There is no end to the cheap substitutes offered for the use of the Church. Almost all of them are methods for running the Christian Society with the minimum of spiritual energy, seeing how little spiritual life you can manage with, whereas our aim ought to be to generate and use the maximum in the illimitable service of the Kingdom of God.
A religion of life must devote itself to vital processes and vital relations. These [30] ]are the things that concern our truest welfare. Take the chief:—loyal discipleship, inspired leadership, warm fellowship, loving service, steady spiritual growth; every one of them vital processes. Look at them in order just sufficiently to get them well in mind.
Jesus Christ, so far as we know, wrote nothing, He organized no religious society, He formulated no creed, but what He did was to gather around Himself a band of disciples, men and women, who received His spirit, and in turn would bring others into touch with the life which had redeemed them. His life, springing up in the lives of men, was to be fundamentally that which should regenerate the world.
The act of discipleship was following Jesus. It began with personal adherence to the Lord, and it continued through personal communion with Him. In art and in learning we know how stimulating the daily contact of teacher and disciple proves to be—the disciple’s spirit kindled by the enkindled spirit of his teacher, the coming together of teacher and scholars [31] ]into a common life and a common purpose. That is why the colleges of American Quakerism have been such great forces. Still greater, vastly greater, is the discipleship which is ours in the School of Christ. It calls for the fullest dedication, the closest following, the daily taking of the cross, but it gives us Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Discipleship then is the first vital relation that must be always energizing the Church, but next in order comes inspired leadership.
The great initial success of Quakerism was due, beyond all else, so far as human means went, to the traveling “Publishers of Truth,” as they called themselves, who carried their burning message far and wide; they were like rich life-blood circulating freely through the body. They were for the most part men and women of competent Bible knowledge and religious training, men with intense sincerity, with a great experience, who were talking about Christ because they knew Him. They went out on a devoted service, which no privations or persecutions could daunt, and many of [32] ]them were young men in the prime of their ardor and strength, who would follow the movings of life rather than the counsels of prudence—and we want those in the Church. The Church must be prepared to take a few risks with its young men. After all, the hearts of the young are burning for a crusade.
In the days of persecution which came upon the Quaker Church there was a great mortality among these leaders and unfortunately the supply of new leaders was small, indeed, ever since that glorious morning of Quakerism, the equipment of the Quaker Church with inspired leaders has been a pressing problem. It is our business to raise up not priests but prophets, Christian men and women of trained intelligence and wide outlook, who know God and have a sure insight into the great social and spiritual needs of humanity, whose lives have been redeemed, whose hearts have been touched with the live coal from off the altar. There is no place in vital religion for the vested interests of a clerical caste, nor the dead hand of tradition, nor the [33] ]compulsion of conscience by the authority of the expert; but there is every need for a leadership, which continues the past in a living experience and educates and inspires and illuminates. A democracy requires leadership, not the leadership of authority, but what we may call, to use the constitution of the Five Years Meeting, an advisory leadership, moving along channels of inspiration and personal influence. “For lack of vision the people perish.”
The third great vital relation that the Church has to be fostering is warm fellowship. A few degrees of temperature may alter a climate and introduce wonderful possibilities of new life. Change the climate and you change the kinds of growth which may come into the world. It is very much the same with the Church. I remember a story of a little girl who was taken into a cold church one winter’s day. She got in at one end and could scarcely hear what the preacher was talking about. After church she went home and her mother asked her: “Nellie, what was the text to-day?” She answered, “I couldn’t hear [34] ]it very well, but I think it was ‘Many are cold but few frozen.’”
I think congregations have sometimes preached that sermon. It is oftener preached by the congregation than by the minister.
Quakerism at times has suffered from a frigidity of climate which has repressed and repelled. In the first centuries Christianity became a great power, because it was a great brotherhood. Surely we need to warm up our church organization so that it becomes quickened into a living fellowship. We want a Christianity with the brotherliness left in and the starch taken out. I remember seeing an advertisement, “Catlow’s preserves, boiled in silver pans.” What it meant was this: you got the sugar, you got the fruit, and you got nothing else. That is what we want in our Christianity. We want the sweetness and we want the fruitfulness. We don’t want much else. We don’t want frigidity, we don’t want starch.