Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

To those who in any degree do know His voice, it gradually becomes clear that prayer and its answer are inseparable. The answer is as the answer of the atmosphere to the lungs, of light to the eyes. The humble and contrite heart opens its doors to its Maker, and is filled with His presence. Then, indeed, the light shines within; then the very breath of our life is breathed into us by the Spirit of God. Inspiration—the inbreathing power from above, by which alone all that is heavenly in us is brought about,—this is the other aspect of worship.

True worship, therefore, implies inspiration. It is the inspired prayer which transfigures life—which is mighty with the might of the Fountain from whence it flows. While we separate worship and inspiration we can never think worthily of either. I do indeed believe that the very desire of our heart is often granted to us in reply to our petition. I do not venture to speak confidently as to the precise relation of cause and effect which may exist between any petition and its fulfilment. There must, I believe, be some such real relation; but to my own mind it often seems more probable and more reverent to suppose, where the correspondence is very marked, that the prayer has been in the nature of a prophetic utterance, of a Divine foreshadowing, than that our wish should have been allowed to become the efficient cause of the Divine action. A prayer which has been answered by the perfect fulfilment of its requests shows, I believe, that the offerer of it was so far under Divine influence; that his will was to that extent at least in harmony with the Divine will. This is a word of blessed encouragement for the one to whom it comes, which it is not always wise or right to proclaim from the housetop. “Upliftings unto prayer” (to quote one more of the deep words of A. H. Clough) are surely among the sacred things of which we should not lightly lift the veil. I do not think that those who have any true and deep experience of what it is to hold communion, however faltering and intermittent, with our God will be forward to attempt to divest it of its mystery, while yet they must earnestly desire to set forth to others what they have learnt of its power and its blessedness. For the sake of the many who honestly desire to know the truth upon this deepest and most urgent of all common interests, I think that we who have some such experience are bound to seek to clothe it in fit and worthy language.

Let us, therefore, recognize and avow, when occasion serves, that prayer, worship, or communion with God is a larger, deeper, fuller thing than mere asking and having. Let us acknowledge that the simplest and most inarticulate cry for help—the voice of the “infant crying in the night, and with no language but a cry”—is as sure to enter the ear of the Father of spirits as the deepest prayer ever uttered by saint or martyr. Let us remember that, according to the teaching of our Lord Himself, the one voice which is more sure (if degrees of sureness there can be) than any other of being listened to by the good Shepherd, is the voice of the one who has strayed the furthest from the fold, and is the most deeply conscious of being afar off—the voice of the lost sheep over whose first turning towards home the very angels in heaven rejoice with a special joy. But let us never forget that in the homeward path there are heights beyond heights; that as any spirit is drawn upwards by the Father’s love and care, it becomes more and more filled with the light of His countenance, more interpenetrated by that light which shines clearest in the dark places through which every upward-tending spirit must assuredly pass. Let us not forget that the reward of faithfulness in that which is least is the call to enter into that which is greater—deeper and higher and fuller of Divine significance; that those “influences of the Divine presence” to which it is the essence of true worship to “yield ourselves” must penetrate into the inmost recesses of our being, and bring every thought into subjection to the law of Christ—that law of the Spirit of life, by which all that is of the flesh is gradually purged away as by a consuming fire—and that to live in the spirit of prayer is to live more and more continually and intimately in the presence of Him before whom the angels veil their faces, and who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. So that it may well be, or rather it can only be, in fear and in trembling that this wonderful salvation of entrance into His presence can be worked out. The prayers which are owned by Him are not prayers which can be offered in the will of man, or which can be used as a means of gratifying the desires of the flesh or of the reason; they are the breathings of the spirit struggling to return to Him who gave it, or rejoicing in the light of His countenance. The spirit which is being made free from the law of sin and death cannot look backwards towards the things of earth. Its path is onwards and upwards, ever “into light,” and its breathings are the vibrations communicated to it from the Source and Centre of light; they obey a law as unchangeable as the laws of light itself, and their function is to destroy and to consume away the perishing, worn-out raiment of the spirit, to free it from defilements and hindrances, and to bring it forth in the fulness of time “into the glorious liberty of the children of God,” the rightful “inheritance of the saints in light.” Surely we may with reverence say that, in a true and a deep sense, God Himself is the Answer to prayer.

CHAPTER IV.
FREE MINISTRY.

Our ministry may be said to be free in several distinct senses.

1. It is open to all.

2. Its exercise is not subject to any pre-arrangement.

3. It is not paid.

We believe that the one essential qualification for the office of a minister is the anointing of the Holy Spirit; and that this anointing is poured out without respect of persons upon men and women, upon old and young, upon learned and unlearned. The gift is, we believe, a purely spiritual one, as much beyond our control as the rain from heaven; yet as unfailing, as abundant, as necessary to fertility.

Our views of this matter differ from those of other Christians, not in the fact that we recognize the free gift of this holy anointing, not even in the fact that we repudiate the idea of its being purchasable by money, but in the fact that our idea of ministry refers exclusively to the offering of spontaneous spiritual ministrations. All would surely agree that it is impossible for any one to offer acceptable prayer, or to sow in other hearts the living seed of the kingdom, without a distinct gift from above. It is obvious that we cannot give what we have not received. It is also surely undeniable that what we have freely received we should freely give; that the gift of God cannot be bought for money, nor restricted in its exercise to humanly prepared channels. No one who believes in the reality of the gift of “prophecy”—of speaking, that is, from the immediate promptings of the Spirit of Truth—would dare to seek either to purchase or to restrain such utterances. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Our doctrine of a free ministry, of course, supposes a real belief in the continual inbreathing of that Divine Spirit, giving both light and utterance through His own chosen vessels for the help of all. It also goes a step further, and regards such spiritual ministrations as all-sufficient. Here is the real point of divergence between us and our fellow-Christians. The vast majority of them regard something more than these purely spiritual ministrations as essential to a full allegiance to our common Lord.