Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

Other Christian bodies have from very early times recognized a distinction between clergy and laity, and have regarded at least two sacraments as having been instituted by Christ Himself, and as being in some sense or other “necessary to salvation;” and the greater number, or at any rate the largest, of these bodies have habitually adopted the use of liturgical forms of public worship.

At the root of our abstinence from all these generally accepted practices, there lies the one conviction of the all-sufficiency of individual and immediate communication with the Father of our spirits; and a profound belief that by His coming in the flesh our Lord Jesus Christ did, in fact, open a new and living way of access to God, which superseded and blotted out the former dispensation of rites and ceremonies, investing all believers with the function of “kings and priests” (calling them, that is, both to exercise dominion and to offer acceptable sacrifices in His name), and enabling them to show forth the nature and results of that worship in spirit and in truth, which was no longer to be in any sense confined to temples made with hands, and of that kingdom which is “not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

It was a bold thing indeed for the early Friends to break loose at once from the whole ecclesiastical system, with its venerable and long-established claim to be the divinely ordained channel of spiritual nutriment. In doing so, they no doubt took up an attitude of hostility towards the “hireling priests,” and their “steeple-houses” and “so-called ordinances,” which, however comparatively intelligible it may have been at the time, was yet not only highly obnoxious, but would even seem to have led them into some degree of injustice.

After sixty or seventy years of severe persecution, however, borne with extraordinary patience as well as constancy, their right to carry out their own manner of worship was fully allowed; and by a strange result of changes, partly within the Society itself and partly in the surrounding mental atmosphere, Friends, from being regarded as peculiarly pestilent heretics, came to be looked on as the most harmless and least obnoxious of Nonconformists. I believe, however, that this can be the case only as long as we are content to acquiesce in a purely passive and dwindling state. Any attempt to promulgate our peculiar views must necessarily give offence. We may, perhaps, no longer think it a duty to denounce the institution of a separate clergy, and the observance of “so-called ordinances,” as positively unlawful or sinful. But to say plainly that we consider them as superfluous, requires hardly less boldness, and is scarcely likely to be more palatable. The fact, however, cannot be disguised; and in spite of the pain which, in these days of free and lively interchange of sympathy, is involved in taking up any clear ground of separation, no true Friend would desire in the slightest degree to disguise or to veil our ancient testimony against outward observances and their accompanying institution of a paid ministry.

It is, however, a great help in doing so to be able to point to the very remarkable fact of the existence during more than two centuries of a body of people whose lives bear abundant witness to the reality of their Christian profession, amongst whom these “ordinances” have been altogether disused.

For my own part, I would rather leave that fact to speak for itself than attempt to trace all the inferences which may, I think, be fairly drawn from it. Yet the question whether the clerical and sacramental system is indeed an essential part of Christianity, or a human accretion, is too profoundly important to the future of Christianity itself to be lightly passed over. Are there not many, in these days especially, who would willingly listen to the Christianity of Christ Himself, could they but find it disentangled from the enormously “developed” Christianity of the dominant Churches?

I am far from venturing to claim that the Society of Friends does actually exhibit a perfect living instance of what has been called “primitive Christianity revived,” but I do believe its ideal to be the true, and the only true one; that of a Church, or “gathered people,” living with the one object of obeying the teaching of Christ Himself to the very uttermost—His own teaching, not that of those who have spoken in His name, even though they be apostles, except in so far as they speak in accordance with it. To live the Sermon on the Mount, and the rest of the gospel teaching, and in all things to listen for the living voice of the good Shepherd, watching constantly that no human tradition divert our attention from it,—this is our acknowledged aim and bond of union as a Society. Our conviction of its sufficiency is the ground of our existence as a separate body.

We believe that neither the division of Christian people into clergy and laity, nor the use of sacramental ceremonies, were enjoined by Christ Himself. It is clear that both these practices quickly arose amongst the early Christians; but remembering that the early Christians were but fallible human beings like ourselves, and that they were undeniably far from clear what rites and ceremonies were to be observed, we do not feel that their practice is to be our guide.

The institution of a separate clergy and that of the sacraments form, of course, essentially one system. The early Friends went to the root of the matter when they abandoned at once the whole of what they called “mountain and Jerusalem worship,” as opposed to the worship in spirit and in truth, which is not limited to any time or place.

I have not the slightest intention of taking upon myself the attempt to show that they were right in doing so. The grounds of their action are fully set forth and defended with undeniable vigour and ability by Robert Barclay, in his famous “Apology.” My humbler endeavour will be to describe the perplexities which prepared my own mind thankfully to accept what to myself appears to be a thoroughly satisfactory disentanglement of essential Christianity from whatever can be honestly regarded as unintelligible, and unworthy of its lofty and spiritual character.