It is not a bit of an excuse for us when we are inclined to judge other people critically, to read in these stories that some of the early Friends did and said harsh and intolerant things. They lived in a much harsher, more intolerant age than ours. The seventeenth century, as we know, has been called 'a dreadfully ill-mannered century.' Let us do our very best not to give any one an excuse for saying the same of this twentieth century in which we live. Thus, in reading of these Quaker Saints, let us try to copy, not their harshness or their intolerance, but their unflinching courage, their firm steadfastness, their burning hope for every man; above all, their unconquerable love.
Remember the old lesson of the daisies. Each flower must open itself as wide as ever it can, in order to receive all that the Sun wants to give to it. But, while each daisy receives its own ray of sunshine thankfully and gladly, it must rejoice that other very different rays, at very different angles, can reach other flowers. Yet the Sun Heart from which they all come is One and the Same. All the different ways of worship are One too, when they meet in the Centre.
Therefore it is not strange that at little secluded Come-to-Good, where the blue doves of the columbines keep watch over the quiet graves, I should remember a message that came to me in another, very different, House of God—a magnificent Cathedral far away in South Italy. There, high up, above the lights and pictures and flowers and ornaments of the altar, half hidden at times by the clouds of ascending incense, I caught the shining of great golden letters. Gradually, as I watched, they formed themselves into these three words of old Latin:
DEUS ABSCONDITUS HEIC.
And the golden message meant:
'GOD IS HIDDEN HERE.'
That is the secret all these different ways of worship are meant to teach us, if we will only learn. Let us not judge one another, not ever dream of judging one another any more. Only, wherever our own way of worship leads us, let us seek to follow it diligently, dutifully, humbly, and to the end. Then, not only when we are worshipping with our brothers and sisters around us, in church, chapel, great cathedral, or quiet meeting-house, but also (perhaps nearest and closest of all) in the silence of our own hearts, we shall surely find in truth and with thankfulness that
GOD IS HIDDEN HERE.