fori pie founding "I%ivt theft Books Mkgif a.CeUtgt in-Mf.Colony" • iLiiiaiiMJsy • DIVINITY SCHOOL TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY THE FAITH OF A QUAKER CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACM1LLAN CO. BOMBAY 1 CALCUTTA I MACM1LLAN AND CO., Ltd. MADRAS > TORONTO : THE MACM1LLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE FAITH OF A QUAKER BY JOHN W. GRAHAM, M.A. Principal of Dalton Hall, University of Manchester; Author of E'volutton and Empire ; The Destruction cf Daylight ; and William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF GEORGE FOX PREFACE These pages have been written with definite reference to the Society of Friends, but it is believed that they have more than a denominational interest. One cannot touch the foundations of Quakerism without touching the foundations of all religion, our attitude to God and Man and the Universe. So that this book has been bound to become not chiefly an introduction to the position of a small sect, but a statement of mystical religion in general. I have had to push on to the point where my faculties ceased to act at the far door of the unknown. The real interest of the following work to students of religious history generally is that it is a sketch of the only considerable adventure in organised Mysticism which has made for itself a permanent place in Christian history during modern times. Organisation and Mysticism might be regarded as sure to make an incongruous combination. Mystics are by their nature more inwardly dependent than other men, and when they seek for fellowship they are apt to find it in the readers of their books, in a few chosen correspondents, or in private groups spontaneously gathered and not crystallised into institutions. To all this the Society of Friends stands in contrast. It is the classical case of a mystical society with a tough organisation. The student of Church history may find instruction in noting how it met, or failed to meet, the perils which accompany the benefits of an organisation. How, in the first place, did the expression of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth reconcile itself to fixed times and places for public worship? How could that worship be conducted with no responsibility for its right conduct lying viii PREFACE at the door of any particular person? Could the archi tectural, artistic, musical, ritual side of public worship be dispensed with? Would the mystical temperament be found to be hereditary? How would the question of doctrinal limitations be settled, or could communion be independent of theology? What would be this select company's attitude towards the world and its social customs? How would it deal with inter-marriage? Could the State be trusted to let such a body of idealists go their way unhampered, or would they find themselves attacked by the Government on such subjects as a State Church, taxation for war purposes, or military service? It is with the measure of success and failure in these connections, and with the causes thereof, that the fohowing pages are, in the second place, concerned. P There arise also the insistent questions which beset all mystics, and which in Quakerism demanded a corporate, instead of an individual, answer. Was the light infallible? Was the claim to it an assumption of spiritual exaltation, not warranted by the facts, and only caused by pride? What, above all, was the connection between divine inspiration and human faculty? What was the share of the intellect in inspired ministry? Was there a special organ in a human being receptive of Divine intimations, and so altogether different in nature and power from the rest of a man? What conceivable outward test could there be of what purported to be Divine inspiration ? Was it safe for an individual entirely to ignore the combined judgment of contemporaries or of wise men in the past ? What, lastly and most critically, was the relation of inward inspiration to revealed religion? These have been my problems. This book was written during the few years preceding the War, and was already in the printers' hands in July, 1914, when the War carried off printers and stopped the publication of such books as this. And it has finally caused a delay of five years. PREFACE ix Since I wrote, Mr H. G. Wehs has brought out a number of religious works, God the Invisible King, The Soul of a Bishop and The Undying Fire, which, their readers wih notice, have much in common with some of the positions in Book I of this volume, though with marked differences also. It seems better to say that these very widely read books and mine had a wholly independent origin, and have reached separately the same or similar truths, so far as they agree. The brief additions, notes and references added since the War whl be easily recognised. Francis Thompson's poem "In no Strange Land" is printed here by kind permission of Messrs Burns and Oates. Book II should not be taken as a History of Early Quakerism, or as a full record even of the early teaching. It consists of four separate essays, expounding the work of the four chief Quaker writers of that time, so far as is necessary for my purpose. That purpose is to be fair historically to the founders, and to correlate the ancient position to the modern one here presented. Had there been no differences between our outlook and that of the seventeenth century it would not have been worth while to write such a book as this at all. The work had already been better done once for all. But it is idle to expect any such identity of forms of theological thought. We live in a different Kosmos. Our connotation of "God" and "Man" has grown. Enough if my readers conclude, as I hope they wih, that under all diversities of forms of thought and expression, the same truths, the same experience, the same Gospel remain. J.W.G. Dalton Hall, Manchester. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii BOOK I. THE FOUNDATIONS I. ' THE FATHER (THESIS) .... 3 i. Begin with experience. — 2. Consecration.— 3. Love. — 4. Leaves of a Tree.— 5. Cells of the Organism of God. — 6. The Living Christ the Blood of the Divine Circu lation. — 7. Prayer. — 8. Personality. — 9. The Gospel Paradox. Die to Live. — 10. Analysis of Personality in Man and God. — 11. Tennyson's faith. — 12. Weakness of anthropomorphism. — 13. Only an Inward God simple. — 14. And Infinite. — 15. Origen on the Logos. — 16. Fourth Gospel on the Logos. — 17. Continuity of the Germ Plasm. II. THE FATHER (APPLICATIONS). . . 29 1. The Law of Parsimony. — 2. The Atonement. — 3. Fel lowship and Worship. — 4. The Light Within and its Dif ficulties.^ — 5. Dualism and Monism. — 6. Doth God create Evil? — 7. Divine Justice. — 8. The need for the Logos. — 9. The Creator. — 10. Progress and Ruin in Creation. — n. Aspiration and Incompleteness. — 12. Heroism. — 13. "The Natural man." — 14. Some Mystical Testi monies. — 15. The Mysticism of Paul. III. THE SON 49 1. Natural Religion. — 2. Saviours and the Saviour, — 3. Union in Christ with God. — 4. His Humanity. — 5. Son of God. — 6. The Son of Man. — 7. The Trinity. — 8. The Word made Flesh. — 9. Cherish His Humanity. IV. THE LIVING CHRIST 68 1. The Christian Mystery. — 2. Early faith in a surviv ing Lord. — 3. The Promise of continued Communion. — 4. TheQuaker Testimony . — 5. DrSanday'sChristology. — 6. Work of the Society for Psychical Research. — 7. Sub liminal Christology. — 8. Conclusion: a Parable. CONTENTS xi CHAP. PAGE V. THE PERSONALITY OF MAN . . . 79 i. Cross correspondences. Man a Coral Island. — 2. Miracles. — 3. TheMinistry of Angels. — 4. The Whole and its Parts. — 5. The Communion of Love. BOOK II. THE FOUNDERS I. GEORGE FOX 89 1. Quakerism the mystical wing of the Puritan move ment. — 2. A revolt against clericalism. — 3. Fox's early struggles and teaching. — 4. The Westmoreland Seekers. — 5. Swarthmoor. — 6. The "Originality" of Fox. — 7. Widespread interest in religion. — 8. Quakerism stronger with time. — 9. Character of George Fox. II. ISAAC PENINGTON 104 1. His family and prospects. — 2. His childish religion and early Calvinism. — 3. A Seeker. — 4. Collapse of Faith. — 5. Marriage to Lady Springett. — 6. First hearing of Quakers. — 7. Path to Quakerism. — 8. Meeting with George Fox. — 9. The Seed. — 10. His writings on the Or ganised Churches, on the Bible, and on Dogmatic Theology. — 11. Old terms spiritually understood. — 12. Outward troubles and imprisonments. — 13. Settlement at Amersham, and Death. — 14. Mary Penington's Testimony. — 15. Works. III. SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 1. The Sandy Foundation Shaken. — 2. Innocency with her Open Face. — 3. No Cross, No Crown.— 4. Luxury. IV. BARCLAY'S APOLOGY . . . .134 1. The Standard Statement of Scholarly Quakerism. — 2. Immediate Revelation. — 3. The Scriptures. — 4. The Divine Light and a Natural Light. — 5. The Universal and Saving Light. — 6. The Conscience. — 7. Justification and Sanctification. — 8. Christian Perfection. — 9. Unpro fessional Ministry. — 10. Non-liturgical Worship. — 11. Other points. xii CONTENTS BOOK III. THE SUPERSTRUCTURE CHAP. PAGE I. SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD . . .153 I. Separateness unavoidable. — 2. Quaker Peculiarities of Speech. — 3. Of Dress. — 4. Marrying out. — 5. Its evil effects and abolition. — 6. Friends' marriage ceremony. — 7. Uses of a select body. — 8. Clarkson's Portraiture. — 9. SeparatSness not necessary for survival. — 10. The Methodists. — 11. Quakerism a taxing cult. — 12. Attitude to Politics. II. ART AND EDUCATION . . . .168 1. Regulations derived from Puritanism fatal to Quaker ism. — 2. Friends not artistic. — 3. Music and Dancing. — 4. The Fine Art of Living. — 5. Educational poverty and attempts to meet it. — 6. Ackworth School. — 7. Other Schools and educational institutions. — 8. No ministerial training college. Woodbrooke. III. THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC . . 178 1 . Absence of Music from Worship. — 2. Lack of spiritual force in aesthetic sensibility. — 3. Dionysiac worship and noisy revivals. — 4. Difference in practice between speech and song. — 5. Responsibility for the use of words. — 6. Public routine prayer. — 7. Thoughts in Westminster Abbey. — 8. The Reward and the Besetment of the Ascetic. — 9. A Hand-made Article. IV. MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH . 187 1. Need of some Church Organisation. — 2. Its Dangers. — 3. The "Quaker" Ministry of the New Testament. — 4. The Church is the Congregation, democratic and with no grades. — 5. House Churches. — 6. Speaking with Tongues. — 7. The Ministry of Women. — 8. Business Meetings. — 9. The Earliest Officials. — 10. The Prophets not Officials. — 1 1 . The Apostles were the Missionaries. — 12. Ministers at home unsalaried. — 13. Prophetic Teachers. — 14. The Seven Deacons. — 15. Hereditary Headship of the Church. — 16. The Church a Religious Club. — 17. The Pastoral Epistles. — 18. Elders and Over seers. — 19. Lightfoot and Hatch. CONTENTS xiii PAGE 210 V. THE DECAY OF PROPHECY i . Duration of Prophetic Ministry in the Early Church. 2. Among Friends. — 3. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. — 4. The Apostolic Canons. — 5. The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. — 6. An Unpaid Ministry. — 7. The Gnostics. — 8. Marcion. — 9. Irenaeus and the Trans mitted Tradition. — 10. The Apologists. — 11. True and false Prophets. — 12. The Epoch 170-180 a.d. — 13. The Montanists mark a conservative reaction to Christ. — 14. Xhey are stamped out by Catholic persecution. VI. MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION . . .227 1. Quaker abolition of the laity. — 2. The evil of the pro fessional attitude. — 3. Too vital for division of labour. — 4. The teaching of Paul on maintenance of foreign mis sionaries. — 5. Ministry over-organised. — 6. Uniformity of ritual for congregations full of variety. — 7. Mission Meetings, and The Home Mission and Extension Com mittee. VII. SILENCE IN WORSHIP AND THE WORK SHOP OF MINISTRY .... 241 1. A Living Silence. — 2. From the Deeps of Personality. — 3. The Message Received. — 4. Minor indications of the source. — 5. Faults of Ministry and their cause. — 6. Dangers of Personal Success. — 7. Keeping the Tools clean. — 8. A Teaching Ministry. — 9. Intonation. — 10. Wait for the Call and guard it. VIII. THE LORD'S SUPPER 254 1. Danger of Ritual. — 2. The Gospel Narratives. — 3. Pauline Addition to the narrative in Luke. — 4. Loisy's Reconstruction of the " Kingdom" and the "Covenant" passage. — 5. The Covenant of the Blood Bond. — 6. A Revelation to Paul.- — 7. Contemporary religious meals. — 8. Paul a receiver of Visions. — 9. The Influence of the Greek Mysteries. — 10. Influence of the cults of Asia Minor. — 11. Heathen Communions. — 12. The Mysteries of Mithras. — 13. The Earliest Love Feasts.— 14. First stage in development. — 15, 16. Detailed influence of the Mysteries. — 17. Communion in 500 a.d. — 18. The Tragedy of compromise, even if unavoidable. — 19. The Protestant Eucharist. — 20. The Argument from utility. — 21. Flee from Idolatry. — 22. Conditions of Divine Communion. xiv CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE IX. BAPTISM 280 1. An old and widespread rite.— 2. Not practised by our Lord, and but little by Paul. — 3. Gone from the conclu ding verses of Matthew. — 4. The Nicodemus Passage. — 5. Historical evils of the Practice. — 6. The Baptists. X. ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE . . 287 1. Organisation a necessary evil. — 2. Early struggles against organisation. — 3. The Monthly Meeting.— 4. The Quarterly Meeting. — 5. The Queries. — 6. Appeals. — 7. The Yearly Meeting. — 8. The Epistle. — 9. A Democ racy. — 10. The Meeting for Sufferings. — n. The Clerk's Decision. — 12. Meetings on Ministry and Oversight. — I 13. Recording of Ministers. — 14. Elders. — 15. Overseers] — 16. Book of Doctrine, Practice and Discipline. 1 BOOK IV. THE OUTLOOK UPON THE WORLD I. SOCIAL SERVICE 303 1. Quakerism, free from distractions, at liberty to keep the human temples of God. — 2. The Philanthropy of Primitive Christianity. — 3. George Fox on Social Abuses. — 4. Woolman. — 5. Sources of Wealth. — 6. Economic Changes. — 7. Modern Needs and Methods. — 8. The Call toFriends. — 9. George Fox as social reformer. — 10. John Bellers. — n. William Allen. — 12. Joseph Sturge and Adult Schools. — 13. John Bright. — 14. Others. II. WAR 325 1. The Teaching of Christ. — 2. The Practice of Christ. — 3. The Spirit rather than the Letter. — 4. Christianity non-political. — 5. The Two Swords passage. — 6. The Early Fathers. — 7. Later Mystical Sects. — 8. Early Quakerism and Peace. — 9. Later Quakerism and Peace. —10. 'Quaker experience. — 1 1 . The tragedy of the case. — 12. Is there a place for Force? — 13. Offensive and defen sive war. — 14. The Soldier and the Policeman. — 15. The State and the Individual.- — 16. Private and Public Morality. — 17. War as a Moral Tonic. — 18. The Ultimate Vision. — 19. Obstaclel : — Thelack of a strong democracy. — 20. Obstacle II: — The existence of conquered nations. — 21. Obstacle III: — A wrong theory of conquest. — 22. Why we cannot enlist in a "Just" war. — 23. The Relativity of Moral Obligation. — 24. Preparing for the Future. CONTENTS xv CHAP. PAGE III. RELIGION AND THE STATE . . .396 1. The limits of State action. — 2. Out of place in family and religious life. — 3. Barbarous origin of State Religion. — 4. Religion irrespective of National Boundaries. — 5. Argument that a religion would die out if unprotected. — 6. Choking effect of a dead organisation. — 7. Safer to trust to human nature. IV. EVANGELICALISM 404 1. The Early Evangelicals. — 2. Their Theology. — 3. They influence Friends. — 4. Early Quaker attitude towards current Theology. — 5. Towards characteristic Evangelical doctrines. — 6. Great Influence of the latter during the nineteenth century. — 7. The Society's Return. CONCLUSION 416 STATISTICS 419 BIBLIOGRAPHY 426 INDEX 437 IN NO STRANGE LAND O World invisible, we view thee; O World intangible, we touch thee; O World unknowable, we know thee; Inapprehensible, we clutch thee ! Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air, That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there? Not where the wheeling systems darken And our benumbed conceiving soars; The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places — Turn but a stone, and start a wing ! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces That miss the many splendoured thing. But, (when so sad, thou canst not sadder) Cry, and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my Daughter, Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems. And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames ! FRANCIS THOMPSON. BOOK I THE FOUNDATIONS G. Q. CHAPTER I THE FATHER. (THESIS) i. The Quaker search for God begins from the begin ning, and bases whatever it builds on the sure foundation of experience. Even if what we build thereon should be found to be not much better than wood, hay or stubble, we shall even then be safe after its destruction, though saved as from fire; for nothing, however foolish, which is based upon direct experience, can ever fah with so overwhelming a destruction, or produce a desolation so hopeless, as that which is based not on the facts of life but on fancy or tradition. Our walls may crash and our floors flame, but through them we shah fall down to the gentle common earth from which we began to build. We wih do as the wise old Pope in The Ring and ihe Book did in his own heart, we will Correct the portrait by the living face, Man's God by God's God in the mind of man. Do we then owe nothing valuable to tradition, or is it only lumber ? Tradition is a treasure house of accumu lated experience which we inherit from our childhood onwards. We should check tradition by experience rather than check experience by tradition; that is, we should pay to the future our debt to our forefathers not by an enslavement to their thoughts, but by correcting and extending their bequest to us. The reader's indulgence may well be asked for in this high essay to teh in part what never can be told in full ; to hold out what little light from the eternal radiance has come my way. 2. In common experience, then, we are constantly called upon to sacrifice our individual claim in favour of 4 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. a larger whole; indeed, this may be described as the central act of Christian practice. We must die to live again ; we are called to spend and to be spent in service for the family, for the Church, for social and national causes ; and this we know to be the way to God and to unity with Him. We often speak of these larger wholes as individuals — we say that a Church is born, a nation is in maturity, a cause dies; the seven Churches had their "angels" ; we. personify all things. We speak of our Britannia and our Columbia, and our great Mother Humanity, because we realise them as single entities. Such units had once their own divinity; to this poetic and imaginative habit we owe the lovely personifications of the Greek world. May we then speak of the Whole, rise thus from the many divinities to the one all- embracing Divinity, and say, from the fact of Consecration, that our God is the Soul of the Whole ? 3. The writer of 1 Cor. xiii. tells us — if we study care fully his analysis of Love — that the essence of the passion consists in taking the loved one within the barriers of our own personality ; or, shall we say, in finding a place where the barriers of two personalities may meet and mix and melt, so that there is a way through, and the two become one? Nothing is more central, nothing more vital, nothing more divine in common experience than this uniting process. Moreover it is the beginning of the way to God, and it is the same the whole way to Him, which we know to be an ever widening community of feeling. We speak habitually of the solidarity of the Church and of the race. May we not begin to believe, in obedient simplicity, that it is actually true that God is Love ? By loving we belong to the Whole ; indeed it is the ordained way of making the Whole, for in the light of love we see that the Whole is not a mere totality made by a number of plus signs ; we see that it is an organic unity, that its elements do not form a mechanical mixture, but some- i] THE FATHER 5 thing even more wonderful than a chemical combination, and, like that, formed at a high temperature. Indeed it makes literally true our Lord's assertion, " I was in prison and ye visited Me,". . ."inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me." 4. These experiences of Consecration and of Love point in the direction of thinking of God as an infinite Personality of which we are a part, as a leaf is of a tree. We are leaves of the tree which is God. Through the channels of communication between the leaf and the stem, the life of the tree is communicated to the leaf while the leaf lives, and the leaf in turn builds up, by the carbon dioxide which it breathes, its own little portion of the structure of the trunk. Something like this is the teaching behind the parable of the vine and the branches, and though the thought may not be an easy one to grasp, it is to be found in the New Testament in such passages as: "In Him we live and move and have our being," "Unto Him are all things, and in Him all things consist." The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the vision He1? If the unity of all things in God be truly one that could be paralleled with the organic unity of a tree, we may go on to say that the whole universe depends for its exist ence upon God, who is at the centre of its life and works down to every extremity : And if the Nameless should withdraw from all Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark2. Christian prayer through nineteen centuries has been spoken to "Our Father, which art in Heaven." From fathers come sons ; in their children parents live ; and as nearly as a fleshly parallel can be expected to run, the 1 Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism. 2 Ibid. The Ancient Sage. 6 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. unity of our soul and the Soul of souls may fruitfully be likened to the mysterious hereditary unity of the family1- 5. Psychical research points strongly to the belief that the soul, though certainly a unity— indeed the most assured unit in the conscious universe — is composite also as is the body. Of our own personality we are more certain than we can be of anything else; some philo sophers amuse themselves by saying that it is the only thing of which we can be sure. Our body is composite ; it consists of countless cells of active protoplasm, each of which has a life of its own, struggles with, and co-operates with, other cells, propagates itself, destroys what is worn out, runs to the defence of the frontiers, obeys a central government, and constitutes the marvellous republic called the body of a man. That the mental and moral per sonality is also analysable into elements is shown by experiments in hypnotism, instances of multiple person ality, and the great range of affections formerly lumped under the word hysteria2. Unity under manifoldness, "toil co-operant to an end," seems to be the constitution of everything we know. May it be that we are like cells forming a greater Whole, entering somehow into the total personality of God? We the elements in His likeness which go to build up His being? Moreover as the body is not formed of a number of cells merely added together, stowed away in boxes, uninformed by any single life; so the universe is one organism whose centre, God, is no more easily separated or discovered than is the centre of the life of the human body. In the body we know that the blood which is the vehicle of the life gathers round and pulses from the heart; we know that the nerves appear to be the seat of the deeper personality centring in the brain, but we 1 More on this later, pp. 25-27. 2 Proceedings (xxx vols.) and Journal (xviii vols.) of the Society for Psychical Research, passim. i] THE FATHER 7 find that the brain is after all an organ ; and it stih keeps the secret of its inmost potency. You cannot separate out the life from the body and show it in a test tube. Sheath is within sheath, nucleus within nucleus, without end. The one life is everywhere, and it cannot be located in one place more than in another; but that the whole organism depends upon it is plain1. Something like this is, I venture to think, a spiritual fact also. We are all built up into God, but added together we do not make God ; He is to be found every where, but not discoverable, separated or enucleated, any where, yet in Him all things consist. This has been called the Immanence and the Transcendence of God. From this metaphor of the cells in the body the whole duty and happiness of human friendship and co-operation seem to follow as the condition of spiritual health. One almost suspects the metaphor to be more than a mere metaphor, and to parallel in some real way the place of man in God's world. Friendliness is the first of duties and necessities; dishonesty spoils the spiritual body politic ; that we are members one of another is axiomatic. Christian law is no high-flown and unattainable ideal ; it is the measure of vitality and well-being. 6. Will our parable find a place for Christ — for the mystical, ever-living Christ, that is? (We are in the region now of psychology and not of history, so that the historical Christ is not in immediate question.) We should hardly expect a perfect parallel, but how if we thought of Christ as the blood of the spiritual body of God, through Whom comes the life-giving circulation, Who is the power which cleanses and restores the worn-out tissues, the 1 Since these pages were written I have read a newspaper report of an Address, and more recently an article in The Hibbert Journal, by Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he makes use of a some what similar metaphor, regarding human beings as corpuscles in the blood of the human body which he likens to the Divine Whole. 8 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. power-house (to change the metaphor) of the manufacturer of souls? Such we find Him to be to us, His Christian followers, and that is as far or even further than a parable can be expected to go. To return to the individual : Tennyson has another parable : But that one ripple On the boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself For ever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion of the deep1. Thus we are drawn to an ever larger, more penetrating, and more universal thought of God; as large, as pene trating, as universal as our conceptions can make it, and yet with the consciousness at the end that our conceptions are poor tools for conceiving the divine completeness ; that they grasp as much of it only as can be grasped by the straining tentacles of a human mind. 7. All this means that we have no view point from which we can contemplate Him from outside. Viewed from outside indeed, as an object of intellectual contem plation, we cannot conceive of a personality without limitation. This was Herbert Spencer's difficulty. If we are to be outsiders to Him we can not do better than fall back upon William Watson's rather melancholy thought of The Somewhat which we name but cannot know, Ev'n as we name a star and only see His quenchless flashings forth, which ever show And ever hide him, and which are not he2. But we are not outsiders; for I fall back for the third time upon a fact of common experience ; the fact of the validity, the effectiveness of Prayer. No one who has lived much in an atmosphere of prayer wih consider it to be the simple mechanical action, and equally mechanical reaction, to which it is sometimes likened. We do not in practice find that it is as easily successful as sending a prepaid telegram, or a messenger 1 The Ancient Sage. 2 Wordsworth's Grave, 1. I] THE FATHER 9 who has to wait for an answer; still less is it like one of the machines which, by turning a handle, or pressing a knob, produce at once the desired response. It is at the time of our deepest need that the answer appears most to seek; it is the blackest darkness which is hardest to relieve, and the sorest need to which no help seems to come. How common is the experience of which Whittier tells in the concluding verse of The Garrison of Cape Ann: In the dark we cry like children; And no answer from on high Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, And no white wings downward fly. He does not end on that note, nor will we, but we will postpone a little while his concluding lines of hope. Enough now to notice that there seems to be some con dition for the effectiveness of prayer to be found in the condition of our own mind, nerves, or even physical health; for it is probably in the weakness and with the obscured faculties of sickness that prayer seems often to be the most unavailing; something has dammed up the sluices between the soul and the Infinite Soul ; for, surely, if it were a question of sending a line to an all-powerful and dearly beloved friend, the answer would come the more assuredly and promptly the greater the confusion or the need for patient courage or wise guidance. Whilst it is clear, or as clear as such things can be, that we are not the only agent concerned in prayer, but that there is an outward response, that there is "someone " to pray to, some reserve of spiritual power not ourselves that makes not only for righteousness but meets our other needs, yet it seems equally plain from the lessons of experience that our own spiritual faculties are essential to a communication which depends upon them for its availing. The whole process is vastly more complicated than it appears, say, to a child. All this need not cast any discredit or doubt upon the 10 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. fact itself— upon the fact of the validity of prayer. It is enough testimony to this to point out how constantly the instinct has asserted itself in useless ways, in prayer for victory in war, for success in business, or for fine weather. It may safely be said that no prayer of this kind has ever been of the least avail outside its purely subjective effect upon the devotee or its telepathic message to some other mind; yet men have gone on doing it because they could not help it. Again, the lack of the inward prayer has constantly led to the preparation of outward substi tutes in printed forms of ritual devotion. These cannot be said to be themselves prayers ; they are stimuli, suggestive thoughts, a framework upon which prayer may build itself, and thus the feeble knees may be strengthened. Prayer, then, is natural to us, an instinct that cannot deceive. Once more, then, as over and over again, we are led to the belief in an indwelling God nestling at the back of the heart of man; and once more we cannot say where God ends and man begins within us. What a curious phenomenon is vocal congregational prayer. It is addressed to God ; but it is uttered in the hearing of the audience, is really aiming at influencing them, and however genuine it may be as individual communion, it fails unless it takes the hearers with it. Its contents are so general as to be fit for common aspiration; they should meet the needs of some one or of some group, outside the speaker. Our own personal prayers would be profaned by publicity. If public prayer did not exist, and exist most helpfully, we should be tempted to say a priori that there could be no such thing. Whereas it is and always has been everywhere. Can the explanation be that we are not addressing our prayers in two discrepant directions after all, but only in one, that in reaching the hearts of the hearers through their ears, we reach God within them, by setting them individually praying? The congregation as one man has communion with the One I] THE FATHER ii Indwelling God. We do not pray into space, though it looks like it to the unknowing. God is not to be reached by way of the sky. At the end we know, when all the anthropomorphism has been washed out of the purity of our conception, that it is a Person that we want; or, to speak more carefully, that it is a humanlike relationship with our humanity that we seek, "A heart behind creation beating." Nor is this a blind cry of the emotional nature only, an unjustifiable "will to believe." The highest we can touch through the personal faculties must be personal; it can, at any rate, be nothing smaller or simpler; how much larger and more complex it may be we have no faculty for discerning. The things of a man are cognisable by the spirit of man, and the things of God by so much of the spirit of God as can dwell within him. In prayer we are turning naturally to that out of which our souls were made, to the home to which by our nature we belong. How, then, shall we conceive of the Divine, so vast, but yet so close and personal? How shall we combine the God of our philosophy and the God of our prayers? No philosophic thought which leaves out prayer wih do for a moment. Prayer is the central fact of religious experience — it is religion in exercise. To put it in the simplest terms, we must have a divine Being who reacts upon us as prayer reacts. Here is the crux of our inquiry. We cannot pray to "the unconditioned Whole" and we cannot think of God as ultimately less than the Whole. Let us try to examine into the nature of Personality. 8. The hopelessness of any attempt at a rigid defin ition of Personality comes out very clearly in the following extracts from an able article on the subject by Miss E. M. Rowell of the Royal Holloway College, in The Hibbert Journal for April, 1911. It is far from my intention to quote them for the purpose of making 12 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. game of them, though they are little more than the statement of a puzzle; and the last quotation shows that the authoress herself agrees with me. The most really significant part of the whole discussion is. that we increase our personality, not by what we get, but by what we give. Is not that what we should expect if we exist and exercise function, not for ourselves or for our own growth, but as subservient parts of a larger whole — as a cog in a machine ? In this case it is not a machine but a great personal Whole, made up of Persons. And our importance in that Whole is measured by the number and forcefulness of our reactions upon, or relations with, other Personal elements in the Whole, by the value, that is, of our contribution to the service of God and Man, not by any aggrandisement, extension or personal wage we may be said to acquire for it. Let us quote some stiff passages from this Hibbert article. The self is nought except by the medium of the not-self. A man is himself in so far, and only in so far, as his interest and being extend beyond himself. Personality is a coming out of oneself, a mingling with the world, a losing of one's soul, which results in the saving of the same. A man's environment — his wife, his children — is part of himself ; remove this or that element, and though it is true that you do not destroy the self, yet the self is more or less mutilated thereby; and if you proceed to divest a man more and more of his possessions you will probably reach a limit when you will be hard put to it to maintain that the man is still himself. Bradley says of the self that "its content is never one with its being; its what always is in flagrant discrepancy with its that." A man is not what he thinks of, and yet is the man he is because of what he thinks. The self thus becomes as it were a centre of attraction, round which the matter of immediate experience ranges itself in charac teristic form according to the law of attraction. The lesson which the modern world has still to learn, after twenty centuries of Christianity, too, is that there is no such thing as self-realisation; that the self has no kingdom of its I] THE FATHER 13 own ; that it lives and is only in so far as it goes out of itself and is content to wear the humble badge of the not-self. Self- isolation is suicidal; communion is the life of the self, partici pation its realisation. The self, then, from its very nature both is and is not; it successfully eludes philosophical analysis. Finally, at the end of a long discussion of personality it occurs to me — with all the irony of such retarded realisation — that any attempt at an explanation of personality was foredoomed to failure. I believe that personality is the one reality of the universe, that it is all-present and all-prevailing, that it is at the back of all being, revealing itself more or less adequately according to the capacity of the different media it uses; and therefore it would seem that it is not personality at all which requires explanation, but all the other things and modes of being. This doctrine has affinity with William James's ultimate belief that the Personality of the Universe is One; and that our bodies are transparent or translucent holes or gaps through which it temporarily shines. He called it the transmission theory. I do not myself accept the theory, which excludes survival after death. 9. The Gospel is full of paradoxes, too frequent and too much alike to be accidental, which imply something paradoxical at the heart of personality. "He that will save his life shall lose it." "He that will lose his life shah save it." "He that is least among you shall be the greatest." "When I am weak then am I strong." "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." "Strength made perfect in weakness." And, turning for the perfect carrying out of the Gospel, as we always do, to our Lord himself, we find that it was because He made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and finally submitted to the death of the Cross, that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the Name which is above every name1. 1 Philip, ii. 5-1 1. 14 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. AU these declare unmistakably that to enrich the personality you must expend it, that all its getting is in giving away, that it is filled by emptying itself, that it is more like a tool with unseen Power behind it than like a store of anything which is exhausted by use ; that, in fact, the Law of the Conservation of Energy can only be accepted by assuming an inexhaustible store of energy behind the little personal organ, and by realising bewilder- ingly that you must extend thereto the field of Energy ; that a person is more like an electric engine fed by a current that does not fail, than like a boiler full of steam ; more like a nerve centre than a bag to be filled. So that its characteristics are all of them those of something which is a part of something greater, a part of an Infinite Personality with which it is in touch, and of which it is an organ, and upon which it can draw for power. This is exactly what we find in our own experience. Our lives are only enriched by the love, friendship, or service that we give, not by absorbing the gifts of others. A person of ample means and indulgent habits, whose life is a succession of "pleasures," who sits listening to other people act or sing or play, who watches cricket matches and eats dinners, with whom to hear a good joke is an event of real importance, and ever threatening boredom is only averted by meeting charming people, or by taking a foreign tour, such a one does not know the real joy and power of which humanity is capable. Such pleasures in measure are necessary, or at least desirable, as recreation for us all ; I would not say a word against them; but they are not by themselves enough to make a man or woman either great or efficient or happy. Our best happiness is in the work that we do, in having the strength to do it, and in the pleasure of its achievement. John Bright's definition of happiness was having a con genial task and making progress in it. The more a man is in active and helpful touch with a large number of his THE FATHER 15 fellow creatures, the larger is the personality of the man. It is possible, by refusing responsibility, by being need lessly absorbed in the care of your health or in the avoidance of fatigue, by becoming attached to some un breakable routine, to shrivel and harden the personality till it becomes a tiny and unlovely thing. " So-and-so is not the man he might have been." I cannot see how these things are as they are unless we are a part, an organ, of the Personality of God. 10. Of the fact of our own personal existence we are, as I said, sure. It is the fact on which all our other per ceptions and derived certainties depend. But carefully to define this Personality is impossible, because it is ourselves, and we cannot get outside it to look at it, and describe it. And the terms we might try to use would fail, because it is explicable by none of them. They are derived from it, not it from them. It is primary and unique. We may, however, sketch some of its distinctive qualities; and I shah try to show that these, added together, constitute the highest created product; but one at every point imperfect, and irresistibly pointing to some unattained pattern or ideal, which would thus seem to be the Inmost Thought of the Universe; more personal than we are, not less. And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness,- — Round our restlessness, His rest1. As persons we are more complex than most animals because our consciousness includes the future2. And we value our attainment most, and reach our highest, when we think particularly of the future, ahow for it, safeguard 1 E, B. Browning, Rhyme of the Duchess May. 2 Most of what follows next was suggested by reading The Nature of Personality, lectures delivered at Oxford by Rev. William Temple, then Headmaster of Repton. 16 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. it, fear it. But we are perpetually pulled up by our imperfect knowledge of the future. Foretelling is a rare power, though I myself beheve that it occasionally exists. A soul absolutely independent of time, able to see the end from the beginning, would be a perfect Person, on this line of qualification. Again : as Persons we ought no longer, like the beasts, to be creatures of impulse momentary, passionate, even bhnd. We move, at our best, in an ordered sequence, beginning in a purpose and reaching a goal; we desire permanent happiness rather than momentary joy — or only joy in harmony with the quiet landscape of happi ness and peace which culminates in peaks of joy. Our children's developing Personality we mark by their stages in steadiness and self control. But we are only imperfect Persons after all : a poor copy of our pattern which is sometimes shown to His servants in the Mount ; one whose Will looks like soulless law, but really knows no variable ness nor shadow of turning, because it is always right, and cannot be bettered by change. Again : as Persons, no longer beasts or passive Things, we have gained marvellous control over Nature. I need not enlarge on this trite and obvious Nineteenth Century theme. The greatest men in some directions are the great conquerors of Nature — the great inventors. This ah leads our thoughts up to a Personality of infinite knowledge of Nature ; whose Thoughts are Nature's laws. The distance between this infinitely endowed Person, and the greatest of our researchers, is a measure of the finite- ness of man ; the distance between Edison and a savage measures a portion of his infinite path. We aim, again, at being free. The control of our own actions is a condition of our complete personality. We claim it by the deepest of the instincts of our manhood. Freedom is obedience to a law which is within; it is a measure of self-determination. But it does not stop there i] THE FATHER i7 Fuh-orbed freedom is freedom from the inward tyrants, passion, habit, caprice, prejudice — we must have a powerful central government within. We measure the dignity of our personal character by this quality of steady orderly emancipation from sin and temptation. And when we fail we cry And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be ! 1 On this line the archetypal Personality, then, is one perfectly free, perfectly self-determined; one central omni potent will. We are made, in this as in other ways, in the image of God, but are not yet made perfect. The faculties of love and sacrifice, too, are treasures of our personality, developed out of, but far beyond, the parental instinct in animals. Ceaseless love and service, then, must be at the heart of things, if our upward path is ordained by any consistent Will. From beyond the stars we hear — "Oh heart I made, a heart beats here." Browning's Arab physician, Karshish, was led by his sudden discovery of Jesus and his teaching to a conception of Love enthroned as God. Saul, another of Browning's inspired creations, saw the vision of Christ from the love of David. The lines are well known and often quoted. 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, that I seek In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever : a Hand like this hand "Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand ! Through men of love we are led with Saul to believe in the Man of Love, through Him we mount with Karshish, by a second induction, to a God of Love. We pass from the known to the unknown. It is entirely experimental and scientific. On God and godlike men we build our trust. ii. So we, by reasonable theory, lead up from man's personality to God's. But theories which appear reason- 1 Tennyson, Maud. g.q. 2 18 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. able do not always carry faith and conviction with them. We need guidance, and above all practice, practice of the Presence of God. Tennyson, that great spiritual voice and leader of those of us whose masters are still the great Victorians, felt the need. That which we dare invoke to bless; Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; He, They, One, All; within, without; The Power in darkness whom we guess; I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun : If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice "believe no more" And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part. And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd "I have felt." No, like a child in doubt and fear: But that blind clamour made me wise; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near; And what I am beheld again What is, and no man understands; And out of darkness came the hands That reach thro' nature, moulding men1. Tennyson himself comments thus in his published notes on this passage: "I believe that God reveals Himself in every individual soul, and my idea of Heaven is the perpetual ministry of one soul to another.".... "Take away belief in the self-conscious personality of God and you take away the backbone of the world." " My most passionate desire is to have a clearer and 1 In Memoriam, cxxiv. I] THE FATHER i9 fuller vision of God. The soul seems to be one with God, how I cannot tell. I can 'sympathize with God in my poor little way." There is a remarkable passage in the Fourth Gospel (x. 34-36) which puts clearly all that this chapter pleads for. Jesus quotes from the Law, "I said, ye are gods? If he cahed them gods, unto whom the word of God came, say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am the Son of God ? " Those " unto whom the word of God came" does not mean those who heard preaching — that does not make men godlike at all times — but those to whom the Inward Word came. He called those gods who had touch with God, who had entered the unity of the eternal. 12. So we too, even thus helped, may find it hard to realise the personal qualities we need in One in whose organism we are but cells. But by trying so to do, we are on the road to the truth, ever approximating, if miles away. But the milestones, as we pass them in our religious experience, and as the world passes them in its quest, are a warrant that there is a goal, that truth lies that way. The race begins anthropomorphically, and so does the child. But he should grow out of this, not jump out of it. Nor should we lazily acquiesce in a simple humanlike conception ; above all, not press it. I rely greatly on the word "omnipresent." Any one who will meditate on that, will I think go the right way. If we confine "personality" to creatures like ourselves, the only "persons" we know, it is not difficult to see how inappropriate such a simple and unqualified use of a well-known word becomes, when applied to the Infinite. Even the passion of love and guardianship which we all agree to attribute to God, as the very centre of His being, was apparently felt by those who wrote the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England to be inappropriate. 20 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. For the first article says that it is a fundamental truth that God is "without body, parts, or passions." It is, however, when we come to such feelings or passions as laughter, pain, grief, regret, or anger, that our difficulties accumulate. Take laughter. A sense of humour, the capacity for laughter, is a part of our personality, which only increases as our faculties become more sensitive and more complex. The Psalmist had no difficulty about it, but sang "He that sitteth upon the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision." It is from the Psalmists and their fellows that we have fortified our anthropo morphic conception of the Divine. "I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh," says the Divine Wisdom. We are struck by its irreverence and its impossibility. The sense of humour implies a sudden perception of incongruity, which certainly could not arise in the unlimited Intelligence which reconcileth all. Hence the point of the humorous story of the prayer which began: "Paradoxical as it may appear to Thee Oh God." Or laughter may arise as Plato in Philebus said it did, from the sight of another's misfortunes, which look ludicrous. Hobbes on the same lines spoke of laughter as "a sudden glory rising from the sudden conception of some eminence in ourselves, as compared with the infirmities of others." This touch of very human personality is clearly inappropriate to the Most High. So is the laugh of triumph in the mouth of One in whom we also say there is no struggle nor change nor triumph. It is clear that this feeling of humour or hilarity inheres only in a personality of limited range very unlike God. But on the other hand if we think of Him as the pervading spirit in all that is best in ourselves, then the sense of comedy, the joy, the merriment, the incongruities proper to our finiteness, the innocent mockery at a 1] THE FATHER 21 ludicrous situation, our little triumphs, may surely be part of the divine endowment of our finite selves, a finite portion of an Infinite. We are surely the better for our laughter. The more we have of it the better. And whatever is good, is of God. God is immanent in all laughter that is not spiced with hatred or contempt or mean triumph. And I find peace and satisfaction in leaving Him there, and nothing but confusion in asking myself whether God, regarded as a manlike occupant of a throne, ever laughs. A similar treatment applies to such emotions as grief, anger or regret. 13. The only true thought of God must be so simple that He cannot be escaped in the experience of ordinary human life; something close to elementary needs, and not to be banished by intellectual eccentricity, or by lack of knowledge, or of a perfect balance of character: it must be the very antithesis of that typical ecclesiastical utterance, rising again and again from the long procession of orthodoxies, "This people that knoweth not the law are accursed." There must be no law to be learnt before beginning to know the blessedness of the Divine touch. It must be revealed unto babes. But every conceivable Divinity wholly outside man fails to meet this test. Such a God can be ignored, denied, got rid of, temporarily or even permanently silenced or escaped. Moreover He is an external pheno menon among other phenomena. One has to be taught about Him. How shall they learn without a teacher? and what if there be no teacher? You postulate a pro fession of teachers at least — and in practice there is always a profession of priests as intermediaries between the great Absent One and His many and weak creatures. To the varieties of assertion about Him there is no end. The tell-tale fact about these assertions is that the reahty compels them to describe such a God as suits the character 22 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. of the worshippers. And the mocker smiles and criticises, saying that man made God in his image. Clearly we must find some reply to a half truth hke this — a pestilent error in effect, as I think. So that in fact the Indwelling God comes to His own all the time, under all savage or gentle, ascetic or joyous, military or mercantile, forms. Whom they ignorantly worship, Him declare we unto them as the permeating, irrepressible, mastering Divine Spirit in man. The God who can be worshipped at any epoch is of course a God akin to and comprehensible to the men of that epoch. For He is in them. 14. But besides being simple the true God must be infinite; must in His completeness be beyond ah our conception. He cannot be a phenomenon we can get outside of, and look at; for one reason because that phenomenon is too small. "Wide as our need Thy favours fall." The arrangements of human and Divine life must be such as infallibly couple endless need and endless grace with what looks like automatic precision. A good illustration is given by Ruskin in his Ethics of the Dust. A child dabbles its fingers in a basin of water, a quite small, finite and accessible portion of liquid. But the child talks to it as though it were the great infinite ocean, water of sea and river and sky. And so indeed it is. We can all drink a little water, and do so from cradle to grave ; but we cannot conceive properly the total mass of water on the planet, though we can talk about it. Must not God be as universal and immense as the water? Yet an authentic portion of it, in every way as good as any other portion, is at our daily and hourly disposal. But this analogy from the homogeneousness of water must not be pressed, and can only roughly fit. It is always risky to venture on an inorganic parallel to an organic fact, and still more to a spiritual one. I do not regard the Divine Spirit as anything hke a homogeneous liquid ; rather as a highly organised Being, with parts and i] THE FATHER 23 functions differentiated for its varied purposes. As the world inhabited by man — elaborated in his tame animals and tamed acres, in his fruits and flowers, in his machines and books, in his poems and arts, in his wonderful speech and his vivid and penetrating imagination — is more rich and diversified than Nature's untouched forest, so is the world of the spirit likely to be capable of becoming far richer and more diversified still ; full of conscious agents probably, as the material world is full of unconscious ones, and needing no pictorial fancy to people it with principalities and powers, angels and archangels and all the heavenly Host; though we cannot follow, nor really glow with adoration, over the Eastern imagery of the alabaster furniture and golden paving stones of the Apocalyptic Heaven. 15. There is a fine passage in Origen, from whose writings the modern thinker will rarely turn disappointed. The Logos was the larger personality in Whom the world of rational beings existed in a manner similar to that in which distinct ideas exist in the mind of man. As the mind is active through its ideas, and is nothing apart from them, so the Logos lives through rational natures, and, while itself distinct from them, has no existence apart from them. God lives through His Logos and His Logos involves a spiritual world of rational beings, who again live by striving to know their source and to act consistently with their knowledge of Him. Origen sought to explain the possibility and the actuality of the Incarnation on the basis of the essential identity of human personality with the Divine. The human spirit was a finite image of the infinite personality of the Logos. The reasoning power and the wih of man are the offspring of the essential attributes of a Divine personality. The spirit of man is a spark from the infinite fire, a ray from the Divine Light. Its limitation not its substance produces the difference between it and its source. 24 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. 16. The author of the fourth Gospel gives us in his first chapter a statement of his own doctrine of God and man, and a wonderfully tight-linked unity he makes of it — complete in that short sequence of verses. He begins with the Absolute, where it is not unnatural that grammar and logic should fail him, as they have failed everybody who has tried to express ultimate reality or ultimate existence or ultimate life or whatever word is preferred. He begins "The Word was with God, and the Word was God." The merest child can see the grammatical contra diction between being God and being with God, but the more you know of the subject the more it seems to be all right. However, we will begin with the statement that "The Word was God," and he goes on to describe the Word as the creative power, as the transmitted life of God in the regenerated soul, giving such souls power to become sons of God. Then he declares that the Word was made flesh and was identical with Jesus of Nazareth; this was the great novelty, doubtless, of his writing; but he does not stop there; he proceeds to say that "of His fulness have all we received." That is to say God was the Word, the Word was Christ, we also have received of His fulness and of such Divine grace that we are also fairly describable as sons of God. It is a tight-linked unity indeed. It leaves no room for the system-maker, who knows how to lay down the boundaries between God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and Humanity, and can arrange the edifice of an intellectual conception, with its main lines and its partitions and its doorways from the Divine to the Human, from the unmanifest to the manifest, from the eternal to the present. Such schemes are utterly out of place in this last and greatest thought of the Apostolic age, concerning the nature of its Lord. How can we explain this permeating identity? Surely it is a life, a communicated life, continuous from the beginning to the extremity of a hving organism. As a bud at the edge of i] THE FATHER 25 a twig partakes of the life of the twig, and the twig of the life of the branch, and the branch of the life of the trunk and the root, so we are a part of God and our hfe His hfe. No one has ever yet penetrated to the heart and centre, the secret point of origin of the life in the trunk of a tree ; it is everywhere but it is nowhere ex clusively ; and so with the Divine life of which we have received the fulness in the branch. 17. We have spoken so far, in language that did not claim to be more than metaphor, of the eternal One of whom our fleeting personalities are temporary and local outgrowths — we have spoken of ourselves as flowers or leaves on the tree of God — as cells in the body of God. But if we are not averse to being taught by Biology, not afraid that its teachings are sure to be paths to materialism, and to the loss of religion altogether, I believe we may go further and learn more. Biology is an unwelcome teacher to some ; but to others it may give precious light. All that is in man came, then, through the potencies hidden in a microscopic germ cell, which has gathered matter round it, and subdivided over and over again till it has become an adult human being, a thousand million million times its original mass. That ah our physical and mental peculiarities, all our heredity, came through that tiny speck of living something, (I hardly like to call it matter), is past our realisation, though we are bound to accept it. But at this point we, in this book, must demand more of it. The Divine Indweher must have been there too. For all that has happened to us since is but the increase of matter, chemical elements made into organic compounds. It is not more materialistic to find God in operation in the germ than in the man it has become. The Divine power works through the process of growth and in the plan of the collection of organic matter. It is 26 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. not to be found located in any special portion of the physical frame, such as the brain or the heart, it is in the whole, everywhere. It comes in fact through the original life-giving germ, and expands with it. But what do we know of this mysterious entity, this unexplored home and source of life ? It seems both spiritual and material, a true vehiculum Dei, the nearest we can come to the secret place of the Most High. The answer is that Biology tells us that it is eternal. The continuity of the germ-plasm is a universally accepted doctrine, and has been for a generation1. It is not the product of the organism which conveys it in each genera tion. The germ which grows up is accompanied from the beginning by other germs which do not change, but retain their character, and find their place in the embryo, and go out with it into the world, and so pass on un changed, to another generation, they and their germ progeny, so long as the race lives. Thus each generation is like a flower which is born and dies on a stock that is per manent, and the reality hidden behind every genealogical tree is a branching development of the one mysterious source of life, bearing ever its sequence of fruits in God- inspired human lives. Moreover in this we find the cause of our oneness with all other men, the human bond we feel. For it appears that this germ-plasm is accurately the same as has come down through all other families. We are thus all made in God's image : we are very closely identified with our brothers and sisters, less closely with more distant and ever more distant cousins; but the bond between all the families that have inhabited the same country for dozens of generations is very real and close. This is the biological discovery of a common humanity, wherever there has been a common ancestor. We are "members one of another," as Paul truly 1 Since Weismann's observations in 1883 and his larger work i] THE FATHER 27 divined; unselfishness is the law of the self we bear from the fount of our being, whilst selfishness is just "the law in the members," in the individual that has grown up here for the uses of the Creator upon the earth. If a physical justification for Altruism is wanted, it is here. Mankind is one organism, and demands the loyalty of its parts. This germ-plasm has been our dwelling-place in all generations. It can not be offered as a solution of the mystery of God, for it is indeed itself a mystery of mysteries and carries inquiry Beyond, but it satisfies the conditions needed by our religious instincts. How much deeper and how much simpler now does the saying of the Apostle become, that "God is Love." And we may ponder too, on the idea of "The Spirit that quickeneth (or giveth life)." "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life." The writers of these words knew nothing about germ-plasm, but they recorded an intuitive experience which, knowing what is now known, we can scientifically endorse and justify1. NOTE The foundation on which the edifice of this chapter and this book is built is the reality of the three experiences of Consecration, of Love, and of Prayer; leading on to conclusions on the nature of Personality. Few will deny that these are, in one form or another, universal and real. But those who carry in their minds the 1 This biological paragraph is based on Dr G. F. Nicolai's Biology of War, pp. 392-6. This book was written in a German fortress during the war. The author, the leading heart specialist in Germany, was Professor of Physiology in Berlin, and. was dismissed and confined and reduced to poverty for opposing the war. After many hardships he escaped by an aeroplane to Denmark. His book, 506 large pages, is published by Dent for 21/- and is a standard work on Peace, an immense store of information. 28 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. i evolutionary history of these experiences may say that they are not significant, because of their origin. Consecration, it may be said, is only the herd instinct of gregarious animals developed, Love was originally only the means of reproduction by sex, Prayer is the instinct of the savage in fear of calamity, helpless before unknown forces. A book on Quakerism is not the place to treat this issue at length; but it may briefly be said that if, to save argument, all this be granted, and thus a glimpse of light be thrown upon the creative process, and a sketchy outline of its story be made visible, the process itself remains the wonder. It is in that that the Divine mystery dwells. What made simple lowly instincts turn into such glorious gifts? Further the ex periences themselves are not less real, not less in accordance with the human and Divine nature which we are out, starting from them, to investigate, than if, as our ancestors thought, they had been produced full grown by a special act of creation. CHAPTER II THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) i. A misgiving may have crossed the reader's mind as we have been elaborating the daring claim that God's dwelling is in Man — that Man is the Temple — the only Temple — of the living God. This awe-inspiring faith is checked often in every-day experience by the knowledge that the elements of God within us are faint. We may have touch with boundless riches ; but we feel poor. We find that we have just enough to go on with, and no more. Our stretches of success on the level are crossed by chasms of failure. We are always, in fact, hungering for more of the Divine Presence. But a similar law of parsimony runs through ah our vital processes. Bathed in floods of sunlight, we can only benefit by the little that falls on our bodies, living in a land of rain and streams, the amount we drink is strictly limited by our physique, — the millionaire, however he may pile on luxury in vast vulgarity, has still only as many sensations of pleasure to satisfy as we have. Every thing vast and overflowing is only given as the organism can take. Even truth is likewise subjectively limited in its acceptance. We can see this in the way that old- fashioned thought falls out of date, and the truth in it takes its place in larger truths in later times; the error in its form and framework, in its connection with other truths, dies out; we know that our forms of thought will in their turn die too. Thought is economised and sparingly dealt out. Complete knowledge of universal truth on the great issues of life would probably blast and shrivel 30 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. us now into insanity or hopelessness or blank confusion. Our perceptions would give way before it. So with our perception of God; to our faith it is proportioned. Faith is the soul's grasp of God. No mighty works can survive in a cold, unresponsive atmo sphere. Nothing was clearer to our Lord's mind, and in his experience, than this. We have just as much of God with us as our needs demand and our faculties permit. Emmanuel — God with us — grows as we grow. The law of parsimony holds. By living up to and using the Divine afflatus we have, we grow into use of the doubled Talent, and come nearer to the joy of the Lord. If we could fly to the sun we should be burnt up; but we have just enough of the sun to give us the rising hope of dawn on the day's work, to ripen our crops at noon, and to cover the mountains with the sunset glory of evening. God is with us enough to make life hopeful, ripening and glorious, but not enough to make us throw common things to an untimely burning, 2. This conception of our unity together in God makes clearer many difficulties which fail to be made clear by drawing any hard lines of classification between God and Christ and Man, but which become plain in their unity, their communion. One of these is the Atonement. The mission of our Lord was to reunite in family reconciliation, restoring love and order and peace in the Father's house, replacing the communion marred by sin. Sin is separation from God; and He came to conquer sin. Sin is the self-assertion of the flesh and of the mind of the flesh — the undivine self — which should only be the instrument, the necessary clothing and vehicle of the soul; and needs to be voluntarily submitted in a heavenly obedience, and to conform to this central Divine Order with which our souls have organic union. Every theory of the Atonement breaks down which assumes the separateness of God and Man, n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 31 as two parties to a bargain. Therein Christ is made to be the victim of a colossal injustice — discreditable to the other two principals in the transaction. But it is all needless — a lawyer's scrupulous quibble — the result of an ignorant people accepting primitive teaching. If, however, the mission of Jesus was to restore, wherever His Gospel penetrated, a unity of purpose, a harmony of motive, a Divine obedience, in the heart of the believer, — the At-one-ment, the reconciliation, is therein achieved. 3. Again, — to check our theory by practice — it is instructive to notice that we find that fellowship comes with worship and worship with fellowship. Public worship is a poor affair where the worshippers do not know one another ; it is a failure where they disapprove of or hate one another. On the other hand true communion between kindred souls melts into worship either in a "place of worship" or out of it. Fellowship and worship are two words for the same communion. How often have we heard the prayer: "As we come nearer to one another, Lord, we come nearer to Thee." This well-known fact is of illuminating significance. 4. What is the bearing of this thought of God upon the doctrine of the Light within, which was the special message of Quakerism in the seventeenth century, but is now widely and livingly held, and is a subject of general religious interest? It is indeed, broadly, the mystic's faith. There has, throughout Quaker history, been some uncertainty and controversy about "the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the World." The adversaries of early Quakerism not unnaturally retorted upon their plain-speaking critics that they were assuming a blasphemous claim to infallibility, and that tailors and shepherds should not claim to be wiser than bishops and Christian Fathers. Indeed, the first generation of Quaker apostles had not passed to its rest before misgivings had 32 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. arisen among Friends themselves, and cautionary state ments implying their practical unity with orthodox Christians on most points began to be uttered. Edward Burrough, John Camm, Francis Howgill and Isaac Penington had died — had died too young, after many imprisonments — before the first flush of the glorious sense of immediate revelation had been checked by the cold hand of authority. The diversity thus present from all days except the earliest has never been finally adjusted among Friends. There have been those on the one hand to whom individual enlightenment and personal freedom of conviction have been as the breath of life; and on the other, those who felt lonely when outward supports were taken away, who needed and valued the help of outward authority, indeed, who lived upon it. That is, no complete and harmonious philosophy of Divine Guidance and its limits exists among all who bear the name of Friend with general agreement. Does not this point to some original weakness in the premises, point to there being something imperfect in the ideas of Divine and human nature with which the seventeenth century faced the problem? It is some error in preliminary assumptions which causes arguments to lead into a blind alley. Let us anxiously scrutinise our data. The seventeenth century had not reached can I venture to suggest? — such a thought of God and of man as is even possible to us now — poor and unworthy as ours doubtless is. Nevertheless, George Fox was here as elsewhere, in touch with future thought where he says, that "though he read of Christ and God, he knew them only from a like spirit in his own soul." It would have been well if this simplicity had been retained in its fulness in Quaker thought ; but that could hardly be. To have stated in plain terms that God's dwehing-place was not in a remote heaven but in the hearts of men would have been impossible in' the days of n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 33 the Commonwealth; it would have been equivalent to Atheism in the popular mind; and the early Friends were already sufficiently suspect of that, through their denial of the power of ah ecclesiastical persons and machines. The experimental psychology which finds man a sufficiently comprehensive entity to be in touch with God, just as normally as he is in touch with the material world, that inductive psychology is an affair of the last thirty years, as a serious and extensive intellectual interest. The early Friends had all been born into a world in which "fallen man," with his weaknesses, and especially his helplessness, was the basis of thought — a world full of contrasts and of opposites — God and man, righteous ness and sin, the spiritual and the natural, the heavenly and the earthly kingdom, the soul and the body. We do not deny these contrasts, but we are able to recognise the deeper unities out of which they spring and to which they belong and return. In harmony with this general line of thought, then, the early Friends insisted that the spirit of God was not a natural light; they made a too absolute contrast1. Per haps it was in their ministry that the effect of this was most observable. Believing ministry to be an almost miraculous product not to be produced in the wih of the creature, it became confined to the few persons who possessed the requisite sensitive psychical temperament, and it produced an unconfessed feeling of infallibility, which it was impos sible to maintain and irreverent to deny. But we may now recognise that the ministry is a divine product because it is a human product, and that it is a human product because it is a divine product, and that like the music of earth, heavenly harmonies sounding through our words are baffled by our poor technique, and are dependent on an orchestra which is never perfect. The doctrine of the 1 See Book 1. cap. iv. § 4. g.q. 3 34 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. fall of Adam had therefore a paralyzing effect upon Quaker theory1. But this can now be restated. The doctrine of the Inward Light is only a way of saying that we are, as I have pleaded, a living part of a living God— the God, to use Edward Caird's favourite phrase, from Whom we come, in Whom we live, to Whom we go. But we do not claim to be a perfect part of Him, or in perfect communication with perfect agents on the other side. In the subject matter of Biology and Psycho logy there is no perfectness ; it is enough if there is life, health and growth; a passing from less to more — from the simple to the complex. There is an everlasting flux, but no mechanical infallibility or flawless perfection, as a circle or a square may be perfect. There never was a perfect rose, never a perfect face, never a perfect soul. But the loveliness of the rose, of the face, and of the soul, surpasses the loveliness of the square. We claim no square or round perfection. Indeed the errors of religious people are plain, and wrong guidance has worked the worst ruin. If we have to be checked by our friends we need not ascribe the error to God, nor believe that our faith is vain. The wheat field must wave in the sun; though many ears are misshapen, we shall not cover it with a roof, and only exotics with glass. We cannot do with any ecclesiastical intermediary of glass, thick or clear, between ourselves and ourselves, the man in God and the God in man. It is unthinkable. We rather say, with the exultation of faith : Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet2. 5. One question will be sure to arise in the minds of those whose training lies among these subjects. I mean the familiar difficulty as to whether we are to credit God 1 I am indebted to various passages in the writings of Rufus M. Jones for the general thought above expressed. 2 Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism. ii] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 35 with evil as well as good. Such a questioner might ask : " You have described God as the metaphysical absolute, do you consider Him the ethical absolute also? If not, are you accepting Dualism, or do you see your way ultimately to Monism? " Put into simpler language this means that if God is not to be credited with causing evh moral character, who is? And is there in the universe a power alien from and independent of God? Assuredly, the God I am feeling after is not the power for evil, but wholly the power for good. The conflict, with which experience makes us familiar, between good and evh is the conflict between God and his opposite. Am I, then, driven back upon Dualism as a final theory? I should reply that I am not a dogmatic Dualist, only that I do not see my way clearly to Monism ; that is, I do not feel able to reconcile all things into a harmonious Whole, though always moving in that direction. For practical purposes I am a supporter of good and an enemy of evil ; but I avoid an acceptance of ultimate Dualism on the very excellent ground of sheer ignorance. I sometimes allow myself to speculate, in accordance with our useful habit of drawing parallels between what we do understand and what we want to understand, between the physical and the moral — to speculate in this way. The refuse in the drains of a great city is to that city wholly evil; it is the typical example of physical evil and danger on a large scale. It must be shunned like the poison it is. But what is it ? It is the worn out and used up ; it is the once serviceable remnant of what has been valuable ; these are the cast-off husks ; they have been essential in their time to what is healthful and good ; they are not evil in themselves, they are only evil where they are ; their evil is relative to time and place. Further, hereafter they will be restored by the action of the healthful powers of bacteriological nature to usefulness, fertility and a new generation. Of the good and the beautiful they 3—2 36 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. are an essential part; in fact they belong to the great scheme of the renewal of life. They are as essential to it as are old age and death to the eternal youthfulness of the world. Similarly, what we call moral evil is recognisably useful ancient passion out-of-date, selfishness used up and superseded, the craft, the violence, the unbridled egoism of the brute and the savage. And just as copious weeds and copious crops come from the same rich soil, so moral obliquity when transformed by the bacteria of the Divine cleansing stations in the human heart, becomes spiritual power, visibly so here, presumably so hereafter. On these lines, therefore, we may hold the door open to Monism, to the "far off divine event to which the whole creation moves." But this is speculation, and I do not aim at going beyond experience. 6. Will this kind of thought help us to face the constantly recurring calamities blindly falling upon us? A strong and good man, a friend and travelling com panion of mine in our holidays, with his feet on the rungs of the ladder of municipal activity in his native town, serviceable and competent, able to devote most of his time to public service, a support of the Friends' Meeting and the Adult School, the only son of his aged parents, now sinking into weakness after beautiful life times of service, a recently married husband and father of a young child — this man was knocked down and killed by a motor-bus in London in a moment without blame to anybody. I attended and spoke at the great open-air funeral where all his native town was moved, and hundreds waited on our words. Could I tell the poor wife and pale and tottering parents that this blind and wretched accident was simply the Lord's doing ; done under arrangement or permission directly given by the Father — the father of all fatherhoods, represented in will and character by our Lord Jesus Christ ? I could not . I was ii] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 37 under troubled exercise of spirit for some days before. But I told the people that God was not in the motor-bus ; but was in the efforts that were made to prevent such accidents; was present in our sympathy that day, in the courage and patience of the bereaved, in the conso lation that would find its way into their sorrow — and also in the opportunity yet to be his, of using elsewhere, in higher place, the judgment, the intelligence and the social gifts, which we had lost here. My friends were what might be called orthodox on Evangelical lines, but their hearts and their judgments went with me. I mention this simply because it is typical, not remark able, but alas! ordinary. "Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break." Every day, year in, year out, accident and disease, poverty and war, multiply this story a thousandfold. Without pretending to assert or to deny an ultimate Monism, I think we are on safe lines in feeling that the Will of God is behind the good that is done by willing men; and that the Divine Will is best done and repre sented, in connection with such an accident, by efforts to guard against its recurrence. The Indwelling God outwardly revealed in Christ is my God. Doubtless as a necessity of thought the Ultimate must be a unity and must include the horrors. But may we not be per mitted at this point to plead that our knowledge and per ceptions cannot take us safely to the Ultimate ? That is, that by us the problem is a priori not completely soluble1 1 The Problem of Pain is only treated here because of the light thrown on it by the conception of the Indwelling God. We only deal therefore with such part of that dark problem as remains, an obstinate residuum, after the load has been lessened in various ways. It is lessened by reflecting how much of pain is but Nature's finger-post warning us against diseased and dangerous bodily conditions — also how great is the spiritual harvest of patience, courage and strength which may be reaped after the ploughing and harrowing of pain, and in no other way 38 THE FOUNDATIONS ¦ [ch. 7. What a host of difficulties does this thought of a World Soul remove! The query about Divine justice is for ever rising upon the lips of men. Who indeed has been treated with the kind of justice which one would ascribe to the action of an infinitely just and omniscient external potentate? What of our inherited diseases or faults of temperament ? What of the upbringing of our city millions ? Who has had a fair chance ? And, in presence of San Francisco earthquakes and , fires and Titanic disasters, and European War above ah, does there not arise the old question about those on whom the Tower in Siloam fell? The justice that there is in the world, on which we habitually rely, is not the justice in Nature, which has no justice, no knowledge of it nor care ; but the justice slowly making its extending way in man. Human nature, good human nature, is just ; and we are labouring to make it more just all the time. That, at any rate, is a fountain of justice, which, though far from pure, has great possi bilities. That is, Divine Righteousness, which we believe to be the Ultimate Law, is working its way through men, its instruments, and it has no other way. 8. It must, one would think, have been this misery of the world, and the pain of ascribing it to a single individual God, which led Philo at Alexandria to elaborate the doctrine of the Logos, with which we concluded the last chapter. Philo was the heir both to Greece and to Judaea. The reverence of the Jews for the one Universal God was such that they never spoke His name, but called — how sympathy could not otherwise be formed and strengthened, nor pity nor mercy nor humility grow to perfection. Nor need we hesitate to believe that there is a Hereafter where the innocent sufferer may find restoration and perhaps "the far off interest of tears." It is only after all these thoughts have been found to be not a complete answer, and when the problem of sin is added, that we ask concerning God the question in the text. n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 39 Him the "One of the four letters," JHVH, the Tetragram- maton. With them the conception of the divine Wisdom as an active emanation of the ultimate being of God had become common, had become almost personified in the Book of Proverbs1, the Book of Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus. Among the Greeks Heraclitus had first, so far as our records tell, put forward the Logos, or Reason, as the underlying principle of the universe ; with the Stoics the Logos was the soul of the world, building it up according to its purpose. Then there was the Platonic doctrine of Logoi as the primal images, ideas, or patterns of things in the visible world. At the University of Alexandria, the meeting-place of the Greek and the Jew, Philo, born from ten to twenty years before our Lord, combined these already harmonious thoughts into the great doctrine which was afterwards to be adopted into Christianity. Indeed Christian no less than Greek and Jew felt the need of some such conception, and we feel it as much to-day. The doctrine of the Logos was the means of giving weighty and reasoned expression to this need of our thought for some scheme which would make room for the " God of battles" and also for Omnipotence ; for where there is omnipotence there can be no battles. The God whom we find in practice is evolutionary in method, which is only another way of saying that progress and victory over a more or less intractable environment, is the method open to Him. It is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would2. 1 v. chapters i-ix. Since the passage above was written Rendel Harris in his book entitled The Origin of the Prologue to St John's Gospel has traced the Logos doctrine directly to this Hebrew source, apart from Philo or the Stoics. It is of the deepest interest. 2 Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur. 40 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. It is enough if the spiritual life within us, which is of Him, is active and progressive, if the spirit which has entered into the flesh is gradually making that flesh a fitter home. In face of blind accidental ruin, lives damaged with no apparent reck or care, we are thankful if evil is not, as it sometimes is, triumphant, and if good achieves her slow conquests. This is the God whose servants, whose organs, whose vehicle we are. In His name we serve in a cause which never has enough servants. It is doubtless, as I have noted, a necessity of thought that there must be in the absolute One Infinite and Eternal, without progress or change, abiding in calm, where Space and Time have no meaning, in a changeless existence, where there can be nothing which can be called a process or a development, which is never acting here more than there, nor now more than then, where there can be neither right nor wrong, victory nor defeat. Such is the eternal, "to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday," and "the isles but as dust in the balance." But as thought moves on into such abstractions as this, it moves away from the human heart, and from the needs of men. " No man hath seen God at any time." Far other than this is the Divine Power that we really know, and to whom we pray as to a Father that is in Heaven. Is not His love at issue still with sin, Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?1 He is, to all appearance, far from all-powerful now. He has His victories and His defeats. He needs our help. We are thankful for every little record of permanent progress in righteousness that we can count up. We battle "for the Lord against the mighty." He is one who needs soldiers in His army and friends by His side. Such is God in action as distinct from God in essence. 1 Browning, A Death in the Desert. ii] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 41 Such is the purpose, the will, the activity of God. This is what thinkers meant by the Logos, and what we generally now describe as the Holy Spirit. It is His communicated life that we have. A religious soul that begins with experience, and bases its thought thereupon, can find in Him a home. It is neither cowardly nor disingenuous to say that finite faculties like ours cannot pretend to explore or to explain all the mysteries of Being, nor account for that age-long conflict in which the Word of God calls upon each one of us to play our part, most audibly of all in the words of Jesus Christ, through Whom we have received Divine Grace. It would, indeed, be abnormal if our faculties extended to a cognisance of the Absolute God. For they do not extend to the Absolute anywhere. All our knowledge is partial, and limited by our faculties, playing on such parts of reality as our senses and our intuitions offer as material for them. Some philosophers say that matter is not real, others that spirit is not real. Neither of these doctrines about deceptive de lusion have I personally room for, and such negations do not lead far, but nobody can actually prove that one or the other, or perhaps both, may not be true. They are beyond proof or disproof. We need not be troubled that the Absolute is utterly out of our beat. 9. How does the process of Creation fit in with this thought of God in man? The first knowledge which everyone has is that he did not create himself to begin with, that he is a product of the will of a creative power. He is conscious of being in the grip of a great scheme governed by principles which it is his business to learn and to obey. We begin, that is, with the consciousness of a Creator. Yet we are constantly modifying ourselves all the time by purposive effort. We train the mind to every possible degree of fineness, or we pout a lip in recurring evil temper, or our faces become plain signals of peace within; we are, in all our peculiarities and in 42 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. every one of our organs, the net permanent product of similar mental activities in the generations gone by. The race is, in a true sense, creating itself. Even the processes which are now unconscious and habitual, like those of digestion, were once purposeful efforts made by the simple structures from which we descend. We inherit them as unconscious habits of the body; and we are, in each generation, adding to or subtracting from the sum of our organs and faculties. The mouth is a very mobile organ. In judging a face I think it is not a bad rule to remember that we inherit our eyes, one chief organ of expression, but we make the expressions of our mouths ourselves to a large extent. We present a case like that of a stalactite cavern. The lime-laden water drips livingly and afresh over the rock every day, and builds up stalactite, just as the living Spirit of God, and the living purposes of our wills, build up our bodies and our minds, and if the will is bad or weak, correspondingly spoil or weaken them. But the stalactite as it stands is the result of ages of the same process, God's building, the hardened product of what we speak of in ourselves as ancestral habit. The conscience is thus an inherited pro duct, which accounts for its curious warps, divergences and gaps. Our duty is to make our own conscience more powerful and more symmetrical in our lifetime, and so hand it on1. I know of no aspect of the relation between God and man more helpful than this creative relation, in elucidating the whole subject. We are working on lines predetermined for us by the great Thinker at the back of all thoughts, but His thoughts are carried out by our thoughts, which are of Him. "My Father worketh up 1 Even to those who follow Weismann in denying the inherit ance of acquired characters, there is left the large region of imitation, education and environment. The statement in the text, though weakened, is not destroyed. ii] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 43 till now and I work." True it is, in the familiar words of F. W. H. Myers, that Never a sigh of passion or of pity, Never a wail for weakness or for wrong, Has not its archive in the angels' city, Finds not its echo in the endless song. But the archive is in the city of our own organism, the endless song is the voice of human society. What better angels' city or endless song can there be than these when the creative work is perfected? 10. The audacity of the statement that we are a part of God can only be made acceptable to experience by a clear statement of the reality also of our weakness and our sin. We must keep our balance and remember that we are dust. But not dust only. Really we are outposts of the Kingdom, frontier stations every one of us of the Imperial Power working through us to extend and consolidate its dominion. We are the seat of war, of absorption, of pacification. Our selves are the field where the great Self absorbs that which is not itself. We know those creeping Alpine plants, grasping the rock, encroaching upon it along all its edges, absorbing it and turning rough mineral to the bloom of flowers. We are each like one of those creeping flowerets, building up God. How if it be the task of this life to adapt one soul, our own, to His Will, fit it for His service, make war and two-mindedness to cease within its borders; and so be ready for further work hereafter, nearer the heart of the Eternal harmony? No words of humility or abasement jar, if it be only remembered that besides being the chief of sinners, a poor worm with a body of humiliation, a man is never theless the vehicle, however unworthy, of the very life of the universe. 44 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. Why does sin make such a mess of a man ? Why, when it has become habitual, is the degradation so ruinous? A man may make intellectual mistakes, retrace his path and be no worse. His judgment may err but he escape scatheless, "though as from fire" (i Cor. hi. 15)- His opinions may veer absolutely round, but no disintegration of his personality occur. But let him lapse in soul, become a moral wreck, false at the bottom, or a victim to drink, or sensuality, or opium, or gambling, or be the helpless weathercock of gusts of temper, and the creature becomes a festering mass of a corruption that is capable of spreading, as a living thing spreads, not easily cleaned up hke a heap of inorganic rubbish. Is it not that the corruption of the best is the worst? And it is because man is the home of God that this desecration of His temple is sacrilege, the only real sacrilege. An inroad has been made upon the Kingdom of God. I am also inclined to believe that when this thought of God has become customary in any of us, the terrible consequences of sin will also become a customary thought, consequences not to be artificially avoided or compounded for, but so ruinous to the whole structure of our being as to bring now and in the future a disaster whose limits are incalculable. ii. Why are we never entirely satisfied with our selves or our experiences? Not only Alexander wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, not only do all the greatest monarchs ever labour to increase their power, the wealthiest men desire more millions, but on quite other lines of effort and enjoyment the cry is always "more." The man whose writings or utterances have had most influence desires still to work, to teach and to inspire his fellows. The most popular person is never quite at the end of his or her conquests. The veriest saints we have known have deplored their shortcomings. Of course this tendency becomes in many n] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 45 unfortunate people chronic discontent and empty longing ; but even the healthiest, the sanest, and the wisest of men have never completely attained; like the Apostle Paul they still press forward that they may attain. Does not this point very strongly to the fact that a human being is not like a cistern that can be filled till there is no room for more, but rather like something which has an inlet and an outlet, which has touch with the Infinite behind, whose capacities in any direction defy all limits. And if we realise that we belong to a great spiritual Personality, all this falls easily into place. 12. How utterly "unreasonable" also to the mind of the mere sociologist have been the martyrdoms of man. How constantly Something in our nature has insisted on its supreme right, if necessary, to sacrifice the outward man, his prospects and his life. Heroism, the endurance of long hardship, poverty and torture, cannot be explained or defended on any lines which do not grant an origin and a communion larger than that of our single personality, which do not realise that we are children of God. How much easier become the modest ventures of faith which are called forth constantly at our hands when we realise how close to us, how truly in us, and with us, is the Power in whose name we are called to go on such an adventure. 13. Some of my friends, who are accustomed to use the phrase "the natural man" to denote only the natural animal man, may perhaps demur to the claim that the true nature of man is to be found on the divine side and in his best moments. I do indeed claim that goodness is natural and sin is unnatural to us, and I do not feel willing to give the great word "nature" over to the powers of evil, but to claim it for God who made nature. The word translated "natural man" has no such word as " natural " in it. In the Greek it means the unspiritual man (psuchikos), and the American revisers, who so often penetrate more fearlessly to the truth than the more 46 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. conservative English body, would have translated it "the unspiritual man," if they had been allowed to do so. Look at the process of conversion or spiritual awakening, which is so undoubted a fact of common experience. It most commonly and most happily occurs in early years, when it comes gently, naturally (if I may use the word), as a great access of aspiration and of happiness, a new revelation of the meaning of life and a joyful acceptance of loyalty to God. When the hardened sinner of later life is converted by a revivalist or otherwise, he has already caked over his spirit with layers of the clay of the earth, and the bursting through has to be cata strophic, and a definite turning round and retracing of the past. But it is, all the time, a wiping out and a destruc tion of that which sin has brought, and which was no part of the man's endowment at birth, however pronounced the hereditary weaknesses may have been which have played the traitor to his nobler self. But they are happiest who know that their spiritual awakening was brought about by a still small voice, rather than by the earthquake and the storm. And such is the normal experience with young people of good heredity and careful training. 14. It would be easy to increase the size of this book by voluminous extracts from the writings of the Mystics in many languages. Others have already done that, and it is not my immediate object to quote from second hand testimony. Of modern writers in harmony with these ideas one may however mention Walt Whitman, whom I value not as a literary craftsman, but as a Mystic ; and Edward Carpenter in his Art of Creation, where I have been delighted to find many of the ideas in this book somewhat similarly expressed. The last three chapters in that book, explaining the reality and detailing the method of Communion with God, are an authentic scripture of the race. ii] THE FATHER. (APPLICATIONS) 47 Charles Kingsley, in his Preface written in 1854 to Miss Winkworth's translation of Theologia Germanica, felt it desirable to show that the Mysticism of which that book is a simple and popular type was to be found in the most orthodox quarters. He quotes Athanasius himself as saying of Christ, "He became man that we might be made God," and Augustine, the orthodox founder of Latin theology, who said "He called men Gods as being deified by His grace, not as born of His substance." One may well feel alienation from the theology of these famous Fathers; and probably their schemes of thought do more harm than good in the world to-day; but they were devout men and knew what they meant when they said things like these. And I will permit myself one more quotation, from Meister Eckhard, one of the leaders of the Friends of God in the fourteenth century, who said: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one vision, one recognition, one love." 15. Only in the light of this Indwelling can we catch the drift of all that is most significant in the Epistles of Paul. Take for instance the passage in 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18, where the Apostle has been dwelling upon the en slavement of the Law, and the veil that once was upon the face of Moses and is stih upon the hearts of the hearers of the Law. He proceeds: "The Lord is the Spirit : and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." The passage is barely grammatical; as prose it is far from lucid. The phrase "Spirit of the Lord" fohows immediately the statement that the "Lord is the Spirit," that is, grammatically, the spirit is the spirit of itself. This merely shows that the truth is beyond 48 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. ii the language which has been formed to express smaller truths, and language cracks audibly when it tries to tell all. What exactly is the mirror? Are we the mirror, before whom the glory of the Lord finds itself reflected, or are we the image reflected in the mirror? So much for literary criticism. But the meaning is plain and emphatic enough. The identity of human and divine glory, and the statement that man is the glowing image of God, could not be put more forcibly. One cannot but feel that this truth should be the key to the thousands of studies of human personality which constitute the flood of fiction in the present day. Ah other preoccupations are secondary with us to the study of men and women, if we may judge by the number of novels and tales printed every month. Much of this denies this Divineness absolutely, and in the hands of a genius so piercing as that of Thomas Hardy how potent becomes the Gospel of despair. I am thinking of one of his books of poems1. Love, it appears, is a temporary delusion, nature is reckless of man, God is distant and cold, or absolutely cruel, human nature mostly animal after all, sin redeemable in the long run if you give it time, aspiration a delusion, and all of us "Time's Laughing Stocks." But if we accept the faith of Paul it fohows that love is eternal, that it is at the heart of nature, that God is so near that we cannot get away from Him, human nature His nature, sin its destruction, and aspira tion its proper activity. And there is no one behind to laugh at our tragedies. 1 Time's Laughing Stocks. CHAPTER III THE SON i. The Apostle Paul asserted that the world had really had enough to make it devout and virtuous if it had only used its gifts; that what is called Natural Religion should have shown men God. He said that "that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity ; that they may be without excuse" (Rom. i. 19, 20). He meant that God was revealed, in outer nature doubtless, but also surely most of all, in the moral world within. In the eye and hand of friendship, in labour and patience, in the happiness of youth and the joy of life, in family affection, and most of ah in all love; in these, and in the faces of our fellows, and in the impulse to all grace and truth within ourselves. But the Roman world had missed unifying all this revelation, had missed reaching through human pleasantness and heroism to the God behind it all. They "had worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator"; and so had been "given over to vile passions," and to idolatry, which the apostle puts in the same indictment. They had got no further than Jupiter and Venus — than Isis and Osiris. And truly this discovering of unity behind ah variety is the great task of religion, as insistent as ever and as hard. We easily recognise goodness when clothed in the flesh we know and love; we know on earth of no G.Q. 4 50 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. disembodied personality. We are asked to conceive of, and to love and worship, a soul of all souls, the Eternal Soul, the One behind ah manifestation, not in human form nor in anything approaching it. The human form is the result of terrestrial evolution, and fitted for success in the battle of terrestrial life just here and now, at a certain cosmic moment. We "stretch lame hands of faith" without reaching a satisfying intellectual concep tion of the One Spirit. Hence the need for the great act of Faith. The intellect cannot work it out because it has no superhuman experiences or perceptions wherefrom to build. It is " the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith" that we have to grasp. 2. But He has not left Himself without a witness. Throughout human history there rise men of strange religious power, organs of the Divine in an unusual degree; and if they have the outward gifts needed, and a fit environment, they become religious leaders, prophets, Messiahs, Saviours. Wonderful is their gift. They seem to speak the authentic words of God. Great is the gratitude and deep the reverence we give them. Richard Hubberthorne, the Cromwelhan soldier, who died in Newgate a martyr to Quakerism at thirty-four, writes to George Fox, his leader, a young man like himself: "The eye being opened which was blind now comes to witness thee and reads thee within me . . . and I live in thee in measure Pray that I may drink of those rivers in which thou swims." So it has been with these Shepherds of Souls, always, and still is. The greatest prophet now alive is perhaps Abbas Effendi — the leader of the Bahais in Persia; if indeed, the war, which must have made havoc among the peaceful Bahais, has spared him. These leaders reveal something of the Eternal Being. And for us Christians, ah these modern prophets look back to one Saviour and Redeemer, the Founder iii] THE SON 5i of our Faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. He too must have been wonderfully influential in His personal presence. Such was His manner that the Scribes and Pharisees once slunk off and left Him and the woman alone. At another time they durst ask Him no further questions. The soldiers sent to arrest Him in the Temple, stayed instead to listen, and reported to their employers that "Never man spake like this man." Even as He merely walked on the road to Jerusalem, the disciples were "amazed" and fell behind whispering. In Gethsemane, at His first word, the party with swords and staves backed and fell to the ground. Crowds followed Him everywhere. At Nazareth He passed in dignity through the mob of His neighbours with stones in their hands. His nature cannot have had in it elements of contra diction, the divine and the human checking and limiting one another, mixed together in debateable proportions, the Divine spoiling the completeness of the human nature, and the human limiting the infinity of the Divine ; not purely human, yet "laden with attributes that make not God." It was one nature, single — probably indeed simple if we only knew — powerful without hesitation — self- conquered in inward harmony — poised and pure — un hampered by haunting doubt — calm in its great claim — certainly whohy and perfectly human — yet able to say "Come... and I will give you rest" — Leave houses and lands " for my sake " — "Everyone therefore who shall con fess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father. There needs to be no compound of human and Divine, and there can be no antithesis ; for they are of the same stuff — the human has a share of the Divine: and the larger and more perfect a man's humanity, the larger and more perfect his share in divinity too. 3. I hope that this thought of Personality, Divine and human, and their connection, may be a theological reconciler. "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 4—2 52 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one ; I in them, and thou in me." "I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own, and mine own know me, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father." These words are Johannine, but I do not therefore doubt that they expressed our Lord's thought. On some such lines Trinitarian and Unitarian, Orthodox and Liberal, may find a reconcilia tion and an understanding, ceasing in their ignorance to draw lines of boundary through unmapped territory, ceasing to try to say where God ends and man begins; but owning allegiance to a Spiritual Order, in which vows were taken for us before we were born. The great trouble is — why are there not more saviours and friends of humanity, leaders of "the long wavering line"? Are we not hindered by this or that? Some thing does not get liberated within us. We are fearful, or conventional, or prudent — or we are, or want to be, rich — or we are too much harassed by poverty — or we hug a reputation — or we are very proud or very set in our own opinion, and do not liberate the God within. Revival preachers have hold of a spiritual truth when they urge their converts to keep nothing back, but surrender all. Power follows. 4. If we have reached the conception of an Eternal Father Soul, what should the Son be like, the human son, the Christ ? We may put aside the primitive notion of a physical Divine paternity, following herein the great weight of evidence. The puzzle over the marl- God — the distinction between the human form and the Divine spirit — the not very happy contrast between the names Jesus and Christ — ah these complications and compromises and contradictions cannot be on right lines. First of all, there can be no doubt that Christ was at iii] THE SON 53 any rate completely a man, the completest and most balanced of men. This the most orthodox Christianity has always affirmed. I need hardly speak much of the evidences of it which run through the Gospels. His value to us depends upon it. This the Gospel of John was written to place beyond doubt. It was written in opposition to Docetism, i.e. to the theory that Christ's humanity was not real, but only apparent. The extremely orthodox writer on the Gospel of John in Dr Hastings's very conservative Dictionary of the Bible says (Vol. ii. p. 717b.): "The Johannine writings, and especially the Gospel, are the most decidedly pronounced anti-Docetic documents in the New Testament. They speak of the true humanity of the Son of Man with intentional emphasis. Thus the father, mother, brothers of Jesus are spoken of ; the weariness, thirst, tears, inward groanings, personal affections, dress, food, spittle, touch, flesh, bones, wounded side, are severally mentioned. He was ' made flesh,' i.e. full humanity; His dead body was partially em balmed, His raiment was divided among the soldiers." Beyond these simple matters are the self-revelations in the long discourses in John v. 19-47, vi. 27-59, 62, viii. 14-55. A careful reading of these is the best way to the mind of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, and, I think myself, of the Lord also. 5. But if there be no line of mutual exclusion between man and God — if man enters into God, and God into man — will not the ideal and perfect man be necessarily one with God without imperfection or partial touch — will He not be the Revelation of the Divine character and will? "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." The text is very simple in sound, but it needs no little power of comprehension. This is to be a Son of God — in the usual and well understood Scriptural use of the word Son. Not till we have dropped the antithesis between human and divine, and realised that one is just 54 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. a gleam of the other, shah we easily see both God and Man glorified in Christ — on the horizon line where earth and heaven join and close. 6. That we be not too vague and general, let us take what may perhaps have been the central aim of our Lord's hfe and the key to His greatness, — His treat ment, I mean, of the purpose which centres round the words "Son of Man" and "Kingdom of God." If we understand these terms we shall have some light on our Lord's mind and career1 Jesus rises out of the silence intervening between the Old and the New Testaments with a freshness and unexpectedness partly due to popular ignorance of what just preceded Him; an ignorance which adds artificial marvel to His aheady sufficiently marvellous personahty. Probably nothing due to recent research has added more to our knowledge of the Gospel than the hght which scholarship has thrown upon the apocalyptic literature of the two preceding centuries. And the literature, as always with the Jews, is closely dependent upon the history. With the passing of Judaea under the rule of Antiochus the Great, King of Syria, in B.C. 198, there began a period of aggressive Hellenization of the people of Jehovah, which under his son Antiochus Epiphanes, who came to the throne in B.C. 175, hardened to a bitter persecution, waged to the uttermost against everything sacred to a faithful Jew. The people were weakened by a Hehenistic party within the priesthood itself. The war waged by the Maccabees for religious liberty and national indepen dence wih always remain one of the great chapters in the history of the world. To encourage the people in this patriotic struggle the book of Daniel seems to have 1 The following paragraphs were contributed by the writer to The Interpreter, April, 1912, under the title "The Mind of the Son of Man," and are reprinted by kind permission. in] THE SON 55 been written; and the passage, Daniel vii. 13-14, is the key passage to all that follows. Behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. The title "the Son of Man," which had hitherto only been used, so far as we know, by the prophet Ezekiel, in a perfectly natural way, was here taken up into the apocalyptic vocabulary, and given a special esoteric sense. Nothing could apparently be more harmless or more modest; it appeared to mean simply the typical man, a representative man. "Son of consolation," "son of thunder," or "son of a swine" are not in Eastern phrase strict patronymics. No prosecution for treason could be built out of so innocent an expression. Such was the method of the apocalyptic writers; but to those who knew their technical terms here was a clear foretelling of a national military deliverer, who should restore the throne of David, dominate the neighbouring countries and found an enduring dynasty. The story of the people continued to be full of turbu lence and slaughter ; the Maccabean dynasty degenerated as dynasties do. Pharisees were slain by thousands by the Court and the Sadducees, and about the year 80 B.C. the fourth part, in order of time, of the book of Enoch (capp. 37-71) called " The Similitudes of Enoch," expressed in apocalyptic form the indignation and the hope of the Pharisaic or national religious party. This book adopted throughout the title "Son of Man" to describe the coming deliverer. In this book for the first time the word Messiah was used in its technical sense. An edition with trans lation of the Book of Enoch has been published in two 56 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. volumes by Professor Charles, but in the fohowing passages I have used a paper on "Jewish Religious Opinions" by Dr Marshall in the volume of "Manchester Theological Lectures1." According to Enoch the Son of Man will be "the Light of the Gentiles," and "the hope of those who are troubled of heart." They will "drink of the fountains of wisdom, and be filled with wisdom." The Son of Man is "much better than the angels." He is "the righteous one, the chosen." He existed "before the sun and stars were made." He sits on God's throne which is called "the throne of His glory." "He has the appearance of a man and His face is full of gentleness." "The glory of the Son of Man is for ever, and there is a day coming when all the elect shah stand before Him. ' ' ' ' They shall worship before Him, and shall set their hope upon that Son of Man, and will pray to Him and beg for mercy at His hand." The day of final judgment is called "the day of the Elect One." "In those days," we read, "the earth wih give back those who are treasured in it, and shall also give back that which it has received. The Elect One shah sit on my Throne and all the secrets of wisdom will stream forth from the counsels of His mouth." "He shall sit on the throne of His glory and the sum of judgment is committed unto Him; and He will cause sinners and seducers to pass away from the earth." "He shall judge Azazel and all his associates," and "Kings, with those who are mighty and exalted, will be terrified when they see Him sitting on the throne of His glory." Parallels in the New Testament to each one of these passages will occur to every reader. They need not be written down here. It wih be plain that the book of Enoch must have 1 There was published in 1917 an edition of a translation of Enoch with useful notes by Prof. Charles, S.P.C.K. in] THE SON 57 been familiar to our Lord, that from it He took the title Son of Man, and into the groove there laid down He fitted the consciousness of a Messianic mission as it dawned within His soul. It is even possible to hazard a conjecture that this work, then comparatively recent, may have been one chief inspiration of His early manhood. He prepared at any rate to fulfil its prophecies. But He was too great for that role. He had within Him a Divine perception that to found and rule over the kingdoms of the earth, and to have the glory of them, was equivalent to bowing down and worshipping Evil. He was tempted, as He tells us, in the wilderness, for the story must have come from Him, by the thought of what great good might be wrought by one who climbed by the aid of a Jewish army to the throne of the Caesars, and, not content with liberating the chosen people, made them and the righteousness for which they testified the conquering law of the world. He turned aside from it, knowing in His heart that it was not His Father's will, nor His calling, to drench the fields with blood, to desolate thousands of homes, to leave the heart untouched whilst the knee bowed, to found one more in the hopeless succession of Oriental despotisms of which history is full. He chose instead the career of a spiritual teacher and liberator of the soul. It is only when we realise the atmosphere and the expectations of His youth, the hopes of the pious ones, amongst whom it seems that His parents were included, who waited for the redemption of Israel— only thus can we realise how immense is the debt which we owe to Him for seeing through and beyond it. It is in decisions like this that I find the evidence of His Divinity. So He lived the unpretentious hfe we know of. But it appears clear that we must admit that He still retained in His consciousness the expectation that the Son of Man was shortly to be revealed from heaven in glory, that there was to be some catastrophic end of 58 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. the age, in which His Father was to be glorified and He glorified in Him. Without adopting the extreme view of Schweitzer and others one cannot deny the force of such passages as these: "Ye shah not have gone through the cities of Israel, tih the Son of man be come" (Matt. x. 23). This was said to twelve missionaries, who were to visit a country district about as large as Wales. It points very clearly to an early consummation. "This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished" (Matt. xxiv. 34, Mark xiii. 30). This passage, from the apoca lyptic chapters, immediately precedes the description of what we now call the Last Day. Indeed it is only our unwillingness to think that any of our Lord's anticipations have not been realised that has caused us to postpone to an ever more distant future what we call the Judgment Day. It is ever more and more alien from any genuine anticipation, and those of my readers who honestly look forward to it still must be few. To our minds the ether- filled spaces of the astronomer are no longer the scene of a geographical heaven. But our Lord frequently spoke of the manifestation of the Son of Man; and the "Be ye also ready," and the parable of the Ten Virgins imply an urgency which could only have been in place on the hypo thesis of an early revelation from heaven. At the same time He stated (Matt. xxiv. 36, Mark xiii. 32) that He did not know the exact day Himself. Then there is the passage (Matt. xvi. 27, 28, Mark ix. 1, Luke ix. 27) where He says that some of those standing there should not taste of death till they had seen the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. The Transfiguration, which immediately follows this passage, cannot be regarded as the revelation of the kingdom ; indeed it was a singularly fit preparation for it. The two great prophets of old, Moses and Elijah, who came to encourage Him in anticipation of the coming crisis, and speak to Him of His "exodus," His " departure," in] THE SON 59 which He was about to fulfil at Jerusalem, had each of them made an unusual departure from the world. The strange word "exodus" harmonizes with this peculiarity of theirs. They had neither of them, in Jewish story, died as other men; they were both believed to have been taken up miraculously into heaven, and they came to aid one who was to be similarly distinguished — one indeed who had already been asked whether He was Elijah or that prophet like unto Himself, whom Moses had foretold. Something hke a Resurrection and an Ascension is an expectation fitting the Transfiguration story. We need not argue the historical truth of the Trans figuration, nor puzzle over what psychical origin it had ; we are simply inquiring into the mind of the Master and His disciples, and we may take the record as a faithful copy of that. It seemed to them fitting that those who had had a similar experience should speak to Him across the ages. It is also clear that His followers were all of the opinion that there would be an early heavenly manifestation. The view of even the outer ring of His followers, ex pressed on the road to Emmaus — "We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel" — the anticipations of an early consummation which were roused by the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, and soothed by the second, point to a belief which can only have been derived from our Lord Himself. Without attempting to expound the apocalyptic chapters with lucidity, we may venture to gather from them that the kingdom of the Son of Man was closely connected with the fall of the Jewish hierarchy, and that there need be no longer a puzzle as to which part of those prophecies refers to the Last Judgment and which part to the siege of Jerusalem, for the two anticipations were the same anticipation. I am, it will be seen, ascribing the material of these chapters to Our Lord Himself, or to those under His immediate influence. 60 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. It is in harmony with ah this that we find our Lord purposely entering Jerusalem as a popular deliverer, a Son of David, with palm branches strewn in His way, an act which in itself was enough to rouse the priesthood. At the Last Supper, and in that portion of the narrative of it which is most certainly authentic and under no suspicion of being Pauline, our Lord stated that He would drink no more of the fruit of the vine till He drank it new with them in the Kingdom, which apparently, therefore, was to come before long. I do not imply that our Lord had not a prevision of martyrdom. Several passages in the Gospels, which we wih discuss, show that some anticipation of it has left its mark upon the narratives. The first passage describes, taking the form in Mark viii. 31 ff., the talk at Caesarea Philippi. "He began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer. . .and be killed, and after three days rise again," and then in v. 38 in the same conversation He tells them "whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels," and proceeds to say that this shall happen before some standing by shall ' ' taste of death. ' ' The whole prophecy is one of death, resurrection, and heavenly glory close together in time (cf. Matt. xvi. 13, and Luke ix. 18). The next passage (Mark x. 33 ff.) is of the talk on the way up to Jerusalem, and is so full of detailed prophecy that it may be held to bear marks of the reflection of the event upon the prediction. "The Son of man shall be dehvered unto the chief priests and the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles: and they shall mock him, and shall spit upon him, and shall scourge him, and shall kill him ; and after three days he shall rise again" (cf. Matt. xx. 17, Luke xviii. 31). But our Lord's actual words must have iii] THE SON 61 touched on the glory of the Kingdom also, for James and John immediately (v. 35) came to ask Him if they might sit on His right and His left in His glory. His reply showed that He looked for the glory after the "cup" and the "baptism" had been lived through. Again a prophecy of death and glorious dominion. In Mark xii. 9 we have the plainly personal parable of the wicked husbandmen, addressed to the chief priests and scribes, according to which their murder of the Son was to be immediately followed by their destruction and the triumph of righteousness, with the stone which the builders rejected made the head of the corner (xii. 10). Again, it is a parable of death and of glory (cf. Matt. xxi. 33, Luke xx. 9). In the Fourth Gospel Jesus is recorded as having said in conversation with Nathanael, a narrative which bears every mark of being a historical memorandum, "Thou shalt see greater things than these.... Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." The Fourth Gospel may not be a safe authority on which, if unsupported, to base anything fresh or unexpected, but it does surely confirm the congruent statements of the Synoptics in a similar sense, and I should not fear to accept this passage as historical. Its meaning admits of no doubt. In John vi. 62, again, He says "What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?" In John vii. 33, 34, " Yet a little while am I with you, and I go unto him that sent me. Ye shah seek me, and shah not find me; and where I am, ye cannot come." We can now make an attempt to understand more of Gethsemane. How clear does it ah become, how human and inevitable, how little need there is of fanciful theo logical interpretations about an accumulation of the world's sin throughout the ages poured by Divine decree upon the guiltless one. The trial was much more real and human than 62 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. that. It had become clear to Him that there was to be no triumph then, but an apparent failure, no fulfilment of the phrase which is preserved for us in the Fourth Gospel, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." That phrase had been used in the upper room not many hours before. Though one would not build much upon it, it falls into line very naturally. But now it appeared that there was nothing before Him but death by torture, the apparent failure of His ministry so near its beginning, the end of an earthly career hardly mature. There would be no theophany. His little circle of influence seemed to be cracked to its centre, even His dearest friends could not understand His mind enough to keep awake. Another friend was an actual traitor for money. It was borne in upon Him that that which He had willed was not to be, but something quite different, and in agony and bloody sweat He made His choice : " Not my wih, but thine, be done." And for that choice, for the second time, we owe Him an inextinguishable d£bt. In that choice, if He could have seen it in the hour of darkness, He was really climbing the last pinnacle of His greatness, and bringing gifts for men. He surrendered again, through that divine intuition of His, to the unex pected wih of His Father. But one can see how His mind was running. "Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shah even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? " This idea of an angelic rescue was the alternative to submission in His mind, and it shows plainly how that mind was working, and was working probably not for the first time. That thought of the twelve legions of angels was probably an echo of His habitual mind, part of its furniture. How happy for Him and for us that the sacrifice was willingly made, that He offered up Himself, and did not pray for whatever may be meant by the twelve legions of angels. But it would be too great a simplification to suppose in] THE SON 63 that our Lord, at the time of crisis, reached a conclusion, fixed and unchanging, at a given hour. Such is not the way that hearts and minds, tossed with tempest, behave. In hours of reflection and loneliness the soul turns in upon itself, hesitates and doubts in the darkness, but in public, and in the presence of the foe, courage and faith may return. We find our Lord telling the High Priest (Mark xiv. 62) " Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." We have no fair reason for doubting the authenticity of this passage. It is indeed represented to be the immediate cause of His condemnation. Never theless, I cannot but think that He had sight of the truth when, in the garden, He made the great sacrifice: "Not my whl, but thine, be done." But this was not the end. There was the Resurrection morning, when, in the light of new knowledge of the unseen world, freed from the physical body, He was able to communicate several times with His disciples. He told them that it had not been a failure after all; that He was not dead, but alive ; and that He would be with them unto the ages of the ages as they carried His Gospel to the nations. And in the strength of that they did it, still hoping that He would come again from heaven during their own lives — "Then we which are alive and remain shah be caught up... to meet the Lord in the air." But this never happened; all things were as they had been from the beginning ; and they looked up year after year to irresponsive skies, till one by one the apostolic men had departed. But did they fail and surrender the hope of the Kingdom? No. They had little need to, for they knew that they had the Kingdom already in their hearts ; they had entered into a new and better life; they had become masters of their temptations; they had entered into human brotherhood and Divine communion, and that which, in spite of the extreme eschatological critics 64 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. must have been the main trunk of our Lord's teaching, was the secret of their abiding faith. And here for the third time we owe Him an incalculable debt. He had taught that before you could become a citizen of the outward Kingdom you must become one of the inward, that the Kingdom of God is within you. Shall we then drop the title Son of Man as being out of date and a mere apocalyptic trick of phrase? We should impoverish our vocabulary and our thought if we did, for there is a more enduring fitness about the title than that due to its origin, and I think that our Lord may have chosen and used it with added satisfaction for its plain meaning ; for His Gospel in its purity has always been the Gospel of ordinary humanity, a message of glad tidings to common people, a denial of the claim of any privileged race or class or priesthood or profession to hinder the life of the ordinary man by extortion or oppression, or the denial of liberty, or of the right to develop a full life. Our Gospel is the Gospel of the Son of Man. 7. This discussion has left outside the Doctrine of the Trinity in its complete theological form. It is better so. The doctrine of Nicaea may have been a useful thought-form for the time when it arose; it may have crystallised experience and speculation in the best shape then possible — but it is not a living part of contemporary thought ; and I doubt the usefulness of the washed out or attenuated forms of the doctrine in which triple manifesta tions of some kind can be noted or discerned in God. These are really only more polite and less dangerous ways of denying the old conception. This reduced doctrine really darkens counsel, and is to most people unintelligible, though it is doubtless convenient to keep the traditional word, even if you alter its meaning. It has, of course, no more authority than a Roman Emperor and a Church Council under his presidency and control can give it. It was no part of the thought of Jesus nor of Paul. The two ill] THE SON 65 passages where it occurs are interpolations of the usual doctrinal type — the one in 1 John, now deleted, confessedly so ; the other, the baptismal formula in the last words of Matthew's Gospel, held so by a large consensus of scholars. But the doctrine represents one of those hard and fast lines of division and classification which are never of more than mere temporary use as scaffolding, and are reahy in their permanence the bane of theology1- 8. We turn with pleasure from this conception of a later century, when the early glory had passed from the Church, to the christology in the noble prologue to the Fourth Gospel to which reference has already been twice made. The writer there forges a preliminary link with which to fasten his biographical narrative on to the best religious thought in the Greek world to which he was appealing. He first affirms the doctrine of the Word, present at creation, transmitting His life to those who received Him, who thereby became sons of God; He was life, and He was for ever shining like a light in the dark places of the world. And then comes his daring identification of this spirit with the spirit of Jesus. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," revealed truth and exhibited grace in contrast with the law which came by Moses, had personal magnetism and was able to transmit the same spirit to His fohowers — "For of His fulness have we all received." Treating Jesus thus, as the incarnation of the Word, Christology is not difficult. Happy are those who find their lives enriched by entering into thought and com munion with our Lord, which is also communion with the Word, the thought or purpose of the Eternal. 1 For the story of the growth of this famous fancy, see Rend el Harris, The Origin of the Prologue to John's Gospel, p. 49 ; a piece of research which should do something to liberate the human spirit from one of its burdens. The Early Friends always objected to identify themselves with the schoolmen's doctrine of the Trinity. v. Isaac Penington's paper addressed to the Boston court, Works, 1. 264, 5. g. q. 5 66 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. 9. Some have sought to honour Christ by slurring over His human grief, struggle and victory. The more isolated and separate He is from other men of like spirit, though smaher stature, the more is He apparently to be held in honour. The weaker, however, becomes the penetration of His appeal. We do well to recognise fellowship with Christ whenever we recognise His prin ciples, which I cannot separate from His personality. We are apt to do about Him exactly what the Jews did about Abraham, to the great worry of the Apostle Paul. They said that they alone, the historic descendants trained in the law, were sons of Abraham; not seeing that Abraham's quality and claim lay in his faith, and that ah who had a living faith in God and goodness were of the true stock and sequence of Abraham ; that Christ and those who followed Him were of Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Paul asked the Jews to find the nature of Abraham in the face of Jesus Christ and in Gentile converts. We ought to recognise the faith of Jesus Christ wherever we find it, outside our own or any Church, and in unexpected forms. The fellowship of Christ must be inclusive ; there must be no " fencing of the Table." What really differentiates people is only that they grasp less or more of the vital store of the Universe. Jesus is not beyond our sufficient if incomplete compre hension, however much He is beyond our achievement. We only degrade Him by idolatry. But we may safely, rationally, love, reverence, and obey — we may worship and bow down in discipleship — to the fullest extent of which we are capable. It is historically true that His is the Name which is above every name, in which every knee shall bow, and shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Of this wonderful human personality — unique in our knowledge — we can hardly make too much. Some Christians are very nervous lest too little honour be iii] THE SON 67 given to Jesus. We impart honour to Him! He does not value "Lord, Lord" and other phrases of honour. He values deeds. Is He of such risky reputation that we must always be insisting on His greatness? We need not be afraid. There is nothing on which ah good men everywhere so unite as in doing Him reverence. But it is the tendrils of their own living faith, which chng hke creepers round a certain not-living framework of their own ideas, that these Christians are really afraid for, in the visible decay of frameworks. Not less than they, however, do we need Him every day; look to Him for strength, for calm, for sweetness. Not less than they do we all long to feel daily — "I am His and He is mine." 5—2 CHAPTER IV THE LIVING CHRIST i. It is remarkable that Path should constantly speak of the Gospel as a "mystery." It is one of the unfor tunate results of using a translated book, that the English reader of these passages, of which there are twenty in the Epistles, is almost sure to think that the Apostle refers to something incomprehensible in the Christian message ; and when he finds the doctrine of the Trinity or of the Atonement presented to him in incomprehensible form, he probably thinks that the reference is to this. But in fact the word Mystery was one of the great common words of Greece and Asia Minor. Everyone knew that it referred to the most solemn symbolical communion services of the ancient world. What was Paul's idea of the Mystery of the Gospel, which had been hidden from ages and generations, but had now been revealed in Christ to simple souls? More than one feature of the Christian Gospel was part of the Mystery of Christ, but a central passage is in the Epistle to the Colossians (i. 27), where he states the Mystery in seven words. He says it is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." The first plain teaching of the Gospel was that God was to be found not only in sacred places or through ecclesiastical persons, but in the human life and death of a Galilean workman, in "Jesus Christ and Him cruci fied" — that "in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." This part of the Mystery has been easily acceptable; but not so easily the next phrase "and in Him ye are made full," or in other words, words from the ch. iv] THE LIVING CHRIST 69 mystical teaching of John, "Of His fulness have we ah received." We are all to attain to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." This is the Mystery which is Christ in us, the hope of glory. In this summary phrase is compacted the teaching which is found expanded throughout Paul's Epistles1; the teaching, viz., that we are to repeat the experience of Christ ; die with Him to the old man, and rise again in newness of life, and so partake in His resurrection. That is why Christ in us is the hope of glory, for the resurrection life, beginning here, is in its nature victorious over death. We are not sufficiently informed as to what exactly occurred to the initiated at the Mysteries, to build with safety on any exact parallelism between them and the thought of the unity of God and Christ and Man; like all other symbols, they would be understood profoundly or superficially, according to the temperament of the wor shippers2. But the plain thought of the Apostle is not in need of any subsidiary clarification. 2. We have spoken freely of the Indwelling Christ as the same as Christ in the flesh. But such an identifi cation wih be challenged. The unity between the two is not obvious to modern men ; it causes question and often confusion. The origin and history of the belief will help us a little. It was an easy and necessary transition for the apostles and their first converts to make. They had seen and spoken with the risen Jesus ; He had told them plainly that He would continue to be with them to the ages of the ages. He had sent them out into the world to preach. And they believed that the same personahty 1 Rom. vi. 5, viii. n, 1 Cor. xv. 20-23, 2 Cor. iv. 11, 14, Gal. ii. 20, Eph. i. 19, 20, ii. 5, Philip, iii. 10, Col. i. 27, ii. 12, iii. 3, 1 Thess. iv. 14. And cf. Luke xx. 36, "children of the resurrec tion," an exactly similar phrase appearing in the Pauline Gospel. 2 But see later chapter on The Lord's Supper. 70 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. that once had been Jesus was stih close to them in the Unseen. "The Lord is the Spirit." Their faith was at times refreshed by vision. The day on the road to Damascus left Paul in hfelong certainty about it. And five or six messages or visions, more or less directly from Christ, came to help him at need1. The vision described in the first chapter of Revelation reads like something more than a mere apocalyptic fiction. The records of the Church even to this day contain many assertions of similar events. We are familiar also with the subjective theory of the origin of many of them, treated as mere instances of the dramatising faculty of the Subliminal Self. While granting in some cases the intra-psychical origin, it is nevertheless difficult to say at what exact time between the Resurrection morning and to-day Jesus abandoned His people or went too far away to be accessible. The origin and persistence of the identification is then plain. Even if the New Testament writers made some distinction in their own minds between the Eternal Logos Spirit and the living Christ of their experience, that distinction is a thought-form proper to them but not to be asserted as a permanent truth. It is more in accordance with Johannine thought at any rate to conclude that the Word, having been made flesh, remained the Word when He returned to whence He came. In our mouths an attempt at distinction between the Lord and the Spirit is somewhat presumptuous and at least unedifying2. 1 "Caught up even to the third heaven"; "Come over into Macedonia, and help us" ; "My strength is made perfect in weak ness" ; "Speak, and hold not thy peace" ; "Fear not, Paul, thou must stand before Caesar." 2 In the prologue to the Gospel of John we have the expression " the only begotten Son." It occurs twice here and twice again in John iii. 16, 18, and in i John iv. g. It was, according to Jiihcher in Encycl. Biblica, a phrase used by Philo and taken iv] THE LIVING CHRIST 71 3. Jesus has left us the promise that He would be continually with His people. He also said that the Com forter would come; "I will send him unto you." No distinction is made between Christ coming Himself and sending the Comforter. Ah this is most seriously signi ficant. We mostly slur it over as a beautiful but rather vague promise and hope. The unity between the historic Jesus of Nazareth and the Indwelling Christ is asserted and assumed, perhaps without our realising how deep an inlet that opens into the spiritual world. After a human career of suffering, labour, service, love, and death, one who was of like passions with us, "tempted in ah points like as we are," and whom we believe to be our best guide in the things of the spirit, tells us that He wih still work and serve and love and sympathize when released from the flesh. There wih be personal identity, personal nearness, personal telepathic power; and an extension of that personal influence, too. "I will send," as well as " I wih come." We have in these sayings every reason able ground for thinking that the constitution of the Universe permits the work and service of angelic beings. from him along with his general doctrine of the Logos, whom he described by this adjective. [Tolstoy, in his translation of the four Gospels, pages 24 and 25, points out how very much more forcible the passage would be if you translated fwvoyevr)s by " of the same nature with " ; then, indeed, it would be an appro priate thing to say of the incarnated Logos. It cannot be asserted that this is the classical meaning of the word, but it would certainly rid one of what is now a curious and troublesome conception if we accepted Tolstoy's opinion. In etymology, though not in usage, " of one nature with " is a good equivalent for /uwoyo^r, which is literally "one kin."] But the phrase in Philo meant to include in the Logos all the activities of God. It is not an exclusive but an inclusive idea and is not Christian in origin. Rendel Harris derives it, like the rest of the Prologue, from the Wisdom Literature of the O.T. In Wisdom of Solomon vii. 22, Wisdom is said to be an only Begotten Spirit; the one repository, that is, of the Divine Mind and Power. (Origin of Prol. p. 13.) 72 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. Surely this also gives warrant to the Christian for believing that we may in prayer still address our Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting Paraclete? It is not ours to penetrate into the hierarchies of the Unseen, nor to lay down the time or the place in which it shah be said, "Then shall also the Son himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all." 4. The first Christians believed, then, that the risen Lord was stih active for their help upon earth, and they had His definite promise "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the ages of the ages." The thought, as we have seen, formed the centre of Pauline teaching, under which the Christian was to die and to rise again in a manner analogous to the experience of his Lord, whom he was to follow in crucifying the flesh with the affections and lusts, and rising into a new life which defied the grave. The belief in the Christ Within is held in the Society of Friends to-day with the same whole-hearted insistence as it was in the early days. At the same time I do not know of any attempt at what might be called an explanation of the identity of a human life lived in history with a universal spiritual influence acting in all ages and places. To many minds the final words of promise "I will be with you alway" explain it all. At the same time one feels always the need of some theory of the matter, some explanation which will fit into the rest of our theological conceptions. Such a faith would be greatly strengthened if it could be based on something more verifiable, nearer to experience, than a single text. The conception of the actual terrestrial personality of Jesus still surviving with conscious con tinuous identity and in brooding guardianship over His disciples still, is one which need not be incredible to any, and which strongly appeals to me personally, but we know how perilous is the history of texts, and how facile in early days was the insertion of edifying passages to support current doctrine ; so that whatever be our happy iv] THE LIVING CHRIST 73 fancies and our favourite theories, assurance comes best from something more fresh and more durable than a Greek manuscript. Let us then seek it. We shall fah utterly in our inquiry unless we begin with the thought of a permeating God making His home ; in our souls. We must have no chasm between the human and the divine. There are no such chasms in that system of interactions which we call the universe. We shah look then to the deeps of personality to find the nature both of God and of man, and in the personality of Jesus Christ we are likely, more than anywhere else,/ to find the link between the personality which we call God and the microcosm of it which we call man. 5. Dr Sanday, formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Theology at Oxford, has been for a long generation a chief pillar of reasonable orthodoxy in England, and has represented in critical controversies the conservative position. His chief work of late years has been a series of volumes and articles on the nature and work of Jesus Christ. In one of these, Christologies Ancient and Modern, he made a suggestion which cannot but be of deep interest to those who cling so far as is possible to old forms of thought. This suggestion has arisen out of the studies of the last thirty-eight years initiated by the Society for Psychical Research. The late F. W. H. Myers's concep tion of the subliminal man, lying beneath the threshold of consciousness at ordinary times, but occasionally mani festing in telepathy, vision, ecstasy, and other psychic outbreaks, has been fruitful in many directions. We have come to believe that the greater part of our person ality is sub-conscious, and that we only use for current purposes so many of the resources of the self as have been found terrestrially useful. It is through our sub liminal capacities that we have touch with God; they are the source of inspiration and the fountain of genius, the organ of prayer, and the scene of the experience of 74 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. the mystics. Dr Sanday suggests that in this mysterious and little known region may lie the secret of the per sonality of Jesus. He suggests that His supraliminal consciousness was human and the product of heredity under terrestrial evolution, just like ours, but that in the subliminal lay His secret. In this direction probably we shah approach the truth. This theory gives us unspoilt the human kinship which we most of all need to cherish in our thought of Christ. 6. Those of us who have been members of the Society for Psychical Research for about thirty-eight years have inevitably had all our thoughts of personality transformed by the conception of the subliminal man ever since Frederic W. H. Myers began his series of articles on the subject in the early numbers of the 5. P. R. Proceedings1. But for other readers it may be well to enlarge a little on what the subliminal self includes. It was first postulated as the organ of thought-transference, and then in an epoch-making series of experiments carried on by Mr and Mrs Newnham it was discovered that automatic writing was apparently a function of the same faculty or organ. Under it were not unnaturally placed the marvels of arithmetical calculating boys, and mathematical and musical prodigies. Somnambulism was taken as the typical central outbreak or expression of the subliminal man given by Nature, and that experimental form of activity during sleep known as hypnotism was, without difficulty, identified with it. A long step from somnam bulism brought us to clairvoyance, and then from the strange lucidity for things distant in space but present 1 The formal series of papers began in 1 891 and the first is to be found on page 298 of Vol. vnof Mhe Proceedings, S. P.R.; but it was preceded by a series of earlier articles, and was finally elaborated in his great book Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, published first in 1903 in two vols., and afterwards in a single vol. with much less illustrative matter. iv] THE LIVING CHRIST 75 in time known as clairvoyance, the next step was to pass to premonitions and retrocognitions, a knowledge of the future and of the past sthl more marvehous. The memorable examples of multiple personality which have been carefully observed by medical men ah point strongly in the direction of this great reserve of subliminal faculty. Sometimes it seems to be primitive and unmoralised and less affected by civilisation than the ordinary personality. On the other hand among the uprushes from this great unknown region we could not fail to include the Daemon of Socrates, the voices of Joan of Arc, and the visions and truth-telling dreams that have never ceased to come to men and women in ah ages. Such experiences as those of Tennyson1, of Swedenborg, and of George Fox2, with the long array of Catholic saints, find theh place, one can hardly venture to say their explanation, in this scheme ; and it has not been difficult to see its wonderful possibilities in connection with the nature of Our Lord ; inasmuch as we have, we believe, found the gateway at the back of our souls which opens into the light of the eternal. 7. And now Dr Sanday, after reviewing all the christologies of the Church, has found in none of them a permanent and stable conception of the mystery of our Lord's person. The theories inevitably fall into one of the following classes: either Christ had two discordant natures, human and divine— or He was a kind of demi-God, unique and standing in between the human and the divine— or the humanity was only pretended and the divinity real, as with the Docetists— or the divinity was wholly ignored. Dr Sanday therefore gives the weight of his great influence in Lectures VI and 1 In Memoriam, xcv, and The Ancient Sage (near the end); and Memoir, single vol. ed., pp. 268, 815, 820. 2 See Journal in many places and R. M. Jones's Introduction to Beginnings of Quakerism. 76 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. VII of the above volume to the conception we have been seeking, of an essential unity after all between the Divine and the Human, so that one whose outward supraliminal life was whohy the product of heredity and terrestrial evolution might yet have a subliminal or hidden man not so different from our own as to destroy His fellowship with us, but yet pure and right and divine without known defect. No one would wish to claim that this is the last word that will ever be said upon the subject, for the subliminal region is still largely unmapped and incompletely explored; but it is a great satisfaction to welcome the influential support and enlightened judgment of a scholar so earnestly religious as Dr Sanday in support of a view which those of us who held it have had but little opportunity or influence to advocate, few people having in past years, and even yet, really mastered the psychology on which it is based. We thus have in Jesus Christ a personality falling into the same general framework as our own, as the bodies of all animals fall into the same general scheme as our bodies; but whilst the divine subliminal endow ment which we possess is a glimmering and struggling light, we find behind the human personality of Jesus a subliminal soul to whom the Spirit is given without measure, one whose meat and drink was to do the will of His Father, one who was able to say at the hardest crisis of His life, "Not my will, but thine, be done," one in whom the divine had a frictionless way. We have the Son of Man, and if our thought of God be broadly correct, we have a Son of God too in a soul so endowed. The gospel of Paul, and the Quaker gospel of the present day, then, unite in teaching us that our object must be to be filled with the nature of Jesus Christ, that our little framework of self is not a rigid framework of bars, but expansible, and that it may be our privilege to learn so much of our elder Brother that our nature may become iv] THE LIVING CHRIST 17 like His nature ; so that in that sense the divine worker within us is endeavouring to have Christ born in us. Thence arises an identity between a life that was lived under Syrian skies and the life of the saints in ah ages ; so, finally, we may venture to speak of the Indwelling Christ. After all, neither the Apostle Paul nor the Early Friends, when they spoke of the Christ within, were thinking of any characteristics of a Galilean carpenter or of a man of Jewish habits in the Roman period. They were not thinking of that which was contemporary and local in the historic Jesus, not thinking of the current opinions which He held along with his contemporaries. They were thinking of the deeper qualities of His person ality, of that which was essentially himself, independent of place and time. They were thinking of what we have called His subliminal personality. It was that which the Apostle was struggling to have born within his converts, so that in speaking of the Christ within us we are extending our conception of the presence of a certain historic personality into that of a spirit, of which that personality was the archetype, the classical example, and for us historically the source. 8. On experience, and not on the details of the historical life of Jesus, was built the Gospel of the Apostle who first taught of the Christ within. Paul never mentions any of the historical sayings or doings of Jesus, does not quote Him verbally nor draw lessons from any teaching nor authority from any miracle. Moreover this mystical experience is widespread even beyond the Christian pale. The modern Indian Mystic Rabindra- nath Tagore speaks of it in the unmistakable accents of veracity, but without our Christian vocabulary. "Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm ; to be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy?" We are here tapping a treasure house 78 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. iv open always to the spirit of man; we are dealing with a universal potency of the soul. With the pre-Christian Psalmist we may worship and say : ' 'Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in ah generations." Let us try a Parable. We often think of the Divine Life coming in to us as a stream comes. The currents of the water of life refresh us. We thirst for God. We drink of Him as of a river. Where a river approaches a mill where it is to be utilised, it is divided. The mill- race water moves on silently and works the unseen turbine, the other stream flows over a weir in a waterfall, visible, picturesque, fuh of lovely detail, plunging into a pool overlooked by nodding ferns, the home of the dipper and the wagtail. Down below the streams reunite; they were always of the same water; and the river below consists of the water both from the mih-race and the cascade. How, then if, in Jesus of Nazareth, the quiet river became a waterfall — a divine spirit poured out in a human hfe — battered and broken and beautiful — where the ferns and the birds, like the many varieties of beautiful incident recorded in the Gospels, found their home ; where too the rocks and the pools are. To be sure what turns the mill-wheel is the quiet unseen power in the mill-race ; but it is the same water as the waterfall. The continuous stream, with a long quiet course above and below, became at that weir, for the time, something to be heard and seen, the most striking and remarkable feature of the whole land scape ; confined by the weir and the rocks, plunging down to apparent waste, but on a wider view contributing to the service of the river. When we think of the place as a landscape we think of the waterfall, first and last. It is what the artist would emphasize, as the engineer would the turbine ; and if they are sensible they do not quarrel about it, though one may be called an evangelical and the other a mystic. CHAPTER V THE PERSONALITY OF MAN The ideas of this chapter come fairly within the title of this book; but it must not be concluded that they are any part of the recognised behef of the Society of Friends. Not all Friends, in deed not many, are psychical researchers, and officially no view, one way or the other, is held on the subject The ideas are only here because they seem to me illuminating and important i. We are only beginning to know a little of the psychic possibilities in man; nevertheless no treatment of Human Personality can afford now to neglect them. The fact of Thought Transference alone — I dare to call it a fact — puts us in possession of a second world of psychic activity probably as extensive, rich and elaborate, as the world of matter. We are at home in a world that is not a world of sense. Having been a steady student of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research since its second year, in 1883, such is my conclusion. An ipse dixit like this wih not carry conviction ; but let it be understood that uninstructed opinion is no longer of weight here. Like other sciences psychical research has come to be an affair for students and experts. Its literature, even its good literature, is enormous. The communications which now come apparently from the founders of the Society who have passed over, F. W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Dr Richard Hodgson, and recently from Dr Verrah and his friend Dr Butcher, may or may not be what they purport to be. I have argued elsewhere that they are1: 1 Hibbert Journal, Jan. 1909. 8o THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. but if they are not, the alternative subhminal theory is not less remarkable, nor less valuable for our present purpose. The only alternative in the field is that the subliminal self of the late Mrs Verrah of Cambridge, a lady of the utmost veracity and keenest intellect, a patient scientific observer, and formerly a classical lecturer at Newnham, — that some part of her, unknown to her, and contrary to her wish, not only personates Myers, Sidgwick and Hodgson and writes in their style and handwriting, but is able to influence half a dozen other subliminals at times, and one or two constantly, to write in unison with her elaborately planned deceptions, without the knowledge or wish of the ladies who own these, or belong to these, active and conscious, but non-moralised subliminals, living as far off as India and America1. On either the subliminal or the spiritistic hypothesis, however, we are faced withalargerpersonality than weknew. There is a groping theory among psychical re searchers that there is in the universe, in our psychical environment, a common reservoir of consciousness with which we are all in touch, generally without knowing it, but with occasional revealing phenomena of the tele pathic order. We each appear lonely, like islands in "the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." Coral islands are however just the tops of. a vast submerged coral reef, cropping out above the ocean. These become fitted to the air and sky and furnished with lovely growths; palms and flowers, birds and men live upon them., That terrestrial activity on the island corresponds to the interesting, richly endowed and beautiful earth life of a man (as it might be) ; but his submerged or subliminal personality is much the bigger bulk of him; and it has 1 As one strong case of cross correspondence, one of forty or fifty cases, I would recommend inquirers to read The Ear of Dionysius by Gerald W. Balfour, being Part lxxiii of the 5. P. R. Proceedings, March 1917. v] THE PERSONALITY OF MAN 81 touch with other similar personalities apparently isolated, as the coral reef extends under the sea. Indeed mining operations, though rare and difficult, might conceivably make intercourse an easy everyday fact, if the natives of the coral islands knew how to mine. 2. To a mind accustomed to these ideas, there is no difficulty in accepting both the pre-existence and the continued present life of one so remarkable on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. "Before Abraham was I am" — "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." These words are easily acceptable. The miracles of healing — of apparently supernatural knowledge or pro phecy — of the Transfiguration — present no real difficulty to a psychical researcher's mind. Neither does the Resurrection, understood as Bishop Westcott1 and Prof. Lake2 and others understand it, as the raising of a spiritual, not a fleshly, body. On this view the parallel drawn by the apostle gains its validity — "If Christ rose, then we shall rise." Otherwise the apostle's parallel fails. 3. Does it not remove needless difficulties of thought if we can conclude that He who works through agents on earth has also bands of agents in the Heavenlies that are so near? It may help us to turn to human analogies. In The Heart of Midlothian Jeanie Deans, in face of the great machine of the law which was threatening her sister, goes up to see the King in person. Negro chiefs press with their grievances to the King in Windsor Castle. Out in India the laws are taken to be laws of the great white King. The government of India is to its simpler subjects not the vast complicated organism we know ; its acts are the direct acts of a person — the Rajah behind the Raj. But we know that a government or a great railway company is an affair working by organised agents, an elaborate edifice of 1 The Gospel of the Resurrection. 2 The Resurrection of Jesus Christ. g.q. 6 82 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. living stones, each in a place fitted to its shape: you come into touch with it through some subordinate who works the wires, and your business passes only so far as is necessary up the hierarchy of officials. Somewhat analogous is the operation of God's laws as we know them in outward nature. Everything is done by subordinate agents. Changes of temperature and water vapour have the business of the rainfah in hand, though to the child it is God who sends the rain out of the sky, and He can be approached on the subject in simple fashion, as a person might be written to. Shall we not help our thoughts and keep them on safe hnes if we think of the spiritual world also as not less highly organised, not less manifold, or less varied in service, than a government or a great business? The agents in that Kosmos will not be heat and cold and water vapour, but spirits not ah unlike ourselves, angel ministrants, friends of man and messengers of God — living stones built up into a spiritual house. I, for one, feel sure that we are surrounded by, and are living in, a world of spirit, just as truly as in a world of matter. The dwehers therein have, it may be or it may not be, their occasional outward manifestations, but they have always, so I believe, their regular and ordinary services unmanifested and unflagging. We are not cognisant of them as persons, to us they have no personal identity; it may be that they are too much absorbed in God as His agents, His hands, His eyes and His feet. They run to do His wih ; the Eternal Will behind the veil. What that celestial relationship may be is beyond our ken. Communion, operating by aid of messengers such as these need not be difficult, no more difficult than the use of the telegraph instrument which so wonderfully conveys our words. 4. It would be unlike nature, once more, if there were to be any great chasm, any serious breach of con- v] THE PERSONALITY OF MAN 83 tinuity, on the long expansion from man to the Infinite. We know that below us creation is filled with various creatures high and low. Why should we be the highest? Multitudinous manifestations of a unity hidden behind them are found all through the universe as we know it. We see a variety of forces in the physical world — heat, light, electricity, gravitation, mechanical force, radial activity; and an endless variety of solids, liquids and gases; we have discovered the hidden unities behind these phenomena — the two unities of matter and energy ; and now in these last days matter is breaking up before our eyes into a form of energy, so that it is a question at what point in its history the ultimate ion should be called matter or be called electricity. We have found a unity behind the phenomena of the physical universe, but we do not doubt or ignore the first varied phenomena. We do not say "I believe in force but I know so much that I deny the reality of the right arm on the hammer and anvil." If we turn for help to force we use the hammer and anvil. Let us apply this light on the mind of the Creator to the spiritual world also. Having conceived the wood, let us not deny the existence of the trees. I believe, then, that we are in touch with a Kosmos of spiritual beings — a kingdom of God — and that when all pictorial embellishments have faded, when we have handed back to the Oriental imagination which gave them birth, the angels' wings, the seraphs' fire, along with the chairs and the jewehery, the wahs and the towers of Heaven; we may stih believe in "guardian angels," in some accessible ministries unseen. This, once more, must not be taken as dogmatism but as the expression of individual belief and hope. What can we do more than point out to others what to us are the gates of faith? So experience reacts upon religious tradition, and 6—2 84 THE FOUNDATIONS [ch. having purified and chastened it, builds anew with fresh buttresses that which cannot be shaken. 5. We have thus dwelt on the communicableness of human beings, on their many points of contact with others embodied and disembodied, from the results of recent Psychical Research. But these will not carry real con viction to ah. And it is not necessary that they should. For the common everyday play of personality cries aloud in the same strain that we are but cehs in some great organism, or, in warmer phrase, pulsations from the heart of God. That cell metaphor, to which I return, is so close that it may be, as already once suggested, more than a metaphor. Every man, animal or plant, was once but a single cell. The whole creature was potentially in the double fertile cell ; a cell, by the way, the scene of activity and strife from the beginning, developing through the interaction of its double nature. There seems room for great upbuilding in the world of souls, little fear of finality there, when so much is potential in so little ; and the seed which is the least of all seeds may grow into a tree where the birds may nest. The oxygen of the soul is love. That is the atmosphere in which it can breathe, and which brings to it exhilaration. Ah life and all society resound with this truth. Earth and Heaven proclaim it. In all its forms, friendship, affection, pity and sympathy, as well as in its keener and mightier play, it is "the green and gold of life." I return to the thought with which I began the first chapter, that this implies that we are not our own, but that the life of the world is in our life, and that our life is a puzzle and a failure when it attempts isolation, and loses its loyalty to the life of the world. Through the simple mysticism of the Theologia Germanica runs like a refrain the repeated statement that in the pure soul there is to be no more "I and mine and me." vj THE PERSONALITY OF MAN 85 How close is, or may be, the relation is clear from the epigram of our Lord, "Ask and it shah be given you." Raised from literalness into the spirit where its true interpretation is to be sought, it means that the door or duct between us and the Divine life is, or may be, always open, and that the mutual reactions are real. And to clear away the rubbish of sin which clogs those passages, and checks the intercourse between God and the children of God, came our Lord in His mission of Reconciliation. Mr J. Arthur Hill in the final chapter of his book on Psychical Investigations (Cassell, 1917) works out an idea of God as the Soul of this planet which is His body. It may be found a helpful thought. And he adds the suggestion, which is in a language understood of psychical researchers, that the working, striving God may bear to the infinite and absolute, the relation which the supraliminal bears to the subhminal in human personality. By those who understand the terms this will be appreciated. It is the most daring flight of speculation that I have met, and to me very attractive, though it makes thought dizzy. BOOK II THE FOUNDERS CHAPTER I GEORGE FOX i. The Quakers arose as the mystical wing of the Puritan movement in the days of the Commonwealth, and continued, in face of persistent persecution from the Anglican Church, to grow rapidly during the Restoration period and after. The Society apparently reached its maximum membership in England in the reign of Queen Anne. But throughout the whole of its ingathering period it drew its membership neither from the gentry nor from the Universities ; nor, on the other hand, from the criminal classes or the dregs of the people, but always from the Puritans, and chiefly from the middle class. The Society, therefore, was not composed of persons violently converted from a life of self-indulgence and from haunts of degrada tion, but out of the very best of the most earnestly rehgious people who have ever fought the good fight on anything like a national scale in England. Quakerism was the last step in the great movement of liberation and illumination which began with the revolt from Rome. Wycliffe and his Lollards had indeed gone far on the path. There are striking similarities between their teaching and that of the early Friends, particularly with regard to war, the avoidance of the use or manufacture of luxuries, and lay preaching. 2. But, as is well known, the course of the Reforma tion in England in the sixteenth century had been grievously hampered by its close connection with Govern ment, with the divorce of Henry VIII, and with robberies of Church property, by the personal tastes of Elizabeth, and by the theological limitations of Calvinism. Puritanism 90 THE FOUNDERS [ch. had been driven by the episcopacy of Elizabeth and James and the real Romanism of Charles I to erect a rival battlement of theology and church government. The Presbyterian claims for absolute correctness in teaching, and for ministerial authority in the Church, could not afford to be any less definite than those of their Catholic opponents. A "Reformed Church" was an exactly descriptive title. The result was a form of clericalism, whose democratic foundation made it more, rather than less, powerful than the Catholic hierarchy; and a system of doctrine, whose newness and completeness made it, in practice, a greater burden upon the soul who suffered under it, than the more primitive and more easy-going Catholic system. The situation was summed up in Milton's witty and famous phrase: "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." Brought up on the Westminster Catechism, believing in the literal scientific truth of every word in the Bible, with the fear of Hell ever present to his spirit, if that spirit happened to be sensitive or imaginative, with the execution on Calvary regarded as an expiation and an equivalent for the sins of the world in the eyes of the only God he had been allowed to hear of, with all his pro pensities to pride and hardness of heart gratified by believing that he was one of the elect, and that the majority of mankind were doomed to everlasting burnings, the Puritan, with all his strength of character and his enthusiasm for righteousness, lived in an atmosphere which tended to choke charity, really denied universal love, and enslaved the spirit of inquiry. Yet the country was keen about religion to an extent we can hardly realise now. Sermons were events of the same order of importance as footbah matches are to-day, and the execution of the King was decided upon, not after consultation with interna tional financiers, but after a three days' prayer meeting. 3. With the soul of the nation so alert and yet so cramped by an imprisoning framework, the times were I] GEORGE FOX 9i indeed ripe for a mystical movement, for a further step in the hberation of the soul. Among those who felt that call was George Fox. Brought up under a father known as "Righteous Christer," in a Puritan household at Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, and employed in shopkeeping and sheep grazing, the needs of the soul gripped him at the age of nineteen and drove him from home, a wandering inquiring spirit, to conquer in sohtude new spiritual territory for his fellows. From 1643 to 1647, during the whole period of the First Civil War, he wandered obscurely in the wilderness. His Journal does not tell us much of the exact nature of his spiritual and intellectual difficulties, but knowing how he went into the experience and how he came out, we shall not be far wrong in believing that he felt the whole edifice of Calvinistic belief crumbling within him^The claims ol the literal Bible and the claims of the authoritative Church and its horrible Hereafter, were being torn from his sensitive soul in a way, and with a suffering, which many of us do not need to have explained to us. The anxious consultations which he had with any priests or professors, that is Anglicans or Presbyterians, whom he heard of as of spiritual repute, all ended in disappointment. This period was closed by the famous illumination in which a voice came to him while walking in the fields: "There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition." He became henceforward the apostle of the Inward Voice speaking the words of the mystical Christ. One more enemy had to be faced, the problem of the existence of evil, of "the ocean of darkness and death" which once seemed to him to cover the world. To one who was living through the horrors of a civil war, who had seen good men on both sides blindly slaying one another for what they believed to be right, for one who must often have crossed the track of armies, doubt of the loving providence of God may weh have been natural. He says "he reasoned about the ground of despair and temptations." Vision came to his support 92 THE FOUNDERS [ch. once more. Sitting by the fireside in the vale of Beavor "I saw an ocean of light and love overflowing the ocean of darkness and death, and in this I saw the infinite love of God." Forthwith he began his ministry. We find throughout the hfe of George Fox no suggestion that conviction of sin and anxiety for his own salvation ever entered his head. His work was to bring men out of that system of thought in which anxiety for personal salvation took a central place. He was now a preacher and a prophet, but still a wanderer, and for five more years he went about, largely in the Midlands and in Yorkshire, preaching that "the Lord had visited His people," that the days of apostasy, that is of all estabhshed churches and formulas, were over like a dark night when the dawn had come. He called men out from all sorts of externalisms, defied ministers in their churches, appeared to his enemies to speak disrespectfully of the Bible, and was ill-used, brought before magistrates, occasionally stoned and often mocked at ; but he gathered a few groups of disciples and a few individual followers, chiefly about Nottingham and Mansfield and in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But for those five years there was no Quaker congregation, no gathered Meeting. There were a number of friendly individuals in occasional correspondence with one another. 4. Now comes the experience which justifies the state ment that the ground was prepared. Others had been travelhng the same path. In 1652 from the top of Pendle Hill, in the north eastern corner of Lancashire, after a long fast and earnest spiritual exercise, George Fox had a vision. As he looked over the ranges of hills which led the eye from fell to feh in the direction of Westmoreland, a vision of a great people in those dales to be converted to the Lord came to him ; and sure enough there in 1652 he founded Quakerism as an organised body. For he found in I] GEORGE FOX 93 Westmoreland a group of congregations calling themselves Seekers1. Their centre was at Preston Patrick, a few mhes south of Kendal, and they had congregations at Grayrigg, Sedbergh, Underbarrow, Kendal, Hutton, Kehet and Yealand. George Fox preached in the churchyard at Sedbergh on fair day at Whitsuntide in 1652 and was recognised by these people as their natural leader. At Preston Patrick Francis Howgill could not begin his sermon, apparently because George Fox was sitting at the bottom of the chapel. Then George Fox arose and preached with power, so that some hundreds were convinced2. These Seekers were the most earnest and devout of the Puritans. They were very largely young men, and with the perspicacity of youth they had seen through the great claims made by the Anglican and Presbyterian com munions. Like ah Puritans they were devoted students of the Bible, and had been able to perceive that the historic churches had departed from anything that was to be found in the New Testament. They therefore took the not un natural course of endeavouring to get right back to primitive practice, to be like Christ and His apostles, and do as they did. It was a genuine religious experience that drove them on this quest. They all, in their life story, tell of being drawn earnestly from their early youth towards religion. The case of Isaac Penington, which is recorded in the next chapter, is a very typical one, and the Seekers in Westmoreland roughly corresponded to the group which the young Puritan gentleman in London helped to found. But after all this was only a purified outwardness. They still relied on history and on externals to some extent, though the externals were better. In fact they had come to the end of what a religion, based on behef in outward facts, could do for anyone. They were ready to answer to the 1 W. C. Braithwaite's Beginnings of Quakerism, chap. iv. and his paper in Friends' Hist. Socy. Journal, v. 3-10. 2 First Publishers of Truth, p. 244. 94 THE FOUNDERS [ch. call of Fox, who had dived into deeper waters and had found the centre of religious experience in the Inward Christ. He reckoned nothing of the simplified ordinances which they stih practised, and he encouraged them to beheve in the validity and central importance of their inward experience. W. C. Braithwaite quotes1 from a tract by Francis Howgih, one of the Westmoreland leaders, called "Lamentation for the Scattered Tribes," addressed to his former friends, the Seekers, in 1656, as fohows : If you build upon anything or have confidence in anything which stands in time and is on this side eternity and the Being of beings, your foundation will be swept away, and night will come upon you, and all your gathered-in things and taken-on and imitated will all fail you. . . . Why gad you abroad ? Why trim you yourselves with the saints' words, when you are ignorant of the life ? Return, return to Him that is the first love, and the firstborn of every creature, who is the Light of the world. . . . Return home to within : sweep your houses all, the groat is there, the little leaven is there, the grain of mustard-seed you will see which the Kingdom of God is like. . .and here you will see your Teacher not removed into a corner, but present when you are upon your beds and about your labour, convincing, instructing, leading, correcting, judging, and giving peace to all that love and follow Him. The Seekers had a minister, Thomas Taylor, who was maintained for the service of these churches and of an allied group at Richmond and other places in Swaledale. At the moment of Fox's arrival he was in Yorkshire, and his connection with Westmoreland had dropped. He joined Friends also in the autumn and abandoned his official position and his salary. 5. Then George Fox went to Swarthmoor and had the memorable interview with Margaret Fell and her daughters and servants, in which they also became his beloved disciples, and showed it in so demonstrative a manner that a messenger went off to meet Judge Fell as he returned 1 P- 97- i] GEORGE FOX 95 home across the Lancaster sands with the report that his family had been bewitched by George Fox1. So we may date the corporate existence of the Society from 1652, when it possessed a centre at Swarthmoor Hall and a few congregations among the country folk of Westmoreland. 6. It does not come within the scope of this book to deal with the interesting historical question as to the extent to which, if at all, George Fox owed his gospel to predecessors2. William Penn says of George Fox that he was an original, and was no man's copy, and a well-read University man like William Penn, living at a time when any indebtedness to previous writers would have been fairly obvious to a religious expert, is not likely to be seriously corrected by later and more difficult research. The question is not unlike the similar one raised by those who point out that practically all of the teaching of our Lord is to be found in the schools of Hillel and Shammai, and in the conglomerate philosophy of Philo. There are certain strong likenesses, which can hardly be accidental, between a famous passage in the first chapter of George Fox's Journal and the writings of Jacob Boehme3. The Baptists as well as the Seekers had gone some way in the Quaker direction, but the work of coordination and the personal power which enabled scattered notions to be welded into a conquering faith, the shock which made the saturated fluid crystallise, was the task of George Fox alone. Terribly alone he was during his nine years' wan dering and early ministry, from 1643 to 1652 ; indeed the fearless reliance of the man upon an inward sense of truth 1 See Journal G. F. (1652) and W. C. Braithwaite, chap. v. 2 This point is discussed in Rufus M. Jones's Studies in Mystical Religion and in his Introduction to W. C. Braithwaite's Beginnings of Quakerism and elsewhere. 3 Discovered by Pfarrer Theodor Sippell, a German researcher working in Devonshire House. 96 THE FOUNDERS [ch. fihs one with wonder. The Militia Christi gives a hard training to its generals. The readiness and extent of the ultimate response is, in itself, sufficient testimony that the thoughts of many earnest souls in the Puritan move ment were prepared for the message; that is, they must have been feeling their way in that direction before. Their biographies before they met Fox have a strong family likeness. Doubtless during the baffling years of inquiry, from 1643 to 1647, the young reformer is likely to have talked with some mystics, and may have acquired by this personal connection some of the words and ideas of Jacob Boehme. Books, except the Bible, he does not appear to have studied, and we may be sure that he was the conscious disciple of no man. He and his friends believed that they received all they had by the direct teaching of God. In the main they were right, although like others they were the vehicle of something in the time spirit. 7. In the middle of the seventeenth century, England was in a state of religious ferment. "Ferment" in the chemical sense is the right word: the temperature was so high that chemical separations and combinations were easy and inevitable. Protestantism had not yet found its feet ; it had not organised itself into what are now its historic types. The grandfathers of the generation to whom George Fox preached had lived through the Marian persecution. The Enghsh Bible was part of current literature, not an ancient classic ; it was a comparatively new book, as books went then. When George Fox was born, it was about as old as Sartor Resartus, and Modern Painters, and Locksley Hall are now. Men called their sons, not Arthur and Lancelot, but Jacob and Eliezer. Their minds were undistracted from religious problems by those interests which fill our newspapers. There were then no newspapers and there were no novels. There was no British empire to speak of, and what there was of foreign pohtics had wholly to do with religion, with the wars of Spain and I] GEORGE FOX 97 Gustavus. Men's thoughts did not circle round Evolution, but round Calvinism, which was as fresh a subject as Evolution is now. The nation was a church, or a fratricidal band of churches ; and men interested profoundly in religion were as common as are now men profoundly interested in golf. Into an agricultural England George Fox came — to men accustomed to pure weather and sunshine undimmed by smoke, men undisturbed by art or literature, com merce or empire, but profoundly moved about their souls and the hereafter. Oliver, at a critical point in his history, took one of his generals aside in the precincts of Parliament, and talked to him for an hour about the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, a subject not often men tioned in the Palace of Westminster to-day. To such men George Fox came with a Gospel more heart-searching, more full of hope and of sense than anything else then existing, he found and gathered round him many groups of seeking communities. There are signs that these were common; as literary and debating societies are now. The hour and the man had met. But the strong effort by which our forefathers drew some sixty thousand of their fellow-countrymen out of the routine of Christian worship consecrated by the tradition of ages, and moulded by gradual experience to fit the needs of human nature — this mighty pull is almost incredible to us to-day. Something seems to have gone from the nation. When one talks to the modern farmer or tradesman, or to the modern clergyman or landowner, it is difficult to believe that nowadays such a stringent self-denying ordi nance as Quakerism could arise. The acceptance of the Quaker reform by so many Puritans after 1660 may have been helped by the fact that Puritanism had failed in the outward. Men saw that the arm of the flesh had shrivelled at their side, and it was not unnatural that they should turn from the attempt to found a kingdom in the outward, and from their noisy and g.q. 7 98 THE FOUNDERS [ch. pugnacious clergy, to the voice which called them to an Inward Kingdom, to the victories of suffering, to the power and freedom of man's unconquerable mind, which disaster and persecution could not take away. The Puritans under the Restoration must have been tendered by suffering and turned inward like the Jews under the preaching of Jeremiah. 8 . How much of the religious storm in which Quakerism was born still survives in strong currents of energy? How much is a spent wave? How much indeed has thrown up but a legacy of wreck? Tragic, pathetic, but most natural was the fierce struggle of the seventeenth century for Papacy, Prelacy or Presbytery. Their devotees each thought they had the only way out of the City of Destruction. But we do not think now of this earth as the "City of Destruction," and ours is no day for an "only way." We can follow Bunyan well enough when he is on lines of common experience, where Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow have to be passed on the way to the Delectable Mountains. But I am not sure that we are not a little imphcated in what Bunyan might have called Vanity Fair, and we no longer think, of sin as a burden on the back which we need the sight of the cross magically to lose — we regard sin rather as a law in the members from which we are to be redeemed by being crucified with Christ to the lusts which war against the soul. Of all the great voices of the seventeenth century few, except that of George Fox, have grown stronger when faced with evolution and with modern scientific conceptions. We Friends meet these with joy. No destructive criticism of externals can really destroy a faith whose home is within, and a God from whom we cannot escape till we escape from ourselves. 9. The greatness of George Fox has been obscured by three causes. First, his illiteracy and humble station in life gave him no place among those favoured by circumstances i] GEORGE FOX 99 to take a large share in the world's affairs. He started with no advantages of education or opportunity such as his contemporaries, Strafford and Cromwell and Milton, had. This same illiteracy led him into a certain want of pro portion in magnifying trifles, such as the classical origin of the names of the months, the use of "thee" and "thou," and an exaggerated sensitiveness about the removal of the hat as a token of respect; but these unlucky and un important details became prominent peculiarities among his followers, easily cognisable by those who could not, or did not care to, go more deeply into the Quaker faith. Secondly, those who were influential in the State, in the Church, and in literature have always been against him until our own generation. Oliver, who recognised in him greatness akin to his own, died when George Fox was only thirty-four, and his lot during the flowering and harvest time of his career lay with the persecuting Church and corrupt Court of Charles II. Even the serious writers of the Restoration period, Bunyan, Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, had no sympathy with him. His story has never been well and completely written till our own day1. Thirdly, we have no good portrait of George Fox, either in colours or in words2, and it is difficult to visuahse him in the way that we can visualise Lord Falkland or Col. Hutchinson. He was no friend to the artists, and they have, I suspect, left but poor portraits of him. Nor have we from the pen of Margaret Fell or William Caton or Thomas Ellwood, as we might have had, a detailed characterisation of the man and his personal idiosyncrasies. We do not know how he talked, except as a preacher, or wrote, except in pastoral letters. Even the numerous family letters of his wife which survive in the Swarthmoor manuscripts are 1 I refer to The Beginnings of Quakerism by W. C. Braithwaite. 2 This was written before A. Neave Brayshaw's short but most important book, The Personal Characteristics of George Fox, had been written. It gives a vivid portrait in words. ioo THE FOUNDERS [ch. full of religious generalities or the practical business of the Society. The fact was that both he and his contemporaries lived and cared for little else. Least of all would they glorify the creature. It is instructive to see how the great ( claim which they made for George Fox, and which he made for himself, as the messenger of God, did not lead to rever ence for personal detail, nor any idolatry of the creature. Herein lies its dignity and its veracity. Nevertheless we would have given much for such a life of Fox as Mr Aylmer Maude has written of Tolstoy. But it is not difficult for a reader of his life, either in its seventeenth century or its twentieth century form, to acquire gradually a sense of the extraordinary power of this great man. There was enough in him to make ten men great. None of the ordinary attributes which make strength and courage, wisdom, tenderness, humour, in tellectual acuteness or organising power, all of which George Fox had in abundant measure, seem enough to account for his brave, victorious, fruitful and unblemished career. One can only understand the record of his cruel imprisonments, his hunger and hardship, his extraordinary personal persuasiveness and gathering power, the utter defeat of priests, professors, judges and magistrates before his commanding presence and his piercing eyes, his states manlike grasp of a new movement in a turbulent age, by realising that we are dealing with a personality which had been enormously strengthened, purified and enlarged by a union with God so consciously close that there was no room and probably little temptation to cowardice or hesitation, but only an ever enlarging love, built on the rock of faith1. It is remarkable that confession of sin, pardon, conscious weakness, repentant retracing of error, are wholly absent either in his times of darkness or of light. 1 As he rode through a howling mob of ragging undergraduates in Cambridge streets, they shouted "He shines, he glistens." We meet many other references to the power of his eyes. i] GEORGE FOX IOI He says: "When I came to eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteousness, for while I was a child I was taught how to walk to be kept pure1." We have here a symmetrical well-formed natural leader, "in unity with the creation," to use a phrase of Fox, and in whom the control from the beginning was where it ought to be. We may be quite sure that if there had been a period of sin or decadence in his hfe we should have heard about it, and it would have affected his gospel ; but never from him do we hear the cry "Who will deliver me from this body of death? " George Fox belonged to those whom Matthew Arnold hails as comrades of his own father in the last lines of Rugby Chapel : Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardour divine ! Beacons of hope, ye appear ! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van ! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave ! Order, courage, return. Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files. Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march. On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God. William Penn prefixed to the pubhshed edition of George Fox's Journal a long Preface still valuable as an authoritative account of the principles of the Society at 1 Journal, io\. edns. Vol.i.p.2. The whole passage is of deep interest. 102 THE FOUNDERS [ch. its foundation, and of the character of its founder. We wih quote a few extracts from this considered judgment of one' who knew him through and through: He was a man that God endued with a clear and wonderful depth, a discerner of others' spirits, and very much a master of his own. And though the side of his understanding which lay next to the world, and especially the expression of it, might sound uncouth and unfashionable to nice ears, his matter was nevertheless very profound; and would not only bear to be often considered, but the more it was so, the more weighty and instructing it appeared. And as abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences would fall from him, about divine things, it is well known they were often as texts to many fairer declarations. And indeed it showed, beyond all contradiction, that God sent him ; that no arts or parts had any share in the matter or manner of his ministry; and that so many great, excellent, and necessary truths as he came forth to preach to mankind, had therefore nothing of man's wit or wisdom to recommend them ; so that as to man he was an original, being no man's copy. And his ministry and writings show that they are from one that was not taught of man, nor had learned what he said by study. Nor were they notional or speculative, but sensible and practical truths, tending to conversion and regeneration, and the setting up of the kingdom of God in the hearts of men. . . .He had an extraordinary gift in opening the Scriptures. He would go to the marrow of things, and show the mind, harmony, and fulfilling of them with much plainness, and to great comfort and edification.. . . But above all he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and weight of his spirit, the reverence and solemnity of his address and behaviour, and the fewness and fulness of his words, have often struck even strangers with admiration, as they used to reach others with consolation. The most awful, living, reverent frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say, was his in prayer. . . .He was of an innocent life, no busy-body, nor self-seeker, neither touchy nor critical.... So meek, contented, modest, easy, steady, tender, it was a pleasure to be in his company. He exercised no authority but over evil, and that everywhere and in all; but with love, compassion, and long-suffering. A most merciful man, as ready to forgive, as unapt to take or give an offence. Thousands can truly say, he was of an excellent spirit and savour among them, and because thereof, the most excellent spirits loved him with an unfeigned and unfading love.. ..And truly, I must say, that though God had visibly clothed i] GEORGE FOX 103 him with a divine preference and authority, and indeed his very presence expressed a religious majesty, yet he never abused it; but held his place in the church of God with great meekness, and a most engaging humility and moderation.... I never saw him out of his place, or not a match for every service or occasion. For in all things he acquitted himself like a man, yea, a strong man, a new and heavenly-minded man; a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making. I have been surprised at his questions and answers in natural things; that whilst he was ignorant of useless and sophistical science, he had in him the foundation of useful and commendable knowledge, and cherished it everywhere. Civil, beyond all forms of breeding, in his behaviour; very temperate, eating little, and sleeping less, though a bulky person. The first two-thirds of George Fox's Journal is the central classic of Quakerism, and the best resort for every inquirer. CHAPTER II ISAAC PENINGTON i. William Penn tells us that of all the early Friends, Isaac Penington was the highest in social rank. If there were an exception, no doubt it would be Wilham Penn himself. The fact is, that as Admiral Penn, the father of William, was high among the soldiers, so Alderman Penington, Isaac's father, was among the chief civilians of the Commonwealth. In 1638, the year of the Scottish Covenant, he was High Sheriff of London. He represented the City in the Long Parliament, and was the Rothschild of the Roundheads. When money was wanted in the early years of the war, application was generally made to the City through Alderman Penington. If the Houses were showing courage and faithfulness to the Cause, the Alderman promised money, and once offered a guard of 300 citizens ; but when compromise about Strafford was in the air, the money was withheld. Penington was Lord Mayor the year the war broke out, and when there seemed a danger of peace being made in 1643, it was he who as Lord Mayor helped to organise mob violence to terrify the peace party. When the House found it necessary for its safety against Army plots to have the Tower in trusty keeping, Alderman Penington was made its Governor. He was a member of the High Court of Justice who tried the King. He was knighted by the Speaker, and became a member of that Council of State which undertook the difficult organisation of the infant Commonwealth. He was what was called a "Parliament Grandee," one of the revolutionary nobihty for twenty years, and a man well able to push the fortunes of his son Isaac Penington the Younger, had the latter been minded that way. ch. ii] ISAAC PENINGTON 105 But our Isaac Penington was no pohtician. A man who could write a political tract, and say of royalty that "Doubtless it hath its advantages above any other Government on one hand, as it hath also its disadvantages on the other hand," could have no active service in a period of heated partisanship. He goes on to say that he looked for the liberty and progress which they were ah fighting -for, to the purification of the human heart from selfish ness, rather than to the substitution of one form of govern ment for another. Religion was ever the pre-occupation of his spirit and the region of his activity. 2. He wrote in later years: My heart from my childhood was pointed towards the Lord, whom I feared, and longed after, from my tender years.... I could not be satisfied with the things of this perishing world, which naturally pass away; but I desired true sense of, and unity with, that which abideth for ever.... I very earnestly desired the know ledge of the Scriptures, but was much afraid of receiving men's interpretations of them, or of fastening any interpretations on them myself: but waited much and prayed much, that from the Spirit of the Lord I might receive the true understanding of them. ...But I was exceedingly entangled about Election and Reproba tion... from Rom. ix. etc., fearing lest, notwithstanding all my desires and seekings after the Lord, He might in His decree have passed me by, and I felt it would be bitter to me to bear His wrath, and be separated from His love for evermore: yet, if He had so decreed, it would be, and I should (notwithstanding these fair beginnings and hopes) fall away and perish at the last. For many years this Calvinist horror haunted him, as it had haunted most of the early Friends before they joined George Fox in his mighty revulsion from it, and from the accompanying externalism in religion. 3. The hopeless misery of this Calvinistic dread broke down Isaac Penington's health. We next hear of a tem porary reaction. When my nature was almost spent, and the pit of despair was even closing its mouth upon me, deliverance came and light sprang within me, and the Lord my God owned me, and sealed His 106 THE FOUNDERS [ch. love unto me, and hght sprang within me; which made not only the Scriptures, but the very outward creatures glorious in my eye : so that everything was sweet and pleasant and lightsome round about me. He felt that this joy was too great for him to bear, and prayed for a more moderated sense of the Divine presence. This came to pass, and the experience remained as a pleasant memory, though he had not reached a perfect and stable relationship with God. I looked upon the Scriptures to be my rule, and so would weigh the inward appearances of God to me by what was outwardly written; and durst not receive anything from God immediately, as it sprang from the fountain, but only in that mediate way. Herein did I limit the Holy One of Israel, and exceedingly hurt my own soul, as I afterwards felt and came to understand.... And that in me which knew not the appearances of the Lord in my spirit, but would limit Him to words of Scriptures formerly written — that proceeded yet further and would be raising a fabric of knowledge out of the Scriptures, and gathering a perfect rule (as I thought) concerning my heart, my words, my ways, my worship. On this basis of literal Biblical interpretation he says, "I fell a helping to build up an Independent Congregation." 4. This was one of the evanescent religious organisa tions of which that fervid generation produced many; it was intended to be a zealous and purified Calvinism. But in the midst of it, suddenly, the whole of his edifice of religious belief was taken away from him. The revolt against the religious system which he had inherited had proceeded to the bitter end ; but there was nothing as yet to take its place. " I had lost my God, my Christ, my faith, my knowledge, my life, my all." He wondered whether his desolation were a punishment for some sin; but he could not honestly think it was. He could not then see, we cannot at such times, that the complete loss of traditional behef was but a means to make room for a richer inheritance. With cordial feelings of regret he left his Independent friends, as a man no longer believing in anything. He confesses in another place that they had gone in that H] ISAAC PENINGTON 107 congregation "too much outward into the letter and form." He was now solitary and miserable indeed. " I was weary all the day long, and afraid of the night, and weary also of the night season, and afraid of the ensuing day1. "...So great was the strife they had to bear who won liberty of the spirit for us. 5. It was in these years of depression and vain search, in the early Commonwealth days, that the son of the member of the Council of State met in London Society the young widow, Lady Springett. She had lost her first husband, the Puritan commander, Sir Wilham Springett, in the second year of the war, eleven years before. These two found they were bearers of a similar burden; their common sorrow and common quest after an inward revelation of God drew them together, and they became Isaac and Mary Penington, in 1654, when he was thirty- eight and she was thirty. Her earlier history, written for her grandson, Springett Penn, forms one of the most interesting autobiographical pieces of that time. It may be found in full in Maria Webb's Penns and Peningtons of the Seventeenth Century, and in Joseph Gurney Bevan's Memoirs of Isaac Penington. When a mere child, she had discovered for herself the Quaker teaching about the futility of formal prayer — had abandoned praying out of books — and, when she was hardly old enough to join her letters, had taken to writing out prayers for herself. She soon grew out of that practice too, though at that early time she had never heard of anyone who prayed extempore at all. Her first really helpful prayer was when she was thirteen, on the day of the mutilation and exposure of Prynne, Burton and Bastwick, by Archbishop Laud. Her prayer was a child's exercise of spirit for the martyrs and the innocent people in the nation. She knew what it was to agonize for many years 1 Extracts are chiefly from Works, 11. 49, collated with other passages as 11. 511, 1. xxv. 108 THE FOUNDERS [ch. of a prayerful life, and to know no answer, no satisfying consciousness of the Divine presence. In time she heard a deprived Puritan minister offer what she knew was a genuine prayer, and she used to go some miles to hear him on Sunday afternoons. Misunderstandings and persecution followed, and the motives of the orphan heiress were cruelly misconstrued by her guardians; but William Springett, then a law student in London, heard of it, and came to her rescue. They had been playmates from early years, and had been brought up under the same roof. He now took his childhood's friend under his protection by marrying her at the age of eighteen. " My heart cleaved to him for the Lord's sake," she says. He, too, had become an opponent of forms. The young people ceased to use hymns; their songs as weh as their prayers were to be their own. When their first child was born, the young aristo cratic father of twenty-one caused excitement among the county families by refusing to have it baptised by the priest, but had it carried five miles to the suspended Puritan preacher, and held it to be baptised in his own arms amid a great concourse of professing people from ten mhes round, who had been invited to the occasion. He died of disease, after the capture of Arundel Castle, but before he died he had abandoned both ordinances altogether, and little Guhelma Maria, the future wife of Wihiam Penn, born a few weeks after her father's death, was never baptised. This testimony appears to have been borne by these young people totally alone. George Fox had not yet begun his mission. After her husband's death in 1643, Lady Springett went from one sect to another, seeking everywhere for reality and experience, and finding everywhere much talk and volumes of theology, but not the Presence of God. Then she tried the gay world, in despair of the religious one, and her strongest emotion was hatred of being too "pious." A violent reaction had set in against the outward profession n] ISAAC PENINGTON 109 of religion. She became what is now called agnostic, and very miserable. She would flee at times with only Guli and her maid into country seclusion, there to give way to the haunting depression which formed the inextinguishable background of her gaieties. One stand-by alone remained. The first text she had ever reahy cared for seemed to hold like an anchor: — "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." And now and then, in a dream, or in answer to a quiet waiting for guidance, she could feel herself still in the hands of Infinite Goodness. She was an agnostic whose honest doubt carried great faith in solution, a sceptic made by revulsion from dogma. She had dropped prayer, "because I feared I could not call God Father in truth, and I durst not mock Him as with a form." In this condition she was when she met and married Isaac Penington ; and the two solitary wanderers, too good and truthful for any church they could find, and, though apparently in the world, yet not of it, set about their quest for God hand in hand. They would have to do without a religion till the Lord taught them one. 6. They shortly heard of a new people called Quakers, but as in later days, the intellectual presentment which our Society made of its faith did not commend it. Mary Penington heard of them as a people in the North, who used"thee" and"thou," and she saw a book written about the plain language by George Fox, which, she adds, "I thought very ridiculous." She wished, nevertheless, that she could slip into one of their meetings unknown, and then she would know by their prayers whether they were of the Lord or not. Isaac Penington, referring probably to the same writings, said he cast a slight eye upon them and disdained them. "Thee and thou" was indeed a heavy baggage to carry, and always has been, attached as we now are to its intimate family use, and precious to us now as is its unique significance. no THE FOUNDERS [ch. Then came the first interview with a Quaker. In Mary Penington's words : One day, as my husband and I were walking in a park, a man that had for a little time frequented the Quakers' meetings, saw us as he rode by, in our gay vain apparel. He spoke to us about our pride, at which I scoffed, saying, " He a public preacher indeed ! preaching on the highway 1 " He turned back again, saying he had a love for my husband, seeing grace in his looks. He drew nigh to the gates, and spoke of the light and grace of God that had appeared to all men. My husband and he having engaged in discourse, the man of the house coming up invited the stranger in. He was but young, and perceiving my husband was too able for him in the fleshly wisdom, said he would bring a man next day who would better answer all his questions and objections. (How great might have been the loss to the world had not this unknown and inconsiderable young man been immedi ately faithful to a sense of duty.) He tried to bring George Fox, but was only able to get hold of Thomas Curtis and William Simpson. ' ' Their solid and weighty carriage struck a dread over me, for they came in the authority and power of the Lord to visit us." Thomas Curtis impressed upon them the truth, " If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine." This struck on Mary Penington's conscience, she believing that she would have to give up many of her practices before she would be able to receive and understand what they laid down as their principles. 7. Thus was the chink made through which could be seen the full blaze of enlightenment to be had when the door was open. And the opening was dependent on the old condition, "Do ah you know." It is an awesome command. She had a terrible time, but she dare not but obey. Here came in the glorious and sufficient reward for her previous spiritual wresthngs. She was already a trained spirit, and fell in to the word of command when it was plainly heard. But for many months the struggle lasted. Her duty called her, apparently, to abandon her social habits and her friends, and cross the wishes of her relations. n] ISAAC PENINGTON m These things, however, she did; and then she received strength to attend some meetings of the despised Friends. " I found they were truly of the Lord, and my heart owned them and honoured them." Her husband's description of his path to Quakerism is different. It was not that he had anything of self in his will not already surrendered : it was again the intellectual poverty of the Society that was a stumbling block. He says : As I remember, at the very first they reached to the life of God in me, which life answered their voice, and caused a great love in me to spring to them; but still in my reasonings with them, and disputes alone (in my mind) concerning them, I was very far off from owning them. ...Yea, the more I conversed with them, the more I seemed in my understanding and reason to get over them, and to trample them under my feet as a poor, weak, silly, con temptible generation, who had some smatterings of truth in them, and some honest desires towards God, but very far off from the clear and full understanding of His way and will. And this was the effect of almost every discourse with them. They still reached my heart, and I felt them in the secret of my soul; which caused the love in me always to continue, yea, sometimes to increase towards them ; but daily my understanding got more and more over them, and therein I daily more and more despised them. 8. Then came an invitation to meet George Fox, and attend the famous General Meeting at John Crook's, in Bedfordshire, at Whitsuntide, 1658, where he was to be present, and several thousand Friends came for three days. The human deliverer was at hand. It enables us to take the spiritual measure of the founder of Quakerism, that when his spirit met a spirit so strong, so disciplined, so pure as that of Isaac Penington, it was George Fox who came to overpower and to save. "Many sons have done valiantly, but thou excellest them all." Much of George Fox's sermon is given in his Journal. Isaac Penington tells of the crisis of his life thus : I felt the presence and power of the Most High among them, and words of Truth from the Spirit of truth reaching to my heart 112 THE FOUNDERS [ch. and conscience, opening my state as in the presence of the Lord. Yea, I did not only feel words and demonstrations from without, but I felt the dead quickened, the seed raised, inasmuch that my heart (in the certainty of light and clearness of true sense) said, " This is he, this is he, there is no other, this is he whom I have waited for and sought after from my childhood, who was always near me, and had often begotten life in my heart, but I knew him not distinctly, nor how to receive him, or dwell with him. And then in this sense (in the melting and breakings of my spirit) was I given up to the Lord, to become His, both in waiting for the further revealing of His Seed in me, and to serve Him in the life and power of His Seed.... Some may desire to know what I have at last met with? I answer, I have met with the Seed. Understand this word, and thou wilt be satisfied and enquire no further. I have met with my God ; I have met with my Saviour, and He hath not been present with me without His salvation, but I have felt the healings drop upon my soul from under His wings. I have met with the true knowledge, the knowledge of life.... I have met with the Seed's Father, and in the Seed I have felt Him my Father.... I have met with the Seed's faith, which hath done and doth that which the faith of man can never do. I have met with the true birth, with the birth which is heir of the Kingdom.... I have met the true peace, the true righteousness, the true holiness, the true rest of the soul, the everlasting habitation which the redeemed dwell in; and I know all these to be true,... and am capable of no doubt, dispute, or reasoning in my mind about them . 9. I have felt bound to let Isaac Penington tell the story of this crisis and redemption in his own words ; yet they are words not easy, as words, to follow. They cannot tell you their secret, these mystics, though they try. "I have met with the Seed." It requires a knowledge of the subject matter, as well as of the tongue of the country, before we can translate Isaac Penington into terms of our own experience. Nor will their words do for us. The words recording our story will probably be quite different. We speak, for instance, of being worried by pessimism. Isaac Penington puts it "The cruel oppressor roared upon me, and made me feel the bitterness of his captivity, while he had any power; yea, n] ISAAC PENINGTON n3 the Lord was far from my help and from the voice of my roaring." Nevertheless as each fresh generation finds itself, awe struck, in the intimate presence of its own spiritual nature, and of a spiritual nature greater than its own, it tehs ever, in its own way, of the same path to spiritual illumination. All the mystics tell us that way is in the submission of our lower appetites to our higher nature, in the plasticity of the raw material of the selfish animal to the Artist hand of the great Craftsman. By the "Seed" Isaac Penington and George Fox meant what Drummond meant by Biogenesis. They taught that religious experience is really a life and a growth, that we are not most correctly regarded (say) as cisterns to be filled or as rough surfaces to be smoothed, but as plants of a heavenly planting, organisms who absorb sunlight and rain, and need to be pruned and tended, and have our seasons of Autumnal harvest and Winter quietude, of the constant rebirths of Spring, and of Summer's warmth of sunshine and wealth of flowers. The breakings up and the painful re nunciations which precede and accompany this organic development may be likened to the breaking of the clods, the relentless straight line of the ploughshare, the finer humihations of the harrow, and above all, to frequent weeding. Weeding is the essential characteristic which makes a garden a garden, and our call is to weed always — most in Spring's sweet growing time of consciously dawning power, and all through Summer's flowering. The analogy of the seed is instructive too, inasmuch as seeds must not be dug up to find whether they are growing, and we must allow ourselves the quiescence of recuperation, away in a desert place to rest awhile. Nor must we fret and fidget for frequent times of ecstasy and rapt joy. No organism could bear the strain for long, nor feel the joy. Nor, again, are we helped much in our own growth by becoming authorities on spiritual horticulture, on the g.q. 8 n4 THE FOUNDERS [ch. agricultural chemistry of souls, nor on the laws of heavenly meteorology. All such learning is, in measure, interesting and helpful, but it is bookishness, not vitality; it is science, not life. Such, then, expanded in modern fashion, was the burden of ah Isaac Penington's works. The enlightenment of 1658 lasted him the rest of his life— twenty-one years spent in enduring hardness in the outward. He never swerved, never doubted again. His special work after this was to point out to religious people, out of the fulness of his own experience, the insufficiency of the theological and the ritual part of organised religion, the essential import ance of the inward life, and the reality of the inward hght. This we find to be the ever recurrent assertion of all living religions, filling their varying doctrines with whatever meaning they may have. 10. Isaac Penington, unlike other early Friends, was not an itinerant evangehst. He rarely travehed, but when he was not in gaol stayed at home and wrote — wrote to religious professors. His work forms a very central, very typical, body of Quaker teaching, as his experience was typical of that of most of his friends. They say fully and repeatedly what Quakerism had to say about the organised Churches, about the Bible and about theology, in connec tion with their central teaching described above. (a) Some of his expressions about the organised churches wih hardly bear reading aloud now; as, for instance, in his Babylon the Great Described. No doubt they were written in love. I am sure they were, and yet their use of the imagery of the Book of Revelation as to the Scarlet Woman and her deeds is pressed home to the clergy with such fulness of detail and such persistent iteration that we find it difficult to associate it with the Mgh-minded and gracious gentleman whom we know the writer to have been. It was the manner of the time, and must be allowed for as such, just as we ahow something to the Bishops n] ISAAC PENINGTON 115 in the little matters of the Conventicle Act and the gaol fever. (b) Isaac Penington's teaching about the Scriptures may be found, among other places, in the following extracts from The Way of Life and Death: What is a Christian's rule, whereby he is to steer and order his course?... Mark, there is the rule: — The new creature, which is begotten in every one that is born of God. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; and this new creature is to be his rule. ...But what is the rule now in the apostasy ? Among the Protestants the rule is the Scriptures, according as they can understand them by their own study, or according as they can receive the understand ing of them from such men as they account orthodox. And hence arise continual differences, and heats and sects, one following this interpretation, another that. And this is a grievous apostasy and the root, spring, and foundation of all the rest ; for he that misseth in the beginning, he that begins his religion without the true rule, how can he proceed aright in anything afterwards?... Thus they put the Scriptures into the place of Christ, and so honour neither Christ nor the Scriptures. It had been no honour to John to have been taken for the Light; his honour was to point to it: nor is it any honour to the Scriptures to be called the Word of God, but their honour is to discover and testify of the Word. . . .Did the Apostle John send Christians to his epistles or to any other part of Scripture to be their rule? Nay, he directed them to the anointing as a sufficient teacher. ...Are not the laws of the Kingdom to be found within the Kingdom? Shall the Kingdom be in the heart, and the laws of the Kingdom written without in a book?... And though man put that upon the Scriptures which seems to be a greater glory, viz., to make them his rule and guide; yet, it being not a true glory, it is no glory, but a dishonour both to them and to the spirit, who gave them to another end. Another extract, in which, replying to an attack, the author goes as far as he can in support of the orthodoxy of Friends : Yet (though we do own Christ to be the rule) we do not deny making use of the Scriptures to try doctrines and forms of religion by; but know that what is of God* doth and will agree therewith; 8—2 116 THE FOUNDERS [ch. and what doth not agree therewith is not of God, and that our forefathers in the faith were led to batter the superstitions and idolatries of the Papists by the testimony of the Scriptures.... But we beheve the Spirit to be a touchstone beyond the Scriptures, and to be that which giveth ability to try and discover not only words but Spirits. This commonsense view of the Scriptures, whilst it made Friends ready to appeal to them as against the later corruptions of the Church, left them free from any con ventional enslavement of spirit, and is the reason why Friends reached intuitively some truths now generally recognised in the fulness of time by the slower progress of Biblical research. (c) In theology in general, Isaac Penington asserts that he and his friends had no new doctrines to preach. They protested that they were as orthodox as other Christians. With the one exception of Robert Barclay, they were not systematic theologians. As they accepted the seventeenth century notions of science and history, they accepted also the scheme of Divine things which harmonised with them. ii. But all this was, in their view, quite incidental and secondary in presence of the reality of religion; and the reahty was experience, not words. They perpetually insisted on the perfect uselessness of orthodoxy to the soul; and on the essential importance of personal intimacy with God, of having the seed of His nature sown in the heart, and growing up in His likeness. So the great doctrinal terms of Christianity acquired in their writings an inward bent. "Salvation," for instance, was to be realised here after, doubtless, but do not forget, they urged with all their power, that it must be experienced here, and that the functions of Hell and Paradise are now active in this nation. The "flesh and blood of Christ" were to them what the living soul feeds on and drinks of. The "Kingdom" of Christ is composed of Kings and Priests of the Church li] ISAAC PENINGTON 117 Militant; and that Church is not an organisation, nor a building. Its census is beyond our data, and its roh-call sounds further than Christendom itself to every race among whom the Holy Spirit vibrates. "Forgiveness" with the early Friends was not an outward transaction, but an inward experience of recon ciliation with God; and he who has this experience need not be over anxious about how he came by it. Finally, the founders of Quakerism press home the truth that the presence of Christ in the heart is the means by which alone we are able to perceive the essential character and meaning of His outward revelation in the flesh. 12. The outward events in the life of Isaac and Mary Penington after their new birth to joy and power need not detain us long. They moved in 1658, the year of Ohver's death, from London to the Penington estate at the Grange, Chalfont, among the lovely woods of Buckinghamshire. It was at this moment that Isaac Penington held a pathetic correspondence with his father, who thought that his son had strayed far from soundness and sense. The letters must have been trying for both. The son wrote with much affection but in great plainness, about the weakness of his father's religion, which, he said, began at the wrong part, that is, in the fear of Divine wrath. The Alderman's troubles were thickening. Now that Ohver was dead, the party was going to pieces, and ended by committing suicide in pure militarism. When Charles II returned the Alderman was one of the regicides who surrendered on the faith of a king, and was slowly done to death in the dungeons of the Tower over which he had once been governor. The property of the family was confiscated, and the Grange was given to the Duke of Grafton1, who, however, for some reason unknown, perhaps for a rent, did not dispossess the Peningtons till 1665. A series of six imprisonments now fell upon Isaac 1 Son of Charles II and Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland. 118 THE FOUNDERS [ch. Penington. Between 1661 and 1672 he spent four years and three quarters in gaol, usually at Aylesbury but once at Reading, whither he had gone to comfort Friends in prison. A magistrate hearing of it, thought it amusing to incarcerate him also. The gaols were miserably cold and damp, so that most of the time when he was out of prison was spent by the sufferer in long illnesses consequent upon his priva tions. His tenderly nurtured life had ill fitted him to resist lack of warmth and fresh air, and prison food. Once they put him in gaol, knowing that the plague was raging inside. This was done by military order of the Earl of Bridgewater, " during whose pleasure " Isaac Penington was to be confined. His offence was that he had not used to this nobleman the customary forms of deferential salutation. He would not say " My Lord," and "Your humble servant." He used no means to defend himself against such an illegal imprisonment. The incident throws light upon the character of English justice under the restored Monarchy. The prisoner's letters to his persecutor, the Earl, from Aylesbury gaol are precious documents : distilled drops of sainthood. That which thou hast done to me hath not made me thy enemy ; but, in the midst of it, I desire thy true welfare; and that thou mayest so carry thyself in thy place, as neither to provoke God against thee in this world nor in the world to come.... I do not desire that thou shouldst suffer either from man or from God, on my account, but that thou mightst be guided to, and persevere, in that which will bring sweet rest, peace, and safety to all who are sheltered by it, in the stormy hour in which the Lord will make man to feel his sin and misery. Two of his imprisonments, one of nine months and one of eighteen, were the private act of this Earl of Bridgewater. Finally, one of his wife's relations procured that he should be brought to trial, and naturally he was at once released; but he steadfastly declined to prosecute for illegal imprison ment. II] ISAAC PENINGTON 119 The mental unrest caused by this liability to imprison ment, must have greatly added to the strain of life amongst these Friends. They were never safe. Once Isaac Penington was arrested in meeting, once when walking with a funeral in the street, and the coffin was thrown to the ground, once when in bed, once on the occasion of the birth of one of his children; and it was when he was in prison that the time was chosen for turning his family out of their home. But his spirit remained ever, we are told, bright and brave. Imprisonment was the least of his sorrows. 13. His principle of non-resistance led some unscru pulous debtors to decline to pay him money they owed; and a relative of Mary Penington deprived her by law of one of her estates, as she could not take an oath to swear to her claim. In poverty and unsettlement they spent several years; we read of a little house being taken near the gaol at Aylesbury, and of their boarding one summer at Waltham Abbey to enable the children to attend that, the first Friends' school. Finally Mary Penington, on whom largely devolved the business affairs of the family, sold one of her farms and bought and enlarged a modest house at Amersham, called Woodside, which is still standing. Thither they moved in 1673. The year before, Isaac Penington had been released from his last imprison ment by the King's Declaration of Indulgence. He spent the last seven years of his life in peace, and died in 1679 at the age of sixty- three. His grave is at Jordans. 14. Mary Penington wrote a dithyrambic threnody upon her husband, printed among his Testimonies : Whilst I keep silent touching thee, O thou blessed of the Lord and His people, my heart burneth within me. I must make mention of thee, for thou wast a most pleasant plant of renown, planted by the right hand of the Lord, and " thou tookest deep root downwards, and sprangest upwards." The dews of Heaven fell on thee, and made thee fruitful, and thy fruit was of a fragrant smell and most delightful.... Ah me ! he is gone ! He that none exceeded 120 THE FOUNDERS [ch. in kindness, in tenderness, in love inexpressible to the relation as a wife. Next to the love of God in Christ Jesus to my soul, was his love precious and delightful to me. My bosom one ! that was my guide and counsellor ! my pleasant companion ! my tender sympa thising friend ! as near to the sense of my pain, sorrow, grief, and trouble as it was possible. Yet this great help and benefit is gone; and I, a poor worm, "a very little one to him," compassed about with many infirmities, through mercy let him go without an unadvised word of discontent, or inordinate grief. Nay, further; such was the great kindness the Lord showed to me in that hour, that my spirit ascended with him in that very moment that his spirit left his body; and I saw him safe in his own mansion, and rejoiced with him, and was at that instant gladder of it than ever I was of enjoying him in the body. And from this sight my spirit returned again to perform my duty to his outward tabernacle, to , the answer of a good conscience. This testimony to dear Isaac Penington is from the greatest loser of all that had a share in his life. Mary Penington. This was written at my house at Woodside, 27. 11. 1680, between 12 and 1 at night, whilst I was watching with my sick child. 15. Isaac Penington left behind him a large number of pamphlets, which were duly collected into a large folio volume. The Works, apart from the letters, occupy 1400 quarto pages in the second edition of 1761. They are, I am afraid, dead, except for the student. It seems to be a law of taste that nothing written, however wise, survives, except what possesses admirable literary form; and these works are chaotic. Style is not a superficial trick easily acquired by a pressman. It means a great deal. It includes continuity of expression as a vehicle of consecutive thought, with repression of all dis tracting matter, it demands a definite beginning, a clear analysis of the subject, and a definite and prompt end. Throughout, the appropriate words need to be carefully chosen and fitted into the edifice. For we must build a piece of architecture in words, not leave a loosely piled n] ISAAC PENINGTON 121 heap of stones. And albeit in Isaac Penington's case many of the stones are jewels, and all are admirable building material, yet the jewels have to be hunted for, and the whole abounds with repetitions and excrescences. He never wrote with an edition of Collected Works in his eye ; he relieved his mind pretty completely of his brief Quaker Gospel in each of the short works; and so, no doubt, reached his contemporaries by iteration more thoroughly. But for our purpose now, a summary would be better than the 1400 pages; and justice may be fully done to his writings in a book of Selections1. 1 See Bibliography. CHAPTER III SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN William Penn has been the subject of many books, and his "Holy Experiment," in Pennsylvania, together with the story of the Pilgrim Fathers and of Rhode Island, furnish the New World with a heroic age, and are for the United States what the tale of the wanderings of Aeneas was for Rome. Here we are concerned only with three of his writings, viewed as expositions of his Quaker faith1. i. Two of these were written in the year 1668, when England was under the dominion of a restored and vindictive Anglicanism. Penn was then in his twenty- fourth year, and was beginning his public ministry. "Being sent of God to teach others what himself had learnt of Him, commissioned from on High to preach to others that holy self-denial himself had practised ; to recommend to all that Serenity and Peace of Conscience himself had felt; Walking in the Light, to call others out of Darkness; having Drunk of the Water of Life, to direct others to the same Fountain : Having tasted of the Heavenly Bread, to invite all Men to partake of the same banquet: Being redeemed by the Power of Christ, he was sent to call others from under the Dominion of Satan, into the Glorious liberty of the Sons of God, that they might receive remission of Sins, and an inheritance among them that are Sanctified, through Faith in Jesus Christ. One Workman thus qualified, is able to do His Master's Business far more effectually, than Ten Bold Intruders, who undertake to teach a Science themselves never Learned." Thus his 1 See for further treatment the author's William Penn (Swarth- more Press) or other biographies. ch. iii] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 123 editor, Joseph Besse, in the Preface to his Collected Works. Penn shortly became embroiled in a controversy with a Presbyterian minister named Thomas Vincent, who preached in the "Spittleyard," and who lost two of his congregation — a mother and her daughter — to the Quakers ; a body who were then sixteen years old and not yet organised. George Whitehead and William Penn en deavoured to debate Quakerism with Vincent, but as with many other similar controversies the result was abortive and unsatisfactory to both sides. William Penn therefore relieved his mind by writing The Sandy Foundation Shaken. This, then, was the first outcome of the Inward Light as it shone in the soul of the son of a Commonwealth admiral now turned Royalist — a young man with fair prospects at the Court of Charles II. "The Sandy Foundation" which William Penn pro ceeded to shake consisted of three doctrines, viz.: (i) One God subsisting in three distinct and separate persons. (ii) The impossibility of God's pardoning sinners without a plenary satisfaction. (iii) The justification of impure persons by an impu tative righteousness. These doctrines he attacks with plentiful quotation from the Scriptures, and also on grounds of ' right reason, to which he adds also much historical comment on the rather discreditable origin and disastrous consequences, moral or intellectual, of these doctrines. His controversial material is profuse. For the Trinity argument there is no scarcity of texts to the effect that "the Lord our God is one God." The argument for real Divine mercy is built on such words as "Who is a God like unto Thee that pardoneth iniquity; He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delight eth in mercy." And imputed righteousness is met by texts with which the Bible is full from cover to cover, such as "He wih not 124 THE FOUNDERS [ch. justify the wicked." Nor is right reason behind in its reinforcement to his argument that three cannot equal one, that each unit of the three must, if separate, clearly be finite ; with much other verbal hammering. In deahng with his second point, against the doctrine of plenary satisfaction, we have such arguments as these: Because if Christ pays the debt as God, then the Father and the Spirit being God, they also pay the debt. If Christ has satisfied God the Father, Christ being also God, it will follow then that He has satisfied Himself, which cannot be. But since God the Father was once to be satisfied, and that it is impossible He should do it Himself, nor yet the Son nor the Spirit, because the same God; it naturally follows that the debt remains unpaid, and these satisfactions thus far are still at a loss. Against the doctrine of an imputative righteousness, we have the argument: "It renders a man justified and condemned, dead and alive, redeemed and not redeemed, at the same time ; the one by an imputative righteousness, the other by a personal unrighteousness." Whilst perforce admitting the cogency of his arguments, and the vividness of his presentment of truth and error in unshaded black and white, the modern thinker cannot but feel that the rough-hewing craftsman, building his foundation in the days of Quaker pioneering, is not quite so fitted for the needs of the twentieth century as for those of the seventeenth. He is too prematurely systematic, dealing sledge-hammer blows at delicate fabrics of thought ; without shadow, and with no gentle merging of opposites. It is always day or night. There is neither sunrise nor sunset, and never any mist. The writer has complete confidence in his use of such words as God and man, righteousness and sin, body and spirit, saved and lost, never recognising any difficulty about definition of these, or of the other contrasts and opposites in which the polemics of that day took much stock. William Penn, however, judged by current standards, was on strong iii] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 125 ground. The little book was very difficult to gainsay, except in the way that was always open to the Estabhshed Church of the time, viz.: — by the imprisonment of its author in the Tower of London, where he was closely confined and denied the visits of his friends. The Bishop of London declared that he should either publicly recant or die a prisoner, to which the young man replied : All is well : I wish they had told me so before, since the expecting of a Release put a stop to some business: Thou mayest tell my Father, who I know will ask thee, these words : " That my prison shall be my grave, before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man ; I have no need to fear, God will make amends for all: They are mistaken in me; I value not their threats nor resolutions ; for they shall know I can weary out their malice and peevishness, and in me shall they all behold a resolution above fear ; conscience above cruelty ; and a baffle put to all their designs, by the spirit of patience, the companion of all the tribulated flock of 'the Blessed Jesus, who is the Author and Finisher of the faith that overcomes the world, yea, death and hell too: neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss and hardships. He that would reap and not labour, must faint with the wind, and perish in disappointments ; but an hair of my head shall not fall, without the providence of my Father who is over all. Verily these were men who could found a religion. 2. His next work was a complement to The Sandy Foundation Shaken and was intended to remove the aspersion which was cast upon him through his denial of the Trinity, that he did not beheve in the divinity of Christ. He therefore wrote "Innocency with her Open Face, presented by way of apology for the book entitled The Sandy Foundation Shaken. To ah serious and enquiring persons, particularly the inhabitants of the City of London, by Wihiam Penn, Jun." "He that uttereth a slander is a fool, and a false balance is an abomination to the Lord," was the title page motto. In this book he asserts the unity of Christ the Saviour with God, and the reality of salvation through Him. It is 126 THE FOUNDERS [ch. but a brief work, but the few pages were sufficient to undo the gates of the Tower for the author. It cannot be maintained that the two books together present a Christology which is coherent and satisfactory, and the reason for that is the same as the reason for the want of shadow in the theological arguments. The early Friends did not realise what we now call "the Immanence of God"; they — along with the age in which they lived — always thought of God as separate, though visiting men — they never dared to say that man was a part of a Divine Being. Thus, though Penn was easily able to criticise the Athanasian Trinity, he sets up no successful substitute for it. It would be open to a Trinitarian to say that the unity or even identity of Christ with God which he asserts in Innocency with her Open Face gives them all they reahy want or mean. The Bishop of London took this view in hberating the author. Penn would, however, demur. He would say " I have asserted the unity of Christ and God — what I deny is their separateness." So far true. But he had only reached half the truth. He must also find the unity between God and Man before he can account for Christ as one with both: — as true God because true man, not in spite of being true man; or less epigrammaticahy, that the very perfection of humanity in Him made Him a perfect representative of God — because we are all, in imperfect measure, organs of God and so part of the Divine. "We hold more of God who gives than of His tribes that take." And His was the pure Divine Spirit in man — an undimmed image in full humanity. When we come to think of the spirit of each man as a cell in the spiritual organism of God, the Incarnation ceases to be a matter of controversy or difficulty. This subject is more fully treated in Book I. If the separateness of God and Man is affirmed, then the separateness of God and Christ follows as the Athanasian iii] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 127 creed asserts — for Christwas clearly aman, in thecompletest sense. Humanity and Divinity meet in Him ; they meet par tially and under difficulties in His true disciples, and He is the first fruits of many brethren, the elder brother of the race. 3. The experience of imprisonment for conscience sake was no mean qualification for the next piece of authorship. Wilham Penn set out to show that the denial of self and the daily bearing of Christ's Cross is "the alone way to the rest and knowledge of God." As The Sandy Foundation Shaken shows to what negative conclusions the hght within led, No Cross, No Crown expounds its positive teaching. The book developed into a general Apologia for Quakerism on the side of its practice, as Barclay's work, treated in the next chapter, was on the side of its theory. From the first page to the last the author is a prophet crying out against a wicked world : the rays of the hght within, when directed without, showed a Christendom whose professors were but true heathens in disguise, "For the unmortified Christian and the heathen are of the same religion. For tho' they have different objects, to which they do direct their prayers, that adoration in both is but forced and ceremonious, and the deity they truly worship is the God of this world, the great Lord of Lusts : To him they bow with the whole powers of soul and sense. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shah we wear? And how shah we pass away our time? Which way may we gather wealth, increase our power, enlarge our territories, and dignify and perpetuate our names and families in the Earth"? The author insists that the Cross of Christ is to be experienced within, where the Cross must be taken by each alone, the strong man must be bound and his goods spoiled. This is followed by a chapter on self-denial, copiously illustrated — as the whole work is — by outpourings of texts, varied here and there by classical ahusions, due to an Oxford education followed up in France. 128 THE FOUNDERS [ch. The next chapter is on "The Unlawful Self," a large subject which leads the author into protests against pompous worship, superstitious writings, monasticism and idleness. His next chapter turns to the errors of Protestants, who are of more refined belief and practice, but, none the less, have a self-pleasing rather than a cross-bearing rehgion. He exhorts them to the religion of waiting, and so enters upon a defence of the Quaker mode of wor ship on the basis of silence. He then turns to Pride as the great antithesis to the Cross of Christ. This fruitful subject occupies several chapters. It will be expected that religious pride will come first under his lash. The pride of priesthood, which is, indeed, the final insolence of our domineering race, is debited with its fruits in slaughter and persecution: ' ' Almost every history tells us with what pride and cruelty, blood arid butchery, with what unusual and exquisite tortures they have persecuted the holy members of Christ out of the world." The pride of power comes next. He tells the story of a man who when accused of piracy by Alexander the Great told him to his face that Alexander was the greatest pirate in the world. The chapter on pride as a love of honour and respect, leads him to the Quaker testimony against vain titles. This testimony, which cost our early Friends much, has also been among the less permanent of their achievements, and has now been abandoned; convention has washed out of titles much of their personal flavour, and most of us use them in the ordinary way of pohteness. But it might do us no harm to read Wihiam Penn on pulling off the hat, bowing the body or knee, and giving people gaudy titles and epithets; a true democracy, and a reverence for humanity, pulse through his protest, and his passage on the true nature of honour is very fine. He suggests that such expressions as "My Lord Peter " and " My Lord Paul " are not to be found iii] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 129 in the Bible, stih less "Your Holiness" or "Your Grace," and the passage "They loved tb be called of men Rabbi" is printed in large black letter. The next chapter is on "the plain language," the use of "thee" and "thou" to one person. It throws a curious light on William Penn's mind that one of his arguments was " that God spake to Adam in the Hebrew language, in which a single person is addressed by a singular pronoun." Frankly, this testimony appears to me to have been erroneous from the beginning, and I should have expected a man of William Penn's education to have risen above it. It has, doubtless, enriched the Quaker vocabulary by making us able to convey a certain meaning, not to be misunderstood, by the use of the old tender pronouns. Some of his arguments are amusing. "Why should children be whipped at school for putting ' you ' for ' thou ' as having made false Latin, and yet that we must be reproached and often abused when we use the contrary propriety of speech"? Another argument is that as "thy speech bewray eth thee" was a characteristic of Peter and the Galileans, so it might suitably be of Christ's followers here. His next object of attack is the pride that leads people to excessive value of their persons. Hence follows much sound writing, very applicable in many directions. Seldom, I should say, has hereditary rank been more mercilessly pulverised. He then turns to women and deals with the personal pride of those who have "any pretence to shape or beauty." He says "it would abate their folly if they could find in their hearts to spare one half the time to think of God and their latter end, which they must spend in washing, painting, perfuming, patch ing, attiring and dressing." "That which aggravates the evh is that the pride of one might comfortably supply the need of ten. Gross ingratitude it is that a nation's pride should not be spared to a nation's power. The sun itself, the blessing of heaven and the comfort of earth, must not G.Q. 9 130 THE FOUNDERS [ch. shine upon them lest it tan them, nor the wind blow for fear it should disorder them. Oh impious nicety!" He thinks that those adornments make many hasty and unhappy marriages. With married people the sin is aggravated, for "They have none of right to please but one another, and to affect the gaiety and vanity of youth is an ih sign of loving and living well at home; it looks rather like dressing for a market." He then turns with even greater severity to the fantastic decorations of those whom he calls the "old and homely." He concludes by describing the proud man as "a glutton upon himself." He now turns to Avarice, on which he brings numerous illustrations from the turbulent history of man, and sets his beloved Society on that lofty path on which it has, on the whole and with exceptions, kept its footing ever since. After pride and avarice he turns to Luxury, and delivers his whole soul against it in three fiery chapters. 4. "Plainness of dress, behaviour and apparel" is one of the official phrases which were familiar to all Friends from their use in the Queries in the past. The existence of this testimony and its ultimate corruption are alike instructive. It arose from a sense of the real importance of the soul and the inner life, and the real unimportance of outward show, and consequently of the wisdom of centring our attention on walking in the narrow but the mounting path, undistracted by frivolity and pride, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes. In origin, then, it was spontaneous and natural, and it might have led, from the best of origins, to an unconscious good taste: an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. Like the monastic attempts at a conscious simplicity, it led to the adoption of a peculiar garb neither better nor worse than that of other religious orders. It led to the exaggeration of trifles, to a wrong valuation of conduct, iii] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 131 to spiritual pride and to the loss of many members through revolt. This is but a part of the larger question of luxurious expenditure generally. Here again, rules are hopeless, even disastrous. But it may safely be said that a Quakerism which is undoubtedly luxurious according to current standards is a degraded form of the original Society, and likely to do little but cumber the ground. Luxury is a consequence of spiritual weakness in one generation and a cause of further weakness in the next. The question is very difficult in detail, very clear in principle. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The expenses incident to a career of fashion or of sport have not been much of a temptation to Friends; and it may fairly be said that neither wine nor excessive dining have been sources of extravagance among them. They have not generally denied themselves what they could safely afford in the way of roomy houses and domestic comforts ; and such recreations as gardens, horses, books, travel, have had free way with them. Education of children has rarely been starved. Expenditure on pictures and other works of art was wholly absent till early Victorian days; not so now. The whole matter of luxury deserves continuous, earnest care on the part of Friends, particu larly of the well-to-do. For that way hes the downward path, past many a primrose. The truth about the economic consequences of luxury is to be found in chapter xvii. § 10 of No Cross, No Crown — and was probably the inspiration of the same testimony in John Woolman later. It traces correctly the poverty and excessive labour of the poor to the luxury of the rich, and does not fall into the common fallacy that luxury helps trade and gives employment. All it does is to divert employment from what will sustain life upon the earth, to things which minister to pride, exaggerated sensibility, demoralising ease or vulgar display. No expenditure can 9—2 132 THE FOUNDERS [ch. be securely justified which does not increase one's efficiency, allowing that word a large and liberal sense. That is, no indulgence beyond that can have any sure defence. It may be right and permissible, but it must make its own special justification, and wih always challenge criticism. It is notable, incidentally, that capital invested in growing corn or making tools gives steady employment to labour. These things are always wanted. But people who make luxuries like lace are often deserted by fashion and left penniless. Again, there is no worse endowment for children than to bring them up in luxury; thus establishing a standard of expenditure which it may be difficult for them to maintain without undue absorption in business. As Carlyle put it, we are rich if our numerator exceeds our denomi nator. And this can be achieved by diminishing the latter. No Cross, No Crown contains "a second part, being an account of the living and dying sayings of men eminent for their greatness, learning or virtue, and that of diverse periods of time and nations of the world, all concurring in this one testimony, that a hfe of strict virtue, viz., to do weh and to bear ih is the way of lasting happiness." There then follows a really wonderful collection of great sayings, which are as interesting now as ever they were. First come testimonies from eighty-seven great men and women among the heathen; that is, chiefly from Greece and Rome. Entering next the Christian ages, and beginning with Christ Himself, we have a collection of the sayings of Christian Fathers — nineteen in number. Then the history of the Waldenses is worked out for an example. Then come dying testimonies to the number of thirty-nine, leading up to the author's own time, and including a pious tribute to his own father. He concludes his great plea for righteousness with the following prayer : O Lord God ! Thou lovest Holiness, and purity is Thy delight in the earth; wherefore I pray Thee, make an end of sin, and finish ill] SOME WRITINGS OF WILLIAM PENN 133 transgression, and bring in Thy Everlasting Righteousness to the souls of men, that thy poor creation may be delivered from the bondage it groans under, and the earth enjoy her Sabbath again; that Thy Great Name may be lifted up in all nations, and Thy salvation renowned to the ends of the world. For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever. Amen . Wihiam Penn's long life was filled with authorship ; but as a picture of the message of a Quaker founder, these early works are all we need here. The current form of No Cross, No Crown, of which there were twenty-four English editions before i860, is the second edition, issued in 1682, corrected and greatly enlarged, including for instance the tribute to bis father, who was still living when the first edition came out. It is thus, as here summarised, a mature work, if thirty- eight be regarded as a mature age; and was much de veloped from the youthful work written in prison under difficulties at the age of twenty-four. The book is stih of great interest; though its style is expansive, hortatory and unrestrained. CHAPTER IV BARCLAY'S APOLOGY i. No book which aspires to be an Apologia for Quakerism can fail to provoke an inquiry as to what need there is for such an attempt when there stih exists a far more vigorous and comprehensive work, the famous Apology of Robert Barclay. This has been assuredly one of the great and memorable books of the world, the single and authoritative text-book of Quaker divinity, a book stih honoured, though it has ceased to be read; but one which was, for two centuries, a hving book, read by serious-minded Friends, and the armoury of texts for thousands of sermons. It is a book which belongs to the same shelf as Calvin's Institutes and the works of Richard Baxter. In style and in volume, it was intended as a systematic and scholarly reply to the manuals of Puritan theology. Wilham Penn, indeed, feels it necessary to make some apology for its learning. "The method and style of the book may be somewhat singular and like a scholar, for we make that sort of learning no part of our divine science, but that was not to show him self, but out of his tenderness to scholars, and as far as the simplicity and purity of the truth would permit, in con descension to their education and way of treating those points herein handled1." It is full of references to the writings of the Early Fathers in maintenance of the Quaker claim, which modern scholarship has only fortified, that they were going back to primitive Christianity. There is a full half-page, for instance, of closely packed references 1 Wm Penn's "Preface to the Reader" prefixed to Barclay's Collected Works, 1691, p. xxi. ch. iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 135 to the writings of the Fathers on the subject of war, more voluminous than any similar hst I have seen1. Probably none of his successors equalled Robert Barclay's array of patristic quotations on this subject2 The book is written very largely in syllogisms, and where not syllogistic in form it is divided into clear propositions, one objection marshalled after another and rephed to in a clear and definite manner; in strong contrast to the easy, popular and more flamboyant style of William Penn. Barclay's Apology has all the appearance of having been written at a ripe age by a scholar who put into it the results of a lifetime of erudition, but the astonishing fact is that it was published when the author was twenty-seven years of age. It was written in Latin and published at Amster dam early in 1676. Its appeal was, therefore, to the scholars of Christendom rather than to the people of England; for the Quaker movement at that time had no expectation of settling down into a sect in Great Britain and her colonies. The author translated it into English, in which it appeared in 1678, and it was at once accepted as the authoritative exposition of the faith of Friends. Subscriptions were raised for one edition of 8000 copies for circulation in massive form, bound in leather. It was placed in all 1 This was written before Dr Cadoux's recent book. In writing my chapter on War these references were not in several cases found to fit correctly; and from a note on p. 387 of the Second Period of Quakerism it appears that they may have had a long history even before successive printers handled them. It there appears that George Keith, writing a criticism of Barclay's Apology after he had become an Anglican clergyman, claimed to have himself, an older man, been of great assistance to his former friend in writing it : and that most of his " authorities of Ancients he had by me and by my collection." (The Standard of the Quakers Examined, p. 22.) W. C. Braithwaite adds "Keith's collection, to which Barclay thus had access, was made partly from his own reading and partly from Vossius, Grotius and the Remonstrants in Holland (p. 23)." 2 Written before DrCadoux's recent full treatmentof thesubject. 136 THE FOUNDERS [ch. Friends' libraries, and for a century the question most commonly asked of applicants for membership was whether they had read and approved Barclay's Apology. Combined with the contemporary writings of William Penn, but possibly more influential than they were, it gave to the gospel of George Fox and his illiterate Evangelists a standing in the world of thought as strong as that of any of the proudest Presbyterians or Anglicans. It Was intended as a reply to the Westminster Confession on the right hand, and to ward off the Socinians on the left, with more distant blows at Popery behind. Nor do we now wish to retire in essentials from its main results, though we reach them by a very different path. The philosophy of the Puritans, which the Apology assumes, is the very antithesis of the plea for human and Divine unity, which constitutes Book I of this volume. Making due allowance for the change in atmosphere in two hundred and fifty years, particularly for the change in what may be called the visible universe during the last half century, we still hold by the deductions of the young Scottish laird who was enabled in the mansion at Ury, in what George Fox called his quiet corner of the land, to write his memorable book. His father, Colonel David Barclay, had been a member of two of Ohver's parliaments, had opposed his adopting the title of King, had fought in the wars, defeated Montrose, and had held the North of Scotland with his troops during part of the Civil Wars. His mother was a Gordon, grand daughter of the Earl of Sutherland, and a distant cousin of the Royal House of Stuart. Colonel David Barclay turned from the world to devote the rest of his life to religion, and looking about the country he found in the storm-tossed ranks of Quakerism the nearest approach he could find to the presence of God among men. His son, the Apologist, was then a boy studying in Paris in the Scots' College, of which his uncle was the rector. It is curious that Penn and Barclay, the two trained theological leaders of Quaker- iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 137 ism, should both have received their training in Huguenot France. French Protestantism was of a narrow, clear, theological type. Barclay showed signs of coming under the seductive attractiveness of Rome after a strictly Calvinist upbringing. At his alarmed father's command he came home from Paris at the age of eighteen, in spite of the offer of great wealth as his uncle's heir if he remained. He shortly adopted his father's new faith, which he held through barbarous imprisonments till his death at the early age of forty-two. The Apology begins with a dedication to King Charles II, which combines habitual deference to royalty with a dignified plainness of speech. He regards the Restoration as a marvellous event, which can only be explained because it is the Lord's doing, marvehous in our eyes, and sufficient to overthrow atheism. He regarded the Puritan magnates as having begun "to do those things themselves for which they had accused others, for their hands were found full of oppression." The Puritan struggle was not the last war for a noble cause of which this could be said. The dedication is a plea for the cessation of Quaker persecution. 2. The first proposition states the necessity of the knowledge of God. The second concerns Immediate Revelation, and is of great importance. He compares inward revelation with the Scriptures as fohows : "Moreover, these divine inward revelations, which we make absolutely necessary for the building up of true faith, neither do nor can ever contradict the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or right and sound reason. Yet from hence it will not follow, that these divine revelations are to be subjected to the examination, either of the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or of the natural reason of man, as to a more noble or certain rule and touchstone; for this divine revelation, and inward illumination, is that 138 THE FOUNDERS [ch. which is evident and clear of itself, forcing, by its own evidence and clearness, the well-disposed understanding to assent, irresistibly moving the same thereunto; even as the common principles of natural truths move and inchne the mind to a natural assent; as, that the whole is greater than its part ; that two contradictory sayings can neither be both true, nor both false." Remembering the sole authoritative position ascribed to the Bible by the Puritans, we see that the gospel of immediate revelation had to challenge that position in a way no longer necessary. Barclay suggests a new and curious reading for certain texts if you substitute the word "scripture" for the word "spirit " : "To another the gifts of healing by the same scripture." This is exactly in the manner of Ruskin, who plays in the same way with the meaning of the word "church." "Unto the angel of the external institution of certain forms of worship of Ephesus write1." Barclay always speaks with respect of his great opponent Calvin, and quotes at this point a passage from the Institutes in support of his own position, but covered over with other doctrines by the ordinary Calvinist. Barclay points out that it is not said "It shall teach you how to understand those things that are written," but "It shah teach you all things." And in paragraph 12 in Proposition 11 Barclay's exposition of the text that "the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth " is almost identical in words with the exposition of the same subject by Isaac Penington. It whl be seen that Robert Barclay's argument, though it places the Scriptures in a secondary position to the light which gave them forth, places them stih in the authorita tive position in which they were generally held by his fehow Christians. He and his friends had no idea of any subversive criticism beyond such errors as might have slipped in through copyists or translators. We shall recur to this point later. His excehent illustration in § 18 of 1 Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds, § 2. iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 139 this proposition must, however, not be omitted here. He says that a mathematician can prove, without detailed measurement, that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles. This is an infallible conclusion which he reaches by his mathematical faculties. An ignorant man, however, who was not capable of the geometrical proof may be condescended to by having the angles actually measured for him. That is the use of the Scriptures, a medium for those who have not enough spiritual insight; he points out that the measuring is after all not so minutely accurate as the theoretical proof, but plain to the senses of the unlearned. 3. Proposition in concerns the Scriptures, whose contents are summarised. "Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fouhtain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Nevertheless, as that which giveth a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty." It is in the course of this proposition, in paragraph 6, that Barclay makes the statement which has been more quoted than anything else in his book, and is probably known to many who know nothing whatever of his main drift expressed in the above quotation. He says that "Whatsoever any do, pretending to the spirit, which is contrary to the Scriptures, is to be accounted and reckoned a delusion of the devil." This was his way of abjuring errors, among which he instances those of the Gnostics and of the Anabaptists of Munster, which might pretend to an origin in the spirit of God; and he says that Friends look upon the Scriptures "as the only fit outward judge of controversies among. Christians." That is to say that, whilst the early Friends had reached the principle of an 140 THE FOUNDERS [ch. authoritative divine life in man, to which they saw that the Scriptures owed their origin, and upon which they depend, with each individual reader, for interpretation, they were not men of the twentieth century in regard to historical and hterary knowledge. They hved before the days of higher criticism, and they never thought of impugning in practice the authority of the Bible, even although Barclay expressly declares that he sees no reason why there should not be a supplementary Bible, written then or hereafter. He sees no reason why the canon of Scripture should be closed. But we are bound to admit that in this exceptional passage Robert Barclay admits the fallibility of the inward intuition, but has no test to provide for it. It is not his fault. There is no test of infallibility in the world, and no infallibility to test. Now, which of these positions of the early Friends is a permanent gain, and which is a temporary qualification of it? If we try to think a little about it, the famous sentence about doing anything contrary to the Scriptures being a delusion does not take us far. We hardly know what meaning to assign to it, for we know that the Scriptures do not speak with a single voice on either faith or practice. Their morality is progressive, and so is their faith. They are not a book written systematically to cover a certain ground and meet the needs of a flock for guidance, as was the Koran. They are the literature of a mixed race, extending over eight or nine hundred years and recog- nisably Hebrew or Greek in their origin. They began with primitive and barbarous proceedings, and with equally primitive science and history. They were not written to form parts of any single volume, and they do not con stitute a book, but are the anthology of a great religious experience. We cannot go to the Bible to ( find detailed guidance, easy of apprehension, on monogamy, on the bringing up of children, on total abstinence, on war, on reading frivolous literature, on gambling and speculating, iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 141 on national rights, on slavery, on the right use of Sunday, to say nothing of such issues as the cure of poverty, individualism, or sociahsm, or the rights of women to share in the franchise or the ministry. On all these points we are thrown back upon spiritual enlightenment, able to guide and inspire us apart from the Scriptures. When we turn to the Scriptures the same enlightenment guides us in the help we can select from them, guidance which an enlightened spirit will have no difficulty in finding there on all these subjects. But the unenlightened, as we know, have found there texts to support every form of obsolete tyranny and cruel evil. We may and do, therefore, accept Barclay's principle of secondary authority and proceed to use the Scriptures in the only way now possible to us. In spite of Barclay's theoretical acceptance of the authority of Scripture in controversies between Christians, it is noteworthy that nearly all the points in which Quaker theory and practice diverge from the current theories and practices of Christendom were also divergences from the letter of the Bible. From the beginning, in fact, Friends allowed themselves as much liberty as they required in dealing with Scripture passages, in obedience to the dictates of the divine enlightenment within them. Had they lived in these days in which the Scriptures are better understood as literature, they would doubtless have exercised a correspondingly larger freedom. It is, then, noteworthy that the Quaker rejection of episcopacy and pastorate was in spite of the "bishops, priests and deacons" of the New Testament, and altogether independent of modern inquiry into what was reahy behind those titles. "Each one of you hath a psalm" did not prevent them abandoning singing in Meetings for Worship. They frankly regarded as inoperative the Apostle Paul's command that women should not preach1. Sometimes they tried to justify this by arguing that "I suffer not a woman to speak in the 1 See Book in. cap. iv. § 7. 142 THE FOUNDERS [ch. Church" meant that he forbade talking and discussion, but in reahty they knew intuitively that however suitable may have been Paul's views of female decorum in the Mediterranean countries in the first century, they were contrary to experience and to right feeling in England in the seventeenth. As to speaking and discussing in church meetings, Quaker women have had a large share, and for a long time back an absolutely equal share with men in transacting our affairs. Very few committees are con sidered complete which do not include women. The testimony against War was based on no direct and definite command even in the New Testament, and it frankly threw over the example and the precept of the heroes of the Old. The entire abohtion of the celebration of the Lord's Supper was carried out in face of the appar ently direct command of our Lord, by a people who were whohy unaware that the words "Do this in remembrance of Me " are an interpolation into the text of Luke1. The universal practice of the Christian Church with regard to Baptism was also overridden by men who had no idea that the concluding words of the Gospel of Matthew were a later interpolation2. The doctrine of the Trinity was, from the beginning, regarded as a human speculation of only temporary value, and the text in the first Epistle of John, on which it was based, had not at that time been removed from the Bible, nor the final text in Matthew been dis credited. The curious thing is to notice how right these pioneers of thought and practice were, how wisely their illumination led them to defy passages of whose authority modern scholarship has now disposed. There remains, of course, the Apostle Paul's assertion of Predestination, the condemnation of the innocent through the foreknow ledge of God, in Romans ix. This great fortified keep of Calvinism they boldly ignored, and the greater part of the Christian Church has come to agree with them. It may be 1 See Book in. cap. viii. 2 Book in. cap. xx. iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 143 fair to ask Biblical hterahsts what ground they have for taking liberties with this plain teaching of the Apostle, and also what right they have to ignore the definite commands of our Lord and of the writer of the Epistle of James, in forbidding any kind of judicial oath. The passage leaves no doubt that the oaths forbidden were judicial, serious affairs. The contrast is explicitly drawn by our Lord with the law which said "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." / Here Friends are on the side of a literal obedience, not because it was literal, but because their moral sense approved it, in spite of the universal neglect of it by the orthodox Church. To have two standards of veracity they declare is impossible for a Christian man. It cheapens the ordinary statements on which human intercourse is daily built. It weakens the sense of moral obligation unaided by supernatural terrors. Our Lord's words here do not represent anything temporary in thought or practice, and we have obeyed them at any cost. Friends' refusal to take an oath was at the beginning the source of persecution and imprisonment altogether out of proportion to its real importance. A persecuting magistrate had nothing to do but to tender the oath of allegiance to a Quaker brought before him, and however innocent he might be it was easy to hale him to prison for refusing it and to keep him there for an indefinite period. In the end Friends have forced the legislature to accommodate itself to their views by per mitting an affirmation instead of an oath on ah occasions. In early times nothing showed their courageous con scientiousness, even in trifling matters, more clearly than this simple testimony, and nothing shows more clearly theh ultimate triumph. I should surmise that by this time the conscience of the nation gives no support to judicial oaths. There has been much perjury in the world, but no case of a false judicial affirmation is recorded. 4. Proposition iv concerns the condition of men in the 144 THE FOUNDERS [ch. Fall, and most of it is therefore of little value to-day1. Barclay takes pains, however, to deny the Calvinistic conclusion of the damnation of infants in the Fall. His natural humanity causes him to say that "this evh seed is not imputed to infants until by transgression they actually join themselves therewith." This proposition contains a contrast between the divine light and a natural light, belief in which he calls a Socinian and Pelagian error. So far as he means that the light of the rational intehect is a different thing from divine intuition he is quite right, and in most of his references it seems plain that this is what is in his mind. The study of Psychology has, it is to be hoped, made progress since his day, and we are now able to realise more clearly, or at least to emphasize more strongly, the unity of the whole spiritual and intellectual being of man, and that it does not do to depreciate one part of him in order to glorify another. Barclay was, however, not unaware of this unity, as his ihustration of the sun and the moon shows. He regarded the intellectual 1 I left this point thus briefly put on one side, thinking it seemly as writer of a modern Apology for Quakerism not to enter into more controversy than I could help with my great predecessor. But since I wrote the above Rufus M. Jones has contributed, in the form of an Introduction (pp. xxx to xlv) to W. C. Braithwaite's Second Period of Quakerism a cogent and enlightening analysis, forming a destructive criticism of Barclay, and centring his guns on this conception of Man as a hopeless sinful creature. He shows to what serious evils this theory led, in darkening the thought of God, weakening the intellectual test of truth, and plunging Quakerism into a too rigidly passive Quietism, particularly in its doctrine of ministry. Rufus Jones regrets that a Scotsman trained in the School of Knox, rather than one of the contemporary Cambridge mystics, became the systematic formulator of the hving Quaker Gospel. The whole passage is of the deepest interest. With it should be read chap. xiv. of the book itself, "The Formulation of Faith," in which W. C. Braithwaite treats rather more fully, on similar lines, the theological positions of Isaac Penington and Robert Barclay. iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 145 light as the light of the moon which is ultimately the same light as that of the sun, to whose direct rays he likened the indwelhng light of God. (Propositions v and vi, § 16.) Probably his successors have put more emphasis upon Barclay's apparent depreciation of the natural light than he himself did. 5. Propositions v and vi, concerning the universal and saving light, are treated together. "God hath so loved the world that He hath given His only son a hght, that whoso ever believeth in him should be saved; who enhghteneth every man that cometh into the world.. . .Hence it well follows, that as some of the old philosophers might have been saved, so also may now some (who by Providence are cast into those remote parts of the world, where the knowledge of the history is wanting), be made partakers of the divine mystery, if they receive and resist not (1 Cor. xii. 7) that grace, a manifestation whereof is given to every man to profit withal." "Christ hath tasted death for every man; not only for all kinds of men, as some vainly talk, but for every one, of ah kinds; the benefit of whose offering is not only extended to such who have the distinct outward knowledge of his death and sufferings, as the same is declared in the Scriptures, but even unto those who are necessarily excluded from the benefit of this knowledge by some inevitable accident ; which knowledge we willingly confess to be very profitable and comfortable, but not absolutely needful unto such from whom God himself hath withheld it ; yet they may be made partakers of the mystery of his death, (though ignorant of the history), if they suffer his seed and light (enlightening their hearts) to take a place." This claim for the salvation of the heathen is in the forefront of the Quaker gospel, was one of its noblest intuitions, has been more and more confirmed as our knowledge of the religions of the East has grown, and it has now taken possession of the minds of the most en- G.Q. 10 146 THE FOUNDERS [ch. lightened men in the foreign mission field. The proof of these two propositions occupies seventy-six long pages, and is central. He begins by attacking the Calvinistic doctrine of Predestination and Reprobation, which he says has greatly stained the reputation of John Calvin, though he traces the beginnings of it to the later writings of Augustine. We need not now spend time in slaying the slain. It was, however, both the great task and the great attraction of Quakerism that it reheved the human mind and the name of God from this abominable teaching. 6. Barclay discusses (§ 16) the difference between the human conscience, which is liable to twists and errors, and the divine hght, which is necessarily free from error. Barclay likens the conscience to the lantern, within which the hght of Christ shines. His metaphor cannot be greatly bettered. We speak now of the conscience as the faculty within us which discriminates between right and wrong, as the taste in the mouth discriminates between the sweet and the bitter, or the ear between harmony and discord, and we regard this faculty as constantly subject to divine ihumination. We may regard the conscience as the solid built-up result of previous illuminations received by our selves and our ancestors, and since human evolution has been gradual there remain corners which are stih dark. Experience showed the Apologist and shows us that whilst the conscience is a natural faculty, always available, the divine ihumination comes and goes and cannot be had at call. Yet no man is left without it, and our duty is not to resist it when it comes. This experience has lost nothing of its freshness since Barclay wrote it down. 7. Proposition vii concerns Justification, which is taken out of all commercial and legal associations and metaphors, and put upon its scriptural ground. "As many as resist not this hght, but receive the same, in them is produced a holy, pure, and spiritual birth, bringing forth holiness, righteousness, purity, and all these other blessed iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 147 fruits which are acceptable to God; by which holy birth (to wit, Jesus Christ formed within us, and working his works in us), as we are sanctified, so are we justified in the sight of God, according to the apostle's words — but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Cor. vi. 11.) 8. Proposition viii concerns Perfection, which is asserted as a possibihty, and yet always admitting of a growth and of a possibihty of sinning. We hardly need reopen this ancient controversy, nor that in the ixth proposition either, which concerns Perseverance and the possibility of falling from grace. These did good service in their time. We are now at the end of the theological part of the book, in which the task of the author was to fit the glorious intuitions of which he knew into the current Protestant scheme of the Universe. 9. Proposition X concerns the Ministry. It probably excited the most hostility, for it denied a professional ministry, whilst not objecting to what might be called the payment of expenses and livelihood under a special and temporary cah. "Also, those who have received this holy and unspotted gift, as they have freely received, so are they freely to give, without hue or bargaining, far less to use it as a trade to get money by it (Matt. x. 8) : yet if God hath called any from their employments, or trades, by which they acquire their livelihood, it may be lawful for such (according to the liberty which they feel given them in the Lord) to receive such temporals (to wit, what may be needful to them for meat and clothing) as are freely given them by those to whom they have communicated spirituals." 10. Proposition xi concerns Worship and is a vigorous attack upon liturgies and fixed routine times of prayer and praise, extempore or otherwise. "All other worship then, 10 — 2 148 THE FOUNDERS [ch. both praises, prayers, and preachings, which man sets about in his own wih, and at his own appointment, which he can both begin and end at his pleasure, do or leave undone as himself sees meet, whether they be a prescribed form, as a hturgy, or prayers conceived extemporarily by the natural strength and faculty of the mind, they are ah but superstitions, will-worship, and abominable idolatry in the sight of God, which are to be denied, rejected, and sepa rated from, in this day of his spiritual arising." n. Proposition xn concerns Baptism and Proposition xin the Lord's Supper. He appeals in both from the shadow to the substance1. The xivth Proposition is a claim for religious liberty against the power of the Civil magistrate. Proposition xv concerns what are called the Quaker peculiarities, a great part of which is now a past testimony in its actual contents, but is as much needed as ever in the spirit that breathes through it. In the treatment of the subject of War, which occupies only a few pages in this Proposition, his belief in the authority of the Old Testament leads him into great difficulties (see § 15). So we part with reverence from this great book. It has been the means of preventing Friends, long debarred from a good education, cut off from most of the professions, and deprived of the influences of an educated ministry, from becoming ilhterate and unintelhgent in regard to their faith. No one except a historical scholar will now read it, but that is not because its conclusions are unsound, but because our whole thought of God has moved, and the processes of the divine life are working in other parts of the field. Probably the Apology was the last of the great argumentative theological folios and quartos of the Calvinistic period, as Quakerism was the last outgrowth of the Reformation movement. In the conflict with Rome under James II which ended in the Revolution of 1688, in 1 See Book in, Chapters viii. and ix. iv] BARCLAY'S APOLOGY 149 the outward peace which followed the Toleration Act, and in the general abatement of theological interest which characterised the reign of Anne and the eighteenth century, there was probably no particular motive for attacking a book which was, in the first place, difficult to attack, and in the second so extremely orthodox in its assumptions that it could not be regarded by anybody as subversive of the essentials of rehgion. It had also become plain that the Society of Friends was not going to become the rehgion of the nation, as seemed at one time possible, and the clergy could sleep in their beds, whatever Barclay had said. Two centuries is a long life for a theological book. It is fair to remember that the very atmosphere which renders it philosophically useless to us was what rendered it useful to the Friends who welcomed it. It was the voice of their age. The fact that Salvation came by obeying the inward illumination, even though we owed that light to Christ and to his sacrifice, was out of accord with the Evangelical theory of the Atonement, and has caused the Apology to be banned in certain circles. It was attacked on this ground by the separatists George Keith and Isaac Crewdson, and at one time its circulation was forbidden as dangerous to the children of Ackworth School. BOOK III THE SUPERSTRUCTURE CHAPTER I SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD i. Of all the "avoidable" causes of the Society's weakness under the test of time the greatest was the error of separateness from the world. It is not, of course, the first time that a religious communion has made this desperate attempt at a short cut to holiness. Such efforts are always pathetic. They are among those half correct courses of action which, though we are bound to condemn them, we cannot help regarding with a certain sympathy. In the case of Friends the causes which brought it about are easily recognisable. The world had forcibly separated itself from them. They were outlaws from public worship, from public education, and from full citizenship, on account of their refusal to take an oath they were excluded from Parliament, their marriages had for some years been illegal, their schools were proscribed, a very large pro portion of their adult membership of both sexes had been in gaol, they were accused of being deniers of the authority of the Bible and said to be in league with the Jesuits. All the jolly cavaliers looked upon them as more objection ably strict than other Puritans. The army and the magistracy, as well as the Church, were their enemies. It is no wonder that they gathered themselves into a select fellowship, above all desirous to keep their skirts clean from the mud of the world — of the world of 1700. 2. Certain outward peculiarities, utterly trifling in themselves, if not indefensible, constituted obvious marks of isolation. George Fox had fought against the usages of language in ways which, if he had been better educated, 154 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. he might have escaped, and his better trained followers did not correct him. It seemed to him untruthful to addressN a single person with the plural pronoun "you," notj realising that a plural pronoun habitually used in the" singular, eventually becomes a singular pronoun. Doubt less this peculiar crotchet was intended as a protest against the artificial manners of a profligate age, and it would have been well if it had been allowed to die ; but it , stayed as a sort of password, and has figured conspicuously in the popular conception of a Quaker. It has done much to neutralise any Apologia. Incidentally it has made us modern Friends bilingual, like the Germans, and given us a way of addressing our family and our intimates by a significant pronoun, which carries with it a charming I recognition of that intimacy; but on the whole it has been a sohd disaster to the Society to have these easily available passwords. Along with "thee" and "thou" may go the curious objection to the use of the names of the days of the week and the months of the year, derived from heathen)' gods and goddesses. George Fox fortunately did not know how many more words in the English language are derived from heathen sources, or we might have had a more terrible purgation still. 1 3. The peculiar dress was even more damaging, for it was more conspicuous. It only became peculiar with lapse of time, by sheer conservatism. The dress of Friends up to about 1700 was the ordinary dress of a quiet-mannered Puritan ; only notable for the absence of finery. But each new fashion was felt to be "fashionable" — and avoided. Quiet drab colours were favoured. This Quaker denial of the beauty of colour was pointed out to me thirty-five years ago by John Ruskin as the cause of the decay of the Society. "Your early Friends," he said, "would have carried all before them if they had not been false to that which is obeyed by the whole of the animal creation, the love of colour." Allowing for exaggeration there is much i] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 155 in it, especially if we extend "colour" metaphorically, to cover music and dancing and the theatre. Margaret Fox, at Swarthmoor Hall, survived all her friends of the great period, and lived on in increasing blindness to extreme old age. One of the most interesting pubhcations of recent times is a letter written by her in protest against regulation of dress, against uniformity and dulness of colour as a principle. It is a very interesting case of divergence between leaders and followers, between men and women of energy and initiative and smaher folk, who are more comfortable under rules. We watch the spirit freezing into fixed form. It also dates, close to the year 1700, the beginning of the Quaker sumptuary laws1. It's a dangerous thing to lead young Friends much into obser vation of outward things, for that will be easily done, for they can soon get into an outward garb, to be all alike outwardly, but this will not make them true Christians. It's the spirit that gives hfe. I would be loth to have a hand in these things.... Let us beware of this of separating and looking upon ourselves to be more holy than indeed and in truth we are.... Away with these whimsical, narrow imaginations, and let the Spirit of God which He hath given us, lead us and guide us.... But Christ Jesus saith that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on, but bids us consider the lilies, and how they grow in more royalty than Solomon. But contrary to this, we must look at no colours, nor make any thing that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them ; but we must be all in one dress and one colour. This is a silly poor gospel. It is more fit for us to be covered with God's eternal spirit and clothed with his eternal light. This is not delightful to me that I have this occasion to write to you, for wherever I saw it appear I have stood against it several years. And now I dare neglect no longer, for I see that our blessed precious holy Truth that has visited us from the beginning is kept 1 A very amusing account in detail of these regulations is now available in The Second Period of Quakerism, by W. C. Braith- waite. Chapter xviii. 156 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. under, and these silly outside imaginary practices is coming up, and practised with great zeal, which hath often grieved my heart1. "Changeable colours as the hills are" is a fine phrase; and natural to one who had lived a long life in that lovely land where the hills change their colour from the summer's varied greens to the brown-red bracken of winter, all the way from Fairfield and the Old Man of Coniston, down by hazel coppices and evergreen firs to the sands and the sea at Swarthmoor. 4. More disastrous than either language or dress was the Society's rule against intermarriage with anyone outside our borders. This was indeed a defiance of nature and society. I have read the earliest Minute books of Swarthmoor Monthly Meeting. They are extremely monotonous reading, dealing month after month with the report that "Friends have been walking consistently" with their testimonies, broken here and there by the tragic and significant entry that such and such a Friend had married one of the world's people, and not having been willing to express his or her regret was, after having been earnestly dealt with, disowned from membership. Margaret Fox's name occurs regularly as being present at these meetings, the Minutes of which were signed by her daughter Sarah Fell, as Clerk, and we may take it that they are typical of the procedure of business meetings in country places generally at that time. There are also a few pathetic documents carefully collected in a book, consisting of statements of regret made by the offender previous to later reinstatement. In time, human nature and good feeling became too strong for routine, and these expressions of regret, particularly as current in Philadelphia in the nineteenth century, often meant that the Friend regretted having had to break the rules of the Society, without 1 (Quoted from manuscript at Devonshire House, on page 198 of Margaret Fox of Swarthmoor Hall by Helen G, Crosfield.) I] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 157 stating that he or she regretted the marriage, which was probably the last thing in the world they had any deshe to regret. In early days these letters were generahy written some years after the marriage and worded variously, often expressing merely a desire for reinstatement among Friends, and written with the concurrence of the outsider, the other party to the marriage. There is no doubt whatever that this rule lost to the Society many valuable members as well as many whose membership had become merely nominal. 5. Its desolating effects numerically may be estimated if one reahses how immensely significant a ratio of diminu tion becomes when applied several times over. Thus, if we assumed that in any family, half the children who left descendants at all married out of the Society, and half married within it, in each generation, we have only one- half of the next generation in membership. In the second generation only one-half of that half would remain mem bers, that is one-quarter of the total descendants of the original pair. In the third generation one-eighth only would remain Friends, and in the fourth only one-sixteenth of the total offspring of the stock. We have now accounted for four generations. This rule operated for a century and a half during which there would be about four Quaker generations of marriageable age, so that on this hypothesis the Society survived as a remnant of one-sixteenth, on our assumption, of what it might have been. Probably, for that period, not as many as one-half married out. If only one in three married out, the Society would have been reduced, in four generations, to sixteen eighty-oneths, or about one-fifth of its possible inherited membership. The process of disassociation must have destroyed the loyalty and blighted the religious careers of many sound Friends. The separation was almost invariably done in a kindly manner and with expressions of profound regret, and in numerous instances where the expelled retained 158 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. their habit of attending Meeting and their Quaker con victions, reinstatement after a period of years took place. The children of mixed marriages were not treated as birth right members in any case. Otherwise the above calcula tions would have been invalid. At the present time, at the request of the parents, such children may be admitted as infants, should the Monthly Meeting agree to do so, and it is generahy forward to do so in all suitable cases. The rule about marrying out was abolished in England in the year 1859, mainly through the efforts of the late Joseph Rowntree of York. It had long been found contrary to the facts of life and human nature in the middle of the nineteenth century. Each case was thenceforth "visited" and taken on its merits. If the newly founded family intended to retain Quaker associations, no disciplinary action took place. Even this "visiting" has now been generally dropped. The practice of intermarriage within the Society, which still prevails to a large extent amongst us on natural lines of choice, combined with the education of boys and girls at our own boarding schools, has resulted in the production of a marked type of mind and of social habit. The objection to marriages with those of the outside world was not pure selectness. It was closely connected with our central testimony against priestly pretensions. To undergo "Marriage by a Priest" was yielding to the most ostentatious of all sacerdotal claims on human in dependence, and Friends' rejection of it was opposed by the clergy with special bitterness. 6. Friends' marriage ceremony remains the most simple, the most beautiful and the most dignified ever devised by man. It may be used by any one, whether in membership or not ; and Friends are glad to make it freely available. It may be valued by some who dislike repeating formulas after a third party, or who cannot fohow the theological implications of the ordinary service, or who I] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 159 wish to avoid its references either to "fornication" or to "obedience" — and yet who desire a definitely religious ceremony. The pair, surrounded as usual by their bridal party, and dressed in bridal array, sit facing a Meeting appointed for the purpose. Like other meetings for worship this begins in silence and may be broken by prayer or by preaching at any point in its course. About five minutes after taking their seats, the pair rise and the man, taking the girl by the hand says : " Friends [in the fear of the Lord and the presence of this assembly]1 I take this my friend A — B — to be my wife, promising through Divine assist ance to be unto her a loving and faithful husband until it shah please the Lord by death to separate us." Then the girl makes an exactly corresponding statement, and very penetratingly through the silence of the meeting fall her significant words. Ministry generahy follows, at some time in the meeting the Registrar reads an elaborate certificate stating what has happened, and the whole function occupies about half an hour. The legal registration is done afterwards in a committee room. There also the ring, now usual, generally finds its way to its place. Of late a feeling has found expression among our young people against the theological implications of the last phrase "until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us." They object to thinking of God as one whom it "pleases " to separate them. And they doubt if death does separate them. Whether there is liberty to drop this phrase is stih an unsettled point. One peculiarity should not be omitted. Friends have always refused to follow the common custom about funerals and tombstones. They do not wear black, or if they do they have failed to maintain the testimony, and they do not erect costly stone memorials. They have the simplest possible slab, often recumbent, recording only the name and age and date of death of the deceased. There 1 May be omitted. 160 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. is a rule of uniformity in Friends' graveyards on this point. In former days, up to about the middle of the nineteenth century, there were no stones permitted at all, and the exact spot of the interment was ultimately forgotten. Ah this was a consequence of Friends' concentration on the spirit, and lack of reverence for the body when its use was over. The absence of mourning meant that faith looked with confidence to the happiness, the service, the love of the dwellers in the Unseen, where the dead had been re-born. All this is stih precious, and, hke all other testimonies based on spiritual sensibility, is on the lines of good taste. 7. One would have to go to the East or to the Eastern habit brought into Europe by the Jews, to examine on a large scale the effect of separateness on a religious com munity. In the Quaker case it has not, so far as I know, ever been resented by outsiders, as it has often in the case of the Jews. This is a testimony to the fact that it has not weakened Friends' sense either of nationahty or of humanity, and that it has been kept fairly free from pride. As a set-off to its final condemnation one need not be blind to its advantages. It has estabhshed a "Freemasonry" among Friends which has been and is most effectual in the ready provision of help in adversity. No poor Friend is ever allowed to come upon the Poor Law; relief is always forthcoming from other Friends, and there are in some places endowments for the purpose. The Society has also been able to act efficiently as a unit when suddenly required. At the time when we were engaged in befriending the persecuted Doukhobors in Russia, the Czar's government, with characteristic fatuity, offered to let some thousands of them migrate to Canada if they, out of their destitution, could produce a large sum as passage money at once. The late John Bellows, E. Wright Brooks, and others raised from Friends I] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 161 £40,000 by telegram within twenty-four hours, and the migration took place. When organising, a few years ago, a municipal effort in favour of Smoke Abatement, I was able to write to some reliable Friend in every important municipality in the country to find out who were the most likely helpers in the cause among Chairmen of Sanitary Committees, Medical Officers of Health, and others. I was less helpless than an isolated individual. If it is a question of fighting Conscription in Australia or in England, the Society of Friends is already a perfect organisation for the purpose. It formed the rallying point of the conscientious objectors to military service in the late war; being at first the only organisation ready to act. 8. Our richest source of information concerning the habits of life of Friends of the eighteenth century is to be found in a remarkable book called A Portraiture of Quakerism, published in 1806 in three handsome volumes by Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist. The origin of the book is most curious. The author explains that in his work for the freedom of the slave he had been brought into an intimate knowledge of the homes and habits of Friends, and he regarded it as a responsibility to describe them to their fellow countrymen, on the ground that though the task was great and he was very busy, there was nobody else in the country outside their own borders who had anything like a similar knowledge of them, and that in all probability there never would be anyone in the future to whom such information would be likely to come. Here we have a most extraordinary revelation of the separateness of the Society, if it be a fact that there was only one man in England, outside its borders, who knew enough about it to write a description of it. The book was highly sympathetic and laudatory, and it had great vogue in Friends' libraries for two generations at least. It is prolix and now old-fashioned, but of unique value to the historian. It is not uninstructive to notice that Clarkson's definition g.q. n 162 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. of Quakerism makes no reference to the doctrine of the Light Within. Clarkson was an Evangelical, and those Friends whom he knew best were of that type. Neverthe less it is suggestive that he regards Quakerism as a practice rather than a theory : Quakerism may be defined to be an attempt, under the divine influence, at practical Christianity, as far as it can be carried. Those who profess it consider themselves bound to regulate their opinions, words, actions, and even outward demeanour, by Christi anity, and by Christianity alone. They consider themselves bound to give up such of the customs or fashions of men, however general or generally approved, as militate, in any manner, against the letter or the spirit of the Gospel. Hence, they mix but little with the world, that they may be less liable to imbibe its spirit. Hence George Fox made a distinction between the members of bis own society and others, by the different appellations of Friends, and People of the World. They consider themselves also under an obligation to follow virtue, not ordinarily, but even to the death. For they profess never to make a sacrifice of conscience; and, therefore, if any ordinances of man are enjoined them, which they think to be contrary to the divine will, they believe it right not to submit to them, but rather, after the example of the Apostles and primitive Christians, to suffer any loss, penalty, or inconvenience, which may result to them for so doing. This then in a few words is a general definition of Quakerism. 9. After all that has been said against the policy of seclusion from the world, we may stih ask the question whether the Society would have survived at all without this armour of peculiarities ; whether it might not have merged so freely into its environment as to be wholly absorbed or transformed. The narrowing banks at least — it may be pleaded — kept the stream from being lost in a swamp of liberal-mindedness. The answer to this depends on (i) Whether the truth Friends had to teh was true enough and strong enough to hold its own in open com petition with other forms of truth then active. And i] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 163 (ii) Whether the environment was too hopelessly un spiritual to make contact useful, and permeation probable. (i) I do not myself hesitate to say that the truth of the Indwelling God, independent of priests and temples, and able to be a sufficient Word to the listening ear, was not only able to survive, but is the basal truth of all religion, the fact to which all rehgions owe what value they have ; it is the absolute religion. The fact that it has both survived and revived among Friends, in spite of ah dis advantages, and is hke a green crop in Spring coming up everywhere outside the Society, convinces me of this. Moreover, from the death of George Fox in 1691 to the preaching of Wesley, which began in 1739, Quakerism had no real rivals in England. The period was dead and cold in the Anglican Church outwardly triumphant, the few Roman Catholics were under a political cloud on account of their Stuart sympathies, there were as yet no Metho dists and no Unitarians. There were smah bodies of Presbyterians (slowly to become Unitarian), Baptists and Independents. The Quakers at the time of the Toleration Act are said in a Government return to have equalled in numbers the other Nonconformists put together1. One cannot but think that a heartily aggressive large-hearted pohcy, giving trifles the place of trifles, might have suc ceeded, and the Society have become the home of the mystically minded in the nation. (ii) The age was irreligious and immoral. As a whole the average sensual man had reacted from Puritanism very badly. It was the age pourtrayed in Pamela and Tom Jones. That was, of course, why, to Friends, separateness seemed needful. But there must surely have been a minority prepared to welcome the golden mean of a reasonable faith. The Society without a "plain" dress and "plain" speech 1 v. F. Storrs Turner, The Quakers, p. 236. J. S. Rowntree, Quakerism Past and Present, p. 72. W. C. Braithwaite, Second Period of Quakerism, pp. 458, 9. 164 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. and freely intermarrying would, indeed, have been better able than it was to resist the canker of popular sin creeping within its own borders. The man who did not want to wear a strange broad-brimmed hat, and a collarless coat, who loved music and song, and saw no harm in using ordinary titles and ordinary pronouns, such a man thrown out of touch with the Society as not being a consistent Friend feh necessarily into the arms of the gay world as the only alternative, and may have degenerated. There was, within the Society itself, a lamentable amount of moral failure, where the Quaker revival had passed into dul- ness. Drinking habits invaded the Friends' farmhouses in the dales and caused widespread disownment. People generally got drunk in those days. In reading the Minute Books of Fylde Monthly Meeting in Lancashire, I found that in the twenty-five years from 1775 to 1800, twenty-five Friends were disowned for sex transgres sions. Earnestly concerned ministering Friends who travelled on long tours of preaching and pastoral care, record, as John Griffith did in his Journal, great weakness and coldness in many places. The disciphne became so lax that a stern revival of it was ordered by the Yearly Meeting in 1738 and carried out by strong deputations. 10. It has sometimes been said that the failure of Quakerism to reach the masses led to the ground being covered by the Methodist Revival. However efficient Friends had been in their own line of service, I do not think they offered milk for babes. John Wesley, with his terrible preaching of Heh, his cheap salvation, (cheap in theory at least), by escape through the merits of another, his stimulating hymns, and his verbal Biblical interpreta tion, widespread and popular as his teaching has become, could not have done his particular work through any Quakerism true to the name. Wesley did not like Quakers as such, though personally he was friendly with many of them, and they had often i] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 165 befriended him on his wanderings. They appeared to him fuh of fads, and dead-alive, and altogether out of his theological scheme. There was ' ' a great gulf fixed " he said, "between them and me." Barclay's Apology he cahed "that solemn trifle." Their silent meetings and their lack of the ordinances separated them from him ; and he even wrote a pamphlet against the sect called An Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion. He advised a correspondent "not to go near the tents of those dead formal men the Quakers1." We can forgive all this now. It only shows that the divergence of the two schools of thought was real and went deep. The country needs both. 11. But it was not only the faults of the Society, it was also its virtues, that kept it from becoming a large popular movement. It is not an easy cult. Self-rehance is attrac tive; but it is taxing also, and most people do not care to pay the tax. Think what it means to have no one to be relied upon to preach to you, no one to sing to you, no music in your worship, no aesthetic help in carved column or stained glass, no one to tell you what to believe, no creed to cling to, no Sacrament to solemnise you, no clergyman to look after you in pastoral fashion. Every Friend has to take a share in all these things for himself. You must be ready to preach if inwardly called, to teach if you can, to visit the sick and the poor, to attend to ah the extensive business of the Society. And a Friend's inward exercise makes no less demand. Silence must not be to him a time of idle vacancy, but of communion, with perhaps no outward aid. The majority of men do not enjoy this. If there be excehences in Quakerism, let it be remembered that no excellence is cheap and not many kinds are common. The Quaker temperament is not the creation of a day in anybody. Pulpit oratory is impossible in a Friends' meeting, though our spontaneous and amateur ministry has about it a timbre which is ah its 1 Wesley and His Preachers, by G. Holden Pike, Chap. xiii. 166 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. own, and makes a mighty appeal to what is good in the soul. 12. The weakness and essential falsity of the attitude of seclusion from the world showed itself most harmfully in the abstention of Friends from politics. Both Joseph Sturge1 and John Bright had to face very considerable criticism from Friends whose good opinion they most valued, because they embarked on the career of political reformer. John Blight's correspondence with his mother- in-law, Mrs Priestman, on the subject, is very typical2. In 1843 a sentence in the Yearly Meeting's Epistle con tained the words "We trust Friends may always be found amongst those who are quiet in the land." This by no means described the attitude of the Anti-Corn Law League, which was then in the full blast of its work, and John Bright sprang to his feet in defence of his action, and appeared to carry the Meeting with him in an audience where actual applause is not permitted. The Epistle from the Yearly Meeting of 1836 included the following paragraph, which well expresses the Society's thought at the time: The position of our members in connexion with the laws which have rendered them eligible for civil offices, from which they have long been excluded, has excited our concern. We are not about to discourage any one from taking his proper share in those services, which as a member of the community he may be rightly called to perform, and which do not require or involve a compromise of our Christian principles. But we desire, that when the opportunity of choice is offered, our dear Friends may seriously consider the responsibilities which they are required to take upon themselves, and the temptations to which they may be exposed. Do not satisfy yourselves, dear Friends, that it is merely lawful ; but also ascertain whether it is for you expedient. Beware lest you be influenced by any other motives than those which will bear the test of Christian principle acting on an enlightened conscience. Be especially careful not to yield to the temptation of indulging the love of distinction, 1 Joseph Sturge: His Life and Work, by Stephen Hobhouse, p. 17. 2 See G. M. Trevelyan's Life of John Bright, pp. 102, 3. I] SEPARATE FROM THE WORLD 167 or of seeking to promote a party. And let those who enter on any public office be concerned, in the first place, to fulfil its duties in the fear of the Lord, seeking for His help, and diligently and faith fully performing the trust reposed in them, as those who have to render an account not to man only, but to God. We desire that our dear Friends may, on these occasions, support in simplicity and fidelity all those testimonies which dis tinguish us from others. We are anxious, however, that it should ever be borne in mind, that these testimonies rest on no other foundation than the great principles of Christianity. Fulfil the law of immutable righteousness : uphold the standard of truth-speaking and inflexible integrity in all things : watch over your spirits that you be not leavened into the spirit of the world ; if so be you have known what it is to be raised above it : shun all party combinations, and pursue in humility the course of Christian independence. In thus discharging your duties among men, you would be made rich ia the inestimable treasure of a good conscience, be enabled to grow in Christian vigour and experience, and be of those preachers of righteousness who, bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit, do, by tlieir good works, glorify our Father Who is in heaven. This chapter is wholly concerned with a time gone by1. The separateness has all vanished now. It waned, with increasing rapidity, through the nineteenth century. "Nihil humani a me alienum puto" is the line of the modern Friend. This isolation is no part of the superstructure de scribed in this book. It was merely a high fence which has decayed and gone. 1 An interesting volume of short stories on this period of the Society has been published by Miss Maude Robinson under the title The Time of her Life (Swarthmore Press). CHAPTER II ART AND EDUCATION i. This separation from the world which we have deplored was carried out, as we have seen, by means of regulations. Our criticism of it may be generalised by saying that to establish special regulation on matters not generally regulated is a lapse from the original liberty of the Spirit, a forgetfulness of our first principles. It has been due to fear — fear about whither the unfettered soul might fly — fear of temptations of the senses in the Arts, fear of dangerous speculation in the intellectual life. All this was part of the inheritance from Puritanism. It was not peculiar to Friends; but would that freedom from it had been a Quaker peculiarity. For men are saved by positive enthusiasms, not by obeying external pro hibitions, valuable as they are in childhood. It is not quite obvious at first sight why the Society retained from Puritanism its regulated, drab, unimagina tive ways, while rejecting much besides. There were certain exceptional Puritans. John Milton was a Puritan who was an artist too. In later life he abandoned chapels, and held, in isolation, views about the nature of worship and ministry which would have qualified him for Quaker ism, and must have formed the basis of the attraction between him and Thomas Ellwood. 2. One may feel sure that release from the gloom of the Puritan theology must have contributed to the cheerful ness of Quaker households. We know enough to feel sure that this was so, and that much of the placid quietness characteristic of their home life followed from theh con ception of the indwelling and universal Father and Friend of ah His creatures. The penetrating thought of God ch. ii] ART AND EDUCATION 169 did not in their case overshadow ordinary life with gloom or excessive seriousness. It permeated it. But all this happiness found little or no outlet on the side of Art. In the first place there was hardly any artistic enjoyment obtainable in the age of the Restoration apart from licentious drama and poetry. Furthermore, the hard working yeomen and artisans who chiefly constituted the Society were altogether outside beautiful craftsmanship, painting or sculpture or authorship. The bulk of the Enghsh people have always, alas, been thus excluded. Laborious, economical, with little to spare in time or money, they had only their religion between them and the masterful pressure of material things. 3. We find in the second and third generation, rather than in the forty pioneering years, this quahty of regulation and of hmited sympathies. However lamentable, they are very pathetic, very human, these reactionary extremes. They were brave and patient soldiers of the truth, not narrow bigots, who denied a place to that lovely activity of the soul, which, when yoked to technical skill, can create and recreate beauty in sound and form and colour, in verse and prose, in the drama and the dance. It would have been quite impossible for Friends to have given their approval to the last two — to the arts which differ from others in that artists use their own persons as their material, and exhibit gifts and graces in their own bodily movements and expressions. This, I think, is the ultimate reason of the danger which has attended them in every age. For the artist, besides being a finished work of art, is also a human being, not clay or marble or pigment, fiddle or phrase. And the claims and passions and decorums of a human being, modesty and sex, may be sacrificed to artistic effect. They have often clashed, and there has to be compromise. To most good men in the Restoration Period the theatre and the dance seemed the very gates to ruin, as indeed in that age they often were, and for long afterwards. If 170 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Friends had admitted the other arts, little loss would have resulted, and little forgiveness been necessary if they had kept aloof only from the theatre and the public dancer. On nearer acquaintance in the twentieth century even these are found to be not ah bad, but like other things both bad and good. We now draw the hne somewhere in regard to these recreations, just as we do with regard to books and to acquaintances. An uncompromising attitude of hostility is now very uncommon among Friends. A somewhat nervous attitude of solicitous sensitiveness is common, but by very many Friends these recreations are taken as a matter of course. Such a practice is quite outside any disciplinary action, and to be an actor would not disqualify for membership in most localities. At the same time, till we have found for actresses generally a reconciliation in practice between a life of public exhibition and a noble womanhood, such as is assuredly found now in many individual cases, I do not think ethical scruple has said her last word to these arts. The Quaker maidens of the past had to lose much beside these. Dressed to be unlike others, they made patchwork quilts and laborious samplers through patient hours. Only by learning poetry and by reading it beauti fully aloud, did melody and artistic romance find an entrance. A romance in verse was admitted where a romance in prose was not. This distinction will not appear quite absurd on reflection. It is perhaps in the eclipse of music that reading aloud really well has always been common among us. Music is no longer in eclipse ; quite the reverse. The absence of music as a part of worship is not because of the music, but because of the worship. A discussion of this rejection of hymn and organ in public worship will be found in the next chapter. The arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, all kinds of design, the writing of poetry, and the writing and speaking of prose, have all now been practised as freely and n] ART AND EDUCATION 171 earnestly by Friends as by others for three generations, both as professionals and as amateurs. No remnant of the ancient limitation survives. But there is one art we must see that we do not lose, in this day of wider sympathies. 4. The art of conducting life, the craft of conduct, has always had the first place in Friends' practice. For there is a fine art of living. It is achieved as other art is, by careful selection among possibilities. Low motives have to be eliminated, inferior ones put into cold shadow. The central subject, the meaning and purpose of it, must not be obscured. There is composition, hght and shade, emphasis and careful detail. I rather think the art I mean is Preraphaelite. The method of impressionism does not seem suitable at any rate. The artist is the Indwelling Word of God. And the model is Jesus Christ. In times of weak faith and dull perception, his vivid historic image may be our refuge. 5. It must be admitted that, on the whole, the early Friends stood in the place of the unlearned. The Uni versities were little more than training colleges for the Anglican ministry, and few University men can have been found among separatists. Nevertheless, a certain number of preachers came over with their congregations to Quakerism, and imparted to the men of the first genera tion a measure of scholastic attainment. Of the gentry and aristocracy there are not many to put beside William Penn, Isaac Penington, John Archdale, Lady Conway, Sir John Rodes and David and Robert Barclay, and when the early converts passed away, the want of education was acutely felt. Not only the Universities but the Grammar Schools were in the hands of the Church, along with such attempts at elementary education as existed. Friends were thrown back upon private schools, and even there they had to resist the persecution of the Church, which made every effort to forbid a Friend to keep a school at all. A. N. 172 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Brayshaw has collected twelve cases of prosecution for keeping a school after the Toleration Act1 Long after that Act, when hberty of worship had been wrung from parliament by a long generation of resistance, it appeared that the hberty of keeping a school was still regarded as an Anglican preserve. To condemn your opponents to ignorance is perhaps the most deadly of all forms of persecution. In time, however, this wore out also, and Quaker schools had liberty to exist. But there was no way of training -or educating teachers, who must have been almost wholly self-taught or imported from outside. There arise occasionally men whose thirst for knowledge will break through barriers and who are willing to accept the pittance paid to the schoolmaster in those days. John Taylor, the father of the founder of The Manchester Guardian, was brought in 1795 from the south to teach the newly-founded Friends' School in that town. In many parts of the North of England schools were attached to the Meeting Houses. Survivals of these schools are in existence still at Lancaster, Yealand and Wyresdale in North Lancashire, and at Newton-in-Bowland, just over the Yorkshire border, also at Long Sutton in Somerset. It was at Newton-in-Bowland that John Bright received the most significant part of his education. Two early Yearly Meeting Minutes run : As the want of proper Persons amongst Friends qualified for Schoolmasters hath been the Occasion of great damage to the Society in many places, as thereby well-disposed Friends, deprived of oppertunities for the Education of their Children in a manner Consistent with a Religious concern for their welfare, have been necessitated to send them to those of other perswasions whereby the Tender Minds of such Children have been in great danger of 1 See Journal F. Hist. Soe. iv. 131, v. 63, viii. 107 n, also references to Episcopal Visitations, J. F. H. S. n. 98, in. 28, iv. 30, v. 77, 78, vi. 169, vn. 19, Life of Richard Claridge, and Centenary History of Sidcot School, p. 13. The case of Richard Claridge in 1 708 which went against the clergy may have ended this attempt. n] ART AND EDUCATION 173 being leavened into the language. Customs, and habits of the World, from whence it is difficult afterwards to reclaim them : — We desire Friends would attend this important Point and in their Monthly Meetings assist young men of low Circumstances whose Genius and Conduct may be suitable to that Office, with the Means requisite to obtain the proper Qualifications, and when so qualified afford them the necessary Encouragement for their support. 1695. Advised that .Schools and Schoolmasters who are faithful Friends and well quallified, be placed and encouraged in all Counties, Cities, Great Towns or places where there may be need, and that such Schoolmasters (as much as may be) sometimes correspond with one another for their help and improvement, in such good easie Methods as are most agreeable to the Truth, and the Children's advantage and benefit, and that care be taken that poor Friends' children may freely partake of such education in order to apprienticeship. During the early part of the eighteenth century the matter was constantly under consideration at the Yearly Meeting, and the minds of Friends were ripe for a national school. 6. Between 1700 and 1740 minutes were sent down twenty-seven times by the Yearly Meeting on the subject1. At this juncture, Dr John Fothergill, the famous London physician, along with his friend John Barclay, came across the country branch of the London Foundling Hospital standing empty at Ackworth near Pontefract in York shire. They bought it at their own risk and the Yearly Meeting confirmed their action, took over the property, and established Ackworth School in the year 1779* After several amateurs had tried their hands, the first satis factory headmaster, Robert Whittaker, was brought from a little Friends' School at Crawshawbooth in Lancashire ; and people who could teach writing and reading and accounts were found with some difficulty in various parts of' the country and brought to Ackworth. Thus was established what grew into a system of schools which owed 1 J. S. Rowntree, History of Ackworth School. 2 A full account is to be found in Dr John Fothergill and his Friends, a standard record, by R. Kingston Fox, M.D. 174 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. but httle to tradition, and so had almost everything to discover; which had no opportunity of touch with a University, and in which the efforts of the management were concentrated on conduct to a quite remarkable degree. Thomas Scattergood came over from Philadelphia to see the new institution, and on his return the Friends there estabhshed Westtown Boarding School on exactly similar lines, lines which it has retained much more com pletely than has Ackworth itself. 7. Ackworth School was followed at later dates by simhar Schools on a smaller scale, managed by local Friends, at Sidcot on the Mendips, and at Wigton in Cumberland. At Saffron Walden in Essex there is now settled a school of this type, older in its origin than Ackworth, and descended from the ' ' Workhouse ' ' established in Clerkenwell under the influence of John Bellers1 Boarding Schools of a more ele mentary and rather cheaper type exist at Penketh, half way between Manchester and Liverpool, at Rawdon, between Leeds and Bradford, among the Cleveland hills at Ayton in N. Yorkshire, and at Sibford, in the bosom of rural Oxfordshire. These schools were all for boys and girls; and they have for the most part dropped that separateness which formerly characterised their plan, and are worked co-educationahy, with varying degrees of thoroughness. Ackworth has found it best not to go very far in that direction. There are, among Friends, two Public Schools — as the word is usually understood in England — at Bootham, York — and at Leighton Park, Reading. These are, hke the less ambitious ones already mentioned, excehent schools. They foster the self-reliance and public spirit of the ordinary Public School boy, without so heavy a bond of convention and uniformity as sometimes limits his individuality and intehectual development. Their range of studies is wider, and consequently less specialised. The 1 See Book IV, Chapter 1. ii] ART AND EDUCATION 175 training and education of teachers for boys was provided for by a small college cahed the Flounders Institute, which was founded at Ackworth in 1848; and during its later years removed to Leeds. It has now been changed into a scholarship scheme, the valuable exhibitions being tenable at any University. Ah our schools are only partly filled by Friends. At the Mount, York, there is a very well-known, even famous, school for girls — a sister school to the boys' school at Bootham. It has a department for the training of teachers. In Ireland there are schools for boys at Waterford and for girls at Mountmehick, Queen's County, of the Ackworth type, and others, of a more elementary type, at Lisburn and Brookfield in Ulster. Friends began to go in some numbers to Cambridge about 1881, and to Oxford later. Before that time very few could be found at either place. The teachers belonged to the University of London. The Universities Tests Act only dates from 1873. No denominational college or hostel has ever been tried by Friends at the old Universities. Such an attempt would be seriously out of place. But attached to the strongest of the modern Universities is the Dalton Hall of Residence, founded in 1876 by Friends at Man chester. A Central Education Committee with a professional Secretary, an annual educational sitting of the Yearly Meeting, and an annual reunion of the Teachers' Guild, keep some cohesion and a close sense of a common purpose, among this little band of Schools, which are almost as well defined an imperium in imperio in the educational world as the Society itself is among the Churches. 8. Whatever value Quakerism has is due to the fact that its ministry has always been unpaid and open to all; but unfortunately unpaid means untrained professionally. The absence of ministerial training coheges has had a disastrous indirect effect upon the education of the Society at large. The training of the clergy has been largely 176 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. responsible for either the origin or the maintenance of many ancient Universities, and if the Society had needed a seat of learning for its ministry, that institution, by all the laws of the growth of institutions, would have developed into a general University College. The process can be seen most clearly by contrasting the Puritan and the Quaker settle ments in America. New England required trained preachers, therefore Harvard and Yale came into existence, and have been the mother Universities of America. Pennsylvania required no trained ministers, and the William Penn Charter School represented the highest effort of the colony in the way of education. The result is that the intellectual primacy of America has always dwelt at Boston, and not at Philadelphia. So the Society in England has had no intellectual centre such as Manchester College in all its wanderings has provided for the Unitarians. The remedy has been forthcoming only in our own day by the establishment of Woodbrooke at Selly Oak, Birmingham, through the generosity of George Cadbury. Here we do not train ministers even now, but we offer to young men and women periods for the study of Biblical and theological subjects, so that they may, whilst retaining an entirely lay position, be better qualified, should preaching or religious teaching fah to them. They often stay only one or two terms and are obliged to be content with that much by way of stimulus, but the tendency is for the period of residence to lengthen, and the influence of the institu tion is permeating the Society everywhere and doing good wherever it penetrates. More than half the students are women, which shows how difficult it is for men to break away for a while from business or professional engage ments. Many come from foreign countries, so that there are now missionaries of Quaker thought to be found in Holland, Norway, France and North America, who have been trained at Woodbrooke. In addition to its theological and Biblical side the Woodbrooke Settlement, as it is not ii] ART AND EDUCATION 177 quite rightly called, has had from the beginning a social study side, for the cure of poverty. We consider that to be at the heart of our calling. The object of this educational system was well put in the report of an Education Commission which, under appointment from the Yearly Meeting, reported on the Schools in 1919. "This conception of education as the enrichment and freeing of the individual soul, that it may consecrate itself to Divine ends, is the distinctive basis of Quaker edu cational theory and practice." G. Q. CHAPTER III THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC i. Doubtless the total absence of hymns or of choir and organ has kept many from our Meetings and our fellowship. No Church whose chief object was to attract numbers would have adopted our ascetic habit. But I take towards it no apologetic attitude. I claim it as a sign of reality and a source of spiritual strength. The issue goes deep down into the very heart of human nature. It is not a trifling fashion or a temporary expediency. For better for worse, silence as the matrix of worship has made us what we are. 2- I believe, then, that aesthetic sensibility appertains to a level of our being different from and nearer the surface than religious perception, than vision and spiritual power : and that when the former is used to stimulate the latter, as it may, it is apt to be mistaken for it, or even to take its place. I believe further that this process is bad for the soul and demorahsing to character. To examine this position it will be weh to take a wide range. Of all the forms of Christianity the Orthodox Greek Church in Russia is the most ornate and splendid in ritual and in music. It is also much the most degraded. Politic ally it was in close alhance with a barbarous despotism. It has carried on a series of religious persecutions — of Stundists, Doukhobors and others, not in the interests of religion or of truth, but by Pobiedonostseff's own confes sion, for pohtical, that is ultimately for military, reasons — to maintain the uniformity desired by the military tyrant of Holy Russia. Everything that is excellent and of good report in Russia is in arms against the Church, whose clergy are ignorant and immoral, and whose source of power is pure superstition. But its music is famous. ch. iii] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC 179 The Roman Catholic Church, the next most decorated and musical, is considered by Protestants to be a long way behind the Reformed Churches in all that reahy purifies the soul. I share this view, but do not propose to occupy these pages with an attack on the Papacy. " Le clericahsme c'est l'ennemi" is the inmost conviction of the most Uluminated spirits in Catholic countries. It is beyond doubt, too, that Romanism has its chief strongholds among the less developed European peoples. But it is keenly devoted to Church music. Among the less or more musical of the Protestant Churches I am ill qualified to draw distinctions, and averse to doing anything so invidious. The differences are chiefly concerned with the quality rather than the frequency or urgency of the musical appeal. Asking, finally, how it has fared with the Society of Friends, who have done without music in worship alto gether — I do not think any critics would accuse us of being either irreligious or demoralised, as compared with church or chapel goers. One would tend, then, to mistrust the effectiveness of the blissful or adoring instincts which are called into sensation by musical services, if they are to be made the doorway to God. The effect of lovely organ music, of anthems sung by white-robed boys and men, under glowing glass and carven organ screen topped by trumpet ing angels, — all this produces the kind of effect nowadays loosely but inaccurately called hypnotic. It raises the tension of the feelings ; it draws away from the dull daily round of detail; it is beautiful and restful. But it stops there. One's favourite sins retain their hold. Render unto beauty of sense the things that are hers ; but they are not known by their fruits to be the same as the things that are God's. 3. If we carry our inquiry beyond Christianity we find the Dionysiac worship satisfying the same need for 12 — 2 180 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. emancipation, in wine and song. Bernard Shaw, in Major Barbara, speaks of the Salvation Army as Dionysiac. This is a half truth, or is even less than half true — but the Army drums doubtless appeal to this same subliminal region as other less loud forms of sensational appeal. The whole machinery of revivals is built up out of hymns; such revivals are not reahy what they appear at the time, and their converts, (a solid remnant always excepted) , are unstable, and less easy to reclaim for religion after their conversion and lapse than they were before. Musicians, music teachers, choir men, singers in oratorio, are not better than ordinary men. They have of course a touch of what we sympathetically call the artistic tem perament. The costly and elaborate training of choirs, and the provision of instruments disillusion me. Why ah this financial fuss and all this shopping? What has this to do with prayer and communion? One sees through the ihusion too easily. Much is lost from worship, even aes thetically. Few things are so impressive to a stranger as sitting in the silence, a silence filled with events, of a Friends' Meeting. The silence may last half an hour — a half hour of peace, not of fidgeting for something to happen. I conclude that my thesis has much to commend it. 4. At first sight there may not appear to be much difference between a thought expressed in word or in song. But in practice there is. In the sixties, at a time when the more ardent spirits in the Society were breaking away from our ancient seclusion, and desiring to learn from others, the Yearly Meeting laid it down that any Friend might sing a solo hymn on his or her own initiative if it felt right to do so. But it is not done, has not been done by more than two or three people. The artist is too much in evidence, the performer is therefore shy and self-conscious. The only way to have singing is to have hymn books about, and for all to join. Not permanently, either, whl a congregation tolerate the haphazard giving out of hymns by an irre- iii] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC 181 sponsible individual. Nor will bad music survive if there is money obtainable. Thus we come to a carefuhy organised musical service, common to all popular religions always, but fatal to the Quaker idea, fatal to the individual's chance of self- expression or of reserve. The spirit of the worshipper is dragged about by congregational necessity, to praise and thankfulness when there may be no hope in his heart, to penitence when there is no present consciousness of sin, to express faith in Christ where strenuous self-examination is really the immediate need. The bitter soul sings glad words, the proud uses words of humility. 5. Thus words become cheap and insincere. A careful economy and a sense of responsibility in the use of words about sacred things, have grown up among Friends. Hymns violate this sensitive truthfulness. The world's religion is choked with words — voluble religious utterance is perhaps the poorest form of professional work now done among men; and, to do the speakers justice, they do not, generally, receive much for it. Indeed, that they often receive so httle is a crying scandal of the system. This repulsive cheapness in the use of words is even more distressing when the words form parts of a prayer, apparently addressed to God. It is not in human nature to follow really the manifold output of devout feeling expressed by powerful and weighty words in the Anglican Church Service. Any one who, every week, to say nothing of every day, covered the whole range of confession for sin and comprehensive prayer in the morning and evening services would go mad. We are not made to be so prodigal of emotion. One emotional experience is quite enough for one attendance at Church, and may be one more than is quite common. Such a range of spiritual exercise stifles each single experience, and leaves a sort of blurred feeling of vague piety behind. The statements are not ah con sistent with one another; for instance, who would pray " that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy" 182 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. with effectual faith, when he knows that next time he will say without reserve that he has done those things which he ought not to have done, and left undone those things which he ought to have done; and that there is no health in him. Whither has simplicity and sincerity gone ? Crowded out by words pre-ordained by the clergy of Queen Ehzabeth. 6. The impromptu prayers of Nonconformist clergy have the merit of initiative and, within limits, of variety. I know that they are a great burden and difficulty to some of my ministerial friends. And no wonder. At a fixed hour, for a conventional number of minutes, with a headache or without it, twice or three times in the day, often twice in a service, the man has to make himself the thinker and the speaker of a miscellaneous company in their approach to God. He, of all men, cannot call his soul his own. We have none of us the right to call our souls our own, where our duty is to have a priestly function to one another, unofficial and voluntary ; but it is an iron-bound devitalised communion that has to be voiced, just for convenience, by a particular man, who earns his living thereby, at a certain point just after the Bible reading. The need for comprehensiveness leads in some Churches to wearisome length in prayer. Every personal prayer is short. All this does not prevent us enjoying Church music as an aesthetic stimulus, and benefiting from it, as we would from an opera or a serious play. Even now there rever berates many a time in my Quaker ears from the days of college chapels the ancient chant: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost ; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." 7. Let me indulge in another reminiscence. Afternoon service is going forward in Westminster Abbey. The glorious music of the white-robed choir is sounding beyond the radiant windows, glowing with the afternoon sun, up to the dim roof far above. All is ancient ill] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC 183 and honourable and at peace. To be sure the words of the service do not matter — are indeed hardly audible, and difficult for a Quaker listener to fohow. He has come for a rest from very practical duties outside, with which this intoned ceremony appears to have little to do. It belongs to another order of things from the moral issues being fought out in the white light of day in the Houses of Parliament and the stately offices round about where the government of the Empire is being carried on, with all its freight of good and evil. There would seem not to be any moral value in the service; but there is an undoubted aesthetic value, deeply felt with its blessing of harmony and rest, by the tired stranger in the stalls. He thinks, as he leans back there and tries to look up as far as the roof, of those plain meeting houses where he and his fellows, in much poverty of the outward, are trying to achieve the Kingdom of God on earth. How much, he reflects, we Friends give up. What a store of beauty and refreshment we have voluntarily abandoned. Many persons who have given up the opera and the play find, in their ritual, satisfaction for the aesthetic cravings otherwise denied them. Abbey services are "the opera and drama of the monk1." Formerly we abandoned both. Some few Friends now never go to the concert room, or the theatre, or the ball room ; others go but sparingly, and not as part of their regular routine of recreation. Along another line of indulgence, again, the decanter does not often adorn our tables, and some amongst us have given up the use of meat and tobacco as well. Assuredly the list of our abstentions is a long one. What do we get in exchange? Is it all worth while? Are we right in not satisfying every taste of our nature as many of our fellows do? The burden of proof would appear to lie with us, who separate ourselves from the common ways of men. 8. There can be no doubt that either of two things may 1 Ruskin, Modern Painters, part iv, chap. iv. § 19. 184 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. happen. We may become narrow in sympathy, dull of intellect and feeling, harsh in judgment, bigoted in opinion, and victims to spiritual pride; more and more despising the judgment of a world over which we have less and less influence. Or, on the other hand, we may acquire a sensi tiveness of perception, a delicacy of feeling, which comes from the sedulous purity of the ascetic who has refused to be charmed by the actress, or to build his amusement on the damaged life of a chorus girl. We may have an acute and direct sympathy with actual pain and need, because our instincts have not been blunted by too frequent vicarious sympathy with fictitious tragedy. We may preserve a clear eye for truth, because we have never allowed ourselves to get comfort from religious forms which meant nothing to us, and religious teachings which were incredible. We may be able to maintain a conscience void of offence, inasmuch as neither the drunkard nor (with some) the slaughtered beasts owe any part of their suffering to our actions. In what then do the saint and the bigot differ? Why has asceticism brought spiritual reward to one and spiritual loss to the other? I believe it is because in the case of the man whom asceticism narrows and sours, pride is mixed in with his habit of mind; if we become proud of our puri ties and our sanctities, our self denials and our difference from the ordinary run of mankind, we are spiritually the worse for the exercise. That character is only too familiar in the religious world. If we can keep out spiritual pride, I think we shah find it no loss but really great gain to enter on the simple Quaker life. We can still find our enjoyment in that lovely outdoor world of water, wood and sky, of radiant sunrises and restful sunsets, of glorious flowers and butterflies, in which we are, I beheve, intended to find an unlimited recreation and an undiluted joy. Moreover, the world of poetry, drama and fiction is richly ours ; so is music, and so are all the plastic arts ; we need not starve our taste or our imagination. A beautiful statue need not in] THE REWARD OF THE ASCETIC 185 be alive to be admired. A picture of York Minster over the fireplace implies no religious insincerity. Our greatest reward of all, however, is in the fact that our religion is within ourselves, is wholly independent of church, or priest, or song; it is where no man can take it from us ; it is singularly free from the claims and the cost of an elaborate organisation ; it fulfils the aspiration of the prophet who looked forward to the time when "They shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ' Know the Lord ' : for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them." 9. Beauty is one of the ultimate things of experience ; a perception and a joy which exists for itself alone. Most of the instincts, emotions and thinkings of men have a plain purpose in gaining livelihood, ensuring safety or maintain ing the race. We have such faculties and senses as have been found terrestrially useful at our stage of the evolution of man. But the love of beauty has no survival value. It is among the rewards of survival. Beauty dwells not in out ward objects, of course, but is a perception within us, which certain outward things which we call beautiful, evoke. Who shall penetrate to the great mystery and answer the question "What is it that makes any person or thing beautiful? " It seems to me beyond complete analysis. We can see that fitness, shown as health, vigour, symmetry, enters into it. To say that harmony and proportion and rhythm enter, is true, but is not the last word. It is somehow a kind of happy response we make to what is as it should be under the purpose of God; our response is God's response. We are thus, in the creation and pursuit and protection of beauty, doing our proper task, and entering closely into fellowship with God. If the ecclesiastical Trinity is falling into the background of thought, is not a true Trinity, a three in one, to be found in Love, Truth and Beauty, as expressing the nature of God? The mistake of the churches has been to confuse the quests for Love and Truth, the harder moral quests, for 186 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. hi the sake of which pubhc worship ultimately exists, with the enjoyment of certain beautiful appeals to the eye and the ear. Wherein lies the proper beauty of worship, the beauty of a simple Friends' Meeting? It lies in fellowship, in communion in God, felt and authentically known, but disturbed rather than evoked by the organ pipes. Beauty is not put into the Quaker service ; it comes out of it. A Friends' Meeting is, to an ordinary ritual service, very much what a hand-made article is to one made by machinery. Machinery can produce things much more cheaply than they can be made by hand, and much more uniformly right. For routine use and every-day wear handicraft has everywhere failed before machinery. In the article made by hand the threads may not be perfectly uniform, the dyes may run a little, the carving is wanting in perfect uniformity of balance and in smoothness of surface or edge. Nevertheless there is a charm about a hand-made article, and also a durability, which machinery cannot give. The craftsman has given it his personal touch ; it is in more direct association with humanity ; there is in it greater room for variety of design and freedom of inven tion, there are the marks of loving care upon it, and as a rule it will long outwear the product of the machine. Even so in a Friends' Meeting. The ministry is varied and irregular, both in its occurrence and in its quality, and the personal hand of the craftsman is apt to show itself in a lack of uniform excellence and success, but it possesses a subtle aroma of spontaneous expression and real feeling which to us more than make up for its hand-made qualities. It is, again, costly and difficult to be an active and faithful Friend, and much cheaper to join in the elaborate eccle siastical machinery which is provided for the public ; but we claim that it wears well, and that it has for us a charm that we would not abandon, in comparison with which the ordinary worship of the churches is as moonlight unto sunhght and as water unto wine. CHAPTER IV THE MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH1 I. Inasmuch as religion is a relation between the soul and God, anything of a Church constitution, of outward laws, and the precedence of one man above another in Church office, anything of external ritual, have at first sight nothing to do with it. At the same time, these institutions have always existed, and we may be thus led to suspect that our view of an isolated personal relationship between the outward man and the inward voice of God is not a complete account of the matter; for we have universally felt the value of communion with others, and the great help that we can receive from one another. There should be an opportunity for the public utterance of the common faith, and for the giving of help to those who may be at a weak point in their career. Public worship is desirable as a fly wheel, to carry the timid heart or wavering will over the dead point. Also the valuable check which the presence and criticism of others give to what might become the vagaries of an isolated religious history is not to be safely avoided. Moreover, Christian feeling works itself out in mutual helpfulness in outward things, in financial assistance as well as in moral support ; and these have to be arranged for. It seems as though fellowship was an essential part of worship, and that in communion with other people we 1 In this and the next Chapter my indebtedness to Dr Lindsay's The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, 1903, is great and continuous. I have gained little by turning to other authori ties except Harnack. The Christian Church and the Society of Friends in particular owe a great debt to the United Free Church of Scotland for this work by the Principal of their Glasgow College. 188 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. get into closer touch with the spirit of God than we could alone; in fact, that if it be true that the Divine Spirit finds its earthly centres of activity in the lives of men, surely by getting into right relations of helpfulness and love towards men we are doing just that same thing towards God. We dwelt upon this in Book I, Chap. I. 2. But this has brought with it inevitably great dangers to the purity of our faith. Spiritual pride has resulted from a sharp distinction arising between those within and those without. Attendance at worship has sometimes superseded the virtue which it was intended to subserve. Formalities in prayer and praise have deadened the hfe of the spirit. Orthodoxy has raised its head in pride and sanctified its own ignorance. The private life of the membership has often been unduly interfered with; and, finally, the autocracy, the ambition and the avarice of priesthoods, have come in and atrophied Christianity. It is plainly our task to value the organisa tion far enough to maintain it and to be loyal to it in loving fellowship, but, at the same time, to keep it simple, fluid, elastic, unprofessional. That is to say, we must care enough for our Society to be regular in the attendance of our meetings, and to be willing to take in simplicity a vocal part in them, or they will, on the one side, either vanish away into helplessness, or, on the other, become fixed in officialism. It will therefore be the next natural task to pass to the early development for good or evil of this institutional tendency in the Christian Church. 3. The Ministry practised in the earliest Christian Churches is fully recorded for us, in a way that admits of no mistake, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Each one had a song, or an exhortation, a revelation, or a piece of instruction. The ministry was exercised so freely by so many members of the congregation that it was necessary to specify that only one was to speak at once, and caution had to be given against supposing that everyone could possess iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 189 the more showy gifts. There is, therefore, no difficulty in seeing that the earliest Christian form of worship was, in manner and form, a Friends' meeting of the early enthu siastic type (1 Cor. xiv.). The important thing for us is to learn why it did not survive, and what were the forces which led to its super session by an official ministry. 4. This little piece of undoubted history, an island rising clear from a sea of opinion, chiefly inferential and conjectural, entirely destroys the doctrine that in a "church " definitely founded by Christ a ministry imparted by the laying on of hands was established and was main tained by an apostolical succession. The word " church " — Ecclesia in Greek and Latin — meant, among the Jews, the whole assembly of the people — the congregation of Israel gathered at the door of the Tabernacle. To the Greek it was the assembly of the city; the citizens of the free Greek city gathered together to do their business. The word "assembly" or "meeting," or "congregation," is therefore its plain meaning. The word is derived from a root meaning "called out " and refers to the people being called out by heralds. This was the case both with the Jews summoned by silver trumpets, and the Greeks summoned by a herald playing his horn. But this original derivation does not survive in the actual use of the word, which, like all other old words, had had its colour washed out by use. It had become an entirely plain common word, which carried with it no notion of a single organised "church," not a shred of assumption of any authority. It means an assembly, a gathering, and nothing more. It was used sometimes for the meetings of private religious associa tions, such as were those of the early Christians. There is every sign that the Christian assembly, in cluding the whole membership, was supreme. Matthias was elected to fill the place of Judas — the seven deacons were appointed — Barnabas was sent to Antioch — judg- 190 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. ment was passed upon the conduct of Peter at Caesarea and on the apostolic standing of Paul — by the assembly of the Church at Jerusalem. The whole community (see 2 Cor. vii.) had the duty of exercising discipline upon the lapsed. It was a democracy working under divine guidance. It was, in fact, a Friends' Monthly Meeting. There is in the New Testament no sign whatever of any speciahy holy times, places, or persons. Dr Lightfoot, in his Commentary on Philippians, says that the Christians had a holy season extending all the year round — a temple as wide as the world, and the priesthood of all believers. This sacerdotal character of the whole Church held, down to the middle of the third century at least. Dr Lindsay says "the conception of a mutilated sacerdotalism, where one part of the Christian worship is alone thought of as the true sacrifice, and a small portion of the fellowship — the ministry — is declared to be the priesthood, did not appear until the time of Cyprian, in 250 a.d., and was his inven tion1." It may be noted that Cyprian is a very favourite Christian father with Anglican divines. In Cyprian's time the Bishops became the rulers of the Church, and his editor has no need to allude to the historically trouble some Epistle to the Corinthians. On the other hand, the moral corruptions of the Church were not yet striking or scandalous nor the Papal claims admitted. The Church was Catholic but not Roman Catholic. If we Friends look back for support to the first century, it is natural that the Anghcan churches should look to the third and fourth. 5. Christians met for a longtime in one another's houses. There are many references to such house meetings in the Acts of the Apostles and in the final chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. The church of St Pietro in Montorio, near the Colosseum in Rome, has in its foundations the remnant of the earliest extant Christian church, and the present church, which succeeded it, is itself modehed on the atrium 1 The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, p. 903. iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 191 or central hall of a private house ; which shows that when a Christian architect was asked to design a church, he modelled it upon the meeting rooms to which he had been accustomed. The remarkable domesticity of it ah comes out weh in the rubric called "The Liturgy of St Clement," where, before the Lord's Supper was to be celebrated, the order was given — "mothers take up your children." They were to be kept safely on their mothers' knees and not allowed to run about at the solemn moment. So that the drawing room, or even the big kitchen, was the only holy place till the end of the second century. Dr Lindsay suggests that the heavenly worship de scribed in the Book of Revelation is probably modelled upon the Christian worship of the author's time, but such an inference seems to me a very dangerous way of using the historic imagination, only to be excused by the great lack of more reliable material. There is no reason, for instance, why the spectacular heavenly worship of apocalyptic vision should not be derived from the temple worship of the Jews, or coloured by the contemporary worship of the Greek gods as much as — or more than — by the simple meetings of Christian people in their houses. Certainly the older faiths presented a better model for a glorious ritual. Psalms or hymns did clearly form part of primitive Christian worship; the apostle does not say whether they were recited or were sung, but from other passages in the New Testament it is plain that the singing of hymns did take place. From the words "each one hath a psalm," it is to be concluded that the singing was individual, and that if there was joining in by the congregation it was spon taneous, not by an organised choir. I am much indebted to Dr Lindsay for his valuable book, but in his consideration of this early worship, he makes it fohow the model of Presbyterian or Nonconformist services, bending it to suit his acquired ideas beyond what I should have expected. 192 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. 6. Speaking with tongues is another early feature which we cannot omit to mention. Those who would simply explain it as disjointed utterance, not easy to understand, rugged and ejaculatory, give a very insufficient account of the phenomenon. It was reproduced among the Irvingites two generations ago, and the records of revivalism furnish not a few other parahels. The trance utterances of child preachers or of preaching mediums give the real clue to the nature of this obscure and not very edifying phe nomenon. One would say that in ordinary edification, lecturing or teaching, the faculties of the outward man, his knowledge, his reason, are alone engaged. In prophetic ministry, which is a revelation of divine truth fresh every time, these outward faculties are reinforced by an out-rush of spiritual power, which is nevertheless under the control of the will, is checked by. the intellect, is submitted to reason, is expressed comprehensibly, audibly and in telligently, and so constitutes a blend of the inward and outward faculties, which is, surely, the most effective form of ministry possible to the combined, the integrated, faculties of a man. Beyond this comes that ecstatic utterance in which the inward activity, whatever it may be, the work of the spirit, of the soul, of faculty which psychical researchers call "subhminal," has taken pos session of the whole man and speaks unchecked by the outward faculties which are, for the present, in abeyance. Here impulse riots unchecked, and the speaker, as a rule, does not know what his lips have been uttering, unless he happens, as Paul says, to possess the gift of interpretation also. Speaking with tongues then was an emotional ecstasy, showy and wonderful, but really a smaller thing than the co-ordination of the inward and outward in the saner messages of prophecy. Paul declared it of no value as a recommendation of the faith to the outsider, only useful among the speaker's friends and fellow saints, and then iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 193 only as a sign that a good man's spirit was in active exercise. The gift of tongues is not all alike; trance utterances have not always been scrappy and without significance. I have myself heard a spiritualist trance speaker give acute and well-reasoned utterances of good intellectual value when he purported to be — and I think was — unconscious of what he was saying1- 7. In one particular the Christian worship of those days, as ordered by Paul, differed from our Friends' Meetings — at least in so far as Paul's instruction was obeyed that the women should not speak in the Churches ; evidently they had been speaking and they may have gone on doing so. His experience had probably been unfortu nate, and his veto must be judged as suitable for a place and a time; but we will venture to say that where women's ministry is exercised to-day, it represents an improvement upon the Corinthian model. There had been the ministry of women before Paul wrote the First Epistle to the Corin thians; we hear that Philip the Evangelist had four daughters who did prophesy, and Prisciha must have exercised ministry very extensively. Unfortunately the Christian Church has forgotten the strong and permanent features of Pauline Christianity, and cherished its local limitations. We must remember that when Paul wrote respectable ladies took no part in public life and dwelt indoors for the most part, that the Hetairae were the public women of the time, and the Apostle was anxious that the Church should not give rise to scandal. By using the gifts of women, giving us a note which women alone can strike, we have enriched our meetings. They have a family completeness about them missed where men only preach. 8. The congregation at Corinth was mixed in race and class, profoundly excited by a new revelation of the 1 This is not the place to argue the point whether foreign languages were miraculously spoken. G.Q. *3 194 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. meaning of hfe, and unaccustomed to organised worship; it may even have contained a number of cranks and rebels against all order. We know, at any rate, that the excite ment was often such that careless visitors who came as on lookers sometimes fell down to the ground on finding the secrets of their hearts revealed by the prophetic ministry. At the love feasts the congregation met for a social meal in memory of the Last Supper. There were also church meetings, congregational business meetings, which dealt with arbitrations, with certificates of removal to other churches, with the movements of travelling preachers and their expenses, with disownment or milder forms of discipline, with collections, with sufferings under persecu tion. The Apostle Paul's letters are never addressed to any authority controlling the church from above. There were, of course, those who were elders, and to whose guidance and control the Apostle urged the congregation to be faithful. There will always be leading and influential Friends, but it was, as I hope it still is with us, a case in which service and leadership went together. Men had influence because they deserved it, according to the excellent Christian principle that the greatest among us shall be he that serveth. 9. The first step in organisation that occurred in the Christian community was when the seven deacons were appointed to serve tables, attend to the widows, and under take the control of the community in its practical affairs. This division was the beginning of a division which is found all through the apostolic period, and can be traced in the sub-apostohc writings, such as the Didache, the Pastor of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apology of Justin Martyr, and the writings of Irenaeus ; it is also found in the Christian hterature which does not belong to the main stream of the Church's history — among the Gnostics, the Marcionites and the Montanists. The distinction ceases to be an essential one, or one inherent in the very idea of the iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 195 ministry, when we get down as far as Tertulhan, a.d. 200, but it does not cease entirely. Among the various difficult, controverted and doubtful points, this is agreed. 10. This great distinction was between the ' ' prophets " and the local church officers, viz. elders or Presbyters, overseers or Episcopi, and deacons. These three latter classes were the office bearers in the church — small meetings' committee, non-members' committee, cohection committee, meeting-house committee, elders and overseers. The prophets, on the other hand, exercised a ministry such as is perfectly comprehensible to us, but which Dr Lindsay, less well informed, states has never occurred — or anything like it — since the end of the third century. The prophet delivered a message, he expounded a revelation, some times he had a vision to tell — sometimes he explained in surprising fashion what was in the mind of his hearers; at all times he gave his soul and all he had to his work. If successful, he brought with him light, stimulus, con viction. The prophets were officials of no church; many of them were wandering ministers held in high honour, esteemed for their work's sake, and treated as befitting mouthpieces of the Lord; but not more official, and not more authoritative, than a Friends' "recorded" minister to-day. It must not however be supposed that though theh functions differed, they constituted an entirely separate set of individuals from the local officials. A man might be both a prophet and an episcopus or overseer ; but the two qualifications were separate, just as a recorded minister may be on a financial committee. The local ministry also included even from early days some teaching and exhorta tion — probably the holding of Bible classes and the duty of presiding at the Eucharist in the absence of a prophet. 11. This prophetic ministry, for the preservation of which the Society of Friends now chiefly exists as a separate Church, consisted of three classes — " apostles, prophets and teachers." The prophets were simply those who were 13—2 196 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. prophetic ministers such as I have described without specialised functions. Their service was mostly within the borders of the Christian communities; but there were two specialised types of the prophetic ministry, the apostles and the teachers. We must rid our minds of the idea that in early days an Apostle meant always one of the Twelve. The word apostle means "one who is sent forth " ; it means simply a missionary. The apostles were those who broke fresh ground in the surrounding mass of heathenism. "They laid the foundation and others built thereon." They were not appointed to an office in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, but devoted to a work of missionary activity. We whl examine the use of the word in order to justify this statement. In the first place our Lord declared Himself to be an apostle or "one sent" from the Father, and as the Father had sent Him, so He sent others in His Name to be His apostles. First, we have the twelve who were sent forth to the villages of Israel; then we have Matthias, who was dedicated to the same "service and sending forth " with the eleven. Then came Paul, an apostle called by inward vision. We next have a class sent by the Christian communities as "apostles of the churches " — translated "messengers of the churches " in the text, under the idea of the translators that there were but twelve apostolic apostles; but the margin tells the truth and gives the Greek word (2 Cor. viii. 23). Barnabas also was an apostle (Acts xiv. 14; Gal. ii. 9). In the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans Andronicus and Junia are described as "of note among the apostles," which most naturally means notable apostles. (I have used the term "Junia" instead of "Junias" on the theory that she was a woman ; so if this be correct we have a woman not only as a prophet but as an apostle.) Silas and Timothy appear to be classed as apostles who had not been burdensome to the Thessalonians, and Apollos would seem to be included with Paul in 1 Cor. iv. 9. Epaphroditus is called "your iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 197 apostle" in Phil. ii. 25. Then there are those ironically called "preeminent apostles " and plainly, "false apostles," who worried Paul among the Christian Corinthians. They were missionaries, but bad ones. In the Didache we read "every apostle who cometh to you, let him be received as Lord." These kept the original apostolic instruction to "provide you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff." The regulations for the treatment of travelhng apostles in the Didache are very clear. He shall not remain except for one day; if however, there be need, then the next day ; but if he remain three days he is a false prophet. But when the apostle departeth, let him take nothing except bread enough till he lodge again; but if he ask for money, he is a false prophet. When the apostle Paul tried to justify his apostleship, his principal argument was not any documentary authority or epistle from James, but " Ye are the seal of my apostle ship." It was not an office, it was a work. The distinction between the ordinary early apostle and the eleven survivors of the first band was therefore simply that the latter had known Christ in the flesh and had been under his personal influence. This experience is one that cannot be communicated by laying on of hands. There could be no successor in that personal experience. It is interesting that in lands where Greek is sthl spoken, the missionary of the modern Greek church is sthl called " Hierapostolos " (Holy Apostle). The delegates of the Archbishop of Canterbury's mission to the Nestorians are regularly called apostles by the Syrians of Urmi. So are the priests who itinerate in modern Greece. (Lindsay.) 12. Having thus clearly reached an idea of the work of prophets, and of the special department of prophetic work undertaken by apostles, we can understand the 198 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. passages in the New Testament which deal with their support. They were worthy of great honour, but, as Dr Lindsay happily remarks, the word rifiij means not only honour but honorarium. The passages therefore in which the Apostle Paul claims his right to a maintenance, are claims made by a foreign missionary necessarily far from home, and wholly absorbed in his work1. He saw its dangers, nevertheless, and cherished the independence which he could achieve by tent-making, whilst at the same time admitting the Tightness of the maintenance of the missionary by the converts. There is nothing throughout the New Testament which gives any sanction to the payment of resident clergy. The beginnings of such a plan are to be found in the Didache, about 135 A.D. But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy of his support. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy, like the workman, of his support. Every first-fruit then of the products of the wine-press and the threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take and give to the prophets; for they are your high priests. But if ye have no prophet give it to the poor. If thou makest a baking of bread, take the first of it and give according to the commandment. In like manner also when thou openest a jar of wine or oil, take the first of it and give it to the prophets; and of money and clothing and every possession take the first, as may seem right to thee, and give according to the commandment. This parallel to the high priesthood is a fatal case of the influence of Judaism upon Christianity. Christian priests have been modelled upon Jewish ones. But this priestly thought was not realised and acted on till the time of Cyprian, 250 a.d. As yet the prophets were in the position of "poor Friends," like the widows and confessors under persecution. The one check on the great influence of the prophets was that they had to be tested by the witness of the spirit in the congregation. Paul asked them to apply this test 1 Treated more fully in Chapter vi. § 4. iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 199 in his own case. The test of the genuineness of the gift appears to have lain mainly in whether it echoed the spirit of Jesus and was loyal to Him. "Every spirit which con fesseth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." This principle of fidelity to the Gospel was doubtless sound and needful in an age where the dying system of the Olympian gods was everywhere giving way to many a fervent Eastern faith. 13. Little need be said about the third division of the prophetic ministry — the teachers, but their inclusion with the apostles and the prophets among the inspired founders of Christianity is to me matter of deep encour agement. One is apt to draw the very true distinction between that which appeals to the head, purely by way of knowledge and argument, and that which appeals to the heart by way of stimulus, devotion and faith; — between the cold dry light of intellect and the white heat of moral passion we draw habitually a clear distinction. And they are distinct; but here we find the intellect transfigured and glorified by feeling; we find instruction walking in heavenly places ; we find doctrine illuminated by hope ; we find in reasoned thought cogent sanction for the moral life. That is to say, that we who to-day would follow in the footsteps of the prophetic ministers of the first century, we who feel that we have in the "public Friends" of the seventeenth century their clear descendants and our equally clear forerunners, we also need not fear putting our brains into our preaching. The materials of teaching may be driven home with hammer blows of conviction, with the penetrating power of a gospel message. Only let us take heed that our material is ignited, that we do not offer to our Friends the -well-laid combustibles of a fire never lighted, that we be no mere hewers of wood and heavers of coal to a people who want to be warmed1. This combination in the first century has, I think, 1 See later Chapter on Ministry in Practice. 200 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. been repeated constantly since. Scottish divines have often been striking examples of this combined power, and the Evangelical revival was full of it also. So is liberal theology now. Nothing is more remarkable than that this great force of prophets — men personally held in the highest veneration in the early Church and in real control over it through their personal qualities — never became its officials, and are not the ancestors of its bishops. It was not without good reason that these Christian preachers were called by the name of prophet, the name familiar — central indeed — in the history of the Jews. They were, in fact, the successors of the Old Testament prophets, whose light had long been lost, who lived in the great days from the eighth to the fifth centuries before Christ. We see the continuity better now that we have ceased to regard the prophets as mainly concerned with foretelling the Messiah, and realise that they were bearers of a message of righteousness, of punishment or of hope to their own age, and that their predictions were of the same nature as those which a preacher thundering against sin in national crisis or in exile might predict to-day. Over against them stood the ever-present, ever-aggressive priest. The story is repeated in Christianity, whose priests in the end choked off its prophets. Our indignation, however, should not be concentrated upon the priests individually; they gain their power from a demoralised or unspiritual people, who will not think and cannot worship without their aid. 14. We now begin the story of organisation which is to lead us far. It begins, as we have already noted, with the appointment about the year a.d. 34 of the seven deacons to serve tables. "Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men." It is pointed out by Lindsay that the Hebrew village community used to be ruled by a small corporation of iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 201 seven men, as the Hindu village is managed to-day by a Council of Five ; and the " Seven " was a title as well-known in Palestine as the "Five" is now in India. That is why it seemed the proper and usual thing to have a committee of seven. 15. There is an interesting point also about the leader ship of the Church at Jerusalem, which from the time of Acts xii. 17, onwards, was under the presidency of James, the eldest surviving brother of the Lord. Eusebius tells us that after the martyrdom of James and the fall of Jerusalem, the remaining apostles and personal disciples of our Lord, with those who were related to Him in the flesh, unanimously elected Symeon as his successor. This Symeon was the son of Clopas, the brother of Joseph, according to Hegesippus, and therefore a first cousin of the Lord. The same writer tells us that in the fifteenth year of Domitian there still survived kinsmen of the Lord, grandsons of Judas, the brother of Jesus. The central government, nervous as usual, haled them to Rome and the emperor questioned them. They showed him their hands horny with holding the plough, and pleaded that their whole wealth consisted of thirty-nine acres of land, which they cultivated themselves. The emperor sent them back home in peace and "there they were made the rulers of the Church, because they had been martyrs and were of the lineage of the Lord." They lived till the reign of Trajan, and their names were James and Zoker1. At first sight this hereditary authority at the very fountain head of the Church seems anomalous, but it is said by Dr Lindsay that it is, and always has been, a common Oriental usage that the eldest surviving male member of the founder's family — whatever the relation ship — succeeds to the headship of a religious society. This is the law of succession to the Sultanate of Turkey — the Caliphate2 Truly all things in this world are continuous, 1 Lindsay, p. 120. 2 Expositor, 1887, Jan. to June, p. 326. 202 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. and, as the Epicureans said, in a perpetual flux, and we have none of us much that we have not received. 16. In like manner the Christian Church took its place as one among many religious fraternities or clubs, among which already the synagogues of the Jews of the dispersion were counted; Judaism was a religio licita. Christianity never was; it appears to have been first recognised in Rome by the authorities as a licensed burial club. These religious clubs had, of course, presiding officers, a managing committee, a treasurer and secretary; they called one another brothers and sisters; they kept a register of members; they included women who took part; they had common meals, sometimes of a Bacchanalian character. On this ground they were suppressed by Julius Caesar; so that when the Government began to find out the difference between Jews and Christians, the latter had no assured legal position. There is little doubt that the committee of presbyters or episcopi, with one episcopus or overseer who acted as treasurer, arose in the most natural way in the Christian fraternity. It is not necessary to suppose that there was any conscious imitation of the earlier clubs, simply that if you are organising a com munity you naturally organise it on familiar lines. 17. In any case, no time was lost in forming the neces sary organisation by the appointment of a managing com mittee. On his second missionary journey Paul appointed elders in Derbe, Lystra and Iconium, and we find that one of the duties of Timothy at Ephesus and of Titus in Crete was the appointment of elders. The pastoral epistles are of the first importance in our inquiry. Titus and Timothy were not permanent "bishops," in the modern or in any sense, of the Churches of which they were in charge, they were temporary deputies of the Apostle ; young missionaries set to do a piece of work for which Paul himself — the senior missionary — had not time. Their words do not give any early sanction to episcopacy, which would be as wholly iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 203 out of date in the first century as the Standard Oh Company would in the business of the Middle Age. It is well known that much uncertainty and contro versy exists about the authorship of these epistles. The "critical" view is that they were, for the most part, not written by Paul, but were compiled in his name at some date early in the second century. This argument is based on the difference of the vocabulary from that in Paul's other epistles, and in the ahusions to a more developed organisation than is otherwise believed to have existed in the time of Paul. It is not a matter which can be definitely decided either way: I always myself feel that, on the whole, the epistles are likely to be the work of Paul, with emendations in later days so as to fit his advice to later circumstances. The exact date, however, does not concern us now, for the picture that they give us of early Church organisation is, at any rate, a true picture, whatever its date; it describes the situation which existed near the beginning of the second century — if not earlier — and the difference of time is not very important. 18. The leading officers of the Church bore the title elders or presbyters, Trpeo-pvrepoi. The same men were also called -rroi/Meve or pastors, and iirio-Ko-jroi or overseers. The title of pastor or overseer was descriptive of their function; elder was descriptive of their status, just as an alderman might be chairman of the Watch Committee also. These words are always used in the plural, and there is no sign of any special presidency by any one Episcopus or overseer over the council of elders. The word "elder" is a common title of a person in authority, just as the word "alderman" among the Saxons and the word "senator" among the Romans had the same reference to age. The early history of the meaning of the word "pres byter" shows plainly that his functions were mainly administrative and judicial, rather than that of edifying 204 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. by word or doctrine. The elders of a city throughout the Old Testament were the judges of cases and the represent atives of order. The elders of the city had to deliver up the wilful murderer; they had to deal with the accidental homicide. It was before them that Boaz undertook the redemption of the inheritance of Elimelech. Many other hlustrations might be given. Throughout Jewish history there was not only the synagogue for worship but the Court, the aweSpiov or Sanhedrin, which was the seat of the elders; it met in the synagogue on week days for disciplinary and administrative work. These local courts were sanctioned by Rome and were in full service when Christianity entered the Jewries of the Dispersion. When a Jewish community turned over and became Christian, it kept naturally the old organisation and the old name. Among the Greeks, too, there had been a similar communal idea. Both the municipalities and the private associations had their committees of officers, and the word used for them is constantly one which implied seniority; the senate of a Greek city was a Gerousia. There is nothing unnatural in a Greek Christian society calling its managing committee by the name of elders. A letter from Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to a presbyter or elder at Philippi deals wholly with administration and disciphne. In modern days the relief of the poor of a congregation is a small matter relatively to its other activities, and is done quietly and in private where it is done at all. But the early Christian Church was very largely an organ of mutual helpfulness as weh as of common worship. The poor were exceedingly numerous among them. It is always the case that the poor are less fixed in their religious associations than the rich. Those of prominent rank and station have their reputation — and often their business or professional interests — bound up with their way of worship. They iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 205 belong to a social circle which centres around it. They have also, naturally, a more close appreciation of religious differences than those who are less educated. Quakerism, with its great fitness for the thoughtful and the educated Christian, makes, nevertheless, more progress amongst adult scholars than amongst University professors or wealthy traders. Those, then, who had no vested interest in the estabhshed religion more eashy gravitated to the new faith. In addition to this, the new faith appealed ol set purpose to the poor. "Blessed are ye poor," said our Lord, "for yours is the Kingdom of God," and "Woe unto you that are rich ! for ye have received your consolation." The poor therefore found in Christianity a new and mar vellous home in which human equality was more than a name, whereas in the pagan world it was hardly even a name. Therefore the Churches contained many poor people to begin with. Then the condition of the empire at large was one of widespread poverty and general economic strain. Lands were lying uncultivated, whose ancient owners had been khled in distant battle-fields, or sold into slavery by money lenders. Their descendants were a city mob with their cry for panem et circenses — food and amusement. Great fortunes and widespread poverty glared at one another as they do now. The provincial cities vied with Rome in the extent of their costly build ings. In Rome to-day the visitor may sthl see enough of the remains of that proud place to realise that the central area of the city — at least a mile by half a mile — was entirely occupied by costly marble buildings, whose stone had been quarried in Nubia or in the far East and North ; and the rest of the city was thickly dotted with vast buildings, such as Baths, of similar splendour. This wealth had all to be wrung from the toiler. Then to be a Christian was in itself to court poverty, imprisonment and loss of goods, and to produce widows and orphans for the Church to care for. Confessors in prison had to be fed; captives 206 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. to be ransomed. It was thought better and higher that widows should not re-marry; and there was a tendency to look upon marriage in any case as a second-best state. All this led to the increase of the number of virgins and widows who needed maintenance. Then there was the support of the prophetic preachers when they were travelling from place to place, and needed help and entertainment on their way. Any Christian stranger was welcomed into the family of the Lord on his travels, a plan which in time of course led to abuses and to the enforcement of certificates of membership. Some of the Church officers also came in as poor Friends. All this lent great importance to the Episcopi or Episcopus who was the almoner. He probably became the almoner by presiding when the gifts were offered at the Eucharist. The views concerning the constitution of the Church in the first century which I have above expressed, are those of the most recent writers; Dr Lindsay in Scotland and Professor Loofs of the University of Halle. I will endeavour to show which of the conclusions that I have given are generally accepted among scholars, and which are sthl matters of discussion. 19. Ever since Bishop Lightfoot published in 1868 his essay on the Christian Ministry in his commentary on the Epistle to the Phhippians, it has been generally agreed among all critics with a historical mind that the govern ment of the primitive Church was by a committee of elders and overseers — the latter called Episcopi — who were only official in the same sense as our Society's elders and over seers are to-day. The theory of Dr Lightfoot, the earliest of modern critics of the period, agrees with that of the latest which I have expounded here, in believing that the elders and the episcopi were exactly the same people. and that the terms were descriptive of their standing and their functions — if indeed they were not used indis criminately — rbut that they were in any case the same iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 207 individuals, and that separate from them, and above them in veneration and influence, were the prophetic ministers, the charismatic ministry of apostles, prophets and teachers, as I have described. We have, in fact, a parallel to the ministers, elders and overseers of our own Society. It is a curious fact also, and an unintentional imitation of the early Church, that a Quaker recorded minister if he changes his abode does not cease to be a minister; that is, he is not local in his service and status, whereas an elder or an overseer loses his appointment if he changes his Monthly Meeting, that is, his district. There is also no doubt at all about the gradual dis appearance of the prophetic ministry during the second century, and about the emergence, as we approach the year 200, of a single episcopus as the pastor of the community, and of the existence during the third century of the three fold ministry — bishop, elder and deacon. But there is much difference of opinion as to the origin of the words Episkopoi or overseers, and Presbuteroi or elders, and also about their relative functions, and we cannot say that we really know the causes which changed the episkopoi into a single episkopos and elevated him above the elders. Criticism began, as I say, with Lightfoot in 1868. He took the word Episkopos as a Greek word for overseer, and Presbuteros as the translation of a Jewish word for an elder, and showed that they meant the same thing, from Acts xx in which the same people, the elders of the Church at Ephesus, are called elders in the seventeenth verse, and bishops in the twenty-eighth verse. 1 Peter v. 1, 2, uses the word "overseeing" for elders, though the text is disputed. 1 Timothy iii. 1-7, and 17-19, uses bishops and elders apparently for the same people also. In Titus i. 5-7, they are specifically described as the same people, and in the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians about a.d. 95, the same identity is observed. These meanings, however, were so completely forgotten that the fathers of the fourth 208 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. century, when they began to examine primitive records, bad to rediscover the original meanings, and Dr Lindsay and others tell us that Jerome, Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret, all recognised that the two words meant the same people. Surely a conclusive testimony. In 1881 appeared Dr Hatch's famous lectures on the "Organisation of the Early Christian Church," which produced a great sensation and had enormous influence in England and Germany. They were violently attacked by Anglican clergy. I remember innocently suggesting to the Dean of my college that Hatch's book would be a suitable subject for us to take on certain Sunday evenings when he was kind enough to hold gatherings in his room for undergraduates; but I soon found that a mere historical student like myself had little insight into the clerical mind. "What," he replied, kindly enough, "he reckons that Bishops were originally only treasurers, I understand. I do not think that it would be a suitable book." Dr Hatch differed from Dr Lightfoot in so far as he believed that the episcopi were entrusted with finance and organisation, and the elders with conduct and moral influence, and that the two were not the same people. He believed that the name episcopus came into Christianity from its use in the Roman religious clubs or fraternities, which were common in those days. That is to say, they were what we should call Club Secretaries or presidents, or treasurers, or all combined. The point can never be quite settled, and it is not at all essential to be clear whether the two were identical, or were co-ordinate at first. Dr Hatch's original, eloquent and learned volume attracted enormous attention in Germany, and caused DrHarnack to translate it into German with long comments of his own. He agreed with Dr Hatch that the two offices of episcopus and presbyter were distinct in their origin, iv] MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH 209 and that the episcopus presided at the worship of the congregation, took the offerings of the faithful and dis tributed them, and was thus all they had in the way of a treasurer. This translation was published in 1883. In the same year a new light was thrown on the period by the publication of the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, by Bishop Briennios of Constantinople. Its publication vastly strengthened the broad Lightfoot- Hatch-Harnack doctrine of Christian origins, and placed it beyond reach of cavil. Dr Lindsay puts a.d. 135 as the date of the Didache. Those who are of our persuasion naturally desire to put it as late as possible, and those of Ecclesiastical Churches as early. Nobody really knows. Broadly speaking, all scholars agree with the general scheme which I have described, of government by a group of officers, all strictly laymen. The need for unity against heresies, and for unity against persecutors, and for authority in doctrine, and for orderly worship in the decline of the prophetic ministry — causes varying in their relative importance in different places — produced the emergence of the one-man ministry. It emerged first in Asia Minor, not far from the time of Ignatius of Antioch, and last in Greece and Rome. The process occupied the middle half of the second century. Fixing our minds on the year 250 as the date of the Decian persecution and the work of Cyprian and the beginning of priesthood — the beginning of the Anglican period of Christian history — I think we had better divide the 250 years into two equal periods and say that up to a.d. 125 or thereabouts the Christian Society was Quaker in organi sation, and in the latter half— from 125 to 250 — was Nonconformist. G.Q. x4 CHAPTER V THE DECAY OF PROPHECY I. The second Christian century witnessed two great transformations, both of them of the deepest significance for us. First, the prophetic ministry passed away. Not that by the end of the second century there were absolutely no prophets left — there were; but the prophetic ministry had lost its power and was greatly diminished in numbers. Secondly, one man — an episcopus — was put at the head of the Council of Elders as its president, as the conductor of services, the distributor of the Lord's Supper, and the administrator of alms. It is well that we should study the fall of the prophetic ministry with the help of all the very slight knowledge which is available in the little-known period of the second century. Prophetic ministry has, as a rule, failed to persist for generation after generation ; it can only have lasted for something over a century in the early Church — lasted, that is, on any great scale. There has never been an age of the world in which some prophetic ministry has not been discoverable in most Churches. There was a great revival of it among the Albigenses in southern Gaul at the end of the twelfth century, another when the Franciscans were founded shortly afterwards in the thirteenth century in Italy, and the Dominicans in Spain. The Lollard preachers in England and Bohemia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries repeated the signs of the first Christians; the Reformation of the sixteenth century had its prophets. How long shah we say that the prophetic ministry of the early Friends lasted? 2. Asa large general movement it seemsto have begunto fade slowly away about 1720, after which the Society began ch.v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 211 to diminish in numbers. That is, it lasted as an extensive popular impulse about seventy years. It did not entirely go, but it was practised by a continuahy diminishing number of individuals during the eighteenth century, particularly by a diminishing number of men. The greater susceptibhity of women resulted in a great preponderance of women's ministry during the eighteenth century. At one time there were five women ministers to one man1 The type and the tradition, however, survived as part of the Quaker system. The ministers spoke at greater length as they became fewer ; they travelled extensively, and were highly regarded; the stream of ministry had a strong flow corresponding to the narrowness of its bed. The names which have come down are those of mighty and faithful witnesses. Most of the sermons of these Friends would be unreadable now. They did not contain much thought ; they were the expression of unregulated emotion, the utterance of simple powerful personalities on simple powerful themes. From this criticism one must except the names of Samuel Fothergill in England and of Job Scott in America. Job Scott as a religious thinker has been too much forgotten, and I think from his Remains that Samuel Fothergill of Warrington may have been the most eloquent minister the Society has ever had. 3. The history of the second century is very obscure, and though the most has been made of the scanty materials which exist, we cannot pretend that we have a living picture of the Church, unless more of its writings come to light. Our authorities for the ministry are three. (1) The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which dates from the early part of the century; (2) certain fragments which are sources of the Apostolic Canons, which belong to the end of the century; (3) the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, which also date from near the beginning, 116 a.d., if they are genuine. 1 J. S. Rowntree. 14—2 212 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is an early Book of Practice and Discipline in sixteen short paragraphs. It exhorts to Christian conduct, gives directions about baptism, fasting, prayer and the Lord's Supper. It advises about the treatment of prophetic ministers, the conduct of worship, and the appointment of officers. The Church was still very much what is shown in the Pastoral Epistles. Control rested with the community as a whole. With them lay the testing of prophets and the distribution of relief; and the office-bearers were sthl on first century lines. The prophetic ministry is stih honoured ; if a prophet is present he is to preside at the celebration of the Supper, and is to pray and give thanks as much as he whl; that is, the prayer was to be impromptu. But a fixed form of prayer was provided for the ordinary office-bearers to use, in case no prophet was present, showing the growth of human arrangements for something to fall back upon where inspiration failed1. We catch the growth in the act. Simple arrangements were made for the maintenance of such prophets as might be staying among the people. Here we have no salaried ministry, but the necessary provision for a travehing gospeher. "But if the prophet asks for money; if he does not practise more than he preaches; if he has not the ways of the Lord, then he is a false prophet and is to be sent away2." We also find that the local office-bearers, the bishops and deacons, were to be upright men, for "they render you the service of the prophets and teachers; therefore neglect them not, for they are your honoured ones along with the prophets and teachers." Harnack, Sanday and Lindsay, all point to this passage as significant, showing a stage by which the regular routine service of the elders and overseers came to supplant a fading prophetic ministry3. 4. In the second document, the fragments which were afterwards incorporated in a later law book.cahed the 1 Lindsay, p. 174. 2 lb. p. 175. 3 lb. p. 176. v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 213 Apostolic Canons, instruction was given that if even a few Christian families lived near one another, they should organise as a Church, and if not so many as twelve persons were among them competent to vote at the election of a bishop, three selected men should be sent over from neigh bouring churches to examine carefully if he were worthy. Harnack finds in this regulation a beginning of the much later rule that a bishop must be consecrated by three neighbouring bishops1. The congregation also had to appoint presbyters and deacons, and to have a ministry of women called "widows," who were to be nurses and Bible women, and also constantly to be given to private prayer. There was also an official reader appointed to read the scriptures during the service — the bishop was appointed for his character rather than for his learning, and he might not have been able to read. In this description we note the absence of the prophetic ministry, and we have the episcopus or bishop emerging from the body of elders and deacons, under whose control, however, the bishop carries on his work. We say, then, that the second century reveals the growth of a Congregational or Presbyterian system of Church polity. The bishop is still accountable to the elders, a very different situation from that in the much later "Apostohc Constitutions," where it is said "thou shalt not call the bishop to account, nor watch his administra tion how he does it, when, or to whom, or where, or whether he does it well or hi or indifferently, for he has One who will call him to account — the Lord God2." 5. It would simplify the story if one could ignore the letters of Ignatius. Their genuineness has been much disputed, and so has their interpretation. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch, and was being cruelly haled across Asia Minor in charge of a band of soldiers to meet his martyrdom by wild beasts in the arena at Rome. His 1 lb. p. 178. 2 lb. p. 185. 214 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. guards brutally maltreated him, and the churches of Asia Minor sent him messages of comfort on his way, to which he replied in these letters. I quote a description of them from Lindsay1 who believes some of them genuine. They exhale the fragrance of a saintly and impassioned Chris tian life. They dwell on the need that the sin sick children of men have for the one great physician of souls. The Christian preacher of the second century lives in them still, embalmed there and treasured up for a life beyond life. We find in them bursts of poetic fancy : the Lord was a Star which shone forth in the heaven above all stars ; and its light was unutterable ; and its strangeness caused astonishment; and all the rest of the constellations, with the sun and the moon, formed themselves into a chorus about the star; but the Star itself far outshone them all. They abound in simple but striking metaphors, such as the lyre and its strings, the athlete and his training; the chorus with its keynote; the wheat ground in the handmill. We find quaint emblems; "Ye are stones of a temple, which were prepared beforehand for a building of God, being hoisted up to the heights through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and using for a rope the Holy Spirit; while your faith is your windlass, and love is the way that leadeth up to God." Some times the words seem insensibly to take the form of a prophetic chant, and have a rhythmic cadence all their own. Throughout there is that taste of Oriental extravagance which makes them so natural. The writer was a great advocate of the power of the bishop. His testimony was all to unity and obedience, and he certainly pleads for the full-blown threefold ministry of the third century under bishops, presbyters and deacons. "The bishops established in the furthest parts of the world are in the counsels of Jesus Christ." "Every one whom the Master of the House sendeth to govern His own house hold we ought to receive, as Him that sent him. Clearly therefore we ought to regard the bishop as the Lord Himself." Those who "obey the bishop as Jesus Christ" live a life after Christ. "It is good to know God and the bishop; he that honoureth the bishop is honoured of God; v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 215 he that doeth anything without the knowledge of the bishop serveth the devil." To obey the bishop is to obey "not him, but the Father of Jesus Christ, even the Bishop of all," while to practise hypocrisy towards the bishop is "not to deceive the visible one, so much as to cheat the One who is invisible1." If these Epistles are genuine, it is clear that Asia Minor had been more developed on ecclesiastical lines than Rome and the West. But they belong in order of development so much more to the end than to the beginning of the second century, that Schmiedel says they cannot be earher than 150 a.d. and are therefore spurious. Their author believed that unity against the outside world and against such heresies as Docetism was the great need. We have not yet reached Sacerdotalism; we might say that the third century and its threefold ministry is up to 250 a.d. more like Presbyterianism than anything else that we know. Christians were during this time forbidden to baptize or to hold a Love feast without a bishop, his consent should be asked for marriages, and the poor lookedto him to distribute relief. He was the president of the court of discipline. 6. All through the second century we must remember that churches were easily organised, for very few places had buddings to erect and none had salaries to pay. The office-bearers were still men who worked at trades or in businesses; bishops were shepherds and weavers, lawyers and shipbuilders, and Hatch quotes regulations from the Theodosian code and from the Statuta Ecclesiae Antiquae approving the practice. The 87th of the Canons of Bash says that "none of the clergy are to engage in merchandise, but they are to learn a handicraft and hve on the labour of their hands2." The only case in which the clergy received payments was when they could be classed amongst the poor, in the position of the widows and orphans. The change during the second century to the threefold 1 Lindsay, p. 193. 2 Ib- P- 2°3 *• 216 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. ministry which was dominant throughout the third century came graduahy and without opposition; we can only surmise what its causes were. In times of warfare — and that was practically the character of the time — govern ment by a committee leads to divided counsels. The Christians were not accustomed to democratic methods — particularly in Asia Minor — and the old sequence: "to him that hath shall be given," must have been of frequent application. As the Lord's Supper became the formal handing round of a purely nominal wafer, it required a presiding officer, and this may have had much to do with the emergence of a single Bishop. Parallel with the growth of the bishop went the decay of the prophetic ministry. The change during the course of the second century may be shown by two quotations. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles says "Every prophet who speaketh in the spirit ye shall neither try nor judge, for every sin shah be forgiven, but that sin shall not be forgiven." Irenaeus at the end of the period says that the test of the true prophet was obedience to the elders. Here we have a revolution, in the overthrow of the prophetic ministry. The spiritual enthusiasm of apostolic days had gone, and the obvious inconvenience of a ministry that could be less and less counted upon no doubt drove the Church to lower ideals. We have not to strain our imagina tions unduly in trying to realise the sad story of the second century. As with other clericals the attack upon heresy was one of the functions of the official pastors. 7. It is necessary to give a brief sketch of the circum stances of the Church in the world before we can properly account for its official development and spiritual retro gression. Those who have ever dabbled in Theosophy wih have some idea of what Gnosticism was. It imaged a whole celestial universe, full of abstractions which it personified; circles, and epochs, and periods of repose filled a fantastic v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 217 cosmogony. Faith and virtue, justice and peace, married and had children, contested, emanated, disintegrated. Christianity was interpreted by these philosophers in theh own terms. Christ ceased to be a historical character and became an emanation of the Infinite, and the Gospel was removed from Galilee and Jerusalem to some place in the heavenlies. Hatch says : Before the close of the Apostolic Age Christianity had come into contact with various large tendencies of contemporary thought. Its first contact was with the great school of fantastic syncretism which had grown up within Judaism itself, and which has left a considerable monument in the works of Philo. To that school all facts past and present were an allegory. The history of the Old Testament was sublimated into a history of the emancipation of reason from passion. If Abel was described as a keeper of sheep, the meaning was that moral wisdom keeps the irrational impulses under control. If Israel was described as warring against Amalek, the meaning was that when reason lifts itself up away from earth, as Moses lifted up his hands, it is strengthened by the vision of God. If Abraham was described as migrating from Chaldaea to Canaan, the meaning was that wisdom leaves the prejudices and crude ideas of its original state, and seeks a new home among the realities of abstract thought. To those who thought thus, the records of the Gospels were so much new matter for allegorical interpretation. To the lower intelligence, to the eye of sense, Christ was a Person who had lived and died and ascended; and the Christian communities were the visible assemblies of His followers : and the Christian virtues were certain habits of mind which showed themselves in deed. But to the spiritual mind, to the eye of reason, all these things were like the phantasmagoria of the mysteries. The recorded deeds of Christ were the clash and play of mighty spiritual forces: the Christian Church was an emanation from God: the Christian virtues were phases of intellectual enlightenment which had but slender, if any, links with deeds done in the flesh. Before long the circle widened in which Christian ideas were rationalised. Christianity found itself in contact not merely with mysteries but with metaphysics. But they were the metaphysics of wonderland. Abstract conceptions seemed to take bodily shape, and to form strange marriages, and to pass in and out of one another like the dissolving scenery of a dream. There grew up a new mythology, in which Zeus and Aphrodite, Isis and Osiris, were replaced by Depth 218 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. and Silence, Wisdom and Power. Christianity ceased to be a religion and became a theosophy. It ceased to be a doctrine and became a Platonic poem. It ceased to be a rule of life and became a system of the universe. It was transferred from the world of human action in which it had seemed to have its birth into a supersensuous world of unimaginable vastness, and its truths were no longer fixed facts of faith and life, but the gorgeous, and shifting, and unsubstantial pageantry of the clouds of an autumn sky1. 8. There was another and a much nobler revolt from orthodoxy led by a great religious thinker and organiser named Marcion. Marcion, like many in our own day, failed to harmonise the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of all compassion, whose name was Love, with the cruel proceedings of the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and, what is more serious and difficult, with the miseries and horrors of life throughout the history of the world. He was troubled in the modern manner by the problem of pain. He therefore concluded that the Creator of the groaning and travailing universe, and the Jehovah of ancient Israel, were the same, or, at any rate, very much alike; whereas the heavenly Father revealed by Jesus Cbrist, was rather an opposing than a harmonising Deity. He therefore rejected the Old Testament and some parts of the New also, and appealed to a pure Christianity centring in the Epistles of Paul. This man, at any rate, knew what he believed. He gathered round him a rival Christian Church, which stood in its own eyes for reform and purification. Its weakness was its too hasty rejection of the Creator of the outer world. The world being fuh of evh and sin the only thing for a wise man to do was to stand aloof from it all and to practise asceticism. He frowned upon marriage; no married person could ever possess full membership in his Church unless they con sented to a divorce ; and when a religious body does that it is doomed. As we go through the ages and read these tragedies of lofty enthusiasms, we cannot but be moved by 1 Organization of the Early Christian Churches, pp. 91-3. v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 219 the pathos of it all, and led to hope that those noble causes which use up as well as consecrate the lives of the best of mankind, whl increasingly be broadened and liberalised, so that they may stand the brunt of experience, because they realise that nothing human is alien from their comprehension and their sympathy. The Marcionites lived simply, rejoiced in sufferings and in labours, welcomed martyrdom, and formed an extreme wing of the Christian movement, doubtless increasing its reputation for eccen tricity with the surrounding pagan world. 9. In the face of Gnosticism and the Marcionites, Irenaeus, c. 180-202 a.d., became the centre of the Church's reaction against heresy. Let us get back, he said, to the historical Christ, to the fixed truths concerning what actually happened. But he was faced with the tendency everywhere to find allegories even in the Gospels. It is wonderful to read of this allegorizing when applied to the Old Testament. The Epistle of Barnabas deals with the verse in the first Psalm "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water." To Barnabas the tree meant Christ and the water meant baptism. He says these words imply "Blessed are they who place their trust in the Cross, and have gone down into the water." The Platonists treated Homer in much the same way, so that anything might come to mean anything. Irenaeus was driven from trust in the records to actual oral transmission. " I knew a man, who knew a man, who knew an apostle," is his claim, and "these beliefs are sure, for they have been handed down and are still testified to by men still living1." As a summary of what this transmission vouched for he gives certain sentences which are the basis of the Apostles' Creed. (The Apostles' Creed in its early form — the Roman Creed — can be traced back as far as 150 A.D.) He therefore pointed Christians to the personal historical knowledge handed down by the bishops of the 1 Lindsay, pp. 221 et seqq. 220 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Churches as a sure ground. The office-bearers who are the recipients of this tradition are therefore to be the judges of orthodoxy. This was not apostolic succession, that monstrous fancy; it was simply a reliable vehicle of historical tradition. Here, once more, we have a standard of authority handed to the office-bearers to uphold, which relatively exalted them still further above the prophetic ministry, with its unlimited freedom and its claim to individual insight. The elders and pastors now judged the orthodoxy of the prophets, and it began to be suggested tentatively that there was a "veritable charisma" — a grace-given truth — attaching to the authorities of the congregations; a suggestion which had in it the threat of much future danger. This movement towards official authority was associated with the name of Irenaeus, but it is probable that it had been acted on before he wrote. 10. We now come to another fact in the situation, revealed to us by the writings of the Apologists; Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Miltiades, Melito, Tatian, Athenagoras. These books were appeals from the Christians to be regarded as ordinary fellow citizens in the empire ; as reputable, creditable people, holding up a high moral standard, rather helpful than otherwise to society, and free alike from treason and from madness. They corresponded to the documents issued by George White head soon after the death of George Fox, in which he endeavoured to show to the orthodox Churches that Quakers held ah their essential beliefs. But the time for making an Apology is not the time when new inspiration is being poured forth. Christians were now mingling with the large life of the world ; men of all classes and of every kind of attachment to the govern ment were in the membership, and since the rescript of the Emperor about 184 a.d. toleration had been the rule. No longer did Christians stand aloof from the world and profess themselves citizens only in heaven. Christianity, in fact, v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 221 had been primarily a mode of life. It has never ceased, of course, to be such, but it became a mode of life of those who were in the world, though not of it. One can see the kind of question that arose — the same as has arisen often with us — as to undesirable occupations. Was it fitting for Friends to make beer, to sell clothing to the army, to accept titles, to enter Parliament, to become mayors of their boroughs, and, in the latter case, ought they to attend the Church or give alcoholic banquets? What, again, should be the attitude of the Christian towards Art; whether pictures, or music, or the drama? I have heard General Booth testify against even cricket and football, and against the learning of foreign languages for any purpose except to preach the Gospel. All this approach between the Church and the world tended to the weakening of the prophetic ministry, whose influence was towards asceticism and separateness. 11. Prophecy also had become mixed in character; charlatans abounded. The Pastor of Hermas contains an interesting passage on this point1. "How then, sir," I say, "will a man know which of them is the prophet, and which is the false prophet? " " I will tell you," he says, " about both prophets, and then you can test the true and the false prophet according to my directions. Test the man who has the Spirit of God by his life. For he who has the Divine Spirit pro ceeding from above, is meek and peaceable and humble and refrains from all iniquity and the vain desire of the world and contents himself with fewer wants than those of other men, and when asked he makes no reply; nor does he speak privately, nor when a man wishes the Spirit to speak does the Holy Spirit speak, but it speaks only when God wishes it to speak. When, then, a man having the Divine Spirit comes into an assembly of righteous men who have faith in the Divine Spirit, and in the assembly of men offers up prayer to God, then the angel of the prophetic Spirit, who is destined for him, fills the man; and the man being filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks to the multitude as the Lord wishes. Thus then the Spirit of Divinity becomes manifest. Whatever power there- 1 Lindsay, p. 234. 222 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. fore comes from the Spirit of Divinity belongs to the Lord. Hear then," he says, "in regard to the Spirit which is earthly and empty and foolish and powerless. First the man who seems to have the Spirit exalts himself, and wishes to have the first seat, and is bold and impudent and talkative, and lives in the midst of many luxuries and many other delusions, and takes reward for his prophecy ; and if he does not receive rewards he does not prophesy. Can then the Divine Spirit take rewards and prophesy ? It is not possible that the Spirit of God should do this, but prophets of this character are possessed of an earthly spirit. Then it never approaches an assembly of righteous men but shuns them. And it associates with doubters and the vain, and prophesies to them in a corner and deceives them, speaking to them, according to their desires, mere empty words.... This then is the mode of life of both the prophets. Try by his life and by his deeds the man who says that he is inspired. But as for you, trust the Spirit which comes from God, and has power; but the spirit which is empty and earthly trust not at all, for there is no power in it; it comes from the devil. 12. The years from about 170 to 180 form an epoch in which three things occurred similar in spirit, and all due to the conflict with the Gnostics and the Marcionites, viz. the elevation of certain apostolic writings to form a Canon of the New Testament on the same standing as the Old Testament; the rise of the bishop as the president of the assembly; and the beginning of the expression "the Catholic Church." Schmiedel considers that the represen tatives of traditional Christianity fell below the Gnostics, intellectually and otherwise, and so it was all the more necessary for them to have a rule of faith — a canon of Scripture — and a strong man to hold the reins; but that the stress of these necessities has saddled Christianity with alien elements which could not be purified away. 13. To depreciate prophecy was then the effect of Gnosticism, of Marcion, of the renewed emphasis upon tradition, of the reconching aim of the Apologists, of in creasing conformity to the world. But these did not have their way without opposition. The change which made the v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 223 Bishop head of the Church came gradually and without controversy, but the depreciation of prophecy caused the great split of the Montanists, who were the Quakers of the second and third centuries. These conservatives pointed to the Epistles of Paul, and asked whether the Church was beingf aithful to the gifts there described. Had not prophecy created the Christian Church? Had it not the signs of a divine origin? Was there not all round us to be found an increasing worldliness? And so in the country districts in the mountainous region of Phrygia, far from great cities, among old-fashioned people, there arose a movement headed by a presbyter named Montanus. Mountains are the homes of prophets. The valleys of Cumberland and Westmorland were the Phrygia of Quakerism, and we may note that oddly enough the capital city of that province is named Phhadelphia. The movement in Phrygia itself went, as movements of re-action are bound to go, somewhat farther than the truth it was trying to serve. Montanists believed with the early Christians that the end of the world was near at hand and that they represented the last generation of prophets and the last effort of the Heavenly Father for the salvation of the world. They believed that they had in the fullest sense the abiding of the Paraclete — the actual presence of the Father and the Son. Not they, but the Spirit within them preached indeed. Their oracles were uttered in the first person, as though God through their lips was saying, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," and even from the mouth of a woman, masculine forms of speech were uttered. This was ecstasy; it was the gift of tongues over again. The outward man was so completely absorbed by the inward power, that he no longer became more than an instrument. Montanus himself put these words into the mouth of the Spirit, "Behold, the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum; the man sleeps and I wake." 224 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Montanist ministry in other parts of the empire did not go to these extreme forms; it was simply the restoration of New Testament methods of preaching, and it was voiced by Tertulhan, the greatest Christian of the beginning of the third century, who was converted to Montanism. He flourished from 200 to 217 a.d., and it is to his voluminous writings that we owe all that we have that is written sympathetically of this revival. Their discipline also was a restoration of primitive simplicity and separation from the world. Both sides accepted the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, but the Montanists insisted on the supremacy of the prophets, the Catholics insisted on the supremacy of the bishops. There was no change in the nature of Christian prophecy. Justin Martyr about 150 a.d. says "the prophetic gifts remain with us even until the present time." Irenaeus at the end of the second century — 180-202 a.d. — says that "some cast out devils, others have knowledge of things to come, see visions andutter prophetic expressions." Tertulhan, the Montanist, describes the ecstatic visions seen during the time of worship by a certain sister, who converses with angels, and even with the Lord. She can read some men's hearts and can heal the sick, and at the conclusion of the service she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision. There are in the Pastor of Hernias similar statements, and Ignatius of Antioch tells how the prophetic gift came upon him when preaching to the Philadelphians and caused unpremeditated utterance. 14. When the Church made its final peace with the world on the conversion of Constantine in 312 a.d., no peace came to the Montanists. The Catholic Church, now armed with secular power, intensified its persecutions. The Christian Emperor — (think what an innovation such a term means) — pursued them with severity, and Montanists v] THE DECAY OF PROPHECY 225 disappeared from the world except in Phrygia. Their churches were confiscated, their books were destroyed, their property could not be willed, and might be seized by their nearest Catholic relatives ; but they held up their banner until at last, in the sixth century, the emperor Justinian resolved to stamp them out. In their despair, these (our Quaker brethren) gathered themselves, their wives and children, into their churches, set fire to the buildings and perished in the flames rather than submit to the episcopal church. So that was the end of the prophetic ministry, and the Catholic hierarchy went on to make their organisation more and more a spiritual parallel to the temporal organi sation of the Roman Empire. The fact that Tertulhan supported the Montanists — was, indeed, a Montanist — should make us reahse how very nearly that great movement was successful, and how much it deserved to succeed. For Tertulhan was the greatest theologian of his time, and the Church owed him much for his defence of the faith amongst the pagans, and his refutation of the heretics within. He had powerfully supported Irenaeus in the view that Christian doctrine must be determined by living tradition from the apostles; he believed strongly in Catholicity; he laid it down as a rule that the bishop should hand the Eucharist, but that in an emergency a layman might do it, though he strongly held the view that there was a Church where three Christians are, though they be laymen. Dr Hatch de scribes Montanism by saying that it was "A beating of the wings of pietism against the iron bars of organisation." It was the first, though not the last, rebellion of the religious sentiment against official religion. But the ideal had, alas, to yield to the practicable, and so the priest marched on to his earthly success and his spiritual failure, till we find St Bernard in a later century saying "The g. q. 15 226 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. v orders of the heavenly Host, although they enjoy beati tude and want nothing to the sum of felicity, sthl revere the glory of a priest, wonder at his dignity, yield to him in privhege, honour his power." History goes on to tell how the Bishop became a priest; but it is not our subject now. In fact the priest was lurking there all the time, in the matrix of the minds of men, waiting till the spiritual shiftlessness of the mixed multitude should call him out. The Catholic Church took the common path trodden by the other current faiths of the time. Christian priests with their ritual and doctrine took their place beside those of Mithras and Osiris, of Attis and Hercules, of Dionysus and Aesculapius, and finally absorbed them, without demanding too great a revolution in thought and practice. Each of these was regarded as a Saviour of men, born of a Divine father and a human mother or otherwise human and Divine. All suffered death for the good they did, but rose from the dead and were taken up into heaven. It was reserved for a succession of heretics, age after age, to turn with conviction and a new joy, back to Christ. CHAPTER VI MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION i. The most daring act which the founders of the Society performed, was in deliberately doing away not with music only, but with set sermons too ; and in undoing the distinction between clergy and laity. Every early Friend felt himself so near to God that no priest could come nearer, and they determined to organise their Society in line with the words of Peter, that "Ye are ah priests unto God." But their destruction went further than priesthoods. They knew of a ministry whose outflow came so directly from God, reached from the deep in one heart to the deep in another, was so considerably inde pendent of the whl or purpose of the speaker for its initiative, and had so little to do with academic prepara tion, that for the preservation and exercise of that ministry they would arrange for meetings on a basis of silence, give liberty to ah to speak, and wait for the result. The result has been the production for 270 years of a ministry which, at its best, is the most potent weapon for good that I know of. It is like no other preaching in its combination of fervour and restraint, its complete absence of artificial eloquence, its possession of the weight that comes with sincerity. This is the ideal ; but Quakers are no more ideal than other people, so that weak and even foolish ministry has always existed among us ; cases in which men have not been able to forget themselves, and have given way to the airing of opinions; or have thought that the inward im pulse to speak freed them from the intellectual trouble of speaking clearly and connectedly, and sitting down when 15—2 228 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. they had done. Considering the wholly amateur character of our preaching, and that it is open to everyone under the impulse of the moment, it is marvellous that we •have not fallen more than we have into weak rhapsody, wild theorising, or mere garrulous boredom. That we have been preserved so much as we have, is due to the sense of discipline in our meetings, to the influence of a reverent and intensely critical congregation; in fact to the restraining power of the Holy Spirit over the gathering. Friends have elected to run these risks rather than adopt the necessary evils of a professional ministry. We are the one religious body which is not organised into a pastor and a flock. Our idea is of brotherly help, not of professional service. We recognise that our power to preach is not at our own beck and call, that it may on any Sunday morning be absent or be present — that, not knowing whence it comes or whither it goes, it cannot be arranged for beforehand. We decline to preach by salary, though we recognise the many influences which have caused most people to find it convenient to do so. People being as they are, perhaps the separation of men for pastoral work, however imperfect, may be the best course for a public in England and America, so little self-reliant, so careless and selfish as it is. Congregations might have no ministry at ah if they did not pay for it. Democracies in politics, we may be too idle and helpless to avoid bureaucracy as a church. Ah that we Friends say is, that we know a better way — we wih risk lack of training that we may obtain simplicity and independence. Those who preach to us shah depend for their living neither on their popularity nor theh orthodoxy; and we wih meditate in shence rather than have platitudes rolled out to us by a man who may be weary or dull, simply because the sermon must begin at half-past eleven, even if it has to be ham mered out. vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION- 229 2. Richard Holt Hutton, the late editor of the Spec tator, says in his Essays : Any attempt to merge the distinctive characteristic of a higher science in a lower— of chemical changes in mechanical— of physio logical in chemical— above all of mental changes in physiological, generahy ends in forcibly perverting the higher and less known science to the type of the better known. I will add that all attempts to work a spiritual communion on commercial principles are likely to end in perverting the spiritual to the type of the economic, until, instead of the mandate of the Holy Ghost, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them," we have the purchase of the next presentation from a broker who has the cure of souls to seh; — and even where abuses so flagrant do not occur, the inner mind of the preacher is altered by the intrusion of the professional spirit and the professional fee. Men desire to excel in their profession, to reach the best posts, and to provide weh for theh families out of its rewards. So the message of exhortation or encouragement becomes a branch of oratory; efficiency is or should be rewarded by promotion. A man must exhibit his power in the pulpit, he must win a reputation. No one deplores this state of things more than many clergymen do ; they regard it as a necessary evil ; we cut the knot by saying it is evh, but not necessary. Money matters are the bane of every denomination. The quarrel about Dis establishment and Disendowment is largely about money, and this great struggle in its disastrous course can hardly fail to cause, for more than one generation, the hardening of the hearts of good men against each other. 3. After all, the clergyman himself gains much. His spiritual faculties are perpetually exercised. His inward eye may become keen, his heart enlarged, and prayer be the atmosphere of his soul. He has much help towards becoming a saint ; though his weak point is in his lack of knowledge of practical life. But the congregation loses 230 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. what the minister gains. This discipline should be theirs. Their faculties are not sufficiently called out ; their sense of responsibility is taken away. Things are left to the minister ; it is his business. The division of labour extends; specialists are asked for everywhere; but the spiritual life and the help of our brethren is not an affair for a specialist ; it is what no man can afford to lose, and what no man should assume for his brother. Our eating, our breathing and our exercise, of body and of spirit, we must each do for ourselves. Socrates extended the Quaker idea even to teaching. Xenophon (Mem. i. 2, 6) says that Socrates considered a money payment between teacher and puph as nothing less than servitude, robbing the teacher of all free choice as to persons and proceedings; and he assimilated the relation between teacher and pupil to that between two lovers or two intimate friends, which was thoroughly dishonoured, robbed of its charm and reciprocity, and prevented from bringing about its legitimate reward of attachment and devotion, by the intervention of money payment. What Socrates taught were his own ideas, not the acquired learning of any school. But this amateurism in the teaching profession cannot be general, because men must spend capital and all theh youth in its preparation, and all their days in its practice; and if we will have services from the clergy at all analogous in specialised skill, we must pay for them ; albeit the real specialisation comes from a University beyond fees, in the heavenlies that are round about. 4. All the above seems to run counter to the famous passage in 1 Cor. ix, in which the Apostle Paul asserts his right to a maintenance 1. It is to be noted first that it was a right of which he preferred not to avah himself. Corinth was a city fuh of dishonesty, and doubtless contained religious as well as other charlatans, and he preferred to be 1 Chap. iv. § 12. vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 231 above suspicion and to earn his own living. He claimed, in fact, a lay position. Dean Stanley comments upon the passage thus : In an age or in a society, where the minds of men are disposed readily to acquiesce, there is usually no authority greater than that of an order of established clergy. But in a time of unsettlement or inquiry, such as was the Apostolic age, and, it may be added, our own, the authority of a layman in religious matters is usually far higher than that of a clergyman; and for this reason, that every sentiment which he utters on such subjects is regarded as spon taneous, disinterested, and unprofessional, to a degree not felt in the case of the regular and established organs of instruction. Such a lay position, if one may so speak, the Apostle here labours to vindicate for himself1. The important point, however, is that the Apostle was a foreign missionary, and that the passage has no reference whatever to the permanent establishment in long-settled Christian countries of men as pastors, who have no other means of livelihood than their pastoral work. There were no such men in the Church in Paul's time, or in his mind. A foreign missionary is in a very different position. He is in a country in which his ordinary means of livelihood are absent, his professional skill or business knowledge unavailing, and if he be as itinerant as the Apostle Paul a settled livelihood is out of the question. Moreover, his time is occupied in many other duties beside preaching. He is a schoolmaster or a doctor or an agriculturist or a translator as well. The Society of Friends holds no brief against the separation of men for duties like these. Organisers, secretaries, district visitors, lecturers, must ah be paid, by the nature of their work. It is only in the exercise of what we have called the prophetic ministry that questions of livelihood are an interference. The Apostle's illustrations are none of them strictly applicable to this particular issue. He compared the work 1 The Epistles to the Corinthians, pp. 162-3. 232 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. and pay of the missionary to that of the soldier, the planter of a vineyard, the keeper of sheep, the ploughman and the thresher. In ah these cases material service obtains its natural material reward. The worker is paid in kind : he has a share in the proceeds. Now in the harvest of souls, what is a share in the proceeds? What is payment in kind? Is it not that the reapers may have souls for their hire? The love and gratitude of rescued humanity, the joy of the workman in his work, and in the fruit of his strivings ; these are the rewards fitting to these illustrations. That the author of the Pastoral Epistles was in the habit of using these words in their exact sense is clear from i Tim. v. 17, 18, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in the word and in teaching. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his hire. " Here it is clear that the true reward for spiritual services is put on the spiritual plane, where alone it ought to be1. When Paul says that the humane provision, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn," was not written because of God's care for the oxen, but as a text to be used in a quite different connection, one recognises a faulty Rabbinical interpretation of the passage. When he says " If we sowed unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we reap your carnal things ? " we can only say that this is a dangerous and undesirable arrangement. His last argument is derived from the Hebrew priesthood who " eat of the things of the temple." This is indeed a disastrous parallel, and the history of Christianity supplies abundant comment upon it in the process by which a Christian priesthood came into being. Paul adds that the Lord ordained that they which proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel. The only extant passage to which this can refer is Luke x. 7 which speaks of a mere invitation to 1 But see also Chap. iv. on this. vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 233 dinner or an act of temporary hospitality, as the seventy went from house to house. There is little parallel in this to an ecclesiastical establishment. We Friends prefer to follow the Apostle's own practice. "What then is my reward? That, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel without charge." Those who desire to read strong things on this subject will find them in Ruskin's Fors Clavigera, Numbers 38, 49, 55. In his pamphlet Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds he says as Friends are so fond of saying, that by yielding to the impression that the more sacred calling is that of the clergy the sacred character of the Layman himself is forgotten, and his own Ministerial duty is neglected [and so laymen wrongly] devote their whole time and energy to the business of this world. No mistake can possibly be greater. Every member of the Church is equally bound to the service of the Head of the Church; and that service is pre eminently the saving of souls. There is not a moment of a man's active life in which he may not be indirectly preaching; and throughout a great part of his life he ought to be directly preaching, and teaching both strangers and friends1. The spirit of the priest is one which falls in eashy with the weaknesses of human nature. Men's love for authority and men's and particularly women's need for guidance, have combined to make into the function of a sacerdotal order the helpfulness which we all owe to one another. This spirit encroaches into many churches and chapels where the sacerdotal theory is not held. The only way to avoid it is to make priesthood universal, priesthood in its truest sense and most untrammelled form. The peculiarity of the Society of Friends is not that there is no clergy; it is that there is no laity. 5. There is a constant wish among good people of a practical genius to aid by some systematic organising all useful activities; and, as a consequence, every faculty which depends for its success upon inspiration, upon 1 On the Old Road, vol. n. p. 274; Collected Works, vol. xii. 234 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. originality, upon genius, shrivels up and finally dies, even if maintaining a name that it liveth, under the restraint of that benevolent system. Here, and everywhere, the result of centralising and organising seems to be to turn out a moderately passable article, but not the best. It sacrifices the best, and aims openly at a good average. But, alas! what a tasteless result is a fair average in art, in poetry, above all, in ministry; for among Friends, ministry is naught if it be not an original product, something inspired. The technical skill required to preach passably is hardly worth men tioning; in fact, one may say that most men, and many women, could eashy do it if they tried. It must be sorrow fully confessed that sermon-making is one of the easiest forms of art. Though men organise, provide and maintain ministry, they cannot command the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth, and the fatal fact is that the Spirit listeth not much to blow in an organised way. If we cease to expect the shy angel of inspiration to come and trouble the waters, and do not wait for her coming, she is apt to give us up, and cease her visits; yet congregations which are not happy without a sermon are likely to get what they want, in spite of that, as a matter of expediency. Great are the triumphs of organisation in the world of business; and great, often too great, are its financial rewards. One cannot but admire even so common an example of it as is furnished by a great factory, where buildings and steam power, and men and machinery, and business ability, and inventive pondering, and fache tran sit, and world-wide communications, combine to produce with increasing cheapness miles of cloth. But the human units, who are parts of the great machine, are products not altogether so perfect and beautiful. The factory does not exist for them, they exist for it. Contemplate the girl stepping about with her bare feet on the oily floor. She has learnt to piece threads, but not to become a man's vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 235 helpmeet and the mother of chhdren. For most of her waking hours she is primarily a mill-hand, and after that a woman; and all her humanity, her girlish joys and hopes, her charity and religion, her personal life, in fact, have to struggle on for a stunted career outside her monotonous factory hours. The individual is subordinated, with more or less of pain and sacrifice, to the great organised machine. So it is in religious organisations. " I would, indeed, like to be back in the field, winning souls, as I used to," said a Salvation Army officer, who used to call on me for subscrip tions at somewhat frequent " annual " intervals; "but they have set me to this canvassing work, I suppose because I used to be in business, and I have to obey orders." The man's eyes were moist, and I saw what a cross this highly organised army was laying on the individual shoulders. Another young man, a solicitor, full of zeal for soul-saving, went from a little northern town to be a captain; but he was found useful as an unpaid legal adviser ; and the ardent missionary sat on a stool all day as of old, and died of weariness, over-work, and scant bodily comforts. "You have no business to send these two defenceless young women to wear themselves out as pioneers in Darlington, and be a mark for ruffian hostility," wrote Mr Stead to General Booth. The reply was that to win victories a general must not spare his soldiers. It sounds cruel, but it was, in fact, a blunt expression of the necessary law under which those live who form part of a highly organised mhitant machine. The Catholic Church, with its celibate clergy, affords another great example of elaborate religious organisation. A friend of mine, who is the Brother in charge of a large institution managed by the "Brothers of the Christian Schools," told me how, in training for theh order, the whl has to be broken in the early years of the novitiate. "Is there any duty you would particularly dislike to perform? " said the superior to an acolyte. The lad mentioned a 236 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. loathsome task. "Then that is what you shall do," replied the stern representative of church order. Men so trained wih, in after life, relinquish uncomplainingly influential professorships and congenial society to go and teach elementary classes in small towns, or to live in hourly contact with the Brother they most dislike. We cannot but admire all this misplaced self-sacrifice, and are conscious of the power of the great machine so formed ; but if there be one jewel more than another, which the Society of Friends exists to preserve, it is the spiritual liberty and the sacred freedom of each man and woman under the Director who rules within. 6. An enterprising syndicate has put upon the market a cheap method of University Extension teaching, by which type-written lectures prepared by some competent teacher could be distributed and read aloud by anybody, who, it was thought, though a stranger to the subject himself, might act as the mouthpiece of a lecturer whom it was too expensive to engage personally. By general agreement this method of teaching is a failure, inasmuch as there is no play of thought by the intercourse of one living mind with another. We describe it as wooden, lifeless, and mechanical. In an intellectual process the mind should apply itself with clear-cut definiteness and delicacy of perception to just those fine distinctions of thought which cannot be prophesied beforehand, and which cannot be dealt with in a mass. How, then, can a ritual service, not arranged even for this year or for this town, but the same for centuries and world-wide, fail to be intellectually inappropriate, indeed to lose its intellectual value? Such we find to be the case. It is in sermons rather than in rubrics that we find help towards our thinking. It is rare for any committee or Board to be able to agree on a form of words which, in their attempt to satisfy all, do not lose incisiveness and character and colour, and acquire instead the safety of the vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 237 average. How much more must this apply to an official utterance of a universal church? In fact five minutes of fresh thought is worth more than half-an-hour's solemn statement of ancient platitude. It is true that the intellectual quahty of a religious exercise is not that for which we value it most. The same considerations apply, however, to a very large extent, to the ethical quality of the service, the quality which we value supremely. Here even more strikingly it is bound to fall back upon generalities, and to use great old words, rich with tradition. But the practical value of every moral injunction lies in the method of its application; and here we want a fresh and individual utterance. The eflect of all this is to make a ritual service not only intellectually woolly, but morally soporific. To indulge in the utterance of great sayings without bringing them home to daily life may be comforting, but it is also demoralising. I hope my many friends in the ministry of other denominations, colleagues in preaching as I feel them to be, whl not think that I have failed in doing them justice, through lack of sympathy and comprehension. It is my own fault if I have so failed, for in several connections I have been taken into their counsels, I have often spoken in their pulpits, and been close to them in very intimate moments. My attitude, at any rate, is not like what they would have met in my predecessors of the seventeenth century. The Quaker there faced, as he believed, the Scarlet Woman of Rome, her too near relatives in the Anglican Church, and dhute but grievous error, in the "professors," or nonconformist clergy. He treated them ah with great plainness, as a viper's brood. In reply they put him in gaol, and did many other worse things. We have all, I hope, learnt and forgotten much since then. Nevertheless, I have been obliged to give my reasons for believing that my friends would be better placed if they were not in a profession. 238 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. They are under servitude, sometimes a light yoke, but not always, not at critical times. For they are bound to be popular, not only because their living is at stake, but because their whole sphere of usefulness goes with it. That is why the testimony of the Churches — say on War — is never above, and often below, that of the average good man. Nor can this be avoided so long as the system is retained. What a twist this need for popularity gives to the single eye. Again all preaching which counts, means that a man unbares his soul. His deep religious experience, his most private self is exhibited for the help of others. This is, indeed, in itself a glorious function — this is the true priestly act, communicating divine things. But to exploit your personality like this for a living! I don't like the idea, and the true and honest preacher forgets it if he can. There is another besetment which is never far from all who in any way live by exploiting personality. Actors and actresses suffer from it in their more external way. Grace and beauty are spiritual, as well as physical, and those who, by gratitude, or compliment, or flattery, are made aware of the appreciation they receive — in any of these callings — have need of sobriety and humility. Every Quaker preacher, every public speaker, is more or less subject to the tempta tion of vanity, if he succeeds much. But those who make their living out of their personal attraction or superiority, and who do nothing else, are in the worst danger, though they can be saved, as by fire, the fire of sincerity and inspiration. 7. In Sunday Schools, which are not for our own chhdren, but are the junior wing of home missionary effort, hymns are freely sung. The Friends' Sunday Schools led the way in the modern movement among such schools for educational improvement. They have elaborately graded courses of lessons, extremely interesting and well conceived ; vi] MINISTRY AS A PROFESSION 239 an active central organisation, and at West Hill, Selly Oak, near Birmingham, there is an institution for the training of Sunday School teachers, formerly the most untrained of all the world's cahings. At all Boarding Schools, and in most families "where they sing," hymns are in free use and generahy valued. Some Friends have recently issued a Hymn Book for use in these connections, cahed the Fellowship Hymn Book. Among the hundreds of hymn books in the world, I myself like this the best of all. I must now make something of a confession. During the latter half of the nineteenth century aggressive "gospel" mission work was undertaken by individual Friends. They nearly always adopted a simple type of noncon formist congregational worship for Mission meetings. This was done because it was what the people they wished to attract expected and liked best. Much good has been accomplished by these noble efforts. For our present subject they have however little significance. The audi ences have not contributed largely to the forces of the Society. In a few places people have, through the mission meetings, taken ultimately to attending the Friends' meetings and been admitted to membership. There has, however, been no great stream of tendency. Nor have Mission meetings been transformed gradually into Friends' meetings. I know of no such case, though hope used to be entertained that such a change might be induced. But it was never a well-grounded hope. By starting a Mission meeting on ordinary Free Church lines, one attracted from the beginning those who liked that sort of meeting. One adopted, from a Quaker point of view, a wrong principle of selection. People came to what suited them. It might have been wiser, in the long run, to have had more faith and courage, opened Friends' meetings and taken the consequences. I know of successful cases of this method of action. 240 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. vi At present, then, this subsidiary kind of meeting exists, though diminished, controlled by unofficial com mittees, and attracting a small working class audience. More often than not it is held in a separate building. The attendances have been falling off seriously of late years1. 1 It would have been a rehef to have had no more to add by way of confession or apology. But it would be misleading not to tell the reader that there are in the employ of a Home Mission and Extension Committee of the Yearly Meeting less than a score of men who reside in struggling or decaying meetings, practically as pastors of a flock too weak to feed alone, and whp become in practice paid resident pastors, leaders of mission meetings, organisers of Adult and other Schools, and frequent visitors at the homes of the congregation. These have been so set apart and given a modest maintenance, in order to prevent a meeting dying out, or to keep up aggressive work which Friends, through deaths or removals, cannot continue. The causes which have produced the pastor elsewhere have been operative here too. The men are of the same religious type as those who feel a call to other pastorates. They differ from the ministers of other denominations in that they are untrained, have no fixity of tenure, and do not lead thought or absorb the whole service of the ministry. They have themselves generally come into the Society from the outside, and so have not the Quaker tradition and upbringing. The introduction of this type of worker has been a chief cause of controversy in our Society of late years, and no general agreement has been reached. For many years the subject has been allowed to slumber, as no immediate danger of a transformation of the Society or of the rise of an influential class of officials appeared. But if ever a period of idleness or lethargy came upon us, the microbe of clericalism is there lying in wait, and capable of rapid multiplication. On the other hand, it is a reasonable hope that the arrangement is temporary and shows little sign of vitality The signs point to its gradual abandonment. CHAPTER VII SILENCE IN WORSHIP AND THE WORKSHOP OF MINISTRY i. All Friends' Meetings, properly so-called, are held on a basis of shence, out of which ministry or vocal prayer may, or may not, arise: as the pressure of "a message" is felt by one or another present. This habit of worship is what a chemist would call the essential oil of Quakerism. Where it is abandoned the Quaker faith is abandoned too. It is a rash and dangerous thing to say that any external habit of religion is a sure test of the presence of its essential spirit, and the statement comes of a family of bad ecclesias tical dicta. Nevertheless it is true here. For contempla tion, meditation, cohectedness, inward purgation, are the very processes of the mystical experiences of the soul. They need an activity of the spirit absolutely blocked by the necessity for attention to other peoples' words. They demand the shence of the outward. They constitute the end in view; ah utterance is but a means to stimulate the circulation of the blood of the soul. And we must give it time to circulate. When the souls of many sitting in silence are being oriented together the effect of the communion may be felt. The souls are in chorus if the voices are not. Each spirit collects itself, polarises the scattered activities of the week, gathering the disturbed consciousness to one point, inwards to the trysting place with the Eternal. Revalua tion takes place. Trifles are seen to be trifles, though they may have excited us at the time. We take stock spiritually — throw away the rubbish, check our estimates, and gain peace at the end, it may be after stiff conflict with the G.Q. 16 242 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. natural man. Grudges and hatreds come up for judgment ; and prayers for patience are put up. Often humhity and penitence cover the whole man. We make contact each for himself with the Real and the Eternal, and thereby gain strength over temptation and sin. In the distractions of dahy life, in the crowded multiplicity of detail, we may fah to see the wood for the trees. Here we are able to look at ourselves and to look from ourselves. How superficial is the view that in shence there is nothing going on. This is what Friends call a hving shence. Few can usefully practise such athletics of the soul for longer than half an hour. In a good meeting ministry often intervenes about that time — sometimes a prayer very early on is helpfully stimulating — and with intervals of silence the ministry of three or four may follow, often in unexpected unison of thought. Out of the shence rises the ministry. 2. The belief expressed in this chapter is that Ministry, as understood by the Society of Friends, is not simply a function of the outward whl or conscious purpose, nor represents only the thought of the ordinary superficial brain of every day use ; but comes from a deeper stratum of our being, has its origin in and derives its piercing and convincing power from a level of personality deeper than the streams of current consciousness. The subject of the underlying consciousness has been already treated in Book I, Chaps, iv and v. Something so fundamental naturally occurs more than once in a book hke this. We often have to remember that we are greater than we know, and that we cannot hope to explain all the things that happen to us by supposing ourselves entirely described as possessors of the particular faculties within the ken of our consciousness, which our evolutionary history has given us for the preservation of the species and for the conveniences of life on the earth. Readers may not resent a brief repetition. Among the phenomena which the Society for Psychical vii] SILENCE IN WORSHIP 243 Research, in the contributions of the late F. W. H. Myers, has included under the activities of the Subliminal Consciousness, are the intuitions of genius — those strange gifts of the imagination which bubble up in some of the most favoured of the sons of men, thoughts, pictures and words, "whose echoes roll from soul to soul," and become the permanent inheritance of mankind. Allied to these are the Daemon of Socrates, the Visions of Francis, and the Inner Voice which spoke to and spoke through George Fox and the early Friends. This "hidden man of the heart," this underlying part of ourselves, is the vehicle of the Word of God. He is known — that I may claim, though there is no room here to prove it — to be the vehicle of thought trans ferred from man to man; that is, he is susceptible of spiritual influence, he has means of perception other than the five senses ; and it is our reasonable hope that he is the vehicle of Divine Thought, too; that "The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart " (Rom. x. 8). We do not know what the landscape may be on the further side of this bright gate into the eternal; we know little of His fronded palms, His golden pavements, or the city set four-square ; I reck not much of these ; but I mean just the same as those apocalyptic seers meant, when by their lips the sense of the Divine glory had to be told in such words and metaphors as they kept in store. Enough for me to know the beginning of the way; to hold one end of the golden thread reaching up to the Eternal Unity; to find that we have a faculty, an actual organ it may be, where God meets man — the one Holy Place or shrine which ever was or can be. If our ordinary personality may be likened to the covering crop of green grass, made up of multitudinous trifles, blade upon blade, found everywhere and having no gaps ; then the bright flowers that stud it here and there, deeper rooted, growing from below the sod, owe theh beauty and theh bloom to a seed sown in subhminal soil ; 16 — 2 244 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. and one species of these deep-rooted daisies is the Quaker Ministry. It maybe thought that this is a one-sided overestimate of the share which the inward man has in ministry. I can only plead that it is the result of the experience gained first-hand through some thirty-five years of ministry, and that it is confirmed by the large body of greater experience to be found in the writings of Friends of all epochs, often subtly descriptive and helpful, if the archaic phrases can be translated into our own terms. If preaching is an affair of the unaided self-purpose, worked out by the conscious intellect, then our Quaker form of worship is calculated to give scope for the worst possible kind, the most haphazard in quality, the most untutored, the most self-appointed and egoistic. We can only regard a Friends' meeting as a well conceived adapta tion of means to ends, if the impulse to speak comes from the unconscious part of ourselves, so that it cannot be arranged for and paid for beforehand ; and our part is to gather our souls together in shence and wait, leaving the Holy Spirit, moving here and there, to do the rest. Our meetings are much more than a convenient plan by which the ministry of several may be substituted for the ministry of one ; they are a well-considered provision for the silence of the outward, inasmuch as that is a condition for the inward to find a voice. Friends' meetings have never been a failure when there has been activity of the Inward Man. Secondly, how do typical Friends tell their story? George Fox's Journal abounds with narratives of meetings in which, he says, the message reached the deep in his hearers' hearts, because it came from the deep in his own. Again and again, from all branches of Quakerism which retain its character, there is the testimony of ministers who go into meeting in physical weakness and weariness and mental helplessness, totahy unable to produce a vii] SILENCE IN WORSHIP 245 thought-out speech or address, only to find that they were made mouthpieces of the trumpet calls of the Lord. How explain this if there is not a reserve within us, whence ministry comes? Then, afterwards, when, through doubt or hesitation, or through the time being otherwise taken up, or meeting prematurely closed, what a painful experience it is to leave a meeting, as Friends say, "burdened." The fountains of the deep have been opened, but with no outlet. It is an experience quite different from and worse than that of an undelivered speech. It may leave one helpless for the rest of the day. Of course the public welfare often demands that we shall patiently endure this, trying as it is. The other side of the story is the light-heartedness, the relief, the chatty frame of mind in which a few minutes after an exercising offering in the ministry a minister finds himself in the yard "a totally different man" as the phrase goes. The outer man is awake again. 3. I have here dipped into my own experience, and indeed, unless I had some direct testimony to offer, feeble as it may be, I should not be worthy of my readers' attention. I feel that this is my warrant for trying to describe how ministry comes to me. It comes by waiting. When I sit down in meeting I recall whatever may have struck me freshly during the past week. This is in part, initially at least, a voluntary and outward act. It means simply that the outward man is ready to run if he is sent. It means that the whl is given up to service; and it is quite possible to stop everything by taking an opposite attitude. So thoughts suggest them selves — a text that has smitten one during the week — new light on a phrase — a verse of poetry — some incident, private or public. These pass before the door whence shines the heavenly light. Are they transfigured? Some times, yes; sometimes, no. If nothing flames, shence is my portion. I turn from ideas of ministry to my own 246 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. private needs. From these sometimes the live coal from off the altar is brought, suddenly and unexpectedly, and speech fohows. Sometimes it does not. Again, there are times when the initial thought strikes in of itself from the Inner Man beyond the will. These are times to be thankful for. Often two or three of the thoughts that have struck home during the week are woven together in unexpected ways. When the fire is kindled the blaze is not long. In five minutes from its inception, the sermon is there, the heart beats strongly, and up the man must get. How trying is any outward interruption during those few rapt and fruitful minutes, when the whole scheme is unfolding itself, and flashing itself upon the brain. There are the five or six main points, the leading sequences of thought are there, the introductory expository teaching, the generalisa tion, the hlustrations, the final lesson and appeal, they fah into place. The sermon is made, but I, the slow compiler, did not make it. Now for the human qualifications to all this. I advise no one to rise with his mind a blank sheet, or with only a text, not knowing whither it may meanderingly lead. That is not a method which, it seems to me, tends to edification. It is better far to find from the inward monitor to whom you have lent your mind, before rising, exactly what you think you have to say; you should have your sequence. Above all, have your conclusion, know where you are going to stop ; and even if you are led away from your plan, keep that as a harbour, to come quickly home to. I beheve that the faculties have enough to do when you are on your feet, in saying clearly and properly what you have intended to say, without composing new matter as you go on. Do I then always say what I intend and no more? Generally a good deal less. Constantly the restraining influence of the Guide stops my saying all I had meant, or half meant, to say; and, what is more, rarely have I vii] SILENCE IN WORSHIP 247 regretted the omissions. I am generally thankful for them. They have meant cutting off what is superfluous or of doubtful wisdom. No doubt this incompleteness is partly due to faults in the intellect, to forgetfulness, nervousness, haste to sit down ; but not wholly so, or the omissions would not be so beneficial as they generahy are. Again, does one never expand when one is speaking? Yea, verily. But mind your Guide here. This practice needs particular caution. Do not limit the spirit to its working before you rise; but limit your own faculties of utterance, particularly if you have been in the habit of speaking for many years. 4. There are two slight indications besides those I have mentioned, which give support to my view that an under lying man is at work in the ministry ; one is, that a conscious ness of oneself, of one's own position standing there in front of an audience, an incursion on the scene of the ordinary self, if it suddenly breaks upon you whilst in the exercise of ministry, brings confusion to the mind and silence to the lips. Hard is the case. "Get thee behind me" has to come quick, or one is lost. The other slight indication is to be found in the fact that at times, in old age, when most of the faculties are dulled or gone, the ministry seems to have an independent life, and to remain as bright as ever. I have known at least one such case. I have then, to sum up thus far, offered support to this view of ministry from the very constitution of our meetings, from the impersonal character and quality of the preach ing, from our feeling of being possessed by the message, of its being a gift to us, and from several minor indica tions. 5. If we turn now to the dangers and common faults of the minister, we shall find that they also give strong testimony to its impersonal character. For they whl be seen to consist of various ways in which the conscious self 248 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. intrudes into the work of the Divine man within and behind him. They can only be met by a resolute, patient, earnest selflessness in the work. There is first the fault of undue length. In one's early years, when feeling one's way, trying to find by what signs one ought to speak and when not, when the inner man is unaccustomed to his work, the outer man nervous and untrained to his part, self-conscious, fearful about appear ing to set himself above his fellows as though better than they, doubtful if his career be worthy of his message, frightened unduly by such a standard as I have raised in this paper, perhaps dealt with early by Elders who do not understand, who may possibly never have preached themselves, in these years speech is difficult, silence an easy refuge. The throat dries when you begin, you mumble, remember yourself suddenly, get confused, sit down in the middle. But in time the organism becomes fitted for its oft repeated task. Thoughts and words flow eashy on the tidal wave of inspiration. Words then may easily run on beyond the range of the tidal wave, and then they only cast up broken and useless wreckage on the shore — second-hand material, old well-used utensils; they are offence to us. In mid-life and after, our danger is to speak too much, not too little. The elderly minister who remains brief and to the point is a glorious product of disciplined and chastened humanity. The instrument has been kept in place. There may be a man who speaks at great length, whose length is a measure of the greatness of his inspiration; but I have never met him in England or in America. The question of length is not one of wordiness only, however, but one of amount of material. My advice would be to phe on all the fuel you can ignite, and no more. From memory and from thinking comes the material for the Inspirer to breathe upon. Bring in your theology, your literary allusions or quotations, your hlustrations from vn] SILENCE IN WORSHIP 249 anywhere and everywhere, freely and fearlessly; provided they are possessed by the inner man who is speaking, not merely thought of by yourself as gay tassels for your needlework, or ornamental appendages to a finished oration, which last, by the way, is a thing you must never deliver: it is forbidden. Quakerism does not lend itself to the manufacture of great popular preachers; it is suited for meetings not too large to give scope for the gifts of many. Now it seems to me to need great inspiration to cover and ignite sufficient material to go on for half or three- quarters of an hour. A quarter of an hour or twenty minutes is, to my mind, enough for a message which is to awaken a response, and stimulate the soul. I think that to double that time may leave the hearers tired, and not ready for much spiritual exercise in response. But on this point I have no more right to an opinion than anyone else. Personally I am not fond of long speeches either; and probably they arise from much the same cause as do long sermons. A man sometimes adds to length by trying to put the whole gospel into one sermon. Perhaps he is afraid of being misunderstood if he insists only on one side of truth at once. That is the self intruding, with selfish fears. Sit quiet under it. Thy Friends will understand thee in time. 6. Anyhow, length is a moot point ; at the worst it is an innocent weakness. It is far less disastrous than the next of our dangers, which is the indulgence of the pleasant feeling of success. Personal success is poison, if enjoyed at all. "Thou preached a fine sermon, to-day," said the kind Friend in the old story, thinking to please. "Yes, the devil told me so before I got out of the gallery," replied the wise minister. The rather unthinking, though kindly, remarks, often tendered after meeting, of "pleasure in what thou hast said," half compliment and too much in the outward, go through one like a stab. If they are acceptable 250 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. to our intrusive self-love, they become dangerous. This desire for success, and for its tokens in acceptability and preferment, is the bane of all to whom preaching is a profession. But we Friends also need to be on our continual guard. I do not plead against grave, thoughtful, dis criminating encouragement to faithfulness, and testimony to the value of the service rendered, offered to the man as a faithful steward. The minister must never try to make a fine sermon, or think that he has made one, or that he whl not speak at all unless he can speak well. He must be a fool for Christ's sake. He whl do no good till he comes to that and stays there. That is the expulsion of the Ego that the Lord may come in. And I believe we shall most of us have to keep watch on this thl our lives end. We are emptied of self, but self returns. Allied to this danger is the astonishing claim to some thing like infallibility, to a command from God which no Elder or Meeting of Elders ought to criticise, which one has, at rare intervals, heard of ministers making in years now gone by. Grievous is this misunderstanding. The Inward Man is in touch with God, but he is not possessed of all His counsel. I believe that he is more prone to error than the outward man who has learned from the rules of experience. But I am sure little need be said on so obvious a point. 7. The above teaching leaves large scope for the service of the faculties of the outward man. We ought to educate ourselves for the ministry if it should come, by cultivating every intellectual and vocal gift, by training and storing the mind through books; by the study of rehgion in its manifold outpouring. Particularly should we study the Bible in an intehigent way; the modern methods have left it fuller than ever of spiritual help. The intellect and the memory are the tools, the engine, by which the work is done; though an engine does not provide the power. Our duty is to keep it clean, oiled, up to date and in repair. This vii] SILENCE IN WORSHIP 251 duty has been too much neglected in the past. As priests ourselves, we ought to aim at being as well educated as the clergy. We should not prepare sermons, but we should prepare ourselves to be ready to preach when bidden to do so. Ah this does not point to formal preparation of sermons. That is a judgment to which I more and more incline. In my first year or two of ministry, I did prepare a good deal, always saving my honour by not preaching unless bidden to do so at the time ; a difficult path to follow. But I less and less believe in it, and have many years ago abandoned it for myself. Others may rightly follow a different prac tice. I feel free to make an exception in the case of weddings and funerals, where there cannot conveniently be any long period of silence. They are occasions by them selves, and perhaps we may rightly have our period of shence beforehand. But on the whole I think the Voice Within is best left to his spontaneous devising at the time ; this is the spirit of the matter. But there should be no hard and fast line. All this may be a little one-sided, perhaps ; but even if it be, it is on the side given to Friends to emphasize. 8. Next arises the question whether all vocal offerings must be of this type? Can there be none on a more con fessedly outward footing? To assert a negative, to make a prohibition in a religious organisation, is full of danger but must sometimes be faced; and I think there is but little place in meetings for worship for conversational, purely didactic, speech, made up for the occasion in the wih of and by the inventions of the speaker. It is apt to spoil the gathered, inward-drawn sense of the meeting. It distracts and scatters, and in practice we suffer greatly from it. There may be special occasions, and there may be meetings peculiarly constituted ; there must be exceptional cases and places. Quakerism abhors a hard and fast rule, but on the whole I think that kind of ministry is best found under other denominations, who can do it much better. 252 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. There should be other times and places found for the gift of teaching; an important subject, but not the one just now in hand. 9. Let it not be supposed that any special intonation or mannerism accompanies ministry from the deeper source. To give or to intend to give impressiveness by intonation is a besetment of the Quaker minister. But not of him only. It has been frankly adopted by the users of liturgies ; and is actually, in the form of organ and anthem and intoned prayers, a principal attraction to the churches around. Among us it is often due to mere nervousness. Sing-song rules the voice when the whl cannot. This is probably why women, to whom preaching is a greater effort than to men, often fah into it. It means a weakening of the instrument ; we may all drop into it when saying a particularly difficult thing. A caution may be given against supposing that the inward utterance may have free scope without the constant co-operation of the thoughts. This may become a snare, and a sermon may consist of text pouring after text without any but a verbal connection; the habituated organs voicing uncontrolled the inward suggestions. Such a sermon may go on for ten minutes or for an hour with equal edification. 10. I trust that nothing here said whl operate as a discouragement to any who are wondering whether ministry is to be laid upon them. The Lord is nigh unto all that cah upon Him. A soul that is striving for purity, one whose spiritual life is not without fruit in thought and idea, who has teachings and interpretations, aspirations, missionary impulses, and a love for souls; and who has enough literary workmanship and faculty of utterance to give reasonable expression to them, is not likely to be left uncalled. These things constitute the materials of a cah; and the proof is needed to show why a call is absent. There is nothing arbitrary, esoteric or semi-miraculous viij SILENCE IN WORSHIP 253 about it. Surely there are many who need to bear this very earnestly in their heart, and not let the mere habit of silence gain dominion over them. It is hard at first to know whether to speak or not; but it becomes easier. Nor is it necessary, nor I imagine usual, to see before you the vista of a long ministerial career. If it is right to speak to day, speak and leave the rest. I have always felt that I might cease to speak at any time; and sometimes that that would be the case. One soon learns to recognise the sensation that bids us rise; and, with a prayer for self lessness, we arise and speak the words of the Father, our share of the apostolate of Jesus. Let us give no place to the fear of man, the public opinion on us personally. From man we have nothing to gain and nothing to fear. To some who read this I would say, put your strength into the ministry; let the life-blood of your spirits flow that way. The quality of our ministry cannot rise higher than the quality of our life and experience, but it may rise as high. Finally, a minister has particular reason for guarding his soul in his dahy doings. A week of taxing absorption in our outward affairs may leave us with no harvest to offer to our brethren, and no strength in the reaper. A week forgetful of God will leave the soul rusty with in attention when it wakes up on Sunday. A week marked by self-indulgence or sin may well lead to an abashed and penitent silence. On the other hand, nothing is lost. Pressed in the wine-press of trouble, it may be ours to pour out the wine of His consolation; the flame of our love may light other torches, and out of the tangled skein of our own doubts it may be given us to spin the clear golden thread by which our fellows may find their way to the feet of God. CHAPTER VIII THE LORD'S SUPPER i. Our disuse of Sacraments is due to our distrust of the spiritual value of all ritual. The outward and visible sign which begins by promising to make more real and vivid an inward and spiritual grace, ends by obscuring it, by limiting it to the range of the outward sign, and finally by asserting that it cannot be enjoyed without the due ceremonial. We obtain in fact the conception of the validity of a sacrament. This hne of testimony to pure inwardness and to universal grace was taken by our early Friends in the seventeenth century in spite of the passage in which it appeared to be ordained by our Lord. But in our time historical criticism has come to the aid of their spiritual intuition, and it whl clear the ground for the positive Quaker position if we first of all plead that no sacrament was ever ordained by our Lord at all. 2. We have four narratives of the Last Supper; one common to Matthew and Mark, one in Luke, one in John, and one in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The narra tive in John makes no allusion at all to the Bread and Wine incident, and need not be further referred to. The other passages are these : Mark xiv. 22-25. And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said. Take ye : this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they ah drank of it. And he said unto them This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. ch. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 255 The account in Matthew xxvi. 26-29 ls Ior our present purpose the same as this, and need not be quoted. Luke xxii. 17-20. And he received a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say unto you, I wih not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you : this do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you. 3. Attentive readers whl have noted that there is an addition here, the passage from "which is given for you" to the end. This addition is, however, absent from some ancient manuscripts, viz. from the Codex Bezae and from six of the most ancient Latin versions. Most of the passage is also omitted from the very ancient Curetonian Syriac version. Copies without it were therefore very widely circulated in the ancient world. It is absent from all the "Western" texts, as classified by Westcott and Hort. It is an awkward addition, too, inasmuch as it brings in the cup twice, and is therefore at once under suspicion of having been put in later from some other source. If so, there whl be no doubt what that source was to any one who compares these added words with the narrative in 1 Cor. xi. 23-25. Paul writes: For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread ; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said. This is my body, which is [broken]1 for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. (Italics mine.) 1 Margin R.V. The last part of this passage is clearly the same as the awkwardly made addition to Luke. Either the Gospel must have taken it from the Epistle, or the Epistle from the 256 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Gospel, or both from a common source. But as the Epistle was written twenty years or more earlier than the compila tion of the Gospel, the Gospel has clearly owed the passage to the Epistle, or a tradition closely akin to the Epistle, most likely, of course, to the Epistle itself. The greatest authorities on the text of the Greek Testament are Professors Westcott and Hort. They were Churchmen. Dr Hort was the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Dr Westcott was the Bishop of Durham and before that the most influential theologian in Cam bridge. They are both conservative, orthodox critics, and keenly devoted to the Church of England; yet they say clearly, on ordinary critical grounds, that "there is no moral doubt that the words in question are absent from the original text of Luke." (See their edition of the Greek Testament, Select Readings, p. 651.) That many conservative critics of an earlier day did not recognise this is not strange. To confess that so much doctrine and ritual are not in the Gospel requhed great courage, and must have been an instance of painful obedience to the laws of critical honour. Now it is this passage and this passage alone which contains the command to repeat the ordinance, the famous words of institution: "Do this in remembrance of me." Neither Matthew nor Mark nor John thought it necessary to put in any such command. Yet, had they believed the command to have been given it is morally certain that they would have handed it on. This is a case in which the argument from shence has validity. And now the one passage in Luke is transferred to Paul, and we are face to face with the startling fact that the original Gospels contain no ordination of the Lord's Supper. 1 The same view is taken by Wendt, 11. 235, 317. Also, I understand, by Paulus, Briggs, Percy Gardner, Grafe, Immer, Jiihcher, Mensinga, Pfleiderer, Spitta, Titius and Willichen. Opposed are Scrivener, Schultzen and Hoffman. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 257 4. The discussion has been so far confined to the single point of the source of the words of institution, but it will be more satisfying to examine textuahy the whole of the four narratives. This has been done by M. Loisy in his great work on the Synoptics published in 19081. As is inevitable with a textual reconstruction it does not rise into the region of proof, and depends for its convincing power upon its intrinsic fitness and probabhity, considerations which, to my mind, are strongly in favour of M. Loisy's view. He believes that the whole of the Corinthian passage, not merely the latter portion of it, has been incorporated into the Gospel of Luke, and there placed after the original Synoptic narrative; also that it has been intercalated in separated pieces into the Matthew-Mark text. So that the words about taking bread and giving thanks and breaking it and saying "This is my body" become Pauline. Cer tainly it is not probable that the borrowing from the Epistle began in the middle of a sentence, between the words "body "and "which." One feels sure also that the source of the idea "This is my blood " was also the source of "This is my body." We thus have two separate accounts: (1) The Synoptic, representing a trustworthy historical tradition, as follows : With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: for I say unto you, I will not eat it, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he received a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this, and divide it among your selves... verily I say unto you, I wih no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of God. (2) The Pauline, which Paul "received of the Lord" by direct inspiration : The Lord Jesus... took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is broken for you: 1 See article by Mr M. A. R. Tuker in the Hibbert Journal for October, 1910. g.q. 17 258 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood : this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. We might cah the former of these passages the " King dom" passage, and the latter the "Covenant" passage. The Synoptic tradition represents the Supper as an antici pation of the Kingdom of God, words which were constantly in the mouth of our Lord ; it has no Eucharistic significance, and there is no suggestion of a permanent rite. The Pauline passage centres round the idea of a new covenant, and mentions the blood of Christ. It contains the idea of the bread being mystically identified with the body; it is in harmony with the teaching about the new covenant which runs through the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle to the Galatians, and it is in harmony with the passages about the blood of Christ which are common in the Epistles. But the conjunction of references to the remission of sins and the blood of Christ occurs nowhere throughout the Synoptic Gospels or, with significant exception, the Acts, except in Matthew's form of this very passage under discussion. The only exceptions in the Book of Acts (Acts xih. 38, and xx. 28) are in speeches by the Apostle Paul. It therefore appears probable that ah these Cove nant words, which we think were put into the Gospel of Luke out of 1 Corinthians, were also put into the other gospels, and form no part of the apostolic tradition or the historical sayings of our Lord. They were a personal, inward revelation to the Apostle Paul. Mr Tuker accounts for the absence of both narratives from the account of the Last Supper in the Fourth Gospel, on the theory that by the time the Fourth Gospel was written the Pauline tradition was established everywhere, but it was no part of the memory of the writer or of his disciple's; therefore, not wishing to open a useless con troversy, or unsettle current practice, he omitted his own viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 259 version, already sufficiently present in the Synoptic accounts. The non-Eucharistic character of the description of the Supper in the Didache is natural, because that document arose either in Egypt or in Jerusalem, places outside Paul's influence in the earliest time. In the Sacraments of the Churches the idea of the Kingdom has been superseded by the idea of the Covenant, solemnised by participation in the body and blood of Christ, in which man makes his covenanted reunion with God. This complete victory of the Pauline narrative is in part due, no doubt, to the fact that it was established by the Apostle, not only in Asia Minor but also in Rome, afterwards the metropolitan church. All this is merely a part of the development of Christian thought which appears to be due to the fertile mind of the Apostle of the Genthes. We have, in the establishment of the Lord's Supper as a sacrament and a covenant, the natural, even the inevitable, outward expression of that deep teaching concerning the union of the believer with Christ, alike in His Crucifixion and in His Resurrection, which formed the central thought of the Apostle's preach ing, being his own explanation of his religious experience. It has often been called Paulinism. 5. It will be well to explain the ideas connected with the word "covenant" in the minds of the early Pauline disciples. They would catch at once the Jewish idea. Let us try to follow them as their minds went back along theh accustomed ruts to Exodus xxiv. 11, where, to ratify the Old Covenant, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel had gone up to Mount Sinai, had beheld God, and did eat and drink. That is, they had a sacrificial meal with God to ratify the Covenant. This is the Elohistic narrative ; in verse six of the same chapter the rather later Jehovistic account of the same incident says that Moses builded an altar with twelve pillars to 17 — 2 260 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. denote the twelve tribes of Israel, had sacrifices offered and divided the blood, half of which he put into basins to be sprinkled on the people, and half he sprinkled on the altar to God. Then he read the Covenant aloud, and the people expressed their agreement with it. To appreciate all this we require to know that in the East the original form of a covenant of brotherhood was for each party to open the veins of the other, and taste of his blood. But in general, in covenants, a consecrated victim more conveniently took the place of the man himself, and after sacrificing it they ate it together1. For that reason, Moses and the Elders of Israel are recorded in one account as having a meal in presence of the Lord, and in the other as sacrificing and dividing the blood. The two accounts have the same significance. Now we can return to the words used at the Supper as understood by Paul. This was their meaning. "Mine is the blood of the new Covenant. By partaking of my flesh and blood you are entering into a blood bond with God; partaking of my nature you get hold of God's nature; your guilt and alienation will be past. Treat now this piece of bread and this cup of wine as though it were my body and blood, to be shed tomorrow." We therefore catch this further meaning, that by partaking of the Christ nature, we are thereby brought into close touch with God's nature, and that Jesus at the Supper as reported by Paul was speaking of Himself as the link between God and man — to a Jewish mind the sacrificial victim, whose blood was being shed to ratify in Oriental fashion that new relationship between the race and its Creator. To us, naturally, this expression "Blood of the Covenant " does not carry more weight than that of a significant analogy, based on the customs of primitive races. Our task is to appropriate its spiritual significance, 1 See W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 314 et seqq., on the Blood Bond. Viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 26i without understanding it prosaically, and becoming en slaved, rather than helped, by the Jewish colouring of the eternal thought, as it appeared when seen through the eyes of the great Jewish apostle. That is the way to inter pret all religions. Take hold of their underlying spiritual truth: but sit loose to their forms of thought. This particular form of thought had a wide range. Herodotus describes it as practised by the Medes and Lydians when they took an oath. He also says that the ancient Scythians mingled their blood with wine in a bowl and drank it. Tacitus describes a simhar practice among the Armenians and Iberians of the Caucasus, and Sir Samuel Baker in 1873 exchanged blood with Rionga, an African Chief. The practice still survives in South Italy among the members of the secret society known as the Mala Vita. The newly admitted member sucks a drop of the chief brigand's blood from a place over his heart1. 6. The next question is as to the source whence Paul probably received his version of what occurred2. What does he say about that? "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you." Can this mean that he received it from a tradition of men? The words will not bear that. And Paul is particular about what he did or did not owe to other Apostles; witness Gal. i. where he insists on his independent first-hand acquaintance with the Lord and with His Gospel3. "By revelation " he had gone up to Jerusalem, he tells us in that chapter. A passage in this very Corinthian Epistle shows us what he would have been likely to say had he meant that he was handing on information or instruction received originally from the 1 From Myth, Magic and Morals by F. C. Conybeare, pp. 258 and 259. 2 Compare the views of Prof. Percy Gardner in Exploratio Evangelica, cap. xxxvi. 3 That he received his version by direct revelation was, I understand, the opinion of Chrysostom, Calvin, Estius, Bengel, Oscandes, Olshausen, Alford, Evans, Edwards, etc. 262 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. eleven Apostles. In the fifteenth chapter he summarises his teaching thus: "I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received," viz. the facts of the Lord's death and resurrection, matters of common knowledge in the Church. We note that he does not say "received of the Lord," and its absence is significant, for the whole subject of his indirect and late apostleship had become a sore point with him through the attacks of his opponents, who ever sought to depreciate him on that ground. There remains, then, the alternative that in some dream or rapt vision the command had been impressed upon him. He was, we may presume, aware of the common tradition about the Supper, now preserved in the Synoptic narrative, and of the frequent recurrence to that tradition in the minds of the believers when they broke bread together, as was their habit in one another's houses. 7. The tendency to combine a meal and a religious celebration was already present in Corinth and elsewhere, from the experience of both the Greeks and the Jews, before Paul preached there1. The Priests when on duty in Jerusalem, away from their homes, had meals in common, usually on festivals or Sabbaths, and the schools of the Pharisees carried out an imitation of this in private life. The Essenes, the monastic communities who of all the Jews were nearest to Christianity, used their common ascetic meals as a means of fellowship. The Greeks also had numerous private religious clubs which habitually met and dined together. The Therapeutae or Worshippers of Egypt had a sacred meal of bread and water every 50 days2. The regular orthodox services at the heathen temples included also what is described in the first Corinthian epistle as "sitting at meat in an idol's temple." The Thiasoi or Trade Guilds had solemn repasts, with homage to a saint 1 Stanley, Christian Inst. pp. 53, 54. 2 Conybeare, pp. 271-3. v. Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity by Flinders Petrie. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 263 or god1. The earliest Church, then, almost inevitably, and without needing any instruction to do so, held simple spontaneous, common meals, generally known, when after wards organised, as Agapae or Love Feasts. 8. Given the man and the circumstances, the result was inevitable. Paul the missionary was full of his Gospel of the participation of the believer in the nature of Christ and of God through Christ, according to the ideas which underlay the sacramental meals by which a covenant was celebrated. If he or his followers were to require any ritual at all, that would have to be the one chosen. The converts on their side had the established habit of common meals, and they had a moving tradition of the last meal the Lord had had with His disciples. All that was needed was a link to connect this last meal with the psychological necessities of ihe moment, and so to establish a sacramental rite under our Lord's own authority. Paul was not himself capable of manufacturing history, but a vision might do so. We are not responsible for our visions, and our psychic personalities are untrammelled by outward facts. Paul was in the frequent habit of receiving commands by vision which carried convincement to his mind and required no further confirmation. When he had heard the words "Do this in remembrance of me" within himself he had a more valid authority than tradition. Indeed he constantly relied on his inward ear and eye for strength and guidance throughout his stormy and strained career. The voice, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," had been his first introduction to the Way. "Come over into Mace donia and help us" was the phantom voice in the night which had nerved him to invade Europe for Christ. The de pression due to his complaint "The stake in the flesh " had been cleared by the words "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness." Courage 1 Conybeare, pp. 271-3. 264 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. after the riot in this very city of Corinth had come with the words, "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace." In the midst of the storm, the promise of safety had been given, when "There stood by me this night an angel of God whose I am, whom also I serve, saying, Fear not Paul; thou must stand before Caesar." And lastly, there was the ineffable vision when he was taken up into Para dise and heard "unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." There can hardly be any doubt of the meaning of the words " I received of the Lord " in the mouth of a man so spiritually constituted, meditating on the organisation of an infant community. So that the sole authority for the ordination of this great act of Christian worship appears to be in some form of vision, or direct intimation to the Apostle Paul. 9. We have so far treated the matter almost independ ently of the external influences of current religious ideas. But the case is enormously strengthened when we find that the best of the other religions of Greece and Asia Minor had a ritual of their own, similar in character and in meaning to the Christian sacraments. Union with the Divinity was the ruling religious idea of the best of the varied faiths, from East or West, with which Christianity came into contact. For the consummation of this union all the Mysteries existed. At Eleusis, within sight of the citadel of Corinth, there were celebrated every year, and therefore at least once during the eighteen months Paul lived at Corinth, in the greatest temple in all Greece, the solemn mysteries of Demeter. To take part in them was the deepest experience of the old religious world. "If prayers and sacrifices were the ordinary ritual of the Greeks, and purifications and the like their special services, the Mysteries were their sacraments." "Justin Martyr," as Prof. Percy Gardner says, "somewhat naively observes that wicked demons have imitated the Christian Com munion in the Mysteries of Mithras." But one naturally viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 265 concludes that it was the older Mysteries which influenced the new. Later, we will try to follow the late Dr Hatch1 in showing that the Mysteries very much influenced the later development of the Communion, and are its true historic antecedents; but at this point we can only reasonably conjecture that the sacred cakes eaten by the initiated in the ceremonial at Eleusis as a means of com munion with the gods may have suggested to Paul's waking mind the wisdom of making the habit of breaking bread from house to house into a religious function and increasing its solemnity. The contrast is indeed actually present in the very passage under review, between the heathen and the Christian rite, between the "Table of the Lord and the table of demons ; the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons " ; a contrast impossible unless there had been a heathen ritual of table and cup. Paul eagerly adapted for the service of Christ the habits of thought which he found. To the Greeks he became as a Greek, that he might gain the Greeks. He adopted the Unknown God whose altar he found at Athens as the very Divinity he came to preach. The Isthmian games, celebrated outside the gates of Corinth, suggested the idea of the athletics of the soul, with the unfading garland as the prize. 10 . The Rev. H . Bulc ock, in his little book The Transla tion of Faith2, argues forcibly in favour of the view that the sacramental teaching of Paul, with the accordant alteration in the account of the Lord's Supper, dates from the period of his long residence for some three years at Ephesus, during which time he came into intimate friendly intercourse in the school of Tyrannus and elsewhere with the Asiarchs (Acts xix. 31) and other influential citizens, and thus became familiar with the best thought connected with the religion of Asia Minor. It was from Ephesus and at this time that he wrote the First Epistle to the Corin- 1 Hibbert Lectures, x. 1888. 2 James Clarke and Co. 1913. 266 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. thians, which emphasizes the sacramental character of the common meal. The vision of the original supper however antedates this, and may be connected in time with the founding of the Corinthian Church on the second mis sionary journey. It may however have been "delivered" to them either by letter or on the short visit referred to in 2 Cor. xiii. i at some date nearer that of the Epistle. ii. i Cor. x. shows us very clearly how these Mysteries affected Paul, both by example and by revulsion. They were of several kinds, always associated with religious aspiration and aiming at ecstasy. They seem to have been, as a rule, connected with the worship of ancient Chthonian or Earth divinities, surviving behind the state worship of Zeus and the Olympian gods. There were very numerous Mysteries in honour of Cybele, Mother Earth, the source of fertility. Others belonged to the gods of the nether world. There were the Mysteries of Dionysus, the god of wine, jollity and freedom from convention. Closely allied with these were the Orphic Mysteries, with their communion meal of raw flesh, and there were the exciting Phrygian Mysteries. Prominent in these Phrygian mysteries was the conception of re-birth, and the belief vividly impressed by solemn pageant and rehgious drama in the death and resurrection of the beloved Attis. The Hilaria, in which these were represented, fell about the time of our Easter, and Firmicus Maternus reluctantly confesses its resemblance to the Christian celebration1. Union with the god was dramatised either by eating a common meal at the god's table or by the devotee being covered with the blood of a slain bull, or by ordinances of immersion, or by a ceremonial imitation of a marriage. " To understand the quality and intensity of the impression produced, we should borrow something from the modern 1 L. R. Famell, author of "Cults of the Greek States," in Encycl. Brit. Article "Mysteries." A very good account of what occurred at the Mysteries is given by Edward Carpenter in chap. xv. of his Pagan and Christian Creeds, 1920. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 267 experience of Christian communion service, mass, and passion play1." In this case the borrowing would be the return of something formerly borrowed. Among the papyri dug up on the site of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus by Drs Grenfell and Hunt is one (Pap. Ox. 1. no) of the second century, which runs as follows : " Chaeremon invites thee to dine at the table (or divan) of the Lord Serapis in the Serapeum tomorrow, the 15th, at nine o'clock." Aristides, a Greek writer of the second century, further Ulustrates Paul's language when he remarks that men enjoy a real communion with Serapis in his sacrifices, in that they invite him to the altar, and appoint him to entertain and feast them. An old Greek inscription of Kos, describing the ritual of sacrifices to Herakles, speaks of the table of the god. Porphyry aids' us to understand Paul's phrase, communion with devils, when, in a passage I have already noted, he describes the demons as coming up and sitting close to our bodies when we eat flesh2. 12. Better in spiritual quality than all these were the Mysteries of Mithras, the loftiest popular cult of the ancient world, and during the second and third centuries the strongest rival to Christianity. The disciples of Mithras celebrated by imitation the last supper which Mithras, the human-divine Saviour, had held with the sun and other gods at the close of his incarnation. "Mithras was regarded as the mediator between suffering humanity and the un knowable and inaccessible God of all being, who reigned in the ether." "A sacred communion of bread, water, and possibly wine, compared by the Christian apologists to the Eucharist, was administered to the mystic who was entering upon one of the advanced degrees3." It is, however, uncertain whether the invasion of the West by Mithraism, which came from Persia, had developed sufficiently by Paul's time to enable it to have had any influence upon him. Reactions between the two religions 1 L. R. Farnell, Encycl. Brit. 2 F. C. Conybeare, Myth, Magic and Morals, p. 277. 3 Article on "Mithras," Encycl. Brit, by Prof. G. Showerman. 268 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. belong mostly to the next age. The Christians in their final triumph destroyed ah the books of Mithraism that they could find: otherwise we should know more about it. Paul revolted from the idolatry that he saw in all these things, the worship of the creature rather than the creator, and he regarded the gods themselves as spirits of evh. "The things which the Genthes sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have communion with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons : ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?" (i Cor. x. 20-22). But like his fellows, indeed like the saints of all ages, Paul must have a communion also, a purified communion with his beloved Master. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh : have not they which eat the sacrifices communion with the altar?" (1 Cor. x. 16-18). He even felt it necessary to defend himself from appearing to give an inferential support to the heathen analogues by establishing the Christian communion (see 1 Cor. x. 19) 1. 1 The position here taken that there was no rite instituted by our Lord at all, and that the early disciples continued a common meal from natural and obvious reasons, without any direct instruction to do so, is now the accepted conclusion among many German critics. A summary of the views of Harnack, Jiihcher and Spitta on this point may be found in The Expositor for July and August, 1898. Differing in many of their ideas and suggestions, they agree on the main critical position here adopted . Dr McGiff ert, in his History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, states that it is not certain that Jesus instituted any Supper, and that the earliest Christians regarded every meal as a Lord's Supper (pp. 68, 69), and had no special communion meal of any kind. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 269 13. We will now inquire what was the kind of function which the Apostle at first established at Corinth, and probably in his other churches. It is described as one to which the rich brought enough wine to indulge themselves or other early comers even to drunkenness, and in which gluttony and bad manners of several kinds prevailed; the last comers found nothing left, and the poor were made to feel ashamed of their poverty (1 Cor. xi. 20-22). It was a common meal, a congregational social evening, badly con ducted. There was no priest to perform it, indeed, there was nothing to perform. Its closest modern analogy is a social tea, followed by a time of devotion. 14. Now comes the first stage in its development. In this First Epistle the Apostle's instruction is that they must satisfy their hunger at home. The eating and drinking were to become purely formal, but the religious part of the service was to survive. Greater solemnity was to be given to the Agape. "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guhty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body " (1 Cor. xi. 26-29). The exact meaning of these words is not clear to me, but it. is plain enough that it was to be a celebration of a profoundly sacramental character, and those who took it frivolously were not "discerning the body." This change occurred as debauchery or excessive festivity became scandalous here or there, unth what was at first a local rule was generally copied elsewhere. Till the need was felt, however, the regular meal was retained as the Lord's Supper. "This was still the case in Syria and Asia Minor when the Teaching of the Apostles and the Epistles of Ignatius were written, and in Bithynia in the 270 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. time of Pliny, but in Rome when Justin Martyr wrote his Apology the Lord's Supper was attached to the regular Sunday service, and the love feast, or social meal, had disappeared altogether, or was held at some other time1." Gradually, everywhere, the common meal was prohibited. The excesses to which its too festive character gave rise, aided the victory of Sacramentalism. So that it ceased to be the feeling that every meal was the occasion for feeding upon Christ and participating in His life, as it had been in the earliest days when they broke bread. Ordinary meals were distinguished from the Lord's Supper. The first enthusiasm had faded; eating and drinking became too frequently very unconsecrated acts. So was drawn once more that disastrous line between things sacred and things secular which it is to-day the task of saints to wipe out. It is significant that this distinction was begun by an abuse, and denotes a moral standard not the highest. 15. Though it is not our concern to trace carefully through the centuries the various stages by which the great engine of the priesthood reached the development with which we are familiar, it is of curious interest to note how the process was aided at every point by the example of the Greek Mysteries. Whether they suggested to Paul the founding of the common meal at Corinth, can be only matter of probability, but that their influence at later stages was real and pervasive is a matter of evidence and fair inference2. The ceremony at Eleusis and elsewhere was one for initiates only. Similarly the Sacrament became one for fuh members of the Church only, those who had undergone Baptism and the long preparation for it. In early days there was no such line drawn. At Eleusis the people stood in the darkness of night outside the great temple where 1 McGiffert. 2 What fohows is from Dr Hatch's Hibbert Lectures, x. viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 271 the story of the capture of Persephone by the King of the Underworld, and her recovery by her mother Demeter, was represented dramatically in a blaze of light. It signified death and immortality, though it was originally a harvest festival in worship of the corn mother. Plutarch compares death and heaven beyond to the experience of an initiate. "When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated into the Mysteries. The one expression reXevrdv, the other reXeladai correspond." In shence the company of initiates stood before the blaze of light ; just as in silence the kneeling communicants watch the priest as he performs the "miracle " of repeating the death of Christ before their eyes. Each initiate in the Mysteries was having a personal communion with the Divine Life, and was made thereby a partaker in the life to come. "Thrice happy," said Sophocles, "they who go to the world below having seen these Mysteries, to them alone is life there, to ah others is misery." In some of the Mysteries offerings were brought and laid upon a holy table, and then distributed in a common meal. 16. These Mysteries had enormous vogue throughout the eastern part of the empire, and from the initiates Christianity doubtless gained many converts with the old practices impressed upon their habits of mind; so it was likely that the new religion would take up the better elements out of the old. The same reasons which had led the elect to establish secrecy among the Greeks, led the same type of person to found a secret doctrine or an esoteric practice in the Church. Origen admits that this was so, and goes so far as to defend it by comparing it with the Mysteries; in fact, this parallel is frequently drawn in the writings of the Fathers. Further, the details of the influence of the Mysteries on the Eucharist may be traced. At the beginning of the Mysteries there was a proclamation warning off those whose hearts were impure or bad. And in the " Apostohc 272 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Constitutions" we find that the Sacrament was preceded by a proclamation — "Is there any one who has a quarrel with any? Is there any one with bad feeling?" This practice may, however, have come, with or without the example of the Mysteries, from the famous words of Jesus : " If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberestthat thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconched to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." In the same book of the "Apostolic Constitutions " we find that the unbaptised and penitents went out, as the uninitiated did, before the Mysteries began. The Communion table became an altar in the latter half of the second century, a most significant change whose echoes are with us still. Later, we find the elements themselves known as Mysteries, and the priestly attendants spoken of as "mystery leaders," fivo-Taycoyot, the technical term at Eleusis. The thing was considered a sort of Christian Mystery by everybody, and modelled accordingly. 17. Here is a description of the Christian Communion by Dionysius Areopagiticus at the end of the fifth century, when the process of assimilation was complete (Hatch, P- 303)- All the other initiations are incomplete without this. The consummation and crown of all the rest is the participation of him who is initiated in the thearchic mysteries. For though it be the common characteristic of all the hierarchic acts to make the imtiated partakers of the divine light, yet this alone imparted to me the vision through whose mystic light, as it were, I am guided to the contemplation of the other sacred things. (The ritual is then described. The sacred bread and the cup of blessing are placed upon the altar.) Then the sacred hierarch initiates the sacred prayer and announces to all the holy peace, and after all have saluted each other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists is completed. The hierarch and the priests wash their hands in water; he stands in the midst of the divine altar, and around him stand the priests and viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 273 the chosen ministers . The hierarch sings the praises of the divine working and consecrates the most divine mysteries, and by means of the symbols which are sacredly set forth, he brings into open vision the things of which he sings the praises. And when he has shown the gifts of the divine working, he himself comes into a sacred communion with them, and then invites the rest. And having both partaken and given to the others a share in the thearchic communion, he ends with a sacred thanksgiving, and while the people bend over what are divine symbols only, he himself, always by the thearchic spirit, is led in a priestly manner, in purity of his godlike frame of mind, through blessed and spiritual con templation, to the holy realities of the mysteries. Such a description would almost do for Eleusis, with bread and wine added. It will be plain that we have moved far from the simple New Testament habit of breaking bread from house to house. In the Coptic Church in Egypt, the one communion which has changed least from primitive usage, we find that the communion service is sthl a social gathering, in which friends move about and talk to one another in famhiar intercourse, and that children are freely admitted; a solitary survival in a land where from age to age but little change has come1. 18. It is one of the ironies of history that the Apostle Paul, so much of whose strength was spent in liberating Christianity from Jewish legalism, became the founder of another ceremonial which was to be, for good or evil, the mightiest ritual in the history of religion. He could see quite plainly the idolatrous elements in the rival faiths which he rejected. It was not given him to see how even Christianity itself would become paganised when it came to have a world-wide vogue, and that humanity, which loves an idol and a priest, would elevate the host into the one and the ministering brother into the other. To the Quaker mind, which it is my task to describe, the fact that the Apostle Paul was led to his doctrine of the union of the believer with Christ, alike in His Crucifixion 1 See, inter alia, Stanley's Christian Institutions, p. 52. G.Q. l8 274 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. to the flesh and in His Resurrection to an immortal life, by the example and permeating influence of neighbouring rehgions, throws no discredit upon that great teaching. Far otherwise. The religious aspirations of all men deserve our sympathy, and may often be guides to ourselves. The universal Father has no orphans in any age or race. When the best religions of the most advanced countries of the time taught the believer's union with his God, it gives an added assurance that the Apostle, in making that the central experience in Christianity, may be the more safely followed. But when it comes to Christianising pagan ceremonial we feel that the Church was therein adopting something which was calculated To make weakness weak And melt the waxen hearts of men. The very fact that idolatrous ceremonial is a part of all ancient religions shows its value in the childhood of the race. That it degenerated into magic and served the ends of priestcraft shows that its usefulness was a temporary thing, and that indulgence in it carried an intellectual and moral blight. It is a calamity to Christianity that the magic efficacy of the instruments of the Mysteries should have been extended to the Christian Communion, for to assert that only by aid of a priest in the apostolical succession standing in a consecrated place can a certain specially full access to the Divine be experienced, is pure magic. "Validity" is a word from the vocabulary of the medicine man. Our Lord's reply to it would be "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I wih come in to him, and whl sup with him, and he with me." The Christian Eucharist has, therefore, the same ancestor as the corn baby at the old-fashioned harvest home. Both alike are derived from the primitive worships connected with crops and fertility and the return of Spring, viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 275 with the dying god whose ferthity is communicated to his worshippers and to the soh in the multitudinous ways familiar to readers of Sir J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough. A reviewer of the complete edition of that book concludes his review with this summary conclusion : From the dark background of nature-worship, with its reasoned cruelties, its calculated sensuality, emerge by a sublime reaction the puritanism of the Hebrew prophets and the idealism of Galilee. They bring by their sudden inspiration the promise of liberty and advance, until with system and with ritual, the deep instincts, the incorrigible metaphors, revenge themselves under splendid disguise in the restoration of the older cult1. 19. The Lord's Supper, as practised by Protestant Churches in the cases in which Protestantism has been able to develop itself fully, has been purified from any claim to be able to produce in a unique manner the presence of God. It is therefore free from all magical taint, as it is practised amongst Enghsh Nonconformists, and to some extent in the Church of England. It has become merely a memorial service, valued because of its historic continuity with the past, and because it is believed to have been ordained by our Lord. Doubtless it will continue to exist on these lines, even if the conviction that it has not been so ordained became general. Probably the strong words of the Apostle Paul about being "one body" with Christ and "discerning the body," would hardly be felt to be appro priate to this purified and simple ceremonial. Experience has shown that the line between the memorial service and the Eucharistic celebration has not always been easy to maintain, or even to draw, so that Friends sthl feel glad that they have inherited no such function at all, which, even withmild formalism, is alien to the inwardness of theh faith. 20. Having now shown the origin of the Lord's Supper in the constant breaking of bread together, its organisa tion as an institution by Paul under the intimations of a 1 The Nation, April 25th, 1914. 18—2 276 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. vision, remodelled by him in his Epistle under the stress of abuses, further shaped on the lines of the Mysteries, and finally become the dearest friend and deadliest foe in Christian conflict; having, therefore, no more authority over us than the command to abstain from things strangled and from blood, to anoint the sick with oil, to kiss all members of the church, or to wash one another's feet, we have still one argument of a different kind to meet. This: that as it was human weakness which originated at Corinth the special service apart from a solid meal, so always the needs of a not too strong human nature have been and are the strength of the Eucharist, and constitute its justifica tion, because it supplies a real need, and would not have come into existence if it had not been useful, according to some standard of utility. Destitute as we have shown it to be of the sanction of our Lord's command, it can be defended on the ground that it meets the tastes and needs of men, that it does people good. That defence we Friends meet with the thought that beautiful and helpful as special days are, they are apt to take away one's attention from ordinary days, absorb one's effort and spiritual energy, and leave a greater desert between the days of communion. The communion is a spiritual stimulant, and we believe that on the whole it is better to do without stimulants. This is the ground of the Quaker preference for an everyday life of communion, a dahy feeding upon Christ. Our general idea is well put in Whittier's poem, The Mystic's Christmas, concluding But judge not him who every morn Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born ! We Friends have done without this means of grace for over two centuries and a half, and I know of nothing to show that our spiritual privileges have been less than those of our fellow citizens. The Divine Presence has been and is viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 277 in measure among us. Saints have lived unbaptised and died unshriven in our communion, and stih do so. We appeal to experience. Our case is easier in that respect than that of our early Friends. They had the hardihood to abolish venerable ceremonies with no experience behind them, and not knowing that the judgment of biblical students would hereafter sanction the line they took. On these two points our testimony has been strengthened by time, and by the growth of knowledge, and the testimony itself is not less, but rather more necessary now than formerly. From all sacramental contentions we are able to stand aside, and we believe that the only safe ground amid conflicting theories is to have no sacramental theory at all ; clearly to understand that no variety of any such theory is to be found in the Christianity of Christ. In Book I of this treatise the religious instinct has been described as a primitive passion like hunger. It would be a nearer analogy to liken it to the other great primary emotion, that of sex — which has its spiritual and its physical side. These passions are variable and occasional ; but hunger and thirst obey a very brief rhythm. They return in a few hours. Sex in its deep, ecstatic great moments is only occasional; it could not be borne as a constant experience by the physical tabernacle nor by the mental. Its rhythm is a long one. So also are the great moments of the saint. No soul could endure the Presence of God in vivid consciousness except at epochs. Ecstasy is an unspeakable, a rather rare, experience. No road goes over mountain tops all the time. Doubtless, as there is the quiet contentment, the stable happiness, of married life, as distinct from the great red letter days, so there is the quiet consciousness of walking in the light day by day, the constant experience of the Christian. But for the keen sensations of the Divine Presence we must wait for the return of the rhythm. But people have not always been content with this. 278 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. in any of their appetites or passions. They have tempted hunger and thirst with dainties and superfluities and artificial drinks. They have played with sex. And they have used drugs — opium or alcohol — as stimulants to elevated emotion; as it seems to the subject at the time. Akin to all these is the religious stimulant, the opium and the alcohol of the soul's desire. Such were the Mysteries, such are the Sacraments. It is better to wait for the rhythm. Our souls grow strong in patience. In no region of our faculties is artificial sensation, unnaturally stimu lated, good for us as a habit. Excess is down an easy path, and is responsible for most of the chronic ills of man. The comparison of the religious stimulus in the Eucha rist to the physical stimulus of potent drugs may not unreasonably appear exaggerated. It might be pleaded that the mild and comparatively harmless cup of coffee was a truer parallel than an intoxicant. I agree that in practice this is the case, and the plea fair. Every stimulant constantly applied loses its strength through familiarity. It is only in theory, or in rare instances, that the com munion of the Body and Blood of Christ rises to ecstasy. But these experiences are those ardently desired, and for them the more potent drug is a fit analogy. The Quaker, however, is an ascetic in religion and prefers to do without even the cup of coffee in this connection. 21. The chief theological problem of the inner hfe among thoughtful men to-day is how to possess a thought of God not unworthy of His myriad universe, grown so vast to us in space and time, and yet a thought not too vague and vast to appeal to heart and conscience; how to unite, in fact, the two conceptions contained in the two words "Omnipresent Father." But what can more surely and fatally localise, provincialise, nay, materialise God than the "miracle" of the mass? What more absolutely bars that conception of universality, which alone can satisfy us, than any sacramental theory of His special or viii] THE LORD'S SUPPER 279 exclusive presence? It is not too much to say that only by understanding the mind of an idolater, with its fervour and its limitations, can we properly comprehend that of a Sacramentalist. He has despaired of his inward inherit ance ; he is seeking the living among the dead. That in man, and only in man, is found the temple of the living God, he has come not only to doubt, but earnestly to deny; and alas for our race ! how often has God taken him at his word. 22. Let us conclude with the positive teaching with which the Scriptures abound, on the real conditions of Divine Communion. Here is a string of sayings from ah parts of the Bible : I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are. If a man love me, he whl keep my word : and my Father wih love him, and we whl come unto him, and make our abode with him. The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are hfe. Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life. The bread of God is that which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world. For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord : I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.... New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, — I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteous ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. CHAPTER IX BAPTISM i. With regard to the ordinance of baptism, there is very little in controversy, and not much to be said beyond the utterance of a broad general principle which applies equally to all ritual. Ceremonial washing is as old a habit as ceremonial eating or ceremonial kneeling ; it was a recognised means of undoing ceremonial uncleanness. The Jews, if possible, bathed the whole body in a running stream, which the Pharisees symbolised by pouring water on the hands before each meal. It was the work of John the Baptist to link together the ceremonial notion of clean and unclean, which was no part of Christianity, with that inward repentance or cleansing in the heart which was ; and it was most natural that the Christians should use for their rite of initiation into the Church that baptism of repentance which had been the symbol used in the great religious revival on which the teaching of Jesus supervened. Chris tian baptism added a conception of endowment of the Spirit to the conception of repentance which John had added to that of ceremonial uncleanness. It is perfectly plain that throughout Christian history, from the very earliest days, converts were baptised on entering the Church. After Peter's speech in the Book of Acts, three thousand entered the Church by baptism. Philip practised the same at Samaria and with the eunuch. Saul was baptised at Damascus, and Cornelius and his friends by Peter. Lydia was baptised at Philippi, and the Philippian jailor also; and there even appears to have been at Corinth a custom of being baptised for the dead. ch. ix] BAPTISM 281 2. It is curious, however, that our Lord Himself did not baptise anybody, though He permitted it, and that Paul, after baptising the first few converts whom he made at Corinth, ceased the practice himself, saying that it was not in his line of duty. We can only guess at the spiritual fact behind these strange exceptions. Can it be that the Apostle Paul — and to a still greater degree his Master — had little personal sympathy with solemnities of this formal kind, and took but little interest in them, whhst allowing them as a practically useful arrangement, recom mended by their followers and permitted by them in a spirit of toleration? One cannot but feel that if Jesus had baptised anyone He would have done something entirely different from what was usual with Him. It was hardly for Him — the reformer of all forms — to begin or to emphasise a new form of His own. During His lifetime the baptising which was done by His disciples was not connected with initiation into a Christian Church which did not yet exist ; it was, doubtless, analogous to the baptism of John, which was thereby taken on into Christian practice. 3. It is also significant that modern inquiry has relieved us of the command which used to stand in Matthew xxviii. 19, "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I com manded you." This is, of course, one of the two passages which used to stand in the Bible as supports to the doctrine of the Trinity. The other text about "the three witnesses" in 1 John v. 7 and 8, vanished, by general con sent, about the middle of the nineteenth century and does not occur in the Revised Version or even in its margin. It is a Trinitarian interpolation inserted at the time of the growth of the Trinitarian doctrine. This text therefore is naturally suspect on the same ground. Dr Gardner re cognised that it was "little in the manner of Jesus." 282 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Dr Martineau says that "the passage betrays itself by speaking in the Trinitarian language of the next century." Harnack pronounces the text as "no word of the Lord." Canon Armitage Robinson — a somewhat orthodox critic — thinks that we have not here got the accurate words of Christ, but that of the Church and the Evangelist's own time and locality. But the real destruction of the text was the work of Mr F. C. Conybeare of Oxford. He examined the writings of Eusebius to see how the text stood in Greek manuscripts during his time, from 300 to 340 a.d. Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea, and he lived a long and learned life in the greatest Christian library of that age, collected at Caesarea by Origen and Pamphilus. Most of the manuscripts of earlier days which now survive come from that collection. Conybeare says that in his library Eusebius must have habitually handled codices of the Gospels older by two hundred years than the earliest of the great uncials that we have now in our libraries. He was also familiar with the commentaries of Origen and Clement of Alexandria and others, and he spent his life in study. By reading his voluminous works, Conybeare has found eighteen citations of this passage, and from all of them both baptism and the Trinity are absent. The words in Eusebius are "Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my Name, teaching them to observe ah things whatsoever I have commanded." This evidently was the form in which the treasures in the great library of Caesarea had the passage. But before he died orthodoxy laid hold upon Eusebius. He visited Constantinople and attended the Counch of Nicaea in a.d. 325 in his old age, and there he learnt the new and more orthodox reading, and incor porated it in two of his latest controversial works and in one of his letters. We see the whole operation before our eyes; the method by which the Bible has been made to support the doctrines of the Church ; what we should call ix] BAPTISM 283 forgery, but which in those days they only cahed edifica tion and adding to the honour of the Lord. Nicaea was a town of Bithynia near Constantinople, and the great Trinity question was the cause of the summoning of the Conference by Constantine. Mr Conybeare says that in the writings of Origen and Clement of Alexandria there is no certain quotation of this passage in the usual orthodox form. In Origen there are three quotations of the passage, but they ah stop abruptly at the word "nations." Either this was the original end of the passage, or, what is more likely, the words which originally followed have been cut out in the interests of the new text. He probably wrote "teach all nations in My Name." There is a citation or echo of the passage in Justin Martyr, which also runs "being made disciples in the Name of the Christ." This was written about 140 a.d. On the other hand, we find that the orthodox text existed in some parts of the Church early in the third century, for it occurs twice in Tertulhan, 200-217 a.d., and in a Greek Gnostic named Theodotus, quoted by Clement of Alexandria. An interesting feature in the growth of the text occurs in the controversy of that same Cyprian to whom the Church owes so much evh. He had a quarrel with Pope Stephen, who asserted that baptisms were valid in the single name of Jesus. Cyprian swore by the triple formula. Again, we see the text in process of growth and under controversy. It is likely that both had their texts to appeal to. In old-fashioned and distant places like medieval Ireland, we find the ancient formula lingering long. The entire Celtic Church was excommunicated in the seventh century because it adhered to the use in baptism of the name of Jesus only. This it would not have done if it had had in its texts an order to the contrary from our Lord. It is strange that a controversy which was once the cause of a great national separation, should now be so entirely 284 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. forgotten by most of us, who accept the interpolated text without question. Another separation took place over this text in the latter half of the fourth century, when a certain Macedonius and his followers were called "pneumato- machi," or fighters against the Holy Spirit, because they refused the Trinitarian formula and denied that the New Testament contained any passage co-ordinating Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This was, of course, soon after the conversion of Eusebius to the Catholic text. We have no Greek codex older than the year 400 a.d. if as old, and from the only manuscripts which could have corrected them, and shown that they had been doctored by the dominant party, viz. the Sinai Syriac and the oldest Latin manuscript, the pages are unfortunately gone which contain the conclusion of Matthew. Therefore we may say that there are no words of Christ ordering the rite of baptism. 4. We ought, in saying this, doubtless, to consider the word which so strangely occurs in the conversation with Nicodemus in the third chapter of John, where it says "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God." The word "water" is here an isolated allusion ; throughout the rest of this im portant passage the reference is to the Spirit only. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." With the tendency to interpolation in the interests of current orthodoxy, which we have occasionally been able to detect, we cannot lay stress upon the verbal accuracy of this conversation. The Fourth Gospel is, in any case, a late, though a valuable production; and if we take the conservative view that it was edited about the year 100 a.d. from memoranda of reminiscences furnished by the aged Apostle John, we have not only no certainty of the verbal accuracy of conver sations, but a practical certainty that no long conversa tions could be verbally accurate. The historians of those days habitually dramatised their characters in speeches written under the influence of a historical imagination ix] BAPTISM 285 long afterwards. So that I conclude that the practice produced the text, not the text the practice. 5. This ceremony may take rank with the other sacra ment in having introduced enormous evils in its train. Once set up an artificial difference between those who have, and those who have not, been subjected to an out ward rite, which can carry with it no spiritual value, and you have pride and fear walking in mutual suspicion under the cloudy darkness of superstition to bloodshed and to atheism. The doctrine of " baptismal regeneration " is a piece of magic and nothing else; it is one amongst the tickets taken to heaven at the booking offices of medicine men in savage tribes all the world over. So long as it remains enmeshed about the feet of Christianity, the Quaker testimony will still be needed. 6. The Baptists began, not with the assertion that adult baptism was essential, but with the assertion that infant baptism, with the accompanying doctrine of bap tismal regeneration, was an abuse and a superstition. To testify against it they established the conspicuous rite of adult baptism as a ceremony of entering the Church on New Testament lines, not so much for its own sake as a protest against its corruption. It is not uninteresting to ask whether their way of bearing that testimony or ours has been the more effectual. To the majority of people Baptists exist to show the value and importance of adult baptism, and their testimony appears to me to have been somewhat obscured by their too obedient imitation of the exact practice of the early Church. If, on the other hand, we have been able to show through two centuries and a half saintly lives lived by the unbaptised, we have, I think, been able to hold the banner fair. This, it maybe remarked, is a not uninteresting feature in the general history of our Baptist friends, who began, like Quakers, with an entirely unprofessional ministry, a plain dress and a separation of the sexes in meeting. It was the lack of intellectual ability 286 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. ix. amongst their members to preach usefully which led them during the nineteenth century to begin to employ and pay ministers where funds allowed. Again, the thorough-going testimony would seem to have been the more availing. CHAPTER X ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE i. This chapter whl be short and written without enthusiasm. The particular organisation maintained by Friends is successful and interesting, but it does not follow that it is worthy of general imitation. The only test of any organisation is the pragmatic one. Any scheme which runs smoothly and works weh is a good scheme for the object in hand. Organisation is a necessary evh ; its great danger is that it tends to become rigid, and the men in whom it is incorporated fight for its existence, with which theh own personal habits and interests, and often, as they think, their principles, are closely bound up. An organisation, therefore, should be sufficient, but not excessive : it should be effective, but fluid. Above all, it should be eashy changed and should respond rapidly to varying needs. Towards these desirable objects Friends' organisation has historically had the great advantage of not being bound up with anyone's livelihood. We have had no clerical order to consider. 2. The burning question for the first generation was whether there was to be any organisation at ah. To the Quaker ranks had gathered the country's mystics, strongly individual in their experiences, their convictions, and their demands, in hot revolt against routine. The result was that the later years of the life of George Fox were spent in controversy with extremists drawn from the Ranters and the Seekers, the men who had in the first instance welcomed him most warmly1. 1 See chapter xi. in The Second Period of Quakerism by W. C. Braithwaite and John S. Rowntree's Lecture on "Micah's Mother" reprinted in bis Life and Work. 288 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. These extreme chhdren of the spirit that bloweth where it listeth would have no fixed times and places of meeting, no government of the Society, and curiously enough, above all things, no women's business meetings. But the practical quality of mysticism prevailed, and George Fox, supported heartily by ah his leading followers, Isaac Penington, William Penn, Robert Barclay and Thomas Ellwood, established from 1672 onwards a scheme of business meetings, which has stood in its general outline to the present day. This durability and practical effectiveness is a sufficient reply to those who believe that either creeds or pastors are necessary to good order, and shows that the man who derives his strength from secret intercourse with the Unseen is the man who comes forth to face the details of life with the best equipment. He is willing to build all things according to the pattern shown to him in the mount. 3. The Monthly Meeting is the unit which exercises executive and disciplinary functions. It generally includes a few neighbouring congregations and a few hundred members. In most cases it still meets once a month and is preceded by a meeting for Worship. It is held on a week day in the morning, afternoon or evening, as may be found locahy convenient. It concerns itself with the reception of new members, the dropping by disassociation of old ones who have ceased to attend Meeting, and the occasional disownment of members for grave misconduct. Its more ordinary functions are, however, those of mana ging endowments, raising subscriptions, disseminating documents sent from headquarters, and sending up to headquarters Minutes representing "concerns" of local Friends. Its duties as the general local executive are manifold, its committees numerous, and its meetings generally last from one to three hours, and are open to the whole membership. The Monthly Meeting arranges for advising Friends annually on the subject of keeping x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 289 correct and clear accounts, and the timely making and revision of their wills. It appoints committees to arrange for the grants in aid of the education of the chhdren of poor Friends. It receives and transmits certificates of removal, ensuring that Friends whl receive a welcome and be enrolled on the list of members in their new abodes. Ah sorts of propaganda and aggressive work may come before it. Each settled congregation has a Preparative Meeting, whose functions are strictly local and subordinate, and are confined to sending up local matters to the Monthly Meeting, to which it appoints representatives. Preparative Meetings generally deal with the repairs, maintenance, and erection of Meeting Houses. Sometimes they have local funds to administer and local collections to make. They have no disciplinary power. They are brief meetings held at the close of a Meeting for Worship on the Sunday morning prior to the Monthly Meeting. 4. Some half dozen Monthly Meetings are grouped into a Quarterly Meeting, which originally occupied in most cases a county area, but in the years of the decline of the Society neighbouring counties were joined. These gatherings are large and interesting occasions, mainly concerned with spiritual stimulus and edification. They are more hortatory and less administrative than the Monthly Meetings. They last for a whole day or for two days, include at least one Meeting for Worship and very often conferences at which prepared addresses are given on the Ministry, on pastoral work, on Home and Foreign Missions, on Social Reform, Temperance, War or other subjects. These Meetings often apply themselves with practical efficiency to the immediate national problems of the hour. 5. One important feature of the Society's scheme are the fohowing queries : ist. What is the religious state of your Meeting? Are you individually giving evidence of true conversion of heart, and loving devotedness to Christ ? G.Q. 19 290 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. 2nd. Are your Meetings for Worship regularly held? and how are they attended? Are they occasions of religious solemnity and edification, in which, through Christ, our ever-living High Priest and Intercessor, the Father is worshipped in spirit and in truth? 3rd. Do you "walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us"? Do you cherish a forgiving spirit? Are you careful of the reputation of others? and do you avoid and dis courage tale-bearing and detraction? 4th. Are you individually frequent in reading, and diligent in meditating upon, the Holy Scriptures? And are parents and heads of households in the practice of reading them in their families in a devotional spirit, encouraging any right utterance of prayer or praise? 5th. Are you in the practice of private retirement and waiting upon the Lord, in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, making your requests known unto Him? And do you live in habitual dependence upon the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit? 6th. Do you maintain a religious life and conversation as becometh the Gospel? Are you watchful against con formity to the world, against the love of ease and self- indulgence, or being unduly absorbed by your outward concerns to the hindrance of your religious progress and your service for Christ? And do those who have chhdren or others under theh care endeavour, by example and precept, to train them up as self-denying fohowers of the Lord Jesus? 7th. Do you maintain a faithful allegiance to the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Head of the Church, and the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, from whom alone must come the true call and qualification for the ministry of the world? And are you faithful in your testimony to the freeness and spirituality of the Gospel dispensation? 8th. Are you faithful in maintaining our Christian x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 291 testimony against all War, as inconsistent with the pre cepts and spirit of the Gospel? 9th. Do you maintain strict integrity in all your transactions in trade, and in your other outward concerns? and are you careful not to defraud the pubhc revenue? 9 a. Do you as disciples of the Lord Jesus take a living interest in the social condition of those around you ? What place do you give to personal service for others ? Do you seek to understand the causes of social evils, and to take your right share in the endeavour to remove them? (Added in 1911.) ioth. Are your Meetings for Church affairs regularly held, and how are they attended? Are these Meetings vighant in the discharge of their duties towards theh subordinate Meetings, and in watching over the flock in the love of Christ? When delinquencies occur, are they treated timely, impartially, and in a Christian spirit ? And do you individually take your right share in the attendance and service of these Meetings? nth. Do you, as a Church, exercise a loving and watchful care over your younger members, promoting their instruction in fundamental Christian Truth, and in the Scriptural grounds of our religious principles, and mani festing an earnest desire that, through the power of Divine grace, they may all become established in the faith and hope of the Gospel? 12th. Do you fulfil your part as a Church, and as individuals, in promoting the cause of truth and righteous ness, and the spread of the Redeemer's Kingdom, at home and abroad? One of these Queries is considered in each Preparative and Monthly Meeting throughout the year, and three of them together at each Quarterly Meeting, where they often form the basis of an interesting discussion. 6. Any member aggrieved by the disciplinary treat ment of a Monthly Meeting can appeal to the Quarterly 19 — 2 292 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. Meeting, where the case is heard judicially. The individual or the Monthly Meeting against whom the Quarterly Meeting decides has a further right of appeal to the Yearly Meeting, the body next to be described, which treats it in a similar manner, and whose decision is final. Such appeals are extremely rare. In my lifetime I have only had to deal with one in a Quarterly Meeting, and there have been none which have reached the Yearly Meeting for about half a century. The only important appeals there have ever been have dealt with charges of heresy in the period of evangelical influence. 7. The Yearly Meeting gathers in London towards the end of May in each year and sits for nine days. As a rule it sits three times a day, and the business which comes before it is varied and important. It is the supreme legislative body. It receives from Monthly, through Quarterly, Meetings, minutes and suggestions for public action, or for changes in the Society's rules, and whhst it is not obligatory it is in practice usual for even small alterations in procedure to come up, not on the motion of individuals, but through a Quarterly Meeting. It used to spend a day on the considera tion of the state of the Society, in which any "concern," within a wide range, might find expression, or in which, on the other hand, the whole Meetingmight concentrate on some vital need or discovered weakness among us. This practice has recently been modified, and the subjects more defi nitely apportioned by a Programme Committee. The Yearly Meeting maintains correspondence with Yearly Meetings in America. It receives reports from the Foreign Mission Association, the Mission and Extension Committee, the Friends' Temperance Union, the Tract Association, the Friends' First-Day School Association. It has under its direct control the two important schools at Ackworth and at Leighton Park, Reading, and it devotes always one full sitting to education. The other schools are owned and managed by Quarterly Meetings. The Yearly Meeting x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 293 maintains connection with the scattered bodies of Friends in Norway, Denmark, Austraha and New Zealand. Much time is also spent devotionally. One morning is devoted, when the pressure of business permits, to Meetings for Worship, held in a number of different rooms, and each business sitting is opened by a short devotional period. Very frequently a special religious meeting for Young Friends is held. Early devotional Meetings are held each morning. For some years Triennial Reports of their condition and activity have been sent up by the Quarterly Meetings, the Yearly Meeting thus dealing with one- third of the country each year. This plan has now been given up. Peace and social questions and kindred political issues often occupy much time. 8. The Yearly Meeting's Epistle is one of the features of the Society's life. It is read twice in the year in every congregation, and once each in the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings ; it endeavours to embody, and notably succeeds in doing so in moving and dignified words, what may be called the main concern of the Yearly Meeting, the messages which have influenced it and which it desires to transmit. It is a pastoral epistle expressing, in a document which has to pass the scrutiny of committees and sub-committees, some of the main exercises of the Yearly Meeting. It is circulated all over the world. It is necessarily, in its first draft, the work of one writer. Care is taken that this writer shall not be the same from year to year. Actually it is of very composite authorship. 9. The Yearly Meeting, like the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings, is open to the attendance of all members, men and women; and all have an equal right of speech. This simple democracy could only obtain with a body of small size. If we were five or ten times our present number, some sort of delegation would be unavoidable. When men and women meet together the company may reach twelve hundred, of whom two-thirds are women. A few sittings 294 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. are held by women separately. Only a comparatively few Friends have the time and money to spare to come to London for ten days. With certain small exceptions Friends pay their own expenses. It may be queried whether the plan is really as democratic as delegation with expenses paid would be. But in fact there are no questions of aristocracy and democracy among us: none which affect the rich man differently from the poor man, and we are well content as we are. 10. The Yearly Meeting has an executive known as the Meeting for Sufferings, which meets monthly in London and consists of representatives sent up by the Quarterly Meetings. Recorded ministers have also a right of mem bership in this body, which generally has an attendance of over a hundred Friends. Its quaint name is derived from the fact that its earliest functions were the relief of the families of imprisoned Friends, efforts for their liberation and their restoration to health and home on their release. "Sufferings" did not cease with the Toleration Act of 1689. There were sthl distraints for tithe and Church rates. The Meeting is sthl for the relief of suffering, but suffering in a wider circle. Constant attendance at that Meeting brings home to one how persistent is the painful cry of mankind. The Meeting organises war victims' funds, relief to Armenians, to starving Russian peasants, and to men anywhere over whom the trail of ruin has passed. During the war a great many young Friends have once more been imprisoned for conscience sake, and the conscientious objectors and their interests have formed a ceaseless preoccupation of the meeting since conscription was established. The Friends' Service Committee, and the Quaker "Chaplains" Committee, have been at work all the three dismal years, 1916-1919. Either the Meeting for Sufferings or the Yearly Meeting itself has the function of liberating Friends officially for foreign service either among Friends' Meetings in America, x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 295 among foreign mission stations, or again among neglected fishermen in the Norwegian islands or the natives of the South Seas. Such liberation carries with it the payment of expenses. The Meeting for Sufferings is also the organ by which Friends approach the Government or Parliament, and they are not unfrequently doing so, particularly where militarism threatens to raise its head. Altogether this Meeting is a very active and weighty body. Its sittings generally occupy three or four hours, and Friends find it worth while to go up to it from distant parts of the country. n. Our method of coming to a decision in a business meeting is that of a perfected and disciplined democracy, and I see no reason why it should not be imitated by other companies of people who trust one another. We take no vote. A subject is discussed, generally after a deliberate preliminary pause, and "the sense of the meeting," as revealed by the speakers, is then registered by the clerk, that is the chairman, as the decision of the meeting, and submitted by him as a Minute for approval or criticism. As all meetings are open to all members, this is, to begin with, undiluted democracy, but it is far from the counting of heads. The weight of the speaker is an important factor in the clerk's mind and so is his or her known representative character. Thus the advantages of an aristocracy are obtained and the weight of leadership is felt. Where the speaking is about equally divided the discussion is further continued, so long as time allows, until some upshot emerges. Of course this plan cannot be worked without frequent recourse to compromise, and sthl more often to delay. Sometimes the issue is shelved on to the shoulders of a committee appointed to consider it, elected in open meeting, and therefore dependent for its representative character upon the sense of justice of those who cah out names. This strangely simple plan works with a remark able absence of friction and is a feature greatly prized among us. 296 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. 12. Alongside the above thoroughly democratic bodies, there have existed in an extremely varying form, Meetings formerly called Meetings of Ministers and Elders, of late years Meetings on Ministry and Oversight, and now deprived of their exclusive character, and theh functions merged in the Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Meetings. Their titles sufficiently show their duties, but their select- ness has constituted a really insoluble problem. The intimacy of a Meeting consisting of a smah number of like-minded Friends, the pillars of the Church and active in its service, led to a frankness of expression impossible in a large open Meeting, but no attempt to draw the line between those who were and those who were not fit for any such select Meeting has ever been successful. The Ministerial visits are arranged for by other committees. The following Queries and Duties are now generally read and considered in open Meeting and describe plainly the functions of these former Meetings. Duties. ist. The religious condition of the particular congre gations within their limits, and whether the Meetings for Worship are held to edification and to the honour of God. 2nd. The counsel, encouragement, and help of those engaged in the work of the ministry, especially of the younger and more inexperienced. 3rd. The making of arrangements for attending, from time to time, the Particular Meetings within the limits of the Monthly Meeting, especially those in which little or no ministry is exercised. 4th. The visiting of the infirm, the sick, and the afflicted. 5th. The religious care of the chhdren and young people who attend our meetings, and the promotion of their religious and scriptural instruction. x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 297 6th. The propagation of the Gospel in the district, as way may open. Queries. ist. Are you engaged to watch unto prayer, that you may yourselves be preserved in humble dependence upon Christ, and in earnest religious exercise for the conversion of sinners, and for the edifying of the body in the faith and hope of the Gospel? 2nd. Do you occupy the spiritual gifts entrusted to you, faithfully, and to the honour of God ? 3rd. Do you overcharge yourselves with trade or other outward engagements, to the hindrance of your service? 4th. Are you careful to rule your own houses well? And do you endeavour, by example and precept, to train up your families in a religious life and conversation con sistent with our Christian profession? 13. Mention has already been made of Ministers, Elders and Overseers. It is well known that the ministry among Friends is not an office, and that it is open to all present in a Meeting to take vocal part with equal freedom. The practice of "recording" ministers has, however, existed, not from the earliest times when their ministry recorded itself, but from a date soon after the Society quietly settled down in peace. The theory was that when a Friend had spoken frequently and acceptably for a few years in our Meetings, he or she should be "recorded" for encouragement, and for such status as sitting facing the Meeting provided. In former days also it was only Friends who had been so recorded who could be liberated for service away from home. The Monthly Meeting hberates for service within its own Quarterly Meeting and the Quarterly Meeting for service within the Yearly Meeting. The same psychological difficulty which has made select- ness impracticable in the nomination of the members of 298 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. the Meetings on Ministry and Oversight has operated to render the recording of ministers also very irregular. It may be said to be a decadent institution, although a special conference on the subject, held at York some years ago, decided to continue the practice officially. It is, however, ignored in some districts and very partiahy executed in others, so that at the present moment the list of recorded ministers gives no idea whatever of the numbers of frequent speakers anywhere. This irregular situation cannot be said to be just or satisfactory. The practice of recording is not very harmonious with the Quaker idea and is sometimes the reverse of beneficial to the Friend recorded. It has been continued for its supposed practical value. Now, however, that ministerial concerns can be and are ratified by Meetings whether the Friend is recorded or not, there seems little that is practical left in favour of such recognition. The recorded ministers have never, however, approached a clerical order nor shown any sign of development in that direction. 14. Elders are the Friends who are appointed to advise and encourage ministers and to check undesirable utter ances. They are concerned, that is, with the decorous holding of Meetings for Worship. One of them now usually sits at the head and breaks up Meeting by shaking hands with his neighbour. Their work is done privately, is often of a delicate personal character, and requires much tact and sympathy. Elders are by no means always elderly people. In practice they are more quiescent than aggressive. It whl be clear that in Meetings which are open to the expression of ministry or prayer by anyone present, whether a member or a stranger, such an office as that of Elder is essential. 15. The Overseers are concerned with the conduct and well-being of the membership. They advise in times of business difficulty, they deal with misconduct, with the arrangements for seating in the Meeting Houses, with the x] ORGANISATION AND DISCIPLINE 299 distribution of relief and with educational grants. No Friend is ever allowed to become a pauper. Friends main tain their own poor. The Overseers note incomings and outgoings into the Meeting and apply for certificates of removal. When a Friend is married at Church or Chapel the overseers report the fact, though disciplinary action thereupon has long ceased. 16. This chapter would not be complete without some reference to the famous book of Doctrine, Practice and Discipline. The doctrinal part has not been revised for a long period. It consists of extracts from Yearly Meeting's Epistles and a few utterances of early Friends before the Yearly Meeting was firmly established. It is unsystematic and frequently repeats itself; most of it dates from the period when evangelical statements of doctrine were domi nant in the Yearly Meeting. It is hardly ever read, it only occupies twenty-five pages, and has been untouched by the theological thought of the last two generations. A serious attempt at arranging for a revision is now (1919) in progress. The last extract included is from the Yearly Meeting's Epistle of 1880, and the present volume was issued in 1883. The section on Christian Practice was, however, brought up to date in the year 1911, and is a very interesting volume. Large portions of it were re-written for the last edition, and it constitutes a summary of the practical applications of Christianity to the twentieth century. It is of great value. Many minds have gone to its compilation, and in the latest edition much of the stiffness of a code of regulations has been removed, so that the style attracts a reader, and no practical or delicate issue is shirked1. Part III of the original work concerns Church Govern ment, and its regulations have already been summarised 1 Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of Friends of London, Yearly Meeting. Part 11. Christian Practice. 191 1. Swarth- more Press. 300 THE SUPERSTRUCTURE [ch. x in the earlier part of this chapter. The latest edition was issued in 1907. Outside this official organisation there exist a whole crowd of subsidiary services. Foreign Missions existed under a separate Board unth a year or two ago, when their appointment became official. Numerous Summer Schools for the study of religious and economic problems have formed most attractive features of the life of Friends since the first Summer School held at Scarborough in 1897. "Young Friends" have a little organisation of their own. Much teaching work both at Woodbrooke itself and all over the country is managed by the Woodbrooke Council. It may be safely believed that every known department of philanthropic effort has a branch working within the Society but without direct official connection with the Yearly Meeting. The organisation here outlined has been tough and durable. But for the last two generations it has been elastic also. Before that it was worked with some rigidity and formalism for a long period, and the oversight of the detahs of personal dress and domestic habits was carried to an intolerable degree1. 1 See among many other sources J. Ernest Grubb's Presidential Address, Journal Friends' Hist. Soe, July, 1914, and W. C. Braithwaite, Second Period, chap. xvm. BOOK IV THE OUTLOOK UPON THE WORLD CHAPTER I SOCIAL SERVICE i. We have found that Quakerism is a form of Christian mysticism; that it is based upon a vivid con sciousness of the Divine in human life, and that it leads to identifying fellowship with worship — the service of manj with the service of God. Whilst man is stih a most im-j perfect revelation of the mind of the Spirit, and whilst the Infinite Spirit must transcend all His partial manifes tations, we yet find in practice that the Spirit of God is in men, His living temples; that into this temple official priesthood is an intrusion, ritual more enfeebling than inspiring, and theological doctrine an attempt to explain religious experience, and therefore growing from age to age. What then has the Quaker left? His attention is not taken up with the adornment of churches, nor with the appointment or payment of clergy, nor with the provision of music, or colour of glass, or sacred odour of incense; his interest is not in some heavenly plan of salvation in whose acceptance intellectual satisfaction is transmuted into hope ; nor, again, is he diverted from motions of help fulness and actions of humanity by tribal cruelty enshrined in the primitive records of the Hebrews. His whole mind is directed to the men, women and chhdren among whom he lives. Society is the garden of the Lord, full of the plants of His right hand planting. Desecrated temples of the Divine Presence, puny, helpless, disendowed, are round about him; all social evils become significant to him, because they mean the degradation of those in whom God Hves. To him therefore the words of the Epistle of James 304 THE OUTLOOK [ch. come with unclouded appeal — "Pure religious service and undefiled. . .is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." That is, philanthropy is the practical outcome of mysticism, and social service in the widest sense is the prime religious duty of man in the outward. And this has turned out to be the case. Whilst we have been denominationally a failure, measured by statistics of membership, the world which has passed us by as a church has decided that we have been, in social and philanthropic fields, workmen that need not be ashamed. Let us rid ourselves wholly of the idea that mysticism is a faith for the recluse in the desert or the monk in his cell. Mysticism is the well-spring of philanthropy; it gives the word of command for the service of man. It is not by chance, but it is artistically fitting, that William Penn was put into Newgate for writing a mystical book, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, and whilst he was there for seven months he wrote the earliest form of No Cross, No Crown, which is the central writing of the early Friends on the practical life of the Christian. 2. It is in harmony with all this that we find "primi tive Christianity revived" among Friends in the matter of simplicity of life and the right use of wealth. Harnack, in his book The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, has shown in numerous hlustrations that the early Christian communities were rehef agencies, and devoted themselves in a remarkable degree to works of charity. For instance, he quotes the testimony of the pagan Lucian who says Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything of this kind occurs, that affects their common interests. On such occasions no expense is grudged. And Tertulhan observes: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes i] SOCIAL SERVICE 305 of many of our opponents." Harnack gives another interesting extract from Tertullian's Apology. Even if there does exist a sort of common fund, it is not made up of fees, as though we contracted for our worship. Each of us puts in a small amount one day a month, or whenever he pleases; but only if he pleases and if he is able, for there is no compulsion in the matter, everyone contributing of his own free will. These monies are, as it were, the deposits of piety. They are expended upon no banquets or drinking-bouts or useless eating-houses, but on feeding and burying poor people, on behalf of boys and girls who have neither parents nor money, in support of old folk unable now to go about, as well as for people who are shipwrecked, or who may be in the mines or exiled in islands or in prison — so long as their distress is for the sake of God's fehowship, and they themselves entitled to maintenance by their confession. The maintenance of the widows and orphans who were left after the storm of persecution, was the beginning of a widespread system of relief of the poor. The Apostle Paul set an early example in the fund which he raised for the poor Christians in Jerusalem from among the more prosperous Gentile Churches which he founded. Along with this there was widely felt through the early Church a horror of luxury and outward pomp, and a leaning to what we should call a Quakerly simplicity of life. 3. It was, therefore, quite in harmony with the strong spirit of Christ which was within him, that George Fox the founder of Quakerism early took sharp notice of social abuses. He exhorted the American colonists among whom he travehed to deal with the Indians as chhdren of a common Father, he appealed to Parliament against the penal laws which "put a man to death for cattle or money " ; and pleaded with the House for an effective Poor Law to provide for "the poor people, the blind, the lame and the crippled, in this nation." " You that are called Christians," he said " mind Christ's doctrines. Want often brings them to steal. They that are rich should prevent g. q. 20 306 THE OUTLOOK [ch. temptation, or take them into some employment. This shows the nobility of Christ's love1." This trait was his from the very beginning. In his years of doubt and darkness, while abstaining from wedding festivities, he would visit the newly founded home and give money where needed. At Underbarrow, at the very crisis of the fate of his mission, when making alliance with the Seekers, his Puritan friends refused aid to some beggars; but he ran after them a quarter of a mhe, "like the wind," and gave them money. George Fox never attempted any socialistic alteration in the frame-work of society, but he was closely akin in sympathy to Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers, whom the Council of State in 1649 found trouble some when they established their community of cultivators at S. George's Hill in Surrey. The Inward Light was Winstanley's doctrine as it was Fox's, and it was usual throughout the seventeenth century to taunt the Quakers with being no better than Levellers. Coomber, Dean of Durham, wrote of these latter in 1678: "And what this man writes of — levehing men's estates, of taking in of Commons, that none should have more ground than he was able to thl and husband by his labour — proving un- practicable by reason of so many tough old laws which have fixed property; yet it is pursued by the Quakers as much as they well can, in thouing everybody, in denying Titles, Civil Respects, and terms of distinction among men, and at first they were for Community." There is no Quaker evidence surviving, that I know of, for this last statement, which may be regarded as untrue2. But Friends were constructive too, in their safe and 1 Passages collected by Joshua Rowntree in his Swarthmore Lecture of 1913, Social Service, its Place in the Society of Friends, a most valuable recent work. 2 Winstanley, The Digger Movement in the Days of the Common wealth, by Lewis H. Berens. Simpkin Marshall, 1906, p. 49. I] SOCIAL SERVICE 307 moderate way. Friends urged on the Government of the day the official registration of employers on the one hand, and of the unemployed on the other, in every market town in the country, thus forestalling by over two centuries the labour bureaux of to-day. The Irish Meetings of 1702 insisted on depriving of the privileges of membership those manufacturers who dis honoured truth by making linen and woollen goods "so slightly as to be of little service to the wearers1." 4. The Quaker classic on the subject of poverty is the writing of John Woolman, particularly his Words of Caution and Remembrance to the Rich. He was a shop keeper at Mount Holly, one of the low round-topped eminences which dot the plain of New Jersey. He ceased to do business when he found that it was becoming so extensive as to absorb too much of his time and crowd out spiritual experiences. He travelled to England in the steerage of the vessel that his mind might not be hurt by the gilded ornament in the saloon, the result of poor men's labour wasted, and he explained, with economic accuracy gained by instinct or from reading No Cross, No Crown, that the luxuries of the rich entailed increased labour upon the poor, and caused them hardships which were damaging to their bodies and their minds. The plainness of his dress and appearance, perhaps the shabbiness of it after a long Atlantic voyage in the steerage of one of the little vessels of the eighteenth century, caused him to be received at first with suspicion on his appearance amongst the well clad and well groomed Friends of the Yearly Meeting in London. He overcame that in his first address, and his books, his example, and his spirit, are sthl among the vitally formative influences in the Society of Friends. He is one of the very few Quaker writers of the eighteenth century who are stih influential. The Journal of John Woolman tells in clear and beautiful English the story of 1 Joshua Rowntree. 308 THE OUTLOOK [ch., a clear and beautiful life. There are many modern and eashy accessible editions. The economist of to-day does no more than support, by organised facts and arguments, the belief in the evils and losses of luxury which John Woolman saw. 5. There is no doubt that Friends have a tradition of large charity and personal simplicity; it is proverbial and need not be insisted upon. Rather is it useful to inquire what were the causes of their surplus wealth, which is also with less reason proverbial.' Being excluded from the universities, and being in eligible for the Army and the Navy and the Church, having little opportunity of influence leading to preferment in the public service, and little liking for the proceedings of governments, they became traders, manufacturers and merchants. They largely created the banking business of this country in the eighteenth century. The Quaker tradesman became the trusted depository of his neighbours' savings in country towns all over England; in that way those numerous country banks were founded which even in their modern amalgamations sthl retain the Quaker names of Lloyd and Barclay. Friends have at one time or another been influential in the shipping interests of the Tyne and the Mersey. One of them founded the Cunard line of steamers; another made the pioneer Stockton and Darlington Railway; another was the first Chairman of the Midland; and another produced Bradshaw's Guide. In the days before the Temperance Movement they were famous brewers. A Friend founded the china clay industry in Cornwall; and in many provincial centres the Quaker grocer, or tanner, or miller, carried on business which led to a comfortable competence. Meantime no Friends were allowed to fah into poverty, and no chhdren were allowed to go uneducated. The education provided at Ackworth and its sister schools was of a plain and business-like kind; it was a good preparation for a life both mercantile and philanthropic. i] SOCIAL SERVICE 309 Expenses meantime were few. Fashion counted for nothing in the dress of the women. Neither the theatre nor the wine bottle drained the pockets of the men. Music was not played, nor pictures bought. Moreover, they had no ministers to pay; no Church music to provide; no costly buhdings to erect and maintain. Quakerism has always been the cheapest form of religion extant; consequently it is also the most laborious form, the one which most taxes its adherents in the way of personal service. Its cheapness, however, should not be lost sight of in any analysis of the causes which led to the popular impression that all Friends are rich or well-to-do, and that most of them are bankers. 6. Turning to the Quakerism of to-day, we find the old order seriously modified. Friends are now increasingly taking to the professions. The list of artists and authors among them is a respectable one. They are numerous in the medical, and not uncommon in the legal, profession. Theh teachers man a set of schools of a valuable and distinctive type. Indeed as the typical Quaker of former days was a grocer, it is not unlikely that the type whl be professional before long. On the other hand the adult schools, home missions, and other activities and attractions of the Society during the last half century have brought in numerous members from the working classes, who though they may repeat in theh increasing economic prosperity the history of the yeomen and artisans who formed the Quaker body of the seventeenth century, are at any rate at present of a different type from the cultivated gentlemen, who in the finest of drab broadcloth, took their wives, plainly clad in faultless satin, to the Yearly Meetings of the eighteenth century. It would be safe to say that the number of Friends who use their wealth for purposes of display or of tyranny, or of excessive luxury, is few; and it may sthl more safely be said that in these few cases the time is not far away when these people or their chhdren whl leave the Society and 310 THE OUTLOOK [ch. nominahy join the Church of England, as so many of the wealthiest Friends have done in the past. It would, of course, be foolish to imply that this large hearted philanthropy is in the least confined to a tiny body like the Society of Friends. The idea, in fact, that divine service largely means social service is in the air, just as the characteristic Quaker doctrine of the immanent God is also now a living and widespread faith. By throwing over the cause of the peasants and supporting that of the German princes, Luther and his friends deprived the Reformation of the strength it might have had as the supporter of the cause of the poor. To-day it seems as though English Protestantism generally was entering upon its long- neglected inheritance. 7. We are living in an age in which, with extraordinary rapidity, opinion is forming in the direction of public action to deal with the aged, with underfed children, with dying infants, with wage-earning mothers, with unem ployed men, with the drink trade, with the land question in its bearing upon dwellings and rural depopulation, with • sweated wages and a miserably inefficient education1. Phhanthropy, that is to say, can hardly be as individualistic as it was even in the days of John Bright and Joseph Sturge, and it is impossible that the Society can pretend to hold an even balance between political parties, so long as political parties represent what in practice, when religious issues have not intervened, they always have represented in all countries — a struggle between property and the poor, between the rights of those who have, and the claims of those who have not. This, of course, leaves a large number of questions open, questions of method and of degree, of the ideal against the opportune, but the attitude of Quakerism towards politics must always be inspired by a consciousness of the value of human souls, 1 This was written before the war; but by an exercise of faith I ahow it to stand. i] SOCIAL SERVICE 3H and the relation of bodhy welfare to that supreme wealth. It must ever desire a more equitable distribution of wealth and must work in that direction. The standard of hving which enables a family to survive in self-respect and good health is a spiritual requirement and essential to the growth of souls; and, on the other hand, it remains true that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 8. Not for nothing has the Society been thus peculiarly endowed and peculiarly liberated. Born out of a vivid consciousness of the sacredness of man, possessing the resources of the middle class, thickly dotted with the well- to-do, and in close touch with a strong body gathered out of the best of the working class; and then, when thus prepared, liberated from most ordinary denominational claims, and finally so gifted, so furnished, and so liberated, it has been placed at the heart of the towns of England, in a social state gaping with inequality; standing, for the most part, secure between demoralising luxury and de moralising poverty ; watching with daily concern a complex and over-developed society, which has learnt how to make but not how to moralise wealth. Thus, our traditions, our opportunities, and our people's need, call aloud to us to obey the Gospel of Christ, where it spells deliverance to the captives in the acceptable year of the Lord. A body can only remain strong whilst it is under strain; unless we function, we die of atrophy, and I believe that our future depends more than any other single thing upon our faithfulness to the service of society. Otherwise the historian may say of us, that Quakerism arose during the seventeenth century as a protest of the religious sense against State control, formal worship and a material theology ; that during the prevailing laxity of the eighteenth century it gathered up its skirts from pollu tion and clung to a narrow seclusion of separateness and purity; that during the nineteenth century it was greatly 312 THE OUTLOOK [ch. affected by the Evangelical movement, with its tendencies to assimhate to ordinary Nonconformist worship ; that this tendency did not finally prevah; but that the Society counted for little after the twentieth century, being partly absorbed into evangelical mission churches, and, for the rest, becoming prosperous and indifferent, mixing with the world in the spirit of the world. So it remains a beautiful tradition, but a most discouraging chapter in the history of religion, recording the eventual failure of a sane and liberal form of mystical Christianity to hold its own. 9. There seems to have been not a day's delay on the part of George Fox and his friends in applying their doctrine of the Indwelling God to the reform of abuses in " God's husbandry, God's building." It was in 1648, before he had gathered a single congregation, and when he was only four-and-twenty, that he pressed through many difficulties to an interview with the Justices at Mansfield to speak to them "not to oppress the servants in their wages," and he exhorted the servants "to do their duties and serve honestly." About the same time he writes1 I was sorely exercised in going to their courts to cry for justice in warning such as kept public houses that they should not let people have more drink than would do them good. In fairs also and in markets I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandise, cheating and cozening. Passages on social need of various kinds are thickly scattered through his occasional writings collected in his book called Doctrinals. It appears to have been the example of Friends which introduced fixed prices into retah dealing in this country. Sooner or later fixed prices always come where commerce is carried on on a large scale. Business must then be able to move without friction, and prices settle at a level as a fluid settles. But Friends appear to have been instrumental in crystallising this 1 Journal, Bicentennial Edition, p. 39. i] SOCIAL SERVICE 313 tendency, perhaps before it would otherwise have matured. In George Fox's Doctrinals we find the words You tradesmen, merchantmen of all sorts whatsoever, set no more upon the things you sell or exchange than what you whl have. Is it not more savoury to ask no more than you wih have for your commodity, to keep to yea and nay in your communications... so a child shall trade with you as a man because of the equity. This practice became known and led promptly to the growing prosperity at Friends' shops. The habit of having a bad light in drapers' shops does not seem to have been peculiar to our own time. Fox writes Some traders have a bad name which deceives the country people who deal with you with your dark back windows. This is to hang gold on the back and let the legs go bare. You are ah members of one body, the poor as well as the rich, for consider what abun dance of riches is in this city, and what good you might do with it, for that will be for your honour and renown. This side of their work was so prominent that it has caused a well-informed German historian1 to come to the conclusion that it was the centre of the whole matter with them, and that their religious position was a mere cover for communism ; that we have, in fact, in the Society of Friends the ethical socialists of the time, though they do not advertise the fact in their writings. Our German friend was doubtless not so much alive to the spiritual impulse as to its social consequences. He mistook the effect for the cause. But his friendly testimony greatly strengthens the immediate point2. It is only overwhelming profusion of material which prevents this subject being treated here more completely. Always social work has been done quietly by unobtrusive people whose names have not survived, or who are only 1 E. Bernstein in chapters on the rise of Quakerism in The History of Socialism, 2 vols. 1895. 2 See Joshua Rowntree, pp. 91-93. 314 THE OUTLOOK [ch. known and remembered as names of blessing in their own neighbourhoods. But by way of giving substance to this chapter, we must mention a few conspicuous names. 10. That of John Bellers, who immediately succeeded the earliest generation of Friends, and died in 1725, has only recently been rescued from oblivion1. He pressed for many years a scheme for colleges of industry which were to be both educational and industrial. Friends acted upon his advice and founded such an institution in London. Bellers held that his colleges would help to do away with "all useless trades, lawyers, bad debts, beggars, and much now wasted house room." He appealed to the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London on behalf of the hooligans of their city, who would assuredly be found confronting them at the Last Great Day of Account. He anticipates our modern Acts against electoral corruption, our modern insurance against ill-health, and he elaborated a proposal for a supreme court for international disputes. He urged that "Mohammedans are men and that beating out their brains to put sense into them is a great mistake." He actually proposed an amicable conference of all religious persuasions on the sensible ground that "What is prayed for of God above, men must be instrumental to accomplish here below, there being few, if any, who believe He will make His angels visible to do it." He understood long before his time the theory of Free Trade and currency, and supported the then unpopular machine production. 11. The life of Whliam Allen is entombed in three considerable volumes which are, however, very interesting reading. He may stand as a type of the best men of his time. He founded the chemists' firm of Allen and Hanbury, was President of Guy's Hospital, a lecturer at the Royal Institution, and he combined with his study of Science devoted charitable labours. He accompanied Stephen 1 By Edward Bernstein and Joshua Rowntree. There is a sthl fuher account of him in The Second Period of Quakerism, chap. xx. I] SOCIAL SERVICE 315 Grellet in a number of remarkable visits to the continent of Europe, everywhere working against poverty, tyranny, and the ruin of human beings. The crusade against the slave trade was in his time, and in that army Friends formed the rank and file. He was very intimate with Wilberforce and with the Duke-of Wehington, was executor of Edward Duke of Kent, and so very intimate with Queen Victoria in her early years. Very little that was useful came amiss to him. A Friend named Joseph Lancaster, whose name is familiar to all educational experts, foimded popu lar education in England by establishing what came to be known as British Schools, because they were carried on by the British and Foreign School Society. They were frankly taken by the Gladstone Government in 1870 as the model for the public Elementary Schools then established by W. E. Forster's Act. They had a large indirect effect in stimulating the Church of England to rivalry by the establishment of the Church Day Schools Association, lest Anglican influence over the chhdren should be lost in the new schools. William Allen's business ability and influence rescued Lancaster and his scheme from fahure. A sthl more famous man, Robert Owen, owed similar help to William Allen in his great experiment in industrial better ment at New Lanark, though in after years Owen moved on lines which Whliam Ahen could not follow. The time was one of wretched agricultural wages. The modern schemes for relieving this by making small holdings acces sible as an alternative were anticipated by Whliam Allen, who buht at Lindfield twenty-five cottages with allotments, a small house for himself, and an agricultural training school. He was probably the leading expert on the Land question in those dark days. The blessedness of the influence of a good man wherever he went, in his influence with royalty or Catholic priests or London hooligans, is most marked in such lives as his. The manifold work of Elizabeth Fry and her friends 316 THE OUTLOOK [ch. has become, by some chance, much better known to the public than that of many other Friends, and need not be dwelt on here. 12. The career of Joseph Sturge of Birmingham has always seemed to me to be the prototype of the modern well- concerned Friend. He did his best to guide the forces of Chartism to a gentler issue, he worked nobly for Peace and against slavery, he felt it his duty to be an active Radical politician, seeing that the middle and lower classes of England were at that time starved and exploited by a privileged order; and he founded the Adult School move ment, perhaps the most fruitful of all his undertakings. The Adult Schools deserve a chapter to themselves, for they represent the most signal service which the Society has rendered to the nation in the latter half of the nine teenth century, and continues to render to-day. An Adult School is the simplest form of religious, social and intel lectual fellowship that could be found. A group of men sit round an amateur teacher, study the Bible, and are possessed with the spirit of fellowship. "The spirit of fellowship" works the miracle. It is like an early Christian community before the evolution of the clergy. Comment is free, questions shower in. The teacher makes no assumption of superior knowledge or standing ; the methods are endlessly elastic and varied; the atmosphere is one of prayer and devoutness; the theology is as many-coloured as the Pied Piper and every kind has to meet criticism. Nobody is shocked at anything honestly and sincerely said ; the Socialists have their fling, and altogether horizons are wonderfully enlarged for the hard-working men who find there at once their church and their university. Ordinary learning has also a place. Friends began by teaching the hliterates of the mid- Victorian days how to read and write. Now lectures are given on "all things civil and useful in creation," on Science, History, Politics, Natural History, travel, books of every kind. The Adult i] SOCIAL SERVICE 317 Schools are the most fruitful nidus which has been found for the Workers' Educational Association's work. They blossom out into football clubs and debating clubs and clubs for microscopy, fishing, climbing, holiday touring, and very numerous tea functions. The Adult Schools have their own savings banks and insurance societies, and a monthly organ One and All. Their lessons are now care fully arranged, and notes for teachers are provided by experts. Simple forms of evening worship have been added to the early morning class. It is not too much to say that the Adult School marks the greatest expansion of the lives of working men that has occurred in our time. Not unnaturally the movement has spread extensively to women also, and in some places classes are mixed. The difficulties which have been surmounted by patience and the Christian spirit have been very great. A class has its bore to endure, its quarrelsome man to placate, its bigot to be tender with, its occasional drinker to redeem; indeed the pastoral and redemptive work done by working men for their fellows as members of the same class can hardly be over-estimated. Not least among the services rendered by the Adult School movement is its breakdown of class distinctions. We Adult School teachers have the privhege of having among our most intimate friends members of the working- class of whose society we should otherwise have been deprived. It is to be feared that over the human landscape of our land there stretches a thin level cloud such as may gather after sunset over a Swiss valley. Among the mountain peaks above, the moonbeams shine on the gleam ing snowfields, but the line of level cloud, so thin and impalpable, is enough to place in shadow the valley below, with its dark pine woods and just visible cascades. Such is the line between the manual worker and the brain worker or idler in England, and the Adult Schools have gone far to break up that mischievous film of class dis- 318 THE OUTLOOK [ch. tinction, and to make us realise that we are ah members one of another. The Adult Schools whl retain their value and their vitality so long as they keep out any test of membership, social or theological, and all control claimed in a clerical spirit or by virtue of a clerical position. This does not mean that it may not be possible for a right- minded clergyman, by divesting himself of his authority, to make a capital Adult School teacher. The Adult School movement has now been extended beyond the limits of the Society of Friends, and has reached proportions too large for us to handle unaided. The movement is now managed by a National Adult School Counch, run by Friends, but unsectarian in character and without proselytising aim. Among the many facts of the moment which cause depression among patriotic men, is that the Adult School movement seems now (1919) to be diminishing in numbers. 13. Of the same type as Joseph Sturge, but touched with a power and genius all his own, is the great name of John Bright, the Quaker cotton spinner of Rochdale. His political labours were for him always a piece of social service. His war was against poverty and selfish privhege, and for the welfare of the common people of the nation. He belongs just now to that dim period which is no longer contemporary, nor yet far enough back to be established in ordinary history, a period in which also Gladstone and Ruskin and Tennyson and George Eliot are experiencing a temporary eclipse of their fame, so that many of us in these days do not know either from our personal memories or from history the great services of Bright. They may be read in that most delightful of biographies, the Life by G. M. Trevelyan. It is not the least of Mr Trevelyan's successes that he has clearly shown how typical a Friend in his every characteristic John Bright was. If anyone wants to know in a concrete example what the Quaker spirit is they could not do better than read that book. 14. In the generation in which we live new forms of i] SOCIAL SERVICE 319 service have arisen. Among these may be mentioned the Garden City and Garden Suburb movement, in which the Cadburys' village at Bournvhle, the Rowntrees' vhlage at New Earswick near York, and the Reckitts' suburb at Hull, are among the most conspicuous examples, and many Friends have taken an active share in the realisation of the greatest experiment of all, the Garden City at Letchworth. The same firms and others have also devoted themselves to the organised welfare of their employees in what is called industrial betterment — than which nothing in all our country has in it more promise of better days for the people of England. There came into existence during the early days of the War a Committee of the Yearly Meeting cahed the War and Social Order Committee, now made into a permanent body. Its endeavour is to make a contribution to social study and reform from the spiritual side; and it has elaborated its attitude for the present into the following eight points, which may be said to represent, in careful phrasing, the modern attitude of the active and progressive majority of the Society to Social Questions. Only a minority of Friends are actual Socialists; every grade of confidence and distrust of public action in business matters exists among us; and finds, happhy, free expression. This Committee presented a statement of social duty to the Yearly Meeting of 1917 in "Seven Points." These were remitted for discussion in local meetings for a year, and many conferences upon them took place, and various emendations were suggested. These, now in eight para graphs, were officially adopted by the Yearly Meeting of 1918, with great unanimity. They run as follows : Foundations of a True Social Order. 1 . The Fatherhood of God, as revealed by Jesus Christ, should lead us towards a Brotherhood which knows no restriction of race, 3ex or social class. 2. This Brotherhood should express itself in a social order 320 THE OUTLOOK [ch. which is directed, beyond ah material ends, to the growth of personality truly related to God and man. 3. The opportunity of fuh development, physical, moral and spiritual, should be assured to every member of the community, man, woman and chhd. The development of man's fuh personahty should not be hampered by unjust conditions nor crushed by economic pressure. 4. We should seek for a way of living that will free us from the bondage of material things and mere conventions, that whl raise no barrier between man and man, and wih put no excessive burden of labour upon any by reason of our superfluous demands. 5. The spiritual force of righteousness, loving-kindness and trust is mighty because of the appeal it makes to the best in every man, and when applied to industrial relations achieves great things. 6. Our rejection of the methods of outward domination, and of the appeal to force, applies not only to international affairs, but to the whole problem of industrial control. Not through antagonism but through cooperation and goodwill can the best be attained for each and all. 7. Mutual service should be the principle upon which life is organised. Service, not private gain, should be the motive of all work. 8. The ownership of material things, such as land and capital, should be so regulated as best to minister to the need and develop ment of man. I should recommend the reader not to regard these statements as platitudinous, or cheap. Anything that has to pass a large assembly has to be general ; but every word here has been weighed, and is intended to carry its full cargo of meaning. The minute which adopted this statement added : We remind Friends that this should be no formal act, but that, having expressed approval, we should continually test our life, individual and corporate, by the principles embodied in them, and seek to illustrate them dahy. The Committee itself, when its seven points were remitted to the local meetings, added notes to explain and enforce them, most of which are here printed, to show how i] SOCIAL SERVICE 321 a body of Friends, less hampered by responsibhity than the Yearly Meeting, and more expert and progressive, desires its principles to be understood. Universal Brotherhood. Do we accept Class Distinctions? Do we unconsciously take them as basic, and so apply a differing standard of what is needed for a good human life? Are we prepared to mix with all sorts and conditions of men in the same spirit as Jesus did? Life itself is the important matter, and not the accu mulation of material things, and it is towards developing life that all social order should be directed. Are the following conditions compatible with this brotherhood? (a) The present position of domestic servants in most house holds. (b) The payment to any workers of such wages that their education and daily surroundings are of a type that makes their company unpleasant to more fortunately circumstanced people. Self-Development. 1. For spiritual manhood, there must be real self- direction. Bad housing, grinding poverty, perpetual material anxiety, excessive hours, heavy monotonous work and an unintelligent and irresponsible part in production all tend to spoh personality for the worker, his wife and chhdren, and are a spiritual loss. 2. There must be full educational opportunity for ah. An all-round development is essential for the realisation of the divine in man. Are the lives of the following types cramped and spoiled in this way? (a) The working mother who has to keep house on an inade quate and uncertain wage. (b) The chhd who has no introduction to the love and beauty g. q. 21 322 THE OUTLOOK [ch that may brighten the world : the chhd whose out-of-school hours are spent in drudgery, badly-paid or unpaid, and often unthanked, e.g., the newsboy and the half-timer. (c) The golf caddie, who spends his youth ministering to enjoy ments he is not permitted to share. (d) The worker with skill and intehigence who has to help merely in a maximum output of things "made to sell," instead of things for the service of the wholesome hfe (e.g. badly made furniture and clothing, shly trinkets and knick-knacks, jerry-built houses, etc.). (e) The man or woman in an office, handling mechanically cards and figures: the factory worker limited to monotonous processes. (f) The worker in lead or other dangerous trades. Mutual Trust. Trust and sympathy and an understanding relationship are essential to all engaged in a common undertaking. The same is seen in any association, a community or a school. The best results are obtained, not by compulsion, but by enlisting ready service. A responsible trust is a great educator. The George Junior Republic and other reformatory experi ments have in a large degree illustrated this truth, and indicate the line of advance. A study of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid would be found helpful, as it emphasises the natural law of mutual help among animals and human beings which has always existed side by side with the struggle for existence. Full Co-operation. Strife is always demoralising and wasteful. Domina tion spohs the personality of all who either suffer or exercise it. The roots of war are in our present social order: the appeal to force is only necessary because we are unwilling to accept the rule of right doing. The dictatorial attitude of a Trade Union may be as bad in this respect as that of a body of employers, and may hinder its proper development. I] SOCIAL SERVICE 323 The demand of the intelligent worker is for a real share in the control of the industry in which he is engaged. Schemes of profit sharing and co-partnership which leave the control stih in private hands do not go far enough. Universal Service. In Peace time, as in War time, service should be the object for which any work is undertaken, and the feeling of vocation should be the deciding factor in entering upon one's ordinary work. Even if there is not a sense of vocation such as is felt by artists and writers, should not the desire for service be the motive force rather than the making of money, the lust for power, or other unworthy ambition? Note the contrast between private leisure time altruism and the accepted practice of exploiting the needs of others for our own gain. Consider the following in connection with the idea of universal service : (a) The rich employer of sweated or underpaid labour who uses his surplus wealth in philanthropic work. (b) What chance is there for service being the motive force in business either for employer or workman, when the making of profit is the first consideration, and not the supply of human need. There are many people needing boots who cannot afford to buy them, even at a time when there is a surplus of boots on the market. (c) The teacher in an elementary school in daily contact with the life of the nation, as contrasted with one who teaches in a Sunday School or Band of Hope, meeting the chhdren only more or less regularly. The plan of Jesus was not occasional charity, but living the daily life of the common folk. Public Mindedness. This suggests the point that the educative influence of a system whether political or industrial is one of its most important aspects; to have a system avowedly based on 324 THE OUTLOOK [ch. i selfishness is to teach and entrench selfishness in the human mind. Should not the freedom of our ministry help us to see that perhaps our healing and teaching and advising professions may some day be organised on better lines? First Things First. The classic examples are St Francis and John Woolman and Thoreau. What is the twentieth century counterpart ? In contemplating a social order based on human need, are we prepared to risk ah in founding it ? The nineteenth century saw the Society of Friends renounce its peculiarities in the matter of dress and con versation and enlarge its range of social intercourse. Has it any example for the twentieth century in the direction of a less artificial simplicity? Are we willing to limit our superfluous demands for the sake of a fuller hfe for all? Are we even willing to examine closely into our present way of hfe to ascertain what is really superfluous? CHAPTER II WAR i. No lengthy proof is needed to show that the Christianity of Christ is actively hosthe to all war. "God is Love " is the theological sanction to Christian conduct, and so excludes war. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. How would these do as nine standards for nine divisions of an army? No amount of genial ahowance for poetic exaggeration or oriental epigram can change the command to turn the other cheek and to love your enemies into a maxim for military tactics. "The Soldier's Pocket Book" is an elaborate and detailed denial of the Golden Rule. This hostility to war is no mere accident. It fohows from the Christian conception of God as revealed in Christ. It follows from the Divine Presence in man, from human brotherhood, from disbelief in force, from the whole spiritual doctrine of human life. War blows away and fouls the soul in reckless tempest. Throughout this book the Christian Evangel has been treated as the proclamation of the presence of God in Man — that was the message which evoked the love and joy, and provoked the upheavals, as Paul and the other missionaries preached it in the cities of the Levant. Against it rose every vested interest in temples like that of Diana of the Ephesians. Proud separatist nationalism it was that killed Jesus. "He said he would destroy this temple in three days." To declare that God was revealed, not in any Oracle, hoary and remunerative, but in the life of a working man of Nazareth, a city which had never been 326 THE OUTLOOK [ch. named as holy, was indeed to bring light and freedom into a dim and oppressed world; and the oppressors felt it. Paul, preaching in the city beloved of Athena, on the hill of Ares, and close to the cave of the Eumenides, to a people super-religious, told them that God dwelt not in temples made with hands, but had made of one blood all nations of the earth, and had appointed the bounds of their habitation, "that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." The connection of thought here is significant. Because ah men were cared for by God the common Father, all might seek Him in their hearts. Mystical religion followed close on Internationalism. Christianity was a faith in which the distinction was obliterated between Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, German or Turk. Ah might join it. There was no special abode of God either on Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem. God — a Spirit — was to be found in the spirits of men. There was in Jesus a great enthusiasm of equality. "Call no man Rabbi — among the Gentiles their lords are called 'benefactors,' (a fine satirical touch), Let it not be so among you." Against this assertion of the Divinity of man under the equal fatherhood of God, stands War. War denies every elementary right to man. It slays him, and only cares for his death as a loss of "man-power." It wounds, blinds, maddens, neglects, the child of God. It drills him into a machine. It corrupts and deceives him. Lies are of the essence of war. Deceit is the oh which makes its wheels go round. And the lords are still there to be called "bene factors," and the multitude of titles and honours is beyond computation. It is because War is the organised, elaborate contempt ^>%nd destruction of humanity, that the Christianity of Christ is for ever hosthe to it. In examining the words of our Lord it is not necessary n] WAR 327 to treat the Sermon on the Mount as though it were an ethical text-book, every word in which was to be taken literally and baldly like a stage in Euclid's propositions. That would be a grave fault of interpretation. It is plain that we are not dealing here with a sermon at all, but with a summary, in the manner of Matthew, of our Lord's Galilean teachings. The passages collected into one place by Matthew are to be found scattered in many places in the Gospel of Luke1. They constitute the texts of sermons or the rememberable sayings, perhaps those frequently repeated. Such repetition may account for there being two differing cohections of Beatitudes. We do not know what qualifying words or what context may have accompanied them. No honest interpreter, also, can pretend that in dahy hfe we even begin to obey literally such commands as to give to every one who asks us and to lend freely without security. We are aware that that would be wrong ; it would soon reduce society to confusion and ourselves to poverty. Nor do we understand the exhortation to take no thought for the morrow as forbidding us to insure our lives, or arranging to meet future financial demands upon us. But all these passages have, in fact, a very eashy comprehended meaning. We are to be liberal and open- 1 In his 6th, 8th, nth, 12th, 13th, 14th and 16th chapters, in fifteen passages altogether; and one can hardly believe that ah these fifteen passages, uttered by Christ together in the Sermon on the Mount, were all repeated afterwards at different times, that they were ah recorded by one evangelist as part of the Sermon, and only in one case ("If thine eye offend thee") repeated, but that the other evangelist wrote an account of the Sermon in his 6th chapter, including only 30 verses out of in, but inserted ah the rest in scattered passages. It is clear that we have in Luke his characteristic attempt to put teachings in their right historical setting. It is also obvious that no good teacher would attempt to teach so much of a varied kind in one address, and in so condensed a form. 328 THE OUTLOOK [ch. handed, we are not to spend our strength in worrying over the means of life, but are to live with some of the careless gladness of the birds and the lilies of the field; we are to give out the melody of the bird and the colour and scent of the lily, instead of being overwhelmed by grinding care. The expression "Resist not evh," then, must be subject to the same canon of interpretation. There are, in fact, two contrasted ways of resisting evil — the way of con version, by love, and the way of force, by hatred. Nevertheless all these qualifying considerations cannot make our Lord's teaching mean the exact opposite of what it says. "Love your enemies" cannot by any possible . exegesis come to mean "Hate the enemy." "Do good to them that hate you" cannot be translated into "Slay theh men, starve their families, and bombard their towns." ,,, The whole meaning and spirit of the teaching is irreconcil ably hosthe to ah war. We cannot imagine Jesus Christ working a machine gun and mowing down His brethren. The Gospel, taken as a Gospel, as a single message and a doctrine of human action in society, had as its main drift to call men away from practices based on coercion, bringing forth fruits of death and destruction, in an atmosphere of hatred and fear — to methods of attraction and persuasion, based on love and a harmonious will. Christ would win men, not conquer them ; He would disarm their mind and purpose by His indomitable suffering and obstinate goodwill — rather than disarm their bodies by force. He would not try to turn enemies into corpses but into friends. That was what He believed to be in accord with human nature and the whl of the Father. This aim could not be missed or mistaken by any of His disciples. It was no isolated command which bade the Christian love his enemies, do good to those who hated him, bless those who cursed him, pray for those who persecuted him. It was the standard method of Christ; n] WAR 329 it made with the rest of His teaching a reasonable and coherent whole. In harmony with it were our Lord's refusal to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan vhlage, His rescue of the woman taken in adultery, His ap peal to the best in Zacchaeus, His general way of friendship with the hated tax-gatherers and despised prostitutes. He exorcised by love the spirit of fear from the maniac among the Gadarene tombs. That spirit went into the swine, who fled in panic down the steep place, according to the beautiful rendering given "By an Unknown Disciple." By giving the cloak also to him that had taken the coat, by going twice the distance of the servile journey demanded, or by acts done in that spirit, Jesus believed that robbery and tyranny would slink away ashamed. He believed that the gentle would inherit the earth. And He carried His faith to the ultimate, in suffering on the cross. He therein maintained His life-long principle, in the faith that through His apparent failure His death would draw many to the gospel of loving-kindness. "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself." And He maintained His spirit whole and pure till the end, when His forgiveness went out to His executioners. All this He frankly contrasted with the ways of the world. "The kings of the Genthes lord it over them; but it shall not be so among you. If you would be greatest, be the servant of all, as I am — even to the giving of my life for the freedom of many." The authority of Christian leadership has been great — that of Jesus and his apostles, and many great Christians since. But so far as it has been truly Christlike it has not depended upon force, nor upon terror, but upon love and native reverence. This Gospel of the power of suffering love and endless forgiveness was absorbed by Paul — or, more truly, it absorbed him. "Why go to law, why not rather take wrong? " " If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink — for so thou shalt make him feel a 330 THE OUTLOOK [ch. burning shame." That was exactly the Christian method with evh. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal." "Our warfare is not against flesh and blood." The Christian scheme was no mere scheme of abstinence from violence. It was a constructive policy for a far more effectual overthrow of evh, by undermining its very foundations. When Christians of this type are asked "What would you have done in 1914? " the answer would be that our method would have begun long before, if the rulers and the peoples had been filled with the Spirit of Christ. That our Lord would have applied this principle to the dealings of nations with each other no one could doubt. Nor is it doubtful that this principle rules out war. 2. We have, as it happens, a definite case in which, as usually interpreted, the alternative of war and peace had to be chosen by our Lord, and it shows His attitude towards a career even of the most moral and beneficent , conquest. I allude to the incident in the Temptation where the devil is recorded as having taken Him up into a high mountain and shown Him ah the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Jesus had taken the title "Son of Man," a technical term well known in the current apocalyptic literature1 as secretly signifying the national dehverer. If war for Jewish liberty and a world ruled in righteousness under Jesus Christ was a thing to be rejected, we may safely believe that war waged by any of the European Powers to safeguard their interests cannot be defended. / Our Lord's attitude towards the Samaritans, again, |/affords another illustration of how He dealt with racial and religious antagonisms. The Samaritans, a mixed race, were occupying part of the Holy Land, and claimed a rival 1 Particularly in the Fourth Book of Enoch, which is full of it. The earliest use of it in this sense is in Dan. vii. 13-14. n] WAR 331 seat of Jehovah. Surely this was a case in which " national honour" in the modern sense was involved. But Jesus uttered the parable of the Good Samaritan, and expressly included them in the exhortation to the Jews to love their neighbours as themselves. Our Lord's cleansing of the Temple is frequently given as an instance of His use of violence, by those who have not read the passage, John ii. 15, R.V., carefully. "He made a scourge of cords, and cast ah out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen." A moment's reflection would make anyone reahse that the scourge was needed for the animals ; then the men had to follow. This is the only passage in which the scourge, or whatever it should be called, of twisted stalks, is men tioned1- To attempt to drive a crowd of strong drovers out with such an implement is a plan which would only appear reasonable to a tribunal in difficulties with a con scientious objector. It is also in harmony with the rest of our Lord's proceedings. He did not drive out the money changers — He spht their money on to the floor, and they felt they must pick it up and go. The large cages full of pigeons were too large to upset, so He bade their owners take them away, and they obeyed. The whole story is one of the power of personality, of moral suasion with nothing physical to back it. But it has figured largely in argument during the war. 3. fit is quite true that there is not to be found in the New Testament any definite instruction — "Thou shalt not make war." Neither is there any passage on gambling, on slave-holding, on polygamy, on suicide, on luxurious expenditure, on speculation, on demoralising recreations, nor on the observance of Sunday; in fact on extremely few of the questions on which we moderns desire guidance is it to be found given in detail;; On ah these matters the earnest inquirer may find principles which may guide him; 1 See Matt. xxi. 12 f., Mark xi. 15-17, Luke xix. 45 f. 332 THE OUTLOOK [ch. and that is exactly what he finds in regard to war. " Texts" in fact have been found to throw at reformers on every moral question. A reference to Timothy's stomach was good enough for teetotallers; the domestic habits of the Old Testament have been quoted to defend slavery in America and polygamy in Utah. ' ' The poor ye have always with you," has sometimes seemed a sufficient answer to those who would attack poverty as a wrong thing in a Christian land; the Apostle Paul's views on women have had to be discounted by modern champions of the equality of the sexes. Social reformers have always been obliged to appeal to the spirit of the Gospel, rather than to the letter of the Bible. In fact the Books of the New Testament were all what might be called "occasional" writings, evoked by an immediate need. Neither the Lord nor any of His Apostles ever sat down to write a text-book, like the law of Moses, or the Koran of Mohammed. There exists no apostolic "Treatise on Christian Duty." We may be thankful that it is so, for the written word remains unchangeable, whereas the spirit is adaptable to every need. A fixed detailed code would either have been neglected by this time as obsolete, and so have discredited our whole faith, or it would have acted as an intolerable drag on conscience. Probably both evils would have occurred here or there. There are many great blanks in our system of conduct sthl, so that a code of Christian morality issued even at this enlightened date would hereafter become obsolete. We are sthl too comfortable about the existence of poverty, we have hardly moralised our empire and the exploitation of natives, and we still permit great suffering among animals. It is therefore as well that we have no word, " Thou shalt not make war," if it implied a fixed code. Nevertheless, we have an analysis of war, sufficiently damaging. " Whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and ii] WAR 333 have not: ye kill... and cannot obtain: ye fight and war; yet ye have not1." 4. The early Christians did not set out by attacking the established institutions which they found in the world. They were loyal subjects of the Roman Empire2, though it partook of the evils of all military rule. They did not make any attack upon slavery. The Apostle Paul returned the runaway slave Onesimus to his master Phhemon. The question of war was not a pressing one in the age of Christ. Men lived under the shelter of the Roman Peace. In fact, our Lord lived at the one signal pause in the story of perpetual war which ancient history records. It is there fore no matter for surprise that centurions were treated with friendliness and that soldiers were told by the Baptist to be content with their wages, not told to disband. That they were also told to do violence to no man shows that they were really keepers of order : in practice they did the work of policemen in Palestine. The Christian treatment of all evils which were inwoven into the texture of society and government, was the only sensible, even the only possible, one. It is an illustration of the truth that you cannot compel any great reform; and that the framework of the State has got to be made out of the convictions of the people, as surely as the honeycomb is made by the secretion of the bees. The light of the Gospel and all other beneficent light comes not like destroying lightning, but like the shent spread of sunrise. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Nevertheless, as surely as Christianity has so accelerated the growth of the moral sense, that it has very largely put down slavery, polygamy, torture, cruelty to the insane, to the criminal, to the chhd, to the woman, so surely we have Christ on our side in the war against war3. 1 James iv. 1-2. 2 Romans xiii. 3 On the existence of moral standards relative to the person, see §§ 12, 13, 14, 23 below. 334 THE OUTLOOK [ch. 5. There is one puzzling passage, the one about the two swords1. It has had a strange history. In the Middle Ages it was the proof text of the spiritual and temporal, that is the double, power of the Pope. It has been a stumbling block to the advocates of peace, and appears in flat contradiction to our Lord's other teaching, and more particularly to the words which follow a few verses later, where the use of swords is reproved — "Suffer ye thus far. All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The real significance of this pathetic incident is revealed by the fact that our Lord was in verses 35 to 38 reversing the whole of an earlier instruction — "When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip : and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough" (A.V.). The passage runs more consecutively if we suppose that the irrelevant reference to a fulfilment of prophecy may perhaps have been due, as fulfilments of prophecy have often been due, to the Evangelist, not to our Lord. The presence or absence of such reference does not affect the interpretation seriously, though it has induced the revisers to alter the A.V. text and translate the ordinary every-day Greek word for "end" by "fulfilment," rele gating what is confessed to be the meaning of the " Greek" to the margin. This has obscured the meaning of the passage. Dr Moffatt's new translation has it, "Yes, there is an end to all that refers to me." This carries the right sense of re\os, and connects with the prophecy also. It is 1 Luke xxii. 35-38. ii] WAR 335 surely correct if we accept the prophecy as there quoted. If we do not, it is not needful to give so long a rendering of ra, irepl iftov re\o<; e'^et. The word "fulfilment " whl not do as a translation. The view here advocated has the support of Thayer's Lexicon under re\o?. In no place does it mean fulfilment of prophecy. There is also an important parallel passage in Mark iii. 26, where it is said that "Satan hath an end" — riXoi e^et — the exact phrase here. The strained translation "fulfilment" was evidently caused by the inclusion of a prophecy characteristic of early interpolation, though not certainly interpolated. But the meaning is plain, even if "fulfilment" be pressed as the translation. The old idealism had been lost. Light comes, as said above, from the consideration that it is not only non-resistance, which for a moment our Lord appeared to be abandoning; He gave a reversal of His other earher instructions to His missionaries. No more were they to rely upon such provision as had been granted to Elijah, no longer was the armour of innocence to be their sufficient defence; they were to take money and provisions as the worldly wise do, for it was all over with Him. "The things concerning me have an end." The disciples did not perceive the despair in the Master's words; and, indeed, the Christian Church has not, so far as I know, perceived it either. They said they had two swords, and He was too wearied to continue, and just said "Enough, Enough." This is Dr Moffatt's translation of licavov io-n. But when the moment of trial came, His hope and faith had returned, and in the presence of actual violence He was once more in possession of all His powers, and forbade, as we should expect, the use of the sword. Is it impossible to accept this reahy plain interpreta tion? It ought not to be impossible to accept any inter pretation which the text properly judged demands. It is a human touch, doubtless, but it is all the more credible for 336 THE OUTLOOK [ch. that1. There are many signs that the early text underwent modifications, all in the direction of emphasizing the Divine at the expense of the human Christ2. This was in accord with a system of doctrine which regarded these attributes as opposed or contrasted, and not eashy reconcilable. Christians of the age after Christ did not build His divinity upon His humanity as a basis, and were not able to rejoice equally in the characteristics of both. We may to-day, however, liken His divinity to the scent given off by the flower of His humanity, and rejoice in the vigour of the flower. The result of this steady pressure of early opinion on the text is to make us value all the more the human touches that have survived the chipping of the builders of dogma. The word Te'\o? translated "end" may be paralleled with the kindred word TereXeo-rai translated "It is finished," uttered at the end on the cross3- We cannot tell what was in the mind of our Lord when He made that last cry: "It is finished." I have heard it described as trium phant, and have even heard it quoted to support what is cahed "the finished work" of Christ. But there is no evidence. It may have been a cry of grief. No one whl ever know. Probably the right clue may be gained from the other sad word on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?4" Have we ever imaginatively realised what this forsaken cry meant? One needs oneself to have felt forsaken by God to have any idea of it. Perhaps few of us have ever been through such a baptism. To one whose whole life had been a steady communion with His Father, from whom again and again strength had come for the strenuous day, this sense of desolation must have been a 1 There is also the view that the whole saying is sad irony. This does not appeal to me personally; but it also implies no warrant for the use of swords. 2 See F. C. Conybeare in Hibbert Journal, vol. I. no. I . 3 John xix. 30. 4 Matt, xxvii. 46, Mark xv. 34. n] WAR 337 lonely blank unspeakable. The Father had assuredly not forsaken Him. But the human body and brain were broken, had ceased to act normally, could neither know nor respond. In face of this undoubted experience, there should be no difficulty in accepting the analogous access of darkness the evening before, with the words, "The things concerning me have an end." That is, these words introduce nothing incongruous with what we know already in " It is finished," and the "forsaken" cry1 The abiding attitude taken by our Lord at this crisis of His self-sacrifice is that, believing that He had at His service, with a mere word of prayer, "twelve legions of angels," He saw that self-defence was not in the line of His duty; and deliberately chose torture and ignominy. "This is your hour and the power of darkness." What shall we think of this depression — this momen tary loss of hope under the prospect of horrible torture? To me it makes more real the human sufferings of our Lord. Not encased in some Divine armour which fortified Him against the weakness of nerve and flesh to which we are liable, but in all points tempted and tried as we are, He gains all the more upon our loyalty and affection by touches like this. If at this dark moment, our Lord could have foreseen the multitude whose spirits He would liberate, whose souls He would save to repentance and service, He would hardly have been baptised with a baptism so terrible as that which has afflicted some of His fohowers. How many of the noblest and best of men have, it may be in the weakness of old age which comes before death, suffered from what we gently call depression, and do not wish to probe into further. But depression means just this kind of feeling, just this loss of touch with God, with hope; just this sense of fahure. We put it down, rightly enough, when it occurs amongst our own family and friends, as a 1 I have not thought it necessary to enter on the region of literary criticism in regard to the words of the Passion. O.Q. 22 338 THE OUTLOOK [ch. failure of the bodily machinery by which the soul expresses itself. We do not blame the aged Christian for it, but we say that his nerves are worn out, that the strain upon him has broken the physical and psychical organs through which the soul works. And so in this our Lord's final strain and agony, in this passion and bloody sweat, it is not hard to realise that for a moment He thought that the things concerning Him had come to an end1. 6. That the whole Christian gospel of trust in the appeal of indomitable love to the hearts of men, was handed down in its purity to the succeeding generations of the Church, is plain from the writings of the pre- Nicene Fathers, that is those Christian leaders who pre- cel!elrthe~Council of Nicaea over which Constantine the Great presided in 325 a.d. 2 Christianity acted as a ferment working through a great mass of dough, penetrating as far as it could, but strongest at the beginning. We should realise that mhitary service was not a practical issue in the early days. Jews and slaves were both excluded from the Imperial army, and even the Christians, who were Gentile and free, were not in practice under conscription; for though the Emperors could enforce it, 1 Ambrose and Origen tackle this passage. Neither accepts it as sanctioning the use of arms; but their ways out are more patristic than modern. Dr Cadoux (p. 39) has no explanation to offer, nor has W. E. Whson, in Christ and War. Harnack in Militia Christi says the sword was a metaphor for steadfast resist ance to persecution. But that is unwarranted and no real relief. The interpretation in the text must stand or fah without the support of any authority I know of. 2 This section has been re-written and extended since the publication of Dr Cadoux's valuable research The Early Christian Attitude to War (Swarthmore Press) in 1919. He has given us, for the first time, an unbiassed and detailed statement, with docu mentary evidence, of this complicated and difficult issue. I have done my best to summarise the evidence and the conclusions. The references are Dr Cadoux's. ii] WAR 339 they commonly obtained all the soldiers they wanted voluntarily. Passages from the Fathers in strong disapproval of war occupy pp. 49-160 in Dr Cadoux's book. There are here about a hundred pages of solid quotation, from ah the leading early Fathers; constituting a mass of evidence that can never again be ignored or minimised. ( They are from Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertulhan and Origen most of all, Hippolytus, Minucius Felix, Commodianus, Gregory Thaumaturgus, the Didaskalia, the Clementine Homilies, Arnobius and Lactantius : surely a comprehensive list.y Tertulhan, Bishop of Carthage, the greatest Church man of his time, who wrote from about 197-220 a.d., says that when Peter cut off the ear of Malchus — Jesus "cursed the work of the sword for ever after1." "Is the laurel of triumph made up of leaves or of corpses? Is it decorated with ribbons or tombs? Is it besmeared with ointments, or with the tears of wives and mothers, perhaps even those of some men who are Christians, for Christ is among the barbarians as well?2" The Didaskalia (iv. vi. 4) forbids the Church to take money from "any of the magistrates of the Roman Empire, who are polluted by war" (about 250 a.d.). Arnobius (304-310 a.d.) asks "Did Christ, claiming royal power for himself, occupy the whole world with fierce legions, and of nations at peace from the beginning, destroy and remove some, and compel others to put their necks beneath his yoke, and obey him?3" Lactantius (about 305 a.d.) just before Constantine could write " If any one has slain a single man he is regarded as contaminated and wicked, nor do they think it right that he should be admitted to this earthly dwelling of the gods. But he who has slaughtered endless thousands of 1 De Patientia, 3. 2 De Corona Militis, 12. 3 Adversus Nationes, 11. 1. 340 THE OUTLOOK [ch. men, deluged the fields with blood, and infected rivers with it, is admitted not only into a temple, but even to heaven1." Throughout, these writers boldly call war wholesale murder. It may centre our quotations if we take the prophecy of Isaiah and Micah2 about beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks: "nation shah not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more," and note how a series of early Fathers comment on it3. They all claim that it is being fulfilled in Christianity. Justin, in his Apology (i. xxxix. 1-3), says "That this has happened, ye can be persuaded. For from Jerusalem twelve men went out into the world... and we, who were formerly slayers of one another, not only do not make war upon our enemies, but gladly die, con fessing Christ." Irenaeus, the leading Christian in Gaul from 180 to 202 a.d. just preceding Tertulhan, says that "this is fulfilled by Christians who know not how to fight, but when they are struck offer the other cheek also4." Tertulhan points out to Marcion " Here too thou mayst learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but a bringer of peace5." Origen, Bishop of Alexandria, by far the greatest, one may say the most modern, Christian thinker in the early centuries, and a support to Quakerism on many sides, who wrote between 228 and 250 a.d., filling the period between Tertulhan and Cyprian, is one of the most out spoken. "We no longer take sword against a nation, nor do we learn any more to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus6." Dr Cadoux (p. 67) very sensibly remarks that the close 1 Divine Institutions, 1. xviii. 8-10. 2 Is. ii. 3 ff. and Micah iv. 2 ff. 3 Cadoux, pp. 60 ff . 4 iv. xxiv. 4, Against Heresies (a.d. 181-189). 6 Cadoux, p. 62. 8 Against Celsus, v. 33. n] WAR 34i fidelity with which successive generations of Christians obeyed their Lord's precepts to universal love and non- resistance is a good answer to those who argue that they were only meant for a perfect society, (where of course they would have no scope), or apply only to the inward mind, not the outward actions, or only to private and not public conduct. He might have added that the action of the early Christians for three centuries runs dead against the theory that they were merely an "interim-ethic," a makeshift to last only till the imminent end of all things. Origen asks "how it would have been possible for this peaceful teaching, which does not allow its adherents even to defend themselves against their enemies, to prevail, unless at the coming of Jesus the affairs of the world had everywhere changed into a mhder state " under the peaceful rule of Augustus1? In another place he says it was allowed to the Jews to fight, therefore since the Christian could not, it was plain that he was of a different origin2. In another passage he emphasizes this difference between the Jewish and the Christian ethic3. Here we find a welcome recog nition of the principle that what it may be right to do at one time or place, may not be right at another. See § 23 in this chapter. We now turn from the exhortations of the leaders to the actual practice of Christians. When, and for how long, and in what numbers, did the general membership refuse to be soldiers? The evidence is not purely negative4, for Celsus the heathen phhosopher writing his book against the Christians in 178 a.d. urged the Christians " to help the 1 Against Celsus, 11. 30. 2 Celsus, in. 7. 3 Celsus, vn. 26. Cadoux, p. 81. 4 There are of course the N.T. cases of Cornelius and of the gaoler at Phhippi, who would be a soldier. But we do not know, in these early cases, with Christian practice still unformed, whether their acceptance of the Gospel led them to abandon the army or to try to do so. They vanish out of the story. 342 THE OUTLOOK [ch. Emperor with ah theh strength, and to labour with him in maintaining justice, and to fight for him and serve as soldiers with him, if he require it, and to share military command with him." Celsus argued that if everybody did as the Christians, the Emperor would be deserted and the empire be conquered by barbarians1. We have heard this argument often during the late War. Harnack in his Militia Christi agrees that this shows clearly that Christians generahy abstained from soldiering. Considering the cruelty and torture ordered by the law courts, which soldiers who were also policemen had to inflict, the frequent sacrifices to the Emperors as gods, and the whole nature of the work, it is not surprising that Christians did not volunteer for it; Difficulty arose when men already in the army became Christians. We now come to the evidence from Tertulhan that in the early years of the third century there were some- Christians in the army. The body was now large, and probably in cluded many who, for domestic or local reasons, had taken the Christian name. InDeldololatria (198-202A.D.) the author asks "whether a believer may turn to military service." This is the earliest hint we have that some instances of mhitary service may have occurred by that time. In De Corona Militis (211 a.d.) Tertulhan defends a Christian soldier who had refused to wear a garland on the Emperor's bhthday. But he tackles the prior question Whether mhitary service is suitable for Christians at all. Do we beheve that a human sacramentum may lawfully be added to the divine, and that a Christian may give a promise in answer to another master after Christ, and abjure father and mother and every kinsman?... Whl it be lawful to occupy himself with the sword when the Lord declares that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword ? And shall the son of peace, for whom it whl be unfitting even to go to law, be engaged in a battle? And shall 1 Cadoux, p. 104. n] WAR 343 he who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs, administer chains and imprisonment and tortures and executions ? With much more to the same forcible effect, he says that those converted while soldiers must in practice leave the army, as had been done by many, or suffer martyr dom1. In addition to the writings of leading Bishops, there are in existence a series of church regulations, called the Canons of Hippolytus. Their author was a leading man in Rome from about 200 to 230 a.d. and his Canons exist in five later versions, not exactly consistent with themselves or one another, but variously modified in detah in different districts. The extant forms are contemporary with, or a little later than, Constantine. The process of change was certainly towards laxity, so that the most rigorous form is sure to be nearest to the original. This form declares that baptism must be refused to soldiers and magistrates unless they quit their offices, and that any Christian who becomes a soldier must be rejected. Some of the other forms allow baptism to a soldier provided he khls nobody; and do not reject a believer who is forced to join the army. The state of these regulations so late as the fourth century is conclusive evidence of the general opinion of the Church2. If any impatient militarist has skipped these simple statements of the Christian Fathers because they ignored the real difficulties of the position they took up, he would do well not to skip the arguments of Origen which I whl now try to summarise3. We noted a few pages back how he realised that what might be right for Jews was not therefore right for Christians. The sub-Christian cannot be expected to practise more than a sub-Christian morality; by his own highest standard he should be judged. This gives room for charity and for genuine fehowship and comradeship with soldiers, and is not inconsistent with 1 Cadoux, p. 113. 2 Cadoux, pp. 1 19-128. 3 Cadoux, pp. 129-147. 344 THE OUTLOOK [ch. profound admiration for theh courage and self-sacrifice, and with honouring their deeds when living and their memory when dead. Those who realise how difficult is the Christian standard in its purity, and what a high. attainment it is to be true to its unperturbed faith, whl be the last to find fault with those who do not reach it. Origen wrote in 248 a.d. his reply to the attack on Christianity by Celsus seventy years before. Origen, following his opponent's order, devotes eight chapters, close to the end of his book, to a defence of the Christian's abstinence from war and from magistracies. To the criticism that the State would fall before the barbarians if every one became Christian, Origen replies that "everyone" includes the barbarians themselves; and in that case there would be perfect security. This reply is valid to-day. If one-third of our own nation had been pacifists one cannot suppose that a nearly corresponding proportion of other nations would not be pacifist too. The modern world moves all together, in spite of an enemy people being always, for the time, in the main a bad lot. (See our forefathers' opinion of the French in 1800 and the Russians in 1855.) So, on any probable estimate of the development of Peace views, there would have been no war. Origen says further, that the patriotic work of the Christians may be found in their availing prayers for the triumph of the right, and in the improvement in public conduct due to their example and teaching. He points out that the priests in the temples do not fight, but keep their right hands pure for their sacrifices, and he likens all Christians to priests — a sound Quaker doctrine. Origen realised that there is more than one outlet for patriotism. In fact, his hope is our hope, that true Christianity whl, step by step, so conquer the hearts of men, that wars whl fade away of themselves. Neither he nor we expect War suddenly to vanish by magic from a world so eashy Ii] WAR 345 stimulated to it as ours. We do not propose chaos or anarchy, we propose a reasoned and potent remedy, and . recognise that in the past some wars have been unavoid able, given the conditions that prevailed. That was Origen's line. It may be added that he never refers in his words to the end of the world being imminent, and was therefore not influenced by that. Nor was he by the other collateral objection to the army due to its idolatrous practices. Quotations to the like effect from Cyprian (250-258 a.d.) and from Arnobius and Lactantius (305 a.d.) are omitted for reasons of space. Towards the end of the third century, when undoubt edly there were some Christians in the army, we meet with the martyrdoms of those who refused the service. Maximilian, a young Numidian, perished in 295 a.d. pleading his objection to war itself, not referring to the matter of sacrificing to the Emperor. Marinus, a centurion at Caesarea, perished in 260 a.d. because he would not sacrifice. Marcellus in 298 in Morocco, took both grounds; Cassianus, the clerk of the court which condemned him, protested against the sentence and suffered death. There are a considerable number of other cases about that time ; which may have contributed, Dr Cadoux thinks, to the outbreak of the terrible persecution under Diocletian in 303 A.D. Such is the story of the operation of the pure Christian spirit. But the Gospel entered the world through the gate of Judaism, and retained thereby many primitive ideas, which, in every department of the Church's thought and practice, have weakened and wasted its force. Jewish tradition was mhitary. The Scriptures of the Old Testament certainly taught that Yahweh had ordered and blessed wars and given victory. The great secession under Marcion was on this and kindred points. His followers renounced the God of 346 THE OUTLOOK [ch. the Hebrews. This Jewish example, which was mostly kept in a different compartment of consciousness, was probably not generally influential; and was plainly over laid by Christ's gospel. But if, at any time, that high faith failed or was questioned, there was always this sub consciousness of "the wars of the Lord " ready to play the traitor to conscience. Again, there was Jewish apocalyptic, with its cata strophic destructions, and its visions of the war of angels, continued in Christian apocalypses, notably that of John. These imaginings, a bad inheritance, were also ready to support enterprises like Constantine's, when faith had faded. Again, the Fall of Jerusalem was believed to have been prophesied by Jesus in His apocalyptic utterances, and to constitute the Divine punishment on the Jews for the crucifixion. This was the third enemy by the wayside of the Christian pacifist1. The doctrine of evolution, of progressive assimilation of Truth, had not yet come to his help. Again, the issue was not raised and settled once for all by our Lord and His Apostles. It did not apparently become urgent thl about the beginning of the third century, as a practical issue. So that the Christians of that day were not fortified by precedent, when the crisis came. To appreciate their mental outlook we need also to remember that they followed the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter in loyalty to the Empire and acceptance of the civil government as ordained by God. This imperial government was harsh and brutal. It extracted evidence by torture. Its methods were rough and its punishments were terrible. Doubtless it needed the recognition of the necessity and fitness of a sub-Christian standard some where in the world, for the purpose of maintaining public order, to preserve loyalty to legalised force. We are 1 See Cadoux, pp. 170 ff. n] WAR 347 very conscious to-day, and they may have been so too, of the miserable prison methods in vogue. It wih be strange if the incarceration of about five thousand conscientious objectors, who are not of the feeble criminal class without a voice, does not result in infusing the Christian spirit into our prison administration, which now only dehumanises its victims. By working the system for the prisoner's good, we may yet abandon the epithet sub-Christian in speaking of our judicial system. With regard to the Fathers of the first three centuries, then, we conclude that they met the ever-recurring diffi culty of conflict between an enlightened conscience and the State, on the whole a beneficent institution but mixed with evh, by recognising, sometimes consciously, more often un consciously, that right and wrong are subjectively dis criminated, that is, that standards differ from man to man. By the third century Christian Fathers had reached the point of praying for the success of the Imperial troops. Tertulhan writes : We are ah of us always praying for all emperors, that their hfe may be prolonged, their rule secure, their household kept in safety, their armies strong, the senate faithful, the people upright, the world quiet, and whatever else his wishes are as man and as Caesar1. Origen says that Christians who do not fight should strive by prayers to God on behalf of those who render mhitary service righteously, in order that ah things opposed and hostile to those that act righteously may be put down2. This recognition of the two standards, Christian and pagan, is summed up in a sentence of Athenagoras, saying that Christians cannot endure to see a man killed, even justly, and d fortiori they cannot kill him3. The most 1 Apol. 30. Cadoux, p. 210. 2 Celsus, viii. 73. Cadoux, p. 210. 3 Legatio, 35, about 180 a.d. 348 THE OUTLOOK [ch, compromising passages Dr Cadoux has found, showing the use of the civh power by Christians, are where Justin asks the government to punish merely nominal incon sistent Christians1, and where a synod of Christian Bishops expehed the heretic Paul of Samosata from the Church and bishop's house at Antioch by aid of the Emperor Aurelian in 272 a.d. (p. 244). If we examine our own current words and ideas we shall find that we all really acknowledge this variety of standard. How otherwise is a Quaker schoolmaster to teach about the Battle of Marathon or the Battle of Marston Moor — to estimate Washington or Garibaldi? The question therefore, as to whether any particular war has been right, such as the Italian Risorgimento, the American Civil War, or the first Balkan War, should always be taken in con nection with the inquiry, for whom was it right ? The question whether such a war was wise, or was avoidable, or was futile, or ruinous, is of course another question altogether. We come now to the question of the actual enlistment of Christians in the army. The story of the Thundering Legion under Marcus Aurelius in a.d. 174, though no mhacle, inclines one to surmise that there might be Christians in the army at that date. The Twelfth Legion was overcome by heat and thirst, and about to be attacked by the enemy. The story goes that in answer to the prayers of the very numerous Christians in it heavy rain fell, the soldiers caught the rain in their helmets, and the bar barians fled at the noise of the thunder, and that in con sequence the Emperor ceased his persecution of the Christians. As a matter of fact the Emperor himself credited Jupiter with the thunderstorm, and the great persecution at Lyons three years afterwards discredits the story of the decree of clemency; but the tale comes through Eusebius from a Christian Apology, published by Claudius 1 Apol. xvi. 14 (153 A.D.) ii] WAR 349 Apollinarius, a contemporary Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia. The Twelfth Legion wintered in Cappadocia at the end of a.d. 174, so that he doubtless heard it from the soldiers. The story is discredited by the fact that the Legion had been called the Thunderstruck Legion (Legio Fulminata) ever since the time of Augustus. But we have to account for a story told by a contemporary Bishop1- There is a passage in Marcus Aurelius, quoted by Barclay, which seems to imply that there were Christians with the army, but not as fighting men. " I prayed to my country's gods; but when I was neglected by them and observed myself passed by the enemy, considering the fewness of my forces, I called to one and entreated those who with us are called Christians, and I found a great number of them. And I forced them with threats which ought not to have been, because afterwards I knew their strength and force." Therefore they betook themselves neither to the use of darts nor trumpets, "for they used not so to do, for the cause and name of their God which they bear in their consciences." The Christians, if any, in the Thundering Legion may have been converted while in the long service army. The first suggestion that men already baptised enlisted comes from about the year 200 a.d. when Tertulhan wrote against the practice. He would not have done this without cause. In 197 a.d. he wrote2 : We are people of yesterday, and fill all your places, cities, islands, forts (castella), free cities, market places, and your very camps. We sail with you and serve with you as soldiers3 (militamus). 1 See Neander, vol. 1. pp. 157-160. Clark's ed. It may be that the soldiers hoaxed the good Bishop by telling him a pious story for his book. It was an excehent yarn at any rate, and figured frequently in various forms in Christian literature. 2 Apology, 37. Adversus Nationes, 1. i. The meaning of castella is uncertain. Dr Cadoux says it may mean only villages. 3 Apol. 42. 350 THE OUTLOOK [ch. In his De Corona Militis (211 a.d.) we have a defence of a soldier who refused to wear a laurel garland in honour of an imperial largess, but whose conduct, in so refusing, was disapproved of by his fellow Christians in the army, and by some civhian Christians in Numidia. About the beginning of the third century then, there is some evidence of the commencement of the breakdown of the Christian testimony. All through that century the leaders wrote against enlistment : — the Church regulations were against it; — but there are signs that it grew slowly, in spite of Tertulhan and Origen, Cyprian, Arnobius and Lactantius. There was one great Greek Father, Clement of Alexandria, who, while not advocating military service, and expressing sound Christian sentiments on forgiveness of injuries, writes in several places on the implied assumption that militancy might be a Christian occupation1 (180-210 a.d.). By the middle of the century the numbers of Christian soldiers seem, from the scanty allusions, to be still small, but at the end of the century to have been multiplied. Even then they would form only a small minority either of the army or the Church. The great persecution of Diocletian in 303 a.d. fell first upon the Christian soldiers. One cannot wonder if, in the series of campaigns under the pro-Christian generals who fought by the side of Con stantine, many Christians entered an army which would deliver them from that terrible bath of blood. In 312 a.d. Constantine, under the sign of the Cross, defeated Maxentius at the Battle of the Mhvian Bridge and became a Christian Emperor. The third century was the time when the Church was in other ways ceasing to be characteristically like its Founder, was adopting a priesthood, creeds, and sacra mental mysteries. After the catastrophe came, in the moment of apparent triumph with Constantine, we find the Church beginning to support the Empire in its wars, 1 Cadoux, p. 232. n] WAR 351 to annex the endowments and the temples of the heathen worship, and to employ persecution as the remedy for heresy. Such a Church abandoned its testimony against war along with much besides. "Thou hast been con quered, Galhean," would have been a truer exclamation to put into the lips of Constantine. The best Christian thinkers have felt this the most strongly. Dante (in J. A. Carlyle's translation) writes "Ah Constantine ! to how much ill gave birth, not thy conver sion, but that dower which the first rich Father took from thee1." Milton translated this passage in his prose work Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England (1641). He adds also a translation of a savage Sonnet (No. 107) by Petrarch to the like effect, and a passage from Ariosto : Then passed he to a flowery mountain green. Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously. This was that gift (if you the truth will have), That Constantine to good Sylvestro gave2. Such was the verdict from Papal Italy in the ages of faith . From the Arbiter in Council3 I take the two following contrasted articles: Counch of Nicaea, a.d. 325, under Constantine (but early in his career), Canon 12: "Whosoever being called by grace have first shown their zeal and faith and have abandoned the mhitary profession, but afterwards have returned to it like dogs to their vomit, let them be hearers for three, and penitents for ten years." Synod of Aries, a.d. 353: "Those who cast away theh arms in peace (i.e. when Christians are not being perse cuted) shall abstain from Communion." 1 Inferno, xix. 115. Dante returns to the subject with great vigour in Paradiso, xx. 55. 2 Orlando Furioso, xxxvi. Stanza 80. 3 Chap. vii. p. 536. 352 THE OUTLOOK [ch. These two edicts date with useful accuracy the official fall of a pure Christianity. Robert Barclay (Apology, Prop. xv. §§ 13-15) also notes passages against war in later Fathers, Ambrose, Chrysos- tom, Hieronymus, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and with much variety and contradiction, even in Augustine. He remarks that the same Fathers who oppose judicial oaths, of whom he gives a long list, also oppose war. This is another instance of the truth that Quaker testimonies are no fortuitous concourse, but are the revival of a single coherent system of conduct taught by our Lord. 7. After Constantine the protest against all war is heard mainly from reformers and heretics. It is essentially a criticism of the State by the conscience, and when the Church, the organ of the corporate conscience, is itself absorbed by the State, such criticism becomes impossible, or very difficult, because of the spokesmen of the Church being endowed with wealth and power (or at the lowest with maintenance and position), by the State, which has never yet felt that it could do without war. But, though abandoned by the Catholic Church, the teaching of Christ has never quite ceased out of the world1. It is curious and instructive to note that the protest against war has been made by heretical bodies, all mystical in thought and strongly opposed to the sacerdotal hier archy. They had, in fact, got back to Christ2. They included the Cathari, the Paterines in Italy in the eleventh century and after, the Albigenses to some extent, the Waldenses, the Franciscan Friars and Tertiaries, the Lollards most conspicuously, the early Moravians, such reformers as Erasmus3, the earlier Anabaptists, the Men- 1 See Christ and War by W. E. Wilson, chap. iv. " Voices in the Wilderness." 2 Fuh accounts of these bodies may be found in Studies in Mystical Religion, by Rufus M. Jones. 2 See his commentary on Luke iii. and xxii. n] WAR 353 nonites, and the " Family of Love " founded by Henry Nicholas. A like view was common among the Socinians at the time of the Reformation. Nor have the Quakers stood alone in our own day. Testimony, costing martyr dom and imprisonment, has been borne by the Doukho- bors in Russia, and during the later and principal part of their history by the Bahais in Persia. These are said to number about a million, and it is to be feared that they are now having much hardness to endure. It would appear from all these cases that a determined hostility to war is not an isolated peculiarity which may crop up anywhere, but is found to accompany a pure mysticism, and to be part of a certain spiritual tone and habit of mind. 8. In all the campaigns of the founders of Quakerism, the flag they flew was inscribed, "Primitive Christianity Revived." Had their methods been those of the Salvation Army, this actual banner would have been unfurled in every market place in England. It formed, in any case, the burden of their plea and the constant appeal in their writings. They were hostile to the pagan elements which had corrupted the original gospel of Jesus, and this they interpreted by His living word within them. What were such reformers to make of the universal assumption in all nations and churches that war was a necessity, and even that in many respects it was rather a fine thing? A few years passed by before the Society as a whole faced the issue. Although in the popular mind Quakerism has stood for Peace more than for any other single thing, Peace was not the heart of the Quaker message. It was only a very prompt deduction from it. Under the Commonwealth, whhst the Society was being gathered together, from 1652 onwards, there was some variety of utterance. Barclay puts Peace into his last proposition, among miscellaneous testimonies, about re moving the hat, taking an oath, or going to the theatre. He treats it with extreme brevity in his text, and does G. Q. 23 354 THE OUTLOOK [ch. not even mention it in the proposition itself. Later genera tions have found that it must hold a larger relative place. Quite early in his history, when lying in Derby gaol in 1650-1, under the Blasphemy Act, George Fox was invited to become a Captain in the Commonwealth army. He declined, saying that he lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars. So he lay among the felons, filthily, for six months more. He thus rang true from the beginning. Nevertheless, many religious teachers might go so far, might declare that, for themselves, they were out of the spirit of war, without seeing their way to formulate any testimony against it as a part of practical citizenship. In later years when William Penn consulted George Fox as to whether he ought to continue to wear his sword as part of the dress of a gentleman, he replied humorously, "Wear it as long as thou canst." This exactly expresses the position. It was an early and very general deduction from the con sciousness of the indwelling Christ. On the other hand, we find Fox upbraiding the Protector for not carrying out a more vigorous Protestant foreign policy: O Oliver, hadst thou been faithful and thundered down the deceit, the Hollander had been thy subject and tributary, Germany had given up to have done thy whl, and the Spaniard had quivered like a dry leaf wanting the virtue of God, the King of France should have bowed his neck under thee, the Pope should have withered as in winter, the Turk in ah his fatness should have smoked, thou shouldst not have stood trifling about small things, but minded the work of the Lord as He began with thee at first1. Edward Burrough wrote, in 1659, an Epistle to the Cromwehian garrison at Dunkirk, urging them to "set up their standards at the gates of Rome," and "avenge the blood of the guiltless through all the dominion of the 1 Devonshire House, Parchment-bound book in Portfolio 9 p. 79- Quoted by W. C. Braithwaite in The Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 440. i] WAR 355 Pope1." Edward Burrough was a fiery young preacher, known as "the son of thunder and consolation," who founded the Quakerism of London, wore himself out and died in prison when sthl only twenty-nine in 1662. The question for many was really perplexing, for a large number of soldiers, probably many hundreds, from the famous army of the Commonwealth joined the Society, and the early Friends looked to that wonderful force as the agent whereby their liberties and the cause of true religion had been preserved. Among the armies of history hardly any can have presented itself in such a favourable light to a religious body. "The Lord hath owned and honoured our English army and done great things for them and by them in these nations in our age2." Early in 1660, however, the point was settled. The mhitary disunion and the disturbances which had f ohowed on the death of the Protector in 1658 caused George Fox a period of depression at Reading, where he lay hi for ten weeks in 16593. When "he rose from his travah with the witness of God," and "over all that hypocrisy which the outward professors were run into," and "came to have ease, and the light, power and Spirit shone over all," he wrote an Epistle, printed in the Journal, pp. 448-9, "lest any young or ignorant people should be drawn into the snare of faction." This Epistle breathes all through the most uncompromising doctrine of Peace4. I think that a legitimate historical imagination aids one to fill in this brief story, and to conclude that the standard Peace testimony of Friends dates from George Fox's struggles at Reading for those ten weeks: — that in that loneliness he was working out for us his solution of the puzzle caused by the rival loyalties to the nation and to 1 Works, folio ed. pp. 536-8. 2 Edward Burrough, loc. cit. 3 Journal, 8th Ed. p. 447. 4 See also George Fox's Epistles, pp. 103, 132. 23—2 356 THE OUTLOOK [ch. God. George Fox had no vocabulary of psychological analysis, his mind was strong and direct rather than subtle. (We are indeed left to guess what it was exactly that troubled his soul from 1642 to 1647.) But when he rose from his bed at Reading and wrote an Epistle on faction and on war, we need not hesitate as to the subject of his struggle1- It is my belief that each man for himself will have to go through some similar struggle for light on this great question. The same thoroughness with which Fox found the Indwelling Word destructive of an order of clergy, caused him to find the law of love inconsistent with the military profession. This Epistle is so epoch-making that I wih quote part of it : Ah Friends, everywhere, keep out of plots and bustling, and the arm of flesh; for ah these are amongst Adam's sons in the fall, where they are destroying men's lives like dogs, beasts, and swine, goring, rending, and biting one another, destroying one another, and wrestling with flesh and blood. Whence arise wars and killing but from the lusts ? Now ah this is in Adam in the fall, out of Adam that never fell, in whom there is peace and life. Ye are called to peace, therefore follow it; and that peace is in Christ, not in Adam in the fall. All that pretend to fight for Christ are deceived; for his kingdom is not of this world, therefore his servants do not fight. Fighters are not of Christ's kingdom, but are without Christ's kingdom; His kingdom stands in peace and righteousness, but fighters are in the lust; and ah that would destroy men's lives, are not of Christ's mind, who came to save men's lives. Christ's kingdom is not of this world; it is peaceable: and all that are in strife, are not of his kingdom. All that pretend to fight for the Gospel, are deceived ; for the Gospel is the power of God, which was before the devh, or fall of man was ; and the gospel of peace was before fighting was. Therefore they that pretend fighting, are ignorant of the gospel; and all that talk of fighting for Sion, are in darkness; for Sion needs no such helpers. All such as pretend 1 The sequence in time may not be so close as this. Norman Penney, in his notes to the Journal, vol. 1. (Camb. ed.), points out that the historical order in the Journal is confused here. But the alterations in the Ellwood edition were probably made with some knowledge of the true sequence. ii] WAR 357 Christ Jesus, and confess Him, and yet run into the use of carnal weapons, wresthng with flesh and blood, throw away the spiritual weapons. They that would be wrestlers with flesh and blood, throw away Chiist's doctrine; the flesh is got up in them, and they are weary of their sufferings. Such as would revenge themselves, are out of Christ's doctrine. Such as being stricken on one cheek, would not turn the other, are out of Christ's doctrine; and such as do not love one another, nor love enemies, are out of Christ's doctrine. The address of Isaac Penington to the army belongs also to this critical juncture. It is undated, but is printed between two papers, dated 19. xi. 1659 and 14. xh. 1659. It was therefore written about the end of Eleventh Month, 1659, i-e- about the end of January, 1660, according to our reckoning. The army badly needed an evangelist just then, and Isaac Penington responded to the call, concluding with the words, " Ah ! remember how often ye have started aside like a warped bow: become now at length upright to the Lord, carrying faithfully to the mark those his arrows which he is shooting at the regions of Babylon. This is from one who waits for what the Lord wih effect, and hopes at length to see an instrument in his hand wherein his soul whl delight." The writer had only been a Friend about fifteen months, and his former attitude to the army still remained as a habit of mind. Fox's letter may not have reached him. The behaviour of the army was soon to cure of theh lingering loyalty any Friends who thought the Lord had done great things for it and by it (a phrase used both by Isaac Penington and Edward Burrough) . Friends, already soldiers at their convincement, began to leave the army, and to be expelled from it, in considerable numbers. Individuals had begun to leave earlier. Finally, in 1660, a strong and definite "Declaration" was sent by George Fox and other Publick Friends to Charles II, setting forth the official opposition of the Society to ah war, as being inconsistent with the spirit and teaching of Christ. This 358 THE OUTLOOK [ch. Declaration is sthl printed in the Book of Discipline, in Vol. ii. of the current edition, p. 139. From that position, now definitely reached, there has never been any official retreat. 9. Near it is printed the paragraph issued in the Epistle of 1804, during the Napoleonic war, which, in its motive and circumstances, the nature of the country's danger, and the state of public opinion, resembles not distantly the recent war against Germany. It runs as follows : We feel bound explicitly to avow our continued unshaken persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our Divine Lord and Lawgiver, and with the whole spirit and tenor of His Gospel ; and that no plea of necessity or of policy, however urgent or peculiar, can avail to release either individuals or nations from the paramount allegiance which they owe unto Him who hath said, "Love your enemies. 'li To carry out such a profession consistently is indeed a high attainment, but it should be the aim of every Christian. It is a solemn thing to stand forth to the nation as the advocates of inviolable peace; and our testimony loses its efficacy in proportion to the want of con sistency in any amongst us. Friends at that time, however, were content to main tain a passive attitude, and to eschew propaganda; for in the Epistle of the following year, 1805, Friends are advised not to make the war a topic of conversation and to be peaceful themselves in words and actions. At the same time they paid their militia fines and went to prison when necessary. Pitt exempted them as a body from con scription. The Friends' family of Fox, at Falmouth, who were shippers, came, through no action of their own, into possession of a quantity of French prize money, and devoted much effort to find out by advertisement in France to whom they might return it as its rightful owners. This piece of unusual conscientiousness attracted the notice of certain kindred spirits in France. The result was that some bodies of separatists from the Catholic Church joined ii] WAR 359 the Society of Friends, and maintained for two or three generations Friends' Meetings at Nimes, Montpehier and Congenies in the South of France. These little bodies finally faded out. Conscription drove their young men from the country. It is noticeable that to-day Friends are by no means minded to seek seclusion in time of war, but are using every effort that the press and public meetings place at theh disposal to influence the nation in favour of a more democratic foreign policy, of justice, and friendly feeling towards the populations with whom we have been at war, and of a permanent settlement which would produce a common federated organisation for peace and disarmament, in a Europe divided on principles of nationahty and not of empire1. 10. My readers whl naturally deshe to know how the testimony has fared among Friends for two hundred and fifty years, and whether experience has shown it to be a tenable position. In England, for the most part, Friends' faith in it had not been greatly tried until 1916. It has been a simple matter to avoid joining the army or navy, militia or volunteers or territorials. Only in the days of the press gang and the compulsory capture of sahors for our fleets in the Napoleonic wars has any difficult testimony had to be borne. It has been nobly borne when required both then and in early days2. In Ireland a critical time arose in the rebellion of 1798, when the Catholic rebels and the English troops were scattering terror and massacre through the country. 1 From a return presented to the Yearly Meeting of 1915. it seems that over 300 Peace Meetings were held in the first nine months of the war, with many meetings also on Christ and War. 2 For Richard Sellar's case see Besse's Sufferings of the People called Quakers, vol. 11. p. 112, and a modern pamphlet by Joshua Rowntree (Northern Friends' Peace Board, Thirsk Row, Wellington Street, Leeds). For Thomas Lurting see W. C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 521. 360 THE OUTLOOK [ch. Friends destroyed any guns which they might have for sporting purposes, and left themselves absolutely un protected. Not a single one of the solitary Quaker homes was molested ; not a single Friend lost his life, except one who had put on a uniform and used a rifle. They sheltered and fed the refugees from both sides, and were helpful in the restoration of peace. The triumph of the law of Christ was real and memorable1. America was the scene of the most extensive real test of Quaker principles in early days. The story of Pennsyl vania is, of course, the classical case, the "holy experi ment." Throughout the frontier wars against the Indians, not only in Pennsylvania, but elsewhere, the policy of the Quaker colonists was never to carry arms, nor even to bolt their doors, and it resulted in their possessing a security which fire-arms could not give. This was strikingly the case in New England, in 1704, where the Irish experience was exactly foreshadowed. The Indians left the Quaker farms alone, devoting themselves to khling Presbyterians who had killed their people and taken their lands2. Regarded as an example of a State existing without war and without soldiers, the "holy experiment" was not decisive, inasmuch as the province was a part of the British Empire and was defended by its armies and fleets. The British colonies were frequently involved in war with the French on their northern border, and the safety of Pennsylvania from conquest was ensured by the defence made by New York and New England. Demands for a subsidy for war purposes were frequently made by the Government on the Assembly of Pennsylvania and con stituted a difficulty of principle. The matter was generally solved by a vote of supply to the Government for general purposes, the responsibhity of its application being thus left to the home authorities. The amount was also 1 See Mary Leadbeater's Journal. 2 See Journal of Thomas Chalkley, pp. 40-46. ii] WAR 361 generally below what was demanded. (The right to tax the colonies was, we shall remember, the occasion of the War of Independence afterwards.) It is not, however, in its relations with European powers that Pennsylvania was significant in freedom from war. There was a long dispute with Lord Baltimore's neighbouring province of Maryland about boundaries, which the colony of Pennsylvania by forbearance and moderation was finally able to settle by arbitration when violence would have been an easy and natural resource. The story of the Maryland arbitration is extremely creditable to Pennsylvania, and was a valuable object lesson to the world. The " holy experiment " did not come to an end through any inherent weakness, but through its connection with the imperial necessities of England. In 1756 the Seven Years' War broke out, the central and critical struggle with France for the possession of the New World. The mhitary people in England decided to abolish the autonomy of Pennsylvania, a course to which they had been perpetually stimulated by the Anglican party in the colony in corre spondence with their influential friends at home; in fact the colonists had never been able to feel complete security of tenure. Friends in England took the matter up for them, and felt that the best the}' could do to save the autonomy of the colony was for Friends to undertake to resign their seats in the Assembly, where they constituted a majority, though but a small minority of the population1. Their elections were usually unopposed, and a seat was held peacefuhy for a great number of years by the same man. The majority of Friends carried out this bargain made on their behalf, and those who retained their seats were too few to govern the policy of the colony. The undertaking then given to take no further part in politics had disastrous consequences for the Society and the State, and has helped 1 In 1770 Friends constituted one-seventh of the population of Philadelphia. 362 THE OUTLOOK [ch. towards the corruption often associated with modern Pennsylvanian politics. Thus the suppression of the most hopeful political element in the American Colonies was part of the price we paid for the conquest of Canada. If tne advice of such colonial statesmen as James Pemberton and John Dickinson of Phhadelphia had been taken, the troubles arising out of the Stamp Act might have been ended without war, a calamity brought on by the hotheads in Boston Harbour1. A small body of Friends who felt free to fight in 1775 separated from the general body in Phhadelphia, and started a single Meeting House of their own on this question, but this body of "Free Quakers" was too small to survive2. The Society maintained its principles and practices intact throughout the revolutionary war. When the Civh War broke out in 1861 the difficulty was real and even insoluble. Friends had devoted themselves for many years to the freedom of the slave; they had formed the backbone and the hands and feet of the Abolitionist party, and to many of them there presented itself a choice of evhs. To fight meant to abandon one dearly-loved principle; not to fight meant not to raise a hand for the maintenance of the unity of theh country and the freedom of the negroes. In these circumstances a considerable number of young men went to the war. Their disciplinary treatment by the Society varied from complete forgiveness to disownment. The question of membership is a local question with Friends, decided by the Monthly Meeting, and Monthly Meetings differed. In the East, the rule against war was maintained with more severity than in the Middle States, and on the whole rather more severely among the "Orthodox" than among the "Hicksite" Friends. It must, however, be admitted that we have here to 1 See Isaac Sharpless, The Quakers in the Revolution. 2 This branch was organised in 1781 and held meetings till 1836. Sharpless, The Quakers in the Revolution. li] WAR 363 record a partial departure under very difficult circum stances from the absoluteness of the testimony against all war. It is probable that in this tangled world it may be impossible at all times to maintain any definite rule of conduct without exceptions. At times the best one can do is to choose between two evils. Let those who have not been similarly tried refrain from passing judgment. Friends in the Southern States bore the full brunt of a really savage persecution for refusing the Confederate conscription. They were at times driven into the line of fire, but refused to shoot. Their thrilling story is told in Southern Heroes in War Time. The recent world war brought the problem again to the front more urgently than ever. In the United States a denominational exemption from mhitary service was given — and mostly accepted. But in England and Australia and New Zealand no such privilege was granted. It was repudiated by English Friends, though apparently the government would have granted it. But Friends desired no soft privilege, and would not desert the others outside their own body, who declined to serve as a matter of conscience. Ultimately 32 per cent, of the available young men in the Society, joined the forces1. These were nearly all Friends by birth, and their Quakerism, in many, though not in all cases, was more traditional than personal. The remaining two thirds of the men liable under conscription served their country in the Friends' Ambulance Unit, the War Victims' Relief Work, the Emergency Committee for the relief of foreigners in dis tress, "work of national importance" under Tribunals, or in prison. There were in prison 279 Friends and registered Attenders, of whom 134 accepted the Home Office Scheme. Thus, to sum up, the Society has had to bear its testimony, in face, not only of dubious wars like those in the Crimea and South Africa, but of the most righteous 1 Official Record made by the Meeting for Sufferings. 364 THE OUTLOOK [ch. wars waged by the most single-minded armies which have ever fought. The Society learnt its infant steppings, at first shaky, in the shadow of the friendly presence of the Ironsides. The very existence of European nations against Napoleon, its own cause of freedom for the American negro, and now the struggle against the mhitary hegemony of Germany, have had to be considered by this body of Christian idealists. The record given above is one of a pertinacity which has needed to be well founded on faith, and on the whole has not fahed. 11. The situation now and in all the above wars has been truly tragic. A tragedy is not a mere calamity, nor a struggle between good and evil both confessed, but there is tragedy where good is pitted against good in hopeless conflict, or where we are in such a case that our choice lies only between two evils, as was the case in most Greek tragedy. "Our citizenship is in heaven," but we have one on earth also. They call in different ways. Happily in this war, until conscription came, a solution was found and vigorously fohowed up in ambulance, hospital, and other relief work, and in the many forms of national service which were needed at home. Though we cannot fire, we did not keep out of the firing line. In morals there can be no claim like that of a prefer ential creditor who must be completely satisfied before others receive anything. In a conflict of influences com peting for our allegiance, our testimony for peace can claim no such isolated and privileged position. It must have weight along with other duties, relying only upon its natural strength. Claims to an overwhelming absoluteness attaching to some particular duty have caused most of the crimes which have been committed by good men. Loyalty to the Roman Church produced the Inquisition, and obedience to revealed truth as understood by the Protestant led Calvin to burn Servetus. A one-sided patriotism has much bloodshed to answer for in many a n] WAR 365 tribal slaughter. So that the " Peace-at-any-price party" is a mere nickname, and in spite of its vogue, does not represent a reasonable Quaker view. But the cause of Peace is inherently so strong, the crime of war is so dreadful in the intensity of its evil and in its widespread moral ruin, that there is needed no protective tariff to shield it from the competition of other moral claims. In war every happy human relationship is reversed; evil has become good, and men behave like madmen in a topsy-turvy world. The late War has seen a revival of barbarism which has shocked mankind. This ruthlessness has flouted the Hague Conventions, and denied the validity of ah inter national agreements; has broken down and discredited the humanising regulations which jurists have painfully built up through generations, to limit the cruelty of war, and to give some weight to pity and humanity. The question has become suddenly grave, whether all this has gone for ever. Is it possible to civilise war, or is all this/ choking of soldiers, starving of prisoners, shooting of civilians, drowning of fishermen and passengers, burning of universities and bombarding of cathedrals, the ravaging and torture of the helpless, the starvation by blockade of a vast civhian population, is this what we must expect as the outcome of the destructiveness which is imphcit in the very object of war? The answer is that these excesses are due to the spirit of war when entirely un bridled, and they have been, logically enough, advocated by Clausewitz, the great German authority on making war, and fohowed with calculated pedantry and cool intention, by his school, the teachers of modern Europe. We must give up all hope of moderating or taming the wild beast. War must be ended entirely, if anything is to be saved. The cause of the tragedy is, however, not obscure. We have lived in Europe under the spirit and rule of war, and of warlike ideas, always. There has never been, since the close of the Middle Ages, even the conception of a 366 THE OUTLOOK [ch. unified government and a unified justice, such as, amid all the bloodshed, remained at the back of the idealism which looked to the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See for those blessings. It looked vainly for the most part, but stih the thought of peace under a single empire and under the sway of a single spiritual potentate never quite died out of the world thl the power of those who held so un worthily those great offices was destroyed by the Reforma tion. We have since then relied on little but force for liberty, security and empire; though happhy there are exceptions to so general a statement. Europe has obeyed the maxim, "If you want peace prepare for war," that is, rely for security wholly upon fear. The nations of Europe must reform, if not absolutely together, at least not independently of one another. We did not succeed by our press and our diplomacy before the war in imposing a better mind upon the militarism of the three European Empires. Nor are we ourselves quite fit to be saved for Peace. Our press has definitely contributed to the European strain; our armament interest has been influential and we have had our Imperialist periods. We, of this time, have been witnesses of the reasoned worship of force. The mind of the conqueror has ruled, and Europe has lived under pride and fear. It has surely become plain at last even to the fighting lords that the attempt of every nation to be stronger than every other nation is an arithmetical impossibility, and the way to political destruction. The maxim that " If you want peace prepare for war," has been for ever discredited, and an object lesson has been given on a vast scale that for Europe, _yas for men, the only safe rule to obey is "Keep thy heart with ah diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The \ spirit of war has led to the fact of war. A long course of psychological inflammation has finally broken through the skin and discharged its vile products. The idea of power, profit and welfare obtained through the use of force must ii] WAR 367 henceforth be discredited, and the minds of the nations be given to an organisation of Europe which wih prevent another terrible cycle of madness. Aggregations of families into vhlages, tribes, provinces, nations, point to a further aggregation into confederacies. The hasty aggregation into empires has turned out to be a false step made over and over again in all parts of the world. Never has an empire remained finally stable. Ah mhitary empires have fallen ; nations have survived. It lies with the British Empire to become an empire only in name, in spirit a confederacy of autonomous nations, or it too whl follow in the wake of the long succession of failures, without evolutionary value. The mind of the governments before 1914 expressed itself in armaments; and these, rising higher and higher, finally toppled over. For the mobilisation of armaments, hurried and threatening, began the war. Neither side would risk losing a day's advantage. 12. Our testimony against all war must not, however, be extended to a universal testimony against all use of force. Force is always a poor and unsatisfactory expedient ; it does not make for settlement and stabhity anywhere. Nevertheless it sthl has a lowly and diminishing place in human affairs. We use it with horses and dogs, and in the last resort with chhdren. We use it with drunkards, criminals, lunatics, and with all sons of Belial : we live in comfort under police protection, we prosecute offenders. In uncivilised countries we might even have to meet criminal violence more directly than we do at home. Friends have never taken up the position of Tolstoy, who was against all government. Even in the schools which he established for vhlage chhdren no chhd was obliged to learn anything or to behave in a schoolroom manner. They might and did kick in a heap on the floor when they were not interested. All Tolstoy's intellectual positions are ultimate ones, properly called ideals. They rarely have 368 THE OUTLOOK [ch. their bases fixed in the firm ground of experience. They are akin to the cloud-capped towers, the dream worlds of the imagination. He was a great creative artist, living in the world of his imagination so vividly that he has scored the minds of his readers deep with the impressions he has brought thence, in "the light that never was on sea or land." But when his imaginative ethic had to be realised — when Counts had to become peasants, authors had to have no property in their books, when Russian Liberal Govern ments and Hague Conferences were held to be mere tainted compromises, then even an affectionate disciple realises that he must go to Tolstoy for his boher power, but not for steering gear. Therefore it is only roughly true to describe Friends' attitude as one of non-resistance, common as it is to do so. Besides the resistance against violence which we all make officially through the police, it is not difficult to imagine cases in which the lives, and more than the lives, of our families, or of helpless people, the aged, or women, or children, dependent upon us could be saved only by a sufficient use of force upon the criminal aggressor. It is never wise to enclose a positive principle in the form of a negative prohibition. A definite command, exact to the letter, that no force should ever be used in resistance to violence and wrong, is too mechanical to meet every case. We must, then, express our Christian duty by some positive ' law, adaptable to circumstances; and I find that in the Law of Loving-kindness. If we keep that as our central motive in dealing with all our fellow creatures and persist therein, we shah have a sufficient guide. If we seek for some definite point below which force is proper, but above which it should be avoided, it must be found by considering the psychology of the person to be coerced. The lunatic, the criminal, and to a less extent the animal or the chhd, have to be coerced just so far as ii] WAR 369 they cannot respond to a higher motive. That is to say we ought never to apply force where there is the power of appreciating and being influenced by reason, justice, shame, mercy, or a sense of duty, and where there is time to call out such motives. These ought to be tried so far as they whl go, and they whl go much further than the thick thumb of mankind has usually probed. With violent criminals particularly — who are grown men in possession of ah their faculties — the records of the Society show many decisive victories of the spirit of love. It is common in all wars to describe your enemy as a criminal nation, and to deduce from the lightness of criminal punishments the lightness of the particular war on hand. This was common form, even in the mouth of Burke, against the French during the Napoleonic wars, and against Russia, as contemporary newspapers show, during the Crimean war. Now, the Germans are called a criminal nation. But such an accusation is untenable against any of the civilised nations of the world. The peoples of the Great Powers are all on much the same general level, or at least on neighbouring undulations, of culture. They can understand one another's minds, and, if a know ledge of Esperanto were general, could enjoy long talks together. National differences are not so great as are class differences within any one nation. Criminality among men is an occasional disease. The criminal is a freak among normal people. There is not in Europe a single village full of criminals, much less a town. But we are asked to believe in a criminal nation consisting of many mhlions of quite ordinary people. Such an imaginary community could not exist, for it would have no coherence. It would perish of internal violence. Murder, fraud, robbery, broken up families, ferocious rulers, the degradation of women, the suffering and enslavement of the weak — these would be features of it. Instead of that we find in Germany ordered business, G.Q. 24 370 THE OUTLOOK [ch. scientific knowledge and literary research, industry, a sense of duty, sound famhy life; all the qualities which need self-control and a devotion to the service of a famhy, an employer or the state. Theh faults were mainly due to over-government, a despotic state, an aristocratic organisa tion, and mhitarism. That is they are curable by democracy and peace. It may be said that a State may act with criminal violence without the people being criminals. This is quite true. The crimes of Governments abound. Statesmen seem to justify their sins by ascribing them to the pressure of public opinion, never a sound excuse. Lies told for your country's, or even your party's, good have so much altruism in them, that they seem to become sanctified. But, when all is said, a criminal State surrounded by innocent and injured States does not represent the European grouping. All break treaties; all divide up other people's property; ah make secret arrangements at the expense of a third, weaker, party. Let us not suppose then, that the civilised nations of Europe are composed of people not amenable to the higher call. In dahy life in ah countries they behave themselves under moral restraint, and in very much the same way in ah. This is clearly a region in which the appeal to force is no longer appropriate. There is something better than force to appeal to in all countries, and there is no reason why the morals of the average individual should not, in the long run, be represented in the morals of the Government. Nations when at peace do not come under the same class as lunatics. This is the central reasoned foundation of our testimony against war, whhe we admit that force cannot be abohshed altogether. War is behind the times, lower than the level which human nature in civilised lands has reached. What wants mending is the bad mechanism of Government. The nations are still organised on lines of war, with armies and navies, generals and admirals, n] WAR 371 emperors and War Offices. The next stage is to estabhsh a mechanism built to manufacture peace. It would fit the modern world. It may be said safely that now no Democracy whl fight of its own accord for aggression, but only when it beheves that it is fighting in self-defence. Doubtless when war has begun, the soldier has under his mhitary oath resigned into the hands of his superiors such natural motives of humanity as would weaken his fighting efficiency. Brute force has resumed its sway on both sides. For non-combatants in danger from hosthe troops the comity of nations, international law and the dictates of Christianity all prescribe abstinence from violence. The obedience of the soldier cannot be avoided if we are to have mhitary action at all. Any emancipation of his whl is a dangerous idea to play with. If the soldier is to exercise his judgment, he and not the civil authority rules the country. We are landed at once in a mhitary dictator ship, the worst known form of Government, one which failed even in the noble hands of Cromwell. 13. The distinction in many people's minds between offensive 'and defensive war is so decisive that we cannot omit to consider it. Almost everybody in this country would say that they wholly disapprove of aggression, but that to defend their hearths and homes is a different matter and might become the only right course. This thought is carried so far nowadays that no nation avows in its official utterances any aggressive design, however plain such may be to other nations and to the more in structed of its own people. Everywhere each nation has to be persuaded that the war of the moment is strictly a war of defence; so that now every war becomes a "war of defence" on both sides. There was no single one of the combatants in the great European struggle who did not claim to be on the defensive, and to have been driven into war by the necessity of maintaining their homes or theh manner of life. This is something gained. It was not 24 — 2 372 THE OUTLOOK [ch. always so. The flatterers of Sennacherib would probably have insulted him if they had suggested that he was anything but a mighty conqueror. No such scruples attended the career of that great conquering state whose laureate poet bade them always "spare the conquered and war down the proud." Such was Virgil's forecast of the destiny of Rome1. The Treitschke school of German writers alone in modern days maintains unblushingly this tradi tion. We shall not be able therefore to accept at their face value all defensive wars. The rivalries of Europe contain an element of attack on both sides. In the strife of Slav and Teuton we cannot discover a wolf and a lamb. The Boer War, which looked hke an attack by a great empire upon a small free nation, was more accurately a contest for supremacy between two white races, neither of which had any particular right to be where it was. Wars of pure defence were, however, much commoner in the past, when 1 The sonorous lines are in Aeneid vi. 847-853, and are part of the well-known speech of Anchises to his son Aeneas in reference to the future city : Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera (Credo equidem) vivos ducent de marmore vultus. Orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent. Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento (Hae tibi erunt artes) pacisque imponere morem, Parcere subjectis et debehare superbos. (Others whl mould with gentler touch the breathing bronze (so for one I believe) and will draw from out the marble living faces. They will speak better in the courts, and will measure with a rod the movements of the sky, and name the stars as they rise. Thou, Roman, remember to rule the peoples with the rod of empire; this shall be thy science and thy art, to compel the peaceful life', to spare the conquered and war down the proud.) Thus did the Roman poet compare the Greek spirit with that of his own people. ii] WAR 373 conquest was blunt and unashamed. Harold at Hastings, the French at Agincourt, and the Swiss at Sempach, were fighting in wars of pure defence. These battles were in the sequence of Marathon and Salamis. Many other wars have appeared defensive for a time on one side, as when Hannibal was in Italy or when Scipio was in Africa ; but these were merely parts of a war for domination. As conquest becomes recognised to be futile and obsolete, wars of pure defence will become obsolete too. In the one case now so vividly before us, it is not uninteresting to notice that if Belgium had kept no army and no fortresses, but had instead relied, however vainly, upon the good faith of her guarantors and upon their mutual watch upon each other, she would have lost no honour and yet not been ravaged. The unscrupulous Germans, breaking her neutrality, would have marched through her land, paying for the damage they caused, and the campaign would probably have been in France. Belgium had no honourable duty to assist one side rather than the other, and was not a party to their quarrels. In the case of a small country whose force is bound to be unequal to her defence, unarmed neutrality is her safest refuge. If we are pushed to the terrible alternative of non- resistance to an actual domestic invader, our action whl depend on the extent to which we have become livingly impregnated with the spirit of Christ. We cannot bring His name into our compromises. But doubtless there would be compromises. There are no Quakers in Belgium. But if there had been what would they have done in 1914? Some, if we may judge from English action, would have fought with the rest — some also would have made in Christ's name no resistance whatsoever. The remainder would have taken service with the State in helpful and necessary ways, not implying a personal share in killing. Temperament and variety of conviction would have led to 374 THE OUTLOOK fcH. varying responses to the tragic issue. Under international law, had that been observed, the non-combatants would have saved their lives. In the actual sack of eastern Belgium, they would have had no such selfish temptation. V The Society of Friends then, as a body, has no place for war, whether offensive or defensive. Individuals would take fines of their own. The imperative law of the purified soul, on which the lineaments of Christ have been im pressed, must prevah, where it conflicts with what would otherwise be the imperative call to national or local co operation. This does not fit the world's immediate pattern; but we can only change the pattern by refusing to use it, and if need be by suffering for doing so. The recent war was not to be accounted for as a simple disagreement between Germany and Great Britain. It was the outbreak and the result of a bad system of interna tional relations, in which diplomacy was ultimately based on fleets and armies, and the amount of force behind an ambassador was what gave weight to his views. The whole system of Europe has been distrustful, full of ambition and fear; all foreigners have been regarded as potential enemies unth mutual self-interest turns them into allies ; the worship of force has been highly organised, and the official religion of the states of Europe has been, in effect, Diabolism. We Friends are hosthe to all this from its beginning to its consummation. In so far as our own country has been a partner in it, as it has, we are isolated from our own country also. This is true, even though it has not been thought possible for a single country to isolate itself from the system. When, therefore, the system explodes, we are consistent in maintaining our attitude of isolation and disapproval, and in spending our strength in working for a better order. The claim of the nation is no longer the highest with us, because it has denied the highest. Nevertheless we recognise that the fleet and the army could not be entirely disbanded to-morrow, and we do not ii] WAR 375 feel it necessary at ah times to condemn our government or our nation on current standards; but our standards are not theirs. This position has been forcibly expressed by the late Caroline E. Stephen, in her well-known book, Quaker Strongholds (page 120, cheap edition; page 135, original edition), as fohows: To abstain, on these grounds, from all participation in warfare is surely a quite different thing from laying down any general theory as to the "unlawfulness" of war. I own that it does not appear to me to be right or wise to blame those who are acting in obedience to their own views of duty, however much they may differ from our own. I do not think it can serve any good purpose to ignore the force of the considerations by which war appears to many people to be justified. I would myself even go further, and admit that, under all the complicated circumstances of the world (including historical facts and treaty obligations), there are cases in which men may be actually bound to fight in what they believe to be a just cause; although it does not, I believe, follow that every individual would be justified in taking part in such warfare. Would any one say that at the time of the Indian Mutiny the Governor- General of India ought not to have permitted the use of arms for the protection of the women and children? I doubt whether any Friend would be found to maintain this. But it is equally to be remembered that no true Friend could weh have occupied the position of the Governor-General. No nation which had from the beginning of its history been thoroughly Christian could, I suppose, have found itself in the position which we occupied in India in 1857. Were all the world, in the true and fuh sense of the word, Christian, such events obviously would not occur. Had we been from the first a thoroughly Christian nation, our whole history must have been different, and would (as we Friends believe) have been infinitely nobler. 14. The difference between mhitary action and police action was early faced by Friends. Isaac Penington, always a leading spokesman for the Society, wrote a pamphlet, "Somewhat Spoken to a Weighty Question concerning the Magistrates' Protection of the Innocent1." This work 1 In his Collected Works. 376 THE OUTLOOK [ch. deals carefully with the relationship of the forcible coercion of criminals to the Christian law of love. Penington contemplates the case of those who "are forbidden by the love and law of God written in their hearts to fight for themselves" even against criminal violence. He says that "fighting is not suitable to a gospel spirit, but to the spirit of the world and the chhdren thereof. The fighting in the gospel is turned inward against the lusts, and not outward against the creatures." In reply to the criticism that under this scheme non-combatants are yet receiving the benefit of a protection to which they do not contribute, he points out that the path of moral advance must be gradual, and must begin with individuals. "This blessed state which shall be brought forth in the general in God's season must begin in particulars, and they therein are not prejudicial to the world, but emblems of that blessed state which the God of Glory hath promised to set up in the world in the days of the gospel." This argument is not nowadays particularly needed over the question of police protection, on which general agreement exists, but one has often to meet it concerning the protection afforded by the Army and Navy, from which the man of peace cannot help, as a citizen, receiving protection. The moral sense of our population is represented by a long and wavering column, pushed back and forward, and the whole nation can only act at or behind the centre of gravity of the column. Never theless those who are working at the head of the line for better things are the greatest helpers of the nation. Isaac Penington proceeds : " For if righteousness be the strength of a nation and the seed of God the support of the earth, then where righteousness is brought forth, and where the seed of God springs up and flourishes, that nation grows strong." In the course of this paper he says: "I speak not against any magistrates or peoples defending them selves against foreign invasion or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within their borders, ii] WAR 377 for this the present state of things may and doth require." It is a perfectly sensible and necessary concession to say that no one could expect the Army and Navy to be dis banded — the convictions of men remaining as they are. But he goes on: "There is a better state which the Lord has already brought some into, and which nations are to expect and travel towards." Hence we conclude that we must above all things avoid universal mhitary compulsion ; we must respect and value sensitive and highly trained consciences and wish them success in their aims. 15. We cannot go far in this subject without en countering the problem of the limits of the right of the State over the individual. In religion as in marriage the State is an intruder. The reason is that these matters are sacredly individual, and that they have only an indirect bearing upon the welfare of the public. The State is concerned with our outward relationships. We are here regarding the State not as a beneficent organ of co operation such as it is coming to be ; we are not thinking of the collectivist activities of the pubhc as a whole; we are thinking of the State as power, to use Treitschke's phrase, and we want to know the hmits of its coercive functions. We venture to draw the line at the interference of the State with conscience. It is not possible to be rigid in this definition, for conscience may become eccentric and ill-directed and may rebel unreasonably. The tendency of late has been in the direction of insubordination. The passive resisters to the Education Bill, the Suffragettes, the Irish Party formerly and the Ulster Party recently, are examples of disobedience to the State which have not received general approval. Political advertisement for the cause at stake is a motive in them all. They are in regions usually left under public control. The Society of Friends in the past has been prominent in its refusal to acquiesce in the ways of the Government in four points : 378 THE OUTLOOK [ch. (i) When the Government insisted on attendance at the services of the Church of England Friends endured a bitter persecution for a whole generation for refusing to obey, and finally won theh fight in the Toleration Act. They bore the brunt of the Nonconformist battle in the Restoration period, a fact not generahy realised. (2) They refused to recognise marriage by a priest, and the law in reply refused to sanction theh marriages performed in any other way. Quaker marriages were, therefore, illegitimate to begin with, but as early as 1661 the Law decided in their favour, and Friends ceased to suffer this great hardship. (3) Friends refused to take judicial oaths. This prac tice not only reverses New Testament instructions, but establishes a double standard of truthfulness. The gradual legal recognition of affirmation registers their victory, which began in 1689 and ended in 1888. (4) They refused to pay Church rates and tithe to maintain the established Church, and for several genera tions, unth the latter half of the nineteenth century, they submitted to the distraint of their goods in consequence. On Church rates they won in 1868, but on tithe the economic entanglement has been too much for them; and the Government has won its battle by putting the tithe not upon the tenant but upon the landlord, as a tithe rent charge. In any case, the selling value of the land was lower, it had been bought cheaper because of the liability to tithe, so that the Friend actually found himself endeavouring in theory to make an illegitimate profit out of his refusal; though in practice distraint and law are not cheap. The matter has now settled down and payment is regularly made, it being felt that the landowner is not, and never has been, the owner of the tithe ; and that all land has been bought and is held subject to it. The landlord is only the vehicle of payment. These four examples seem to point to where an individual can, and cannot revolt. n] WAR 379 On the other hand Friends pay war taxes, and the following reasons may be given for such action: Firstly, we cannot discriminate between the portion of our tax which goes for war purposes and that which does not, and even if we could find a proportion and only pay accordingly, since the Government has no separate income account for war charges, we have no reason for believing that we should deduct anything from the particular expenditure which we dislike. This is the decisive argu ment. The ordinary national revenue we are in duty bound to support. Secondly, the tithe analogy holds here. All business payments are regulated on the basis of taxation as it stands. Every bargain takes a tax into account. Indirectly the income tax affects salaries and prices, and refusal to pay would in fact be attempting to get an unfair advantage, inasmuch as full payment has been already allowed for in our financial arrangements. Thirdly, the fact that we could not escape payment if we tried, unth ah our goods were sold up and we as paupers were no longer liable to taxation, whilst not an argument to be pushed to the end nor sufficient of itself, does reasonably make us hesitate before embarking on a resistance which, even if spiritually justified, would certainly be economically futile. Fourthly, we are compelled to receive the protection which the Army and Navy provide, and it seems a natural corollary from that that the payment for it should also be compulsory. Yet beyond all question the surest condition of safety in Europe would be the total absence of armies and fleets. We can be embarrassed in practice or in argu ment if you alter one only of the conditions, but if we had our way altogether, no one can gainsay its practical excellence. On the whole, then, in stepping from conscription to the income tax, we are stepping from what mainly concerns the individual to what mainly concerns the State. 380 THE OUTLOOK [ch. We may fairly go much further along with our fellow citizens in a country in which we have a share in the government than we need go under an autocracy. In this country we ourselves are the governing order; and after we have given our vote it is right, unless in very extreme cases, to abide by the national decision unth it actually touches the sensitive places of the inward man. If we lived under a despotism, we should be much less responsible for the actions of the State and so be much more free to defeat them if we could. 16. Why the moral law should not be binding upon States as upon individuals, to use the famous principle uttered in the ears of the nation by John Bright, I have never heard, nor can any reasoned answer be given; nevertheless the most extraordinary diversities between corporate and individual ethics do exist. Take, for instance, the current conception of national honour. The "honour" of an individual works at times in a way almost opposite to the "honour" of a nation. An honourable man is one who declines to take any advantage over his neigh bour, either by violence, legality or deceit. He is scrupulous to set right any financial advantage which he may have improperly or accidentally gained. A secret treaty with the people who live at No. I against the interests of those who live at No. 2 would not be made by an honourable man. Ah dodges he avoids. As a trustee he can be relied upon to take care of the interests of his wards and not to exploit them or sell anybody else a concession to exploit them. He would not make a profit out of selling a poisonous drug like opium to people who do not want it. He would not grind the faces of his weakest employees. National diplomacy, on the other hand, devotes itself to rivalry in the exploitation of the dark races for whom we are trustees. It regularly makes secret clauses and secret treaties; it habitually ignores the welfare of populations when bargaining for power or profit; it is not anxious ii] WAR 381 about labour conditions in the dependencies. It looks always upon its own things, and never upon the things of others. The word " honour " has in its vocabulary too often no connection with the word "honourable," but is con cerned with maintaining power and achieving success. A nation's honour is shown in scoring off an opponent and in yielding nothing; it is the honour of a fighting terrier, and under it we are always supposed to be in competitive, if not actual, war with our neighbours. In a boundary dispute honour is satisfied if we obtain what we demand. In private life it would be satisfied if we felt sure that the other party had obtained all that was his due. In a word individual honour is opposed to egoism; between nations it is sometimes equivalent to egoism. That is why a clause exempting from arbitration matters which affect a dis putant's honour is eashy capable of wrecking the whole scheme. Why, again, may not nations be magnanimous? Why are acts which crown a noble character in a man, to be forbidden to a nation? There have been in our history a few such acts of national generosity or justice — the eman cipation at the public expense of the West Indian slaves in 1834, costing twenty millions; the return to France in 1815 of some of her captured colonies and the main tenance of her territorial integrity in Europe; the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece ; the agreement to arbitrate about the Alabama, and the acceptance of the exorbitant Geneva award — all these acts have been to our benefit as a nation, as such acts are to a man ; both in his own soul, and in his reputation for fairness and honour. Sometimes a trustee may feel hindered from following his individual promptings of liberality; but if he can obtain the consent of the beneficiaries for whom he acts, he is less trammehed and need hardly ever behave with niggardliness or rapacity. A Government with access to public opinion can always obtain the sanction of the nation in whose interests it acts, 382 THE OUTLOOK [ch. and then becomes perfectly untrammelled. It can act as an individual, and should act as an individual should. During the life of Euripides Athens passed from mag nanimity to greed under the influence of an Imperialism, which grew baser as the Empire grew1. 17. He who would deny that war can ever be a buhder of good character has against him no mean array of testimony. All literature which treats of war, with exceptions notable through their very fewness, treats it as a cause and a sign of central nobhity of character. As an exception stands The Trojan Women of that terrible and unpopular truth-teller Euripides2. There are also in quite modern days, other realistic records like his3. But Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Spenser, Bunyan and Scott, thought far otherwise, with all the ballad writers, romancers and chivalric poets. The Psalms are full of war. "The Wars of Arthur and Roland" made even John Ruskin, that great prophet of peace, hesitate puzzled4. This ancient testimony must be believed as true in its day. Modern tenderness had not yet arrived. Human personality had not yet become the centre of social devotion, and recognised as the gateway to God; and the feeling of human brotherhood which follows that faith had as yet httle vogue. Humanity has of late appreciated in value as tribal gods have faded away, with their celestial sanction to hatred. As States and Empires have increased, war has had less connection with the safety of hearth and home, and its root in greed and ambition has become more plain. War has always been the greatest of sports — a game played with the last and highest stakes. Beside the excite- 1 See the Introductory Essay to the Bacchae in Prof. Ghbert Murray's Euripides. 2 Geo. Allen and Unwin. 3 Such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, or Zola's Dib&cle, and many books about the late war. 4 See Appendix to The Crown of Wild Olive. n] WAR 383 ment of it, hunting and Alpine climbing become chhd's play, and cricket an affair of the drawing room carpet. All that sport is generahy ahowed to do for character war does, or did, more. And, in addition, behind it lay at the back of the warrior's mind some loyalty believed to be worth dying for. Every soldier is pulled up to a certain point of self-control, toughness, courage, alertness, and general character, and those who start below that level wih stih find a moral tonic in war. There we must stop. Beyond that modest level of attainment, war begins to do character harm. It levels down as well as up. Its mechanical uniformity is deadening, initiative (especially in privates) is atrophied. Every man who has handed himself over to the machine has but little use for his higher brain centres. Our professional officers are generahy good fellows, but few of them think : they are simple loyal men for the most part, in England modest and likeable, but it embarrasses and distresses them to face intellectual exercises. Where mhitarism has become perfected and is the main national cult, the officers are brutalised by pride and power. In war we see every kind of violent villainy rampant — murder, robbery, the ruin of homes, of women, of whole provinces, ferocious charges of men about to die, lying reports, the daily sight of wholesale horror and the making of more. Sympathy, hard hit and exhausted, flees away, and no man can live unless he become hardened to suffering. The chained devh within becomes, for a time, master again. The man is henceforth like a beast who has tasted blood. He becomes hke a demoralised collie who has once worried a sheep, and it whl cost him an effort to get his mind out of uniform when he returns home. He bears in him for life a sohed memory and imagination1. Nevertheless he has counted not his life dear unto 1 See, among many other records, A Private in the Guards by Stephen Graham. 384 THE OUTLOOK [ch. himself, he is (we assume in the typical case) a brave man : and I count courage the central quality of a man's make-up, as love and purity of a woman's. Physical courage, at any rate, a soldier learns. Can Peace provide scope for these things, — for honour and sacrifice, for courage and the risks which high sport brings? Only, I think, if held as a faith single-mindedly, not as an opportunist or an economist holds it. "For God and Man" is a loftier cry than "For King and Country." To treasure the integrity of the Christ within is to cherish a vestal fire not less dear than the hearths of private homes : to go to prison for refusing conscription may be harder than to hold a trench. The contempt of one's mates puts a man into the firing line. To face a mob has its risks. Moreover, our ordinary industrial life, in workshops, among furnaces, on railways, in drains, on the ocean, is always turning up heroes. So long as diseases are fatal and infectious, but must be nursed, so long as Society suffers from poverty, from drink and degrading vice, the need for Paladins, for knights errant and honourable women, presses dahy upon us. Not war alone demands that men "hve dangerously" and dare great adventure. Courage and risk and sacrifice are needed in all high emprise, in the effort to explore the secrets still hidden from science — to learn to make more beautiful things — to plead with, persuade and strive with men. 18. It is well carefully and tentatively to discuss the possibilities of the future as practical men, not hoping for too much, and thankful for a little step in the right direc tion. The immediate need is a real League of Nations. But our hope penetrates much higher than this. This does not satisfy our vision. Far more deadly is our real attack upon war. We know that the safest plan of all, and the cheapest, is to have no armies or navies at all. Then no man need be afraid. It is only upon itself that militarism feeds. Take away its diet and it dies. II] WAR 385 There are no longer left in the world warlike savages numerous enough to threaten civhisation. If Kurds or Turcomans or Afghans disturbed the slumbers of London and Paris they could be guarded against. China would be only too glad to return to the epoch of peace which preceded the attack of Europe upon her. Japan, we are assuming, would be within the region of disarmed peace. Let this vision once strike upon the suffering peoples of Europe, and let it find them sufficiently organised to put theh purpose into action, and war is doomed. The years of prostration, poverty and bereavement which will follow this war will be a time in which this hope wih be received more gladly than it has ever been. A bankrupt world will be teachable on lines of wisdom like these. Man needs a new and mighty Evangel, he needs a new crusade, a new body of preaching Friars, a renaissance of the soul. Perhaps this is one of the few cases in all experience in which a complete and drastic remedy is easier than half measures; for such an appeal would have behind it all the power of a passionate emotion, all the energy of a new-found joy. Would that the tide of peace sentiment which will assuredly appear before long might rise high enough to flood out every barrack and War Office in Europe. 19. The central difficulties in the way of such a gospel of good tidings are mainly three : (1) the lack of a wise and conscious democracy everywhere; (2) the struggles of oppressed nationalities; and (3) a wrong political theory of conquest. Immanuel Kant, in his essay on Universal Peace, postulated democratic governments first. Autocrats and bureaucrats can never be trusted. Most of the wars of the world have been brought about by the existence of ambitious and selfish men, to say nothing of fools, lunati.cs, and actual criminals, on the thrones of Europe. Royal families, whose members live an unnatural life, must always be in danger of producing characters like these G.Q. 25 386 THE OUTLOOK [CH. to the ruin of the nations. It is, nevertheless, my opinion that we cannot wait for complete internal readjustments of this kind before we attempt to push our Peace proposals to the uttermost. There are other serious faults in Society which help to make war. Edward Carpenter, in his recent book, The Healing of the Nations, ascribes all war to the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and would try to abolish vicious class distinctions in the interests of Peace among nations. It is common to hear people say that so long as our organisation of society at home is so bad, and the distribution of wealth so unequal, we cannot hope to put down war. I desire to put in a plea against this order of procedure, and against waiting for the tarrying wisdom of a democracy before we attempt to organise the nations. Changes come one at a time. We shall, I trust, abolish or vastly diminish war before we are ah Socialists living in cohectivist democracies. Of all the great evils of the world, war is the next due to be abolished. Poverty whl outlast war. War is so wasteful, so mad, so hosthe to all that we value in character, it is so plainly a feature of a savage past, that it whl be wise to concentrate effort on its abohtion rather than sit with folded hands or dissipate effort too widely, till all else of human ill is on its way to cure. Almost all people are in their hearts against war. Nearly everybody hates it or disapproves of it, and men only accept it because they believe they are helpless under necessity. War is no longer a natural function of human nature in civilised lands. Human nature has grown out of war. War in Europe is due to the bad mechanism of government, and when a great institution is dependent upon the bad mechanism of another series of institutions it is doomed. On the other hand the capitahst system of production has, with ah its evils, the general support of the majority of Englishmen. There are, again, in every country large bodies of people who beheve in autocracy or in aristocracy as the organ of government. Perhaps n] WAR 387 over half of the people of Europe would be found to be of this opinion. On the whole, then, I should not feel inclined to be dismayed or to pause because of the diffi culties which Peace has to confront from the lack of human freedom or the ignorance or gullibility of the population, stih prevailing in many countries. 20. Our second obstacle is the fact that there can hardly be permanent peace so long as the consciousness of nationality is widely denied. Nationalism, hke love or religion, may be a good or an evil thing. When it means national aggrandisement, contempt of other nations, the deshe to assimilate them or to erect tariffs against them, it has become a dangerous evh, but when it is struggling to be itself it is wholly justified. A nation is an entity sui generis. It need not be identical with a race. Belgium and Scotland contain at least two races each. It need not have one language. Belgium again has two and Switzer land four. But a stable nation will have most of such elements as a common race, a common language, a com mon history and tradition, a single government and (the only absolute essential) a sentiment of self-consciousness. Europe is really in its present trouble because the nationali ties of the East of Europe have been in bonds. Germany has governed Danes and Poles and Frenchmen, Austria has governed Serbs and Czechs, Slovaks and Poles, Rou manians, Croats and Italians, Russia has governed Finns and Poles, Ukrainians and Roumanians, Turkey has governed Bulgars, Serbs and Greeks, and all these Powers have governed badly, have attempted to destroy the language and the national feeling of the conquered races; and with such exceptions as that of the Poles in Galicia they have been denied full and free citizenship. It is a strange fact that nations do not die. Centuries of oppression have not destroyed Poles, Bulgars, Serbs and Roumanians. The Irishman, the Scotchman and the Welshman show little sign of absorption even in the friendly 25—2 388 THE OUTLOOK [ch. Enghsh stock. But ah Emphes die. Political history records httle else than theh rise, strength and decay. The story of human evolution through long ages is the story of a perpetual increase of the size of the unit within which there is peace. The famhy has consolidated into the tribe, the tribe into the province, the province into the nation. Over and over again the false step into empire has been made and has been retraced. Not even a thousand years of Rome have made Europe into a Roman nation. Nor did a second millennium of the Eastern Empire leave a united nation centring at Constantinople. The next step in the integration of peoples is the step of Federation, and only on these lines whl Great Britain escape the doom of her great forerunners. Let us then in all European settlements cease to ignore, as the diplomatists have consistently done in the past, the claims of nationahty, even in conquered and defeated peoples. Let this be the steady purpose before our minds. 21. The third difficulty is the current doctrine of Empire. On all sides we hear that Germany has "lost" Alsace-Lorraine, that Austria "wanted" Salonica, that Germany "wanted" Antwerp and Belgium, that to "acquire" the tropical colonies is the motive at the back of German aggression, and so forth. It is supposed that the country which "gets" those advantageous ports or colonies whl carry on more trade and grow rich. From the beginning to the end this is a delusion. To govern a country is one thing, to own it is quite another. Neither the government of France nor the government of Germany has ever owned or can ever own Alsace-Lorraine. It belongs to a number of holders of property who are mostly its own inhabitants. If Germans expect to get tea and coffee from a tropical colony of theirs they whl have to buy it from those who grow it, exactly as if it belonged to Great Britain. The German trading community in Antwerp is already large, and so long as we have Free H] WAR 389 Trade and free migration it is difficult to see how a government could make it larger or increase its prosperity. Great Britain does not own the wool of Australia. English men buy it if they want it, and so do Germans at the same price and with the same fachity. There is the gravest confusion in the popular mind between government control and economic exploitation, and all the national jealousies connected with trade are mischievous delusions. It would pay Great Britain extremely well to have the coast of Africa dotted with German colonies and German factories. Our merchants would buy such of theh products as they wanted; it would be profitable to do so, and to sell in return Enghsh textiles or other home manufactured products. Cannot we all realise that a trade bargain is a double transaction, which is an advantage to both parties or it would not take place? It is nothing but good for us that Germans should make money. They are all the better customers in consequence. In times of good trade within a nation everybody benefits and is glad. Activity in one kind of production scatters its benefits far and wide. When one trade does well another tends to do well too. The same process holds with regard to the world's trade. If Germans do well Englishmen and Americans whl tend to do weh. From a business point of view the nation which undertakes the administration of a tropical colony is doing an hi paid and expensive service to the rest of the world, and receiving in return not much more than a few berths for its civh and mhitary servants, paid at first by the home tax-payer. I know of no conquest in modern times that has been economically worth while1. The possibhity of putting on a hosthe tariff causes some qualification to all this, but nothing like so much as is generally believed. Curiously enough it was Germany who maintained Free Trade in her colonies, while France and 1 See J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, chap. 11. and the author's Evolution and Empire (Swarthmore Press). 390 THE OUTLOOK [ch. Russia keep us out by tariffs, as do also our own colonies to a large extent. The preference given to British goods in Canada is such as to give us an advantage over other importers, but no equality with the home manufacturer. To understand how slight, though real, is the perversion and block caused by a tariff, we must realise that inter national trade pulses round the world, it may be in a long circuit which may include five or six countries. France pre vents English shk going into Madagascar, and insists that only French shk shall go. So far it is a block to the English shk trade, but something comes from Madagascar to pay for that silk, say cocoanuts. Who buys these? They are sold to whoever whl buy, and it is possible that someone in England is the buyer. Whom does England pay? She may eashy pay in the form of machinery sent to France to make up to her for her shk exported to Madagascar. Thus, though the English shk trade suffers, the machinery trade gains. This is a short circuit consisting only of three exchanges. International trade is often far more compli cated. Ah that a tariff does is to hinder the circulation of the blood of commerce at one point, and its principal effect is to make the protected article dear to the consumer and a source of artificial profit to the producer. But the circulation finds its way round by more devious arteries. There are doubtless cases where a colony may be economically valuable only if, by European oversight, turbulent tribes can be repressed and the conditions favourable to business be established. The country which does this work of government obtains the first right to run mines and buhd railways in such a country. All the figures, however, show that these privileges by no means repay the costs of conquest and administration. The real point is that the latter are paid by the taxpayer, while the concessions go to a few wealthy firms. Great Britain, however, need not be afraid on this point. So much of the 11] WAR 391 world is already under our control that the opportunities for the investment of capital there are far more numerous than we have yet taken up. One further object of colonial expansion is supposed to be to find room for surplus population. Surplus popula tion, however, is by no means bound to go to colonies controhed from home. Germans are as free as Englishmen to go to America. The state of Wisconsin and certain parts of the Argentine are predominantly German countries already. Forty German papers are or were published in the city of Phhadelphia. Their own colonies they neglected. The extension of manufacturing in Germany has been so great that there was no surplus population before the war. A mhlion and a half Russians had to be brought in every autumn to reap the harvest. England, and to a less extent Germany, are fohowing France in the diminution of their birth-rates. We here become aware of the real reason for the desire for colonial possessions. The country whose citizens emigrate under foreign rule loses them as soldiers. They are for the most part only too pleased to escape from mhitarism. Not without reason do Army and Navy Leagues talk much of the expansion of their country as a world power. That is, nations fight to get colonies, and colonies are to grow fighters. Militarism exists to supply its own needs only. Let it, however, be clearly understood that the laws of economics and the laws of government work on different lines. No one buys an article because it is manufactured within the empire. No grocer can afford to buy Canadian condensed mhk if Swiss condensed mhk is better at the price. Competition in business takes place by means of samples and price lists. Business men keep no revolvers in their safes. Once let the people realise this simple doctrine and the greatest hindrance to the reign of peace whl be removed. Protective tariffs are the outcome of the wrong theory 392 THE OUTLOOK [ch. of empire, and they perpetuate the evil thought which has given them birth. A tariff is always a mean thing. It says to the people whom it excludes that though they can make an article better and cheaper than somebody else at home, they shall not be allowed to earn a living by doing so. It is a form of hosthity between nation and nation. It produces strongly entrenched rival interests and entangles politics and business, flavouring the mixture with the sauce of ill-will. But its relation to nationalism is worth our inquiry. It is common for Protectionists to say that national patriotism is with them, and that a denationalised cos mopolitanism is the motive of Free Traders. Strange to say it is the artificial affinities and barriers caused by Protection which tend to prevent the natural coalescence of national units now separated. Within the Russian tariff wall the Poles became a great manufacturing community, supplying the empire and enriching themselves. The economic interests of Warsaw are directly opposed to its national aspirations, which would lead it to reunion with the German and the Austrian Poles. The commercial connections of Alsace are chiefly with the German Rhine Valley, from which, as a French province, she would be excluded under Protection. The hinterland of Trieste is not Italian mainly; her interests as a port are in Austrian territory. Under Free Trade the spiritual reality which we call a nation would be able to realise itself unhampered by artificial business restrictions, and Free Trade would release the patriotic spirit. It would also remove many rivalries. Why must Serbia have a port on the Adriatic? In order that her market for swine may not be at the mercy of Austrian custom-houses. 22. A Friend of the present day, faced with the outward suggestion and its inward echo that it is his duty to help to save his country from the danger of defeat, or even of conquest, has a long Quaker tradition behind him. Ii] WAR 393 He is no pioneer. We are deeply indebted to the insight of our forefathers in taking the initiative for us. But no tradition, however honoured, whl really be enough to resist the pressure of living conviction. Refusal to enlist must be based upon something more intimate than a Quaker or a Christian tradition. Men whl take liberties with a tradition. Fading words of Greek manuscripts, handed down through perilous centuries and copied into modern print, have not proved strong enough to withstand the flood of military feeling. We see that every day in the voluminous pulpit apologetic which defends war from the Christian standpoint, and in the strange refusal to grant validity to the teaching of Christ about the conduct of a man as a citizen, whhe admitting it in his private relation ships. We must have something living to meet the living foe, and happily we have that living Presence. God has not left Himself without a witness. It is because we cannot defile the living Christ within that we cannot join in war. Our personahty would be desecrated by its murderous servitude, because that personality has its birth and its home in the Indwehing God1 23. There is in morality nothing rigid and hardly any law that is universally applicable. Morality is a quality of the relation of a human being to his environment, and we must judge of the lightness or wrongness of an act, not by regarding the act alone in the absolute, classified among our pigeon holes of approval or disapproval, but by considering also the other side of the relation, the human being who commits the act. Of him alone, and of the spirit in which he acts, can the words right and wrong be asserted, for these words denote moral attributes, and can 1 This treatment is, I am glad to find, similar to the line taken by Caroline E. Stephen in Quaker Strongholds, chap. v. I cannot hope to improve upon her clear and beautiful treatment of the problems of war. The book is in many Friends' households, and this chapter is well worth reading again. 394 THE OUTLOOK [ch. only be apphed to a being who possesses moral attributes. The judgment of right or wrong must be applied in each case with reference to the time, the place, and the person. Whhst it may be necessary for the self-respect of a Somali warrior to kill a man and take his wife, and there may be no other way open to a well-bred savage of entering upon matrimony, such an act among us would encounter numerous difficulties and need not be characterised. This principle has a very immediate bearing upon the duty of the Christian in time of war. We can only expect a Government, which represents the centre of gravity of national opinion, to act in accordance with the views of the average man. If it did otherwise it would be hurled from power. Nevertheless as Christian men we cannot so wound the Christ within as to kill and destroy as a soldier must. Our individual standard may well remain different from the average standard of the nation. What is wrong for us may be right for the Cabinet. Some may fear that this doctrine of the relativity of moral obligation weakens the force of its categorical imperative. On the contrary, its very suppleness enables it to press upon the conscience as a coat of mail presses upon the body more closely than a steel cuirass. We feel it more because it fits us better, and there are no ways of escaping it. But the case is far stronger than this. The whole chance of moral progress, upon which all our hopes are built, depends upon this very fitness of the call to the person called. If morals were absolute and rigid for all time, how could they grow? They only grow because certain people in a community begin to find it wrong to do that which has hitherto been generally accounted right, and in time public opinion is raised and the moral standard placed at a different point. If we may not thus hope we are of all men most miserable. It may be urged that the moral standard may vary from time to time, but not at a given time from person to person. But this is impossible, ii] WAR 395 for it is only by variation from person to person that variations from time to time are, or ever can be, brought about. Paul had this at the back of his mind in his famous contrast between the law and the gospel — the one rigidly fixed in tradition, the other a living growth. It sthl remains true in the field of morals that noblesse oblige. This does not mean that everything that a nation decides to do at any time is to be counted right. A nation, like an individual, whl do wrong unless it lives up to the highest accessible standard of justice and mercy. The historian whl give his judgment upon national acts, but the judgment of God in the heart of every individual is a different matter, strictly personal to each. There is, in fact, an inward and an outward standard of lightness. According to the inward standard, an act must be judged by the conscience. According to the outward, it must be judged by its consequences, in the largest sense of that word. The trouble is that these judgments do not always coincide. Then we may have the State at war with the individual. 24. It is widely hoped, even by those who believe that fighting is an immediate necessity, that Christianity whl in the long run put down war. But such an enormous change as is implied in the abolition of war whl have to be the result of a long period of work by a minority, and during that period the position of such a minority is necessarily anomalous and difficult. They find themselves under two conflicting laws, and they have to choose. The present resounds with the cah of the nation, the future makes its distant but penetrating appeal through the stih small voice of the Christ within. CHAPTER III RELIGION AND THE STATE i. The State is the nation organised for government. It is not identical with the nation, but is an organisation within it, for a particular purpose. Its essential functions are these : to keep internal order, to enable the nation to act as a unit in relation to other nations, to protect itself from external violence, and to collect the revenue for these objects. That is, ah governments exist for purposes of police, diplomacy, war, taxation, and currency. At this point the extreme individualist says the State should stop, and we know that this question of the right limits of State action is the central question, including many issues, in all our modern home politics. Up to the present time we have found it wise to have state co operation in matters which can be done more cheaply for everybody on a large scale than a small one. We have handed over most of our education to the Government; and it is worth noting that it is a successful plan except in the precise point to which we are coming, where it is connected with religion. There it has bred little but friction and disorder, and has delayed growth in good things. Municipalities, however, deal eashy and success fully with transit (and in some countries with rah ways), with lighting, with the cleansing of rivers, with the provision of water and power. They have tried — but have hitherto fahed — to give us clean air. They have not yet embarked upon the provision of meat or mhk, though they have established public slaughter houses and they inspect cow houses. A picture or a book can most economically be seen or read by many; therefore art galleries and ch. iii] RELIGION AND THE STATE 397 libraries are publicly provided, along with swimming baths, parks and playgrounds. Everything tends to the increasing action of the State. In war time they have used their credit for insurance, and for preventing trade loss, panic and starvation. It is, however, to kinds of business where individual taste counts that public action is unsuited. A lady passing through the nervous strain of buying a hat does not wish to be treated as she is treated by a post office clerk; government tailors are not likely to be the fashion with gentlemen who are particular about their coats; the lack of sympathy already sufficiently shown by repairers of bicycles would be exaggerated tenfold if they were government officials. The sphere of government appears, therefore, to be well adapted for undertakings where economy can be produced by production on a large scale ; but even there individuality, as in the production of newspapers, when it comes in, overrides everything else. The greatest evh connected with State action is that it is often tainted with class plunder. The mhitary services, and militarism generally, are for the benefit of the rich, and Protection, wherever it exists, is a weapon directed by the rich against the poor. Place and power, contracts and commissions, these things come to those who have power over the machinery of the State. But apart from other "class" evils hitherto not separated from public action, we realise that State action must be uniform, wholesale, regulated by routine, slow to change. 2. We realise, for instance, that our famhy life cannot be interfered with by government. Government registers our marriages, but we do not allow it to choose our wives, nor to sanction them when chosen, nor to inspect them, nor to regulate in any way the intimacies of our married life. That is a relationship most strictly individual; it is founded on love and lives by faith and loyalty, it is carried on in mutual service, a service which is perfect freedom, 398 THE OUTLOOK [ch. by two people who have given themselves that they may find themselves, who have lost themselves to be saved, and who in mutual reverence and consecration have learnt to live a larger than an individual life. Now are not these very words and thoughts exactly appropriate also to the religious life ? The government may register churches and chapels as it registers marriages, for the sake of public order, but the religious life to which the chapel is only the entrance and the implement is also founded on love and lives by faith and loyalty, and is a sacrifice and a service — a service which is perfect liberty, in which men lose their lives to save them, and by con secration and obedience enter into a larger than the individual life. I, therefore, conclude that the State has just as much to do with our religious life as it has with our married life, and that both are utterly out of its province. The parallel is not a mere fanciful parable, for it is a fact that the love of God and the love of man and woman are strongly allied in our constitution; the glory of sex and the glory of faith are the brightest things, the strongest things and the deepest things in human experience. Their dangers are great and strikingly analogous. The tempera ment which is strongly devout is, as a rule, capable of strong human love as well. And when they fade into formalism they are both equally painful. 3. Why, then, are we the inheritors all over the world of State religions? They are all derived from primitive times, at latest from the time when the Divinity worshipped was an external Being with power over a particular tribe or state. From him, as a rule, the chieftain was de scended, and towards him the nation as a whole looked for protection, for victory in war, for good crops, and fruitful families, and fine weather. The god was the dis penser of the favours of nature and of her terrors. He had to be approached in very much the same way as the king of a mighty neighbouring empire; the nation had iii] RELIGION AND THE STATE 399 to speak to him as a whole and suffered as a whole at his hands; he required national sacrifices and a monarch's obedience. But ever since it was reahsed by any religious men that the kingdom of heaven is within us, that if we find not God within we fah to find Him at all, that religion is an inward attitude and experience, an intimate play back and forth between the flesh and the spirit and the Father of spirits — since it was realised that neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall we worship the Father — State religion has been an obsolete survival. The absorption of Christianity into the State religion of the Roman Empire is perhaps the most disastrous event in the history of a Church already sufficiently full of Jewish and heathen elements. The Church henceforward became an instrument of the civil power, became immediately a tyrant and a persecutor, an enemy to the spirit, stiff and rigid in dogma, even at times a dark thunderous cloud blocking the way between man and God. Christian ministers became little different from heathen priests. The history of persecutions, religious wars, and the ever lasting public quarrels over religion, is the history of State action, including always more or less coercion of the soul. No doubt the sacerdotal mind, the mind which desires to stand between the soul and the Soul of souls, may find a lodging place in the freest of Free Churches, but it is immensely helped, indeed extremely difficult to avoid, under the machinery of a State Church. 4. It requires but little thought to see how absurd is a national unit of religious experience. The Divine Father knows nothing of the separation caused by a frontier. The Spirit transcends Alps and Pyrenees. Religion is a human affair, and international. Mystics are neither German nor English, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. Not only are there everywhere those who fear God; but there are everywhere those who wish to worship Him in 400 THE OUTLOOK [ch. a certain manner, and who have simhar thoughts con cerning Him. Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed Thou knowest, Wide as our need Thy favours fall. Nationahsm is preposterous here. States come and go, but the heart of man and the Will of God abide. Indeed, the very religion we believe in is not native; it is a Jewish, an Eastern, faith by origin. Again it was to Christians strikingly that the truth came that God has made of one blood all the nations. The State has always found itself incapable of dealing directly with religious matters, and has established orders of clergy to deal with that department. One cannot imagine a Spiritual Health Office in the Town Hah where officials decide whether a clergyman is in his right place, or whether a complaining parishioner has a right to alter the hymns, and who send inspectors to mission services as they do to factories. Parliament is confessedly unable to alter the rubrics, though it alone has had the power so to do. We cannot imagine a new form of prayer passing the second reading in the House of Commons, and being amended in Committee. 5. What, then, is the case of our opponents? Why is the State Church defended? Of course, where a great and wealthy corporation is dependent upon the maintenance of things as they are, those things are sure to be defended by numerous arguments, such as that it is atheistical for the State as a State to acknowledge no religion. But the reahy serious argument, to which we do well to pay earnest attention, is the fear that the nation cannot afford to leave the religious life to individual effort, that the dim multitude is thoughtless, and full of the beast, and not to be relied upon to be religious at all, unless assisted by public authority. We are told that the best and freest must submit to some limitation of their freedom in iii] RELIGION AND THE STATE 401 order that the many-headed aggregate may be benefited by the State's guardianship of a good tradition; that there come periods of depression in moral and spiritual things, but the steady machinery of the State acts as a fly-wheel to ward off stagnation and keep things going till better days come. That an Established Church is such a fly-wheel and a guarantee for continuity we shall agree, but it is possible to regard this not as a benefit but as an actual hindrance to religion. We value the blessedness of routine in our dahy occupations, the peace, the release from initiative and fatigue, the good influence of regular habits which routine brings to us as dahy workmen. But in the region of religious life routine is out of place. That is because the religious faculty is that of a living organism; it must have its period of winter repose, the upheavals and rebirths of spring, with the breaking of the clods and the dropping of seeds, the glory of summer and the quiet ingathering of autumn fruits. A rigid routine is really as inappropriate for a parson as it is for a gardener. 6. Passing from the region of metaphor, do we not know that the greatest hindrance to a religious revival or re-organisation is generally to be found in some existing moribund church or chapel or order of clergy, so that something which purports to take the place of a religious communion but fahs to do so "in the life," is the most serious hindrance to that life. How many an impatient reformer has wished that all religious organisations might be destroyed and built again from the ground, trusting in the never dying religious instinct of man. The fact is that an organised church which is no longer a garden of the Lord has become a thicket of brambles and is nigh unto the burning. We may add to this general reply two conclusions from practical experience. One is that the Established Church in England has never acquired close touch on a large scale g.q. 26 402 THE OUTLOOK [ch. with the working classes, whose epochs of decadent morality it hopes to help them to survive; and we do not as a rule find that the reforming power which improves the decadent morality of the richer classes comes from the official church with which tbey are habituahy asso ciated. Secondly, the Church has, by the fact that it is an Establishment, constantly found itself associated with incongruous elements — Beer and Bible, Church and King. It has condoned war, and slavery, and class distinctions, unth there has arisen in politics that jeering but hlumina- ting epithet "the Nonconformist conscience." I believe that the Church if disassociated from the State would be more free to do the best work that it is in her to do, would find scope for her noblest sons, and would not be found preaching up war. The fact is, that however imperfectly religious the people are, the State cannot give eyes to the blind. That is the function of an infectious order of saints. There is much in Anglican ideas as understood by many men of high intelligence and deep devotion who worship in her churches — there is much that is extremely attractive. My liberal clerical friends tell me that the Anglican idea is one of general freedom of thought, permitting the development of ideas and of a changing theology, but maintaining a beautiful and decorous form of worship, and carefully guarding precious tradition. It is always well to look at the best hopes and ideals of our friends of other bodies, and I cordially and gratefully admit the value of their position. But how much better fitted they would be to discharge this graceful and dignified service if they were able, with due deliberation and after plentiful patience, to carry out in their rubrics those changes of thought which to individuals they permit. The hand of the State, however, compels them to leave unchanged the prayer book and everything in it except by an extremely difficult Act of Parliament, although many of them would gladly change the crude morality of the ill] RELIGION AND THE STATE 403 marriage service, and many theological utterances of the sixteenth century if they could1. It is a plea for convenience and nothing else which has led churches to establish a routine of prayer which can always be depended upon. 7. But my main indictment of official priesthood is that it is extraordinarily dangerous to dwell upon, and to act upon, the idea that human nature is weak and un reliable. That is what makes human nature more weak and more unreliable. The Church of Rome forbids free thought on just this ground. Thought would go wrong if it were free, it is said; it needs to be guided by tradition and authority; and this plea has always produced, and does still produce, the official priest, the licensed intermediary between the feebleness of man and the greatness of God. In vain Luther preached the priesthood of all believers. In words I suppose that all Protestants would to some extent accept it, but in practice they have not found it sufficient. And all the time there are, of course, the true priests going in and out amongst us, ordained in a temple more metropolitan than Rome, strong souls, helpers of the race, with a strength not derived from the holding of an office. Let us believe that Christ's appeal to plain men, His discovery of the kingdom of heaven in little chhdren and in publicans and sinners, was no mistaken diagnosis; we wih not discourage through disuse the conscience and the reason, the initiative, the curiosity and the self-reliance of the weakest of the flock. To erect a state priesthood is really to despair of the race, and to fortify that priesthood with the secular arm and with public revenue is to add external coercion to the enslavement of the soul. 1 This was written before the "Life and Liberty Movement" arose. I think its history confirms the line above taken. 26 — 2 CHAPTER IV EVANGELICALISM i. " Evangelical " was the word assumed to themselves by a body of men whose names we hold in honour, who were the instruments of a great revival of religion inside and outside the Church of England towards the close of the eighteenth century. Within the Church the Rev. John Newton, who died in 1807, was the most conspicuous man, and with him we associate the poet Cowper, Lord Shaftes bury, and the Wesleyan leaders, along with Hannah More, Zachary Macaulay and the Clapham sect, Whliam Wilber- force, the Buxtons, and later Charles Simeon at Cambridge. The flame of true religion burnt warmly among them, and they led beautiful, if limited, lives. They founded the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society, they threw themselves into the emancipation of the slave, the reform of prisons, and the relief of the poor by charity. In these connections they came closely into contact with Friends, and the most active spirits amongst us turned to them from the — if it must be admitted — somewhat lazy mysticism rather common then in the Society. But this valuable movement believed itself to be based upon a terrible theology. 2. Evangelicals, in the mouths of those who took the name, held the following central beliefs: the Bible was dictated by God Himself, and is therefore free from error of any kind, from the creation of woman to the lake of fire, whatever history, or literary discovery, or biological science, or morality might have to say. The Bible was interpreted to say that the majority of the human race ch. iv] EVANGELICALISM 405 would be condemned in an endless eternity to torture by physical fire without hope of redemption, and that the only way of escaping from this, from which way the heathen were obviously excluded, was by accepting in full payment for sin the physical blood of Christ, shed as an equivalent to satisfy God's justice; this independent altogether of the conduct of the redeemed one ; for though righteousness was earnestly advocated it formed no part of the machinery of redemption, taking in their theory a secondary though in practice an important place. "Justification" preceded and was different from "Sanctification." It was beheved also that the Trinity consisted of three separate persons, whatever William Penn and a succession of Friends might have written to the contrary. These statements may be found writ large in the literature of the period. But it is safe to say that in this Evangelicalism there was nothing whatever of the Evangel. Every one of these positions is derived from Jewish or heathen sources: they are apo calyptic or rabbinical, or patristic. Not one comes from our Lord. Since that time the spirit of divine Love, aided by the growth of literary and scientific knowledge, has weathered this closely-knit fabric of thought until there must be very little of it remaining in the Church to-day. The worst cruelties of this scheme were doubtless slurred over and willingly ignored by many good people even then. It is very difficult to know how to use the word "Evangelical" to-day. It still constitutes a strongly- marked party, but after much inquiry I have never been able to find exactly where its limits would be drawn, and how much of the badly weathered edifice of the Rev. John Newton is still inhabited by the orthodox evangelical. Further confusion has been brought into the use of the word by the daring innovation made by the " Evangelical " Free Churches in using the term, without regard to its historical meaning, to include all Nonconformist bodies 406 THE OUTLOOK [ch. except the Unitarians. That is it includes the liberal school of thought in ah of them. It is a laudable attempt to regenerate a noble word, but it is undoubtedly confusing. 3. Quakerism represented a revolt, root and branch, from the Evangelical theology above described, as it was held by the Puritans of the Commonwealth. The conceptions of God and man behind the two cults were irreconcilable, though both necessarhy began with assumptions common to nearly all Christians of the period. Striking differences in theological behef were however unavailing finally to keep apart men of goodwill. Friends and the early Evangelicals found themselves working earnestly in the same causes and by the same philanthropic methods. They became socially intimate and differences were courteously minimised. One story of this process may be read at large in The Gurneys of Earlham, by Augustus J. C. Hare, a record of a household where some of a large famhy of charming daughters married Evangelical clergy men. An exception was Elizabeth Fry. Joseph John Gurney, her brother, came under the influence of Charles Simeon, and imbibed Evangelical beliefs, putting into a place secondary to Scripture the experience of the Inward Voice. The fache permeation of the Society by Evangelical thought can eashy be accounted for by going back to the original foundation of the Society's faith. The story of Christianity itself is not dissimilar. Our Lord and His Apostles inherited and transmitted much that was taken from the faith of theh time. The synoptic Evangelists and the Apostle Paul used prophecy and found its fulfilment irrespective of the original sense of the passages; they saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven when the Seventy returned saying that the Devils were subject to them ; that is they accepted the demoniac theory of disease; they looked for an early manifestation of the Kingdom of the Son of Man in the clouds before some of iv] EVANGELICALISM 407 them should taste of death. But none of these things were of the Gospel, nor do they spoh it for us now. After the Lord's death much more did Judaism and Hellenism assert themselves. The Priest crept back into Christianity. So, on a smaller scale, the tendency among the Friends of the eighteenth century was to live on the past revelation, and hold safe views. They became very nervous about the Unitarian movement in New England, and about the French Revolution ; they reacted back from fear of these solvent acids into more timid thought than before. 4. The attitude of the founders of Quakerism towards the theological positions of what is called orthodox Christianity in general, and to the Evangelical statement thereof in particular, can be simply told. The Quaker upheaval did not, in fact, concern itself, to begin with, with systematic theology at all, but with practical religion; and the early Friends, therefore, only attacked the current theological positions where these appeared to conflict with the freedom of the soul and its undivided loyalty to the Indwelling God. They therefore accepted, without criticism and without any particular interest in it, the usual scheme of thought current in their time. They used the records of the Old Testament freely as hlustrations. They did not doubt the historical existence of Adam, but when they referred to him it would be because of the old Adam within themselves as expounded in the New Testament. They did not doubt the existence of the Garden of Eden, but they would only refer to it as a foretaste of a spiritual paradise. They did not doubt that the world was created in a week, and that the race, descended from a single pair, was afterwards drowned by a flood, but they did not write about these things, nor refer to them in their sermons. In face of the miracles worked in the soul of man they took but little interest in the miracles of the Old Testament, though if asked they would have accepted them as everyone else did at the time. The 408 THE OUTLOOK [ch. same would apply to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, to the New Testament miracles generally, and to the anti cipation of the day of Judgment and of the bliss and terrors of the next world, as described in the book of Revelation. To ah these things they gave the " otiose assent " of the memorable Paley. These records did not count either for or against their movement1- Their Christology was entirely orthodox. The tendency which has been called Unitarian, and which by the early years of the nineteenth century controlled the old Presby terian chapels, finds no place in any of their controversies. To them, however, the historical Christ had become experimentally real and potent in the mystical Christ whom they recognised within them. They freely spoke of the two as identical, without ever raising any question about identifying a historical figure with an inward power2. This shows how small a place theological thought had among them. The literary criticism of the Bible, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become dominant among Protestant churches, had not arisen in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the first principle of Quakerism made them born critics when the time should be ripe, and in practice the Higher Criticism has found a readier home in the Society of Friends than in other orthodox churches. They always put the Bible in a derived place, as being the product of a spirit still living and acting in modern days ; and there can be no denying that they flew right in the face of certain plain, if superficial, scriptural directions, in 1 There is a curious passage however in the Journal of Thomas Storey, one of the early Friends, who, on examining the strata of the cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, ventured the hypothesis that they must have existed and graduahy come into being through epochs of what we now cah geologic time, thus anticipating the work of Lyeh and modern geology. 2 See Book i. chap. iv. iv] EVANGELICALISM 409 practising the ministry of women and in abandoning the sacraments of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper, not to speak of their attitude towards all war, to which the Bible, taken literally, appears to give much countenance. 5. When we come to the Society's position towards the special beliefs characteristic of Evangelicalism, we have a different story to teh. The doctrine of an everlasting Hell of physical fire is the gloomy background of Evan gelical theory, but not of Evangelical theory alone. There are sthl some terrible booklets intended for the use of chhdren in Ireland, and officially approved by the Roman Catholic Church, which surpass in crude horror of material fire and dreadful detail about serpents and vermin, anything that could possibly have been written in more savage centuries. So that, though this doctrine formed a potent instrument in Evangelical revivals, it is not their peculiar property. With regard to it, it may safely be said that whether the early Friends had it at the back of their minds or not they did not say much about it. I believe that it would be difficult to find in the keen and extra ordinarily voluminous literature of early Quakerism any reference to it. Certainly there was no habitual use of it. The emphasis of their teaching was all to the effect that heaven and hell are to be experienced in this life. The same holds to-day. I have, during a lifetime which can no longer be called short, attended Meeting regularly. I must have attended considerably over three thousand five hundred Meetings for Worship, and I have never in all that time, which covers over half a century, ever heard one single reference which even by implication brought in the doctrine of hell fire. Any reference to it which one might fancy being made, say by some raw preacher from the Western States of America, would certainly produce a restless rustle of misery and revolt in all the Meetings I know. Far different was the use of this doctrine by the early Evan gelicals and their successors. Most revivalists have used 410 THE OUTLOOK [ch. it systematically as theh strongest card, and have hoped to terrify the sinner into redemption. The Evangelical doctrine of Atonement, as I am using the word historically, ascribed the salvation of mankind here and hereafter to their annexing for themselves, even whhe yet sinful, the infinite merits of the crucified Redeemer, whose shed blood was regarded as the equiva lent in the Divine sight for the sins of the world. This doctrine most people now find incredible, unspiritual and even immoral. The founders of the Society changed the whole venue of the heavenly court, which became to them a trial of strength on the battlefield of the soul of man. Atonement with them always meant reconciliation. Par taking of the blood of Christ always meant a participation in the nature and character of Christ. Forgiveness was an inward restoration, not the payment of an outward debt. Imputed righteousness was a mere dodge of Calvin. They wished to bring men from "notions" to reahties and this atonement theory was what chiefly they meant by notions. Broadly speaking they put the historical revela tion into a historical place, and the present revelation into immediate service. Their conceptions of religion were vital and organic not forensic or material. They abhorred any cheap acceptance of Christ. Predestination they do not seem to have wasted much powder and shot upon in their preaching. They probably realised that it was beneath their serious notice, and the chapter in Romans did not trouble them. It whl easily be seen by any student of the Bible how richly they were able to draw stores of divine truth thence to maintain all their positions. 6. In all matters of outward church regulation, in methods of public worship, the use of hymns and organ, and a paid ministry, there was a good deal to separate Friends from the Evangelical movement. These differences were strong enough to prevent anything like amalgamation in this country. Furthermore, the great body of Friends iv] EVANGELICALISM 4n in England always remained essentiahy Quakerly through their practical belief in the Indwelling God, which they retained along with a modified Evangelical theology. That it is abundantly possible to do this it must be fully admitted. Mysticism may be an experience under all theologies. It was only when Quaker Evangelicals claimed that those who did not hold theh theology were neither good Christians nor good Quakers, and that the Society now officially maintained the positions held by its adver saries in the seventeenth century, that any cause for controversy arose. Such controversies have been kept within extremely narrow bounds in England, but their consequences in America have caused the tragedy of Quakerism. At the beginning, however, the Evangelical movement was received among Friends of the earlier nineteenth century like new wine. The Bible was introduced into Friends' families as part of famhy worship. They had refrained from such routine use of the Scriptures, and we cannot but be glad of the change which the new ideas caused. The introduction of the Bible to Ackworth School by Joseph John Gurney caused the children for some weeks to abandon their games and be found sitting about in corners reading the new and exciting stories. There must have been many dull Meetings in the general absence of the stimulus caused by familiarity with the Bible, and with Biblical studies. The repeated answers to the queries about whether drowsiness existed and was being reproved, teh an eloquent tale of how some of our country Friends, coming from their work in the fresh air, utilised the quiet hour in the Meeting House. Those who took up Evangelicalism with such zeal as to lose their Quakerism altogether, and who reverenced the letter of the Bible to such an extent as to induce them to defend the ordinances and to repudiate Robert Barclay's doctrine of the universal and saving light, were few in 412 THE OUTLOOK [ch. number. At Manchester and at Kendal a smah separation took place in the year 1835, representing a real loss to the Society, which however inevitable was and stih is greatly regretted by ah. It was cahed the Beacon controversy and it cost the Society three hundred "well concerned" members. In the opinion of a man so wise and catholic in spirit as Samuel Tuke of York, who took part in the proceedings, the separation was under the circumstances necessary. Though modified modern Evangelical beliefs have always been held within the Society, and are not incon sistent with it, they make its testimony rather blurred; it loses incisiveness. The plate is somewhat fogged: The modern liberal theology is a far more congenial intellectual outfit for the Friend. Unfortunately a theory which claims to be the whole truth cannot bear dissent. Either it initiates active per secution or it administers the cold shoulder where the former is impossible. There have been sundry heresy hunts of this kind, which I am thankful to believe it is not my duty to record. Evangelical thought continued without any serious break to be very influential in the Society in England till near the end of the nineteenth century. Joseph John Gurney, a man of great personal charm, considerable learning and lifelong devotion to the ministry and service of the Society, exercised by his widely read writings and by his urbanity and social standing a very great influence in the Evangelical direction for a long generation. There were always two parties. Neither of them excluded nor expelled the other, but when it came to a serious difference of opinion, connected often with some American separation, the Evangelicals always had their way in the Yearly Meeting. Their devotion to active Christian work and the liberal and friendly attitude which they maintained towards other religious bodies were also elements of real iv] EVANGELICALISM 413 and deserved strength. Nearly all the men and women who are now old in the Society and honoured in its ser vice derived their religious inspiration from Evangelical fountains. They began the Sunday Schools and the Foreign Missions, and had a chief hand in that great modern institution the Adult School, in its early days. They led in subscription lists and in practical phhanthropy. The books left by the early Friends lay neglected in remote parts of Quaker houses. Barclay's Apology ceased to be officially issued and was openly disapproved of in in fluential circles. Mission meetings, in which singing was ahowed and some pre-arrangement was made, sprang up in various parts of the country. 7. But the times and the growth of the truth were against them. The whole Christian world outside the Society was learning its way about in Hebrew literature. The theory of Evolution became the accepted doctrine among those who knew, and the development of theology within the Society followed the same lines as it has followed in the Christian Church at large. What remained, and it was tough and ineradicable, of the essential ideas of Quakerism heartily welcomed it. So that the history of the growth of thought within the Society has been very much the same as that in most other churches, but with less friction. The definite turning of the tide may be placed in the year 1887 when a Declaration of Faith, as it happened of a peculiarly hasty and hl-considered form, was presented for the acceptance of London Yearly Meeting and emphatically refused. It originated in a conference of American Orthodox Friends of the Gurneyite body held in Richmond, Indiana, with the object of unifying and consolidating the Society, threatened by movements on both sides. But they pulled the cord of control too tight and it broke. Its rejection caused ah liberal thinkers and conservative Friends alike to breathe more freely, for there was the threat of disciplinary action behind the estabhsh- 414 THE OUTLOOK [ch. ment of a creed; and a creed in itself ran counter to the dearest tenets of the ancient faith. In fact the light of the setting and the rising sun mingled. The summer night had been short. Conservative Friends who had felt themselves in a neglected backwater found that the new knowledge and the more spiritual religion of younger men were theh own in a new dress; both united in refusing the Evangelical school of thought, which had in its day stood for freshness and reform. In the Society at large the real date for the beginning of the modern epoch as apart from the above special Yearly Meeting decision, was the Manchester Conference of 1895. There the scattered elements of liberal Quakerism found one another. Friends who had suffered under mhd forms of persecution or depreciation found that they were not alone, but that ah over the country the tide of a more spiritual and a more ethical gospel was rising. The central sitting of that Conference, when modern thought was expounded in a series of papers and the most excited discussion in our modern history fohowed them, was a historic occasion of deep consequence, and its work has never been undone. Since then, without bitterness, almost without controversy and with much forbearance in most quarters, the light has dawned and the Society stands nearer to its ancient position than ever it did, and is perhaps more united in spirit than it has been for a hundred years. This is happy for us all, but it has been purchased at the cost of much self-restraint on the side both of the old and the new, and restraint is not a feeder for enthusiasm. We have never been able to — or thought it right to — let ourselves go; we have steered as near as we could to the shore of orthodoxy; so long as there was depth of water for our keels our guns have not voheyed. We have determined not to strive nor cry, and the result is that perhaps our voice has not been sufficiently heard in the streets to iv] EVANGELICALISM 415 produce a striking and obvious revival of prophetic power. But now, I believe that the fields are white unto harvest. In this generation a revolution has come over the face of our own and of other churches. Once more the gospel of the Inward Life and Light is restored. If we obey it and live in it with sufficient power and concentrated service, the prophetic ministry must surely break forth as its expression. We need not dwell with sadness on the thought that every new outbreak of prophetic fire is like the conquering hours of morning, the glories of dawn, bringing bounding pulses and refreshed strength; and that in evitably the hot noontide whl be upon us and the shadows of evening wih follow. For wih there not be another morning? This is what I believe has happened to essential Quakerism. We are now in the morning of another day, and the time for the expression of our faith is this time. CONCLUSION Friends described their organisation as a Society, not as a Church. This was part of their protest against the exaggerated claims of outward organisations and of ah the churches they knew. To their minds there was but one church, the Church Universal, whose roll-call is beyond ah memberships, and extends as far as Divine Grace. No organisation should usurp the title. It has happened well that they have adopted the most non-committal of names. At first they called themselves " The Chhdren of the Light," a phrase which summarises their message with perfect truth, but it does not appear to have been used extensively. They were in the way of speaking of one another as " Friends " in such and such a place, or "Friends of Truth," and that became the official name. Quakerism is a mere nickname given by a magistrate at Derby, whom George Fox had bidden to fear and quake. Nicknames like weeds have great power of survival. The days are long gone by when any reasonable man thought that his own form of worship was the one and only "correct" form, or that his own creed expressed the absolute truth, single and complete. We recognise that the variety of human nature, the diversities of circum stance and intellectual outlook, need a corresponding variety of religious expression. We only claim to practise a form of Christian communion, which we believe to be the best we can find or recognise — so much better, indeed, than its competitors that it has a just claim upon our allegiance and service; even though we cannot go out as missionaries of Quakerism with the fanaticism of the Mussulman, or even with the zeal of the Catholic or the Plymouth Brother, inspired by terror and the sight of a CONCLUSION 4I7 single narrow line of hope. I hold that Quakerism is nearer the beginning than the end of its special mission. There wih always remain, and I believe there wih in the days before us rapidly increase, a number of men and women who are religious, who believe in God, and know something of His communion, which they rightly identify with the love of man, who love Christ and wish to obey His com mandments, but who see through every ecclesiastical claim, who are too sincere and original to appreciate a religion of routine, to whom theology has become ex tremely simple, but correspondingly penetrating in its appeal, whose religion must needs survive, if it is to survive at all, in friendly contact with history and science. The type of man I am thinking of is also ethically sensitive and original; he considers war a form of collective mental disease, and has transferred his reverence from all holy places to those temples of the living God, whom he sees, puny, and dirty, and hungry, crowding the purlieus of our cities, or in weary dulness sitting ale bound in the vhlage public-house. Where is the man I so describe to find a spiritual home? Sacramental religion is out of the question ; Evangelicalism does not appeal to him ; even the Liberal Churchman and Nonconformist are too clerical, for he does not wish to be a member of a pastor's flock. For the sake of such a one we must continue to make a faithful and daring present ment of ah to which our teaching about the Indwehing God leads us in practice. There is no need for us to look down upon the ground and apologise for our form of worship in a timid and deprecatory manner. A Friends' Meeting well held remains the most interesting and stimulating form of worship yet devised by man. To one accustomed to it the savour has gone out of any other similar function. I attended a large Chapel last night : it was the occasion of the state attendance of our Nonconformist Lord Mayor, and everything was, therefore, at its best. The anthem and G.Q. 27 418 CONCLUSION the Te Deum I thought very finely rendered, the sermon was excehent in spirit and form, and. the minister evidently a really good man ; but the whole thing was too mechanical — served up with sauce of too much conventional patter — to please my sensitive Quaker palate, and I had to return evasive answers to the approving comments of the gentle men around me. Yet how few we Friends are. The needs of most people we do not appear to meet. There can be no doubt that the absence of any man whose business it is to push the interests of the congregation is a disadvantage to us, in competition with other congregations. And the absence of music is the absence of a great attraction. There is always at the fountain of my thoughts a picture of an ideal Society of Friends, such as I think indeed, with the faithfulness of many, might be seen in America and in England — quiet in ordered peace, permea ting in unseen influence — working with the wisdom of the serpent the harmless plots of the dove's goodwill, but at times with a voice too that can be heard in the people's ears, not only persuading men to all good ends, but doing it with golden words — words of moderation towards opponents, and charity, even to ancient evhs — a charity born, not of muddled good feeling but of clear and sympathetic vision. It is a religious Order of knighthood, in fact, that I have in my mind : an Order with no signs on it of separation from the world. We have been a sort of religious Order before; garbed, separate, sacred in "plainness of speech and apparel." But we are cahed to be an Order making no vows of that kind, and leaving no door for self-satisfaction, or other pitfalls; cheerful, laborious, weh-trained; doing what others do, for the most part, but with a difference — avoiding ah habits of hfe which separate us from the common people; an Order of Friends of Man, living Epistles bearing the sign manual of the Living Christ. STATISTICS There was at the close of 19131 in London Yearly Meeting, which includes, besides England and Scotland, 11 Meetings in Australia, one in New Zealand, and one in Cape Town, a total of 403 Meetings, including 19,942 members, of whom 9218 were male and 10,724 female. This represents an increase of 166 on the year, or 8-3 per thousand. The increase of the population is about 10 per thousand per annum, so that at the moment we are not quite keeping up with it. Beyond these there are 9131 persons who are registered attenders of Meeting or holders of an associate membership. This number fluctuates a good deal. The Society had in 19 13 steadily grown every year without exception since 1864, when it reached its lowest number at I3»755- To this number it had dwindled from a maximum of from 50,000 to 60,000 at about the year 1700. During this time, however, there have been large emigrations, and a growth in America referred to lower down. There are no accurate records of membership in those early days. The late John S. Rowntree, in his book Quakerism: Past and Present, pp. 68-88, estimated the above figure at 66,000, but in his latest book (The Society of Friends, Its Faith and Practice, p. 45) he says that " there cannot have been fewer than 50,000 at that time." This agrees more nearly with an investigation made by the late Wilham Thistle- thwaite. The inevitable reaction after a great religious revival, the severity of the discipline, particularly disownment for marrying out, moral lapses in a lax age, the absence of musical and other attractions in worship and domestic hfe, monotonous and insufficient ministry, and the difficulty of establishing a 1 This is now a httle out of date, the publication of the book being delayed by the war. It seems better to retain the figures of a pre-war year, however, as free from any exceptional influence. 27 — 2 420 STATISTICS social chcle everywhere in so small a body, are among the causes for this slow decay in numbers, which can only be treated fuhy in a historical work. The connection between the Society's annual increase and the growth of the population is extremely shght. During the year 1913 there were 146 registered births and 301 deaths. This heavy loss was more than met by convincements from outside, reinstatements and admissions as minors. These number 428 as against 114 resignations, disownments and disassociations. Thus out of every four who entered the Society in that year only one entered by the gate of birth. The above apparent birth-rate of 7-3 per thousand strikes one at first sight as anomalous, if not incredible, but it is susceptible of a simple explanation. By most Monthly Meetings only those are registered as mem bers at birth who have both parents Friends. The others may afterwards be admitted as minors, or may never become members at ah. To obtain an idea of the actual birth-rate among Friends, one would have to discover how many of the families now growing up are of this half-Quaker type. During 1913 there have been founded 39 homes in which both parents were Friends, and 94 Friends have married non-members. The offspring of these 94 families are in origin only half Quaker, so that it may be fair to count half of their children as descendants of the body of Friends, as equivalent, that is, from a birth-rate point of view, to the entire offspring of 47 Quaker families. That is the births registered represent 39 families within the Society, whilst there are not registered the equivalent of 47 families having children. I have compared this ratio of 47 to 39 with the ratios given by other years, which give 47 to 41 and 47 to 31. The last figure covered the average for five years from 1895 to 1900. These ratios roughly confirm one another, so that if we take the latest figures we find that the excluded births represent a birth-rate of 8-8 per thousand, which added to the 7-3 per thousand of the children registered, gives a birth-rate of 16-1 per thousand. But here another consideration inter venes. The longevity of Friends is much greater than that of the general population, the average age at death being as high STATISTICS 421 as 65 years1, whereas in the general population of the country the average age at death is about 46 years. People do not have any more chhdren from living a long life, so that the number of births is not much affected by it, but the number of individuals living at a given moment on which the percentage of births is calculated is increased by longevity. A Friend appears in the population totals 65 times, whereas the average Englishman appears 46 times. If the birth-rate is corrected for this, it reaches about 21-5 per thousand2. This is not quite up to the general birth-rate of the country, which was, in 1911, 24-4 per thousand, and has since slightly decreased. It is probably, however, as high as, if not higher than, the birth-rate of the middle classes. I have entered into these vital statistics, because they are often misunderstood. At the same time they are not of much value, inasmuch as the Society is constantly recruited from adults at an age after their children are born. How greatly this is the case must be plain when we remember that three out of every four new members are admitted by request. This consideration would tend to make the real birth-rate higher than it appears to be according to the figures. Another flaw in the argument is due to the fact that there are some Meetings which admit, at the request of the parents, children of mixed marriages at birth. This influence would tend to make the birth-rate we have reached too high. On the other hand there are here and there a few Friends who object to register their children at ah. If we have now reached a negative result, it is at any rate better than a wrong positive one. How powerful is the statistical effect of the admission of members in mid-life or later, may be shown from the death-rate. Our 301 deaths would give a death- rate of 15 per thousand. The death-rate of the country at large was, in 191 1, 14-6 per thousand and has since fallen a httle. This would make out that the Society has a higher death-rate 1 Annual Monitor List. 2 This is a little too high, for longevity imphes that a larger proportion of Friends live to become parents. It does not mean that each lives to the average age. 422 STATISTICS than the average population, whereas in fact it is remarkable for its longevity. Such is the effect of healthy habits and comfortable surroundings. Only one child in 29 dies before it is a year old. The number of members married during the year was 172, or 8-6 per thousand, which, corrected for longevity, becomes 12-4 per thousand, as against 15 per thousand in the country at large. The longevity correction is a httle excessive as explained in the footnote 1- In Ireland the Society of Friends is sthl a slightly decreasing body. In 1864, when Enghsh Quakerism reached its lowest point, there were 2851 Friends in Ireland. Now there are 2349 members. The situation of Irish Friends as a Protestant upper- class body, all descendants of Cromwellian colonists, living a somewhat isolated existence among a Catholic population, renders accession to membership difficult; and priestly hostility cripples every kind of philanthropic work and religious pro paganda. Irish Protestantism also is of a stiff dogmatic type, not much inclined our way. In addition, the figures of births and deaths are worse than in England, and the marriage and birth-rates are extremely low. There are tiny bodies of Friends maintaining an existence in Norway and Denmark, and a few individuals in Hanover, in Paris and in the Montpellier district. Though the Society is increasing year by year in member ship, it is, hke other religious bodies, not increasing in actual attendance. A statistical return of attendance was made in 1851. At that time the morning attendance at 343 Meetings was 13,361, a number nearly equal to the total membership. The attenders not in membership appear to have nearly balanced the absentees. Another census was taken in the year 1904, which gave an attendance at the morning Meetings of 11,911, and another in 1909, giving an attendance of 11,256 on a membership which had increased by nearly half as much again since 1851. The census of 1914 revealed a further diminution in attendance. Only 10,811 Friends were found 1 Seep. 421. STATISTICS 423 present on an average at the morning Meetings. The usual causes have operated which are general throughout the country. Friends reside at much greater distance from Meeting than they did, they go away for the week-end, or they are absorbed in Adult School and mission work, which may interfere with their attendance. The public opinion which used to demand regu larity no longer exists. To obtain an idea of the activity of the Society measured in numbers, we must not omit the Adult Schools. These are now under the National Adult School Union, which is no longer a denominational body, and includes many schools which are not managed by Friends. Before this reconstruction took place, however, it may be said roughly that there were 47,000 names on our Adult School registers, of whom a small proportion were those of women. There has been of late years a lull in the formerly rapid growth of this movement. The junior schools are sthl managed by a denominational organisation, the Friends' First-Day School Association. Their latest report gives the number of children's schools at 266, the scholars on the books 23,037, taught by 3016 teachers. The attendance of scholars is 17,711 and the attendance of teachers 2558. The fall in the Sunday School population of the country is to some extent felt also here. The membership of scholars has fallen in the year about 2-6 per cent., and the average of attendance 5-2 per cent. The schools are particularly well organised and have done much pioneer work on the educational side in pro viding graded lessons. They run a useful magazine called Teachers and Taught. The Friends' Foreign Mission Association works in India, Madagascar, Syria, China and Ceylon, and has a total of 103 English missionaries (including their wives) and 1233 native workers. They count 4128 members of their congregations and 17,931 adherents not in membership. Considerable educational work is done on behalf of their 7317 pupils, and 21,480 patients have been treated at 11 hospitals and dis pensaries. Recently absorbed by this Association, there is a Friends' Industrial Mission at Pemba, near to Zanzibar, 424 STATISTICS employing seven missionaries, and an Armenian Mission in Con stantinople, employing five Enghsh ladies. There is also a httle missionary work carried on among Roman Catholics in France, including a station in Brittany, and there are isolated famihes of missionaries working under Friends in Japan and in the islands off the coast of Norway. In America the record of membership is apt to be mislead ing, inasmuch as the body of Friends who have abandoned our mode of worship is by far the largest. The test of membership among them is slight and admission easy, nor are names removed from the books with great strictness. The figure which is published gives about 95,000 members at the end of the year 1911, indicating a net loss on the year of 854 in this body of 14 pastoral Yearly Meetings. From 1901 to 1911 these Meetings reveal a net gain of 3 per cent., about one quarter of the net gain per cent, of Friends in England during the same period. The seven Yearly Meetings of the "Hicksite" or Liberal Friends total about 21,000 members, though the numbers on the registers might, it is beheved, slightly exceed this. The largest Yearly Meeting is that of Phhadelphia, whose member ship at the end of 1910 was 10,841. These Friends have just arrested a long steady decline, and are showing some signs of the beginning of an increase. The Conservative group of Friends also has its centre in Pennsylvania, where the Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meet ing numbers about 4400 Friends. The total membership of what may be cahed the Conservative or " Wilburite " branch in America, including Philadelphia, may reach about 8000 Friends. It would be a mistake to suppose that in the pastoral body there did not remain a number of Friends who stih retain the tastes and convictions of the Society, but no statistical computation is possible. Included, however, in this fellowship of Yearly Meetings, is the small Yearly Meeting of Baltimore, whose 1200 Friends retain for the most part Quaker characteristics. If we add the Friends in the United Kingdom to the *' Hicksite " and Conservative groups in America, and make some little allowance for Friends of the same type in the pastoral Yearly Meetings, STATISTICS 425 it may be computed that the number of persons who retain the Quaker character throughout the world is about 55,000, a number almost identical with the maximum number with which it faced the future in the year 1700. The number on the registers throughout the world, including the pastoral Yearly Meetings and some membership at Foreign Mission Stations, reaches approximately 150,000. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ah these books, both new and second hand, can be most conveniently bought from 140 Bishopsgate, London, E.C. 2 — the Society's official bookshop. A complete "Descriptive Catalogue" of Quaker literature in two large vols. (1867), with Supplement (1893), was the life task of the late Joseph Smith. Of these only a short selection fohows. My friend Norman Penney, F.S.A., Librarian of the Friends' Library, Devonshire House, 136 Bishopsgate, London, E.C. 2, has very kindly revised it for me. FOR FOX, PENINGTON, PENN AND BARCLAY Journal of George Fox. First printed in 1 vol. folio in 1694, edited by Thomas Ellwood under official authority. The 8th or Bicentenary Edition, edited by Daniel Pickard of Leeds in 189 1, in two octavo volumes, is copiously indexed and is the ordinary edition in use. An abbreviated form of the Journal, edited with Introduction, Notes and photographic hlustrations, two volumes, small octavo, was issued by Rufus M. Jones in 1904, and is well done. Another abridgment made by Percy L. Parker, the Editor of Public Opinion (Pitman, 1905), is also weh done. One fourth of the Journal, and some valuable appreciations make a volume of about 500 pp. The modern edition for scholars is that issued in 1911 in two handsome volumes by the Cambridge University Press, a literal copy of the MS. Journal, with the first sixteen MS. pages missing, and containing the expurgated passages which all the earlier editions omitted. It is in the original spehing, not easy to read. It has a great mass of illuminating, critical and explanatory notes by Norman Penney, F.S.A., the Librarian of the Devonshire House Library, and Editor of the Journal of the Friends' Historical Society. There are also many documents inserted by Fox. The connection between the Ehwood edition and the Cambridge edition is described in Appendix A to The Beginnings of Quakerism. BIBLIOGRAPHY 427 George Fox's Epistles (1698) and George Fox's Doctrinals (1706) are large folio collections of his miscellaneous papers; no modern editions. A selection of the Epistles was published by S. Tuke in 1825. Modern Lives of George Fox have been written by Samuel M. Janney in America (1853) ; by A. C. Bickley (1884) ; by Dr Thomas Hodgkin in 1896 and by H. G. Wood, the Warden of Wood brooke (1912). An attractive hfe of Margaret Fox of Swarthmoor Hall by Helen G. Crosfield was published in 1913, and Cameos of the Life of George Fox by Ernest E. Taylor. There are shorter biographies of Fox and Penn by F. A. Budge and Frances E. Cooke. The article on George Fox in the Dictionary of National Biography is a scholarly treatise by Dr Alexander Gordon. The Personality of George Fox by A. N. Brayshaw is a short book of high value. Works of WilliamPenn, 2 vols, folio (1 726), frequently reprinted. Separate editions of No Cross, No Crown are numerous. The 26th was officially published in small form in 1896. His Fruits of Solitude, in Reflections and Maxims has been often reprinted, notably in an edition by Edmund Gosse in 1901. Modern Lives of William Penn have been numerous. Thomas Clarkson's is faithful but a century old. The edition of 1849 with W. E. Forster's reply to Macaulay, is in very small type. That by W. Hepworth Dixon, editor of the Athenaeum (1851, 3rded. 1872), shows more literary craftsmanship, but less real sympathy with itssubject. That by Samuel M. Janney (1852) on thewhole remains the best, but is also in too smah print. There is a Life by Dr Stoughton, and a faulty one by Mrs Colquhoun Grant. The most recent is William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania, by John W. Graham (Swarthmore Press. 2nd ed. 1918). Maria Webb's Fells of Swarthmoor Hall 1865, and Penns and Peningtons of the Seventeenth Century 1867, were the forerunners of much modern work, and remain excehent and interesting books. Works of Isaac Penington, folio 1681. 2nd ed. in two volumes quarto, 1761. 1400 pp. There are later editions in 4 volumes. No modern ones. A Memoir and Review of his Works was published by Joseph Gumey Bevan in 1807, and contains the substance of his output. There have been Selections, by John Barclay (1837), by Caroline J. Westlake (1876), by Hy. Bryan Binns (1909), one published by Roberts Bros., Boston, and a number published in Philadelphia. 428 BIBLIOGRAPHY Barclay's Apology for the True Christian Divinity as the same is held forth and preached by the people in scorn called Quakers was published in Latin in 1676, in English in 1678. The 14th edition was published by W. G. Smeal and R. Barclay Murdoch at Glasgow in 1886. The Anarchy of the Ranters by Robert Barclay (1676); many later edd. There is a life of Robert Barclay included in J affray and Friends in Scotland (v. infra) and a modern sketch by M. Christabel Cadbury. HISTORIES The first standard History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers was published in English in folio in Amsterdam in 1722 by Wm. Sewel. The first issue was in Dutch in 171 7. It is a monumental record — as material for history indis pensable. With it as companion goes Besse's Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers (2 vols. 1 753) . Gerard Croese's History (Lat. 1695, Eng. 1696) and Gough's History (4 vols. 1790) are less valuable books of the same type. The standard modern History of the earliest period, sup planting ah others, is The Beginnings of Quakerism by W. C. Braithwaite, published in 1912, carrying the narrative to 1660. Another volume (published 1919) covers The Second Period of Quakerism to 1725. These volumes are issued in pursuance of a work planned by the late John Wilhelm Rowntree, and are of high value, both as a record from first hand sources, and for their reconstructive imagination (Macmihan). F. Storrs Turner's The Quakers (1889) was written with the detachment of a sympathetic outsider, and with much insight. The Rise of the Quakers (1905) a short book by T. Edmund Harvey. S. M. Janney's History (4 vols. Philadelphia, 1865) is particu larly valuable for its account of the Hicksite separation in the last vol. The article "Friends, the Society of" in the new edition of the Encycl. Brit, by A. Neave Brayshaw is an authoritative modern sketch; also the one on the same subject in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics by W. C. Braithwaite. The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth by Robert Barclay of Reigate (1876) is a large work revealing much new information, evangelical in tendency, and concluding that BIBLIOGRAPHY 429 denominations thrive according to the extent of the lay ministry they exercise. The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society, 16 vols, to date (1903-19) with its Supplementary volumes, The First Publishers of Truth, and Extracts from State Papers, continues to reveal matter of the most varied interest, both important and trifling, under the careful and scholarly editorship of Norman Penney. John Stephenson Rowntree's collected Essays in his Life and Work by Ernest E. Taylor (1908) contain a rich store of historical matter representing original research. The Quaker: a study in Costume by Amelia M. Gummere (1901), and the same writer's The Quaker in the Forum (1910) deal with special departments of the subject. BIOGRAPHY The Lives and Journals of the Early Friends are very numerous ; and official editions of their collected works, which were mostly pamphlets, were often issued after their deaths. These large leather bound volumes appeared very frequently during the twenty years preceding and following 1700. Among the more interesting are : History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (1714) — an autobiography reprinted in Morley's Universal Library. Ed. by C. G. Crump (1900) and by S. Graveson (1906). Alexander J affray and Friends in Scotland. The diary was from a MS. discovered and edited by John Barclay, published in 1833, with much additional matter, including a Life of Robert Barclay the Apologist. Life of Thomas Chalkley (d. 1741). Journal of Wm. Edmundson (1715). The best of the numerous Journals and Biographies from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are: Journal of John Woolman (1720-1772). Many editions. The most convenient has an Introduction by John G. Whittier. A short and precious book. Memoirs of Samuel Fothergill by George Crosfield (1843). He would seem to have been among the most eloquent ministers in our history. Life and Labours of Stephen Grellet (2 vols. i860). There is a short sketch summarised from the above by Rev. Wm. Guest. Both very interesting. 430 BIBLIOGRAPHY For medieval Quakerism in England, see Journal of John Griffith. Works of Job Scott, short and of high theological value. Modern ed. by H. W. Wilbur, Philadelphia, 191 1. Journal of Thomas Shillitoe (2 vols. 1839) gives the "orthodox" account of the Hicksite separation, and Journal of John Comly, the other side. Memoirs of Daniel Wheeler (1842), William Allen (3 vols. 1847), Joseph John Gurney (2 vols. 1854) and Elizabeth Fry (2 vols. 1859) are on interesting subjects, but too long. A shorter volume on J. J. Gurney has been written by J. B. Braithwaite, and on Elizabeth Fry by Georgina King Lewis. Among modern Biography we may mention Life and Labours of Elias Hicks by Henry W. Wilbur (Friends' Conf. Co. Phila. 1910). It fihs a long empty gap in our records. The Life of John Bright by G. M. Trevelyan is the standard example of Quakerism in public hfe. The Memoirs of Joseph Sturge by Hy. Richard (1864), and The Life of Rt Hon. John Edward Ellis by A. T. Bassett (1914) have interest of the same kind. A new Life of Joseph Sturge by Stephen Hobhouse (1919) tells its story in a shorter form and is a very competent work. Life of J. G. Whittier by Samuel T. Pickard (2 vols. 1895) and a shorter volume by Georgina King Lewis. Bernard Barton and His Friends by E. V. Lucas (1893). Dr John Fothergill and His Friends by Dr R. Hingston Fox (1919) is an authoritative work on the leaders of medicine and philanthropy in the eighteenth century (Macmihan). A Book of Quaker Saints by L. Violet Hodgkin is an attractive hlustrated volume of sketches and stories based on the experiences of Early Friends (1918). Life and Letters of Thomas Hodgkin by Louise M. Creighton (1917)- Life of Joshua Rowntree by S. E. Robson. Life and Letters of Silvanus P. Thompson by his wife and daughter (1920). DESCRIPTIVE AND APOLOGETIC A Portraiture of Quakerism by Thomas Clarkson (3 vols. 1806), new edition (altered) 1847, has been described in the text. The Story of Quakerism by Eliz. B. Emmott (1908) is a good modern account of the Society up to the present time. It is both historical and descriptive. BIBLIOGRAPHY 43I , o ^ ™ends' wh0 they are- w^at they have done by Wm Beck (1893). Written from an old-fashioned standpoint, but containing much useful matter on Friends' business, social, and philanthropic A Reasonable Faith, by Three Friends (Wm. Pohard Francis Frith and William Edw. Turner) (Macm. 1883) and The Gospel of Divine Help by Edward Worsdell (1886) were forerunners of the modern stream of liberal teaching. Quaker Strongholds by Caroline E. Stephen (1889) has been widely circulated as the best modern Quaker apologetic The Religious Poems of John G. Whittier are an unrivalled I source of real knowledge of Quaker thought, feeling, and practice ' The Series of Swarthmore Lectures, dehvered annually at Yearly Meeting time since 1903, are generahy studies and ex positions of Quaker thought. Among them are Quakerism : A Religion of Life by Rufus M. Jones. Spiritual Guidance in the Experience of the Society of Friends bv W. C. Braithwaite. 3 The Communion of Life by Joan M. Fry. The Missionary Spirit and the Present Opportunity by Henry T. Hodgkin. Human Progress and the Inward Light by Thomas Hodgkin. The Day of Our Visitation by Wm. Littleboy. Social Service: Its Place in the Society of Friends by Joshua Rowntree. The New Social Outlook by Lucy F. Morland. The Quest for Truth by Silvanus Thompson. The Historic and the Inward Christ by Edward Grubb. Silent Worship : The Way of Wonder by L. Violet Hodgkin. The Society of Friends: its Faith and Practice by John S. Rowntree. 4th ed. (1908). Reprinted often. A very useful httle book. Quakerism : Past and Present, Prize Essay, by John S. Rowntree (1859). Essays and Addresses by John Wilhelm Rowntree (1905), edited by Joshua Rowntree. Authority and the Light Within (1908) and What is Quakerism? (1917) by Edward Grubb, with several theological expositions and commentaries by the same writer. The Evangelical position is to be found in the writings of Joseph John Gurney, Essays on Christianity (1825); Observations on the 432 BIBLIOGRAPHY Distinguishing Views and Practices of Friends (1824); Biblical Notes and Dissertations (1830). A Beacon to the Society of Friends, a small book by Isaac Crewdson (1835), caused the Beaconite separation in Manchester and Kendal. The Heart of the Christian Message by Prof. G. A. Barton (1910) is an excellent account of the modern Quaker position. The Trial of our Faith by Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., a cohection of Essays (1911). A Not Impossible Religion by S. P. Thompson, F.R.S. Though not precisely Friends' books the two volumes by Rufus M. Jones in the Rowntree series, Studies in Mystical Religion (1909) and Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries (1914), are of great value for their description of the mystics before and contemporary with Fox. They are among the most valuable of our recent literature. The same writer's Dynamic Faith (1900) and Social Law in the Spiritual World (1904) express the best mind of modern Quakerism. The Fruits of Silence by Cyril Hepher (1916) and the Fellowship of Silence by various writers, ed. Cyril Hepher (1916), are on Quaker lines. AMERICAN SUBJECTS Isaac Sharpless's books, A Quaker Experiment in Government (1898) and The Quakers in the Revolution (1899), and The Quakers in the American Colonies (191 1) (one of the Rowntree series) by R. M. Jones, assisted by Isaac Sharpless and Amelia M. Gummere, are, and whl remain, our standard histories for their periods. Isaac Sharpless issued in 19 19 Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsylvania, a series of biographies on the same period. James Bowden's History of Friends in America (1850) is a fuU account, carefully written, up to 1820. W. Hodgson's The Society of Friends in the Nineteenth Century recounts separations from the Conservative orthodox position (2 vols. Phila. 1876). Journal of Elias Hicks (1828) and Memoirs of Edward Hicks (1851)- The History of Friends in America by Allen C. and Richard H. Thomas (1895) is a reliable and impartial work by two orthodox Friends. BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 Evans's Exposition of the Faith of the Religious Society of Friends was an "orthodox" work of controversy directed against Hicksite Friends (1827). The latest and the best account is by Edward Grubb, Separa tions in America, their Causes and Consequences (1914). A student need go no further. The Quaker Invasion of Massachusels, R. P. Hallowell (1883). Southern Quakers and Slavery by Stephen B. Weeks (John Hopkins Univ. Historical Studies, 1896) is an extensive and useful work of research. The Memorial History of Philadelphia by Howard M. Jenkins is fuh of weh-arranged and interesting matter. Among the many hves of Abohtionists that of Isaac T. Hopper by Lydia Maria Child (1853) is of thrilling interest. Other American Works, not of a local character, have appeared under other headings. BOOKS BY FRIENDS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS Wm. Penn, An Essay towards the present and future Peace of Europe, by the establishment of a European Dyet, Parliament or Estates (1693). Works of John Bellers of London (1654-1725). The Philanthropist, a Journal founded by Wihiam Allen in 1810 and edited by him. Jonathan Dymond's Essays on the Principles of Morality and on the Private and Political Rights and Obligations of Mankind. This reahy great book was left in MS. by the author, a linen draper at Exeter, who died of consumption in 1828 at the age of 32. As the work, dignified, durable and learned, of a very young author of extraordinary force and ability, it is comparable to the Apology of Robert Barclay. It contains the norm of Quaker conduct. Eighth edition, 1886. He previously pubhshed An Enquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity (1823), still a standard work. Ah that is known of Jonathan Dymond is included in a careful Memoir, Letters and Poems, collected by his nephew C. W. Dymond, of Sawrey, Ambleside, privately printed in 1907. The Temperance Problem and Social Reform by Joseph Rowntree and Arthur Sherweh — a large well-documented work on the g. q. z8 434 BIBLIOGRAPHY Disinterested Management of Pubhc Houses (1899). Seventh edition enlarged, 1900. An epoch-making book, widely read: followed by Public Control of the Liquor Traffic by the same authors (1903), and other volumes. Poverty, a Study of Town Life by B. Seebohm Rowntree (1901). A standard work on the actual measured facts of poverty illustrated in the City of York, and commonly quoted along with Charles Booth's work on London. Followed by a number of other works on social subjects, such as: Betting and Gambling, a series of essays edited by B. S. Rowntree (1905)- Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium (1910). Along and important work full of statistics, by B. S. Rowntree. The Imperial Drug Trade, a treatise on the Opium Question, by Joshua Rowntree (1905). Women's Work and Wages by Edward Cadbury, M. C. Matheson and George Shann (1906), a study of conditions in Birmingham. Social Aspects of the Quaker Faith by Edward Grubb, a cohec tion of Essays (1899). Infant Mortality by (Sir) George Newman, M.D. (1906). The Destruction of Daylight, a Study of the Smoke Problem, by John W. Graham (1907). Evolution and Empire by John W. Graham (1912). Cheap edition, 1914. Christ and War by W. E. Wilson, B.D. (19 13), includes both the Christian and the Economic argument for peace, followed by The Foundations of Peace by the same author in 1918. As a Man Thinketh, a Pacifist argument drawn from Science, by Ernest E. Unwin (1919). The True Way of Life (1910) and Christianity and Business (1912) by Edward Grubb (Swarthmore Press). Pacifism in Time of War and The Pacific Settlement of Inter national Disputes by Carl Heath. The Early Christian Attitude to War by Dr C. J. Cadoux. A piece of original research of interest to Friends, though the author is not a member. There is no suitable heading under which to place as denomi national works the numerous books by Dr J. Rendel Harris. But whether learned works of Biblical Research or books of Devotion,' they are all full of the Quaker spirit. BIBLIOGRAPHY A FEW OUTSTANDING BOOKS 435 An inquirer, desiring to read a few of the most important books in this list, may be advised to select '—George Fox's Journal, especially Vol. i, and including Wm. Penn's Preface. Wm. Penn's No Cross, No Crown. One or two of the Propositions in Barclay's Apology. History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood. W. C. Braithwaite's Beginnings of Quakerism and Second Period of Quakerism. - John Woolman's Journal and Essays. Dymond's Essays on Morality. Caroline E. Stephen's Quaker Strongholds. - The Religious Poems of Whittier. G. M. Trevelyan's Life of John Bright. Part II " Christian Practice " of the official volume on Doctrine, Practice and Discipline, revised in 1911, is an instructive and not uninteresting volume. INDEX Absolute, the, 37, 40; Beyond us, Ackworth School, 1 73 Adult Schools, 316, 318 Aesculapius, 226 Agapae, 263, 269, 270 Albigenses, 352 Allen, William, 314, 315 Ambrose, 338, 352 American Civil War, 362 Anabaptists, 352 Angels, 71, 82, 83 Anglican Period begins, 209 Antiochus Epiphanes, 54 Apocalypses on Son of Man, 55-57 Apocalyptic Heaven, 23 Apology of Justin Martyr, 194 ; of others, 220 Apostle, 196, 197; a foreign Missionary, 198 Apostles' Creed, 219 Apostolic Canons, 211, 213; Con stitutions, 213, 272 Appeals, 291, 292 Ariosto, 351 Arnobius, 339, 345 Arnold, Matthew, 101 Art in Quakerism, 168-171; of Conduct, 171 Asceticism, in Worship, 178-186; Reward of, 183-185; in Com munion, 278 Athanasius, 47, 352 Atonement, simplified, 30, 31; in Evangelical Doctrine, 410 Attis, 226 Augustine, 47, 352 Bahais, 50, 353 Baker, Sir Samuel, 261 Baptism, 280-286 Baptismal Regeneration, 285 Baptists, (285 Barbarity in War, 365 Barclay, Colonel David, 136 — John, 173 — Robert, Apology, 134-149; educated in Paris, 136; War, Predestination, the Bible, 142; contrasts Divine Light and Natural Light, 144; on Universal and Saving Light, 145 ; on Salva tion for the heathen, 145; on Calvinism, 146; on Conscience and the Divine Light, 146; on Justification, 146; on Perfection, 147; on Ministry, 147; on Wor ship, 147, 148; on Baptism and The Supper, 148; on Religious Liberty, 148; on War, 148, 353; Fathers on War, 352 Beacon Controversy, 412 Beauty, in Worship, 178-188; Na ture of, 185 Belgium, 373 Bellers, John, 174, 314 Bernard, Saint, 225 Bernstein, 313 Besse's Sufferings, 359 n. Bible (see Scriptures) Biology of War, 27 Bishop (see Episcopus) Blood of Christ, 258; of the Covenant, 260 Boehme, Jacob, 95 "Born of Water," 284 Braithwaite, W. C, notes on 93, 95, 99, 144, 155, 287, 300, 354, 359 Brayshaw, A. N, 99*?., 172 Bridgewater, Earl of, 118 Bright, John, 166, 172, 318 Browning, on Christ, 17, 40 Bulcock, the Rev. H., 265 Burrough, Edward, Epistle to Dunkirk, 354, 355, 357 By An Unknown Disciple, 329 Cadbury, George, 176, 319 Cadoux, Dr, 135 «., 338-348 Caird, Edward, 34 Calvinism, 89-91 Cambridge, 175 Canon of the N.T., 222 Canons of Hippolytus, 343 Canons of Basil, 215 Carpenter, Edward, Art of Creation, 46; Pagan and Christian Creeds, 28—3 438 INDEX 266 m.; Healing of the Nations, 386 Cassianus, a Martyr, 345 Cathari, 352 CathoUc Church, 222, 224, 225, 226, 235; approves War, 352 Cells in the Body of God, 6, 84 Celsus, 341, 342, 344 Celtic Church, on Baptism, 283 Central Education Committee, 175 Chalkley, Thomas, 360 "Children of the Light," 416 Christ, the Historical, 50-64 (see Jesus Christ) Christ, the Mystical, 7, 68-78; Identification with Historic, 69- 77; Origin of Identification, 69, 70 Christianity and War, 325-330; main drift of, 328, 329 Christologies Ancient and Modern, 73 Christology, in the Fourth Gospel, 65 Church, meaning of, 189; rates, 378 Clarkson's Portraiture, 161, 162 Clement of Alexandria, on Baptis mal Formula, 283; on War, 339, 35° Clergy oppose Friends' Schools, 171 Clerk of the Meeting, his Powers, 295 Codex Bezae, 255 Colonies, uses of, 391 Communion (see Lord's Supper), Table, 272 ; Texts on, 279 Conscience and The Divine Light, 146; and the State, 377 Conscription, 359, 363 Consecration, 3, 4 Constantine, 224, 350, 351 Continuity of the germ plasm, 25-27 Conversion, 46 Conybeare, F. C, notes on 261 , 262, 263, 267; on the Baptismal Formula, 282 Coomber, Dean of Durham, 306 Coptic Church, 273 Corinthian Church, 193, 194 Council of Nicaea, 338, 351 Covenant, 254, 255, 258, 261 Creation, 41 Criminal Nations, 369, 370 Cross Correspondences, 79, 80 Curetonian Syriac, 255 Cyprian, 190, 198, 209, 283, 345 Dalton Hall, 175 Daniel, Son of Man in book of, 55 Dante, 351 Deacons, seven, appointed, 194, 200 Declaration of 1660 on War, 357, 358; of 1804, 358 De Corona Militis, 342, 350 De Idololatria, 342 Diabolism, 374 Dickinson, John, 362 Didache, 194, 197, 209, 211, 212, 216, 259, 269 Didaskalia, 339 Dionysiac Worship, 179, 180, 226, 266 Dionysius Areopagiticus, 272 Disarmament, 384, 385 Divine Justice, 38 Doctrine, Practice and Discipline, Book of, 299 Domitian, 201 Doukhobors, 160, 178, 353 Dualism or Monism, 35, 36 Eckhard, 47 Education, among Friends, 171- 177; Commission, 177 Eight Foundations of a True Social Order, 319, 320 Elders (see Presbyters), among Friends, 298 Eleusis, 264, 265, 270, 273 Empire, dies, 388; wrong doctrine of, 388, 389 Enoch, Book of, 55, 56 Ephesus, 265 Episcopus, 195, 202, 203, 206-209, 210, 212-215, 222 Epistle of Barnabas, 194, 219 Erasmus, 352 Essenes, 262 Established Churches, 396-403; vested interest, 400, 401 ; fly wheel, 401 ; better disestablished, 402 Euripides, 382 t Eusebius, on Baptismal Formula, 282 Evangelicalism, 404-415 Evil, Is God its Creator? 83-37 Evolution of Spirituality, 27, 28 Experience and Tradition, 3 INDEX 439 Fall of Man, in Barclay, 144 Family of Love, 353 Farnell, L. R., 266^., 267 Fathers on War, 838-348 Fell, Margaret, 94, 99, 155 Fellowship and Worship, 31 Flounders Institute, 175 Fothergill, Dr John, 173 — Samuel, 211 Force, sometimes necessary, 367 Foreign Missions, 300 Fourth Gospel, "I said ye are gods," 19; on the Logos, 24; anti-Docetic, 53, 61 Fox family of Falmouth, 358 Fox, George, 50; Visions, 75; Career of, 89-103; his Wander ings, 91 ; his Inward Strife, 91, 92 ; Preacher, 92 ; on Pendle Hill, 92; meets the Seekers, 93; at Swarthmoor, 94 ; his sources, 95 ; his greatness, 98, 103; his disadvantages, 99; Wm. Penn on, 102, 103; on his Ministry, 244; on social abuses, 305, 306, 312, 313; declines Captaincy, 354; on Cromwell's Foreign Policy, 354; ill at Reading, 355; Epistle on War, 355, 356; Declaration to Charles II, 357 — Margaret. See Fell Francis, St, 324 Franciscans, 352 Frazer, Sir J. G., 275 Free Quakers, 362 Friends, in Politics, 166; in Busi ness, 308; economical, 309; in Professions, 309; in Prison, 363 Fry, Elizabeth, 315 Funeral of man killed by accident, 36. 37 Fylde Monthly Meeting, 164 Gardner, Prof. Percy, 261*1., 264; on Matthew xxviii. 19, 281 Germ Cell, continuity of, 25, 26 Gethsemane, 61 Gnostics, 194, 216, 217, 222 God, as Tree, 5, 25; as Father, 5; as a Body of Cells, 6, 7; Simple, Intuitive, 21; Indwelling, 22, 37; Struggling, 40 Greek Church, 178 Griffith, John, 164 Grubb, J. Ernest, 300 n. Gurney, Joseph John, 411, 412 Gurneys of Earlham, 406 Hardy, Thomas, his pessimism, 48 Harnack, 187, 208, 209, 212, 213, 282; Expansion of Christianity, 304, 338 n., 342 Hatch, Dr, 208, 209, 215, 217, 218, 225, 272 Hell, doctrine of, 409 Hercules, 226 Hereditary Leadership in the Church, 20X Herodotus, 261 Heroism in peace, 384 Hibbert Journal, on personality, ri ; on psychical research, 79; on Lord's Supper, 257 Hill, J. Arthur, on God, 85 Holy Spirit, 41 Home Mission and Extension Committee, 240 Howgill, Francis, 93, 94 Hubberthorne, Richard, 50 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 74 n. Humour, in God? 21 Hutton, Richard Holt, quoted, 229 Ignatius of Antioch, 209, 211, 213- 215, 224, 269 Immediate Revelation in Barclay, 137 Indwelling God (see God) International Trade, 389, 390 Inward Light, 81-34 Irenaeus, 194, 219, 220, 224, 339, 340 Irish Rebellion, 359, 360 Isaiah, 340 Isthmian Games, 265 James, Kinsman of the Lord, 201 — William, on personality, 13 Jesus Christ, 50-64; His personal appearance, 51; His Nature Simple, 51; Divinity and Hu manity unified, 5 1 , 53 ; Paternity, 52; Humanity, 53, 66; His Messianic Anticipations, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61; His Transfiguration, 58, 81 ; Gethsemane, 61 ; His Re surrection, 63, 81 ; His Sublimi nal Personality, 76, 77; Pre- existence, 81; Miracles of Heal ing, 81 Jewish tradition pro-war, 345, 346 John the Baptist, 280 Jones, Rufus M„ notes on 34, 75, 96, 144 440 INDEX Jordans, 119 Justification, 146 Justin Martyr, 194, 224, 264, 270, 283, 339, 340 Justinian, 225 Kant, Immanuel, 385 Kingdom of God, 44, 54 "Kingdom" Passage, 258 Kingsley, Charles, 47 Lactantius, 339, 345 Lancaster, Joseph, 315 — School, 172 Last Supper, 60 Laughter, of God? 20, 21 Law of Parsimony, 29 Leadbeater, Mary, 360 m. Letchworth, 319 Light Within, 31-34 Lightfoot, Dr, 190 Lindsay, Dr, The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries, 187, 190, 191, 195, 198, 200, 201, 206, 209, 212, 213, 214, 215, 219, 221 Liturgy of St Clement, 191 Logos, 23, 24, 38, 39 Loisy, on the Lord's Supper, 257 Lollards, 352 Long Sutton School, 172 Loofs, Prof., 206 Lord's Supper, 254-279; in Mark, 254; in Luke, 255; in 1 Cor., 255; Words of Institution, 256; clue to Paul, 256; Synoptic Record, 257; Pauline Record, 257; King dom and Covenant, 257; in the Didache, 259; Jewish ideas of Covenant, 259; due to a Vision, 261-264; previous Sacred Meals, 262, 263; based on the Mys teries, 264-268; early form of, 269; Engine of Priesthood, 270; resemblances to Mysteries, 270- 273; pagan character, 273-275; in Nonconformity, 275; its practical utility, 275, 276; its inutility, 276-279; conditions of Divine Communion, 279 Love, as Organic Union, 4; as a quality of Personahty, 17; Oxygen of the Soul, 84 Luke xxii. 35-38, 334-838 Lurting, Thomas, 359 n. Maccabees, 54, 55 McGiffert, Dr, 268 n. Magnanimity in States, 381 Manchester College, 176 Manchester Conference, 414 Manchester Theological Lectures, 56 Marcellus, a Martyr, 345 Marcion, 194, 218, 219, 222, 340, 345 Marcus Aurelius, 348, 349 Marinus, a Martyr, 345 Marriage Ceremony, 158, 159; at Church or Chapel, 299; illegiti mate, 378 Marrying out, 156-158 Martineau, on Matthew xxviii. 19, 282 Martyrdom, unreasonable? 45 Maryland Arbitration, 361 Materialistic Argument, 26, 27 Maximilian, a Martyr, 345 Meeting for Sufferings, 294 Members of Meeting for Sufferings, 294 Mennonites, 352 Messiah in Enoch, 57 Messiahs, 50 Micah, 340 Milton, John, 168, 351 Ministers, Liberation of, 295; Re cording of, 297 Ministry, in Barclay, 147; in the Early Church, 187-209; in 1 Cor. xiv., 188, 189; non-sacerdotal, 190,208,213; of women, 193; un professional, 194, 202, 206, 207, 215; prophetic, 195, 196, 198, 200, 207, 210, 2ii, 216, 221-225; as a profession, 227-240 ; from the inside, 242-253; Call to, 252 Ministry and Oversight, meetings of, 296; duties of, 296; queries of, 297 Mission Meetings, 239 Mithras, 226, 264, 267 Monism or Dualism, 35, 36 Montanists, 194, 223-225 Monthly Meeting, 288 Morality, a quality of the indi vidual, 393-895 Moravians, 352 Mourning, 159, 160 Music in Worship, 178-181, 183 Myers, F. W. H„ 43, 73, 74, 79 Mysteries, 68, 264-268, 270-273 Mystery of Christ, 68, 69 Mysticism, leads to Philanthropy, 3°3. 3°4; t° Internationalism, 326 INDEX 441 Nation, what is it? 387; does not die, 387 Nationalism, killed Jesus, 325 Natural Man, 45 Natural Religion, failure of, 49 Newton-in-Bowland School, 172 Nicolai, Dr, 27 Nonconformist Period in Early Church, 209, 213 Non-resistance, 368 Oaths, 143, 378 Oliver Cromwell, 97, 99 One Man Ministry, 209 Only Begotten Son, 70, 71 n. Organisation, of Inspiration, 233- 286; of Quakerism, 287-300; Controversy on, 287, 288; a hindrance, 401 Origen, on the Logos, 23; on Mysteries, 271 ; on the Baptismal Formula, 283; on War, 338, 339, „ 34°. 341. 344. 345. 347. 35° Osiris, 226 Overseers, 298, 299 Owen, Robert, 315 Pacifism and Socialism, 386 Paganism in Christianity, 274 Pain, Problem of, 37 Parables, Cells in the Body of God, 6, 84; of Sewage as type of Evil, 35. 3&; Conscience as Stalactite, 42 ; Alpine plants, 43 ; the Weir and the Waterfall, 78 ; the Coral Island, 80; Jeanie Deans, 81; Physical Agents, 83 ; the Garden of the Soul, 113, 401 ; fine art of living, 171; hand-made and machine-made article, 186; moonlight in the Alps, 317 Pastor of Hermas, 194, 221, 222, 224 Pastoral Epistles, 202, 203 Paterines, 352 Paul, his mysticism, 47, 77; on Natural Religion, 49; on Main tenance, 230-238; Lord's Supper due to, 255-260; in vision, 261- 264; influenced by Mysteries, 265-270; irony of History, 273; at Athens, 326; returns runaway slave, 333 Paulinism, 259 "Peace at any price," 365 Peace principles in America,360-363 Pemberton, James, 362 Pendle Hill, 92 Penington, Alderman, 104, 117 — Isaac, 65, 93, 104-121; Child hood, 105; his Calvinism, 105, 106; period of doubt, 106, 107; Marriage, 107; convinced of Quakerism, 109, no; First Im pressions of Friends, in; at John Crook's, m; Description of Convincement, in, 112; the Seed, 113; Works, 114-116; In wardness, 116, 117; at Chalfont St Peter, 117; six imprison ments, 118; at Woodside, Amer sham, 119; Death, 119; Style, 120, 121 ; addresses the Army, 357! ou Magistracy, 375-377 — Mary, 107; her childish re ligion, 107; Marriage to William Springett, 108 ; Widowhood, 108 ; Wanderings, 108; Marriage to Isaac Penington, 109; Path to Quakerism, no; Threnody on her Husband, 119, 120 Penn, Gulielma Maria, 108 — Wilham, Preface to G. F.'s Journal, 102, 103; on Isaac Penington, 104; Writings of, 122-133; Joseph Besse on, 122; Debates with Vincent, 123; writes The Sandy Foundation Shaken, 123; on the Trinity, 123; on Plenary Satisfaction, 124; on Imputative Righteous ness, 124; imprisoned in the Tower, 125; wrote Innocency with her Open Face, 125; his Christology, 126; wrote No Cross, No Crown, 127; contents thereof, 127-132; second edition, 133; on wearing a sword, 354 Pennsylvania, 360-362 Perfection, not in Hving creatures, 33; doctrine in Barclay, 147 Personality, of God, 5, 19, 20 — of Man, leaf on a tree, 5; Cells in the Body, 6; Miss Rowell's article, n .Paradoxical, 13; gains by giving, 14; Part of God, 14; superior to animals, 15, 16, 17; Characteristics of , 1 6, 1 7 ; Seat of War, 43 ; its weakness, 43; never complete, 44, 45; in light of Psychical Research, 79-85; Coral Island, 80 — of Preacher, 238 Personification, 4 Petrarch, 351 442 INDEX Petrie, Flinders, 262 n. Philadelphia, 174, 176, 223 Philanthropy and Mysticism, 303, 304; now Communal, 310 Philo, 38, 39 Phrygia, 223, 225 Pitt exempts Friends, 358 Plain dress, 154, 155 — language, 153, 154 Pliny, 270 Plutarch, 271 Pneumatomachi, 284 PoHce, 333, 375 Polycarp, 204 Poor, relief of, in the Early Church, 204, 205 Portraiture of Quakerism, 161, 162 Prayer, its subjective side, 8, 9; its vaHdity, 10; Congregational, 10, 181; personal, n Preparation of Sermons, 251 Preparative Meeting, 289 Presbyters, 195, 202-204, 207, 208, 212 Press Gang, 359 Preston Patrick, 93 Priesthood, Christian, 188, 190,198, 200, 215, 225, 226; due to human weakness, 233; dangerous, 403 Primitive Christianity revived, 353 Prophets in O.T., 200 Protection, 391, 392 Protestant Churches, Music, 179; Prayers, 182 Psychical Research, 6; on Mystical Christ, 73; on Human Person ahty, 79-85 Pubhc Worship, 187 Puritanism, 89-91, 97; surviving among Friends, 168 Quaker, diversity on theory of Inward Light, 31-34; Education, 171-177; Cheerfulness, 168; Pe riod in Early Church, 209 Quakerism, relation to Puritan ism, 89, 90, 97; destructive of Calvinism, 91; founded as a Society, 92; joined by Seekers, 93; strong power of survival, 98; its meaning to Isaac Pening ton, in, 112; not an easy Cult, 165; and Art, 168-171; and systematic Theology, 407-409 Quarterly Meeting, 289 Queries, 289-291 ; concerning Min istry and Oversight, 297 Rabindranath Tagore, 77 Reckitt, Sir James, 319 Reconciliation in Christ, 85 Religious Meals, 262; Instinct, 277 Rendel Harris, 38; Prologue to the Gospel of John, 65 Resurrection of Christ, 63, 81 Rhythm of Emotions, 277 Richmond, Declaration of Faith, 4i3 Ring and the Book, 3 Ritual, wooden, 236, 237 Robinson, Maude, 167 n. Roman, Church, 179; Peace, 333; Empire, 333, 346, 347 Rome, 205, 259 Rowell, Miss, article on person ality, n-13 Rowntree, John S., 287*1. — Joseph, 158, 319 — Joshua, notes on 306, 307, 313. 359 Ruskin, Ethics of the Dust, on God , 22; on the Church, 138, 183 n.; on Clerical Profession, 233; puzzled on Peace, 382 Sacraments (see Lord's Supper and Baptism), Validity of, 254; not ordained, 254; for Church members only, 270; limit God, 278; Idolatrous, 279; Magical, 285 Sacrilege of the Human Temple, 44 Salvation Army, 180, 235 Salvation of the Heathen, 145 Samaritans and Jesus, 330, 331 Sanday, Dr, on Christology, 78-75, 212 Sanhedrin, 204 Scattergood, Thomas, 174 Schmiedel, 222 Schools, Friends', 172-175 Scott, Job, 211 Scourge of Cords, 331 Scriptures, 137-142; literal inter pretation, 140-142; not definite on modern issues, 331, 332 Sedbergh, 93 Seekers, 93, 94 Self-creation, 41—43 Sellar, Richard, 359 n. Sense of the Meeting, 295 Separate from the World, 153-167; advantages of, 160, 161; was it necessary? 162-164 Sermon on the Mount, 327 INDEX 443 Sewage, type of Evil, 35, 36 Sex and Religious Emotion, 277, 278 Silence in Worship, 180, 241, 242 Sin, why so degrading, 44 Singing, Outside Worship, 238, 239 Sippell, Theodor, 95 n. Smith, W. Robertson, on Blood Bond, 260 Social Service, 303, 324; Friends' call to, 311, 312 Socinians, 353 Socrates, Daemon, 75 ; on payment for teaching, 230 Son of Man, 54-64 South of France, Friends in, 359 Southern Heroes in War Time, 363 Speaking with Tongues, 192, 193 S. Pietro in Montorio, 190 Springett, Lady (see Mary Pening ton) — Sir William, 108 Stanley, Dean, on Professionalism, 231, 273 n. State and Individual, 377; Moral ity, 380, 381 State Religions, 396-408; compare marriages, 397, 398; Primitive and universal, 398; absurd, 399 Statuta Ecclesiae Antiquae, 215 Stephen, Caroline E., quoted, 375 Stimulants in Religion, 277, 278 Sturge, Joseph, 166, 316 Subliminal Man, 73, 75 Summer Schools, 300 Swarthmoor, 94, 95, 99, 155 (Monthly Meeting), 156 Synod of Aries, 351 Tacitus, 261 Taxes for War, 379 Taylor, John, 172 — Thomas, 94 Teachers, 199 Teachers' Guild, 175 Temple, William, on Nature of Personality, 15 Temptation of Christ, 56, 330 Tennyson, 5, 8, 17, 18, 19, 34. 39, Tertulhan, 195; a Montanist, 224, 225; on Baptismal Formula, 283 ; on Relief of the Poor, 305 ; on War, 339, 34°. 342. 347, 349. 35° Theodosian Code on Paid Ministry, 215 Theologia Germanica, 47, 84 Therapeutae, 262 Thoreau, 324 Threefold Ministry, 215, 216, 224 Thundering Legion, 348, 349 Time's laughing stocks, 48 Tithe, 378 Toleration Act, 172, 378 Tolstoy, 71 n., 367, 368 Tombstones, 159, 160 Tradition and Experience, 3 Transfiguration, 58, 59 Treitschke, 372 Trevelyan, G. M., 166 n., 318 Trinity, 64 ; absent from the Bible, 63, 66; absent from Matthew xxviii. 19 and 1 John v. 7, 8: 281, 284 Trojan Women, 382 Tuke, Samuel, 412 Tuker, Mr M. A. R„ 257, 258 Twelve Legions of Angels, 62 "Two Swords" passage, 334-338 Undesirable occupations, 221 Unity in MultipUcity, 83 Universal Brotherhood, 321 Universal Light, 31-34 Universities, 175, 176 Universities Tests Act, 175 University Extension, 236 Validity of Sacrament, 254, 274 Varying standards of conduct, 343. 347. 348, 393-395 Verrall, Mrs, 80 Virgil on Rome, 372 Visions, 75 Waldenses, 352 Walt Whitman, 46 War, 325-395; in Barclay, 148; Christ's Teaching, 325-330; His Practice, 330, 331 ; not definitely forbidden, 331, 332; Early Christians and the State, 333; "Two Swords" passage, 334- 338; in the Early Fathers, 338- 348; Christians in the Army, 348-350; adopted by the Catho Uc Church, 350-352; refused by heretics, 352, 353; first Quaker testimony on, 353-358; testi mony during Napoleonic War, 358, 359; testimony in experi ence, 359-364; tragic issue, 364- 366; and Force, 367-369; False- 444 INDEX hood in, 369, 370; Offensive and Defensive, 371-374; Carohne E. Stephen on, 375; and Pohce, 375-377J Taxes, 379; and Character, 382-384; and De mocracy, 385-387; and Nation ality, 387, 388; and Empire, 388, 389 War and Social Order Committee, 319-324; Universal Brotherhood, 321; Self -Development, 321; Mutual Trust, 322; Full Co operation, 322; Universal Ser vice, 323; Public Mindedness, 323 ; First things first, 324 Watson, WilUam, on God, 8 Weismann, 26, 42 Wesley, John, 163-165 Westcott and Hort, 255, 256 Westminster Abbey, 182, 183 Whitehead, George, 220 Whittaker, Robert, 173 Whittier, 276 Wilson, W. E., 338 ot. Winstanley, Gerrard, 306 Wisdom of Solomon, 71 n. Wisdom origin of Logos, 39 Women's Ministry, 193, 211 Woodbrooke, 176, 300 Woolman, John, 307, 308, 324 Word of God, 24 World Soul, 38 Worship, and Fellowship, 31, 186; in Barclay, 147; Asceticism in, 178-186; Music in, 178, 179; Singing in, 180, 181; Formal Prayer in, 181, 182; in West minster Abbey, 182, 183; Pubhc, 187 WycUfie, 89 Xenophon, 230 Yearly Meeting, Epistle of 1836, 166; of 1843, 166; Minutes on Education, 172, 173; Constitu tion and Work, 292-294 Zoker, 201 CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BV J. B. PEACE, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS