Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

Both by our Master Himself, and by the Friends who originally preached Him as the Light, the figure of light was used in a broad and popular sense. Light is the most obvious and the most eternally satisfying figure for Divine truth. It is, however, hardly more obvious or more satisfying than the other figure so commonly, and almost interchangeably, used by the same teachers, of breath—inspiration. I scarcely know whether it would convey most truth to say that the cornerstone of our Society was a belief in “the light within,” or in “immediate inspiration.” I doubt whether the two ideas are in all respects altogether distinguishable. Belief in the fact to which they both refer, of an actual Divine influence communicated to every human spirit, is our real corner-stone.[4]

The fact of inspiration is denied by no Christian—the full recognition of its present and constant operation is in some degree a peculiarity of Friends. It is not uncommon outside the Society to hear expressions implying that Divine inspiration is a thing of the past; a quite exceptional gift, familiar only in apostolic times. It seems to me that this limitation of its range amounts almost to a denial of its reality. I can hardly understand the idea that God did occasionally long ago speak to human beings, but that He never does so now. It seems, at any rate, inconsistent with any worthy sense of His unchangeableness.

Many of us have come to believe that one of the greatest hindrances to a real belief in or recognition of inspiration has been the exceedingly crude and mechanical conception of it as attributed to the letter of Scripture. From this hard and shallow way of thinking about inspiration, Friends have generally been preserved in proportion as they have held firmly the old Quaker doctrine of the inner light. Some, no doubt, have gone too far in the direction of transferring the idea of infallibility from the Bible to themselves. But, on the whole, I believe the doctrine of Fox and Barclay (i.e., briefly, that the “Word of God” is Christ, not the Bible, and that the Scriptures are profitable in proportion as they are read in the same spirit which gave them forth) to have been a most valuable equipoise to the tendency of other Protestant sects to transfer the idea of infallibility from the Church to the Bible. Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the Divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism. Whether this belief, honestly acted on, will manifest itself in the homespun and solid, but only too sober morality of the typical everyday Quaker, or whether it will land us in the mystical fervours of an Isaac Penington, or the apostolic labours of a John Woolman or a Stephen Grellet, must depend chiefly upon our natural temperament and special gifts. The range of the different forms taken by the doctrine is as wide as the range of human endowment and experience. A belief which is the common property of the prophet and the babe will, of course, yield every variety of practical result.

It is a belief which it is hardly possible to inculcate by anything more or less than a direct appeal to experience, to the witness within; and there is the further difficulty, that the experience to which we can appeal only as sharers in it, must be expressed in language very often and very naturally misunderstood. The assertion, however guarded, that one has actual experience of Divine inspiration in one’s own person, is very apt to sound like a claim to personal infallibility. Yet in reality nothing can be further from the mark. The first effect of the shining of light within is to show what is amiss—to “convince of sin.” It is not claiming any superiority to ordinary human conditions to say, in response to such an appeal as that of the Friends just referred to, “Yes, I have indeed been conscious of a power within making manifest to me my sins and errors, and I have indeed experienced its healing and emancipating power as well as its fiery purgings and bitter condemnations. That which has shown me my fault has healed me; the light has led and is leading me onwards and upwards out of the abyss, nearer and nearer to its own eternal Source; and I know that, in so far as I am obedient to it, I am safe.” What is such a reply but an acknowledgment that “the light, the Spirit, and grace of Christ” have indeed been an indwelling, inbreathing power in one’s own heart? If it be a claim to inspiration, it is a claim which implies no merit and no eminence in him who makes it; it is made on ground common to the publican, the prodigal, and the sinner, to Magdalen and to Paul. It is the history of every child returning to the Father’s house.

But it is not every one to whom it would be natural to describe this experience in language so mystical as this, nor would the mystic’s experience be likely to stop short at anything so simple and elementary as the process just described. And here we are confronted with the real “peculiarity” of Quakerism—its relation to mysticism. There is no doubt that George Fox himself and the other fathers of the Society were of a strongly mystical turn of mind, though not in the sense in which the word is often used by the worshippers of “common sense,” as a mild term of reproach, to convey a general vague dreaminess. Nothing, certainly, could be less applicable to the early Friends than any such reproach as this. They were fiery, dogmatic, pugnacious, and intensely practical and sober-minded. But they were assuredly mystics in what I take to be the more accurate sense of that word—people, that is, with a vivid consciousness of the inwardness of the light of truth.

Mysticism in this sense is a well-known phenomenon, of which a multitude of examples may be found in all religions. It is, indeed, rather a personal peculiarity than a form of belief; and therefore, although from time to time associations (our own, for one) have been based upon what are called mystical tenets, there can scarcely be anything like a real school of mysticism—at any rate, in Europe. Mysticism, as we know it, is essentially individual. It refuses to be formulated or summed up. In one sense it is common to all religious persuasions; in another, it equally eludes them all. We can easily understand what constitutes a mystic, but the peculiarity itself is incommunicable. Their belief is an open secret. They themselves have ever desired to communicate it, though continually feeling the impossibility of doing so by words alone. It is the secret of light—an inward light clothing itself in life, and living to bring all things to the light.

Mystics, as I understand the matter, are those whose minds, to their own consciousness, are lighted from within; who feel themselves to be in immediate communication with the central Fountain of light and life. They have naturally a vivid sense both of the distinction and of the harmony between the inward and the outward—a sense so vivid that it is impossible for them to believe it to be unshared by others. A true mystic believes that all men have, as he himself is conscious of having, an inward life, into which, as into a secret chamber, he can retreat at will.[5] In this inner chamber he finds a refuge from the ever-changing aspects of outward existence; from the multitude of cares and pleasures and agitations which belong to the life of the senses and the affections; from human judgments; from all change, and chance, and turmoil, and distraction. He finds there, first repose, then an awful guidance; a light which burns and purifies; a voice which subdues; he finds himself in the presence of his God. It is here, in this holy of holies, that “deep calleth unto deep;” here that the imperishable, unfathomable, unchanging elements of humanity meet and are one with the Divine Fountain of life from whence they flow; here that the well of living waters springeth up unto eternal life.

“The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Personal religion is a real and a living thing only in proportion as it springs from this deep inward root. The root itself is common to all true believers. The consciousness of its “inwardness” is that which distinguishes the mystic. How it should be that to some minds the words “inward and outward” express the most vivid and continuous fact of consciousness, while to others they appear to have no meaning at all; how it comes that some are born mystics, while to others the report of the mystic concerning the inner life is a thing impossible to be believed and hardly to be understood;—these are psychological problems I cannot attempt to unravel. If, however, a certain correspondence between the inward and the outward do really exist (and this, I suppose, will hardly be denied, whatever may be the most philosophically accurate way of expressing it), the faculty of discerning it must needs be a gift. I believe, indeed, that the power in this direction which distinguishes such mystics as, e.g., Thomas à Kempis, Jacob Boehme, Tauler, Fénélon, Madame Guyon, George Fox, William Law, St. Theresa, Molinos, and others, is essentially the same gift which in a different form, or in combination with a different temperament and gifts of another order, makes poets. It is the gift of seeing truth at first-hand, the faculty of receiving a direct revelation. To have it is to be assured that it is the common inheritance, the “light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Preachers like those I have just mentioned always appeal to it with confidence as to a witness to be found in every heart. And surely experience confirms this conviction of theirs. It is in degree only that their gift is exceptional. They may have the sight of the eagle, but they see by the same light as the bat.

Now, the obvious tendency of a vivid first-hand perception of truth, or light, is to render the possessor of it so far independent of external teachers. And we all know that in point of fact such illuminati always have shown a disposition to go their own way, and to disregard, if not to denounce, traditional teaching, which has brought them into frequent collisions with ecclesiastical and other authorities. Those of the Church of Rome have, with their wonted sagacity, as much as possible sought to turn this strange power to account, while providing safety-valves for the unmanageable residue.

It is the easier to do this because of the two marked characteristics of mystics—quietness and independence. Mystics are naturally independent, not only of ecclesiastical authority, but of each other. This is necessarily implied in the very idea of first-hand reception of light. While it must always constitute a strong bond of sympathy between those who recognize it in themselves and in each other, it naturally indisposes them to discipleship. They sit habitually at no man’s feet, and do not as a rule greatly care to have any one sit at theirs. Mysticism in this sense seems naturally opposed to tradition. No true mystic would hold himself bound by the thoughts of others. He does not feel the need of them, being assured of the sufficiency and conscious of the possession of that inward guidance, whether called light, or voice, or inspiration, which must be seen, heard, felt, by each one in his own heart, or not at all. But the duty of looking for and of obeying this guidance is a principle which may be inculcated and transmitted from generation to generation like any other principle. Its hereditary influence is very perceptible in old Quaker families, where a unique type of Christian character resulting from it is still to be met with.