Brinton CH 9 The Four Periods of Quaker History

 

CHAPTER 9 The Four Periods of Quaker History
and Their Relation to the Mystical, the Evangelical, the Rational and the Social Forms of Religion

The history of the Society of Friends falls into four periods which are marked, conveniently though only approximately, by the turn of the centuries. These periods can be designated as follows:

1.The heroic or apostolic period, about 1650-1700

2.The period of cultural creativeness, about 1700-1800

3.The period of conflict and decline, about 1800-1900

4.The period of modernism, from 1900—.

These four periods represent four stages through which Quak­erism in different areas has passed, is passing or will probably pass. The transition from one stage to the next takes place grad­ually. Changes occur in different places at different times and to different degrees. Some small areas of Quakerism are still in the second period which in their case can hardly be called crea­tive, though it follows the form of the old creative epoch; others, more extensive, are still in the third period, the time of conflict and decline. Perhaps the dates suggested fit the Philadelphia experience more closely than that of any other area.

These four periods differ from one another primarily in the proportion in which four different elements or four different manifestations of religion are emphasized: mysticism, evangel-175

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icalism, rationalism and the activism of the social gospel. These four tendencies have been present in every period, but there has been considerable difference in the degree of attention and emphasis which each has received. The nature of the four forms will become clearer in the course of this chapter; suffice it to say here that mysticism is inwardly directed, evangelicalism is outwardly directed, rationalism is concerned primarily with a religion arrived at by the process of thought, and the social gospel is concerned with humanitarian service. These distinctions enter into both doctrine and practice. In terms of doctrine the mystic discovers religious and moral truth through inward feel­ing, the evangelical through Christian history which is an out­ward objective authority, the rationalist through logical thought, and the servant of humanity through practical efforts toward betterment in this world. For the mystic the primary religious practice is meditation and silent worship; for the evangelical it is study of the sacred record and proclaiming its message; for the rationalist it is the deduction of a right philosophy and theology; and for the activist the essential requirement is to help his fellow men.

It is probable that no living religion is without all of these forms, but there are wide differences in the degree of emphasis. Using these four types as our basis of comparison, we may esti­mate the ingredients in the four periods of Quaker history in some such way as this:

1.     The synthesis or balance of mysticism and evangelicalism, about 1650-1700.

2.     The period of greater mystical inwardness, about 1700-1800.

3.     The conflict of mysticism and evangelicalism, about 1800­1900.

4.     The rise of a paramount interest in rationalism and the social gospel, about 1900—.

1. The Heroic or Apostolic Period The Synthesis of Mysticism and Evangelicalism

The first of these periods was marked by a deep spiritual in­wardness which took precedence over the outward activity to

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which it gave g_uidance and power. It was also marked to an equal degree by a fervent zeal to spread the Truth in spite of violent and cruel opposition by both Church and State. In terms of practice there was, therefore, a living synthesis of mystical and evangelical religion. The same synthesis was achieved, though perhaps less completely, in the realm of doctrine. Much emphasis was placed on the significance of the historical events which gave rise to the Christian religion, including especially the life, teach­ings and sacrificial death of Christ. This emphasis was prominent in the writings by which the Quakers defended themselves against opponents who claimed they were not Christians because of their universalism, their opposition to the doctrine of imputed righteousness and their belief in the supremacy of the Light Within over the Bible. They based their stand on the New Testa­ment, believing, in spite of all attacks upon their position, that Quakerism was "primitive Christianity revived."

The Quakers were, accordingly, at least in their own estimation, evangelical in doctrine, though leaning to what would today be called a "liberal" position. The inward side of religion was given precedence, though the outward was by no means ignored. Because of this, the setting up of meetings for worship for inward, communion with God became the major objective in both Eng-lan. an. 'merica, and "the preaching of the Word" to assure a right belief—which was a major objective of Puritanism—was esteemed of less importance. The objective of the Quaker min­ister was not so much to teach as to direct his hearers to their Inward Teacher. It is natural, however, that historians of Quaker-ismmihoiiid emphasize the more spectacular episodes in the lives of Friends who were preachers, since there is little of the dramatic in a silent Quaker meeting. The adventures of the so-called First Publishers of Truth in almost every accessible part of the earth in the face of relentless opposition are equal in dramatic quality to the more exciting experiences in the history of religion. There were no human beings whom the Quakers despaired of. A delegation was even sent to Rome to convert the Pope. They believed that the same Light of Christ could be appealed to in all men from the American Indians in the West to the followers of Mahomet in the East. Delegations sent to Mediterranean lands

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suffered more from the Christian Inquisition than from the heathen Turks George Fox attempted to send letters by personal messengers to the King of Spain, the Pope, the King of France, the Czar of Russia, the magistrates of Malta, the Bey of Algiers, the mythical Prester John and, lest any be left out, "To all nations under the whole heavens." The bloody, cruel and finally victor­ious struggle to introduce Quakerism into Massachusetts resulted in floggings, imprisonments, banishment into the wilderness, and four deaths by hanging. Because shipmasters were prevented by severe penalties from bringing Quakers to America, a group of eleven sailed on their own tiny vessel guided by the Spirit. Joseph Besse in two large volumes, which constitute a kind of Quaker martyrology, records the sufferings and some of the adventures of twelve thousand Friends in the period prior to the Toleration Act in 1689. It is a record without parallel in religious history. In introducing the chapter on sufferings in Europe and Asia he speaks of the motives of these dauntless preachers:

Their call to so extraordinary a service was grounded upon an assurance of faith in themselves, and a most clear and convincing evi­dence of a divine impulse upon their spirits and a necessity of obedi­ence thereunto. This certain sense of duty and the unspeakable peace of mind they found in the performance of it, which had supported them under many sufferings in their own country, led them to travel as with their lives in their hands to testify the Truth, even to the teeth of its greatest opposers, for, knowing that the cause was the Lord's, they were raised above the fear of man in publishing it, and the Presence of Him on whose errand they went did attend them through the greatest difficulties, enabling some of them cheerfully to lay down their lives in His service.'

Besse's account contains many sentences which end like the following:

The Man with the Black Rod and the Keeper took us and put us into an inner room in the Inquisition which had but two little holes in it for light or air but the glory of the Lord did shine round about us.²

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It was this sense of a divine commission and a continued aware­ness of the divine Presence which made it possible for these often quite commonplace human beings to accomplish what otherwise would have been beyond human endurance.

A contemporary letter indicates the extent of the effort to publish the Truth. It is dated from the general meeting at Skipton in 1660 and is followed by a recommendation that a collection be taken in every meeting for the help of traveling Friends.

Dear Friends and Brethren,

We having certain information from some Friends of London, of the great work and service of the Lord beyond the seas, in several parts and regions, as Germany, America, and many other islands and places, as Florence, Mantua, Palatine, Tuscany, Italy, Rome, Turkey, Jerusalem, France, Geneva, Norway, Barbadoes, Bermuda, Antigua, Jamaica, Surinam, Newfoundland_; through all which, Friends have passed in the service of the Lord, and divers other countries, places, islands and nations; and among many nations of the Indians, in which they have had service for the Lord, and through great travails have published His name, and declared the everlasting gospel of peace unto them that have been afar off, that they might be brought nigh unto God.'

During this active and vivid period the message was also spread by a flood of books and pamphlets. Many of these were printed secretly at great risk to the Quaker printers. By the year 1708 more than twenty-six hundred books and pamphlets had been issued by at least four hundred and forty different authors.⁴ In 1672 a special committee was appointed by the Yearly Meet­ing to supervise the printing and distribution of Friends books. This committee saw to it that an answer was written to every anti-Quaker book.⁵ There were at least eight hundred of these. The pamphlets illustrate more clearly than the books the zeal and enthusiasm which gave the Quaker movement such driving force in the face of powerful opposition. While a few were ecstatic, and occasionally almost incoherent, there were many reasoned defenses of Quaker testimonies against oaths, tithes, hat honor and man-made social distinctions in general.

This period was above all characterized by the power and penetration of its vocal ministry. Of John Audland, twenty-two

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years old, it was said, "Immortality shined in his face and his voice was as thunder."When William Dewsbury came to Kelk it was reported of his visit:

His testimony was piercing and very powerful, so as the earth shook before him, the mountains did melt at the power of the Lord, which exceedingly, in a wonderful manner, broke forth in these days in our holy assemblies, to the renting of many hearts, and bringing divers to witness the same state, measureably, as the prophet or servant of the Lord did in ancient times, whose lips quivered and belly shook, that he might rest in the day of trouble. Oh! It was a glorious day, in which the Lord wonderfully appeared for the bringing down the lofty and high minded, and exalting that of low degree. Many faces did gather paleness, and the stout hearted were made to bow, and strong oaks to bend before the Lord.'

When it was said of Thomas Reif that he had. a "watering testimony,'¹ it meant that his ministry watered and made the Seed of God to grow in man. That many other Friends had such a testimony is shown by the great harvest that was gathered. The movement spread rapidly through England and America and in other parts of the world.

In this first period the emphasis was primarily on religious experience. The traveling ministers did not often give doctrinal sermons. They appealed to their hearers to seek and find the divine Light and Life within themselves. Theological opinions were not ignored but they were condemned as "airy notions" when unrelated to experience. Only for the sake of uninformed persons or in dealing with opponents who endeavored to prove that Quakers were not Christians, did members of the Society of Friends produce theological essays. They used the same words as did their opponents but not always in the same sense. In speaking of Christ it is sometimes difficult to tell whether they were speaking of the Eternal Christ, "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Cor. 1:24), or the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Often when their opponents were speaking of Jesus, the Quakers were using the same language to denote the "Word which was in the beginning with God." It is as difficult to be specific about Quaker theology in this first period as it is to be specific about Christian theology in New Testament times. In The Varieties of

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New Testament Religion E. F. Scott lists eight distinct points of view. Perhaps as many could be found in early Quakerism. In

seeking for differences of view among early Friends, one has only to compare Penn's Sandy Foundation Shaken which is highly mystical, with his own next book Innocency with Her Open Face which is largely evangelical.

The Quaker religion of this period was a living union of the mystical and evangelical aspects of Christianity as exemplified both in doctrine and practice; in doctrine because no theological opinion was valid unless vitally related to religious experience; and in practice, because outward activity was valid only in so far as it grew out of inward spiritual guidance and power. C. G. Jung points out that when the introvert and extrovert elements in human character are integrated, the strongest type of personality results. The same is true of the balance and integration of the mystical or inward element in religion and the evangelical or outward element. When either is developed at the expense of the other, some form of disproportion—it may be fanaticism, or it may be formalism—results. The peculiar power of the early Quakers was due, in part at least, to the balance of the inward and outward aspects of religion.

2. The Period of Cultural Creativeness and Mystical Inwardness

The period of creation was followed by a period of conserva­tion. No religious movement has ever maintained the fire, energy and power which accompanied its formative period. The burning zeal which flames out in the market place must sooner or later become the warm glow of the household hearth. If religion is to become a genuine part of life itself, it must enter the home as well as the public square and become integrated with the routine affairs of family living.

This second period is referred to by all modern historians of Quakerism as the period of Quietism. This designation, while true, is not always correctly interpreted. It is not, as some appear to suppose, a term of disparagement. For the quietist, worship requires a passive as well as an active phase, a negative as well as a positive way, a time of receptivity and waiting for divine

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guidance as well as a time for action upon that guidance. The Quaker quietists were far from quiet once they were assured of the right word or deed. Their period of withdrawal was followed by a return to activity with an increase of insight and power. The leading spirits of this period, Anthony Benezet, Thomas Chalkley, John Churchman, Joshua Evans, David Ferris, Rebecca Jones, John and Samuel Fothergil, Catherine Phillips, Martha Routh, William Savery, Job Scott and John Woolman, to mention only a few, were all quietists, but every one of them traveled widely in the ministry and became an active agent in some social reform. In the so-called "quietist period" the Quakers governed three American colonies and were active in the politics of two more. In the technical meaning of the term, Quakers of the first period were also quietists, and all the usual phrases which signify Quietism, such as reference to the Light as "that which is pure" (or free from human contamination), can be found in their writ­ings. In the transition from the first period to the second, there was no change in doctrine but there was an important change in behavior. The period following the end of persecution in Eng­land brought about by the Toleration Act of 1689 found the Quakers almost exhausted by the storm they had weathered. Most of the first leaders had died, many of them in prison, and a second generation was coming on who were not motivated by the blind­ing fire and acute zeal that comes from discovery of new truth or from resistance to violent opposition. Many of the most active Friends had migrated to America where they were engaged in setting up a new society and a new way of life in a new world. The enthusiasm which accOmpanied the first revelation of the Truth was renewed in the enthusiasm with which the colonists set about creating a new commonwealth where Truth might reign. This was their Holy Experiment. They not only created governments conducted on Quaker principles, they created a distinctive Quaker culture, a unique way of life. The feeling en­gendered by this extraordinary opportunity in the new world is suggested in the early meeting minutes such as those of Chester (later Concord) Quarterly Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meet­ing whose Minute Book is described on its first page as

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Belonging to the People of God called Quakers of Chester County in the Province of Pennsylvania in America. Begun by Divers of those People who in great freedom of spirit left their native country of England and transported themselves and families to this Remote part of the world.

Philosophers have from time to time described their conception of an ideal commonwealth. Here was a vigorous group of ordi­nary people who not only dreamed of their utopia, but brought it into actual being.

The Golden Age of Quakerism in America was between 1700 and 1740. The first phase of the struggle to clear forests and build homes was then almost over, but material success had not yet become great enough to sap religious vitality. The French and Indian War which was to bring tension between Quaker rulers and the home government in England had not yet broken out. Pennsylvania under Penn's Frame of Government and a Quaker Assembly was the most prosperous of all the colonies and Phila­delphia was becoming the center of culture in the New World. In Rhode Island half the population was Quaker and for thirty-six successive terms Quaker governors held office. The Quakers were the most important religious group in North Carolina. Under John Archdale, a Quaker governor, they controlled at one time half the seats in the Assembly. The Quakers had purchased New Jersey before they acquired Pennsylvania, and, although they surrendered their proprietary rights in 1702, they continued to wield a strong influence in the management of the province. In Maryland, Virginia and New York, Quaker meetings were rapidly increasing in numbers and membership due to the zeal of traveling ministers and the ease with which a Quaker meeting could be set up.

In this period attention gven to government sometimes inter­fered with religious duties as is shown in the minutes of Middle­town Monthly Meeting dated 1701:

The greater part of the members of this meeting, being called away upon business relating to government, therefore it is adjourned until tomorrow, being the fifth of this month.

John Kinsey (1693-1750) was at one and the same time clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Chief Justice of the Supreme

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Court and Speaker of the Assembly. Others could be named, such as Thomas Lloyd, David Lloyd, Isaac Norris and James Pemberton, who combined religious with political responsibility in a way which was characteristic of many leading Friends of the first half of the eighteenth century.

But the most important product of the flowering of Quakerism in the New World was the unique Quaker culture. By culture is meant a clearly defined way of life with a spiritual basis. A true culture affects every aspect of life. In the Quaker communities the meeting was the center, spiritually, intellectually and eco­nomically. It included a library and a school. Disputes of what­ever nature were settled in the business sessions of the meeting. The poor were looked after, moral delinquents dealt with, mar­riages approved and performed. There was little need for court or police force or officials of any kind except a few whose func­tion was to transfer property and perform similar legal duties. Each group, centered in the meeting, was a well-ordered, highly integrated community of interdependent members. The charter of the community and the moral code which governed its way of life was written in the Book of Extracts which was not a de­pository of tradition, but a record, subject to constant revision, of enlarging moral insights. This flowering of Quakerism was not characterized by any outburst of literary or artistic production. Its whole emphasis was on life itself in home, meeting and com­munity. This life was an artistic creation as beautiful in its simplicity and proportion as was the architecture of its meeting houses The "Flowering of New England" has been described in terms of its literature, but the flowering of Quakerism in the middle colonies can be described only in terms of life itself.

During the second half of the eighteenth century in America forces and influences from within and without altered this favored condition. The French and Indian War flared out all along the frontier. Most of the Quaker members of the Pennsylvania Assembly resigned in 1756. The inhabitants of the Common­wealth feared the loss of Penn's charter if, because of the Quaker influence, they refused to co-operate in prosecuting the war. But this partial withdrawal from government was not followed by retirement within a shell of isolation. Work was urgent for Indians

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and Negroes. In 1758 peace was made with the Pennsylvania Indians largely through the efforts of the "Friendly Association for Gaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures." Friends who had refused to pay taxes to support the war gave lavishly to this organization in order to achieve the desired result and to demonstrate the adequacy of peaceful methods. Whenever the white man made a treaty with the Indians, Friends saw to it that 'a Quaker was present to defend Indian rights.

New efforts were made in the field of education. Monthly Meetings were required to report to the Yearly Meeting exactly what each was doing to educate its children. By the end of the century there were approximately sixty Friends schools in Penn­sylvania and about half as many in New Jersey.

Of supreme importance was the strenuous effort which began about the middle of the century to reform the Society from within. There was great uneasiness about Friends in government who had shown a compromising spirit and about Friends who, having grown wealthy in business, were departing from sim­plicity. A new set of Queries, fourteen in number, to be answered in writing four times a year was devised in 1755 representing all the important testimonies regarding behavior. They consti­tuted a powerful and inclusive check on un-Quakerly forms of behavior. Gradually the number of times on which the Queries were to be answered was reduced to once a year. The Discipline, as a moral code, took more definite shape and the means of enforcing it were increased. Many Friends were disowned for various types of delinquency, the most frequent being marriage with a person not in membership in the Society of Friends. Friends strongly believed in religious unity within the family. The loss from disownment was large though many disowned Friends later returned to their early allegiance. Throughout the century, in spite of disownments ar1d rigid enforcement of the Discipline the number of members increased. American Quaker­ism probably reached its numerical climax about 1800.

This century is here designated the "period of mysticism" be­cause the conscious effort to follow divine guidance wherever it might lead was unusually strong. The first leaders had thrown

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themselves with such abandon and lack of self-consciousness into the task of spreading their message that they did not practice the continuous self-examination apparent in the more cautious and introspective members of the second period. There was a differ­ence of degree not of kind. The Journals written by the leading Friends of the eighteenth century portray a humble, devout life guided from within, and a sense of peace and serenity resulting from awareness that every task laid upon them by their divine Master had been carried out according to the measure of Light and Power which was given. The theological battles of the seven­teenth century were over; the Quakers were generally accepted as Christians. Less attention was paid to doctrine and more was directed toward the cultivation of the right inward state. Theo­logical opinion was not absent, but it was in the background and seldom became the subject of spoken or written discourse. Most sermons in meetings for worship were appeals for obedience to the admonitions of the Spirit made manifest within. Concerns for particular forms of social service were expressed in the meet­ing for business. Traditions were growing up and exerting a strong influence. Whittier in "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim" writes of a Quaker meeting of the period:

The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole Through the stained onel of each human soul.

There was much traveling by the leading Friends, some of whom were so continuously engaged in religious service that they were seldom at home for any length of time. Several could say toward the end of their lives that they had visited every meet­ing in the Society of Friends. Individual journeys not infre­quently occupied as many as four years including crossing the Atlantic. Traveling Friends held advertised meetings for address­ing the general public, and meetings held in meeting houses were often attended by many who were not Friends. The days of con­vincing the unconvinced were by no means over. Great distances were covered by canoe or on horseback, sometimes along lonely frontier trails. Martha Routh, an English schoolteacher in delicate health, records that she traveled 11,000 miles in America in 1794­96. Catherine Phillips records that she traveled 8,750 miles on

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horseback on an American Journey in 1753-56. Meetings for worship held with families were included on these itineraries sometimes five or ten in a day. Traveling Friends were the links which bound the widely scattered Society together, giving it coherence and insuring a certain degree of uniformity.

The most complete description of the Quaker cultural pattern of this period was written by Thomas Clarkson. Not himself a member Of the Society of Friends, he had come into close contact with Friends in antislavery work and he admired their ways. Clarkson's Portraiture of Quakerism first issued in three volumes in London in 1806 became in Quaker schools and elsewhere the main source book for those who desired to preserve and perpetu­ate the Quakerism of the eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. Clarkson observes in his introduction that there had been books written about Quaker history and principles but none, like his, about the manners and customs of the Society of Friends. But a living culture cannot be transmitted by a description, how­ever exact. To be really understood, it must be felt and lived.

The Quaker way of life as developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries survived in many places through much of the nineteenth century, and in a few areas it has persisted well into the twentieth. Friends now living, whose grandparents were examples of what Thomas Clarkson wrote about, comprehend and appreciate the inner significance of this thoroughly corre­lated system. They can, however, pass on only a faint impression of it to their children for whom the whole flavor and essence of the old Quaker life has become, if it is of interest at all, the object of antiquarian inquiry. Through such study the outward form is ascertainable, but the inner quality must be felt in order to be known.

3. The Conflict between Mysticism and Evangelicalism

During the larger part of the second period the mystical ele­ment in Quakerism took precedence over the evangelical. It was deemed essential that the outward should be a genuine and sincere expression of the inward. But gradually the elders and overseers who were guardians of the traditions governing "plain­ness in dress, speech and behavior" became dominant. The

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priestly type of mind took precedence over the prophetic type.

Friends do not have a testimony against forms as such. Inward feeling must inevitably find expression in outward form. Nor do Friends have a testimony against forms inherited from the past just because they come from the past. Action, in order to be based on as wide a range of experience as possible, must to some extent be governed by the wisdom of those who are no longer liv­ing. But it is possible for the past to exercise more weight than it should in determining the sense of the meeting. In the days following the American Revolution and the French Revolution there was much talk of freedom which had its influence on the Quakers. It is not surprising that there should arise in the first quarter of the nineteenth century considerable resistance in the Society of Friends to those who were enforcing very strictly a definite code of behavior. There were also many well-founded complaints by official Friends about looseness of conduct and the lowness of spiritual life. A conflict was brewing which first ap­peared as a tension between the rank and file and the Friends on the facing benches.

The conflict burst into flame when the elders, going beyond their accustomed prerogative as guardians of behavior, attempted to become guardians of the theological opinions of those who spoke in meetings for worship. This broke the Society of Friends in America into two parts. Those who were in favor of dictation regarding doctrine tended to be the more evangelical in belief, though there were many exceptions. Those who were opposed to dictation by the elders tended to emphasize the mystical side of Quakerism, though here also there were many exceptions. The tension increased from 1800 until it led to a separation which began in Philadelphia in 1827. Spiritual life was at too low an ebb to create the former synthesis of inward and outward. Edward Hicks in his Journal calls it a "quibbling, scribbling age." The Inward Light, the source of unity, had become ob­scured. Worldly prosperity had taken the fortress which persecu­tion had assailed so long in vain.

In Englind the tension between these two elements was, with the exception of two minor separations, kept within bounds with more mutual forbearance than in America. The evangelical party

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was generally dominant during most of the nineteenth century partly because, as is usually the case, it was more insistent on its principles than the mystical party. As each separation occurred in America, London Yearly Meeting always recognized the more evangelical party. English Friends traveling in America strongly supported that side and thereby increased the tendency toward separation.

The separations in America during the nineteenth century will be touched on here only in so far as they throw light on changes in Quaker ideas. Several factors conduced toward these changes. Friends were in closer contact with the outside world than they had been in the preceding century. Influences from two opposite directions were affecting them, the so-called evangelical awaken­ing of the Methodist revival from the right and the rationalistic philosophy of the time, and the French Revolution from the left. The Methodists held that man was fallen and had no capacity for goodness. They stood for the plenary inspiration of the Scrip­tures, the Deity of Christ, His substitutionary death on the cross, and a personal religious experience which suddenly and miracu­lously converted the believer from a state of depravity to a state of grace. In their insistence on personal religious experience and in some of the social reforms which they advocated, they came close to Quakerism, and it is not surprising that some of the Quaker leaders, of the early nineteenth century came to Quaker­ism as converts from the Methodist revival. No substantial portion of the Society of Friends was affected by the rationalism of Paine, Voltaire and Hume or the popular deism which made God wholly transcendent. Paley's Evidences and Butler's Analogy were weak answers to deism, but the French Revolution appeared as a horrible outcome of free thought. The main result of the impact of rationalism on a part of the Society of Friends at that time was negative in supporting the reaction toward mysticism and against evangelical doctrines. The struggle both in the sep­aration of 1827 and in that of 1845 was between those who emphasized the outward Scriptures and outward historical events recorded in Scripture and those who emphasized inward mystical experience. In the heat of controversy each drove the other to extremes which later were somewhat modified. In Philadelphia

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the new evangelical emphasis came first to the city; the country, as usual, being moie conservative, remained closer to the mystical emphasis of the eighteenth century. This was confusing. It meant that the conservative country Friends possessed a more liberal theology, while the radical city Friends held a more con­servative theology. But country and city were at odds for another reason. City Friends could easily get together and attend com­mittees. They were more wealthy and many of them more edu­cated. They dominated the Yearly Meeting for Ministers and Elders and the Meeting for Sufferings, which was the Executive Committee of the Yearly Meeting. The country Friends could but seldom attend these important gatherings. They resented the domination of aristocratic, city Friends. For these reasons there were twice as many of the evangelical party in the city as there were of the liberal party. In the country, on the other hand, where the majority of Friends lived, this situation was reversed. Similar conditions prevailed when the separation spread to Balfi-more and New York. In Ohio where there was no large body of city Friends, the two parties were practically equal.

The immediate cause of the separation was the attempt on the part of the Philadelphia elders to forbid Elias Hicks to preach. He was an aged and powerful minister who was then traveling with a minute from his home meeting in Long Island. A genuine mystic, sympathizing neither with evangelical doctrines nor with the type of rationalism which resulted in unitarianism, his whole religion was based on the Inward Light, yielding small place for the historical Jesus, the Bible, Christian tradition, or anything outward. Many who took his part did not understand or appre­ciate his extremely subjective type of religion, but they defended his right to preach and his concept of religious freedom. Others took his part because they disliked the aggressive heresy-hunting tactics of the evangelical Orthodox party. Samuel Janney, the leading historian of the Hicksite or liberal party, writes in his Journal for 1824:

The doctrines I then held were those called Orthodox, but I could not endure the spirit of bitterness and party zeal by which those doctrines were too often accompanied.⁸

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The Orthodox party claimed that the separation was due to doctrinal differences, but the Hicksite party denied this. The latter wrote to London Friends:

We do not believe that the dissensions which have appeared amongst us had their origin so much in differences of opinion in doctrinal points as in a disposition, apparent in some, to exercise an oppressive authority in the church.

Doctrinal statements appearing in the Hicksite disciplines and elsewhere uphold this point of view.

When the separation finally occurred in 1827 both parties were to blame for their behavior: the Orthodox party for their belliger­ent attack on persons holding what they considered unchristian opinions, and for their disowning of all members of the Hick-site party; and the Hicksites for their impatience and unwilling­ness to wait, in the time-honored Quaker manner, for greater unity. They withdrew from what they called "the scene of confusion." What had begun as a controversy over a problem of church government, namely, the authority of the elders, now became a theological controversy between the followers of the historic Christ and the followers of the Inward Christ. This con­troversy much lowered the general regard in which the Society had been held. The Manifesto, the official organ of the Shakers, said that "when the Quakers so far forgot their union as to wrangle about doctrine they sank into woridlings." Both sides issued publications appealing to the writings of primitive Friends and both found much to support their positions. What both overlooked was the fact that primitive Quakerism, like primitive Christianity, was a synthesis of mystical and evangelical elements in which each modified the other. For primitive Quakerism the historical Christ and the Inward Christ were one, the historical Christ having been the incarnation and complete revelation of the Inward Christ.

Since the Hicksite, or liberal Friends, had assumed a position which allowed for a wide variety of theological opinion, no fur­ther separations occurred among them. They reduced the author­ity of elders and overseers so they did not continue to lay the same emphasis as did the Orthodox on time-honored Quaker

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traditions. They emphasized democracy and tolerance. For a century their discipline advised the meeting to deal with persons who denied the divinity of Christ, which was defined as blas­phemy.

The Orthodox wing adopted a more authoritarian position, assuming greater control of the individual by the group. As a consequence, the old controversy between the mystic and evan­gelical broke out again. This resulted in the Wilburite-Gurneyite Separation which began in New England in 1845 and gradually spread to other areas. Joseph John Gurney's (1788-1847) name was attached to the more extreme evangelical group, and that of John Wilbur (1774-1856) to those who represented the older, more mystical type of Quakerism which also contained definite evangelical elements. Gurney, an attractive, able and cultured member of a distinguished English family and a brother of Elizabeth Fry, spent three years in a tour of American meetings in the years 1837-40. His devout life and powerful ministry made a profound impression. He was opposed by John Wilbur who claimed that he was preaching doctrines not in accord with primitive Quakerism, such as a belief in imputed righteousness through a profession of faith and in the Bible as the only source of Truth; the Word of God rather than a word of God. Later in his life Gurney denied having these opinions. Wilbur was of the prophetic type. His thought was closely in line with the Quakerism of the preceding century. He relied upon the Inward Light as the primary source Of Truth, and the Bible as a sec­ondary source revealing the same Truth. Gurney was a scholar, versed in theology, an advocate of higher education and par­ticularly of Bible teaching to which the conservative Friends objected as a type of programmed religious service not inspired by the Spirit, and mere "head knowledge." At Oxford and else­where he had come under the influence of prominent English churchmen. Thomas Shillitoe, an active English opponent of Elias Hicks, criticized Gurney for being, as he said, "an Episco­palian, not a Quaker." Jonathan Evans, a leading opponent of Hicks in Philadelphia, was equally opposed to Gurney. When Wilbur expressed disapproval of Gurney in New England Yearly Meeting, the Yearly Meeting overwhelmingly supported Gurney,

THE FOUR PERIODS OF QUAKER HISTORY  193

and by an irregular procedure brought about the disownment of Wilbur by overriding the support of his own Monthly Meeting. The adherents of Wilbur appealed to other Yearly Meetings, thus causing divisions in them. The Philadelphia Orthodox Yearly Meeting recognized the Wilburite Yearly Meeting in Ohio, but eventually, in order to appease their own small Gurneyite minority, withdrew correspondence, the usual form of recogni­tion, from all other Yearly Meetings. Most members of Phila­delphia Yearly Meeting at Arch Street continued to feel that they were a part of the Wilburite group, the recognition of which was never formally rescinded.

There were then in the second half of the nineteenth century in America three kinds of Quakers designated by the names of three persons. The Hicksites represented the more mystical, liberal, noncreedal branch; the Gurneyites, the more evangelical, authoritarian and theologically conservative branch; and the Wilburites, a branch whose position was between the other two. The doctrinal differences among the three were not clearly de­fined since they had no formal written creeds. It was more a matter of emphasis than of content. Among the Wilburites there was more opportunity than in either of the other two for a genuine synthesis of the mystical and evangelical elements in Quakerism. It was they who could most clearly lay claim to be the heirs of the original Society of Friends. But there was an important difference. The code of behavior which the first Friends arrived at through immediate experience of the Inward Light, the Wilburites, with many exceptions, tended to accept in large measure on the basis of tradition.

Again the more evangelical branch became subject to division. The history of religion has shown over and over again that creeds do not unite, they tend to divide. A group held together by a creed is more brittle and more subject to breakage than a more yielding organic group held together by the Spirit. Soon after the Civil War a great revival of evangelical religion, akin to Methodism, occurred, especially in the Middle West. It pro­foundly affected all religious sects, including the Society of Friends. Evangelists traveled from place to place, bringing multi­tudes to their knees crying for mercy and forgiveness. Quakers

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who had become evangelists or evangelists who had become Quakers held revival meetings in Friends meeting houses. This tendency generally showed itself first in the singing of hymns and proceeded finally to the taking over of the meeting by the evangelists. They preached a fourfold gospel of justification, Sanctification, the Second Coming of Christ and Faith Healing. Many new members who were by this means brought suddenly into membership knew nothing of the Quaker meeting for wor­ship. Meetings seeking to worship in silence were interrupted by impromptu hymns, calls to prayer, personal testimonies and shouts of hallelujah and amen. In order to care for the new converts and to bring order the evangelist was sometimes pre­vailed upon to remain and become a professional pastor, con­ducting a regular Protestant type of programmed service.* Through such influences a large proportion of the Society of Friends became removed from its foundation and brought-into the full stream of Protestantism.

These changes brought in a new series of separations. Be­ginning in 1877 in Iowa and ending in 1904 in North Carolina, a number of meetings and individuals withdrew from those affected by these tendencies and affiliated with the Wilburites. They are now known as Conservative Friends. To them the evangelists appeared to be bringing in "strange fire,"⁹ to be saying, "I converted these" instead of leaving it to the Lord, to be attempting to bring about suddenly by methods of high pressure the new life which can only grow slowly. In the Journals of the evangelists the pronoun "I" is used in a way in which it is not used in other Friends Journals. The Lord "gave me souls," writes Esther Frame,¹⁰ an evangelist who joined Friends because of more opportunities for a woman to preach. When John Henry Douglas found his fervent appeals in a Friends meeting unavail‑

Cf. George Fox's account of his visit to Rhode Island: "At another place I heard some of the magistrates said among themselves, 'If they had money enough, they would hire me to be their minister.' This was where they did not well understand us and our principles, but when I heard of it I said, 'It was time for me to be gone; for if their eye was so much to me or any of us they would not come to their own teacher.' For this thing [hiring ministers] had spoiled many, by hindering them from improving their own talents; whereas our labor is to bring all men to their own teacher in themselves."—Journal, II, 171-72

THE FOUR PERIODS OF QUAKER HISTORY  195

ing, he cried out, "What shall I do with you?" A woman Friend then arose and said, "John, we own no man master in this assembly." This illustrates a fundamental difference between the new evangelist and the older Quaker preacher. For the evangelist the religious service was focused on himself; for the older type of minister the sermon arose out of the united life of the meeting. The evangelist kept careful count of the number of conversions he made. The older Friends did not pretend to know what changes the Spirit might be secretly making in the hearts of their hearers.

It has often been suggested that the pastoral system with its programmed worship came into the Society of Friends because of failure of the meeting based on silence and particularly failure of the older type of ministry. This may, in some instances, have been true, but in the great majority of cases it appears to have come, not because of absence of Life, but because of too much liveliness. The revival unsettled the meeting, produced a chaos of ecstatic testimonies and much running about, and the pastor was brought in to restore order. The more active, aggressive element also welcomed his assumption of responsibility to lessen the influence of the more pacific conservative element.*

Again the more evangelical party was subject to division. The Friends who had adopted the pastoral system became divided into a modernist wing with a somewhat critical attitude toward the Bible and a fundamentalist wing of Biblical literalists. The fundamentalists still depend on revivalistic methods. Their doc­trine of sanctification as a second experience following conversion has an affinity to the primitive Quaker doctrine of perfection though it is based on a different theology. The modernist Friends churches have largely given up revivalism which no longer exerts its former appeal. Their leading members today have been edu­cated in Friends colleges and many have come into contact with other aspects of Quakerism. As a result there is a greater

⁰ English Evangelicalism produced a number of programmed meetings most of which have disappeared. According to the London Book of Meetings, the following religious community services were carried on in 1898: "24 First-day Evening 'Reading Meetings,' and 83 First-day Evening 'Mission Meetings.' "—Friends Quarterly Examiner, Vol. XXXII, _p. 407 Seventh Month, 1898.

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approval of the older way of Quaker worship. The pastoral Friends churches are frequently community churches which minister to a limited geographical area which includes persons with a variety of religious backgrounds. One of their main eon-cerns is foreign missions.

This account, too brief to be wholly accurate, is intended to suggest the changes in Quaker ideas and the occasion of those changes. The clue to the tensions and cleavage is the inability of the more mystical and the more evangelical, the inwardly centered and the outwardly centered, the introvert and the ex­trovert to understand each other and to wait patiently enough in the Light for unity. The nineteenth century was a time of restlessness and division in all religious groups in America. The causes of disagreement were many, including migrations to new frontiers, civil war, and periods of transition in economic status as well as in scientific and philosophic thought.

A diagram will summarize graphically this period in Quaker history. Several minor separations are not included.

The Modernist Period: 1900-1950

The following description of this period concerns mainly that part of Quakerism in America which has continued the original way of Quaker worship and practice. It is to be observed, how­ever, that the changes to be noted have taken place, in various degrees and forms, throughout Christendom.

During this period we can no longer refer only to conflict between the mystical and evangelical wings as the key to under­standing Quaker history. The tension continued, indeed it must always be present, but other emphases were increasing. The Society of Friends was now wide open to outside influences. Rationalism and the religion of social service had always been present in Quakerism, but they were subordinate to the mystical and evangelical. Reason had been considered a reliable guide to moral and religious Truth if illumined by the Inward Light and checked by the New Testament. Social service was always held to be essential in Christian behavior provided that it arose from divine Leading. Barclay protests against the Protestant theology which enabled a man to be saved without good works.

THE FOUR PERIODS OF QUAKER HISTORY     197

1900

0         -         Postoro! System

Begins

1800

1750

1700

Wiikinso

0r

I

'Q¹°nd

1650

MYSTICAL EMPHASIS EVANGELICAL EMPHASIS

DIVISIONS IN AMERICAN Q1JAXERISM AS RELATED TO MYSTICAL
AND EVANGELICAL TRENDS

This diagram indicates only the beginning of separations which sometimes took place over a period of time. Tendencies toward unity in the second quarter of the twentieth century and the growth of inde­pendent meetings uniting all branches are not indicated.

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But subordination of the rational and the social to the mystical and evangelical did not continue to the same degree. Many Quakers became primarily intellectual and humanitarian in outlook. The searching for inner guidance in the heart and outer guidance in the Scriptures receded, though it never al­together ceased.

This change, which like all changes took place gradually, was due to several conditions. Chief among them was the general tendency toward secularization and humanism. All through the nineteenth century science had been coming forward as the most reliable guide to truth, and in the twentieth century it came to be revered as the most dependable source of knowledge. Rapid acceleration in the application of science had given to man an extraordinary control over nature. Reliance on the divine seemed less essential. Such reliance was sometimes con­sidered a sign of weakness or ignorance. In cities little was in evidence that was not man-made or under human control. In earlier generations most Friends were farmers; now many were living in cities or suburbs where the mysterious and unpredictable aspects of the creation appeared at a minimum. Man seemed self-sufficient, victorious and without need of help from God or religion. Two world wars have since shown this victory to have been an illusion. Man's victory over nature was annulled by the fact that he had failed to triumph over himself.

Secularization and the tendency toward humanism was ac­celerated in the Society of Friends by higher education. In most colleges science took precedence and other studies employed the scientific method as far as was practicable. Even courses of study in religion and ethics sought for a scientific basis.

In the first half of the nineteenth century a strong religious atmosphere pervaded the Friends Boarding Schools. This was carried over to the colleges which developed in the second half of the century. But the Quaker colleges, like other denomina­tional colleges, though they continued to emphasize religion, tended to satisfy an intellectual rather than a devotional interest. It is significant that the Wilburite Boarding Schools, Westtown, Barnesville and Scattergood, did not become colleges as did the Gurneyite Boarding Schools, Haverford, Earlham and Guilford.

THE FOUR PERIODS OF QUAKER HISTORY  199

The Conservatives, being more inwardly directed toward the Light, did not feel so strongly the impulse toward higher edu­cation, but the Evangelicals, being more outwardly directed to­ward the Bible, Christian missions and evangelical beliefs, felt the need of Biblical study and theological preparation. The major concern of Joseph John Gurney in visiting Friends schools at Haverford and Guilford was to encourage Biblical study.

Through the early years of the twentieth century the Orthodox Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia still adhered to the Wilburite point of view based on a synthesis of mysticism and evangelicalism with a strong emphasis on the traditional Quaker pattern in "dress, speech and behavior." The shift to a more modern rationalistic point of view with a strong emphasis on social service occurred within a single generation. The Hicksite group, having less of an evangelical emphasis, had less of a tendency to­ward outward checks both in doctrine and in practice and so more readily permitted their traditional mysticism to be replaced by the newer rationalism. At the middle of the twentieth century there is little to distinguish the majority of the Orthodox from the majority of the Hicksites, though each group possesses a minority which perpetuates older traits.

The most characteristic feature of this period was the initia­tion of Conferences and Summer Schools both in England and in Eastern America. These were a new and effective means of adult education in the field of Quaker history and principles. In England the Manchester Conference of 1895 marked a transition. In America the Haverford Summer School of 1900 proved to be a similar turning point. These schools were succeeded by similar educational efforts all of which were expressions of renewed interest in the past and a desire to learn from it. Included also was a determination to come to grips with new trends in Biblical criticism and scientific thought. Under the early inspiration of John Wilhelm Rowntree in England, Rufus M. Jones in America and many others, a new teaching ministry developed in both countries. Theirs was the task of helping the Society of Friends through the difficulties created by modern thought. It was dis­covered that, because Quakerism is based on immediate ex­perience, it had little to fear from the inroads of scientific or

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historical research. The religion of the Society of Friends was shown to be a faith which a highly educated modern mind could, without reservation, accept. Early Quaker history and thought which had become obscured and distorted by the con­flicts of the nineteenth century and the partisanship of those who still held extreme opinions, began to be set forth in adequate and readily available books and periodicals.

A second important influence in this period in America was the rise and growth of the American Friends Service Committee, following the development of the Friends Service Council which had functioned for some time in England. At the same time, Yearly Meeting Committees were set up to deal with a great variety of social concerns.

In assessing the interplay of the four chief elements in every complete religion—mysticism, evangelicalism, rationalism and humanitarianism—it is clear that, in that area of Quakerism which is now under consideration and which has preserved the historic form of Quaker worship, the twentieth century has wit­nessed a growth of rationalism and humanitarianism at the expense of mysticism and evangelicalism. Mysticism, which is inward, tends to become rationalism, which is also inward; evangelicalism, which is outward, tends to become humanitarian­ism, which is also outward. It might appear that the evangelical interest in saving souls is very different from the humanitarian interest in saving bodies, but in so far as the first is concerned in improving living conditions in the next world and the second in improving living conditions in this world, there is an obvious parallel.

No doubt rationalism and humanitarianism were developed to a high degree at a time when they were urgently needed. It was necessary that Quakerism should have a rationalistic basis in order to cope with modern thought which more easily prevailed over faiths which had not clearly set forth their intellectual ground. A new outburst of social activity was indispensable to meet the tragic need of a world torn by two major wars. This activity has brought new life into the Society of Friends and many new adherents. As a result of the greater understanding of Quaker history and principles, and because of greater social

THE FOUR PERIODS OF QUAKER HISTORY     201

activity, the decline in numbers of the nonpastoral Friends has been stopped and a steady, healthy increase is taking place. The migration from the country to the city has affected rural meet­ings adversely, especially those of the Wilburite Friends in the West, but this loss in the country has resulted in gains in the city. Migrating Friends today discover one another and form new meetings. Over one hundred and fifty such new meetings have been set up in various places in America since 1925. Many of these meetings have been started or carried on by workers or former workers of the American Friends Service Committee who have first learned about Quakerism while engaged in some proj­ect in this country or while working on a relief team abroad.

The growth of a rational religion with its teaching ministry and the growth of humanitarianism with its ministry of social service were favorable developments in the Society of Friends resulting in new life and increasing membership. In so far as they flourish at the expense of the older mysticism and the older evangelical­ism, however, they may not in the end have proved entirely fortunate. The older social service, which still persists to some extent, originated in an individual concern and was solemnly endorsed by the meeting. It was a synthesis of the mystical and the humanitarian elements. The newer social service manifesting itself in the form of professional duties or appointments made by standing committees is frequently one-sided. The concern for service may be sincere, but it has originated outside the individual who carries it out. The older rationalism, which still to some extent exists, was tested and checked by the revelation of God in the heart of man and in the Scriptures. The newer rationalism has sometimes attempted to deduce Truth by reason alone with no premises based on historical events or inward feeling. Be­cause of this origin, it is too often cold and impersonal.

Signs are now apparent in the Society of Friends that what has been called the modernistic period isdrawing to an end. There is no reason why the growth of one or more of these four forms of religion should hinder the growth of the others. The most ade­quate religion is that in which all four are fully developed. But human nature is weak and it is easier to become one-sided than to achieve harmonious symmetry. Lack of balance in an mdi‑

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vidual may, however, be compensated by balance in the group. A group which contains the right proportion Of prophets or mys­tics, evangelicals or priests, theologians or philosophers, and re­formers or social workers may achieve more than a group in which such balance is lacking. But here we must remind ourselves again that, as Paul shows (I Cor. 12:28), gifts are not all of equal value; "Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy" (I Cor. 14:1).

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 203

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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:

QUAKER THOUGHT AND THE PRESENT 205

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

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

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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.

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, the first in childhood, the second in adolescence and early adult life, and 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.

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, 1758184O]2

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]

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.

The second stage began with a period of juvenile frivolity

* 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."

QUAKER THOUGHT AND THE PRESENT 207

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, 17971889]6

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]

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 astoni3hment, what had taken place secretly in the heart. Having made a public declaration, the

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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

QUAKER THOUGHT AND THE PRESENT 209

undertaken in later adolescence or in early adulthood. 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

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and then finds that his life is absorbed in serving them. 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 condi‑

tioned 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.

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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.

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A society based on enlightened self-interest is unstable and destined either to sink lower or to rise higher. It will either go down to the mechanical level where men are forced to work together by an authority acting from without, or 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. Either we must have a greater degree of authority to hold men together from without, or 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. The ancient expression, "We are

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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

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to draw men up to a life above nature and the demonic powers within it.

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: the Protestant Reformation and 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. Science, in similar fashion,-reduced

ashion,reduced him and the whole universe to a swarm of separate par­ticles. 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.

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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. Modern Protestantism contains a great variety of points of view covering the whole religious spectrum. Modern Quakerism also contains a wide variety of religious opin­ions, and 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.¹⁰ 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 require‑

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ment, 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.

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 water baptism, the concept of a blood-sacrifice and 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 reli‑

QUAKER THOUGHT AND THE PRESENT 217

gion 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.

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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

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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.

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 de‑

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pendence on the Life Within, he will be overwhelmed by the very environment which he has fashioned.

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 J:he 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

QUAKER THOUGHT AND THE PRESENT 221

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

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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.

APPENDIX The Philadelphia Queries of 1955

I. MEETINGS FOR WORSHIP AND BUSINESS

1.Religious Meetings

Are your meetings for worship and business held in expectant wait­ing for divine guidance?

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

Do your meetings give evidence that Friends come to them with hearts and minds prepared for worship?

Are your meetings a source of strength and guidance for daily Christian living?

1.    Ministry

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

Do you foster the use and growth of the spiritual gifts of your members?

1.    Participation in Meeting

Do your resident members attend meetings regularly and punc­tually?

To what extent are your meetings for worship attended by persons not in membership and are they welcomed and encouraged to con­tinue attendance?

Are your meetings for business held in a spirit of love, understand­ing and forbearance, and do you seek the right course of action in humble submission to the authority of Truth and patient search for unity?

II. FRIENDS' CARE OF ONE ANOTHER

1.    Unity within the Meeting

Are love and unity maintained among you?

Do you manifest a forgiving spirit and a care for the reputation

of others?

When differences arise, are endeavors made to settle them speedily

and in a spirit of meekness and love?

223

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5.Education

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

What efforts are you making to educate all your members in the knowledge of the Bible, of Christianity and of the history and princi­ples of Friends?

Do you maintain schools for the education of your youth under the care of teachers of Christian character in sympathy with the princi­ples of Friends and supervised by committees of the Meeting?

Do you encourage members to send their children to Friends' schools and do you give such financial aid as may be necessary?

5.     Oversight of the Membership

What is being done to draw members together into a spirit of fellowship?

Does the Meeting keep in contact, either by visits or personal letters, with all its members?

Are Friends in material need assisted as their circumstances require? Do you counsel with those whose conduct or manner of living gives ground for concern?

III. RESPONSIBILITIES OUTSIDE THE MEETINGS

5.     Social and Economic Relationships

What are you doing as individuals or as a Meeting:

To aid those in need of material help?

To encourage total abstinence and remove the causes of intemper‑

ance?

To insure equal opportunities in social and economic life for those

who suffer discrimination because of race, creed or social class?

To create a social and economic system which will so function as to

sustain and enrich life for all?

5.     Civic responsibility

What are you doing as individuals or as a Meeting:

To understand and remove the causes of war and develop the con­ditions and institutions of peace?

To carry your share of responsibilities in the government of your community, state and nation, and to assure freedom of speech, and of religion and equal educational opportunities for all?

5.     Extending Our Message

What are you doing as individuals or as a Meeting:

To interpret to others the message of Friends and to cooperate with others in spreading the Christian message?

IV. PERSONAL LIVING

5.     The Home

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

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Do you make your home a place where friendship, peace, and re­freshment of spirit are found, and do you have regular periods of family worship?

Do you frequently and reverently read the Bible and other re­ligious literature?

Do you choose those recreations which will strengthen your physi­cal, mental, and spiritual life and avoid those that may prove a hin­drance to yourself and others?

11. Self-Discipline

Do you keep to simplicity and moderation in your speech, your manner of living, and your pursuit of business?

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

Are you punctual in keeping promises, just in the payment of debts, and honorable in all your dealings?

Are you free from the use of judicial oaths, from betting and gam­bling and from practices based on the principles of gambling?

Are you free from the use and handling of intoxicants and the misuse of drugs?

Do you take your right share of responsibility in work and service for the Meeting?

12. Human Brotherhood

Do you live in the life and power which takes away the occasion of all wars? Do you seek to take your part in the ministry of reconciliation between individuals, groups, and nations? Do you faithfully maintain our testimony against military training and other preparation for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the spirit and teaching of Christ?

In all your relations with others do you treat them as brothers and equals?