V.
One of the most notable features of the last century has been the progress of the democratic movement. Every one who has watched that movement must realize the great danger of the tyranny of majorities. It is true that this danger seems to most of us to-day a smaller one than the [84] ]danger of the tyranny of a bureaucracy or of an autocrat. But, whichever way we look at it, it does not seem that we have found the true solution. Is it not possible that the pendulum has swung too far and that we have yet to discover the highest principle upon which a State may be governed?
In the new democracies of the East there is perhaps a greater danger, owing to the rapidity with which the new ideas have spread and the lack of an understanding of the deeper principles out of which they spring. Those who have closely followed affairs in the Far East will realize with what anxious eyes Japan has been watching the democratic movement in China, and how she would have given almost anything to preserve at least the name of monarchy for China. In India and in other nations the desire for an independent government and the rule of the people is outrunning the growth in ability to fulfil such functions. The spread of democracy and the desire for national independence is making itself felt, not only in the State but also in the [85] ]young Churches in the Far East. On the one hand we have those systems of Church Government which are classed together as Episcopal, and in which the authority is vested in a comparatively few. On the other hand we have Churches which pin their faith to the old adage “vox populi vox Dei.”
I question whether either has found the solution to the difficulty of the young Church. In both systems there lurk dangers which can here only be hinted at.
It has often seemed to me that Friends do not realize how much they have in their Meetings for Discipline. I believe that we have here a most valuable contribution towards the solution of the difficulty at which I have hinted. We have at least an ideal which we ought to be most careful not to surrender. Let me explain a little more fully what I mean.
We meet together on the assumption that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and that we can trust Him to lead it. We enter upon the discussion of a difficult matter of business with the full knowledge [86] ]that many different shades of opinion will be represented in that meeting. Nevertheless, we discuss it with the confidence that the will of God will be made known to us as a Body of persons, and through the whole Body; not that is to say merely through the individual or set of individuals who act as a Cabinet, nor even through the majority of those present. We discuss the question together and we believe that, at the end of that discussion, we shall be led to a united judgment as to the wisdom of a certain course of action. That judgment may not be the opinion of any one individual in the room. It may be the opinion of the actual minority of those present; but, if we are in a true Friends’ Meeting for Discipline, we come out of that room all of us satisfied that the Spirit of God has Himself determined our action and that He has, as it were, made Himself responsible for it. If we entered our Meetings for Discipline in this spirit, they would assuredly be a sacrament to every one of us. There is need for as much consecration of heart in them as in the Meeting [87] ]for Worship; and perhaps more, for it is not easy to give up one’s own pet theories and prejudices. If this call to sacrifice is cheerfully accepted, our Meetings for Discipline should be of untold blessing to each of us; and thus there would be a chance for us to do our part in the solution of this most difficult problem. The end towards which we are working is the Kingdom of God—neither a democracy nor bureaucracy, but a theocracy. Here again I am encouraged by noticing in some movements with which I have been connected in recent years, a tendency to follow in certain lines the methods which Friends have adopted in their Meetings for Discipline. I refer especially to certain Missionary Conferences and Committees with which I am connected, and to my experience in the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland. And to apply this more particularly to the conditions in the mission field at the present time: in every mission we find this restless desire for autonomy. If we truly believe that the Spirit of Christ is present in the Church itself, surely there [88] ]need be no fear in our standing aside as foreigners and leaving the Church to Him who has been the Founder of it and who is Himself responsible for its future. If, on the other hand, we leave only the ideal of government by certain Bishops specially chosen, or by a majority which can perhaps be maneuvred in the interests of a particular person or opinion, we shall indeed have grave cause to fear for the Church as it is left to itself.
To those not accustomed to such procedure this seems, no doubt, like a wild impossibility. To Friends it is a serious truth and the experience of this one Christian body has demonstrated, amid much failure at times, its entire practicability as a method of transacting business. Whether or no this method be adopted by wider circles, it is nevertheless true that the Church needs a deeper conviction of the active presence of God “in the midst of her,” not merely to inspire the individual but also to direct the counsels of the body as a whole.
VI.[89]
Next to the danger of materialism or practical agnosticism in the Church of Christ comes perhaps the danger of opportunism. I suppose to the end of time there will be difference of opinion on the question of compromise. That a certain element of compromise must come into human life, as it is now arranged, seems to me inevitable. Much as we chafe against it, we are bound to accept it, owing to the limitations of our existence here. To take one of many examples: I suppose there is no one of us who does not year by year contribute, through the payment of taxes either direct or indirect, to the maintenance of the Army and the Navy, and perhaps to other actions on the part of the State with which he equally disapproves. There is, however, a whole range of problems upon which opinions differ very greatly. The question to which I have made allusion—the question of Peace—illustrates my meaning perhaps as well as any. At what point are we going to make our Peace principles felt? [90] ]There are certain fundamental propositions to which every member of the Church of Christ can be found to assent. That we should love our enemies: that we should do good to those that hate us: that we should show kindness to all men: and so forth. But at what point are you going to apply these principles? We are living in a world where some kind of physical force seems to be absolutely necessary. I doubt if there are any of us who would go as far as Tolstoi in our rejection of it.
But does this mean that we must therefore accept war as a necessity of this present evil time, and therefore be prepared ourselves to take up arms, as many of our fellow-Christians think? The “practical commonsense man” sees no other course, even if his conscience do cry out at times.
To take another of the great problems which press upon us in these days, viz: the relation of Christianity to business. “Business is business” too often means that Christian principles cannot be applied to it. There are so many things a man “must do” if he is to get along at all. [91] ]“It is better to leave religion out altogether in some of these practical affairs.” In non-Christian countries we constantly see the divorce of ethics from religion; and I am afraid the evil is not confined to distant lands. We all know something of the pulpit that dare not denounce the sins practiced by the wealthiest of the congregation: the minister whose tongue is tied upon sweating and overcrowding: the church-member who is zealous in the observance of religion, but lacking in his business obligations.
What a need for the thoroughgoing Christian who has ideals and maintains them in everyday life, who will not lower them to suit the exigencies of life, or the pressure of social custom, to whom expediency is a forbidden word even though its exclusion may mean the Cross!
Or turn to the great non-Christian world with which we are daily brought into contact. Here is one of the greatest problems, if not the greatest, which confronts our civilization to-day. How are we going to meet our fellow-men of other races? The [92] ]politician has his solution: the commercial man has his. What is to be the solution of the citizen of the Kingdom of God? There can only be one answer: we must go to these men as to those who are our brethren; we must see them not as wholly bad or depraved, but as those who have in them infinite potentialities, who are called into the same citizenship and the same sonship which we enjoy. We must reaffirm to-day our belief in that Light which lighteth every man, but we dare not be content at that. As our forefathers led the way in the understanding of sympathy with other races; so we to whom these still more intricate problems present themselves, must stand for the ideal, however hard it seems—the ideal of spiritual kinship and the strenuous effort to realize it in our relationship with other races; and so it comes about that the Foreign Missionary enterprise seems to be of the very essence of Quakerism, and that we find it closely akin to the great causes of Peace and Anti-slavery with which our Society has ever been identified. Is the Church of Christ playing [93] ]the part which it ought to play in regard to these matters? Is it taking the stand which it ought to take in regard to the color problem in this country, in regard to the export of spirituous liquors, and so forth? What, indeed, is to be our view of a Christian Mission College which deliberately includes in its curriculum military drill with the full paraphernalia of warfare, and this in the traditionally peace-loving empire of China? To me it seems evident that there is a great place for the Society of Friends in this movement, just because we stand upon the side of idealism in all these complicated issues.
Right along the line Quakerism ranks itself on this side. The Society of Friends, as I read its history, has stood for an idealism which is well in advance of the current practice. In the holding of our Meetings for Worship we have stood for the absolute ideal; many of our Christian brethren admit it in theory, but regard it as quite outside the sphere of practical religion. The same seems to be true as regards the Sacraments, Oaths, and [94] ]so forth. The idealist is needed as much to-day as ever he was. The moral reforms, to the achievement of which Friends have contributed so much, have been attained by men who dared to be regarded as utterly impracticable, as mere dreamers and visionaries. When slavery, for example, was knit into the very fabric of Society, when its abolition seemed certain to lead to an industrial cataclysm, Friends were not wanting who boldly said, “Whatever happens, we must liberate the slave;” and in the end the visionary was right and the practical common-sense man was wrong; and the simple secret of it all was that the visionary saw God first and his fellow-men in the light of God’s will for them.
No less has it been true in business affairs that Friends have maintained the strictest standard of integrity in the face of opposition and probable loss. They recognized a higher obligation which must be obeyed whatever the consequence which faced them. And in the strength of that idealism they won their way to the respect and confidence of their fellows. In the end [95] ]they were often found to be the more practical in spite of (or was it because of?) their unreasoning idealism. “It was in this focussing upon moral effort that the Quakers differed most from the other sects of the Commonwealth period. Their ‘views’ were not novel or original. Every
one of their peculiar views had already been proclaimed by some individual or by some religious party. What was new was the fixing of their ideas into one living truth, which was henceforth to be done, was to be put into life and made to march.”[Footnote 7] ]
And to-day, if the Society is true to its past it will not lose the chance of standing on the same side for the ideal, the Christian and the only final solution of these complex problems. The Church needs a body of men and women who will dare to be fools, unpractical, dreamers, in following the Light and who will act up to their ideals.