CHAPTER III
THE QUAKER CHURCH
At the heart of the Quaker church is “meeting”—the silent Quaker meeting so long a source of misunderstanding to those outside the body, so clearly illuminated now for all who care to glance that way, by the light of modern psychology. We have now at our disposal, marked out with all the wealth of spatial terminology characteristic of that science, a rough sketch of what takes place in our minds in moments of silent attention. We are told, for instance, that when in everyday life our attention is arrested by something standing out from the cinematograph show of our accustomed surroundings, we fix upon this one point, and everything else fades away to the “margin” of consciousness. The “thing” which has had the power of so arresting us, of making a breach in the normal, unnoticed rhythm of the senses, allows our “real self”—our larger and deeper being, to which so many names have been given—to flow up and flood the whole field of the surface intelligence. The typical instances of this phenomenon are, of course, the effect upon the individual of beauty on all its levels—the experience known as falling in love and the experience of “conversion.”
With most of us, beyond these more or less universal experiences, the times of illumination are intermittent, fluctuating, imperfectly accountable, and uncontrollable. The “artist” lives to a greater or less degree in a perpetual state of illumination, in perpetual communication with his larger self. But he remains within the universe constructed for him by his senses, whose rhythm he never fully transcends. His thoughts are those which the veil of sense calls into being, and though that veil for him is woven far thinner above the mystery of life than it is for most of us, it is there. Imprisoned in beauty, he is content to dwell, reporting to his fellows the glory that he sees.
The religious genius, as represented pre-eminently by the great mystics—those in whom the sense of an ultimate and essential goodness, beauty, and truth, is the dominant characteristic—have consciously bent all their energies to breaking through the veil of sense, to making a journey to the heart of reality, to winning the freedom of the very citadel of Life itself. Their method has invariably included what—again borrowing from psychology—we must call the deliberate control of all external stimuli, a swimming, so to say, against the whole tide of the surface intelligence, and this in no negative sense, no mere sinking into a state of undifferentiated consciousness, but rather, as we have seen with Fox, a setting forth to seek something already found—something whose presence is in some way independent of the normal thinking and acting creature, something which has already proclaimed itself in moments of heightened consciousness—in the case of the religious temperament at “conversion.”
Silence, bodily and mental, is necessarily the first step in this direction. There is no other way of entering upon the difficult enterprise of transcending the rhythms of sense, and this, and nothing else, has been invariably the first step taken by the mystic upon his pilgrimage. Skirting chasms of metaphor, abysses of negation and fear, he has held along this narrowest of narrow ways.
But the early Quakers and the old-time mystics knew nothing of scientific psychology. They arrived “naturally” at their method of seeking in silence what modern thought is calling “the intuitive principle of action”—“the independent spiritual life fulfilling itself within humanity”—“the unformulated motive which is the greater part of mind.” Like every seeker, on whatever level, they were led by feeling. Feeling passed into action. Thought followed in due course, and was deposited as doctrine. They spoke, groping for symbols, of “the seed,” “the light,” “the true birth.” In other words—lest we go too far with psychology’s trinity of thought, feeling, and will as separable activities “doing the will”—they “knew the doctrine.”
From this standpoint of obedience to the “inner light” they found within, they “understood” what they saw around them, and brought a fresh revelation to the world. “I was afraid of all company,” says Fox during his early trials, “for I saw them perfectly where they were, through the love of God which let me see myself.” For them the keynote of life is what an independent uninstructed French mystic, Brother Lawrence,[10] has called “the practice of the Presence of God,” and the man to whom the practical spade-work of the mystics, the art of introversion and contemplation, the practice (very variously interpreted) of purgation, the pathway that leads to “unknowing” and to union with what men have called God, has not been entered on as a matter of living experience, is no Quaker, no matter how pious, how philanthropically orthodox, how “religious” he may be. In a meeting for worship he is a foreign body, an unconverted person.
Side by side with the meeting for worship is the business meeting—a monthly meeting which is the executive unit of the society. It is held under the superintendence of a clerk, whose duty it is to embody the results of discussions in a series of minutes (voting and applause are unknown), and to send these up to the larger quarterly meeting of the district—a group of monthly meetings—delegates being appointed by each monthly meeting to secure representation. The meetings are open to all members and to outsiders on application. Most local questions are settled by the quarterly meetings, whose deliberations are on the same plan as those of the monthly meetings. Questions affecting the society as a whole, and matters otherwise of wide importance, go up to Yearly Meeting—the General Assembly of the Society—where, as in the subordinate meetings, decisions are reached by means of a taking by the clerk of the general “sense” of the gathering after free discussion. The decisions of Yearly Meeting are final. It issues periodically a Book of Discipline, in which are embodied, in the form of epistles and other documents, the general attitude of the society as a whole in matters of belief and conduct. A number of sub-committees are perpetually at work for special ends—social, philanthropic, etc.—and there is attached to Yearly Meeting a standing committee known as the Meeting for Sufferings, established in 1675 in the interest of the victims of persecution. It is composed of representatives of quarterly meetings and of certain officers. It is always engaged in the interest, not only of members of the Quaker body in difficult circumstances, but of sufferers all over the world. It does an enormous amount of unpublished work. Notorious, of course, is the history of the party of Quakers who arrived in Paris on the raising of the siege[11] with food and funds for the famine-stricken town; less known is the constant quiet assistance, such as that rendered to famine and plague districts and at the seat of war in various parts of the world. There are two offices in the Quaker body: that of Elder, whose duty it is to use discretion in acting as a restraining or encouraging influence with younger members in their ministry; and that of Overseer, exercising a general supervision over members of their meeting, admonishing them, if it should be necessary, as to the payment of just debts; the friendly settlement of “differences” about outward things; the discouraging and, as far as possible, restraining legal proceedings between members; “dealing” with any who may be conducting themselves, either in business or in private life, in a way such as to bring discredit upon their profession; caring for the poor, securing maintenance for them where necessary, and assisting them to educate their children. When any person has been found to be specially helpful in a meeting, and his or her ministry is recognized over a considerable period of time as being a true ministry, exercised “in the spirit,” such a one is, after due deliberation, “acknowledged” or “recorded” as a “minister.” This acknowledgment, however, confers no special status upon the individual, and implies no kind of appointment to preach or otherwise to exercise any special function in the society. There is, apparently, to-day a growing feeling against even this slight recognition of ministry as also against the custom hitherto prevailing of the special “bench” for Elders, which is usually on a raised dais, and facing the meeting. Men and women work, both in government and in ministry, side by side. Until the year 1907 they held their Yearly Meeting separately,[12] with occasional joint sittings. Since then all Yearly Meetings are held jointly, though the women’s meetings are still held for certain purposes.
The superficial structure of the society has existed, together with its founder’s system of the methodical recording of births, marriages, and deaths, much as we know it to-day from the beginning.
The distinctive Quaker teaching—with its two main points, the direct communication of truth to a man’s own soul: the presence, in other words, of a “seed of God” in every man; and the possibility here and now of complete freedom from sin, together with the many subsidiary testimonies, such as that against war, oaths, the exclusion of women from the ministry, etc., depending from these points—has also survived through many crises, and, in spite of the perpetual danger of being overwhelmed by the Calvinism amidst which it was born, and which to this day takes large toll of the society, and perpetually threatens the whole group, is still represented in its original purity.