Tremendous social problems confront men to-day, new hopes of higher life are coming to the mass of workers, new convictions and new duties are dawning on the world, and fresh questions are being raised in the domains of history, psychology and philosophy. We are probably living in the midst of as great a period of transition as that which formed the bridge between the Middle Ages and Modern Europe, and those alone [49] ]will find the fuller truth and lead men into it who will bear the travail and follow the trail of the Seekers of the Light. We want men who will get on the top of the situation, men in the spirit of George Fox. When he was overwhelmed by the confusion of the year of anarchy that preceded the Restoration of 1660, he lay in great exercise of spirit at Reading for ten weeks and he writes:
“And so when I had travailed with the witness of God which they had quenched and gotten through with it and over all that hypocrisy ... I came to have ease and the Light shined over all.”[Footnote 3] ]
It is the duty of the Church to discountenance all the manifold insincerities which disfigure our current Christianity, and to give free scope to honest-hearted love of truth. Sincerity is a plant that thrives under freedom and light, but withers under authority. The Church must use methods of illumination and education and fellowship as its means for cherishing true-hearted allegiance to the Lord. It will find these [50] ]methods more fruitful than methods of authority. Methods of authority may secure an artificial conformity, but it will always be at some expense of sincerity.
Jesus resolutely turned His back on the quickly won Kingdom of God, to be made up of those who gave Him external obedience; He set Himself to the slow achievement of an inward Kingdom, which should gather men into willing discipleship.
I desire an atmosphere of large-hearted charity and brotherly confidence, which will allow the Seeker after truth to live in the power of his experience, even if it is not a full experience, without being expected to live beyond his experience, an atmosphere which will allow him to make use of all the great aids which we have to-day in the search after truth—the great aids of scientific investigation, and what is still more important, in my opinion, the modern historical method which we are using to-day. We want to have as the motto of our Church the motto of one of our Yorkshire towns, “Weave truth with trust.” We want a Church that believes in the nobility of [51] ]the truth; as this belief prevails amongst us, so shall we find a deeper reality in all our Church life, and a fresh release of energy and renewal of inspiration. For Quakerism is essentially a religion of sincerity, answered by the incoming of the living Christ.
VI.
What then shall groups of Friends, who have reached the vital experience of which I have been speaking, do with their experience? Surely there are great demands confronting them to-day, great duties and convictions to be entered upon, great Messianic hopes stirring in the world. This world of change is also a world that is fertile in the promise of richer life. There is the passionate craving after truth. Surely we are to stand for reality in religion and life. There is the fresh sense that is coming to men of the meaning and the worth of personality. Men are learning what the early Friends reached as a fact of inner experience, that their hearts could be places where the Divine side of life could spring up, and that here in this world of our own [52] ]personality, in personal responsibility, personal dedication, personal service, is the very heart of religion.
There is another Messianic hope: Woman’s place in the universe in equal fellowship with man. Surely we can stand for that. We have expressed that in our Church life long before it came as a great hope to the mass of the people.
Then there is the hope of the establishment of the reign of law instead of brute force in international affairs. We stand and have always stood for that.
Again, there is the hope of the better ordering of society, removing the menace of destitution from the poor, securing an equality of opportunity for all, remedying the conditions that produce stunted lives, and giving those whom we call men the chance to become men in reality. The social regeneration of England and America has become to-day a living Messianic hope, making an insistent demand upon the Christian Church. Surely, with our witness to the practical application of Christianity to every part of life, we stand for [53] ]that. Above all, and finally, there is the great hope of Christ and His Kingdom, not for a few only but for the whole world. With our living experience of Jesus Christ, we must stand for that. Are we not again called to form a vanguard of progress towards the Kingdom of God? Our response to the call depends upon our personal consecration to the task. Behind the Kingdom of God as it is, behind the Kingdom of God as it is to be, there stand the actual groups of disciples, their personal experience, their personal devotion.