Brinton CH 10 Quaker Thought and the Present

CHAPTER 10 Quaker Thought and the Present.

 Through the three centuries of Quaker history the four primary elements present in all religion have at different times exerted their influence in varying degrees. 

During the first century and a half mysticism and evangelicalism were in balance in the group as a whole though many individuals tended to stress one or the other; 

during the nineteenth century mysticism and evangelical­ism were in conflict, each pressing the other to extremes in the group as a whole, though in many individuals the two were in balance; and 

during the past half century rationalism and humanitarianism have assumed greater prominence, sometimes becoming dominant, though here again there are some individuals in whom the four tendencies are in balance.

The best type of religion is one in which the mystical, the evangelical, the rational and the social are so related that each exercises a restraint on the others. 

• Too exclusive an emphasis on mysticism results in a religion which is individualistic, sub­jective and vague; 
• too dominant an evangelicalism results in a religion which is authoritarian, creedal and external; 
• too great an emphasis on rationalism results in a cold, intellectual religion which appeals only to the few; 
• too engrossing a devotion to the social gospel results in a religion which, in improving the outer environment, ignores defects of the inner life which cause the outer disorder. 

 

In Quakerism the optimum is not equality in rank of the four elements. The mystical is basic. The Light Within occasions the acceptance or rejection of a particular authority, reason or service.

Mysticism and evangelicalism are directed toward the super­human. 

Reason and good works are human. 

Yet man may let his attention slip below the human level.

 

 The three levels can be designated as follows:

 

Inward           Outward

 

Superhuman        Mysticism       Evangelicalism

Human                 Rationalism     Humanitarianism

Subhuman           Vitalism          Materialism

 

Let us first consider the inner three, even though they are so intimately related to the outer three that they cannot be fairly treated separately.

By vitalism is meant a religion which worships the life-force in its biological sense. This includes what might be called "tribal mysticism," the sense of kinship in a family, tribe, caste or race which finds expression in ancestor worship or worship of a tribal god. Included also is the cult of patriotism which, through symbols and rituals, worships the nation as a kind of pervasive personality. The Nazis, in their emphasis on "blood and soil," represent an extreme modem form of this type of mysticism. 

In the primitive fertility religions which worshiped the reproductive powers of nature we have older examples of mysticism on this level, the feeling which all persons have in some degree, that there is in man and nature an inner vital creative power which is worthy of reverence.

That the divine is immanent in nature is a creed not only of simple folk, but also of philosophers and poets, a creed which ranges all the way from primitive animism and magic to the highest flights of absolute idealism, finding the whole universe to exist only as a thought of God or as a body of which God is the universal soul. Hinduism today includes all these stages from animism to absolute idealism. Wordsworth expresses this nature mysticism in comprehensible terms in his "Lines, Com­posed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey":

a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.205.

Nature mysticism, whether limited to the tribe or directed to­ward all nature, is a right beginning to religious progress; its limitation appears, however, if it does not grow into something higher. To center our worship on nature whether in whole or in part, or on family, race or nation, is to include the evil in these orders as well as the good. Nature "red in tooth and claw" is an incomplete expression of God. Loyalty to family, race or nation, while of value as far as it goes, is not good if the evils of these objects of loyalty and devotion are overlooked.

Nature mysticism or tribal mysticism runs the risk of leveling down instead of leveling up. By seeing God in all things we behold Truth, but that does not mean that all things should remain as they are, simply because God is immanent in them. God still creates and His presence, even in the lowest of His creatures and even in the most sensual desires, is evidence that His work has been begun, though not finished. 

Only as we turn our thoughts to God Himself do we find the Being worthy of our individual, loyalty and worship. Christ, the revelation of God in human terms, is the culmination of the process of which nature is the beginning.

The Quakers believe that God is in nature and in all human beings, including what Robert Barclay called the "natural man," that is, man as a child of nature, an animal who is the descendant of a long line of animal ancestors. 

God, Barclay said, exists in "natural man" as a "Seed." This is a useful figure, for it implies growth. The Seed, or "that of God in every man" even the unregenerate, can be cultivated or "answered" and so started on a process of growth. As it grows man is lifted from the animal level to the human level and finally from the human to the divine.

The Seed will grow of itself if the soil is fertile and the surface not too hard or stony. The plant can be watered and nourished but its growth cannot be forced. The divine Life, like a plant, cannot be helped to grow by stretching or pulling. Finally it matures. 

It is interesting to notice that in the New Testament the word translated as "perfect" means also mature. * Perfection is the maturing of inner capacities, be they small or great; it is not the end of an infinite process but it is an attainable goal. 206.        

Continuing to fix our attention on the three levels as inwardly revealed, we find ample evidence in the Quaker journals that these three actually exist in experience, however, they may be interpreted in theory. The journalists were extremely careful not to go beyond experience itself and to write down as truly as they could what their own experiences were without any attempt to adjust their descriptions to forms determined in advance by a creedal requirement. 

The spiritual journey of the writer was generally described in three main stages, 

1. the first in childhood, 
2. the second in adolescence and early adult life, and 
3. the third in full adulthood, 

though there was considerable variation in the age at which the turning points took place. The three sets of extracts that follow are examples taken from the Journals of each of the three centuries of Quaker history.

1] The first stage was a time of primitive innocence like that of Adam in 'Paradise. Like Adam, the writer sometimes heard the voice of God.

While I was yet very young . . . being inspired with a divine principle, I did in those days sometimes feel the power of it overcom­ing my heart. [William Caton, 1636-65]'

In my early age I was sensible of the tendering impressions of divine love. [Mary Haggar, 1758-184O]

I remember that at a very early age I experienced the operation of divine grace condemning me for evil and inciting me to goodness. [Samuel M. Janney, 1801-80]

* Thus the word translated as "perfect" in the King James Version of the Bible is sometimes translated "mature" in the Revised Standard Version. ­That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus" (Col. 1:28) be­comes "That we may present every man mature in Christ."

 207.

These examples from many that might be given indicate a sharp divergence from the Calvinist doctrine of depravity. 

The young Quaker was a child of nature and as such felt in his soul the Word of God who had created and was still creating nature.

2] The second stage began with a period of juvenile frivolity which the journalist, writing of his experiences at a later age, looks back upon as vanity and a waste of time. A few typical expressions are:

My mind was drawn out after the vain plays, customs, fashions and will-worships of the world. [James Dickinson, 1659-1741]

I took great pleasure in airy and vain company. [David Ferris, 17O7-79]

The vivacity of my natural disposition often led me beyond due bounds. [Sarah Hunt, 1797-1889]

No Journal records more serious misdeeds than "frothiness of behavior" and fondness for various amusements, sports and games. The writer is still somewhat a child of nature but not entirely so, for soon an inner conflict begins. The divine voice is heard calling, not back to primitive unconscious innocence, for that is no longer possible, but up to the higher level of deliberate self-conscious obedience. 

There is a pull from above and a pull from below. The self is divided, a state well described by Paul when he said, 

"I can will what is right, but I cannot do it" (Rom. 7:18).

Almost every journalist gives a vivid description of this stage of conflict.

In this furnace I toiled and labored and none knew my sorrows and griefs which at times were almost intolerable. [Stephen Crisp, 1628-92]

I never had before such a clear and undoubted sense of the two powers of light and life and of death and darkness. [William Evans, 1787-1867]

I tried many ways to flee from him.... but he followed me up as he did the children of Israel in their travels. [Thomas Arnett, 1791-1877]

3] The intermediate stage of conflict was finally replaced by a complete willingness to follow the Light Within wherever it led. 

This third stage might come suddenly but more often it came gradually through a series of steps, one of which was the success­ful expression of a repressed concern to speak in a meeting for worship. When this occurred the family and friends of the speaker knew, sometimes to their astonishment, what had taken place secretly in the heart. 208.  

Having made a public declaration, the speaker must now live up to it. He most adopt the plain dress and speech of the typical Friend as a way of showing the world where he stands. 

He has emerged on the level where his life is centered in the Light. His inner tension and conflict is, for the present, no longer felt. Of course he may sometimes slip, indeed he generally does so. 

New periods of conflict and de­pression may occur, but on the whole his life is lived in a con­dition of inner peace and whole-hearted commitment to the will of God wherever it may lead. 

These journalists represent an achievement higher than average, but they were standard Friends in the sense that their Journals formed the basis of instruction in the Quaker way of life as read on winter evenings at the family fireside.

We find, then, three levels of human achievement which merge so gradually into one another that it may be difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. The three are based on experience rather than on theory. 

Man actually finds himself poised between a world of darkness and a world of light. He can center his life in the dark world or in the flickering twilight of human reason or in the clear Light of the divine Presence. 

The dark world is not evil in itself. It forms the essential basis of our life on this earth. It is evil only when the soul becomes centered in it. 

The same may be said of the realm of reason. 

Without reason in control of sensual desires we could not rise to the level of men. Reason has lifted us up out of the world of sensuality into a realm where we Jiave learned to a large degree how to control our instincts and our material environment. 

Through reason we have become human and through reason we defy the forces of nature which would otherwise overwhelm us. Through reason we have not only become lords over the beasts but we appear to have peculiar qualities and characteristics which distinguish us as beings different from them, not in degree only, but in kind.

But in the world of reason no ultimate goal is in sight. Neither the stars of night nor the sun of day shine clearly. Reason is baffled by insoluble problems. It can show the next step ahead but it cannot reveal man's destiny. Reason tries to construct a consistent system of ideas, an effort which is most ardently  undertaken  in later adolescence or in early adulthood. 209. 

The college student of today is at the stage when rational consistency appears to be of supreme importance. He is determined to recon­cile science and religion and when he fails he may throw away one or the other. Or he may attempt to find a rational solution to a problem like that of Job, the reconciliation of the justice of God and the suffering of the righteous. Or he may find himself baffled by the problem of freedom and determinism. When reason tries to achieve a consistent system of thought there is always some nonrational element left over which cannot be fitted into the system.

As a result, reason becomes humbled and submissive, and the human will finds itself ready to surrender to a greater Will. If this occurs, it need not be because of a belief that the universe is irrational and that there is, therefore, no consistent system of Truth. It should indicate the recognition that man's human mind is insufficient to know the ultimate consistencies which God knows. If the scientist by his experimentation discovers two facts which seem inconsistent, he does not discard science as irrational. He is confident that in the long run a greater knowledge will discover consistency. 

In the same way the seeker for ultimate religious Truth believes that in the mind of God Truth is a harmonious system. 

But the feeble light of human reason will not project its beams so far. Man must, therefore, seek in his soul the Light by which all things are seen as by the eyes of God. He must trust his., feelings, which go deeper toward the center of his being and of all Being than does even the most penetrating reason He must as far as he can come into union with God the ultimate spring of creative power and the final source of Truth. Man then finds that, through right spiritual development, he can center his soul in that world of Light which will enlighten reason, just as reason through right scientific processes enlightens nature.

In the twilight zone of reason the human being is a divided self. 

He tries to satisfy his desires by the accumulation of ma­terial possessions. But the more possessions he acquires the more he becomes possessed by them. His efforts to bring nature under his control make him a slave of nature. He constructs machines and then finds that his life is absorbed in serving them. 210. 

The very science by which he controls nature reduces him to nature's level. He first discovered that his earth was not the center of the universe but a minute fraction of it. He then discovered he was descended from animals and concluded that he must himself be an animal. 

Later all his noblest emotions were interpreted in terms of his physical make-up and glandular secretions. His mind became reduced to a system of mechanical stimuli and conditioned responses. His religion was analyzed in psychological terms as the result of a father complex, a mother fixation, or some other psychopathic reaction. 

Finally, he invented instruments of war­fare so destructive that he is now in danger of destroying his own species. No wonder he is in despair.

Man has wandered a long way from his primitive home. He has left behind his mother nature in whose shelter he was happy as a child, playing in the divine Presence. 

He cannot return be^­cause he is no longer a child. He must go forward and seek a new home for his spirit now that he has learned to reason, to compare, to test the present by some invisible ideal which he dimly sees glimmering ahead. Those who have already reached this goal tell him that there God's completeness will sustain his human incompleteness; the peace of God, which already exists as a Seed sown Within his mortal being, will grow and flourish in his whole soul, even in the present world of strife and turmoil.

But to attain this peace, man need not withdraw from this world of strife and turmoil. The God whom he has found is not only a God of Peace who can receive him in "the everlasting arms." He is also, paradoxically, not only Truth, he is also Love. 

The Christ who said, "My peace I give unto you," was the same who suffered on the cross. This paradox brings us to a consider­ation of the three outer stages of the soul. That which is at peace. within may be disturbed without. 

• The wheel of social achievement can only turn if the axle in the middle is at rest. Man first finds God within and through that discovery he finds peace and strength. 
• Then he can go out into this troubled world bringing with him peace and strength. 
• This is the ministry of reconciliation by which man is reconciled to God and to his fellow men.

--

 211

<The three outer stages> 

which we have rather inadequately called evangelicalism, humanitarianism and materialism, being respectively the superhuman, the human, and the subhuman, rep­resent a different aspect of the same ultimate Reality as the three inner stages: mysticism, rationalism and vitalism. 

Thus matter is the outward appearance of inward life. 

By our scientific instru­ments we can only weigh, measure and time by clocks. Physical science can discover nothing but matter and its laws of motion. A living organism appears to science to be only an unusually complicated mechanism. For pure science there is no difference in essential nature between an automobile and a human body except that one is more complicated and difficult to understand than the other. 

Nevertheless, man feels a mystical intuition of that life within him which is beyond the reach of science. No scientific instrument can discover love, hate, joy or pain. It can only discover the currents along nerves or blood vessels which accompany such emotions.

Humanitarianism or social service is the outer and applied aspect of rationalism. 

Reason tells us that co-operation is better than conflict, that by helping others we help ourselves, and that by deteriorating our environment we weaken ourselves. 

We frame business contracts, laws, constitutions, rules of various kinds that help us to live with our fellow men on a basis of mutual helpfulness and with a minimum of conflict. 

The structure of the modern state, unlike that of the tribe or race, is largely a product of reason based on humanitarian interests. Even the totalitarian state makes this claim. It exists for the benefit of its citizens, and if some citizens are liquidated, even this is in the interest of the whole.

Yet humanitarianism based on reason is unstable. 

It assumes that man is wise enough to know that he ought to help his fellow men, but this knowledge does not always result in the right action. 

Men acquire power and use it for selfish interest. 

Modem democratic society is based on the theory that enlightened self-interest is able to create a peaceful, happy society. 

The "economic man" of the economists is a thoroughly selfish creature, but wise enough to see that selfishness can be carried too far for his own best interest.

212                  

A society based on enlightened self-interest is unstable and destined either to sink lower or to rise higher. 

1. It will either go down to the mechanical level where men are forced to work together by an authority acting from without, or 
2. it will rise into a religiously integrated group life where men co-operate because they are animated by an inner Spirit which is divine. 

In the latter case we have unity produced by the Light. 

Present-day democ­racies are devolving into the authoritarian state because human selfishness cannot produce its opposite which is human inter­dependence. 

1. Either we must have a greater degree of authority to hold men together from without, or 
2. a greater degree of religion to hold them together from within. 

There is no third choice.

That man can emerge to the third and highest level of group life which is integrated by religion has often been shown in human history. 

It occurred in early Christianity and early Quakerism and at many other times. 

I have called this achieve­ment evangelical because it is a church in the best sense of that word, and in Christianity it is a church animated by the Spirit of Christ, the Word of God. 

The Christian Church was in intention a continuation of the Incarnation, the Incarnation as re-enacted in the life of the worshiping group when it realizes the divine Presence in the Midst.

But if we are to be truly evangelical we must realize the Atone­ment as well as the Incarnation. 

How can we today take up the Cross of Christ and follow him? How are we to share his suffering as well as his peace? 

If the Church is to be the con­tinuation of the Incarnation it must also be a continuation of the Atonement. 

It must dare to live up to what it believes regardless of the suffering which this may entail. It must become a part of the Kingdom of Heaven rather than a compromise with the kingdoms of this world. 

It must take upon itself the world's suffering. Like a scouting party far in advance of the line of battle it may suffer many losses, but it will lead the way to victory.

Man in the middle zone of humanistic reason and humani­tarianism will sink lower or rise higher, not so much through his own efforts, as because he submits to forces which either pull him down because he is a child of nature or lift him up because he is a child of God. 213. 

 

The ancient expression, "We are saved by the grace of God," means that we cannot raise ourselves solely by our own efforts. Like a man climbing a ladder we must take hold of a rung above in order to ascend. 

Man cannot main­tain himself as a man unless he is also more than a man. If he does not reach toward the superhuman, he sinks to the sub­human. 

When life becomes secular in the sense that it is centered only in the human, it becomes materialistic as is amply shown in our present-day industrial and scientific culture. 

In losing his hold upon divinity man loses his hold upon humanity as well. The Russian Communists illustrate this. In denying the truth of religion they have denied that which makes humanity worthy of reverence. The result is a subhuman, ant-heap type of community life.

The process of descent from the superhuman to the human and from the human to the subhuman has appeared in the de­clining stages of every great culture. 

Beginning with a primitive, tribal, nature religion, the culture reaches its height in aspiring toward the superhuman. 

As it begins to decline it passes through a humanistic period before entering the final materialistic stage, when it ceases to have life and creativity. 

In our Western Culture during the later Middle Ages man's attention was fixed on the superhuman. A typical achievement of this period was the cathedral with spires pointed toward heaven. Its stained-glass windows shut out all view of the world of nature. Everything within the cathedral reminded man of the supernatural. Encom­passing society was the great Church, outranking the state, 

a supernatural, supranational community revealing supernatural truth beyond human reason and 

dispensing through its sacra­ments the supernatural grace. 

In the universities theology took precedence over all other studies and philosophy was its hand­maiden.

There were, to be sure, few physical comforts, nor was there individual freedom. The most honored human being was the saint who possessed no property at all and might even have very little learning. 

Yet there was a vivid sense of the eternal imping­ing on this world of time. 

Great works of art and literature came into being. 

The City of God appeared in the dark world of nature to draw men up to a life above nature and the demonic powers within it. 214.   

But the zenith was passed, the Church became corrupt and the Renaissance, so-called because it appeared to be the rebirth of a like aspiration in the Graeco-Roman world, exalted the human spirit and the human body. 

Humanistic studies outstripped theo­logical studies and began to dominate the universities. Slowly the great age of reason emerged when the philosophers of the En­lightenment felt that no problem was beyond solution by the human mind.

In the midst of this period <two movements> began which in many respects differed widely but which have shown a strong affinity for each other: 

1. the Protestant Reformation and 
2. the de­velopment of mechanistic science. 

This view of science reduced all things, including man, to mechanisms governed by the un­alterable laws of nature. 

Predestinarian Calvinism, which largely dominated the later Reformation as its logical outcome, reduced man to a depraved status which was wholly subject to the unal­terable decrees of God. 

• In physical science man is moved by physical forces external to himself; 
• in Calvinism man was saved by divine Grace external to himself. 
• The Church as such was no longer looked upon by Protestants as the means of salvation. Man was an individual facing God alone. 

1. Science, in similar fashion, reduced him and the whole universe to a swarm of separate par­ticles. 
2. Protestantism gave acceptance to the Bible record regard­less of its rationality, and science accepted the so-called facts of nature however unreasonable they might appear.

Both Protestantism and mechanistic science weakened what might be designated as the religious horizontal component, the interhuman spiritual tie as a necessary factor in the process of what is called regeneration or salvation in religion and evolution in science. Protestantism kept the vertical relation between man and Cod as the one necessary factor. 

Catholicism and Quakerism emphasized the unifying power of the divine Spirit in the wor­shiping group as a kind of soul in the social organism. 

Catholicism gave less place to the individual than did Quakerism, which, hav­ing the Reformation as one parent, endeavored to preserve the individual. 215.

Such a comparison is valid only as it refers to major historical trends in the past, the effects of which are still to some degree apparent in the present. 

1. Modern Protestantism contains a great variety of points of view covering the whole religious spectrum. 
2. Modern Quakerism also contains a wide variety of religious opin­ions, and 
3. even Catholicism, in spite of its exercise of hierarchical authority in matters of belief, exhibits variations. 

Every religion begins with a fairly homogeneous group. The longer it lives the more heterogeneous it becomes.

As a result of overemphasis on mechanistic religion and mech­anistic science the great age cf humanism is now drawing to a close. 

Humanistic studies still hold a place in colleges and uni­versities, but the physical sciences are dominant. Society is be­coming increasingly individualized as the old bonds of group life, including even the family, gradually weaken. 

Western man, hav­ing lost his hold on the superhuman, is sinking below the human. The time seems to be coming when only authority, exerted through force, can enable men to co-operate. Democracies, based in theory on a kind of humanism, are reverting to reliance on physical force. Wars are increasing in number and violence. It may be that a dark age looms ahead.

As Oswald Spengler points out in his Decline of the West, all great cultures end with a godless religion. 

Our Western culture now tends to support this observation as it proceeds toward ma­terialism which finds an extreme expression in Marxism. 

But Spengler does not notice an important phenomenon which some­times appears in periods of decline. 

Small mystical groups come into being united by an inner Spirit. 

They reject the degenerate culture around them. They believe that within themselves there germinates the new and better society that is to be. 

Christianity appeared in the declining stage of Graeco-Roman life as a new, vital upsurge of the Spirit, preserving much that was good in the old culture and conveying it into the new. 

When Christianity was born the old forms of community life based on tribal and civil loyalties were breaking up and new associations of all kinds were being formed. 

The Roman imperial system could maintain order by force but it could not provide the communal life which the human soul requires. 

The Christian Church met this requirement, and because it was able to do so more fully than any of the many voluntary associations of the time, it increased while they decreased. 

Christianity provided the religious basis which met the human need both for community and for loyalty to a person. 

The invisible Christ Spirit united the group into an organic whole. Beyond this, it provided for participation in the first stage of the new and perfect order of society, the Kingdom of God which would replace Caesar's empire.216  

A declining culture may give birth to something which, being independent of temporal forms, is derived from the supertemporal nature of Reality. 

Christianity began in a Hebraic culture, was carried throughout the Graeco-Roman world, and was then in­fused into Europe. 

While it has taken on cultural forms from all of these areas, Christianity is rooted in elements which are inde­pendent of all three. 

Quakerism, in considering itself to be "Primi­tive Christianity Revived," was not actually the revival of the earlier movement. 

It omitted many Hebraic traits in early Chris­tianity and attempted to emphasize only the timeless elements at the heart of the original gospel. 

Among Hebraic elements which were eliminated were 

1. water baptism, 
2. the concept of a blood-sacrifice and 
3. the coming of the Messiah in clouds of glory. 

These characteristics do not appear in John's Gospel and Epistles nor in the later letters of Paul which served as the primary sources of Quaker theology. 

It was John and Paul who contributed to the timeless element in Christianity in an effort to enable the new religion to grow out of its Jewish swaddling clothes.

Early Quakerism, unlike early Christianity, appeared at a time of upsurging activity in religion, politics and science. As an in­tegral part of that activity it made contributions in all three of these fields. 

On its active, outward side, Quakerism was fully in line with the trend of the times, but on its mystical, inward side it was not in accord with the times. 

In spite of the belief that a return to the world must follow every withdrawal, the past three centuries have not been propitious for a doctrine of withdrawal, even in this form. 

Quakerism at first made a strong appeal by its subtraction of the forms which had accrued in the course of Chris­tian history and which by this time appeared to obscure the orig­inal message. Many were attracted by the attempt to have a religion of honesty and sincerity. .

But when the Friends spoke of an inward experience which was above all outward forms, few could follow. 

The new science was just beginning to open the wonders of the world without. Newton was a contemporary of Fox. This science the Quakers accepted as eagerly as any others, for it was based on genuine firsthand experience and it revealed the ways of God in nature. 

For example, Thomas Lawson, a Quaker school­master of the early period, writes in his scientific textbook which appeared in Latin:

His works within and His works without, even the least of plants, preach forth the power and wisdom of the Creator and eyed in the spaces of eternity humble man.

Only later did it become evident that science could exalt as well as humble man.

Vast geographical areas were opening in the New World. There was much work to be done on the frontier. Men were too tired to espouse a religion which could not be administered by men who made it their professional responsibility and too preoccupied to wait in silence upon the Lord. 

The Puritan type of activism was more congenial to the mechanical age than the Quaker cultivation of the inward life. As a result of these conditions, Puritanism waxed while Quakerism waned, although in the early colonial days in America Quakerism was ahead. 

• In the eighteenth century Quaker energy was largely used up in holding the ground it had already gained, 
• while in the nineteenth century a large section of Quakerism gave up the endeavor and settled down into a type of life and worship close to that of Protestantism.

But the middle of the twentieth century presents a different picture. 

Men are beginning to realize that pure activism does not lead them anywhere. Much of it appears more like the convulsive jerks of epilepsy than a journey toward a definite goal. 

The cry of the day is motion and more motion, faster and faster, but there is little said about where this motion takes us. Numberless gadgets make life physically easier, but not more important. 

A long series of books have appeared lamenting the decline of our Western culture. They are skillful in diagnosing the disease, but they offer no cure.

218.                 

In science something new has come about which may forecast the character and direction of a change just as the mechanistic science of Galileo and Newton forecast the character of the last three centuries. 

To many scientists the structure of the physical world now appears more organic than mechanistic. 

The concep­tion of a soul, so prominent in the science of the Middle Ages, has come back, though in a differenf form. 

Some scientists who have turned philosophers conceive objects such as atoms, molecules, cells and animal organisms to have parts which are so united from within that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

In a mechanism the whole is equivalent to the sum of its parts. In an organism a part is what it is because of its relations to the whole; in a mechanism a part is the same outside the whole as it is within. 

As a result, when electrical particles form atoms, atoms form molecules, molecules form cells and cells form animal organisms, integration occurs in such a way that something new has come into existence which cannot be discovered or predicted by an examination of the parts. 

On each level a new integrating factor exists which creates a new type of unity and co-ordination. It is, therefore, impossible to explain the higher in terms of the lower.

What is the source of this unity? To say that it comes from below is to hold that it results from a happy accident. 

There is, however, one level in this evolutionary process at which we can view it from within as well as from without. That is the level on which we ourselves are. According to our own inner feelings as expressed in our highest insights, the integration of man and the integration of society is due to power which comes down from a superhuman Life outside ourselves. 

The man whose personality has become divided so that he does that which he would not, be^­comes united and at the same time elevated to a higher level by the Light Within. That is how it feels. Such feelings are like those of an astronomer who plots the trajectory of a comet and finds that it comes from outside the solar system. 

The divided, disin­tegrated group is united by divine Power from above, as the his­tory of religion from the most primitive times to the present has so often shown. Perhaps we can say that the summit of the evolu­tionary process of higher and higher types of integration is a Church, a body whose soul is the Eternal Christ, the Word of God which, as John says, creates the world and produces unity in it (John 17:21). 

The process by which a Quaker meeting comes into unity may be typical of the whole evolutionary process through which God creates. This evolution proceeds not by com­petition but by co-operation.219.

But these theoretical speculations do not bring home to us the great truths of our religion. We cannot worship an impersonal In­tegrating Factor, though it is helpful to know that such exists. 

The new science, however, offers us a universe more congenial to an inward, mystical type of religion than a universe explained largely in terms of mechanics, which deals only with external, measurable quantities. 

Perhaps this new science reveals merely a few straws which show the direction of the wind. 

For example, in the theory of relativity, action at a distance, characteristic of Newtonian mechanics, has disappeared. This may forecast the disappearance of the doctrine that God acts upon man only from without.

 The principle of indeterminacy in physics may fore­shadow the disappearance of a religion which still preserves in some form the doctrine of predestination. 

The hypothesis that the Power comes from above which creates organic unity in all stages of the evolutionary process from atoms to the Church Universal leads directly to the concept of the Light of Christ as the source of unity. 

Paul's words that "He is before all things and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17) may be not only a religious in­sight but even a scientific hypothesis.

Whatever comfort and support we may be able to derive from this form of present-day science and philosophy—and it is too early to know exactly where it is leading us—the fact remains that failure to find happiness and security in the outer world will turn some men to look for help from within. 

The failure of materialism and humanism will lead some to seek that which is above both. 

The doctrine of inevitable progress through scientific knowledge which so dominated the thought of the nineteenth century is no longer held to be valid. 

Science is not the Messiah that will bring in the Kingdom of God. Engineers and scientists are not, as H. G. Wells supposed, our seers and prophets. The material world of physical science cannot satisfy the human spirit. 

Unless modern man learns to sit loose to the world without, through greater dependence on the Life Within, he will be overwhelmed by the very environment which he has fashioned.220     

Perhaps we are on a spiral movement in history which is bring­ing us around to a point of view which resembles that of the medieval world as it developed in the springtime of European culture, a season which in many respects had a primitive nature religion though it inherited, through the Catholic Church, a legacy from the advanced stages of Greek and Hebrew thought. 

The feudal system of that time produced a closely integrated com­munity life, but on a low, preindividual level. Today the disin­tegration of the older forms of group life and the gradual atomiza­tion of our social structure, especially in cities, have performed a service in destroying what was outworn and in developing the individual as a unique, free personality. But many are dissatisfied. 

An individualistic religion provides no home for the spirit and a religion which preaches perpetual struggle offers no peace or security. The result is nervous tension pervading all life. 

A multi­tude of clubs and other kinds of associations have come into being to meet the needs of the lonely, insecure individual. They minister to a part of man, but not to his whole nature.

 A type of group life is needed which creates social relationship on all three levels—the spiritual, the intellectual and the economic, or what we have called the superhuman, the human and the subhuman. 

This took place in the Middle Ages, through an all-inclusive Church, but we cannot go back to an older, more primitive pat­tern. Having won freedom and individuality, we must center our lives in the superhuman.

Our current religious organizations to some degree meet the requirements for the spiritual as an essential element in the highest and most satisfying type of group association. 

But, as has been pointed out, this highest level has both an inner and an outer side, it is both mystical and evangelical. Most modern reli­gious organizations meet the need on the outer or evangelical side more fully than on the inner or mystical side, though the inner is never entirely neglected. 

A Christian church today, however it may be defined, is generally a group held together by a common faith and a common way of worship. The form of worship does not specifically provide for dependence on the Presence in the Midst to unite the group from within. 

Modern movements in Protestant theology are going back to the older Protestantism with its exclusive evangelical emphasis. 

Liturgical tendencies in public worship are reviving elements from a still older pre-Prot­estant and even pre-Christian ritual. 

Though there is a wide­spread interest in mysticism, it is, with some important exceptions, largely academic and antiquarian,.-_.The mysticism of the medieval saints and the mysticism of the Hindu-'Vedanta are being exam­ined and in some instances revived, but they fit with difficulty into our modern Western life. 

Though much can be learned from them it is impossible to transport such spiritual exercises in their entirety from one culture to another.

Unless man can develop his interior dimensions in such a way as to form a dyke against the floods from the world without, he will become engulfed in the world of nature and sink back to the subhuman level whence he long ago emerged. 

His Protestant individuality and freedom, won at great sacrifice during the past three centuries, is being lost to the increasing domination of the state and the military establishment. 

Protestantism has demon­strated an ability to serve as the religion of a rapidly developing scientific and industrial culture in a free society, eager to control the world of nature. 

That culture is now declining because man, in learning to control the outer world, has neglected his own inner world. A new and vital materialistic philosophy hovers on the outskirts ready to flood in and fill the vacuum created by the retreat of the Spirit. 

When man is not guided by the divine Spirit within he must, to avoid chaos, submit to an outer control. Grad­ually we are coming to a time when we are presented with the choice between a totalitarianism based on the control of man by man or a religion based on the uniting power of the Holy Spirit.

It is not probable that multitudes will forthwith select the sec­ond alternative. Some will try to save society as a whole. Others in despair of salvaging the ship will take to the lifeboats, land on another shore and build another ship of state. This happened in the declining days of the Graeco-Roman world when small com­munities of Christians adopted a wholly new way of life. This can happen again. It may be that these small units will grow into large communities and give their character to the rising culture of a new world. Such pioneering societies may not be called Quaker, but their religion will resemble that of the Society of Friends and they will be able to learn something from the failures and achievements of three centuries of Quaker experience.

 

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