THE POWER AND FUNCTION OF QUAKERISH. HE Society of Friends
is little given.to advertising, its central faith being that the Kingdom of God cometh not by observation. It is not, therefore, from any advertising motive that the little book on " The Society of Friends: its - Faith and Practice," by J. S. Rowntree (London : Headley
Brothers), has been brought out, but merely from the proper desire to let men know in a simple way what are the essential elements of the Quaker creed. This is done in the few pages of this work, so that he who runs may read.
We have said "essentials," but we might almost say "essential," for Quakerism may almost be summed up in the belief, "the Kingdom of God is within you." It is one of the great subjects of eternal wonder and dispute that a religion whose great idea was expressed by its Founder in these mystic yet vital words should have—and that in a short time—allied itself with the powers of this world, of this secular order. Nothing is clearer than that Christ repudiated this world, this secular order, or than that he warned his disciples against its dread fascination. That disciple who leaned on the Master's breast, and who assimilated his ideas most closely, has devoted his chief Epistle to an elaboration of this doctrine, saying that love of the world is incompatible with love of the Father and the Son. He has also in the Apocalypse triumphed in the overthrow of world-power in the shape of the Beast and the Woman drunken with the blood of the saints. What would he have said could he have seen in vision the alliance, within two short centuries, of the Church cemented with the blood of confessors and martyrs and the very world-power whose destruction he foretold ? We know the arguments on either side of this controversy. Matthew Arnold has told us that the stream of pure Christianity would have dried up in Judtean sands had it not merged in the great river of Roman and world activity. Another sect would have been added to those already existing, and that would have been all. But the great vital change in society, the social revolution needed, would not have been attained had it not been for the Decree of Minn. The present writer does not desire to pronounce on this great theme, as regards which mankind will always be divided ; he must be content with saying that the price paid for the revolution was immense.
During the long history of Christianity there has always been a tendency at moments of crisis to the creation of a party or sect in the Christian world of the pristine idea, of the early attitude of the infant Church. When ceremonialism threatened to drown the simple doctrine of Jesus with the contents of pagan worship and ritual, when the world was manifestly too much with Christian men, a few pious souls have always turned with longing to the creed of immediate vision, to the voice of God in the soul, with no altar, priest, or intermediary of any kind. The mystic attitude of the Fourth Gospel is combined with the ethics of the Synoptics, and a new charm of Christian doctrine steals over the minds of those who believe that the Kingdom is an inward one, and who see in an all but bare simplicity an attraction which the riehest cathedral with its dim religious light cannot afford. For English people this attitude of mind is represented in Quakerism, which is only one phase of a general fact. Ger- many has had its Quakerism in Tauler, in the Moravians, Italy in the early Franciscans, different, of course, in many ways, yet one with the Quakers in accepting the mystic and inward doctrine, and also in accepting heartily the plain and obvious meaning of the ethics contained in the Sermon on the Mount, which the more conventional Christianity has con- trived to do without.
Whatever view we may take of the necessity of the world- movement catching up in its swirl the stream of Christianity, we cannot ignore two great facts. In the first place, a kind of protest against the secularising of Christianity must con- stantly be made ; and second, the Quakers, in making that protest, are certainly nearer to the teaching of Christ than is the more conventional Christianity. Even Puritanism, itself a revolt from Anglican smooth uniformity and ultra-cere- monialism, soon was tempted to fall from its high estate, to be entangled in public intrigue, and to commit some of the very sins which it had laid at the door of Anglicanism. Then it was that the Society of Friends stood forward to witness for the simple Gospel in this land. We may admit extrava- gance and folly, if we like, but when all is said and done the service 'rendered by George Fox cannot be overestimated. The idea of a simple Christ life, with its absolute fidelity, its bold demeanour in face of all the powers of the world, its yea being yea, its nay nay, its worship of the heart, its loyalty, to' divine command, is so complete that, in the present writer's opinion,. it has presented to our people the highest ideal of religion which has been known since Wycliffe It would be too long a task to show also that, if we are to take up the New Testament without bias we must admit that these Quaker ideals are nearer to the plain teaching of Christ than any other. Puritanism as a whole unfortunately took its principles more from the Old than from the New Testament. The organised Church has invariably fallen back on tradition, and Newman argues that we can only defend the Church on the assumption of the doctrine of development, not from the words or acts of the Founder of the Church. In the controversy always going on between Puritanism and the Church it is assumed on both sides that Christ intended to found a great visible Communion with sacraments and rites. But Quakerism will not have this; it stands by the simple ideas of Christ regnant within the soul, to which He binds Himself by a mystic union which needs no celebration in the way approved by the Church. Nay, it goes farther, and expressly implies that all ceremonies tend to obscure the vision of God from the eyes of the soul.
The dangers of such a noble creed are manifest, for it is, and will probably remain, a creed for the few. But to the mysticism of the Quaker faith is attached the ethics of practical Christianity. Never was there a creed which more fully combined the two elements of the religion of Christ. Faith without works is dead, urged the great practical apostle whose famous Epistle Luther called "an Epistle of straw." But a mere gospel of works will never satisfy the infinite needs of the soul. Quakerism understood in its beet minds both doctrines, and so did not fall into barren quietism on the one hand or bustling philanthropy on the other. The greatest Quakers loved to commune in the stillness of the meeting-house, no one breaking the solemn silence unless called of the spirit to do so, but they also looked on the world and the dominion of darkness, and they determined to shed light on that darkness, not so much by preaching as by Christian practice. Charles Lamb, who loved the Quaker meeting, has told his readers to get by heart the "Journal of John Woolman." No better testimony could be given to all that is rare and high in Quakerism than these records of the doings and sayings of a poor man living in the last century in a small village in what is now the State of New Jersey. We are told sometimes that the retired simple man of the inner life does not understand the great world and its problems, that he is unpracticable, and so on. Had the teachings of Woolman been learnt, the United States would have been saved the horrors of the African slave trade, of the "domestic institution" in the South, and the hugest civil war in history, with its incalculable losses and misery. At about the same time an English Quaker lady of inexpressible charm, Elizabeth Fry, was taking up a duty which statesmen and preachers had neglected, a duty which called for a courage at least equal to that of the field of battle. She deliberately sought out the most unhappy and degraded men and women England contained within her borders, and she began the great task of reforming our prisoners. The work both of John Woolman and of Elizabeth Fry aid not proceed so much from the reason as from the heart, from a heart cleansed from all that is false, misleading, derived from prejudice. They are exem- plars of the saying of their Master : "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." How superficial in their presence seem the taunts of the " practical " man ! How little the subjects of controversy ! How the ambitions of the world sink into nothingness 1 Hera is the practical side of Christian quietism, with its heroic attitude of the inner mind, derived from the blending of the inner Christian idea with the ethics of Christianity applied in the actual stress of life. We do not doubt the loveliness of many a saint, of many an obscure monk or priest, in the great guarded fold of the orthodox Christian Church. But for fidelity and courage, as well as for inward light shining in a dark world, where will you find the superior of these saints of Quakerism ? The Society of Friends may well be proud of its record, even though it knows it is not likely to convert the wide world.
It may be necessary—we ourselves think it is—for the great .rough workaday world to be addressed and controlled by a stronger and more definite organisation than that afforded by the Quaker rule; but even those who fully admit this, and
believe in the necessity for ordinary men of a visible Church and a human organisation, must acknowledge in the Friends the guardians of, and witnesses for, the higher spiritual life enjoined by our Lord. The world would be spiritually poorer without the Society.
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