Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

In our days faith is challenged at every point and at every turn, with a freedom and a violence which was unknown fifty years ago. All that can be shaken is being shaken, to its very foundations. My own firm belief is that, though full of danger, this is on the whole a natural, a necessary, and, in the main, a beneficial process. Throw a large load of fuel on a clear fire, and for a time it may seem doubtful whether it is not extinguished; but if the flame be strong enough, it will rise again through the smoke and dust, and burn the stronger for what it has mastered. And so assuredly will faith in whatever is truly eternal rise above all present confusions and darkenings of counsel, and burn with fresh power in those hearts which have steadfastly cleaved to truth, be its requirements what they may.

The Society of Friends has always refused to require adhesion to any formularies as an express or even implied condition of membership; and surely it has done wisely.[31] It has frankly and steadily accepted the Bible as the one common standard and storehouse of written doctrine, but it has always had the courage to trust unreservedly to the immediate teaching of “the Spirit which gave forth the Scriptures” for their interpretation, and for the leading of each one “into all truth;” it has hitherto been true to its belief in the living Guide. And this, I am convinced, is the only belief which will meet the needs of the free thought of our day.

If thought is to be truly free, in the sense of fearless and unbiased, it must not only be open to the whole range of experience, but it must be subject to the correction of central and unchanging principles; freedom requires stability as well as openness. I believe that those of us who have learned to submit to correction both from without and from within, who dare to face at once every real fact, and every necessary process of mental discipline, within their reach, have a most weighty office to fill amidst the troubled thoughts and lives of our day. For while human nature is what it is, it must recognize, however dimly, that it needs not only to be fed with knowledge, but to be strengthened with might in the inner man.

People want, and must have if they are to be spiritually helped at all, two things mainly at this moment, as I believe. They want a higher, purer, worthier form of faith and worship than they have been accustomed to find provided for them; and they want stronger proof of the reality of the objects of faith than is commonly offered.

By a higher, purer, worthier form of faith and worship, I do not mean improved formularies or liturgies; I mean rather that openness to improvement which is precluded by fixed forms, and which the very beauty and dignity of the Anglican Liturgy tends to impede. They want, I believe, a manner of worship which shall be simpler, more living and actual—truly higher and purer because less intellectually ambitious, and more freshly inspired by human needs and Divine help; and a manner of speaking about Divine things less conventional, less technical and artificial, arising more visibly from actual experience, and based more solidly upon common ground. They want not authorized teachers, but competent witnesses; not to listen to sermons and religious “services,” however admirable, which are delivered in fulfilment of a professional engagement, within prescribed bounds of orthodoxy, at stated times and in regular amount; but to come into personal contact with those who have seen, felt, encountered, the things of which they speak; and who speak not because they are officially appointed to speak, but out of the fulness of the heart because they must—people who dare to be silent when they have nothing to say, and who are not afraid to acknowledge their ignorance, their doubts, or their perplexities. We are becoming critical and impatient of conventionalities, not only, as I believe, because education is spreading, but also because we are hungry for reality, because we are brought face to face (by the astonishing circulation of everything) with all manner of problems which are awful enough for us all, and doubly awful for those whose foundation is in any way insecure. In the presence—and in these days every corner of the land, not to say of the world, is in a sense present to our mental vision—in the presence of every variety of human (and animal) misery, of vice and crime and violence, and inherited degradation and disease, of changes and dangers and crumblings away of every refuge, who can wonder if men and women refuse to be satisfied with shallow or conventional explanations of the fearful problems confronting them and challenging their faith? The glibness, the exasperating completeness, the unconscious blasphemy, of many “orthodox” vindications of Providence, are enough to disgust people with mere orthodoxy.

We Christians have been roughly awakened by the storm, and are beginning to recognize that we needed such a correcting and sifting of our thought and language as modern attacks are abundantly supplying. At such a moment it is surely an unspeakable privilege for any religious body to be entirely unshackled by creeds and formularies; to have nothing in its tradition or practices to hinder it from profiting by this process of correction, or from uttering its perennial and unalterable testimony in the freshest and most flexible and modern language it can command. And perhaps it is a still greater privilege, in the midst of this Babel, to have learned the thrice-blessed power of silence; to have secured both in private and in public the opportunity and the practice of dwelling silently upon that which is unspeakable and unchangeable; of witnessing to the light in that stillness which most clearly reflects the Divine glory, in which the accusations of the enemy are most effectually quenched.

And not only do people in these days want purer expressions of faith; they need also stronger proofs of the reality of its objects. I do not, of course, mean new proofs; I do not mean that really new evidence can ever be forthcoming in favour of eternal truth, though fresh aspects and illustrations and revelations of it are indeed crowding upon us day by day. I mean rather that the battle which was formerly fought by single champions here and there has now broken forth along the whole line; that in these days, whether we will or no, we are all in the thick of the fight; that no one can help hearing the deepest of all truths called in question at every turn; and that we need weapons, if not of tougher quality, yet of readier use and more thoroughly proved, more honestly our own, than those which may have sufficed in former times. We need, I believe, moral and spiritual rather than merely intellectual proof of the reality of that which alone can satisfy the human spirit in its deepest needs. Let creeds, like all other beliefs, be sifted, and tested, and corrected, and proved or disproved, and in every way dealt with as truth may require. Those whose one object is truth can have nothing to dread from any serious and legitimate handling of any question whatever. But, when all is said and thought, it remains for ever true that man cannot by searching find out God; while yet without Him what good shall our lives do us? It is not by supplying people with the wisest and truest replies to their difficulties that they can be effectually armed against them. Second-hand belief is poor comfort in days when authority of all kinds is so freely discredited. And at all times and under all circumstances something more than theory is required for victory.

For what, after all, is this “faith,” which above all things we who have even a grain of it must desire to hold forth to others? “This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.” It is a power, not a mere belief; and power can be shown only in action, only in overcoming resistance. Power that shall lift us one by one above temptations, above cares, above selfishness; power that shall make all things new, and subdue all things unto itself; power by which loss is transmuted into gain, tribulation into rejoicing, death itself into the gate of everlasting life;—is not this the true meaning of faith?

I see no possible means of spreading such faith as this but to exercise it; in our own persons, as the way is prepared for us, to work righteousness, to obtain promises, out of weakness to be made strong, to wax valiant in fight—yes, and to receive our dead raised to life again. These are the proofs which will convince the world “of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment;” these, not reasonings, are the proofs of a Divine Fountain of life and power to which Friends have been taught to attach weight. Formularies, even the most perfect in their day, and the most venerable in their origin, will wear out. The meaning of language shifts, and the changing lights of knowledge distort whatever forms do not change with them; but the power of an endless life will never lose its hold on human hearts; and the need for help from the cloud of witnesses compassing us about was never sorer than in our own days.

Around us from all sides comes the cry, spoken or unspoken, “Give us of your oil.” But we who are not unsupplied are being sternly taught to reply, “Not so; but go ye to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.”