USA > Ohio > Miami County > West Milton > Centennial anniversary of West Branch Monthly Meeting of Friends, 1807-1907 > Part 10
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We have seen in the concept of personality the very conditions meet to fulfil the ideas insisted on by Christ. In personality lies the power of choice, the necessary adjunct of will and freedom. In the use of choice,
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man, from the most primitive records, has failed or missed. Weakened and scarred by many a fall he has wandered and tangled himself in meshes of sin and error till, helpless and lost, he knows full well the awful reality of that proverb, "A redeemer or I perish !"
Man is evidently so entangled in a wilderness of sin and so preoccupied with notions of his own that he may be truly called lost, hopelessly lost, and dead, hope- lessly dead: Lost, till a Shepherd find him and carry him back to the fold; dead, till the Christ speak to him and regenerate his soul with a new knowledge, a new feeling, a new power, a new love. Believing that God does this is only to say again that God is immanent with the human spirit and is ever transcendent also with infinite power and goodness to co-operate in every turn and movement toward the fulfilment of the highest and best capacities of men. In some such intimacy as this has not man a right to expect salvation from , his God, his Master, and his Father ?
The Quaker believes he has found some such favor as this with God. He has made a lofty claim indeed, but he has brought God great honor, for it is the longing of the Father's heart to commune with and save all His sons and daughters. Standing at the door He knocks! knocks! knocks ! And when the door opens, what a joyful guest He is! O, that we Quakers might learn to use our hearts again, to trust legitimate feeling, as we trust our eyes, weigh with reason as we would measure with our hands, try with our powers of judgment and conscience every risen impulse as we would scrutinize a stranger at our door. Walking thus with an open heart and an open mind we could never fail to know God's help and to be able to do beyond our human strength. This is essentially the Christian doctrine of comfort. Comfort implies co- operation. God personally in touch with man in the co-operating and reciprocal sense in which the human character is built up as a real divine creation is that Comforter which all may find, and, I may say, is the only true and blessed Comforter there is to be found.
Give us a return to the essentials of Quakerism, to the Rock of Christianity, to this permanent and noble doctrine of the Spirit, so beautifully illustrated and so valiantly tested in the conflict of early Quakerism with the externalism, priest-craft and apostate Protestant- ism that warred the early Quakers to their graves.
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Noblest and divinest of human dogmas is this doctrine of "the leading of the Spirit" if seen in its rationality and its trueness.
"Awake, awake, put on thy strength,"
cried the Hebrew prophet to his deaf hearers and heedless brethren,
"Awake, as in the days of old,
The generations of ancient times," he cried.
And well might some Quaker prophet exclaim : Awake, awake, put on thy strength,
O Quakerism !
Awake as in the days of old,
The generations of ancient times.
One might feel willing at this point to desist from further disquisition on Quakerism, for, indeed, while this element, the practical doctrine of the Spirit, is maintained, Quakerism will survive. But there are other elements ; we shall find our religion going deep into the subsoil of human needs. We love to find it so solidly founded upon the Rock of Truth.
In our quest for a Quaker foothold we shall search not so much among the philosophies as among the simple records of Christ, that we may see if possible, what is most accordantly Christian ; that is, what is in accord with the example and teachings of Christ, to- gether with legitimate deductions from the interpreta- tions of the Apostles, and the experience of the church in history. Using these sources, I am happy again to believe that Quakerism is in close accord with the best conclusion of Christianity. I will assume, however, the axiom that the simplest is often the truest, the neediest is often the best. This is certainly applicable to Christianity. If I should undertake to give just the truest possible definition of Jesus' religion, and give it in a few words, it would be in this, that it is the answer to the genuine feelings of need in human souls. The most inherent needs must have their answers in ways most real and satisfactory. The soul that is crazed with hunger cannot be saved with the gift of a Bible, its need is bread. The soul that is píning for a sympathetic word cannot be saved by a dinner or a garment, its need is a friend. A soul that is burdened with guilt cannot be saved by a vision of Sehenna, its need is Christ's word of reconciliation and love. And so on, Christianity really refuses to be bound down to a philosophy, it seeks to find its way
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into all the streams of human drifting and draw in like a great net all to a sifting test of a visitorial call to be better. Quakerism stoutly refuses to view man and the world as operated upon any mechanical and predestinarian principle. It sees running through all the creative work that the design is based upon intel- ligent moral purpose. We see God displaying benefi- cent purpose in all His world. Opportunity for the full development and display of the inherent and manly powers lie spread out before us all. Let us appropri- ate, expand, unfold, see, grow. We can put forth our best, and then it will be no inconsistent thing for God to do miraculous things where He is actuated by a motive to help or save. A miracle may be the unusual thing, but it can never be the impossible or unlikely. It will be the expected in a system where crises speak as Providences, where history is a background for the divine revelation, and where destiny is to be thought of as the ends of moral purpose. Moral purpose and opportunity attended by co-ordinate means of judg- ment are notes which Quakerism see spread in all the manifold designs of the world we live in. Upon these bases we find too that divine sympathy is a most pre- cious Christian reality.
Quakerism, while it may be seen, has never upheld predestinarian views, neither has it held to a soft- hearted universalism in which judgment is weakened by mercy. We cherish a reverent fear of God. We believe that the appeals of God in living inward con- sciousness coincide with extended opportunity in out- ward steps of life. We always maintain a sober belief in a moral order of all things, and therefore hold not to any over-reliance on divine mercy, nor do we dis- trust the feelings of our hearts that in all pursuit there is a loving, co-operating Hand of Providence. The weakest impulse is not to be spurned, God watches it. The Quaker, if he understands himself, has always looked for God to be ready and near wherever he is called upon to act or speak. The Quaker view sees God in such paternal light that the poorest, nakedest, meanest soul that ever pauses to lift its sullied face upward toward heaven finds-startled at His goodness -that God is watching; watching to catch the faint turn of the eye or discern the weakest longing to be better, and to such a one speak in tones inimically sweet and full of solicitude, "My child"! God never forsakes a man till in utter repudiation the man ceases
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to respond to any order of the universe that includes solicitude or call.
Quakerism implies in its members that they are Friends of God. This in turn implies that as Friends they are capable of discerning and feeling His will. The Quaker method therefore of "uniting" in judg- ment upon the various concerns of its meetings implies a high and eloquent testimony to spirituality. We are not always equal to this high ideal, but when we are, we stand in the higher realms of power and usefulness. When the "Hand of the Lord" is laid upon any one His Hand does not hastily depart or His Spirit flit away in transient mood. But deeper and deeper still will the thing settle upon the minds and hearts till with full wrought conviction one can rise up with authority in God's messages. But while conviction is fallen upon one, not infrequently the same is felt by another. But let us now pass on to still another which we may class among the permanent elements. We shall find it in this: That the highest types of human life and conduct arise when man recognizes and owns his indefeasible rights of sonship to God, his Creator. It may be thought that this assigns too great value to man's worth and deserts. It may be thought that this opens too broad a view of God's paternal love to in- clude all men in the list of sonship. But it does not seem so in the attitude of Christ.
He refused to see in any a condition beyond the yearning love of God. He viewed in all men some- thing of eternal destiny, and therefore worth the supreme efforts of saving care. He refused to see in any one, however sunken, a moral evil which his gospel could not cure, if received. He insisted that all should recognize in God the purest motives of paternal love and in fellowmen something of an undeniable broth- erhood. We owe to all the obligation that belongs to the conception of brotherhood and common Father- hood. The first principle, therefore, in leading men everywhere to respect one another in their just rights is to lead them to recognize, as did Christ, their high- born possibilities, their undeniable responsibilities to a Heavenly Father.
This is a note for our modern Quakerism to sound wider and louder. Our older Quaker theology, while cautious on this point, nevertheless yields itself easily to it. In the broad catholicity of the "Universal Light," and in the charitable view taken of the heathen by our early theologians, we have the evident percep-
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tions of this great truth. But the lowering clouds of Augustinianism soon darkened the day of early Quak- erism into twilight and obscurity.
Augustinianism is too great an antithesis to the Gospel of hope and encouragement to suffer this view to be spoken of freely in an age so polemic and con- flicting as that which superseded the Reformation period down to the close first early stages of Quaker- ism. But Christ can now be refused no longer. He has been obscured and deflected for centuries by the gloss of spurious dogmas that have obliterated many of the loveliest lines of the Gospel. It stands for us now to mellow down some of the rough pathway that has been cast up by the older theology for men to walk on. Their feet are bleeding and men have mutinied. The panic of the camp is not over with yet. But we Quakers ought not to be panic-stricken. We should hastily step forward and reveal our God whom others have longed and looked for. It is ours to do a great mission. Men will repent if we cease to ignore their worth, but reveal to them the indignity of their sin and the responsibility of their sonship.
Quakerism has practiced this Gospel better than she has preached it. This Gospel of love is welcome, though it has been much suppressed for lo! these cen- turies. Jesus lifted the burden, but men immediately crucified him! The church kept her silence! Mean- while the awful ignorance enveloped the perishing multitudes. Then their blood cried out from the abysmal depths in an ominous prayer for relief. God is a God whom importunity moves to compassion. The fear and suffering of the human heart has caused God to break through the crusted dogmas and mailed rituals of ancient creeds and commission a new apostolate. He commissions us to go forth as messengers of the better Gospel. The impulse of hope long suppressed becomes again the born day-star of joy and triumph to humanity. God is understood better than ever to- dav as viewing us in the tender feelings of Fatherhood.
But I ask, will Quakerism embrace this message? Will we feel the true motions of the Eternal Spirit and arise with the kinder light, the wider, more glad- some news? I feel that we will, we must; that a new generation of apostles will again go forth-fear- less, devoted, martyr-spirited. Will you? Will I?
But what if we fail! What if we will not read these sure lines of the Gospel for this God's hour ?
Well, then, if such failure is coming, let some wild cataclysm of history terminate our vagrant course ! Let us not survive to failure! Let not our noble an- cestors, worthy to find in us still nobler sons,-let not their fair names, in a critical hour like this, be tar- nished in history by our stupidity and fall! But we will not betray them. We will prove ourselves Quakers of their stock and kin. We will be heroes, leaders, martyrs, too,-all for Christ's sake. We will be Quak- ers ; all the world shall know. We will plant the ensign on foreign fields ; among enlightened people and dark- ened heathen. We will press the trumpet of love and good will and peace to every trembling breast of humanity, and say, God's child, arise! Everlasting habitations are thine by the Father's will. Prove thy claim. Do not perish !
If you will indulge me a little farther, I will speak of yet another before I close.
Quakerisin has stood for holiness. The Qauker has taken to himself the command of God, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." The Quaker also sees in God that the central element of His divine character is goodness. Upon this principle God directs his own action, and upon the similar standard he calls upon men to act. God is able to recreate the hearts of men in divine life so that they can enter into the goodness that really separates them from what is base to what is truly sacred in the role of everyday affairs. Holiness is simple goodness expressed in words and deeds.
With this conception of holiness we can easily elimi- nate much that passes under that label as being unreal to the Quaker idea. To him holiness was his daily walk. It was his daily speech, his dress and address ; his worship, his every mien and performance. By his practice of the co-operation of God in soul experience he strove to keep his heart right and good. The im- pulses of his soul were the dynamics of his deeds. Thus he met the problem of sin by the positive prin- ciple of holiness, as Whittier says :
The Quaker of olden time !- How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime. He walked the dark earth through. The lust of power, the love of gain, The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain The purity within.
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As I speak these words of Whittier on "The Quaker of Olden Time," the vision comes back again of the pioneers of a hundred years ago. But we must not hold that vision long. The past is closed up behind The present, the great present, opens right before
us. us. And, now, we who remain, the remnant of Old West Branch, standing at the milestone of a hundred years, let us think for a moment what that means. A solemn praise rises from our hearts, and reverence comes not amiss when we remember how these pio- neers suffered in toil and sacrifice for a home here among the primeval forests of early days. Here they planted by the side of their cornfields the meeting- house and the cemetery-the one a resting place for the soul, the other a resting place for the body. But deeper still than the thoughts of self must have been the hope and faith they cherished for their posterity. As we look around us today we see all this God- favored community. Shall not our hearts be bowed in honest solicitude, God helping, we will live out and express, as did our Fathers of old, that holiness of character which will insure the future of a hundred more years of Quakerism to remain here and broaden, and be a blessing to the people that shall live here and shall come and go among these same fields and groves and towns of old West Branch.
But as in memory today we engage in hallowed speech and sit with idealized thought concerning the characters that are gone, I want us now to recall that the past, in very fact, was peopled with living men, real men and women, who felt and strove, and wished, and played at the drawstrings of life just as mortals now who live upon the earth. They had their heart closets, just as we. The halo that rises like a celestial diadem above their heads, we can now behold, not because their lot was blessed beyond our own, but because we see that amid life's way, though rugged be the journey, impulses of good which rise up in loyal hearts may always find their counterpart in noble deeds and kindness, in devout worship, in genuine holiness of character. And, my Friends, what these have done, we can do! Impulses to do good have not ceased with the passing of these generations. But these same impulses are ours. Let us act. A good impulse born in the heart and struggling for incarna- tion in some deed of kindness ought to be a vision to
the soul nobler than the "sign of Constantine," and should acclaim with divinity tones,
"By this sign conquer!"
THE QUAKERISM OF THE FUTURE. BY ELBERT RUSSELL.
It is always dangerous to attempt the role of prophet about the near future. Events are likely to rise up and prove one a false prophet. Conscious of this danger, I shall attempt the safer task of showing what will be the natural result of conditions and forces now ex- isting.
In my address on the Quakerism of the Nineteenth Century, I called attention to the great growth of the cities and to the shifting of population from the coun- try to the city which characterized the last decades of the Nineteenth Century. It is evident that if Friends are to become a power in this country during the Twentieth Century, they must take possession of the cities. The dominating forces of the future are those which radiate from the cities. This is true even of the forces that mould the life of the rural districts. Through the telephone and the newspaper, by the rural mail delivery and the interurban cars, the forces of both good and evil move out from the city to control the thought, the standards of life and the religion of the nation.
If the Quakerism of the future is to minister to the life of the people, it must not only move to the cities and adjust its ways to the conditions of city life, but it must make the changes that are demanded to adjust itself to the new conditions of modern life and thought. The fact that Quakerisin has preserved its existence while undergoing all the changes, not only of the Nine- teenth Century, but of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth, shows that it is not a hard and fast system. It is essentially a matter of life and spirit. It consists pri- marily of right personal relations between man and God. and between man and man. The new conditions of the Twentieth Century demand new methods of stating the gospel, new means of bringing it home to men and of applying it to modern life. The Quakerism of the future must have, not a new gospel, but a new embodiment of it suited to the new world to which it must endeavor to bring the gospel.
A study of the changes that have come silently with
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the growth in civilization, the conquest of the wilder- ness and the building of our cities, will indicate in what directions these changes must be made. In the first place, under the conditions of modern city life, we find that the old fears are gone. The terrors of our pioneer fathers, who founded meetings like West Branch, were the dangers of the wilderness, the In- dian, the wild beast, the pestilence and the forces of nature, such as the storm and flood and lightning. Men met these dangers with a feeling of helplessness or struggled against them in great uncertainty. But through the inventions and co-operation of modern society there has come a sense of mastery over the world unknown to former generations. The Indian, panther, wolf, and pestilence have vanished. We no longer fear small-pox, cholera and yellow-fever as our fathers did. Our steamships make their schedule against the storm. We dike rivers to confine the flood or else predict their overflow in time to escape its danger. Our philanthropy sustains cities stricken by the earthquake while they rebuild so as to defy a future quaking. Man no longer feels that he is a worm of the dust, but rather feels as a strong man, armed, looking for new worlds to conquer. As a consequence of these changes the old appeal to fear has lost its power. Examine the liturgies that express the sense of need, the fears and the prayers of men of past cen- turies, and one finds there expressions of fear, a sense of abject helplessness and petitions for deliverance from dangers, all of which are strange to the modern mind. The appeals which touch the modern man are not such appeals to his helplessness and native fears as stirred men to strange outbursts in the old revivals, but are calls to courageous warfare against sin and demands for the consecration of himself at his highest efficiency to the work of God.
A second change which makes necessary a different method in our religious teaching is the idea of the reign of law. The great achievements of modern life have been secured by the discovery of the laws of nature which enable men to predict and control the forces and powers of the natural world. The enter- prises of which the Nineteenth Century boasts depend for their successful achievement on the unfailing relia- bility of nature. Caprice and accident and mystery are the things that are feared. The things which are mysterious, just because they are incalculable and
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therefore uncontrollable, mar man's work and render his success uncertain. Consequently man sees today the highest benevolence in forces that are calculable and regular. The electrician dreads rather than rever- ences the lightning and the short circuit. As a result of this, the religion of the future will find its evidence of God rather in His regular providence than in the supernatural or miraculous. It will be in the regular order of the world that man will find the highest proof of God, and the supreme test and evidence of divinity will be found in fixed and reliable character rather than in mere power or mystery.
As a result of the changes in political ideals which a century of democracy has produced in the American 1 cople, the source of authority in religious thinking has changed. Democracy has taught us that authority in government rests not on the arbitrary will of a sovereign, but on the sense of justice and right in the hearts of the people, and just as the age of arbitrary and external authority in politics has passed away, so also it has ceased to be the power it once was in the realms of thought and of religion. In the future with a fast increasing number of men, the convincing power of truth and righteousness is to be the only acknowledged authority. The generation that is just now going to influence the work of the world has been trained in the schools to seek for proof by experi- ment. It will inevitably carry the same attitude of mind into every sphere of life. Proof by experiment will be the ultimate authority in science, conviction of right in government, and the evidence of living expe- rience the final authority in religion. As a result of these changes, it will be more effective to represent God, not as an absolute sovereign, but as a Father, seeking to lead his children and to reveal himself to them. The tone of the one who most successfully leads the coming age in religion will not be dogmatic. It will claim no authority but that which proceeds from the demonstra- tion of individual and collective spiritual experience. Its message will be. not "Believe because I say so of be damned," but, "Come and see."
Another characteristic of the future which must affect the presentation of our message is the distinction which men make to-day between the spiritual and the material. Time, place and external appearances belong to the world of matter. Faith, hope, love, reverence and conscience are things of the spirit. The things
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that belong particularly to the spiritual life are more clearly seen to be not matters of place and time and outward form. The changes that have gradually been brought about in our conceptions of the universe since the days of Copernicus and Gallileo have rendered the old naive religious geography impossible to-day. As the telescope has been turned upon the heavens and our sense of the vastness of space so greatly increased, as we realize that the daily rotation of the earth has robbed up and down of any possible meaning for the universe as a whole, we find it no longer possible to locate God and Heaven in a given place, bearing a definite relation to the world, and this vanishing of geographical location in religion has turned our atten- tion inward to spiritual things, has given us a new sense that the essence of religion consists of those things that are spiritual and eternal, not by pilgrim- ages to sacred spots nor by waiting for holy seasons, but by the true spirit of worship in all places and by a spirit of brotherly love at all times must men seek God.
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