence, legality ordeceit. He is scrupulous

to set right any financial advan tage which he may haveimproperly or acciden tally gained. A secret treaty withthe people who live at No. r against the interests of thosewho live at No. 2 would not be made by an honourableman . All dodges he avoids. As a trustee he can be relied

upon to take care of the interests of his wards and not toexploit them or sell an ybody else a concesnon to exploitthem. He would not make a profit out of selling a

poisonous drug like opium to people who do not wan t it.He would not grind the faces of his weakest employees.

National diplomacy, on the other hand, devotes itself torivalry in the exploitation of the dark races for whomwe

are trustees. It regularlymakes secret clauses and secrettreaties it habitually ignores the welfare of populationswhen bargain ing for power or profit ; it is not anxious


During the life of Euripides Athens passed frommagnanimity to gm d under the influence of an Imperialism,

which grew baser as the Empire grew l.

1 7. He who would deny that war can ever be a

builder of good character has again st him nomean arrayof testimony. All literature which treats of war, withexceptions notable through their very fewness, treatsitas a cause anda sign of cen tral nobility of character. As

an exception stands The TrojanWomen of that terribleand unpopular truth-teller Euripides’. There are alsoin quite modern days,other realistic records like his' . But

Homer andVirgil, Shakespeare and Spenser, Bunyan and

Scott, thought far otherwise, with all the ballad writers,romancers andchivalric poets. The Psalms are full of war.

“The Wars of Arthur and Roland ” made even JohnRuskin , that great prophet of peace, hesitate puzzled‘.

This an cien t testimonymust be behaved as true in its day .

Modern tendernesshadnotyetarrived. Human personalityhad not yet become the cen tre of social devotion , and

recognised as the gateway to God ; and the feeling ofhuman bro therhood which follows that faith had as yet

little vogue. Humanity has of late appreciated in valueas tribal gods have faded away,with theircelestial sanctionto hatred. As States and Empires have increased, warhashad less connection with the safety of hearth and home,and its root in greed andambition has becomemore plain .War has always been the greatest of sports—a gameplayed with the last andhighest stakes. Beside the excite

See the Introductory Essay to the Bacchus in Prof. GilbertMurray ’

s Euripides.

Geo. Allen and Unwin .

Suchas Tolstoy'

sWar andPeace, orZola’

sDebacle,andmanybooks about the late war.

See Appendix to The Crown ofWild Olive.

rr] WAR 383

men t of it, hun ting and Al pine climbing become child's

that sport is generally allowed to do for character wardoes, or did,more. And, in addition , behind it lay at theback of the warrior’s mind some loyal ty believed to beworth dying for. Every soldier is pulled up to a certain

poin t of self-con trol, toughn ess, courage, alertness, andgeneral character, and those who start below that levelwill still find amoral ton ic in war.

attainmen t, war begins to do character harm. It levelsdown aswellasup. Itsmechanical uniformity is deadening,initiative (especially in privates) is atrophied. Everymanwhohas handed himself over to the machine has but littleuse for his higher brain cen tres. Our professional ofi cersare generally good fellows, but few of themthink : they aresimple loyal men for the most part, in England modest

perfected and is the main national cult, the oflicers are

of violen t villainy rampan t—murder, robbery, the ruin of

horror and the making ofmore. Sympathy, hard hit andexhausted, flees away, and no man can live un less he

becomes, for a time,master again . Theman is henceforthlike a beast who has tasted blood. He becomes like a

demoral ised collie who has once worried a sheep, and itwill cost himan eflort to gethismind out of uniformwhenhe return s home. He bears in himfor life a soiled memory

Nevertheless he has coun ted not his life dear un to

See, among many other records, A Private in the Gm ds byStephen Graham.

384 THE OUTLOOK

himsel f,he is (we assume in the typical case) abravemanand I coun t courage the cen tral quality ofaman

'

smake-up,

as love and purity of awoman ’

s. Physical courage, at any

and sacrifice, for courage and the risks which high sportbrings? On ly, I think, if held as a faith singlemindedly,not as an opportun ist or an economist holds it. ForGod

andMan ”is a loftier cry than

“For King and Coun try.

”

To treasure the in tegri ty of the Christ within is to cherishavestal fire not less dear than the hearths of private homes :to go to prison for refusing conscription may be harderthan to hold a trench. The con tempt of one’

smates putsaman in to the firing line. To face amob has its risks.

Moreover, our ordinary industrial life, in workshops,among furnaces, on railways, in drain s, on the ocean , is

always turning up heroes. So long as diseases are fataland in fectious, but must be nursed, so long as Societysuffers from poverty, from drink and degrading vice, theneed for Paladins, for knights erran t and hon ourablewomen , presses daily upon us. Not war alone demandsthat men “ live dangerously ” and dare great adven ture.

emprise, in the effort toexplore the secrets still hidden fromscience—to learn tomakemore beautiful things—to pleadwith, persuade and strive withmen .

1 8. It is well carefully and ten tatively to discuss the

possibilities of the future as practical men , not hoping fortoo much, and thankful for a little step in the right direction . The immediate need is a real League of Nations.

But our hope penetratesmuch higher than this. This doesn ot satisfy our vision . Farmore deadly is our real attackupon war.We kn ow that the safest plan of all , and thecheapest, is to have no armies or navies at al l . Then no

man need be afraid. It is only upon itself that militarismfeeds. Take away its diet and it dies.

386 THE OUTLOOK [cm

to the ruin of the nations. It is, nevertheless,my opinion

of this kind beforewe attempt topushourPeace prOposal sto the uttermost . There are other serious faults in Societywhich help tomake war. Edward Carpen ter, in his recen tbook, The Heal ing of the Nations, ascribes al l war to theexploitation of the poor by the rich, and would try toabolish vicious class distinctions in the in terests of Peaceamong nations. It is common to hear people say that solong as our organisation of society at home is so bad, and

the distribution of wealth so unequal, we cannot hOpe to

put down war. I desire tO put in aplea against this order

otprocedure , and against waiting for the tarrying wisdomof ademocracy before we attempt to organise the nations.

Changes come one at a time.We shall, I trust, abolish

world, war is the next due to be abolished. Poverty willoutlast war.War is so wasteful, somad, so hostile to allthat we value in character, it is so plain ly a feature of a

savage past, that it will be wise to concen trate eflort on

eflort too widely, til l all else of human ill is on its way tocure. Almost al l people are in their hearts against war.

Nearly everybody hates it or disapproves of it, andmenon ly accept it because they believe they are helpless undernecessity.War is n o longer a natural function of human

war.War in Europe is due to the bad mechanism ofit is doomed. On the other hand the capitalist system of

the majority of Englishmen . There are, again , in everycoun try large bodies of people who believe in autocracyor in aristocracy as the organ of governmen t. Perhaps

11 ] WAR 387

over half of the people of EurOpe would be found to be

of this Opinion . On the whole, then , I should not feel

inclined to be dismayed or to pause because of the difi

cultieswhichPeacehas toconfront fromthe lack of humanfreedomor the ignorance or gullibility of the population ,

20. Our second obstacle is the fact that there can

hardly be permanent peace so long as the consciousness

of nationality is widely denied. Nationalism, like love orreligion , may be a good or an evil thing.When itmeansnational aggrandisemen t, con tempt of other nations, thedesire to assimilate themm‘ to erect tarifls against them,

it has become a dangerous evil, but when it is struggling

sai genesis. It need not be iden tical with a race. Belgiumand Scotland con tain at least two races each. It need not

elemen ts as a common race, a common language, a com

on ly absolute essen tial ) a sentimen t of sel f-consciousness.

Europe is really in itspresen t trouble because the nationalities of the East of Europe have been in bonds. Germany

governed Serbs and Czechs, Slovaks and Poles, Roumanians, Croats and Italians, Russiahas governed F

‘

mnsand Poles, Ukrainians and Roumanians, Turkey has

have governed badly, have attempted to destroy the

language and the national feeling of the conquered races ;and with such exceptions as that of the Poles in Galiciathey have been denied full and free citizenship.

It is a strange fact that nation s do not die. Cen turies

Roumanians. The Irishman , the Scotchman and the

Welshman show little sign of absorption even in thehiendly25—3

388 THE OUTLOOK [cm

English stock. But all Empires die. Political historyrecords little else than their rise, stroug h and decay. Thestory of human evolution through long ages is the storyof aperpetual increase of the size of the unitwithin which

there is peace. The family has consolidated in to the tribe,

Over and over again the fal se step in to empire has beenmade and has been retraced. Not even a thousand yearsof Rome have made Europe in to a Roman nation . Nor

did a second millennium of the Eastern Empire leaveaunited nation centring atConstan tin ople. The next stepin the in tegration of peoples is the step of Federation , and

on ly on these lineswill Great Britain escape the doomofhergreat forerunners. Letus then in all European settlemen tsease to ign ore, as the diplomatists have consisten tly donein the past, the claims of nationality, even in conqueredanddefeated peoples. Letthis be the steady purpose before

2 1 . The third difficulty is the curren t doctrine ofEmpire. On all sides we hear that Germany has “ lost ”

Alsace-Lorraine, that Austria“wanted Sal onica, that

Germany “wan ted ” Antwerp and Belgium, that to

”acquire ” the tropical colonies is the motive at the backof German aggression , and so forth. It is supposed thatthe coun try which " gets ” those advan tageous ports or

colonies will carry on more trade and grow rich. Fromthebeginning to the end this is a delusion . To govern a

coun try is one thing, to own it is quite an other. Neitherthe governmen t of France nor the governmen t of Germanyhas ever own ed or can ever own Alsace-Lorraine. Itbelongs to a number of holders of property whoaremostlyits own inhabitan ts. If German s expect to get tea and

coffee froma tropical colony of theirs they will have to buyit from those who grow it, exactly as if it belonged toGreat Britain . The German trading community in

An twerp is al ready large, and so long as we have Free

390 THE OUTLOOK [cm

Russia keep us out by tsriffs, as doalso our own colonies

to a large extent. The preferencegiven toBritishgoods in

Canada is such as to give us an advantage over other

importers, but no equality with the home manufacturer.

To understand how slight, though real , is the perversionand block caused by a tarifl , we must realise that international trade pulses round the world, itmay be in a long

vents English silk going intoMadagascar,and insists thaton ly Frenchsilk shall go. So far it is ablock to the English

silk trade, but something comes fromMadagascar to payfor that silk, say cocoanuts. Who buys these? They aresold to whoever will buy, and it is possible that someonein England is the buyer. Whom does Englan d pay ? She

to make up to her for her silk exported to hfadagascar.

Thus, though the English silk trade suflers, themachinerytrade gains. This is a shortcircuit consisting only of threeexchanges. International trade is often far more complicatesi. All that a tarifl does is to hinder the circulation ofthe blood of commerce at one poin t,andits principal efiectis to make the protected article dear to the con sumerand a source of artificial profit to the producer. But

the circulation finds its way round by more devious

econ omically valuable only if, by European oversight,turbulen t tribes can be repressed and the conditionsfavourable to business be established. The country whichdoes this work of governmen t obtain s the first right to runmines and build railways in such a coun try. All thefigures, however, show that these privileges by n o meansrepay the costs of conquest and administration . The real

poin t is that the latter are paid by the taxpayer,while theconcessions go to a few wealthy ‘irms. Great Britain ,

however, need n ot be afraid on this poin t . Somuch of the

11 1 WAR 39!

for the investment of capital there are farmore numerousthan we have yet taken up.

One further object of colonisl expsnsion is supposedto be tofind roomfor surplus population . Surplus popula

tion, however, is by no means bound to go to coloniw

controlled fromhome. Germans are as free as Englishmentogo toAmerica. The state ofWisconsin andcertain partsalready. Forty German papers are or were published in

the city of Philadelphia. Theirown colonies they neglected.

great that there was no surplus population before the war.

Amillim and ahal f Russians had to be brought in everyautumn to reaptheharvest. England, and to a less extentGermany, are following France in the diminution of their

We here become aware of the real reason for the desire

are for the most pm't on ly too pleased to escape from

militarism. Not without reason do Army and Navyl e aguss talkmuch of the expansion of their country as a

world power. That is, nation s fight to get colonies, andcolonies are to grow fighters. Militarism exists to supplyits own nee ds on ly. Let it, however, be clearly understood

work on diflerent lines. No one buys an article because itis manufactured within the empire . No grocer can affordto buy Canadian cor.densedmilk if Swiss condensed milk

by mean s of samples and price lists. Business men keepno revolvers in their safes. Once let the people reala-e thissimple doctrine and the greatest hindrance to the reign ofpeace will be removed.

Protective tariffs are the outcome of the wrong theory


of empire, and they perpetuate the evil thought which has

given thembirth. A tarifl is always amean thing . It saysto the peoplewhomitexcludes thatthoughthey can makean article better and cheaper than somebody else athome,they shall not be allowed to earn a living by doing so. Itis a form of hostility between nation and nation . Itproduces strongly en trenched rival in terests and en tangles

politics andbusiness,flavouring themixture withthe sauceof ill-will.But its relation to nationalism is worth our inquiry.

It is common for Protectionists to say that national

patriotism is with them, and that a denationalised cos

mopolitanism is the motive of Free Traders. Strange tosay it is the artificial afiinities and barriers caused byProtection which tend to prevent the natural coalescenceof national units now separated. Within the Russian taridwall the Poles became agreat manufacturing community,

econ omic in terests of Warsaw are directly opposed to itsnational aspirations, which would lead it to reunion with

connection s of Alsace are chiefly with the German RhineValley, from which, as a French province, she would beexcluded underProtection . The hin terland of Trieste is notItalian mainly ; her interests as a port are in Austrianterritory. Under Free Trade the spiritual reality whichwe call anation would be able to real ise itself unhamperedby artificial business restrictions, and Free Trade wouldrelease the patriotic spirit. It would also remove manyrivalries. Why must Serbia have a port on the Adriatic?In order thathermarket for swinemay nothe atthemercyof Austrian custom-houses.

22 . A Friend of the presen t day, faced with the

outward suggestion and its inward echo that it is his dutyto help to save his coun try from the danger of defeat, oreven of conquest,has a long Quaker tradition behind him.

394 THE OUTLOOK (en .

only be applied to abeingWhO pouessesmon l attributes.'

l'

he judgment of right or wrong must be applied in each

casewithreierence to the time, the place, and the person .Whilst itmay be neceuary for the self-respectof aSomaliwarrior to kill aman and talre his wife, and there maybe no other way open to a well

-bred savage of euteringupon matrimony,mchan act among us would encounternumerousdifliculties and neednotbe characterised.

‘

l'

his principle has a very immediate beuing upon th'

duty of the Christian in time of war.We can on ly expecta Government, which represen ts the cen tre of gravity ofnational opinion , to act in accordance with the views of

the average man . l f it did otherwise it would be hurled

frompower. Nevertheless as Christian men we cannot sowound the Cluistwithin as to kill anddestroy as a soldier

must . Our individual standard may well remain difierentfromtheaverage standardof the nation .Whatiswrong forusmay be right for the Cabinet .Some may fear that this doctrine of the relativity of

moral obligation weakens the force of its categoricalimperative. On the con trary, its very suppleness enablesit to press upon the conscience as a coat of mail pressesupon the body more closely than a steel cuirass.

”We imiitmore because it fits us better, and there are no ways ofescaping it. But the case is iar stronger than this. The

whole chance of moral progress,upon whichall ourhopesare built, depends upon this very fitness of the call to theperson called. If morals were absolute and rigid for alltime, how could they grow ? They only grow becausecertain people in acommunity begin to find itwrong to dothat which has hitherto been generally accoun ted right,andin time public opin ion is raisedandthemoral standardplaced at a differen t poin t. If we may not thus hOpe weare of al l men most miserable. It may be urged that themoral standardmay vary from time to time, but not at agiven time from person to person . But this is impossible,

n ] WAR 395

for it is only by variation fromw son to person that

about. Paul hadthis at the beck oi hismlnd in his famouscontrast between the law and the gospel—the one rigidlyfixedin tradition ,the otheralivlng growih. l tstill remainstrue in the fieldofmorals thatnoblascobh

’

gs.

decides todoatany time is to be counted right. Anation ,

like an individual , will do wrong unless it lives up to the

highest accessible standard of justice and mercy. The

historian will give his judgment upon national acts, butthe iudgment of God in the heart of every individual isa dif’ferentmatter, strictly persoml to each. There is, in

fact, an inward and an outward standard of rightness.

According to the inward standard, an actmust bejudgedby the conscience. According to the outward, itmust bejudged by its consequenceg in the largest sense of thatword. The trouble is that these judgments do not alwayscoindde. Then m may have the State at war with the

24. l t iswidely hoped,even by those who believe that

in the long run prrt down war. But such an enormouschange as is implied in the abolition of war wil l have to bethe result of a long period of work by a minw ity, andduring that period the position of such a minority isnecessarily anomalous and difficult. They fin d themsdunder two conflicting laws, and they have to chm . The

presen t resounds with the call of the nation , the futuremakes its distan t but penetrating appeal through the stillsmall voice of the Christ within .

CHAPTER I I I

REL IGION AND THE STATE

1 . The State is the nation organised for government.It is n ot iden tical with the nation , but is an organisationwithin it, for a particular purpose. I ts essen tial functionsare these : to keep internal order, to enable the nation toact as a unit in relation to other nation s, to protect itselffromexternal violence, and to collect the revenue for theseobjects. That is, all governmen ts ernst for purposes of

police, diplomacy, war, taxation , and currency.

At this poin t the ex treme individual ist says the Stateshould stop, and we kn ow that this question of the rightlimits of State action is the cen tral question , includingmany issues, in all our modern home politics. Up to thepresen t time we have found it wise to have state co

operation in matters which can be done more cheaply foreverybody on a large scale than a small one.We havehanded over most of our education to the Governmen t ;and it is worth n oting that it is a successful plan except inthe precise poin t to which we are coming, where it isconnected with religion . There it has bred little butfriction and disorder, and has delayed growth in goodthings. Municipal ities, however, deal easily and success

fully with tran sit (and in some coun tries with railways),with lighting, with the clean sing of rivers, with the

provision of waterand power. They have tried—but havehitherto failed—to give us clean air. They have not yet

embarked upon the provision ofmeat ormilk, though theyhave established public slaughter houses and they inspectcow houses. A picture or a book can most economicall ybe seen or read by many ; therefore art galleries and


by two people who have given themselves that theymayfind themselves,who havelost themselves to be saved,and

Now are not these very words and thoughts exactlyappropriate also to the religious life? The governmen tmayregister churches and chapels as it registersmarriages, forthe sake of public order, but the religious life to which thechapel is only the en trance and the implemen t is alsofounded on love and lives by faith and loyalty, and is asacrifice and a service—a service which is perfect liberty,in which men lose their lives to save them, and by consecration and obedience en ter in to a larger than the

individual life. I, therefore, conclude that the State hasjust asmuch to do with our religious life as ithas with ourmarried life, and that both are utterly out of its province.

The parallel is not amere fanciful parable, for it is a factthat the love of God and the love of man and woman arestrongly allied in our constitution ; the glory of sex and

the glory of faith are the brightest things, the strongestthings and the deepest things in human experience. Their

men t which is strongly devout is, as a rule, capable ofstrong human love as well. And when they fade intoformal ism they are both equally pain ful.

3. Why, then , are we the inheritors al l over the worldof State religions ? They are all derived from primitivetimes,at lates t fromthe time when theDivinityworshippedwas an ex ternal Beingwith power over a particular tribeor state. From him, as a rule, the chieftain was de

scended, and towards him the nation as a whole lookedfor protection , for victory in war, for good crops, andfruitful families, and fine weather. The god was the dispenser of the favours of nature and of her terrors. He

had to be approached in very much the same way as

the king of amighty neighbouring empire ; the nation had

m] RELIGION AND THE STATE 399

to speak to himas a whole and sufiered as a whole at his

hands ; he required national sacrifices and a monarch’s

Butever since itwas realised by any religiousmen thatthe kingdomof heaven is within us, that if we findnotGod

between the fieshand the spiritand the Father of spirits

in Jerusalem shall we worship the Father—State religionhas been an obsolete survival.

of the Roman Empire is perhaps themost disastrous even tin the history of a Church already sufficien tly full of Jewishand heathen elemen ts. The Church henceforward becamean instrumen t of the civil power, became immediately atyran t and a persecutor, an enemy to the spirit, stiff andrigid in dogma, even at times a dark thunderous cloudblocking the way between man and God. Christian

The history of persecutions, religious wars, and the everlasting public quarrels Over religion , is the history of Stateaction , including alwaysmore or less coercion of the soul.NO doubt the sacerdotal mind, the mind which desiresto stand between the soul and the Soul of souls,may finda lodging place in the freest of Free Churches, but it isimmensely helped, indeed extremely difficult to avoid,under the machinery of a State Church.

4. It requires but little thought to see how absurd isa national unit of religious experience. The Divine Fatherkn ows n othing of the separation caused by a fron tier.

The Spirit transcends Alps and Pyrenees. Religion is ahuman affair, and in ternational. Mystics are neitherGerman nor English, barbarian , Scythian , bond nor free.

Not only are there everywhere those who fear God ; butthere are everywhere those who wish to worship Him in

400 THE OUTLOOK [cm

a certain manner, and who have similar thoughts

Nor hounds, nor clime, nor creedThou knowest,

Nationalism is preposterous here. States come and go,but the heart of man and the Will of God abide. Indeed,the very religion we believe in is not native ; it is a Jewish,an Eastern , faith by origin . Again it was to Christiansstrikingly that the truth came that God hasmade of oneblood all the nations.

The State has always found itself incapable of dealingdirectly with religiousmatters, and has established ordersof clergy to deal with that de

partment. One cann ot

imagine a Spiritual Health Office rn the Town Hall where

or whether a complaining parishioner has a right to altertl hymn s, andwho send inspectors tomission services asthey do to factories. Parliamen t is con fessedly unable toal ter the rubrics, though it al one has had the power so to

the second reading in the House of Commons, and beingamended in Committee.

5. What, then , is the case of our opponen ts? Why isthe State Church defended? Of course, where a great andweal thy corporation is dependen t upon the main tenanceof things as they are, those things are sure to be defendedby numerous argumen ts, such as that it is atheistical forthe State as a State toackn owledge noreligion .

But the really serious argumen t, to which we do wellto pay earnest atten tion , is the fear that the nation cannotafford to leave the religious life to individual efiort, thatthe dimmultitude is thoughtless, and full of the beast,and not to be relied upon to be religious at all , un lessassisted by publicauthority.We are told that the best andfreest must submit to some limitation of their freedom in

402 THE OUTLOOK (on .

with the working classes, whose epochs of decaden tmorality it hopes to help them to survive ; and we do notas a rule find that the reforming power which improvesthe decadent morality of the richer classes comes fromthe official church with which they are habitually associated. Secondly, the Church has, by the fact that it is anEstablishmen t, constan tly found itself associated withincongruous elemen ts—Beer and Bible, Church and King.

It has condoned war, and slavery, and class distinctions,un til there has arisen in politics that jeering but illuminating epithet the Noncon formist conscience.

I believe th. .t the Church if disassociated from the

State would be more free to do the best work that it is inher to do, would find scope forher n oblest son s, andwouldnot be found preaching upwar. The fact is, that howeverimperfectly religious the people are, the State can not giveeyes to the blind. That is the function of an in fectiousorder of sain ts. There is much in Angl ican ideas as

understood by many men of high in telligence and deepdevotion whoworship in her churches—there ismuch thatis extremely attractive. My liberal clerical friends tell me

permitting the devel opmen t of ideas and of a changingtheology , butmain tain ing a beautiful and decorous formof worship, andcarefully guarding precious tradition . It isalways well to look at the best hopes and ideal s Of our

friends of other bodies, and I cordially and gratefullyadmit the value of their position . But how much betterfitted theywould be to discharge this graceful anddign ifiedservice if they were able, with due deliberation and afterplen tiful patience, to carry out in their rubrics thosechanges of thought which to individuals they permit.The hand of the State, however, compels them to leaveun changed the prayer book and everything in it exceptbyan ex tremelydifficultActofParliamen t,al thoughmanyof them would gladly change the crude morality of the

RELIGION AND THE STATE 403

marriage service, andmany theological utterances of thesixteen th cen tury if they could‘.It is a plea for convenience and nothing else which has

led churches to establish a routine of prayer which can

always be depended upon .

that it is extraordinarily dangerous to dwell upon , and toact upon , the idea that human nature is weak and un

and more unreliable. The Church of Rome forbids freethought on just this ground. Thought would gowrong if itwere free, it

'

rs said , it needs to be guided by tradition andauthority ; and this plea has always produced, and doesstill produce, the official priest, the licensed in termediarybetween the feebleness of man and the greatness of God.

In vain Luther preached the priesthood of all believers.I n words I suppose that all Protestants would to someexten t accept it, but in practice they have n ot found it

And all the time there are, of course, the true priests

metropolitan than Rome, strong souls, helpers of the race,with a strength not derived fromthe holding of an office.

Let us believe that Christ’s appeal to plain men , His

discovery of the kingdom of heaven in little children and

will n ot discourage through disuse the con s cience and the

reason , the initiative, the curiosity and the self-relianceof the weakest Of the flock. To erect a state priesthood isreally to despair of the race, and to fortify that priesthoodwith the secular arm and with public revenue is to addexternal coercion to the enslavemen t of the soul.

1 This was written before the Life and LibertyMovement

26—2

CHAPTER IV

EVANGEL ICAL ISMx. Evangelical was thewordassumed to themselves

by a body of men whose names we hold in hon our, whowere the instruments of a great revival of religion insideand outside the Church of England towards the close ofthe eighteen th cen tury. Within the Church the Rev . JohnNewton ,who died in 1 807,was themost conspicuousman ,

andwithhimwe associate the poet Cowper, Lord Shaftesbury, and the Wesleyan leaders, along with Hannah More,

force, the Buxtons,and later Charies Simeon atCambridge.

The flame of true religion burn t warmly among them, and

they led beautiful, if limited, lives. They founded theBritish and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious TractSociety, they threw themselves into the emancipation ofthe slave, the reformof prisons, and the relief of the poorby charity. In these connections they came closely intocon tact with Friends, and the most active spirits amongstus turned to them from theb -if it must be admittedsomewhat lazy mysticism rather common then in the

But this val uablemovemen t believed itself to be basedupon a terrible theology.

2 . Evangelicals, in the mouths of those who took thename, held the following cen tral beliefs : the Bible wasdictated by God Himself, and is therefore free fromerrorof any kind, fromthe creation ofwoman to the lake of fire,whatever history, or literary discovery, or biologicalscience, or morality might have to say . The Bible wasin terpreted to say that the majority of the human race

406 ms OUTLOOK [ca

exceptthe Unitarians. That is it includes the liberal school

of thought in all of them. It is a laudable attempt to

3. Quakerism represen ted a revolt, root and branch,from the Evangelical theology above desaibed as it

conceptions of God and man behind the two cults

assumptions common to nearly all Christians of theperiod.

unavailing finally to keep apart men of goodwill. Friendsand the early Evangelicals found themselves workingearnestly in the same causes andby the same philanthropic

be read at large in TheGm eys oa t am, by Augustus

J. C. Hare,a record of ahousehold where some of a largefamily of charming daughtersmarried Evangelical clergymen . An excep

’rionwasElizabethFry . JomphJohnGurney,

her brother, came under the influence of Charles SM,

and imbibed Evangelical beliefs, putting in to a placesecondary to Scripture the experience of the InwardVoice.

The facile permeation ofthe Society byEvangelical thoughtcan easily be accoun ted for by going back to the originalfoundation of the Society’s faith.

that was taken fromthe faith of their time. The syn opticEvangelists andthe Apostle Paul used prophecy and foundits fulfilmen t irrespective of the original sense of the

when the Seven ty returned saying that the Devils weresubject to them; that is they acceptedthe demoniac theoryof disease ; they looked for an early manifestation of theKingdom of the Son ofMan in the clouds before some of

rv] EVANGELICALISM 407

of the Gospel, nor do they spoil it for us now. After the

themselves. The Priest crept back into Christianity. 50,on a smaller scale, the tendency among tbe Friends of theeighteen th cen tury was to live on the past revelation , and

hold safe views. They became very nervous about the

Unitarian movement in New England, and about theFrench Revolution ; they reacted back from fear of thesesolven t acids in tomore timid thought than before .

4. The attitude of the founders Of Quakerism towardsthe theological positions of what is cal led orthodoxChristianity in general, and to the Evangelical statemen tthereof in particular, can be simply told.

The Quaker upheaval did not, in fact, concern itself,to begin with, with systematic theology at all , but withpractical religion ; and the early Friends, therefore. on ly

appeared to conflict with the freedom of the soul and itsundivided loyal ty to the Indwelling God. They therefore

in terest in it, the usual scheme of thought curre n t in theirtime. They used the records of the Old Testamen t freelyas illustrations. Theydidnotdoubt the historical existenceof Adam, but when they referred to him it would bebecause of the OldAdamwithin themselves as expoundedin the New Testamen t. They did not doubt the existenceof the Garden of Eden , but they would only refer to it asa foretaste of a spiritual paradise. They didnot doubt thatthe world was created in a week. and that the race,

descended from a single pair, was afterwards drowned byaflood, but they didnotwrite about these things, n or referto them in their sermons. In face Of the miracles workedin the soul of man they took but little interest in the

miracles of the Old Testamen t, though if asked they wouldhave accepted themas everyone else did at the time. The

403 ms oun oox

same would apply to the doctrine oi the Virgin Birth, tothe New Testament miracles generally, and to the an ticipation of thoday of Judgment and of the blissand terrorsof the next world, as described in the book of Revelation .

To all these things they gave the " otiose assen t " of thememorable Paley. These records did not coun t either for

Their Christology was en tirely orthodox . The tendencywhichhas been called Unitarian . and which by the earlyyears of the nineteen th cen tury cont rolled the old Presbyterian chapels, finds noplace in any of their con troversies.

To them, however, the historical Christ had becomeexperimen tally real and poten t in the mystical Christwhom they recognised within them. They freely spoke ofthe two as iden tical, without ever raising any questionabout identifying ahistorical figurewith an inward power'.This shows how smal l a place theol ogical thought hadamong them.

The literary cri ticism of the Bible, which by the endof the nineteen th century had become dominan t amongProtestan t churches, had not arisen in the seven teen thcentury. Nevertheless the first principle of Quakerismmade themborn critics when the time should be ripe, andin practice the Higher Criticismhas found areadier home inthe Society of Friends than in other orthodox churches .

They always put the Bible in a derived place, as being theproduct of a spirit still living and acting in modern days ;and there can be no denying that they flew right in theface Of certain plain , if superficial, scriptural directions, in

There is a curious passagehowever in thejormral of ThomasStorey, on e of the early Friends, who, on examining the strata Of

must have ex isted and gradually come into being through epochsOf what we now cal l geologic time, thus an ticipating the work of

L yel l and modern geology.


to terrify the n‘

nner in to redemption .

The Evangelical doctrine of Atonemen t, as I amusing

here and hereafter to their annexing for themselves, even

Redeemer, whose shed blood was regarded as the equivalen t ia the Divine sight for the sins of the world. This

even immoral . The founders of the Society changed thewhole venue of the heaven ly court, which became to thema trial of strength on the battlefield Of the soul of man .

Atonemen t with them always mean t reconciliation . Par

They wished to bringmen from notions to realities and

n otions. Broadly speaking they put the historical revelation into a historical place, and the presen t revelation into

vital and organic not forensic ormaterial . They abhorredany cheap acceptance of Christ . Predestination they donot seem to have wastedmuch powder and shot upon in

their preaching. They probably real ised that it was

beneath their serious n otice, and the chapter in Roman sdidnot trouble them. It will easily be seen by any studen tof the Bible how richly they were able to draw stores ofdivine truth thence to maintain al l their positions.

6. In al l matters of outward church regulation , inmethods of public worship, the use of hymns and organ ,

and a paid ministry, there was a good deal to separateFriends fromthe Evangelicalmovemen t. These differenceswere stron g enough to preven t anything like amal gamationin this country. Furthermore, the great body of Friends

xv] EVANGELICALISM

admitted. Mysticism may be an experience under al l

that those who did not hold their theol ogy were neithergood Christian s nor good Quakers, and that the Societynow official ly main tained the positions held by its adver

within extremely narrow bounds in England, but their

was received among Friends of the earlier nineteen thcen tury like new wine. The Bible was in troduced in to

refrained from such routine use of the Scriptures,andwe

cann ot but be glad of the change which the new ideas

by Joseph John Gurney caused the children for some weeksto abandon their games and be found sitting about incorners reading the new and exciting stories. There musthave been many dull Meetings in the general absence of

with Biblical studies. The repeated answers to the queriesabout whether drowsiness existed andwas being reproved,tell an eloquen t tale of how some of our coun try Friends,

Those who took up Evangelical ismwith such zeal asto lose theirQuakerismaltogether,andwho reverenced theletter of the Bible to such an ex ten t as to induce them todefend the ordinances and to repudiate Robert Barclay

’

s

doctrine of the universal and saving light, were few in


took place in the year x835, representing a real loss to the

regretted by all . It was called the Beacon con troversyand it cost the Society three hundred “

well concerned ”

members. In the opinion of a man so wise and catholicin spirit as Samuel Tuke of York, who took part in theproce edings, the separation was under the circumstance s

Though modified modern Evangelical beliefs havealways been held within the Society, and are not incoasistent with it, they make its testimony rather blurred ;it loses incisiveness. The plate is somewhat fogged. The

modern liberal theology is a farmore congenial in tellectualoutfit for the Friend.

Un fortunately a theory which claims to be the whole

secution or it administers the cold shoulder where the

hun ts Of this kind, which I am thankful to believe it is notmy duty to record.

break to be very influential in the Society in England till

near the end of the nineteen th cen tury. Joseph JohnGurney, a man of great personal charm, considerable

of the Society, exercised by his widely read writings andby his urbanity and social standing a very great influencein the Evangelical direction for a long generation . Therewere always two parties . Neither Of them excluded nor

expelled the other, butwhen it came toaserious differenceof Opinion ,connected often with someAmerican separation ,

the Evangelicals always had their way in the YearlyMeeting. Their devotion to active Christian work and

the liberal and friendly attitude which they main tainedtowards other religious bodies were al so elemen ts of real

THE OUTLOOK [cm

ment of a creedn nd a cree d in itself ran cormter to thedearest tenets of the ancient faith. In fact the light of the

neglected backwater found that the new knowlcdge

their own in a new dress ; both united in refusing the

Evangelical school of thought, which had in its day stood

In the Society at large the real date for the beginningof the modern epoch as apart from the above special

Yearly Meeting decision , was the Manchester Con ferenceof 1 895. There the scattered elemen ts of liberal Quakerismfound one another. Friends who had suflered undermildforms Of persecution or depreciation found that they werenot alone, but that all over the coun try the tide Of amore

sitting of that Con ference, when modern thought wasexpounded in a series Of papers and the most exciteddiscussion in our modern history followed them, was a

historic occasion of deep consequence, and its work hasnever been undone. Since then ,without bitterness, almost

nearer to its ancien t podtion than ever it did, and isperhapsmore united in spirit than ithas been forahundred

This is happy for us all , but it has been purchased atthe cost of much self-restrain t on the side both of the oldand the new, and restrain t is not a feeder for enthusiasm.We have never been able to—or thought it right to—letourselves go ; we have steered as near as we could to theshore Of orthodoxy ; so long as there was depth Of water forour keels our guns have notvolleyed.We have determinednot to strive nor cry, and the result is that perhaps ourvoice has not been sufficiently heard in the streets to

rv] EVANGEL ICAL ISM 41 5

Butnow, I believe thatthe fieldsare white untoharvest.

of the Inward Ii fe and Light is restored. If we obey it

that every new outbreak of prophetic fire is like the

bounding pulses and refreMstrength ; and that inevitably the hot noontide will be upon us and the shadows

of evening will follow . For will there not be anothermorning? This is what l believe has happened to essen tialQuakerism.We are now in the morning of an other day,and the time for the expresm

’

on of our faith is this time.

as a Society, notas aChurch. This was part of their protest against theexaggerated claims Of outward organ isations and of all thechurches they knew . To their minds there was but onechurch, the Church Universal , whose roll-call is beyond allmemberships, and extends as far as Divine Grace. Noorganisation should usurp the title. It has happened wellthat they have adapted themm non-committal of names.

At first they called themselves The Children of the Light,”

truth,but itdoes notappear to have been used extensively.They were in the way of speaking of one another as

Friends ” in such andsuch aplace, or Friends of Truth,"

nickname given by amagistrate at Derby, whom GeorgeFox hadhidden to fear and quake. Nicknames like weeds

The days are long gone by when any reasonable manthoughtthathis own formof worshipwas the one andonly“correct ” form, or that his own creed expreswd the

the variety of human nature, the diversities of circum

variety Of religious expression .We only claimto practisea formOf Christian communion ,which we believe to be thebest we can find or recogniH much better, indeed,than its competitors that it has a just claim upon our

al legiance and service ; even though we cannot go out asmissionaries of Quakerism with the fanaticism of theMussulman , or even with the zeal of the Catholic or the

Plymouth Brother, in spired by terror and the sight Of a

4 1 8 CONCLUSION

the Te Deum I thought very finely render-ed. the sermon

was excellent in spiritand form,and theminister evidentlyareally goodman zbut thewhole thing was toomechanical—served up with sauce of toomuch conven tional pattertopleasemy sensitive Quaker palate, and I had to retumevasive answers to the approving comments of the gentle

we do not appear to meet . There can be no doubt thatthe absence of any man whose business it is to push theinterests of the coxgregation is a disadvan tage to us, incompetition with other congregations. And the absenceofmusic is the absence of a great attraction .

There is always at the foun tain Of my thoughts a

picture of an ideal Society of Friends, such as I think

indeed, with the faithfulness of many, might be seen in

ting in unseen influence—working with the wisdomof the

serpen t the harmless plots of the dove’

s goodwill, but attimes with a voice too that can be heard in the peOple

'

s

ears, not on ly persuadingmen to all good ends, but doingit with golden words—words of moderation towardsOppone

r ts, and charity, even to ancien t evils—a charity

born , not Of muddled good feeling but Of clear and

It is areligious Order of knighthood, in fact, that I havein my mind . an Order with no signs on it of separationfrom the world.We have been a sort Of religious Orderbefore ; garbed, separate, sacred in

“ plainness of speechan dapparel .

”Butwe are called to be an Ordermaking no

or other pitfalls ; cheerful, laborious, well-trained ; doingwhat others do, for themost part, butwith a differenceavoiding al l habits of life which separate us from the

common people ; an OrderOfFriends ofMan , living Epistles

Tmu was at the eloee oi rgn‘ in London Yearly l l eeting,

which includes, besides England and Scotland, uMeetings inAustralia, 0ne in New Zealand.andone in CapeT0wn ,at0tal of

403 Meetings, including members. of whomgarS weremale and xo,7z4 female. This represents an increase of tfi on

the year, or 8-3 per th0usand. The increase of the population

is about I O per thousand per annum, s0 that at the momentwe are not quite keeping up with it. Beyond these there are

9:3rpersons wh0 are registeredattenders 0fueeting orholders

The Society had in 191 3 steadily grown every year withoutexception since 1 864 , when it reached its loweet number at

To this number it had dwindled fromamaximumoffrom to atabout theyear 1 700. During thish e.

Americareferredto lowerdown . There are noaccurate records

in his bookMutua l“and Precast. pp. 68-88, estimated

Friends, I tsFaithandPractice,p. 45)he saysthat there cannothave been fewer than 50,000 at that time.

”This agrees more

nearlywith an investigation made by the lateWilliamThistlethe severity of the discipline, particularly disownmen t formarrying out,moral lapses in a lax age, the absence of musical

and insufi cient ministry, and the difi culty of es tablishing a

This is now a little out of date, the publication of the bookbeing delayed by the war. I t seems better to retaiu the figures

of a pro-war year, however, as free from any exceptional

27—2

430 STATI STICS

social circle everywhere in eo small a body, are among tbe

treated fully in a hietorical work.

The connection between the Society’

s annual increu e and

the growth of the population is extremely slight. During the

year rgrsthereweremm eredbirths andwrdeatha. This

as against rr4 resignations. diaownments and disassociations.Thus outof every fourwhoentered theSociety in thatyearon lyone enteredby the gate of birth. Theaboveapparentbirth-rateof 7

-3 per thousand strikes one at first sight as anomalous, if

not incredible, but it is suscepfi&e of a simple explanation .

By mostMonthly l l eetings on ly those are register-ed as members at birthwhohave bothparents Friends. The others mayafterwards be admitted as minors, or may never becomemernbers at all. To obtain an idea of the actual birth-rateamong Friends, one wouldhave to disc0ver how many of the

191 3 there have been foundedag homes in whichbothparents

ofispring of theee94 families are in origin only halfQuaker, sothat itmay be fair tocounthalfof their children as deecendantsof the body of Friends, as equivalen t, that rs, fromabirth-rate

p0int 0f view, to the entire ofispring of 47 Quaker families.‘

l'

hat is the births registered represent 39families within theSociety, whilst there are not registered the equivalen t of 47families having children . I have compared this ratio of 47 to 39with the ratios given by other years, which give 47 to 4x and

47 to 3x. The lastfigure covered the average forfive years from1 895 to 1900. These ratios roughlyconfirmoneanother,so thatif we take the latest figures we find that the excluded birthsrepres en t a birth-rate of per thousand, which added to the

7-3 per thousand of the children registered, gives a birth-rateof r6-r per thousand. But here another consideration in tervenes. The longevity of Friends is much greater than that ofthe general population , the average age atdeath being as high

4a:

than the svm p powhdm whuess in fact it is remarksblefor its longevity . Such is the dlect ol heslthy hahits and

comfortsble surroundings. any one child in n dies before it

is s yesr old.

The number of membersmarrieddurhig the year wssm,

or 8

ra-4 per thm nd. as sgainst 1 5 per thousand in the countryat large.

‘

l‘

he longevity correction is a little excessive ss

explained in the footnote‘.

ln lrelandthe Society oi Friends is still s flightl ecressingbody . ln 1 864. when English Quaherism resched its lowest

potnt. there were 2851 Friends in Irelsnd. Now there sre smmembers. The situation of l rishFriends ss aPi-otestantupperclass body, all descendants of Cromwellian colonists , living a

renders accd on tomembershipdifi cultn ndpriestlyhostility

paganda. l rishProtestantismalso is of a stifi dogmatic type.notmuch inclined our way. In addition , the figures of births

and deaths are worse than in England, and the marriege andbirth-rates are extremely low.

in Norway and Denmark, and a few individuals in Hanover,

in Paris and in the Montpellier district.

ship, it is, libe other religious bodies, not increasing in actualattendance. A statistical return of attendance was made in1 851 . At that time the morning attendance at 343Meetingswas a number nearly equal to the total membership.

The attenders not in membership appear to have nearlybalanced the absen tees. An other census was taken in the year1904, which gave an attendance at the morning Meetings of

and another in 1909, giving an attendance ofon amembership whichhad increased by nearly half as muchagain since 1 851 . The census of 191 4 reveal ed a furtherdiminution in attendance. Only Friends were found

See p. 42 1 .

433

did, they go sway for the wesk-end, 0r they sre absorbed in

larity no longer exists.

To obtain an ides of the sctivity ot the Society messuredin numbera we must not omit the Adnlt Schooh. These u s

took plsce, however. itmay be ssid roughly that there were

proportion were those of women . Therehas been of late yesrs

alull in the formerly rapidgrowthof thismovement. Thejunior

gives the number of children'

s schools at a66, the scholars on

the books taught by 30 16 teachers. The attendance0tscholars is 1 7,71 1 and the attendance of teachers 2558. The

fall in the Sunday School population of the coun try is to someexten t felt also here. The membership of scholars has fallenin the year about z

'oper cent., and the average of attendance

workers. They coun t 4 1 28 members of their congregationsand adheren ts not in membership. Considerableeducational work is done on behalf of their 731 7 pupils, and

patients have been treated at 1 1 hospitals and dis

pensaries. Recen tly absorbed by this Association , there is a

Friends’ Industrial Mission at Pemba,near to Zanzibar.

424 STATISTICS

stantinople, employing fiveEnglish ladies. There is alsoa little

includng a station in Brittany, and there are isolated families

In America the recordofmembershipis apt to bemislu ding.inasmuchas the body of Friends whohave abandonedourmode of worshipis by far the largest. The tes t ofmembership

removed fromtheboolrs withgreatstrictness. Thefigurewhich

191 1 , indicating anet loss on the year of 854 in this body of 14pastoral Yearly Meetings. From 1901 to 191 1 theseMeetingsreveal a net gain of 3 per cent., about one quarter of the net

The seven Yearly Meetings of the“Hicksite or Liberal

Friends total about members, though the numbers on

shipat the end of 191 0 was Time Friends have just

the beginning oi an increase.

’

l‘

he Conservative group of Friends also has its centre in

ing numbers about 4400 Friends. The total membership ofwhatmay be calledthe Conservative or

“Wilburi ”branch in

I twouldbe amistake to suppose thatin thepastoral body theredid not remain anumber of Friends who still retain the tastesand convictions of the Society, but no statistical computation

Meetings, is the small YearlyMeeting of Baltimore,whose 1 200Friends retain for the mostpartQuaker characteristies. Ii weadd the Friends in the UnitedKingdomtothe

“Hiclrsite“and

for Friends of the same type in the pastoral Yearly Meetings,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Al l these books, b0th new and second hand. can be most

A commete Descriptive Catalogue of Quaker literaturein two large vols. with Supplemen t was the lifetask of the late Joseph Smith. Of these only a short selectionfollows. My friend Norman Penney, Librarian of the

E.C. a, has very kindly revised it for me.

FOR FO! , PENINGTON, PENN AND BARCIAY

Jonmal oj Geo'gs Fox . First printed in r vol . folio in 1 694 ,

Leeds in 1 891 , in two octn vo volumes, is copiously indeaed and is

was issued by RufusMJonu in 1904 ,and is wel l done.

Another abridgmen t made by Percy L Parker, the Editor of

Pnbls’

oOpin ion (Pitman , 1905), is als0 wel l done. One fourthof the

Jam s),and some valuable appreciationsmake avolume of about

The modern edition for scholars is that issued in rgrr in tv o

handsome volumes by the Cambridge University Press, a literalcopy of theMS . Journal , with the first six teenMS . pagesmin ing,

editions omitted. I t is in the original spel ling, not easy to read .

I t has a greatmass of illuminafing, critical and explanatory notesbyNorman Pen ney, the L ibrarian of theDevonshireHouseL ibrary, and Editor of the Journal of the Friends

’Historical

Society . There are also many documen ts inserted by Fox . The

edition is described in Appendix A to TIn Beginn ings of Qua/mien .

Bmmocw nv 427

Gm oFos’

s Epistles (1 698) and 6m s Fox’

sDoeninsls (1 706)ars large folfo collections of hismiseel laneous papers ; nomoderneditions. A selection of the Eplstles was published by S. Tuke in

was.

ThomasHodgkin in r896 and by H . G.Wood, theWarden ofWoodbrooks (rgrz). An attractive life ofMargaret Fox of SwarthmoorHal l by Helen G. Crosileld was published in rgr3, and Cameos ofthe L ife of George Fox by Ernest B . Taylor. There are shorter

is a scholarly treatise by Dr Alenander Gordon .

Ths Psn onality os orgs Fox by A. N . Brayshaw is a short

Works ofWill iam!“ in ,avols. folio (r726), frequen tly reprin ted.

zGth was ofi eial ly pub’

.'hed in smal l torm in 1 896 . l-l is Fmits oj

notably in an edition by Edmund Gosse in roor.

Clarkson'

s is faithful but a century old. The edition of 1 849withW. E . Forster’

s reply toMaeaulay. is in very smal l type. That byW. HepworthDixon , editor of theAlb u min (tsst , 3rded. r872 ),shows more literary craitsmanship, but less real sympathy withits subject. Thatby Samuel H . Janney (1 852) on thewhole remainsthe buh but is also in too smal l prin t. There is a L ife by Dr

Themost recen t isWilliamPenn , Founder of Pen nsy lvan ia, byjohnW. Graham (Swarthmore Pram. and ed. r9r8).

Pen ingtons of the SeventeenthCent-”y r867, were the forerunners ofWorks of I saac Pen ington , folio 1 68r. 2nd ed. in two volumes

quarto, n ot . 1 400 pp. There are later editions in 4 volumes. No

AMemoir and Review of hisWorks was published by josephGurney Bevan in i 807, and contains the substance of his output.There have been Selections, by John Barclay (r837), by

Caroline J .Westlake by Hy . Bryan Binns on e

published by Roberts Bros., Boston , and a number published in

428 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barclay’s Apoloo for the True Christian Divin ity as the sense is

published in Lafin in 1 676. in English in 1 678. The reth edition

waspublishedbyW.G. Smeal andR. BarclayMurdochatGlasgowin 1 886.

The Anarchy of th) Renters by Robert Barclay many

“ Scotland “. infra) and a modern sketch byM. ChristabelHI STORI ES

lheChrisfion PWcalledQuaherswas publishsd in English in folioin Amsterdam in 1 722 b m . Sewel . The first issuewas in Dutch

in 1 71 7. I t is amonumen tal record—asmaterial forhistory indispensable.With it as companion goes Bern

’

s Collection of theSnfiwings of thePeopleealledWithers (2 vol» . GerardGrueso

'

s

History (Lat. 1 695, Eng. r696) and Gough’

sHistory (4 vols. 1 790)are less valuable books of the same type.The standard modern l-l istory oi the earliest period, sup~

pl anting all others , is The Beginn ings of Quakerism byW. C.

Pn aithwaits, published in 191 2 , carrying the narrative to x66c .

Another volume (publ ished 1919) covers The Second Period ofQuakerim to 1 7z5 . These volumes are issued in pursuance of a

value, both as a rccord fmm first hand sources, and for thsir

detachmen t of a sympathetic outsider, and withmuch insight.

The Rise of the Quahers (1905) a short book by T . Edmund

S.M. Janney ’

s History (4 vols. Philadelphia, 1 865) is partienlarly val uable ior its account of the I-iiclrsite separation in the last

sketchzalso the ons on the same subject in the Encyelopsedis of

The I nner L ife oj ihe Religious Sociel ies of lhe Connnonm llh

by RobertBarclay of Reigate (1 876) is a largework revealingmuch

430 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ed. by H.W.Wilbur, Philadelphia, 191 1 .

Journal of Thomas Shiaiioe (2 vols. r839) gives the“orthodox

Memoirs of DanielWheeler Will iamAllen (3 vols.JosephJohn Carney (3 vols. 1 854) and ElisabethFor (2 vols. 1 859)are on interesting subjects, but too long . A shorter volume on

J . J . Gurney has been written by J . B. Braithwaite. and on

ElisabethFry by GeorginaKing l d wis.

of El ias Hiehs by HeuryW.Wilbur sgro).I tfil ls a long empty gap in our records.

TheMemoirs of Joseph Sturge by Hy . Richard and

The L ife of RtHon. John Edward Ellis by A. T. Bassett (191 4)have interest of the same kind. A new L ife of Joseph Sturge byStephen Hobhouse (1919) tel ls its story in a shorter formand is a

L ife of J . G.Whittier by Samuel r . Pickard (2 vols. 1 895) anda shorter volume by Georgina King Iawis.Bernard Barlon and l l is Friends by E . V. Lucas

Dr John Folhergil l and His Friends by Dr R. l-Iingston Fox

philan thropy in the eighteenth cen tury (Macmillan ).A Booho naher Saintsby L Violet I-l odgldn is an attractive

of Early Friends

091 7)L ifeof joshnaRowntree by S. E .Robson .

daughter

DESCRIPTIVE AND APOLOGETIC

A Portraitureo naherisrn by Thomas Clarkson (3 vols .

new edition (altered) 1 847,has been described in the text.

modern accoun t oi the Society up to the present time. I t is both

BIBLIOGRAPHY 43:

The Friende. oho they ere. .hat they heee dene bm Beck,Written hemm old-fashioned sh ndpdnh bnt containing

Frith andWilliam Em urner) (Macm. 1 883) and The Goepeloj Dioine Help by EdwardWorsdall (1 886) wese iorerunners ofthemodesn streamoi liberal tssching .

Quaher Strongholds by Caroline E . Stephen (1 889) has besn

YearlyMeeting time sinoe sgos. are generally sWdies and ex

Qsaherism: A Religion of L ife by RufusM. Jones.

Spiritual idanee in the Eeperience ojthe Society ojFriends by

The Communion af L ife by Joan l . Fry .

TheMissionary Spiritand the PresentOfl ornmity by Henry T.

Hodgkin .

Heman Progress andthe I nu rdL ightby ThomasHodgkin .

Social Service : I ts Plece in the Soeiety of Friends by Jodma

rs.Ham anda. I nwardcw by EdwardGrubb.

rt. Society of Friends : its Paith end Practice by John s.

Quakerism:PastandPresent,Hise Essay, by John S.Rown tree

(1 859)EssaysandAddresses by JohnWilhelmRowntree (r905), editedAuthority and the L ightWithin (1908) andWhat is Queherism?

(191 7) by Edward Grubb, with several theological expodtions

TheEvangelical position is tobe toundin thewritings of Joseph

John Gurney, Essays on Christianity Observations on the

432

Dietingnishiu l’ieu end h aetia s fl l ’fi ends t Biblical

Netes andDisserteeions (r830).A Beacon to the Society of -Friends. a small b00k by l sasc

Crewds0n (1 835), canssd the Beaconits separation lnManchestsrThe Heartof theChristianMessegeby ProL G.A. Bart0n (191 0)

is an eacellent sccount ol themodern Quahsr position .

oi E-ays (191 r).A Not lmpoesibleRel ig-ion by s. P. Thompson , F.R.8.

Thoughnotpreclsely Friends’books the two volumss by RuiusM. Jones in the Rown t ee series. Studies inMysticel Rel igion

(r909)andSpiriniel Reformers ojthe 1 6thand 1 7thCenturies

The Fruits of Silence by Cyril Repl ies (191 6) and the Fella-shipojSilence by variouswriters, ed. Cyril Hepher (r91 6),are on Quaker

(1 898) and The Quehare in theReoolution (r899), and TheMars

in the American Colonies (191 1 ) (one of the Rowntree series) byR.M. Jones, s-istedby l saac 8harplm andAmeliaM. Gnmmere,are ,andwill remain , 0ur standardhistories tor theirperiods.

I saac Sharple-issued in rgrg Politieel Leaders of ProeineialPennsy lvaniamseries of biographies on the same period.

James Bowden'

sHistory ojFriends in America (1 850) is a ful l

W. Hodgson ’

s The Socieol of Friends in theNineteenthCentney

(2 vols. Phila.

Journal of Elias Hicks (1 828) andMemoirs of Edward HichsThomas (r895) is a reliable and impartial work by two orthodox

434 smuocmmv

edition snlarged, 1900 . An epoch-making booh wldely read

iol lowedby Publ icControl ojthe LiqnorTrafi eby thesame authorsand other volumes.

Poverty ,e Study of Tm L ife by B. SeebohmRown treeA standardworkon the sctualmeasured iactsof poverty lllustratedin the City ot York, and common ly quoted along with Charles

Booth’

s work on In ndon . Followed by n uumber of otherworkson social eubjects, suchasBetting andGambling ,a serles of essays editedbyB.S.Rowntree

Land and Labour : Lessons from Belgium A long and

importan t work full of statistics, by B . S. Rown tree.The lmperial Drug Trade, atreatise on theOpia uestinn , by

JoshuaRown treeWomen '

sWorhandWages byEdwardCadbury, l l .C.MathesonSocial Aspeets o/ the Quaher Faithby EdwardGrubb, a collec

tion of EssaysI nfantMortal ity by (Sir) George Newman ,MD .

TheDestruction of Day light, aStudy of the Smoke Problem, byJohnW. Graham

Evolution and Empire by JohnW. Graham w eepedition , 191 4 .

ChristandWar byW. E .Wilson ,B .D. (19r5),ineludes boththeChristian and the Economic argument tor peace, iollowed by TheFoundations of Peace by the same author in 191 8.

As aMan Thinheth, a Pacifist argumen t drawn irom Science,by Ernest E. Unwin

The TrueWay of L ife (191 0) and Christian ity and Business

( 191 2 ) by Edward Grubb (Swarthmore Press).

The Early Christian Attitude toWar by Dr C. J . Cadoux . A

piece of original research of interest to Friends, though the anthor

There is no suitable heading under which toplace as denominational works the numerous books by Dr J . Rendel Harris. But,whether learned works of Biblical Research or books oi Devotion ,they are al l full of the Quaker spirit.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 435

An hqn lrer,deelrhg toread s iew oi themost lmportantbooksh flushstmay beadvhedtosdoct

George Fox’

s Journal , especially Vol . 1 , and includingWm. Penn'

s Preface.Wm. Pa n'

s No Cross,NoCrown .

Oneortwool the l ’ropositions in Barclay’

sApoloo .

W. C. Braithwaite’

s Beginnings of Quaherism

Dymond’s Essays onMorality .

The Religious Poems oiWhittier.

G.M. Trevelyan '

s L ife of John Bright.Past II

“Christian Practice

"of the omcial volume on Doctrine,

Practiee andDiscipline, revised in 191 1 , is an instructive snd n0t

438

386Cassianas. aMartyr. 343

2 , 224, 225,226.ha

gm mW" .

63342

75

andWar, ass-ass;of. 328, 329

Christologies Ancient andModernChusr

gh, meaning of, 1 89

Cla31?kson ’

s Portraiture,Baptis

mal Formula, 283 ; onWar. 339.35°

1 71Clerk of theMeeting . his

Supper)

1 46 ; and the State. 377Comm 359. 363

Constan tine, 2 24. 350 . 35 1Continuity ol the germ 918 8111 .

26

87: on the Baptismal

2 2

Coomber, Dean of Durham, 306Coptic Church, 22 3Corin thian Ch 193. 194Council of Nicaea, 333 . 35 !Covenant, 254 . 255. 258 26‘

Creation,CriminalNations. 369. 37°Cross Correspondences . 79. 80

233209. 283. 343

$5Dante, 35 1Deacons, seven . m ud. 194

Declarafion of 1 660 onWar. 357.Diabolism.

Dickinson .

Didache, 194 . 197. 313., 269

Dtdasha 1a,

Dimysiac “lig-mp, 1 79, 1 80. 226.266

Book of, 299

Doukhobors,Dualism orMon ism. 33. 30

Formula,

Evolution of S 2 28Experiencem a,3

7

Elenaia, 264“ 338”

270 . zndoctrine

Enoch. Book of, 55. 5bEphesus, 265Episcopal . 195.m . 203. 206-209.2 1 0. 2 1 2- 2 1 5, 2 22

Epistle om abac. 194 . 2 19Emmas, 352Essence. 262Established Churches. “ 4 “

439

Fan am . in Bu cky . 1 44

Force. sometimes necessary. 367

Committee. 240

Hum Personal ity and its Survivalof B Death. 74 n .

on. 1 02 . 1 03: on hisMin istry. Humour. God ? 2 1244 ; on socu l abuses. 305. 306. Hutton .Richard fi olt.quoted, 2293 1 2. 3 1 3 ; decline.

m: on Cromwel l 's oreign Ignatius of Antioch. 209, 2 1 1 . 316

3. 354 : il l at Reading. 355 269

Declaration to Chafl ee I . 357 1 37Indwell ing God (n o God)International Trade, 389. 390I nward Light. 81 4 6Irenaeus. 194 .Irish Rebellion . 359. 360

309: in

James. Kinsman of the Lord. 20 1

1 36. 7 J

FfidesbdonthlyMeeting . 1 64

Gethsemane. 6 1Gnostics. 194. 310. 1 21 . 222

. 2 ; aa Father. 5an a Body 6. 7: Simple.I ntuitive. 2 1 ; I ndwel l ing. 2 2 . Heal

jevash tradition pro-war. 345 ,

46

oan the Baptist. 280ones, RufusM.. notes on 34. 75 .96.m

£ 81 .Wm l w

2 1 5. 2 1 7. 2 1 8.“ 5. 373

Hel l. doctrine of. 409

fimM“w mm

Church. 20 1p

Buodotua. 26 1

and the

1 8 190. 191 . 195. 198. 200 , 20 1 .

209. 2 1 2. 2 1 3. 2 1 4. 2 1 5. 2 19.22 1

L in e” of StClement. 19123. 24.theeox'dq

9s .Supper 257

Lollarda. 352

of

Latting. Thomas. 35911 .Maccabees, 54, 55

Moravian . 352

294Men nonites. 352Ma niah in Enoch, 57Meeeiaha. 50Milton .

3f:hn .Min isters. L iberation of. 295 : Re

cording of. 297Ministry, in Barclay. 1 47. inEarly Church. i l l—I D ; in 1

xiv .. non -sacerdotal.2 1 .oi women . 193 nu

pron-donut194. 202 . 206. 20

2 1 5 ; prophefic, 195.

P

—IIn c-tee. 1 53. 1 54M37!M 284

in the

61 . 1 62

Prophets in 200

Protection .

82 1 . 392

Protestant urchee.Music. 1 79

surviving

ism, . 90. 97: deetructive o f

91 ; fou nded as a

iatry an d Overnight. 297

xiii»

?Mics MoDust. onurch. 1 38. 1 83 01 .on Clerical Profession , 233 ;

puzzled on Peace. 382

Sacramen t”(m Lm'd’

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g‘i

ditymof. “

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Schmel. 2 22Schools. Friends

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. 1 72- 1 75

Scott. Job. 2 1 1

Scourge of Cords. 33 1Scriptures. 1 37- 1 4 2 ; literalprotation . 1 40

-1 42 ; not definiteon modern issues . 33 1 , 332

m m, 35. 36Emotion , 277.

Ba d. 260

Social Service. 303, 324 ; Friends’

call to. 3 1 1 . 3 1 2

South 01 France. Friends in . 359Southern Home: inWar Time. 363

Stan ley.Dean , onW ham.

2 1 , 27 n .

Stage and I ndividual . 377:Moral

99. 1 55

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Teachers, 199

Nature of

56. 33°

onWar. 339. 340 . 342 . 347. 349.

35°

Theodosia» Code on PaidMin istry,

2 1 5

xx viii. 19and rjohn v .

25862

Two Swords passage. 886-888

1 75University Ex tension . 236

Validiq of Sacrament.Vm standards of conduct,

M; in Barclay. 1 48 ;Christ

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s Teaching. 325 330 : HisPractice. 330 33 1 ; notdefinitelyforbidden . 1 .

thewgChristians tnte. 333

y

1 82. 1 83 ; Public.

Wei-m un. 26. 42 2Wesley. john , 1 63-1 65Mom 30Westcott and Hort. 25 256 Epistle of 1 836.Westminster Abbey. 1 2. 1 83 1 66 ;Minutes 011

Whittia . 276Wilson, w . E . Zoker. 20 1Winstan ley, Gerrard. 306

CAMBRIDGE : PRINT I D B? J. B. PEACE.M.A., AT TBS UNIVERSITY I'l l “

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