THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF A CREATIVE WORSHIP
BY HOWARD H. BRINTON, Ph.D.
Professor of Religion at Mills College, California
Preface
The Swarthmore Lectureship was established by the %oodbrooke Extension Committee, at a meeting held December 7th, 1907: the minute of the Committee providing for an annual lecture on some subject relating to the message and work of the Society of Friends." The name ' Swarthmore" was chosen in memory of the home of Margaret Fox, which was always open to the earnest sceker after Truth, and from which loving words of sympathy and substantial material help were sent to fellow-workers.
The Lectureship has a two-fold purpose: first, to interpret further to the members of the Society of Friends their Message and Mission ; and, secondly, to bring before the public the spirit, the aims and the fundamental principles of the Friends.
I - - PAGE
It CREATIVE VoRSan' 9 ió
QUAKER AND PURITAN -
III PIJIUTANISM AND THE CONCEPT OF MECHANISM 24
IV QUAKERISM AND THE CONCEPT OF ORGANISM -
V GOALS AND PROCESSES IN WORSHIP 4°
VI GOD AND THE REBIRTH OF THE Soin. 49
VII THE CREATION OF TII1 NEW - 55
VIII CREATIVE GROUP WORSHIP - - 65
IX SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS - - 80
X QUAKERISM AND THE FUTURE -9°
I
CREATIVE WORSHIP
MY attention was recently arrested by this sentence in the Hibbere Journal:
Plead for our responsibilities toward our fellows and you are understood if not always followed, but tell the average man that it is his duty to worship God and you speak in a language which no longer conveys any meaning.'
A significant condition is suggested by this exaggerated statement. Contemporary opinion is confused and uncertain in regard to the value and nature of worship. Does worship consist in attention to sermons and the singing of hymns or is it participation in ritual or liturgy? Is it based on prayer, meditation, adoration, or communion? Or is it, as many believe, comprehended in terms of loving service in behalf of humanity? Is worship all these combined, or is it something more than any or all of them, an experience which no word can describe and which the wit of man can never fully fathom?
Among Protestants, particularly, we find a lack of clarity and conviction in regard to the meaning and worth of both public worship and
' T. G. Hardy,' The Present Predicament f Christianity Hiljbtwi Journal, Vol. XXTV.
9
private devotion. Yet there is an uneasy feeling abroad that something of value has been lost, though few are clear as to what it is or how it may be recovered. We hear of "the lost art of worship" and wistful eyes are turned back to a time when man was lifted out of the commonplace by simple and direct dealing with his God.
Lost, song ago, that garden bright and pure. Lost, that calm day too perfect to endure,
And lost the child-like love that worshipped and was sure.'
That phrase," the lost art of worship," suggests an analogy which will lead us directly to the central theme of this lecture. It may be that the art of worship has been lost for the same reasons that some other arts have been lost in recent times. The machine age has made possible the quick and efficient production of many objects which were once created slowly and laboriously by hand. The book which the monk in his carrel illuminated with minute and prayerful care is now mechanically multiplied by thousands. The church edifice, once reared through centuries of loving effort by reverent hands, is now erected by engines and cranes manned by mechanics whose interest in the project may be purely secular. The change which has affected the book of religion and the house of worship may have influenced worship itself. It may be that worship has, in some degree, fallen under the spell of the mechanistic age and imitated
Henry Van Dyke, The God of She Oj)ees Atr.
Creative tCtorsbtp. It
its methods and adopted its philosophy. If this is true, it is not surprising that worship no longer makes the compelling and mysterious appeal that it once made. Large scale mechanisation tends in some of its stages to stifle art by producing objects which in their wearisome uniformity arouse no devotion to what they are in themselves. Only the creative power of life, bourgeoning in novel and unpredictable forms, can arouse an eager human response. But the arts do not die so long as life overflows the mechanical moulds which it fashions for itself. New incarnations of old arts and handicrafts, utilising scientific improvement in tools and utensils, continually come into being as individuals or small groups of like minded artists devise new patterns which take form as spontaneously as green shoots emerge from the ground. Each age interprets its own unique spirit in its work, The new and living always returns not wholly to supersede the old but to re-embody it for new ends. We shall not now go back to the monk to illumine our sacred texts; we shall use the printing press as a more effective tool to produce for a wider public beautiful and more readable pages instinct with the vitality of the present. If worship has been so mechanised that it has lost a measure of the creative quality which alone can move the human will, it will, like the arts, bud forth here and there in unexpected places. For worship like the arts meets a need which humanity has never neglected for long.
The great success of the mechanistic age in
presenting a icture of the universe may
partially explain the present uncertainty in regard to the nature and function of worship. Near the closing decade of the nineteenth century the sciences assumed an air of finality. Physics, in particular, presented a unified theory of existence which seemed to offer a ready explanation of all things. Philosophy, also, dominated by the great systems of German Idealism, seemed almost to have perfected a theory of the universe. Theology no longer looked upon philosophy as a handmaid but followed meekly where philosophy led. Religious worship caught the spirit of the time and exemplified the sharp and clear-cut aspects of science, philosophy, and industry. No longer regarded as the supreme experience which subordinated itself to no temporal considerations, it began to imitate the efficient methods of secular undertakings. By so doing it tended to undermine the very reason for its existence. True worship because it is creative does not move in the realm of the clear-cut and definite. Its place is not among the crystallised forms of the world that has been, but upon the uncharted and mysterious frontier between the created and uncreated, where man finds his Creator. There is an ancient Chinese proverb which says that l man loves mists and spirits". That which is too definite and clearly outlined does not profoundly stir the imagination. Creative worship, so closely akin to wonder and awe, has little affinity with the self-assured and self-assertive mood of an age
which aspires not only to control all things but to understand all things.
Today Science is re-discovering the creative mystery of the universe. The old self-assurance is largely gone. Within the first quarter of the twentieth century a revolution has taken place. The laws of mechanics no longer explain all things. The intellect of man has become aware of something strange and unpredictable at the very heart of existence. Matter and radiation have assumed a complexity which was hardly guessed at in the eighteen hundreds. The exploration of the minute structure of matter seems to take us as far into the unknown as does the exploration of the farthest reaches of space. No wonder a physicist has entitled his recent book The Mysterious Universe.
Creative worship will be revived for the same reasons that the arts revive and that science re-discovers the mystery of creation. The exploration of the human spirit like the exploration of the universe has scarcely begun. Worship lies on the edge of the known. At this point the path of tradition becomes a path of exploration which extends indefinitely into realms of the world to be.
Is it possible to forecast the form in which worship will be renewed? No definite surmise can cover the whole area for no one form of worship will ever meet all the varying needs of human kind, but there are straws that show which way the wind is blowing. If it is true that many
contemporary modes of worship have become mechanised (and I shall discuss this point later in more detail) the pendulum will inevitably swing to mystical and organic types of worship. The alternation from mechanism to organism and from organism to mechanism is fundamental and recurrent. Organisms make machines to carry out their purposes. In order to make full use of these machines men adapt themselves to them and become machine-like themselves. A man who operates a machine seems almost to become a part of it. But the weariness and monotony of a mechanised world inevitably produce a reaction. Alen discover some way of escape to a life which is uncontrolled and which admits surprises. From the dreary wood and stone boxes of the city we flee to the fresh upspringing life of the country. But if we linger in the country very long we contrive new wood and stone boxes in which to imprison our spirits.
The tendency of an organism to become mechanised by the tools which it makes and uses and the subsequent struggle to escape from this bondage form the plot of many dramas in secular and religious history. The present affords much evidence that we are entering upon a reform which is destined to carry us from a mechanistic to an organic view, not only in science and philosophy, but also in religion. Religious doctrine and religious practice have reached a fluid stage which indicates that past tenets have dissolved, while new systems have not yet crystallised. In the
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words of General Smuts, "Humanity has struck its tents and is on the march".
It is my general purpose in this lecture to compare the mechanistic and organic trends in religious worship. I desire specifically to analyst-and
nalyseand evaluate the contribution of Quaker practice to what is here termed organic worship. To make the discussion concrete, I have selected for analysis two types of worship which 1 shall call Puritan and Quaker. Such a comparison no longer retains the controversial implications of the seventeenth century. Puritanism has waned and Quakerism is as yet very far from realising the possibilities which await it in the future. Yet there is a strong element of both in the present. Many sects in England and America, both evangelical and liberal, have directly or indirectly inherited a share of the Puritan theological tradition and the Puritan method of worship. The contrast between the two types can be brought out clearly by reviewing their development in America.
Because of lack of space for elaboration, I shall employ the contrasting terms of Puritanism and Quakerism to designate two distinct tendencies in all religion. One illustrates a mechanistic and the other an organic theory. Both have had their successes and failures. Both are as old as human kind. Both meet fundamental needs of the human spirit. The contrast is suggestive rather than exact because neither has existed or ever can exist in a pure form without large admixture of the other.
NEAR the beginning of the eighteenth century two divergent philosophies of We struggled for supremacy in America. These we shall label Puritan and Quaker. There were, of course, other important world-views, expressed in religious terms, such for instance as Catholicism in Maryland and Anglicanism in Virginia,' but in respect to fervour, and breadth and depth of political and religious influence none at that time can be compared to the Puritan and the Quaker. Puritanism was the elder and the more complex, but both were young and possessed the unbounded self-assurance of the first great enthusiasm of new discovery. An impartial observer living about 1710 might have found it difficult to predict which of the two was destined to dominate the consciousness and conscience of the new world. In New England the Puritan theocracy was in control, but the Quakers had secured a foothold after a persistent struggle and a number of meetings were set up even in Massachusetts Bay. In Rhode Island the Quakers controlled both the governorship and the assembly. In New York they were
1 Anglicanism on the whole thiew in its lot with Protc. tantlMn,
in a minority, but in Long Island and along the Hudson the number of new meetings was rapidly increasing. in Pennsylvania and the Jerseys Quakerism was supreme. In Virginia and Maryland the Quakers were the religious body second in strength. They had struggled for and won full political and religious rights. In the Carolinas where John Archdale, a Quaker governor, had recently presided, the Quakers were the most active sect and in 1703 held half the seats in the Assembly. This vigorous growth of the Society of Friends was not solely due to migration from England. It was stimulated by the fact that in many pioneer communities Friends were the only organised religious body and by zealous missionary efforts, largely exercised through travelling ministers, many of their neighbours were gathered into membership.
But Quakerism in America as well as in England was first a leap, then a step, then a halt. From a missionary religion, ambitious to convert the whole world from the Grand Turk on the East to the red Indian on the West, it sank almost within the second generation to a small quietistic sect whose primary purpose was to preserve inviolate in an evil world the sacred deposit of truth bequeathed by its founders. Puritanism, on the other hand, progressed steadily in power and influence until it became the dominant type of moral and religious thought and practice in nineteenth century America.
Internal reasons for the decline of Quakerism
be followed only in a type of life as far removed from worldly interests as possible. Religious attention became for the most part inwardly directed and prosyletising as a denominational policy was given up. The theory that the Inner Light is an alien divine substance is a mechanical theory. In mechanics one substance acts on another as an external force. The organic theory does away with this concept of substance, and allows different beings to interpenetrate by sharing a common life. But the personal practice of Friends remained organic though their theology took this mechanistic turn. As a company of waiting worshippers men and women actually felt themselves to be
dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole.
Had the Quakers been more acute philosophers or theologians they might have expressed a theory of the Inner Light in closer accord with their practice. The materials for such a theology are amply set forth in the Gospel of John and in the writings of some of the Greek Fathers. But Friends in America at this early period were engrossed in the practical aspects of their faith and without elaborate or deep analysis they adopted the inconsistent Protestant theory which weakened their position from the start and eventually persuaded them to withdraw from the world.
i8 Swartbmore lecture.
have beeny discussed by Quaker historians. In the eighteenth century Friends in America were not intellectually equipped to achieve leadership. The Puritans maintained colleges in order to produce an educated clergy but the Quakers, having no clergy, and depending on an Inner Light which illumined all men, built secondary schools instead. The Puritan could participate in a government which waged wars, but the Quaker could not and so was constrained to go out of politics even though the peace policy had been successful in Pennsylvania. In spite of this retreat Quaker democratisation of education and some Quaker political ideals, particularly in regard to religious freedom, eventually prevailed throughout the colonies.
But there was a reason more fundamental even than pacifism or lack of profound educational equipment which influenced the Quakers to give up their ambitious plan to convert the new world. Quakerism was seriously weakened because it had taken over from various Reformation sources a theology which was incongruous with its central doctrine of the Inner Light.
Puritan theology was based on a sharp distinction between natural and supernatural, worldly and other-worldly. The early Quakers accepted this distinction, and inclined to the view that the Inner Light was a supernatural substance entering into natural man. It shone in from an immeasurable distance, illuminating a world with which it had nothing in common. Hence it could
20
It is an odd fact that the same clear-cut dualism between natural and supernatural which inclined the Quakers towards a religious practice too exclusively inward drew the Puritans toward a practice too much outwardly directed. The reason for this was that the dualism was deeper for Puritan than for Quaker. For Puritanism the dualism existed both in practice and in theory while in Quakerism it existed only in theory. In practice the Quaker could bridge the chasm between himself and his God by finding God within his soul. As this experience transcended all others in importance religious attention was inwardly directed. But the Puritan could bridge the chasm between himself and his God neither practically nor theoretically. His worship existed not for the purpose of union with God but rather to glorify Him and to uplift the creature by this noble exercise. The Puritan's religious attention was externally directed towards a transcendent Creator. This resulted in an intense activity in the world though not as was constantly emphasised, of or for the world. To state it differently the Puritan could enter the supernatural realm only after death, hence the natural world was the only possible sphere of brief mortal activity. The Quaker could enter the supernatural realm in this life by retiring within himself. Here, though in the world, he found a sphere of experience apart from the world. For this interesting reason the same dualism had opposite effects on Puritan and Quaker. Early Puritanism
solved its difficulty by adopting an Old Testament code of behaviour as suited to a natural world while it reserved the New Testament code for the supernatural realm of Heaven. Quakerism could not do thifor it always regarded the natural as suffused with the supernatural.
Under the influence of modern thought Quakerism is shaking off the old dualism. This change has resulted in an even more intimate realisation that the divine re.a.hn is present in human experience. Puritanism is becoming less dualistic, but with the result that its external heavenly realm, dimmed by science, no longer controls men's actions. A secular moral code is superseding divine commands recorded in the Sacred Book. But surviving traces of the old dualism continue to cause tension, for example, the pacifism of Jesus is still unreconciled with the traditional Puritan attitude toward the natural man as inclined toward evil and ultimately to be managed for his own good by force of arms.
Though Quakerismhad ceased to be a missionary religion it still wore the mantle of its earlier prophets as the badge of a peculiar sect, but it did not avail itself of more than a half portion of their spirit. The age of quietism was a time of concentration, of singleness of purpose and of conviction which we may well reverence today. The plant did not bloom much above ground, but its roots went deep down to living waters. Saints were produced and important social reforms instituted such, for instance, as a vigorous protest
against the slave trade and the early abolition of ncgro slavery within the Society. In spite of numerical decline the influence of Friends in America was greater than is generally supposed. I quote from Henry Seidel Canby, Editor of the Saturday Review of Literature.
"The mental habits and ideals of the Quakers", he says, are stronger in the American mind today than anything else that has been brought over seas and only to be equalled by the effect of the native environment itself. . . . We know that Penn's State was the first model of a liberal government and far closer in ideals and practice to our United States than was the Puritan theocracy. But it is too commonly supposed that essential Quakerism was lost in the rigidity which strangled the Friends in the eighteenth century and changed a world-wide enthusiasm into a prosperous sect. This is not true. The seed of the Quakers was sown as widely, if less deeply, than the mental habits of the Puritans. The Quakers, while their energy lasted, permeated every corner of the infant country.
Indeed, one need not fear overstatement in saying that the fundamental qualities of what can properly be called the American brand of idealism are essentially Quaker in character and largely Quaker in origin."!
In spite of wide-spread Quaker permeation the Puritan sects and kindred religious bodies grew in America to many millions of adherents while the Quakers could scarcely muster a hundred thousand. Such were some of the internal causes of the decline of Quakerism, but there were external causes which were equally important. These can be
Saturday Rvi*w of LiICVAIU,e, January 2nd. Iqrz'
summarised in the statement that the trend of thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was unsympathetic to the essential doctrines of the Society of Friends. The general atmosphere was one in which Quakerism could not easily breathe.
III
4URITANISM AND THE CONCEPT OF MECHANISM
FEUGIOUS bodies like other living things flourish a favourable environment and decline in an unfavourable one, but they are not wholly victims of circumstance. Like other living things of an advanced type they can do much to create a favourable environment. Puritanism flourished and Quakerism declined partly because Puritanism was more congenial to the mechanistic thought and practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Man has always been what Carlyle calls "a tool using animal", but these two centuries were characterised not only by rapid development of the art of machine making, but also by the resulting conception that the universe was essentially a machine-like structure. The overwhelming success of mechanistic conceptions in one field naturally led to their extension to all fields. This philosophy was not often held consciously and deliberately, but it was a potent hypothesis at the basis of the most successful attack upon nature which man has ever made. In the frontier life of America the machine, conceptualised and hypostatised, was as definitely
the god of battles in the war with nature as Jehovah was Lord of Hosts in the war with the Philistines.
Puritanism and similar types of Reformation thought prepared the way for the mechanistic age and were also powerfully influenced by it. Men worshipped a God who was an engineer and who had made a universe external to Himself, but wholly controlled by His will. Man was considered to be" natural ", that istosay, he was part of the machine and like it external to God. He therefore had no value in himself. Divine grace might influence him as a hand manipulates a machine. He was saved as a machine is saved if it is wholly attuned to the will of its manipulator. As nature obeyed the laws of mechanics enacted by the Divine Legislator so man obeyed laws external to himself. The result of a philosophy of this type was that Puritan worship was directed from above; that is, from outside the worshipper. The worshipper and the musical instrument with which he worshipped performed similar functions, each under control. It would be unfair to say that such a worship was as mechanically carried out as the reaping of a field or the building of a house. The power of God was often triumphantly manifested in it and men and women came out of the church door with a new light in their eyes because they had glimpsed eternal things. They could meet the dull tasks of the coming week with increased fervour because those tasks, however humble, as well as their own endeavour and
27
devotion manifested the immutable decrees of God.
A philosophy or religion tending toward mechanistic or legalistic concepts can inspire intense loyalty. Puritan religion, like Old Testament religion, is based on loyalty to the Divine Law Giver. The prophet who vocalises a decree of God experiences a powerful emotion like that of the scientist who discovers a law of nature. The lack in such a system results from the fact that it emphasises processes not goals. It stresses that which is relatively good rather than that which is intrinsically good. The Puritans, to be sure, had a goal but it could be reached only in Heaven. Mortal life was significant as a means rather than for what it is in itself. A machine is valuable as a tool not as an end, and a machinelike man is destined for constant activity rather than for attainment.
New England bequeathed to the United States this ideal of unremitting struggle. The Calvinist could never be certain whether he were elected or damned, but he strove unceasingly for improvement. Deep within the heart of the new world Puritanism planted the will to action, the stimulus to achieve and to accomplish. The laws of mechanics are the laws of motion and the worship of action is common to Puritanism and the philosophy of mechanism. Mechanically speaking, equilibrium is death. There is no escape from tension.
In certain types of philosophy which have
recently been typical of much American thought, such as pragmatism, instrumentalism, behaviourism, and the like, we find this same ideal of perpetual motion. The whole emphasis is on striving, not on the goal. Nothing eternally worth while is discovered. Pragmatism offers itself as a guide, but no one knows whither it guides. The object of action is more action.
Woe to them that are at ease in Zion," Unceasing struggle is the lot of fallen man. Yet Quakerism declared from the beginning that a completely satisfying goal is sometimes reached. Nothing so scandalised George Fox's Puritan opponents as his assertion that he had a sense of the state in which Adam was before he fell.
No two centuries in the world's history have brought humanity forward more rapidly in social and political change and in physical comfort and material power than the eighteenth and nineteenth. This development has been partially due, in the United States, at least, to the Puritan ethic and the mechanistic world-view. But let us inquire also whether some important human need may not have been passed over. Since the Great War destroyed our confidence in progress based on science many have been searching for that which is obviously lacking.
QUAKERISM AND THE CONCEPT OF ORGANISM
QUAKERISM was not congenial to the spirit of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because it embodied an organic world view. There is, of course, much that is mechanistic about historic Quaker practice and much that is organic about historic Puritanism. Neither of the two presents a rigidly co5rdinated system. Nevertheless, if we confine ourselves to general tendencies and ignore exceptions, we can say that Quakerism is basically organic both in its theory of worship and its theory of conduct. What does this mean? Two questions require special consideration if we are to explain the Quaker doctrine of worship in terms of organic concepts.
The first question is: What is an organism? and the second question is: How do organisms come into being? Simple answers can be given to these questions if we avoid the host of philosophic problems which suggest themselves.
We appear at first sight to understand mechanism more completely than organism for we can make and control machines. From another point of view we know organisms more immediately for
Creative 'orsbtp.
we are organisms ourselves and feel them from within, whereas the matter out of which mechanisms are constructed is opaque and mysterious. No definition of an organism can add much to the intimate mystic knowledge which we have of ourselves, yet r shall attempt a definition the bearing of which will become clearer as the argument proceeds.
An organism may be defined as a structure or unity in which the parts exist for the whole and the whole for the parts. In Kant's famous phrase, the parts and the whole are reciprocally means and ends. A watch is a whole which is an aggregate of pre-existing parts. It is therefore simply the sum of its parts. An organism, however, Is more than the sum of its parts for it must make its own parts while the parts make it. Thus my body, as an organism, is more than the sum of the hands, feet, and other members because it possesses a kind of behaviour which modifies the parts and relates them as a unified whole. A part is not changed in being added to a mechanism, but it is changed as it partakes of the life of an organism. A cogwheel of a watch is the same cogwheel outside the watch as it is in it. But a part of my body is not the same if separated from the whole. The parts of a watch are externally or mechanically related while the parts of my body are internally or organically related. An internal relation changes the nature of the parts which it relates while an external relation does not. Some philosophers of the organic trend go
so far as to maintain that a molecule of water which, with other molecules, forms an animal body, is not the same molecule inside the body as it is outside. A molecule which belongs to the body is so modified that it possesses a new type of behaviour. As a member of the society of molecules which form my body it apparently acts in the interests of the whole, while outside the body it is, so to speak, on its own, and concerned only with its own particular interests.
A severely foreshortened sketch will indicate one way of viewing the process through which organisms come into being. I shall use a somewhat anthropomorphic illustration. Let us assume a group of entities which are independent of each other in the sense that each acts according to its own nature regardless of the interests of the others. Such a group may be a swarm of atoms or a crowd in a city street. Each member of the group affects the others externally by pushing, pulling and jostling, in other words, by force of some kind. We can say that such a group is externally or mechanically related. Now let us suppose that a miracle occurs which supersedes the laws of mechanics without anulling them. The entities which were formerly indifferent to one another or that used one another for only individual ends become suddenly cooperative. A common life emerges which profoundly modifies the behaviour of all so that each becomes as deeply interested in the welfare of the others and of the whole as in its own welfare. Thus a unit
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of organic type, not simply an aggregate of parts, conies into being out of the self-sacrifice and coärd mat ion of its members. The members themselves are transformed and lifted to a new level of existence.
The emergence of a social organism in this way is a matter of common experience. A group of men may be at cross purposes, each determined to have his own way, regardless of what the others want. Nothing is accomplished until each one discovers that what he really wants can only be attained by united action in which the deepest will of the group becomes manifest. The new unit thus created is not passive or, as it were, the creature of its parts. it is actuated by a soul or spirit, in other words, it has become an organism. It presents a new type of behaviour. Individuality and freedom are not done away; there is no mechanical domination of a majority over a minority. Each individual finds his own highest will expressed through the group. Some noteworthy biologists today maintain that this creative synthesis, born through mutual-service and self-sacrifice is the key to all phases of
evolution, inorganic, organic, mental and social. An atom, a molecule, a plant, an animal, a human
society are cooperative systems. Each exhibits
a unique type of synthesis. Progress occurs when the self goes beyond self to play its part in a larger
whole. This conception of evolution, which in place of a process of competition substitutes a process of cooperation, is dramatically set forth
occasioned by mind. Some maintain that a psychic element was present from the beginning, others that it emerges during the process. In either case the evolution of more and more elaborate types of mind develops on the same lines as the simpler examples of life. Psychologists such as McDougall rehearse a complicated story. Simpler elements of mind such as reflexes, instincts, appetites combine to form higher types such as emotional dispositions, beliefs, conceptual reasoning and philosophies of life. There are many levels in mind and each level is reached as before by a creative synthesis of the elements of a lower level. The more intricate pattern emerges as a unit possessing a quality different from that of its component parts. Reverence, for instance, is composed of love, fear and wonder, but it is more than the sum of these and different from any one of them. Personality emerges as various elements are combined to produce an integrated whole. The highest personality attains the greatest internal harmony.
This summary sketch of universal history is set forth in language too general to satisfy scientist or philosopher, but it emphasises the point that new and higher types of life come into being by coOperaton and the coordination of elements on a lower level. Morgan, Alexander, Whitehead, Smuts, Broad, and others develop the theory in various ways. The term "emergence" used by Morgan finds favour as denoting change which is not an unfolding of something hidden and already
32 %wartbmore Lecture.
in William Patten's hook entitled The Grand Strategy of Evolution. The world movement proceeds not by hatred and strife which destroy, but by love and harmony which bind all parts, weaker and stronger, together into inclusive units of life.
The creation of new forms throughout cosmic history can be viewed as a series of upward leaps from levels on which elements are mechanically related so that they act on each other externally by force to levels on which these elements have united to form organisms and which tend as a consequence to act upon one another internally by love. As so considered the narrative of Creation may be paraphased somewhat as follows:
In the beginning there was a swarm of electrons, the most primitive forms of matter, pushing and pulling on each other from without. The Power which unites uttered the creative Fiat and the electrons cooperated with one another to form organisms called atoms. The atoms jostled and fought until again the Spirit of Cooperation entered and they combined to create molecules. The molecules were mechanically and externally related until Creative Harmonising Love fused them into fellowships called living cells which exhibited an trnprecendented kind of behaviour. In a similar way cells, by forming new types of relations with each other, gradually achieved great societies such as animal bodies and eventually the infinitely elaborate structure of a human brain.
A new type of behaviour emerges which is
existing, but the arrival of the genuinely new. The new does not so much grow out of the old as it is builded upon it. However much we know about the old we can not predict all the characteristics of the new. An emergent organic development differs fundamentally from a mechanical process. An eclipse can be accurately foretold because it is conditioned by mechanical laws. But no knowledge however complete of soil and seed and sunshine enables us to predict the appearance of a new variety of flower. Nor would any calculations, however perfect, based alone on the properties of chemical elements afford any foreknowledge of the emergence of a human genius.
The mechanistic theory of the nature of evolution which was congenial to scientific thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries endeavoured to explain the higher in terms of the lower, and on this hypothesis science looked forward to completing its task by interpreting all things, including mind and life, in terms of matter and motion, space and time. Such a view finds that nothing is really new, for what appears new is simply the old in a different and perhaps more complicated arrangement, nor does it find anything which is valuable in itself. All is process or movement. There are no stopping points at which tension is relaxed.
The twentieth century has witnessed a widespread reaction against this attitude. An increasing number of scientists declare that life
cannot be expressed in terms of physics nor mind in terms of physiology. The emergence of a higher level of existence reveals a new kind of reality which cannot be explained in terms of the old and which possesses intrinsic value. The writer of Ecclesiastes mournfully ruminated that there is" nothing new under the sun ", but in the Book of Revelation it is declared, "Behold I make all things new". And the book of nature is a continual Apocalypse revealing a new heaven and a new earth.
The modern version of Creation is as dramatic as the account in Genesis. It covers in its tremendous sweep the whole of science. Like its ancient prototype it aims to leave nothing out as it advances from blank primordial darkness to the final unveiling of the sons of God. And this comparison suggests the query whether here, as in the drama described in Genesis, there broods over the face of the waters a Spirit through whose creative will such marvellous forms have risen from the deep.
In mechanistic language God constructs the world from without. If we use the organic analogy, " God is Life ", as John said in his letter, He inspires the world from within. The opening chapter of Genesis presents a mechanistic drama, the beginning of John's gospel, an organic account of creation.
If we examine contemporary versions of the creation story what do we find about God? Scientist, philosopher and religious mystic each
give a characteristic answer. The physical scientist has recently become acutely aware of the limitations of his method. He has found that he derives from his instruments and equations only what he puts into them. He has uncovered the frame work, but he cannot see and interpret the living universe in which novel and unpredictable results are being produced. The information he gives is important because upon it our modern industrial civilisation is based, but he is concerned with a limited area of experience. Since he interprets the new in terms of the old he cannot find a creative Power, but he does not stand in the way of those who search for it.
The philosopher is not, as a rule, so humble as the scientist. He usually discovers that science has failed to tell the whole story of evolution. With notable exceptions, contemporary philosophers sense a nei.d for some creative Agency. Mechanical forces, they find, tend toward equilibrium—there must be something more than these which can lift the world to new levels. Some philosophical biologists speak of a life force," a vital impetus" or an "internal factor rending toward perfection ". Morgan finds an original "Activity" which he calls God. With this " Activity" he admits the possibility of immediate acquaintance. "What then does it feel like? "he asks," Without denying a felt push from the lower levels of one's being—a so-called driving force welling up from below—to me it feels like a drawing upwards through Activity existent
Crcattv'c UlorBhtp. 37
at a higher level than that to which I have attained."' This mysterious uplifting force behind evolution is called by Alexander a nisus toward Deily, by Smuts Holism, by Whitehead a Principle of Concretion. For some philosophers it appears to be wholly within the cosmic process. Others, for example. Whitehead, consider that it also transcends the natural world. In each case there is an acknowledgment that evolution is creative and that it implies an organising, perfecting, integrating power.
The words these philosophers use for God are not characterless, abstract terms. They symbolise concrete qualities. To decipher the work of God's creative hand is to find out much that is important about God Himself. "The invisible things of Him from the Creation of the world ", says Paul. " are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." The qualities which distinguish the new from the old are characteristic of the Creator through whom they come into being. We shall discuss these qualities later for they must also characterise the worshipper who seeks to he like God in order that God may create in him a new Being like Himself.
Philosophers as well as scientists recognise their limitations. It is a vague, impersonal Being who is found by philosophic methods. Reason discovers only abstractions. ilie warm, living, throbbing heart of existence escapes philosophic
Ernirgen$ EvouEo,v, P. zoB,
as it does scientific analysis. For further information we must go to religion and particularly to those geniuses in religion called the great mystics. Scientific and philosophic knowledge must be complemented by something more direct and intimate. It is as if we were following the movement of a great symphony. As scientists we might test it by the laws of composition, harmony and acoustics, as philosophers we might inquire why the music is beautiful, or what there is in our human nature which finds its satisfaction in this way. As mystics we, like the composer, lose ourselves wholly in the music to possess it even as we possess ourselves. The complete story can only be told by scientist, philosopher, and mystic together. Evolutionary philosophy has reared a Holy of Holies in the Temple of the Universe, but the God it finds between the cherubim is too abstract to be loved and worshipped. Only religion can catch the living voice of Him whose train fills the starlit temple.
We find, therefore, that in regard to the nature and existence of a creative agency at work in evolution, science does not commit itself. Philosophy, and here I refer to an important modern trend, admits a Power which perfects, organises, and integrates, while religious mysticism, basing its answer on experience, finds that same Power to be God the Person who can be loved and worshipped. Religion does not directly concern itself with the lower reaches of the evolutionary process such as the emergence of
Creative VZlorbtp.
molecules out of combinations of atoms, nor does science at present concern itself explicitly with the higher stages such as the re-birth of the soul through worship. Philosophy has a wider range of interest than either science or religion, but its attention seems to be particularly focussed on intermediate stages. Each needs the other two. Man has developed a three-fold approach to knowledge. Science deals with his preceptions, philosophy with his reason and religion with his will and feelings, yet all three converge upon one body of truth. " Experiment with truth " is an ancient Quaker phrase. Perhaps we shall find that religious mysticism can throw some light on the dark lower levels of existence and science and philosophy on the luminous higher level where man seeks God in worship.
The theory of the cosmic process which I have here outlined will, during the remainder of this lecture, be applied to an analysis of Quaker worship. It furnishes terms by which to describe (i) worship as a goal rather than a process, (z) worship based on an inner creative life which the Mystics know to be God; (3) worship which makes possible the emergence of the new; () which binds a group of worshippers into an organic unity; and (5) which finally seeks to extend to the entire human race this unity of men with each other and with God.
GOALS AND PROCESSES IN WORSHIP
MECHANISMS as such are not valuable in themselves. They represent tools or processes which may be used by organisms to gain desired ends. Their value depends on an external relation which they bear to something else. Organisms on the other hand are, as such, valuable in themselves. The parts of an organism are so related to each other internally that the whole requires no external relation to complete it. Thus a road is a mechanism which is valuable because it carries me home to my family, but my family is not valuable because of anything I can do with it. It possesses a set of inner dimensions which make it worth while because of what it is. This comparison is, of course, only relatively true. The road may be beautiful and so a thing of worth, and I may use my family to supply some of my wants. Nevertheless, in spite of this dual capacity, we can distinguish between objects which are valuable as instruments to carry out a purpose external to themselves and organisms which in themselves and to themselves are objects of worth.
Let us carry this distinction over into the field of religious worship. Mechanistic worship has an instrumental value and points to something outside
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itself. The worshipper is exhorted to do this or believe that. God is addressed in prayer or glorified in song. The ship of the soul is pointed toward the desired haven, the sails are set to favouring winds and the captain is given his instructions and chart. But the port is far off, beyond the mortal bourn. Toil and struggle is the lot of man. Vigilance must never cease lest the vessel drift. Divine service in which the tension of the soul is never relayed, is characteristic of many sects which have inherited the Puritan tradition. The worshipper may, it is true, become so wrapped in the beauty of music or ritual that the external goat is at the moment forgotten. But the sermon eventually makes it clear that the service is not primarily directed toward an asthetic experience. Words, in Protestant worship, are not goals. They are tools used to accomplish a purpose, usually to promote an improved type of behaviour.
Such pragmatic religious service is comparatively modern. In ancient worship the temple was the house of the living God graced by his actual presence. The worshipper came not to talk about God nor even to improve himself. He came for divine companionship. He approached a supernal realm in order that its ineffable light might be shed on his commonplace life. The sacrifice might or might not accomplish its purpose, but the worshipper was kindled by the thought that he and his God had direct dealing with each other. After their temple was destroyed
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the scattered Jews built no more buildings where Jehovah Himself could be found, for their Scriptures instructed them that God could only be worshipped in Jerusalem. Instead they built synagogues where God could be talked about and his sacred word once given to the prophets could
be studied and expounded. These synagogues were ancestors of Protestant churches. The
Catholic Church continues a more ancient theory
for, in Catholic worship, something happens which is important in itself, the miracle of trans-
substantiation. The Priest can in a sense
dispense grace and forgiveness through the Church, but the Puritan and particularly the
Calvinist could never find relief from his tension
of uncertainty. The pastor was not a priest. He could offer only such hope and comfort as
emanates from the Divine Promise. His exhorta-
tion, " Make your calling and election sure" was a spur to activity rather than a solace in distress.
Man must convince himself by the quality of his actions that he was of the elect. He coufdl never relax in simple enjoyment of that which was good in itself for no such thing existed in an evil world remote from Heaven.
This explicit Puritan theology has for the most
part disappeared, but it has left a deep impress on the thought and behaviour of the Western
world. This fact is well brought out by Max Weber in his book lately translated under the title, The Protestant Ethic. Weber shows that the Protestant became an ascetic because his theology
maintained that the world and its pleasures were vain. Yet, contrary to the usual effect of asceticism, the Protestant did not withdraw from the world. He was convinced that God had assigned him a task and that proficiency in that task was an expression of virtue. Accordingly, he must work intensely at his calling but he may not enjoy the material fruits of his labour. Modem capitalism is a result of this strange combination of asceticism and activity. Capitalism in some form has always existed, but our modern rype is peculiar in that economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as a means for the satisfaction of his material needs ". Man exists for business but business does not exist for man. Capitalism results because the modern business man does not retire from business as soon as his material wants are satisfied. He keeps on working and piling up wealth. Human satisfaction is not his goal, but proficiency in the performance of a task. It is not greed for gold or power which has built up modern capitalism though these have played their part. It is the idea that successful activity is the result and expression of virtue. Weber quotes from Benjamin Franklin as typical expositor of the Protestant ethic. ' Time is money," says Franklin. " He that idly loses live shillings' worth of time loses five shillings and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea." Franklin does not say a word about the use to which the five shillings may be put. If questioned, he would perhaps reply that it would
be useful in getting five more shillings. It does not seem to have occurred to his modern disciples that human time is human life, which is valuable in itself. To express life in terms of money is to express the organic in terms of the mechanistic.
In modern capitalistic ethics we find a curious reversal of traditional values. Poverty, meditation and superiority to worldly activity were once marks of a saint. The modern Western mind finds a virtue in work regardless of what it may accomplish and a vice in inactivity even though it results in enlargement of soul. Diligence, thrift, sobriety, prudence are pioneer Puritan virtues and by a convenient coincidence they also result in worldly prosperity. Such prosperity is therefore a sign of divine favour and Mammon, once the enemy of religion, has become a great ally.
The pleasant reward of virtue was not a surprise to the Puritans for there is much in the Old Testament which predicts it.
Honour the Lord with thy substance And with the first fruits of thy increase So shall thy barns be filled with plenty And thy vats overflow with new wine.
The writer of Proverbs assures us that he has never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. No such utilitarianism is set forth
in the Sermon on the Mount. Consider the
lilies of the field." "Take ye no thought for the morrow." The New Testament emerges from the
Old as a higher level of life emerges from a lower in the process of evolution. In its external aspect, the Hebrew law is a mechanistic structure and Jesus came to fulfil the law, that is, to accomplish for it its own ends by transmuting it into organic tissue and freeing its soul. Moses came that we might have law: Jesus that we might have life.
The tendency to substitute the means of life for its end, which is characteristic of the Protestant ethic, lies at the basis of much of our modern restlessness. Our engineers build machines which transport us with great rapidity, but they furnish us with no satisfying goal. The time that is salvaged by labour saving machines is used in building more machines. They enable us to talk across oceans but they supply us with nothing to say. The Grecian poet who sing "to heaven and few ears" will be remembered long after the modern Boanerges who can compel the simultaneous hearing of three continents.
We cannot, of course, live without tools and the better the tool, the wider the range of life. A new instrument, like sight to the l)lmd, sometimes reveals vast and unsuspected areas of reality. But the very glory and perfection of our instruments has often led us to forget that they are means and not ends. The only end in itself is the glory and perfection of life.
Protestant worship has a close affinity to Protestant ethic. The worship like the ethic is based on process rather than goal. It is, in the main, a means to man's improvement, a means to
salvation, a means to the glory of God. No one would deny that such means are valuable, for the ends sought and often attained are among the highest that we know.
We should not, however, omit recognition of the fact that there is a point at which Protestant worship may attain to an experience which is in itself an end. This occurs when worshippers partake of Communion not only as a symbol, but as a mystic rite that enables them to share in the life of Christ. Protestantism at present hesitates to define the exact significance of this experience. The result is that many earnest persons refrain from this organic form of public worship as not clearly understood.
The silent worship of a Quaker Meeting is also Communion in so far as it rises above silence as a symbol and realises the life of God in the souls of the waiting group. Such experience is significant for what it is in itself as well as for what it may accomplish. The individual worshipper is a tiny part that becomes knit organically with the whole and the whole flows into and transforms the part. This sharing of life is an end in itself because life possesses intrinsic value.
If I meet with a friend whom I love I do not think of the good this meeting will do me. I enjoy the occasion for what it is. I may reflect afterward that the meeting helped me, but at the time I enjoy the moment of common life with my friend as an experience which is beautiful and good in and for itself. In the same way worship which
is organic rather than instrumental finds that life shared with God is good in itself. In the silence of all flesh the worshipper turns
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance Of adoration, and with an eye of love.
Inner tension is relaxed. The present moment attains supreme worth. No word of advice, no thought of duly points beyond the instant. The worshipper becomes an organic part of a larger whole of life which is harmonised, complete and at rest.
There is another type of Protestant service which I shall discuss briefly because it has widely influenced the course of Quaker history in Ansenca. In the ezperieocc of conversion at a revival meeting the Puritans intellectual assurance of election becomes a conviction based on feeling. The convert becomes aware of a sudden change from a state of nature to a state of grace. The old divided self is Integrated, and harmonised by the miraculous flooding in of a new type of life. About sixty years ago, a stream of revivalism swept across the Middle States of America and drew a large part of the Society of Friends into its current. In the early stages there appeared to be nothing unQuakerIy about it. It professed to emphasise )ust such an inner integration as Friends had sought from the beginning. Of the two types of worship which we have been considering, the mechanistic and organic, it leans toward the latter in theory, at least, though it rose out of the former because of a reaction which emphasised a more intimate type of relationship between man and God. It is not surprising that Friends in the pioneering regions, whose minds were, from the very facts of theor CLSe, hospitable to new ideas, welcomed it. The early history of Qwakethm with its so-called" thrashing meetings'* exhibits many phenomena which are somewhat akin. Meetings seemed quickened by the revival spirit into new life. Quaker preachers, filled with a. mighty enthusiasm, brought thousands to their knees overwhelmed with a sense of sin. But Friends who viewed experience at longer range separated
themselves from the revivalLstic trend because it did not often accomplish what it pi-ofesed to accomplish. It attempted to do quickly by violent methods what can usually be permanently achieved only through slow, orderly and quiet growth. When the first enthusiasm had died away it was discovered that the converts needed outward kelp. Theoretically a Quaker meeting composed of converted persons should have proved self sustaining for each convert was believed to be inwardly possessed of and by the Spirit of God But in practical expenenco, external guidance became necessary and the Quaker meetings which had robed most strongly on revivalism were forced to secure regular pastors and to adopt a programmed and externally controlled religious service of the Puritan typo.
The lesson to be learned from this incursion of revivalism into the Society of Friends is not that we should be afraid of enthusiastic feeling. We have perhaps more need of undaunted fervour than we have ever had. It is rather this obvious lesson, that forced growth in religious societies as in plants develops a need for niechanisal props. New lifemay open out as suddenly as the flower which blooms on a stem. But it has taken many days of silent reception of the sunshine above and slow sear
VI
GOD AND THE REBIRTH OF THE SOUL
I RAV1 described a type of worship which is the search for and sometimes the attainment of a completely satisfying goal This goal is a life which is in harmony with itself. Such a new life emerges out of the old in much the same way that a higher level emerges out of a tower in the course of evolution. There may have been a group of discordant and mechanically related elements in the soul, each seeking its own interests irrespective of the others. Then the miracle of creation occurs. God says, "Let there be light ". The diverse glimmering sparks are fused into a common radiance. Our darkness comprehendeth His light. A new type of behaviour emerges. This is the rebirth of the soul through worship.
The worshipper may have approached the Divine Presence at odds with himself. Passions clash witli ideals, desire is at odds with duty or self-depreciation with pride. Through prayer, contrition and self-surrender all the are sacrificed on the invisible altar. In the silence a voice is heard like that which once spoke to the stormy waves of Galilee, " Peace be stilL". It is the same eternal voice, that spoke above the troubled waters of the deep at the first creative moment,
and which still speaks at each subsequent moment
of creation. Life is the voice of God." The
soul of the worshipper is reborn because the warring elements have been harmonised into new life. This new life does not arise because some elements of the old have been destroyed. That is not the method by which God works. But desire, passion and pride of the old self find their deepest aims futhiled in the new in a way which would have been incomprehensible on the lower level. The higher organism arises not through destruction, but through the realisation of undreamed of possibilities. The vision is enlarged for that which is in part done away and the soul surveys all things from a wider vantage point of experience. Power, formerly bound down in conflicting emotions, is now released because these emotions are unified in a higher life.
I am not attempting to describe an experience which comes with revolutionary and explosive effect. To a few it may come in this way, but to most of us it comes unobtrusively and unexpectedly in many different ways. Even the solution of a simple problem to some extent integrates and harmonises discordant elements within us. The rebirth of the soul through the power of God in religious worship differs from other experiences in the depth and extent of the changebrought about and the high quality of the new life attained. Other experiences expand the soul partially, but in worship the life of the individual merges with the Ideal Life and all things are beheld as with
the eyes of God. The soul becomes aware of the goal of existence. It returns to earth but it does not return unchanged. Something of the harmonising principle which seeks to unite the world organically in the bonds of Love has permeated its being. It returns re-oriented with a vivid sense of the direction of the world movement in which it shares. It has caught sight of the polestar through the clouds and it can set its course with assurance. Such worship may be private or public, but in either case it will be in silence for the self assertion of the individual must be stilled if the voice of the Universal is to be heard.
The religions of the world are founded on the deep experiences of a few individuals who have come to the turning point in their lives by waiting in silence in desert or in solitary places. When Moses saw God in the burning bush or Elijah heard the still, small voice, when Paul went to the desert of Arabia after his conversion, or George Fox on Pendle Hill saw in vision a great people to be gathered, when the Buddha sat in meditation under the 13o-tree or Mohammed listened to an angelic voice in the cave near Mecca, above all, when Jesus Himself faced temptation alone in the wilderness, a great new message to the world was born not because God was spoken to but because he was listened to.
It may appear that there are two goals to be sought in worship, one the organic union of the worshipper with the creative life of God, the other a resultant rebirth into a higher type of life.
Yet, these two are one goal for only God is sought. What lies beyond the experience of God the worshipper cannot see. It is a strange paradox that the better life does not come if it is directly sought after. It is a new creation and its nature is unpredictable. God is sought not as a means but as an end, and only when He is sought as an end does he become a means of emergence to a higher level of life.
There is no mechanically or rationally constructed road to the higher life. A Chinese philosopher says that the Tao, or Way of the Universe, would be no Tao if you could chart it. The worshipper must throw himself on the mercy of God as a seed is sown in the ground and patiently await the silent power of growth which Pushes out from within. God does not work in nature or in us as one force among other forces, pushing and pulling from the outside. He abides
at the germinating core of life, An inward
Omnipresence ". We can indeed help Him. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but "God giveth the increase ".
This conception of God as the One Being who seeks to hind together by His life and love the scattered fragments of existence is the central thought of John's gospel and letters. The life of God is from the beginning the vine of which all men are branches. This organic union can be further realised for the very reason that it is already begun. " 1 am come ", said Jesus," that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." "That they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us."
The Inner Life is the Inner Light. John said of Jesus "In him was life and the Life was the Light of men ". This identification of Light and Life helps us to understand our Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. According to the mechanical theory, different lives do not overlap and one individual can therefore move another only from without. On the organic theory, lives may share in a larger life and so affect one another from within. If we are in organic union with God we can know His will even as we know our own for we have centred our will in His.
This should not be beyond our comprehension for we may have mystic knowledge of God just as we may have mystic knowledge of one another. Externally I see you and hear your voice. if I am a scientist I may seek more technical mechanical knowledge. I may examine your body with an X-ray or tabulate your reactions in a psychological laboratory. But I find only mechanism. I do not find soul for that which relates the parts into a living whole cannot be found In any of the parts. It cannot be weighed, or measured, or seen, or heard for scientific procedures concern themselves with external relations between your body and something outside it, whereas the soul binds the parts together from within. But there is another kind of knowledge which can pierce through the screen of flesh. Such knowledge is life and love
which recognises and creates organic ties. Love binds me to my fellow man by creating a life in which both share and through which we know each other from within in the same way that each knows himself.
Mysticism has sometimes meant obscurantism1 and a dealing with the occult and mysterious, but employed in our present sense to signifyan organic type of relation it comes within the range of normal human experience. Life can know life only through a larger life which includes both. Such a larger life emerges in the course of evolution through love, cooperation, the coOrdination of parts into one organism. My love for my friend is an emergence of such an organic type of relation. Mysticism as a doctrine holds that one part of such an organism can know another internally as it knows itself. Mystic knowledge, therefore, is life and love for only life and love can bind a living whole. But love does more than this, for it separates as well as binds. True love does not dominate or control. It respects the freedom and individuality of parts and at the same time it offers a larger whole through which that freedom and individuality may find expression.
VII
THE CREATION OF THE NEW
MECHANISMS, as such, are determined, predictable, and controllable. Life, as such, is undetermined, unpredictable and uncontrollable by agencies outside itself. The same comparison can be made between mechanistic and organic worship if we assume, for a moment, the improbable hypothesis that either of these forms can exist without considerable admixture of the other.
What we shall, for lack of a more accurate term, call mechanistic worship is based on the externally and traditionally given whether it be ritual, creed, hymn, scripture or sermon. But worship based on the Inner Light which is also the Inner Life is as open to the novel and unexpected as is life itself. I do not mean to say that life is ever wholly new or even new in the main, for the past is always visibly and powerfully active in the present.
The present moves attended
With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old world splendid.
No religion can dispense with its historic bases and its ancient heritage any more than an organism can dispense with environment and the habits
which it has slowly and often painfully built up. The greatest reform movements in religious history have effected only slight modification in old forms. for religion is one of the most conservative forces in human affairs.
Yet despite this conservatism there are some forms of worship which are particularly hospitable to the creative inipulses of life. Sometimes in a Friends meeting the new descends with startling freshness, though this newness is seldom out of harmony with the old. A message may arise unexpectedly out of the life of the meeting demanding expression in words on the part of some one who had not foreseen the requirement. Or it may be that the silent worshipper finds developing within him strength to perform some act which he had before considered beyond his power.
As a result of an organic form of worship of unusual fecundity there have been few extensive reforms during the past three centuries which the Society of Friends has not anticipated within its own membership. Doctrines and practices commonly accepted today regarding peace, the abolition of negro slavery, temperance, prison reform, the care of the insane have come earlier to Friends, not through any intrinsic merit of their own, but because they practised a form of worship which was especially adapted to the emergence of unforeseen qualities of life. That a form of worship based on the silent fertilisation of hidden vital processes should often sink to a
mechanistic level is due to limitations on the part of the worshippers rather than to a defect inherent in the practice.
The use of the word "practice" may suggest that there is a mapped road to the experience out of which new life is born. This, as I have already indicated, is not the case. The new life is not reached by struggle, nor effort, nor yet by chance.
The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not by violence." The great mystics, however, have had much to tell us regarding the steps on the way. The first step which has been emphasised by many is a so-called " purgation ". The soul must he cleansed of its appetites, desires and interests in order that its whole world may be built up anew from the beginning. If God is to create a higher life the worshipper must bring the lower to abeyance. Most Eastern mystics and the classic mystics of Christendom admonish us that we must not seek God by thinking of any particular object or action, for this will arrest the soul on Its flight to the Universal who transcends all that is particular. God is immanent in the world but also transcends it quite as truly as the human soul is immanent in each part of the body but also transcends each part and all the parts together. The mystic does not seek God by discursive reason. His search is for Life. Reason divides, analyses, distinguishes. Life is synthetic ; it unites the part with the whole through the irrational sacrifice of each for the other. The mystic may have sought God because of inner
conflict which he could not overcome. The more he struggled the more the conflict increased. Each of the forces within him grew strong by combating an opposing force. He solves his problem by purgation, that is, by denying both forces which were tugging at him; and, fixing his attention on the one God who transcends finite distinctions, he sinks hack, relaxed and effortless, into the Everlasting arms. At the centre of Life out of which all new life is reborn he finds peace and harmony of soul which can mould the chaotic flux of existence into forms like Itself.
This famous negative way of the classical mystics is on the whole uncongenial to our Western temperament. Its joy and its fruits have been widely realised in the great religions of Asia. In the West our combative inclinations and our scientific method have led us to seek success in any undertaking largely through self-assertion, struggle and activity. Doubtless many of the great mystics particularly in the East have overemphasised the via nativa. They fled from the world and found peace but they did not always take the way back. The result of their withdrawal was asceticism and a lack of concern for human affairs. Yet in spite of its tendency to other-worldliness, the negative way is an important element in all religious life, even in life of any sort. It is grounded in the principle that we must give up in order to obtain. In terms of the philosophy of emergent evolution C. L. Morgan states this principle as follows: "Evolutionary advance at
a higher level entails retrogressive dissolution at lower levels "or much at the lower level must be unmade that a richer entity at the higher level may be made '.'
Applying this to ourselves it means that the old self must be left behind if the new self is to be created. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.."
The doctrine of the negative way emphasises the important truth which Western liberal thought is prone to overlook, that God is transcendent as well as immanent, and is sought beyond Nature as well as in it. To think of God as immanent only is to make him responsible for the evil of the world. There is no way to preserve ethical values in a universe where God is equally and everywhere present. The Hebrews were able to teach us the worship of the transcendent Jehovah because they had won a long battle over the nature god Baal. Baal worship exalted the passions which unite man to nature. Jehovah worship exalted the will which can control the pions. Vital religion must contain enough of asceticism and of the spirit of negativity to rise above the nature that is, to the supernature that is to be.
Our Puritan and Quaker forbears were near the truth in positing a supernatural above the natural, but they made the difference between the two so sharp that there was no possibility of organic union. They recognised, however, that
the soul faces two ways, upward toward superhuman levels of life as yet unattained except in God, and downward toward levels of life which are sub-human and have received the name of "natural ". We too often pattern our ideals on the lower or mechanic level, We have found that to control Nature we must be like Nature and imitate her laws. Where our heart is there is our treasure. But let us search for God not only downward in what is, but upward in what is to be. God is not responsible for the disintegration by which life drops to lower levels. He is the Creator through whom higher levels emerge and He transcends all.
My favourite mystic is Jacob Boehme, who discovered how the negative and positive ways could be combined. He solved the problem by finding that lie could go inward on the negative way to the Heart of God and then, passing through this Divine Centre, he could return on the positive way back to nature.' But he did not return to the same nature that he left. He found all things fraught with new meaning because he brought
back with him some portion of the creative Life which inspires nature from within. l3oehme gives
us an illuminating description in antique and
abstruse language of the emergence of an organic order out of the mechanical. The mechanical he
calls the dark world, the organic the Light world. In the mechanical there are brute egotistic forces
A k,tajlcd dca:dption of Boehm&s solution appears In Chapter V of The Mystic WilJ. by H. H. Brinton.
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which rage and tear at each other. Each increases the power of its opposite. The more attraction attracts the more repulsion repels for action and reaction are equal and opposite. Nature seeks peace from this conflict but cannot find it in itself. Finally, exhausted by struggle, it selflessly sinks into the One Being out of whom it came. Here at the Unifying centre of all things is peace and a Life at harmony with itself. Nature then emerges into the light world unified and harmonised, for new organic links have been discovered which bind it together into One Life. Mechanic forces now become organic- Altruism replaces egoism. Attraction, the force which holds together the physical world becomes love—the force which binds together the world of life, The Light world, says Boehme, is the Son, the goal of Nature, the incarnation of God the Father in the forms of Nature. What is true of nature is also true of man. Man cannot of himself solve the conflict within himself. Therefore he goes inward to God, but lie does not remain there. He wants peace, but he wants a peace incarnate in the world. He returns to the world bringing with him the Creative Love of God through which the Son is born in his soul. A new and harmonised life emerges because, to use the word of Paul, the Christ is "formed" within. Boehnie believes that our religious life is a continual alternation between the negative and positive ways. We go inward to find God and outward to manifest His life in the world, And because God has already
been made manifest what we find outwardly helps us as well as what we find inwardly. That which keeps true our sense of the direction of the goal is the perfect incarnation in Jesus Christ.
Some will think that I am describing worship as an esoteric experience to which only a few may aspire, while the ordinary worshipper must he content to think over his problems in the silence, arrive at what solutions appear best, and be satisfied if once in a great while he feels some tiny spring of divine life well forth in his soul. Yet, in reality, I have attempted to describe an experience of a kind not wholly unknown in any phase of life,
The painter occupied with a small portion of his picture must sometimes follow the negative way, lay down his brush and in silent meditation on the whole, re-discover the bearing of the central theme of his work. Then, following the positive way, he goes back to the picture and
embodies" some portion of that central theme. The business man engrossed with conflicting affairs, must sometimes give up his struggle, stop his work and silently re-discover the whole meaning and object of his project. Once this central plan is clarified the conflict often resolves itself. The architect, drawing this doorway or that cornice, must sometimes stop his work and allow his mind to be filled with the idea of the whole building as seen from no one limited aspect. Returning to his drawing, he finds that the doorway or cornice has acquired a new significance in the light of the whole. The negative way must be
Creative Worobtp. 63
followed if the positive way is to proceed to a higher level. The most effective means to accomplishment is not always to rush impetuously ahead. There is no virtue in mere diligence. We must stop sometimes and be quiet and allow our minds to be passively possessed by the central organising concept which seeks to coordinate our activity from within.
Worship differs from the experiences just mentioned in that it seeks to penetrate further and aspire higher. It aims to fit our fragmentary life and purpose into the highest and most inclusive vision of which we are capable. It seeks no less than the organising centre of all existence in the Life of God and a return to the world with God's plan for the Kingdom written anew upon the heart.
There is no search for adventure which is higher or more thrilling, than the search for God and His plan for the World. And here, toot is the source of happiness. One of the first discoveries made by every religious genius has been that happiness does not lie in the attainment of any particular object, nor in indulgence in any particular activity. No one thing can satisfy us for more than a moment, because our life is set in the Infinite Life of God. Happiness is found only in some universal or whole of life which is never exhausted because it can be applied to an endless number of particular things.
A guide in the Sierra Nevada Mountains said that he found his way by alternating between a
VIII
CREATIVE GROUP WORSHIP
So far worship has been described as if it were essentially solitary, silent, and concerned only with the relation between an individual and his God. It is, however, a peculiar doctrine and experience of the Society of Friends that worship of the organic mystical type is not only possible for a group of persons, but that in a group it often attains dimensions and qualities unattainable by the individual in solitude. Union with God is attained not only by what Plotinus has called 94 the flight of the alone to the alone "; it is realised also by a type of worship in which the synthesis of a waiting group is an important element in the union of the individual with God. Herein lies the unique contribution of the Society of Friends to Christian thought and practice. It is true that silent communion with God on the part of groups of persons has been known and loved since worship began. But whether it be a company of Zen Buddhists meditating for hours without a motion of the body, or the silent devotion of Christian Anchorites, or the moment of speechless adoration at the elevation of the Host, there is an important difference between prescribed
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near and far view; a near view to get around the obstacle immediately before him and a far view of the mountain tops and the sun to give him his general direction. Life needs both a near view and a far view, a near view for activity concerned with this or that, and a far view best obtained in
silences and the germinating silence of a Quaker meeting sensitive to the emergence of new life and thought. This is what Charles Lamb called" the agreeing spirit of uncommanicativeness" which makes men "malleable and prepares them "not to speak, but to be spoken from ". Before and after the Reformation there were scattered companies who sought God in united silence as did, for example, The Friends of God ", "The Brethren of the Common Life "I" The Familists and the" Seekers ". Many Familists and Seekers became Friends and there is no doubt that these early experimenters in worship exercised a determining influence upon congregational worship in the Society of Friends. It is, I think, true to say that no other religious group beside the Quakers, with a few possible minor and individual exceptions, has undertaken in the same thorough way a collective worship of the type I have designated as organic. if it. is the function of a definition to indicate what is unique or peculiar to the thing defined then this essentially social characteristic of Quaker mysticism should appear in any comprehensive definition of Quakerism. Quakerism might be partially defined as a doctrine which holds that there is something of God in every man. Yet this belief, though central with the Society of Friends, is held in some form by many sects and religion!. The illumination of the Holy Spirit has never been completely denied by any Christian group, Quakerism might also be partially defined in terms of its peace principles or its social theories
or testimonies. These are corollaries of the doctrine of the universality of the Inner Light. A more accurate definition would state that Quakerism is the belief that the highest type of worship is a group mysticism which affords opportunity for the silent growth of organic relations uniting the worshippers with God and with each other.
A number of recent books on the philosophy of religion devote a chapter to the subject of worship. These generally describe worship in terms similar to those used by the mystics. They emphasise a solitary experience. "Religion", says Whitehead. " is what a man does with his solitariness." 2
H. N. Wieman, in a book entitled The Wr€sflc of Rdigi4m with Truth, says (page 8r)
The rnoiet effective worship is always solitary—in the presence of others it would be shocking and outrageous to be as intimate and personal as one must be in solitary worship. In the presvncc of others one must use conventional phrases, pious forms and generalities broad enough to include their thinking as well as one's own. But if the worshipper does not get beyond these conventional generalities and pious phrases, he will never accomplish an)-thing. He must be precise and searching, cutting down to the roots of his nature if he is to accomplish anything. And this requires solitude.
W. E. Hocking in his illuminating study of The Meaning of God in Human Experience,
Religion in the Making.
a book to which I am much indebted, does not go beyond the solitary aspect of devotion
All thorough going mysticism is", he says, 11
soli-tary so far as human companionship is concerned; we must first be sure about that. There are phenomena in religious history that look like mass-mysticism, and have been interpreted as such; religious dances, dramas, festivals, revivals, in which the white heat of social consciousness becomes the generator of mystical enthusiasms. But even in these somewhat tumultuous and disorderly variations of our theme, the mass consciousness forms the level from which the individual departs, he is not a mystic until his own spirit has made its solitary leap to God, like a tongue of flame out of the midst of the fire."
There is an important truth in these words. The Pentecostal flame lights first on an individual. But our philosophers do not apparently believe that it can spread to the group and maintain its undiminished brilliance. But Pentecost itself may be interpreted as an example of collective mysticism in which a group was lifted up to a high religious experience. Groups, like individuals, may emerge to higher or sink to lower levels. As a rule they sink for there is great inertia in a group. A mob or political state will often perpetrate acts beneath the ethical code of the individuals who compose it. But groups may evolve to higher planes. The crew of a sinking ship may be inspired to acts of self-sacrifice above the usual code of behaviour of its component members.
Thinkers who maintain that the highest form of worship is an individual mystical approach to God will probably leave small impress on prevailing practice in Protestant Churches, except to increase the tendency to non-attendance. Their criticism reveals a weakness in the traditional collective method and theory, but it does not offer anything new. There is no way suggested through which a congregation as such may attain the heights which an individual may scale.
An unexpected result of modern liberal thought has been a return to enhanced ritualism. in primitive religions, ritual often partakes of magic and is thought of as potent to secure desired ends. But it has also the function of uniting and uplifting. In the modem house of worship it may become the means through which a congregation achieves mystic participation in that which is msthetically satisfying. A noble and beautiful ritual can uplift the worshipper from commonplace actualities to the realm of spirit. There appears to be an increasing desire today to relieve the bleakness of some Protestant services with colour and harmony. One prominent minister goes as far as to declare that "Protestant worship can only be invested with a value that will arrest its declining attraction by actually appropriating the Mass ".1 Protestantism looks back longingly toward its ancient parent to supply its greatest need.
Unless ritualistic mysticism goes further than
stheticism it cannot answer the human longing. In the Mass, something of an infinite import is believed to occur in very truth, not by virtue of a symbol. It seems improbable that after three centuries of modern scientific experiment Protestant theory can honestly incorporate a doctrine of transubstantiation.
Ritualistic worship relaxes the tension of the soul in the contemplation of that which is noble and harmonious. To this extent it satisfies a genuine human need and becomes an end in itself. But it does not, of and in itself, create the new. Its influence tends to be conservative because it inevitably points toward the past. In primitive worship ritualistic mysticism is a means by which the individual will is adjusted to the social will, not a means by which the novel and unexpected is encouraged. The new comes into early worship when the priest consults with God in solitude as Moses held converse with Jehovah on the mount.
Quaker experience supports the view that it is possible and practicable to merge the peculiar values of individual and of social worship. The unique worth of individual worship arises from the fact that the solitary worshipper need not adapt himself toy external or traditional circumstance. He is not tugged at from without if he aspires to reach heights unattained by those around him. And yet the extreme of individualism even in worship might result in an unproductive religious anarchy. The special efficacy of social worship is due to the opportunity which it affords for the
stronger to help the weaker. Those who know the ascent can guide those who do not readily find it.
But in this e. an extreme of social control might
effect a type of uniformity out of which new life could not readily emerge.
The Quaker Meeting for worship when it attains its ends avoids the two extremes and combines, I believe, the high potency of each. It approximates the characteristics of a living being. A nice adjustment of individual and social values is arrived at so that the whole does not dominate the parts nor do the parts go their own way regardless of the whole. Each determines and is determined by the other. The power which controls and directs and which is sometimes called
the life of the meeting," permeates the group, and harmonises the deepest will of every member.
Intellectually, it is a paradox that parts knit in a living whole may retain their individual freedom, but we know from our own experience of life that such may be the case. On a level lower than this ideal organic plane we may view the component members of a meeting as comparatively indifferent to each other. No common will seems possible unless it be externally imposed. As fellowship deepens and the spirit of worship grows a new and higher synthesis silently quickens the individuals into a united whole, Isaac Penington compares this experience to the fusion of fire. He says: "They are like a heap of fresh and burning coals warming one another . . . as a great strength, freshness and vigor of life flows
into all ".I Whittier describes the influence which quickened waiting hearts
• •till haply someone felt
On his moved laps the seal of silence melt.
Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole
Of a diviner Life from soul to soul,
Baptising in one tender thought the whole.
That such a miracle can occur without words may appear incredible to one who has not experienced it. Often spoken words help to bring the consummation to pass. The Divine Fire may kindle one coal first and its glow spread thence to the others. But sometimes the radiance is suffused without speech as silently as the breath of spring unfolds new and beautiful forms of life in a meadow.
Friends have sometimes used the term " a gathered meeting" to indicate that this common life has been realised. There is, to employ another traditional term, a Il covering" over the meeting. Its warp is fashioned of the prayers and searchings of the worshippers and its woof is woven by the Divine hand. If words are uttered which are
in the life of the meeting " this means that the words spoken in a measure express the exercise of the whole. There is a wide difference between a lively meeting and a meeting "in the life ". A lively meeting where there is much activity may remain on the lower mechanical level. A meeting in the life 00 may be held in complete silence.
* A Fu,th.r TSaøsy to the Truth, P. 55.
I have endeavoured to propound a theory of worship in terms of a theory of evolution. It would, however, be quite as relevant to interpret evolution in terms of worship. Might it not be true that in religious worship something takes place deliberately in the full sunlight of consciousness which also takes place throughout the whole evolutionary process, more darkly, less consciously. The worshippers attain a new and higher life both individually and collectively, not because they seek this life but because they seek and find the living God. In worship God binds together both the warring desires of the soul and the dissociated units of the meeting into one living whole. This event is analogous to the creative process as it takes place throughout nature. God binds together through His love the scattered and disordered elements on one level of existence so that a new unit emerges on a higher level. It is in this way that, electrons are united to form atoms, atoms to form molecules, molecules to form living cells and cells to form larger organisms.
In a meeting for worship, this same creative process which appears so mysterious in lower forms of life becomes explicit and for the first time fully aware of its real nature. The worshippers are like the spokes of a wheel. The nearer they come to the centre of all Life the nearer they are to each other, Having reached the centre they become united in a single life through the creative love of God. Here again we must remind ourselves that it is not the inner and subjective alone
which brings this to pass. The Historic Christ and the Inward Christ are both active for they are the same. "If we walk in the Light as He is in the Light we have fellowship one with another."
The emergence of a new united life is often well exemplified in a Quaker meeting for business. It is the ideal of the group to act as a unit but sometimes agreement apparently cannot be reached. In such cases a period of silent waiting is generally succeeded by the discovery of a way to attain united action. This is achieved because each worshipper has sought in the silence Him who is the creative source of unity. This search for unity is an organic type of procedure. The doctrine of majority rule where the greater force overcomes the less is mechanistic. Mechanistic science is based on the concept of number. The counting of heads to decide a question is quick and efficient. Organisms grow more slowly and are not as efficient as machines but they possess intrinsic value. They therefore justify the labour and sell-sacrifice by which they are created. In an army we see a mechanical type of unity secured by the submerging of the individual. God does not secure unity in that way. His is not a mechanical force which pits itself against other forces. He sends his rain on the just and the unjust. He works through the unifying power of love which seeks to find some place for every hope or fear however lowly and forgets not even the sparrow's fall.
Mechanical unity is particularly adapted to
regulate large, unselected groups of human beings. It would seem hopeless for the general of an army or the ruler of a state to attempt to weld his followers together into an organic whole. An organism requires time for growth and the larger the organism and the greater the variety of the elements to be assimilated, the slower the growth. Friends meetings for worship function best when they are comparatively small. As there is an ideal size for a human organism there may be a norm for a meeting, possibly not much above a hundred nor less than ten. Yet organic unity is not impossible, however large the group. The Kingdom of Heaven will have come when all men are united organically with each other in the Life of God.
If our meeting for worship is to accomplish the great things we expect of it there must be careful preparation. We cannot go abruptly from one type of life to another. The old is pregnant with the new long before it comes to birth. We cannot be insensitive to the needs of our neighbours before meeting and then quickly become sensitive to God and our fellow men in meeting. Sensitivity or, as our older vocabulary termed it, a" tender" spirit in worship like taste or feeling is developed through exercise and cultivation. Worship is an art in which some attain proficiency quickly and others slowly. In either case the success of the meeting is largely dependent on the quality of life which has preceded it. The flower blossoms only after the bud has slowly matured,
A living ministry which emerges spontaneously out of the life of a meeting for worship usually points forward to goals, not backward to origins. It does not reason nor argue nor preoccupy itself with means and instruments. It suggests as best it can a simple insight and it appeals to the simple insight of others. A painter who exhibits his picture gives no reasons why the picture is valuable. He appeals only to the sense of beauty or worth in the spectator. Chinese landscape painting produced tinder the influence of Chan (Zen) Buddhism is an apt illustration of this point. It requires much from the spectator. One might say of it. what the Chinese say of their poetry, "The sound stops, the sense flows on
Indeed the composition may be judged incomplete until it has created a vision of the Unseen in some congenial mind. By means of suggestive line reduced to the minimum by an austere technique the imaginative apprehension of one whose thought is attuned to that of the painter is quickened to catch the drawing's ultimate intent. Mountain peaks or mist shrouded trees just hinted at in shadowy distance carry the thought on to realms of feeling which partake of the mystery of the uncreated.
A poet who offers his poem to the world does not attempt to argue his readers into a state of enjoyment. He trusts that others have capacity to appreciate what has been meaningful to him. In the same way a living ministry suggests the better life for what it is, as something to be seen
The higher life which emerges in the soul, born out of the Life of God, must become incarnate if it is to continue to exist, Without a body it soon vanishes like a phantom into the deep whence it arose. Activity which embodies life may assume many forms, such, for example, as thought, speech, and behaviour. Whatever it be, it should ring true to the experience which called it forth, it should be synthetic, not analytic, it should integrate parts into wholes, not separate wholes into parts.
Life is killed by dissection. A vocal ministry which pulls a religious experience to pieces in order to examine it destroys it as effectively as a biologist destroys an organism in order to bring it piecemeal under his microscope. Long and elaborately reasoned discourses tend too often to clamp delicate life processes into stiff, intellectual moulds. If the worshipper has pierced to the ultimate springs of the Will, he realises that this experience is not easily conveyed to others through any process of rational analysis. What he has grasped in a flash of insight he should share in all its fresh spontaneous vitality. If he weigh and balance too long, the vision will fade into the light of common day. It is true that a concern" which requires verbal expression sometimes develops slowly, perhaps through months and years of search7 and waiting, but once it emerges complete and harmonised with the issues of life, it should be presented in its concrete wholeness as something valuable in itself.
desired. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests a picture of ideal human life. He offers no arguments as to why that kind of life is better than another. He appeals only to the direct insight of congenial souls. It is astonishing how seldom the will is moved by reasons. Reason can only work with what it receives. It does not generate the new. It turns the will backward to origins not forward to goals. Only life can generate life and worship is a search for a living experience which transforms and illuminates problems from within.
I am not pleading for a surrender of our God given reason. A careful study of the multitude of problems which surround its constitutes a major claim on our time and energy. But it does not follow that because such activity is good and necessary that it should be undertaken in a meeting for worship. Such a meeting has a specialised function. It occurs rarely enough to permit its proponents to plead that it should not be encroached upon by other sorts of activity. It seeks to nourish the soul with the fruit of the tree of life and it is not at the moment concerned with the botanical species of the tree nor with the chemical analysis of the soil of the garden.
Let us not in our meetings for worship be afraid of common place words, of repetitions, or of old and familiar expressions. It is not new words but new life that we want. The food of the soul is none the less nourishing if it is not served in strange and fanciful forms.
Do not lovers repeat to each other over and over again the familiar phrases? They do not indulge in long speeches nor in closely reasoned discourses, nor in a self-conscious struggle for new ideas. The expression of feeling is always simpler than the expression of thought. The language of love is the simplest language there is, so simple that ultimately it does not need any words at all.
SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
TILE next step in this analysis takes us to the sequel of the meeting for worship. We cannot and we should not separate worship from its consequences. I have endeavoured to set forth first the process by which, through worship, the soul of an individual is harmonised and integrated so that a new and higher life may be born within it, and, second, how waiting spirits gathered in a meeting for worship are drawn together and uplifted so that new life emerges in the whole. How does the same process operate in larger social grOups?
God creates new life outside the meeting for worship in the same way that he does within it. A meeting for worship differs from what is called secular life only in the degree to which the worshipper is enabled to become sensitive to the operations of Divine Creative Love. Creative Love is at work everywhere and, as it is yielded to, it harmonises and unifies individuals and societies.
Worship may further this work of the Spirit throughout the world. There seems to be a law which we might call the law of spiritual inertia, by which spiritual life tends to continue and propagate itself. If a certain degree of life emerges
within a meeting uniting worshippers into a living whole, that life tends to live on when the meeting has ended. It may even generate new and similar ties between the worshippers and others of their fellow men. Growth and reproduction are laws of all living things, including the Life of the Spirit.
The character of the worship determines the life outside, and conversely it is determined by it. A group which meets for worship is more likely to succeed if before the meeting there has been a growth of common interests and loving attention of one to another. Similarly the worship determines the subsequent character of outside relationships.
Mechanical worship tends toward emphasis of mechanical relations between men, organic worship fosters relations of an organic type. If we accept mechanical relations as our standard we tend to treat our fellow men as we treat physical objects in general. If, through the experience of worship, we have become intensely aware of the possibility of organic relations among men, then we endeavour to create those relations by love which operates from within. Love surrenders even while it controls, for love unites into a common life which recognises and respects freedom and individuality.
Historically we find that mechanistic types of worship have been associated with a theory of life which permits the use of force in human relations. Churches of the Puritan type have tolerated war, not as the best way of attaining desired ends, but as, in some cases, the only
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practicable method, Such groups have never advocated war as a means of acquiring territory or power any more than they have advocated diligence in business as a means of getting riches. According to their method of reasoning, war, like business, may be a soul-testing task assigned by God. Success is not a reward, but an evidence that a stern duty has been performed. It may happen, and it frequently does, that power and riches result from success in war or in business, but this has not been the deliberate aim. That profit and virtue are so closely related is a coincidence, not unfortunate, perhaps, but to be accepted with becoming piety.
It is unfair to cite Protestantism exclusively as an example of a philosophy of life which aims at mechanistic coordination and Quakerism as an example of a philosophy of organic unity without making large exceptions in either case. Each of these two contrasting world views is modified by the other and no large aggregate of human beings represents an unmixed theory. A third world view, Catholicism, has found room to harbour both tendencies but without reconciling the two. in the realm of Grace the Church is an organism binding its members together through a common invisible bond. In the realm of Nature, however, a different code of ethics is admitted. The natural man may attain his ends through war though as a member of the spiritual body of the Church he is removed from the worldly considerations which occasion war.
Catholicism is more international than Protestantism, but less international than Quakerism. This was clearly illustrated during the World War. Partly, no doubt, owing to geographical distribution, Catholicism and Judaism took a position between the individualism of Protestantism and the universalism of Quakerism.
The Protestant has inherited a tradition which finds man to be "natural" and permits him to act in a " natural" way; the Catholic finds man to he l natural " in the world and spiritual in the Church and therefore gives him a double code of behaviour; the Quaker believes that he must act as if he and all other men were spiritual. These three attitudes are reflected in the three types of worship. A worship which is non-mystical and controlled from above treats man as natural. A worship which is partially mystical, recognising the presence of God Himself in the Church Universal and in the Mass, apprehends man as both natural and spiritual. A worship which is wholly mystical and organic and controlled from within assumes that man is spiritual.
The Protestant and Catholic may say to the Quaker, Why not see men as they actually are? Some men have emerged to a higher level of life and we treat them as spiritual and capable of being moved by love. O hers are obviously on a lower level and we treat them as natural and move them by force ". The Quaker replies that he agrees that some men are on a higher level of life than others, but that the only waNr to bring men
up to the higher level is to act as if they were on it already. Force degrades them and keeps them where they are. Faith and love alone are capable of creating the new and higher life. Faith and love cannot always succeed immediately in effecting the desired condition. The organic method is always a dangerous experiment, for the emergence of new life is uncontrollable and unpredictable. A Quaker meeting for worship may he made of no avail by persons who wittingly or unwittingly abuse their freedom in it. In the same way, a person or a nation may not respond to faith and much damage and hardship may result. It may be that the damage and hardship could have been prevented by a use of force the results of which are usually predictable. Nevertheless, there is only one way to create the higher life of the spirit and that is through faith and love. The risk must be taken if the results are to be attained.
It is a paradox that faith, like hope.
human terms because we are accustomed to we human enterprises begun in this way. No group of men can act together except through faith in one another. The faith of each strengthens the faith of the others and is strengthened by it and all become bound in a common life.
The risk of failure and suffering is not borne by man alone. To say that the method which uses faith is grounded in the nature of things is to say that God Himself shares the tragedy which often results. The Cross will ever remain the supreme symbol to convince us that the Kingdom of Heaven comes not by violence but by atoning sacrifice. That culminating act of self-abnegation on Calvary is still creating, with ever increasing power, new and widening bonds of fellowship, both human and Divine.
It is true that the method of dealing with men by force is also fraught with ennobling danger. Let us not minimise the heroism of soldiers and their self-effacing idealism which calls forth acts of extreme devotion and self-sacrifice. The pacifist who condemns war because of its cost in life or money lays himself open to the charge that he values the joy of living more than ideals attained through fearful struggle. The method of faith and love involves even more serious danger and risk of loss. Success in the mechanical method is generally predictable when one side is provided with superior resources and equipment. But no amount of intellectual calculation will enable one to predict the outcome of faith and trust in the
creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
but this paradox lies at the basis of all progress in the long course of evolution. Evolution proceeds by uniting into organic wholes discordant and mechanically related parts. Before their union no part can know how the other parts will behave. How then can they become coOrdinated ? There is no way except by faith. Let some parts trust to others. If the other parts respond a new and common life will emerge. I have stated this in
inherent goodness of human nature. This method should be hazarded at all costs, for by no other way have new and higher types of life emerged in the long course of evolution. Love and faith do not always insure the " survival of the fittest ", but they alone make possible the "arrival of the fittest ". New life is created through sacrifice whether it be the sacrifice of a mother for her new born child, of the old self of the worshipper for the higher self of the re-born spirit, or of him who turns to love and not to force and finds his trust is vain.
I do not wish to imply that the distinction between mechanic and organic is like the distinction between evil and good. Force can be used for many good ends and faith for bad ends. A band of thieves may use the trust they have in each other to accomplish an evil design. On the other hand, mechanical methods of the police may sometimes serve a good purpose. An army may enforce an excellent decree of some international court. It is nevertheless true that force, however useful in building bridges, degrades man to the level of a mechanism; and love, however often it may be divorced from wisdom, always uplifts man toward the Divine. Our Quaker faith that every man is a potential son of God and therefore possesses that which may be grasped and vitalised by an out-reaching love is not only verified by our own experience. It lies at the basis of the modern philosophy of evolution.
I have spoken of worship as a means of
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generating certain kinds of human relations which tend to reproduce themselves in the world outside. Without the inflow of this spiritual energy, philanthropy tends to become stereotyped and social reform mechanical. In dwelling upon the fruits of worship we should not overlook what has already been emphasised regarding worship as an end in itself. Worship, like art, is both an end and a means. A poet does not compose his poem in order to do something with it. He composes it because it alone can adequately express his vision. A thing of beauty needs nothing outside itself to justify it, but because it is beautiful it possesses a value which is social and not merely individual. No true art expresses exclusively the personal emotion of the artist. That which embodies the aspiration of the poet includes in a sense the aspiration of humanity. The reader of the poem may be lifted to the height already reached by the poet.
In the same way, the life which is attained through communion with God propagates itself even though it is not sought for that reason. It is impossible for any one to be with God and not to be partaker of the out-flowing Life by which He ever seeks to unite His world to Himself. The soul in its search for God may have left behind a world in which it apprehended little more than the superficial mechanical relations between man and man. It had, perhaps, sought to fight evil by meeting it in a head-on collision, of which the result may have been dc-feat. It may have
exhausted its strength by struggling vainly with
the weary weight of all this unintelligible world ". Humbly, reverently, and silently it enters that unfathomable central calm at the heart of existence. Here at the radiating centre of life it sees the world as God sees it from within. What formerly appeared mechanical is now seen as organic. No longer are men analysed as selfish individuals, each struggling to attain his ends, indifferent to his fellows. The soul apprehends everywhere something it had not realised before, tiny tendrils reaching out blindly toward each other in the dark. The soul now knows that the deepest longing of every individual is the common will of all. It returns to the world to realise the vision for it has learned at least one secret of every human heart.
Such religious life is both worldly and otherworldly. It is other-worldly because it must sometimes turn aside from and forget the burning issues of life which it is inadequate to meet unaided. It is worldly because it returns to those issues better able to understand and meet them. This dualism is not as sharp as the ancient distinction between natural and supernatural interpreted as alien to each other. It does, however, preserve a distinction which vital religion needs. To make everything holy is to make nothing holy and to banish religion by reducing it to the level of the common place. Our religion takes us out of the world because our need is too deep to be answered by any particular thing or activity in it, but it
must return us to the world because only so can vision become incarnate.
In worship we turn away from the task before us in order to discover the true meaning of the task itself. As we go back and forth, first to the task, then to our worship, and again to the task, the vision vouchsafed its becomes clearer, the task is better done, each approximates the other until at last task and vision merge in complete and perfect reality. This is the consummation of life and worship.
QUAKERISM AND THE FUTURE
I HAVE tried to suggest in what sense it may be said that Quakerism is founded on the concept of organism while Puritanism is founded on the concept of mechanism. Modern Quakers and present day sects descended from or largely influenced by the Puritans exhibit many variations from the central position of their founders. It has been necessary, however, to simplify our discussion by assuming extreme positions. Puritanism was congenial to Western culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of a prevailing tendency toward a mechanistic philosophy of life. The ideal of organised efficiency, the overwhelming success of mechanistic science, the supposed moral value of unremitting struggle and effort, the emphasis on tools and processes rather than on goals, not only dominated the popular philosophy which accompanied the rising tide of industrialism but accorded well with Puritan theology and Puritan methods in worship. The function of man was to be an efficient, smoothly running cogwheel in the cosmic machine, the purpose of which no one could define more explicitly than to maintain that it contributed to the glory of its creator.
This system of thought and practice cleared away a vast amount of ignorance and superstition, but there has never been lacking a vigorous protest against it. Quakerism in its first great missionary enthusiasm bid fair to capture the new world, but it came out of time. The age of mechanism was just dawning. There was too much to do. A continent must be won from nature. How could a sect prevail which placed at the very heart of its procedure a silent inactive waiting when the one virtue everywhere acclaimed was action and more action? Laborare est orare is a comprehensible creed. God is a God who does things and He is best served by those who do likewise. Worship, like life, is service. Little wonder that mystics were crowded off the scene.
Yet human nature is bound to assert itself. Mechanism is comparatively modem, but man has been a mystic from the beginning. There is abundant evidence of the fact that we have entered upon a reformation in religion and a revolution in science quite as important as that which occurred three centuries ago. The pendulum is swinging back from mechanism to mysticism. Does this mean that a new age is dawning as congenial to Quakerism as the former age was congenial to Puritanism? Let us review a few present tendencies.
First of all, faith in a type of progress based on science alone vanished in the smoke of the Great War. There is now a subtle apprehension that man may be destroyed by his machines, just as
m Karel Capek's play, " R.U.R.', he is swept from the scene by the Robots which he himself constructed.
Second, mechanism appears to be retreating as a basic scientific conception. Whitehead declares that the term no longer has meaning. New theories of the nature of time and space, matter and motion, are leading us to a conception of nature which verges on the organic.
Third, philosophers to whom I have already alluded have developed a theory of evolution which subordinates the idea of competition, and emphasises as of prime importance the faith, love and self-sacrifice through which organisms come into being. This theory does not explain life and mind in terms of the physical sciences, but finds that they emerge with new and unpredictable types of behaviour.
Fourth, theologians and philosophers of religion are basing their arguments for the validity of religion not on reason and authority but on the testimony of religious experience. Few important religious books have recently appeared which have not expressed the thought that mysticism lies at the heart of vital religion.
Scientist, philosopher and student of religious history direct our attention to an organic world and an organic religion, and what these investigators are thinking today people in general will be thinking tomorrow. There is and there will be no cessation in the construction of powerful tools to control the forces of nature, but there is
evidence of an increasing desire to develop a philosophy and a religion which will enable man to rise above the welter and flux of material things into some realm of central peace where the spirit may be refreshed and invigorated.
As the age just dawning reveals many signs of congeniality with religion of an organic type, the Society of Friends may make an important contribution to the faith and practice of the future. it may even be the Moses to lead the modern world out of the religious wilderness, if it manifests power and dedication commensurate with its ideal of worship and conduct.
If the meeting for worship is acutely sensitive to the new and unpredictable, if it becomes in very truth the means through which individuals and groups derive strength from the Infinite Strength of God, then who can foretell or limit the life and power that may through it become manifest in the time that is before us?
Two series of Gifford Lectures which have influenced this discourse, Eddington's " Nature of the Physical World and Morgan's " Life, Mind and Spirit ", end with the suggestion of a door. Eddington finds that a scientist as scientist encounters some scientific difficulty in passing through a door, though the commonplace man may enter unthinkingly. Morgan leads up to the church door but, as philosopher, he hesitates to enter and conduct the service. As mystics, we are bolder than scientist or philosopher. We cntr and worship, though we cannot describe in words or
translate into formal theory the glory and beauty of our experience. Here, indeed, lies the limitation of a lecture on worship. The mechanical is the describable, but life in its ceaseless aspiration, welling up from the unfathomable deep, eludes all attempts to clamp it into moulds of theory or description. As Plato said:
"There is no way of putting it into words like other studies, but after much communion and constant intercourse with the thing itself suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping lire, it is born within the soul and henceforth nourishes itself."
