Rufus Jones, Quakerism - a religion of life

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owar ill more Lecture

(Quakerism; A Religion of Life-CU

Rufus M. Jones


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_\ STUQIA IN

Presented toTHE LIBRARY

of

VICTORIA UNIVERSITYToronto

byMr. R.W. Rogers


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Swartbmore Xecture*


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First Edition, 1908.Second Edition, 1912.

(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]


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Swartbmore Xecture,

QUAKERISM IA RELIGION OF LIFE.

BYRUFUS M. JONES, M.A., D.Litt.Author of "Social Law in the Spiritual World" etc.

LONDON : HEADLEY BROTHERS,EISHOPSGATE. B.C.


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DA1131(912.tMMANUEi,

HEAHLKY BKOTHFRSPKIMKKS,

LOM-oX . AND AMiMiK


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preface.

book is the first of a series ofpublic addresses to be known as the

Swarthmore Lectures. The Lectureship was established by the WoodbrookeExtension Committee, at a meetingheld December Qth, 1907. The Minuteof the Committee provides for " anannual lecture on some subject relatingto the Message and Work of the Societyof Friends." The name " Swarthmore "was chosen in memory of the home ofMargaret Fox, which was always opento the earnest seeker after Truth, andfrom which loving words of sympathyand substantial material help weresent to fellow-workers.


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6 preface.The Woodbrooke Extension Com

mittee requested Rufus M. Jones, M.A.,D.Litt., of Haverford College, Pennsylvania, to give the first lecture on theevening preceding the holding of theFriends Yearly Meeting of 1908. Inaccordance with this decision, thelecture was delivered in the CentralHall, Birmingham, on May igth.The Swarthmore Lectureship has been

founded with a two-fold purpose : firstly,to interpret further to the membersof the Society of Friends their Messageand Mission ; and secondly, to bringbefore the public the spirit, the aimsand the fundamental principles of theFriends. This first lecture presentsQuakerism as a religion of experienceand first-hand reality a dynamic, practical religion of life.


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manent

and, so far as one may prophesy from 3nteC8tthe nature of the soul of man, it alwayswill be a supreme concern of the race,though it will undoubtedly wax andwane as the central point of view shifts.There are vast bends and eddies in theonward current of progress. Sometimes one, and sometimes another,commanding interest sweeps into theforeground, and religion may seem, forthe moment, to be a losing power.


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Quahertem :Discoveries of new physical forces and

of rich raw material resources bring oneras of unwonted industrial expansion,and the drift towards wealth andmaterialism appears, for a time, to bethe main current of human interest.The little prophets who mistake surfacewaves for the ground-swell set of oceancurrents, begin prematurely to predictthe exhaustion of religion and the dryingup of its springs.

Scientific geniuses hit upon some central secret of Nature, and find a newclue to the meaning of the riddle. Newmethods of research are proposed withamazing results, and men gather to thequest with the keenest passion. Accurate knowledge, exact description,formulation of unvarying laws, becomethe foremost interests, and it seems


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a tteliofou of Xtfe. 9possible to explain every phenomenonand event of the world system, and tobring everything, from inmost centreto farthest periphery, under the reignof law. The history of religion againseems to be winding up. Little prophets,who mistake street lamps for perennialstars, hurry to announce that religionhas about run through its circuit, thatits meteor flight, with its trail across theworld, is nearly spent !

But they all reckon ill. They haveused too short a plummet line. Theyhave sounded only the shoals and inlets,not the deeps of the soul. The bend ofthe current sweeps round a little fartheras history progresses, and the ancient setof the shoreless sea is felt again, andthe soul is once more aware of its tidesfrom the nether springs of eternal life.

2


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10 Quakerism :Emerson was sound in his great prophecy that " we need not fear that wecan lose anything by the progress of thesoul. The soul may be trusted to theend."

As in the past, so in the future, theprimary concerns of serious men will bespiritual concerns : how to becomeallied with God, how to enjoy Him forever, how to overcome the fleeting andtemporal by the power of the permanentand eternal, how to build into realitythat unquenched faith in a Kingdom ofGod which all true prophets have helpedto kindle. The curve is not backwardsbut forwards. There is a steady, irresistible onward push toward furtherdevelopment. We are not called tofan a flickering flame or to nurse a dyinghope. It is not our mission to prop a


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a Keligion ot Xtfe* ntottering ark, or to bolster up an artificial system. We have to deal, rather,with the aptitudes and hungers of thesoul itself, and with religion grounded inthe very nature of tlungs.

The primary service of a religious body His therefore prophetical , its business is tohelp men to find the clues to the meaningand significance and power of life, to further the discovery of God, and to assistmen to draw upon the great reservoirs ofspiritual energy. The days of the priestare over. The demand is now for prophets.Men do not want sacred persons to " do "their religion for them ; they wantilluminated leaders who can enlarge theirvision, who can interpret, in the languageof to-day, the eternal realities of theSpirit.


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12" Would God," said a great leader,

" that all the Lord s people wereprophets." That is the ideal whichmust always be in our eye a lay religionwith no sharp distinctions of classor privilege, but producing spiritualleaders, through whom God, stooping,can show sufficient of His light for thosein the dark to rise by, until all see forthemselves.

This distinctly prophetical work hasalways been the mission of Friends.No one can read the account of GeorgeFox s visit to Oliver Cromwell withoutfeeling that Fox was there as a prophet.Carlyle has happily put the greatQuaker s message to the Protector : Hehad " much discourse with him concerning Life and concerning Death ; concerning the Unfathomable Universe in


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H Religion of Xffe. 13general, and the Light in it from Above,and the Darkness in it from Below ; to allof which the Protector carried himselfwith much moderation." Yes,George,"

adds Carlyle ;" this Protector

has a sympathy with the Perennial, andfeels it across the Temporary." That iswhat the great Quakers of all generationshave, in one way or another, been tryingto do ; to discourse concerning Lifeand Death, concerning the Unfathomable Universe, with its Light from Aboveand its Darkness from Below ; concerning the Perennial, which is revealedin the Temporal, the Abiding in theshifting aspects of Life.

" Still, as of old, in Beavor s Vale,O man of God ! our hope and faithThe Elements and Stars assail.And the awed spirit holds its breath,Blown over by a wind of death."


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rcacbtnoSpirit ofEarlpQuakerism.

14 Quakerism :It is our business to-day to have a

message concerning life and concerningdeath, which helps men to rest theirsouls on God s

" Immortal Love and FatherhoodAnd trust Him, as His Children should."

It looked for a brief period as thoughQuakerism was to be a dominant type ofreligion among Anglo-Saxon people.Two hundred years ago, there were inEngland, Scotland, Ireland and Wales,approximately 75,000 Friends, 10,000of whom were in the city of Londonalone. In America, they formed thechief religious force in Pennsylvania andNew Jersey. They had, for a generation, been a leading factor both in thereligious and political life of RhodeIsland. In Maryland, they were nextin influence to the Roman Catholic


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H tRelifltcm of Xtfe. 15founders, and they had a large YearlyMeeting in Virginia.The Carolinas had already had a

Quaker Governor who had re-organised the colony, and given its promiseof future greatness. In New York,Friends were building a chain ofMeeting-houses parallel with the Hudson, and were already one of theleading denominations in the newmetropolis, and even in Puritan Massachusetts they were rapidly spreading inall the settled parts of the colony. Theywere everywhere robust and virile, withgreat visions of spiritual conquest in theireyes ; they undoubtedly cherished thefaith that God had raised them up torestore primitive Christianity, and to bethe rebuilders of the Church the Churchof the Spirit.


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16 Quakerism :We are not concerned now with the

story of the slowing down and thedwindling power. It is a drearychapter with some comedy, and muchthat is tragic. Our great concern now isto deal wisely, if possible, and with someof that old time robustness and virility, with present opportunities. Onceagain, the out-reaching spirit of the earlydays has broken out among us, a newenthusiasm has quickened us, and someof that old time white-hot conviction ofa prophetic mission has touched us. Weare swinging back to the " fiery positive." The question, then, confrontsus : what are we here for ? Towhat peculiar mission has God calledus ? What contribution have we tomake toward the spiritual progress ofthe world ?


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a tteltaton of Xtfe. 17Our supreme testimony, as a Society, ZTbC 1Rcnl

has been the testimony to the realpresence of Christ, as an ever-livingSpirit who reveals Himself to all soulsof vision and loyalty. We have undertaken, as a people, to demonstrateand exhibit that true religion is thelife of God in the lives of men, topresent a Gospel, growing, expanding,progressing with the enlarging life ofthe race, grounded in the centraltruth that God is forever humanlyrevealing Himself, suffering over sin,condemning evil, making hearts burnwith His love and sacrifice, andworking now as He worked formerly inGalilee and Judea. A Friends meetingis organised and held in bold relianceon the actual presence and communionof the Divine Spirit. Friends have set


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1 8 Quahertsm :themselves the task of producing acongregational church with no headbut the unseen Christ, the creation ofa religious fellowship which is basedsimply on the response of the membership to this living, though invisiblepersonal Presence.We cannot be the true successors ofthe Quaker apostles of the Commonwealth era unless we can make this faithin God as a present, immanent Spirit,live and virile, unless we can give convincing evidence that He voices Himselfin the deeps of the human soul, andthat Divine revelation is a continuousreality.The religion which is to prevail, and

which is to nourish the heart of the expanding race, will be one that brings tomen the live faith that God is the


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a lRclt0tou ot Xife. 19environing Presence to all souls, and thatHe is building an ever enlarging spiritualcity a republic of God not in thedistant heavens, but out of our lives,and that the heart of the universe isLove a love that triumphs just as fastas it wins human lives through whichto express itself. We are thus called,by the very obligation of our spiritualpedigree, to be the bearers to-day of atype of Christianity which is essentially inward, spiritual and mystical.

By mystical religion I do not in anysense mean something dim, vague orhazy ; something occult, that veils thestars of our ancient faith in a blur offog ; some vapoury substitute for thereligion of Christ by which apostles andprophets and martyrs and millions of


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20 ^uahertsm :" common people " have overcome theworld. I mean a religion of inward,first-hand conviction, a religion rootedand grounded in experience, a religionwhose authority is as little endangeredby science and criticism, as is theauthority of the multiplication table, orthe law of gravitation.Few of us who are here can be unaware

of the situation in the world about us.Our generation has passed through themost profound and sweeping intellectualtransition I might almost say, revolution that has ever been experienced ina single generation; for even the LutheranReformation did not, to anything likethe same extent, affect the minds of men.This generation has witnessed " anirresistible maturing of the mind " whichhas made much of our old knowledge


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a tteltoion of Xife, 21look as outgrown as baby clothes on thegrown-up man.

Science is no longer a series of happyguesses which may be right, and whichmay just as well be wrong. It is now awell-knit system of knowledge, testedand verified by facts, so accurate that ifa new planet were suddenly hurled intospace, subject to all the complicatedattractions of the other heavenly bodies,we could tell precisely where it would bein its travels a thousand years from thisminute. The triumphs of science havebeen due to an insistence on facts. Thevictories have been won by turning awayfrom vague arm-chair speculation, andby exact observation of what actuallyoccurs. The result of this laboratorymethod is that the scientist now speakswith an unparalleled authority. The


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22 Quakerism :eclipse, once assigned to the caprice ofevil spirits, is now explained by a well-charted order of events ; and invisiblebacteria, obedient to biological laws,have completely usurped the place of baddemons as the explanation of disease.The same thing is true in the domain

of history. The historian no longerguesses, he has become scientific in hismethods. By patient, painstaking attention to the minute details of ancientdocuments, and by searching scrutinyof even the most insignificant features,which for centuries meant nothing toreaders, the historian has made the pastlive again, and has transformed most ofour ideas about the men and the movements of antiquity. He, too, speakswith authority an authority rock-ribbed with an array of facts.


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H TCdfflion of OLife. 23Well, to put a very great matter into

a very few words, this is what has happened : a new interpretation of ouruniverse and of its history has comeamong us. It is being given with an irresistible authority, compared with whichthe authority of the Pope of Rome,with his slowly builded system of dogmaand traditions, seems as ineffective aswould be an army with bow and arrows ,against one with Maxim guns.The youth of the present day are being

trained to think accurately and to acceptonly what has the compelling, coercivepower of facts behind it. Whateverwe may believe on hearsay, or from habit,custom and tradition, the generationcrowding behind us is going to carrythis reverence for facts, this demand forverification and demonstration, to every-


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24 Quakerism :thing that affects their lives. Thisspirit is already everywhere abroadand must be reckoned with. Andthe most significant result of it isa tendency, everywhere more or lessapparent, to turn away from tradition,from superstition, from religion of the"ecclesiastical type," to an inward,spiritual, more or less mystical, religion.The centre of gravity in religious systems has altered its place. Men areasking for a religion which builds solidlyon the veritable facts of experience.They are not satisfied to be told thatGod once dealt directly with men,in some remote dispensation when Godwas more neighbourly ; that at the far-off origin of this religion of ours, therewere facts of experience which proved theDivine Presence, but that now it must


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H IReliaion of Xife 25be taken on hearsay and second-handauthority ; that the only evidence ofGod s love is the existence of certain" letters " from Him, written whenthe race was young, or the testimony of certain chosen priests who aresupernaturally raised above the humanlevel. They want to feel their ownsouls burn within them with a senseof His Presence now. They seek aconsciousness of finite spirit meetinginfinite Spirit, an inward testimony tothe Great Companion of our souls. Theyask for the evidence, the demonstration,of a new creation, which enables a man,once weak and sinning, to overcomeworld, flesh and devil, and to live inholiness and self-forgetful love. Theydemand a Christ who is " warm, sweet,tender even yet " a present Friend,

4


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26 Quakerism ;inspiring, drawing, feeding the soulits spring and source of strength, makingit cry, whether in joy or in affliction :" Abba, Father," and giving an earnestof the power of the resurrection andthe dynamic of an endless life.The type of religion which is to prevail

and which will support the individual,and nourish the ideals of the nation inthese days of expanding knowledge andof scientific attitude, is one of thisexperimental sort one of inwardconviction, of first-hand authority, ofdemonstration of the spirit and power.

It was as the bearers and exponentsof a dynamic religion of inward experience and conviction that our foundersmade early Quakerism so very powerful. They had felt God s healingdrop into their souls. As they sat in


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a Heliaton of Xife. 27their Meetings, they felt the evil in themweakening, and the good raised up, andthey spoke of what they knew. Asthey walked the fields they were uplifted with openings of the personallove of God for them. Only by returning to a similar first-hand religion,inwardly felt and buttressed on thefacts of the soul s experience, can wespeak to our age with power.We are in the fringe, as I have said, ofa great movement of mystical religion.It is well under way in almost all partsof the world. Cheap substitutes forspiritual bread are at a discount everywhere. Dry and juiceless performancesin the name of religion do not speak tothe condition of men. The soul of manis crying out for something real. Asalways happens at such times, when, as


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a8 Quakerism :Milton says, men try to " purge andunseal their long abused sight at thefountain itself of heavenly radiance,"there is much confusion, and some tendency to take will-o-the-wisps for celestiallights. Unfortunately, it has to beadded that religious quacks abound,and beguile the gullible in shoals.The hunger of heart, the silent passionfor the living God, the ground-swell ofa deeper spiritual life, are good signs ;but there was never a greater need forgenuine prophets and spiritual guides.The easy-going solutions will not do.There are no quick elixirs for the soul.We can minister to our age only on condition that we become the bearers of areligion which verifies itself in experienceas the laws of the universe do. We mustmake our Meetings places where souls


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H Ucliofon of OLife* 29win their deliverance from sin feedingplaces, too, for the hungry soul, and wemust be able to give the evidence anddemonstration of a Companion, Friend,Saviour, Father, here-present now aliving, personal Spirit, who is " closerthan breathing, . . . nearer thanhands or feet."

But the utterance of this mysticalmessage is only one of our tasks. If weare to be true prophets to our age, we - . .must reinterpret the historical revelation Gospel.of God, so that again it shall becomequick and powerful. It is never wiseor safe to sever the connection with history. All our gains and triumphs, ourvisions and ideals, have in them theprecious life blood of remote prophets,and saints, and martyrs. The spiritual


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30 Quakerism :travail oi the

ages is in our most modestvirtue, our most primary doctrine ; itis a part of the necessary air we breathe.Our generation needs, as truly as the

first century needed, the dominant ideas,the compelling message of the Gospel ofChrist. In the war of creeds and underthe mummy-wrappings of " Church-ianity " these revelation-truths havetoo often lain obscured and forgotten,like a precious pearl in a rubbish heap.The world is so accustomed to a paganised Christianity, and to a scholasticallytransformed faith, that Christ s primarytruths still sound new and strange. Icannot do more than name them here :God is always and everywhere an infiniteFather. His nature is love and tenderness. He shares Himself, He givesHimself, He docs the best He can for all


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H TRelioion of Xtfc* 3 1His creatures, His method of redemptionis love and self-sacrifice. The DivineHeart bears our sins and carries oursorrows, endures the agony which oursins involve, travails with us in thecrucible of pain, in the darkness of death,and brings life and immortality tolight. All men are meant to be sonsof God ; they are potential sons theybear in their being the mark and superscription of God ; they never travelbeyond the tug of Divine love upon them.They are intended for royal destiny.This temporal sphere is only one stageof life. The Father s house has manystoreys with ever heightening life andever wider freedom, as the spirit cooperates with the eternal nature ofthings. But each person holds the keyto his own destiny, and his personal


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3 2 Quakerism :choice is of all things the most momentous. Choices open doors upward or open doors downward, theyenlarge or shrink the life. Gravitationis as real in the spiritual as in thephysical world. Those who ally themselves with God, and join their willsto His, form a continually expandingsociety a kingdom of God, comingto-day, coming to-morrow, and yetalways prophetic of farther futurefulfilment. There is a personal Mind,a personal Heart, a personal Will workingin all things and through all things,forever making man, bringing all thingsup to better, and overcoming evil andhindrance through love and good-will.We have outgrown the intellectualsystems which sufficed in the days of theHebrew prophets, and under which the


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a IRclioioti of Xife. 33writers of the New Testament lived, butthe vision of God, which is revealed inthese Scriptures, the aspiration of soulfor His Kingdom, the loyalty of heartto Him, the exuberant joy in His presence, the discovery of deliverance fromsin, the certainty of eternal life, theincarnation of God, the communion ofthe Holy Spirit, these are the supremespiritual contributions to the life of therace, the most precious legacy from thepast.We can keep it only as we learn to putit into the very life blood of our generation, and carry it over in essence andspirit, into the thought and prevailingconceptions of our time. We must learnto translate the Bible into one morelanguage, the language of life. Wemust make Christ stand before our

6


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34 Quakerism ;generation as the true type and goal oflife, always girded for service, andexhibiting at every point the meaningof His own highest words : " For theirsakes I sanctify myself." And we mustgo to our practical tasks with a faithlike His in the infinite worth of man.

Social There is nothing finer in the pro-phetical work of primitive Friends thantheir insistence on the worth of man.They saw divine chances, and a possibleroyal destiny in every human being,regardless of colour, and howeverhampered or blurred by sin and oppression. They considered their mainbusiness to be the emancipation of manfrom everything that bound andcramped him. By the right of primogeniture, this high estimate of the worth


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H IReliglon of Xtfe. 35of man comes down to us as a sacredlegacy. William James has calledQuakerism " a religion of veracity, rootedin spiritual inwardness," but that is notenough. It must manifest its fruits inspiritual outwardness.

There have been vast gains made sincethe Commonwealth days, and, for onewho has the real perspective, the progressof emancipation appears very great.But even yet, we have no task before usgreater than the task to-day of helpingmen and women to possess themselves.The deepest cleavage in our modernsociety is the cleavage between therich and the poor a wide gash whichcuts straight down through humanity.Most of us have neighbours who gethardly more out of life than did the primitive cave-dwellers human fellows so


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36 (^uafeertsm ;

low down that they have to reach up totouch bottom, and neighbours at theother extreme, among " the unemployedrich " who, like lotus eaters,

" Live and lie reclinedOn the hills, like gods together,Careless of mankind."

We have learned, after centuries ofexperiment, that this social trouble istoo deep to be cured by the easy methodof flinging alms to poor beggars, or bysystems of organised charity. Themillionaire who, in his business, fostersiniquitous social conditions and turnsmen into cogs in the vast machinery ofindustry, and then tries to wash his souland his reputation by enormous gifts tocharity, philanthropy and education,is not solving the problem. The womanwho gives freely to vagrants and to


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a TRcltQiou of Xifc. 37public charity, and then does nothingto show her own human personalinterest in those who labour and areheavy laden in the circle of her ownhousehold, and the wider circle of herneighbourhood, is not helping to solvethe problem.But we must not take the short cut

and shipwreck on the shoals of abstracttheories. The society toward which weare toiling and aspiring will not comeby the proclamation of socialism orby any other cure-all scheme. Nosystem of sharing goods, or of sharingprofits, in itself, will accomplish theend in view ; nothing short of the sharingof life, the spirit of love and brotherhood,the personal consecration, not only ofour wealth, but of ourselves, to ourfellows will make a good society. The


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a tReliflton of Xtfe. 39personal worth of the individual, a faiththat a man is more precious than thegold of Ophir, a vision of the potentialchild of God in the submerged toiler,and, with that faith and that vision,the readiness to identify ourselves asfriend with those who need us, the bestowal of personal care and sympathy,the sharing of the self as well as the

sharingof money, the cultivation of the

spirit of consecration to the tasks andneeds of the neighbourhood group inwhich we live. In the great words ofthe Quaker prophet, John Woolman :" We must make it the business of ourlives to turn all we possess into thechannel of universal love."We must meet the problem of " the

submerged tenth " with " a vicarioustenth," steadily growing into a vicarious


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2>ct>otiott

tonational3oeals.

4 Quafeertem ;

church. Instead of being content withpreaching about a God who once vicariously suffered for man s redemption, it israther our task so to live in the life andpower of that Divine love, that Divineself-giving, that our lives, kindled andaflame with that passion, shall againmake Christian love real, practical anddynamic, and shall exhibit the beautyand joy of service, as the Master did.

The great prophets of the race havealways been great patriots. They havebrought to their people a vision of thecountry as it ought to be, they have beenloyal to the ideal nation. They haveloved their country too much to sparenational sins or political blunders orshort-sighted opportunisms, but theirmain service has always been their


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a ffielfoion ot Xife. 41unerring vision of the ideal city, theperfect state, the new Jerusalem, thecity of God with righteousness dominant.

Friends have sometimes been dull ofvision for national ideals and they have,at some periods, been too absorbed in" individual states of mind " to take upthe prophetical mission to the nation,but the pillar Quakers have beenprophets of the ideal nation, devotedlyloyal to the country that ought to be.It is unmistakably a part of our modernmission, not to build dreams of newJerusalems in the skies, but to live, andif necessary, die for noble national ideals,to make righteousness prevail in thenation, here on the solid earth, to enlargethe scope of freedom and to promotepeace through the heightening of national


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4J Quakerism ;honour and the expansion of nationaljustice.

Spirit Ot Our Quakerism must, then, be nothingptilH* short of a religion of life, a real experiment

in the application, the reproduction, ofChrist s religion. Neither form nor theabsence of form ; neither creed nor theabsence of creed will avail, but a kind oflife which is Divinely begotten, inspiredand fed from within. It is not " views "that are wanted, but the evidence thatin the hush of our Meetings we find aliving God, that in our human tasksDivine streams of Grace are raining intoour lives, and currents of spiritualenergy are coursing through our deedsand purposes. And withal we must goto our day s work with sunlight on ourfaces.


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H TCeliQfon of Xtfe. 43Let those who work the muck-rake

for sensational news or for commercialliterature have a monopoly of " seeingyellow " ; we must, like the seer ofPatmos, do our work with a vision ofthe rainbow round the throne of God,a vision of hope and promise everylime we look up, with an invinciblefaith in the inexhaustible assets of Godand the ultimate triumph of the Spirit." I saw," says the first prophet ofQuakerism, " that there was an ocean ofdarkness and death ; but an infiniteocean of light and love flowed over theocean of darkness. In this, I saw theinfinite love of God." Nothing canoverwhelm a man with a vision like that.

Let us stop assuming that the greatdays of Quakerism were in the seventeenth century, and that we are a tiny


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44 (Siuakertsm ;remnant left behind to chronicle thestory of spent fires and dead issues.The great days of Quakerism are to bein the twentieth century. This is thebest " dispensation " that ever was, thebest era that has yet dawned. Themomentous question is, shall we quitourselves like men and do, in the highspirit of early Friends, the work of thisage.

Let us once more raise the whitebanner for a genuine spiritual religion ;a religion which finds a present God,and has the power of first-hand experience of Him ; a religion which sees apossible son of God in every, personabout us, and which sends us out withholy fervour to bring many sons toglory ; a religion which takes up theburden of the world s suffering, and


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a ttelfoion of OLife. 45carries refreshing and gladness intodarkened homes and cramped liveseverywhere ; a religion not confinedto the narrow area of a church building,but permeating the entire communityand making for the transformation ofthe state into a holy commonwealth ;a religion not personified in a priest orpastor, but embodied and exhibitedin a fellowship of saints, a congregationof ministering members.

On one day of Easter week each year,multitudes of eastern Christians throngthe Church of the Holy Sepulchre inJerusalem to wait for the descent offire from heaven. They crowd aboutwith eager faces, and with genuine faiththat the miracle will be granted.Within, by the empty tomb, stands a


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*6 Quakerism :priest with an unlighted torch. Againand again he thrusts it into an openingin the tomb, and draws it out still unlighted. Suddenly, as he pulls it forthonce more, it kindles into flame. Thosecrowding about believe that it is actualDivine fire. Instantly every man in thecrowd near by rushes with his torch andkindles it from the priest s torch, andthey, in turn, pass the flame on to lightthe torches of those about them ; andthen each man with his lighted torchstarts running to kindle the torches ofthose who remained behind in the cityand field, until the light has spreadthroughout the land.My figure is taken from a religion in

which superstition plays a great part,and one feels afraid that the way oflighting that first torch would hardly


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a IRclioion or Xtfe* 47bear investigation ; but, nevertheless,this great eastern pageant of Jerusalemsuggests a method which will work inspreading a true religion and a genuineDivine fire. Instead of going to theempty tomb, we must go to the livingChrist who triumphed over the tomb,and instead of lighting a physical torch,we must have our own spirits kindledto burning passion by His Presence inus, till " the love of Christ constrainsus," and then, with unveiled faces,reflecting, as from a mirror, the glory ofthe Lord, we can make men see andbelieve in the Christ who is transformingus by the Spirit of the Lord.


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48 (Slualtertem ; H IRclioion or Xite*Rote.

For the help of readers who desiremore detailed information on the historyand belief of Friends, the following booksare recommended :

George Fox s Journal (abridged), editedby P. L. Parker, is. and is. 6d. net;Thomas Ellwood s Autobiography, is. 6d.and 25. 6d. net.John Woolman s Journal, Introduction by

J. G. Whittier, is. 6d. and 2s. 6d. net.The Rise of the Quakers, by T. E. Harvey,M.A.. is. 6d. net.The Story of Quakerism (for young people),by E. B. Emmott, is. and 35. 6d. net.Quaker Strongholds, by Caroline E. Stephen,

is. and 2s. 6d. net.Authority and the Light Within, by EdwardGrubb, M.A., 2s. net.Social Law in the Spiritual World, by RufusM. Jones, M.A., as. 6d. net.The Double Search, by Rufus M. Jones, M.A.,

is. and 2s. net.A Dynamic Faith, by Rufus M. Jones, M.A.,6d. and is. net.

Essays and Addresses, by John WilhelmRowntree, 53. net.The Guiding Hand of God, by J. Rendcl Harris,M.A., is. 6d.John S. Rowntree : His Life and Work, 6s.net.Poems, by J. G. Whittier, Oxford Edition,

2s. and 33. 6d.


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Documents

Rufus Jones, Quakerism - a religion of life