The Message and Mission of Quakerism

In order to get at the essentials of Quakerism, we do well to go back to the beginnings, to those first years of nascent energy which carried the Quaker message through the English-speaking world. Whenever a new truth starts to life, it is intensely dynamic and vital; it masters every opposing circumstance; it flings itself victoriously against a stubborn world. It is a thing of life and movement, and I believe it will be found that a live truth in motion is the mightiest of all forces. But, a generation later, unless the vital forces have been cherished, the emphasis comes to be laid on establishment rather than movement, and when a thing gets established it usually ceases to move; the emphasis comes to be laid on dogma instead of truth, on organization instead of life, and the day of glory and power passes away. That was the case with Quakerism. Two things, I believe, leave a vivid impression upon any student of the early Quaker movement. They can be stated quite simply, but they make up together the fundamentals of Quakerism to which everything else belongs as a natural consequence. In the first place we find ourselves among men and women of an intense sincerity, who are seeking truth with all the energy of their faith, all the energy of their nature, and, in the second place, we become aware that this earnest search after the Kingdom of God and its righteousness was rewarded with a great finding, a rich personal experience in their lives, of the living presence of Jesus Christ, their Savior. We know now that communities who called themselves “Seekers” were specially receptive of the Quaker message, and became the main strength of the new movement. In that Puritan age, filled with religious zeal, there were many honest-hearted men craving after something more real than the mere outward profession of religion. They were not satisfied with the triumphant religion of the time, which put strong emphasis, and rightly put strong emphasis, on belief in the great historical facts of Christianity, but had little or no conception of Christ’s living presence in the world to-day. And when Fox told these honest-hearted Seekers that he knew in his own experience that Jesus Christ was come to teach His people Himself, their souls leapt up to welcome the Divine Guest. Fox himself was a man of intense sincerity, who found actually in his own spirit the place where the seed of Divine life was springing up, the place where the voice of a Divine teacher was being uttered, the place that was being inhabited by a Divine and glorious presence. He could tell the great company of Seekers who met at Firbank Fell in Westmorland on that memorable afternoon in June, 1652, not only of an historical Christ, but of a living Savior, their Teacher to instruct them, their Governor to direct them, their Shepherd to feed them, their Bishop to oversee them, their Prophet to open Divine mysteries to them. I am giving you the points of his three-hour sermon on that occasion. Their bodies, he said, were intended to be temples for Jesus Christ to dwell in. They were to be brought off from the temples, tithes, priests and rudiments of the world. They were to come to the Spirit of God in themselves and to Christ the Substance.