【英文读物】The Message and Mission of Quakerism

【英文读物】The Message and Mission of QuakerismFOREWORD The two addresses which compose this book were delivered at the Five Years Meeting of the Society of Friends held in Indianapolis, Indiana, from October 15th to 22nd, 1912. They were listened to with profound interest and appreciation, and were approved by a Minute which also ordered their publication, in order that the wider group of Friends, and all others who are interested in the message and mission of a religion of this type, might have the opportunity to read them. It is a plain duty of any religious body to put its truths into circulation, and to reinterpret again and again the vital principles by which its members live and work. Here in this little book will be found in convenient form a fresh and illuminating expression of the truths, principles and ideals of present-day Quakerism and some of the practical problems confronting the modern world which the application of these truths, principles 4and ideals might solve. The reader will discover that the writers live in the Twentieth Century and that they are “speaking to the condition” of the age. Rufus M. Jones. Haverford, Pennsylvania12th mo. 9th, 1912 PART I THE ESSENTIALS OF QUAKERISM BY WILLIAM C. BRAITHWAITE Introductory Words It is with great diffidence that we from England venture to speak to the American Yearly Meetings. Our circumstances and the problems we have to face are often so different that it would be presumptuous in us to feel that we had advice on matters of detail that would deserve very great attention from you. But when it comes to our common history and to the common inheritance we have in the principles and faith of the Society of Friends, we may speak freely. We represent the main body of those who call themselves “Friends.” The Yearly Meetings from which we come connect by continuous history with the first Quaker Churches of two hundred and fifty years 12ago. Of course when we compare ourselves as we are now, with the first Friends, we find great differences, as great undoubtedly as exist between the New Englander of to-day and the Pilgrim Fathers. We should find much to astonish if we could peep in at one of those first London meetings held in the summer of the year 1655 at the Bull and Mouth, the great “tavern-chapel” in Aldersgate, in which you could then crowd a thousand people standing. I fancy these meetings may have been rather like some of your pioneer meetings in the West. But the pioneers of the London work, Howgill and Burrough, would find modern Quakerism, whether in England or in the Middle West, a strange thing. It takes a wise man to recognize his own great-great-great-great grandchildren. They have an inheritance that connects them up with their ancestor, but their environment is so different that on the surface they seem to have been changed into another type of man. At bottom, however, we shall find that the inherited type will continue. “For never Pilgrims offshoot scapes control13 Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul.”(Lowell, “Fitz Adams Story.”)In other words, the inner life of a religious movement remains, although the expression of that life will greatly vary under changing conditions of time and place.Chapter 1 In order to get at the essentials of Quakerism, we do well to go back to the beginnings, to those first years of nascent energy which carried the Quaker message through the English-speaking world. Whenever a new truth starts to life, it is intensely dynamic and vital; it masters every opposing circumstance; it flings itself victoriously against a stubborn world. It is a thing of life and movement, and I believe it will be found that a live truth in motion is the mightiest of all forces. But, a generation later, unless the vital forces have been cherished, the emphasis comes to be laid on establishment rather than movement, and when a thing gets established it usually ceases to move; the emphasis comes to 14be laid on dogma instead of truth, on organization instead of life, and the day of glory and power passes away. That was the case with Quakerism. Two things, I believe, leave a vivid impression upon any student of the early Quaker movement. They can be stated quite simply, but they make up together the fundamentals of Quakerism to which everything else belongs as a natural consequence. In the first place we find ourselves among men and women of an intense sincerity, who are seeking truth with all the energy of their faith, all the energy of their nature, and, in the second place, we become aware that this earnest search after the Kingdom of God and its righteousness was rewarded with a great finding, a rich personal experience in their lives, of the living presence of Jesus Christ, their Savior. We know now that communities who called themselves “Seekers” were specially receptive of the Quaker message, and became the main strength of the new movement. In that Puritan age