SPECIAL TESTIMONIES.
There are certain points of Christian practice upon which we have been
accustomed to lay a degree of stress amounting to peculiarity, although
our “testimony” in regard to them does not involve any opposition to the
beliefs of other Christian bodies, as does that which we have just been
considering respecting the freedom of the ministry and the disuse of
ordinances. The idea of “testimony,” or practical witness-bearing to a
stricter obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ than is thought
necessary by the mass of those who are called by His name, has been
strongly impressed upon Friends from the very outset, and the
persecutions which it brought upon them did but burn it irrevocably into
the Quaker mind.
The preaching of the early Friends was, above all things, a preaching of
righteousness. I think I cannot be wrong in saying that a greater value
has from the first been attached by Friends to practice, as compared
with doctrine, than is the case with most other Christian bodies.
Obedience to the light which convinces of sin was the sum and substance
of George Fox’s preaching, and through his epistles and other writings
there runs a vigorously practical tone which seems to have been
responded to with equal vigour by those whom he addressed.
The early Friends certainly did, as a rule, wonderfully practise what
they preached; and their character for integrity was very quickly, and
has been permanently, recognized. It seems to myself inevitable that the
appeal to the witness in each heart should reach deeper, and bring forth
correspondingly better fruit of obedience, when disentangled from all
reliance on external passports to Divine favour. Not only the idea of
any possible “efficacy of sacraments” as apart from righteousness of
life, but also the idea of “substitution” as distinguished from actual
experience of the transforming power of the righteousness of Christ,
were vigorously rejected by the early Friends; and in this insistence
upon the identity of righteousness with salvation lay, as I believe, the
main secret of their strength. At any rate, there has been a remarkably
steady endeavour to maintain a high and definite standard of Christian
morality, partly by means of the discipline of the Society, partly by
family tradition, discipline, and example. Certain “testimonies,” _i.e._
practices conscientiously adopted, inculcated, and watched over, have
been handed down from generation to generation with a jealous care
which, though sometimes overshooting its mark and tending to produce
reaction, has nevertheless moulded the very inmost springs of action,
and produced and maintained a distinct and somewhat singular type of
Christian character.
The essence of Quaker “testimony” is a practical witness-bearing—a
lifting up in practice of the highest possible standard of
uncompromising obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ, both as
recorded in the Gospels, and as inwardly experienced as the Light—the
Spirit of Truth. Friends have, as a matter of fact, felt certain things
to be inconsistent with this teaching which, by the great body of those
who profess and call themselves Christians, are not regarded as being
so. They have attacked these things not so much in words as by enjoining
and observing a strict abstinence from them at any cost, in a spirit not
unlike that of the Rechabites of old. The original Quaker idea was
before all things to have “clean hands;” to stand clear of evil in one’s
own person, but to abstain in silence unless specially called to
speak.[16]
It is, of course, impossible to abstain on conscientious grounds from
what is freely practised by others without giving some offence. Any
singularity of this kind will inevitably be understood as casting some
shade of disapprobation, if not of actual blame, on the common practice.
I do not see how we can avoid this offence unless we are content to sink
to the level of least enlightenment. We must, I believe, nerve ourselves
to endure the giving of it, remembering that the disciple is not above
his Master, and that there was a time when our Master Himself had “no
honour in His own country.” If they have heard His word, they will hear
ours also. Meanwhile we may take heart from the knowledge that conduct
destined to have permanent influence must often displease for a time.
The early Friends, or “children of light,” as they sometimes called
themselves, seem to have been drawn together in a kind of spontaneous
unanimity on the main points in which their view of Christian duty
transcended that of those about them. The Yearly Meeting, which was not
constituted till 1672 (or twenty-four years from the date of George
Fox’s beginning to preach), finding the “testimonies” against war,
oaths, and superfluities already in full practice, expressly recognized
them as belonging to “our Christian profession,” and directed inquiry as
to the faithfulness of Friends in maintaining them to be made in certain
queries addressed from time to time to all the subordinate meetings.
The practice of addressing such queries to the subordinate meetings is
maintained to this day, although the queries themselves have from time
to time been altered, and of late years the greater number of them are
directed to be seriously considered, but not answered. This change in
our practice has probably not been without a balance of advantage and
disadvantage. The system of requiring answers to the queries was, in
truth, a very powerful engine of discipline, for they were considered
and answered with scrupulous care and precision, and, in case of an
unfavourable report, individuals who were regarded as failing to
maintain the testimonies of the Society were liable to be “put under
dealing,” and, in case of obstinacy, to eventual disownment. This
ultimate penalty of disobedience was in former times inflicted for much
slighter causes than would at the present day render any one liable to
it.[17]
It seems to me that there is a serious danger inherent in the very
nature of collective testimonies, especially those which imply the
lifting up of a standard of exceptional severity and purity, lest that
which is in some, perhaps even in the majority, sincere and spontaneous
should be adopted at second hand, and without personal warrant, by
others, and should thus become a mere hollow profession. For this reason
I am thankful that a much greater degree of freedom is now allowed to
our members in all matters as to which there is room for a conscientious
difference of opinion. Our strength seems to me to depend largely upon
our consistency in appealing to the gospel rather than to the law—in
trusting to the purifying power of an indwelling, informing Spirit,
rather than to any external framework of regulations. To do anything
which can stimulate the profession of more or higher enlightenment than
is actually possessed, is indeed a signal and a grievous departure from
our own avowed principles; and I believe that no surer method could be
devised for bringing our Society into disrepute and decay than the
attempt to require a pre-arranged uniformity with regard to those
special testimonies which imply special enlightenment.
The loftier and more delicate the ideal, the greater the risk of
formulating and attempting to impose it. It seems to me that our wisdom
is to insist more and more boldly upon obedience to the broad plain laws
of duty which all Christians recognize as laid down for us by those
recorded words of our Master Himself, which are our one supreme
standard; and at the same time to leave more and more scope for the
working out in detail of all the lovely and harmonious yet varying
results of individual faithfulness to the promptings of His Spirit in
each heart. Any distinct breach of the moral law, any falling below that
standard of “peaceable innocent life” which is acknowledged by all as
the test of the reality of light within, may and should surely be made a
matter of Church discipline—a matter, that is, in which brethren should
watch over one another for good, and obedience to which must be a
condition of sound fellowship. But when discipline descends to the
regulation of details whose whole significance and value depend upon
their being prompted by conscience, under the living and ever-present
guidance of the light, then surely the human is intruding upon the
province of the Divine, and we are checking and hampering and weakening
that very moulding from within which it is our chief object as a Society
to watch for and to yield to in all things.
But while all attempts at collective self-discipline must involve a
danger of hollowness, which means weakness, if not actual insincerity,
it is to be remembered, on the other hand, that there is in association
not only a well-known source of strength, but a very valuable shelter; a
protection to right instincts of modesty. In maintaining any
exceptionally high standard of action, especially in matters of detail,
there is a real safety as well as comfort in united action. While we are
treading in the steps of our honoured predecessors, however freely we
may have chosen our path, we are not tempted to claim that we discovered
it; nor need we anxiously vindicate it as though it were but the
prompting of some individual scruple or preference. In the practical
results of the collective exercises of a considerable body of
fellow-disciples, we do, I believe, in fact find, as we might reasonably
expect to find, a peculiar purity and propriety. It is not difficult to
justify the wisdom by which our special testimonies have been worked
out, though it is easy also to see the mischief of too rigid an
enforcement of them.
Our Society, like the United Kingdom, enjoys the elasticity resulting
from the absence of any written constitution, and the precise working of
its discipline is by no means easily traced. Its “testimonies,” though
clearly recognized and notorious, are not formulated or defended in any
authoritative document. The “Book of Discipline” consists, as I have
said, of extracts from “Epistles” and “Advices” circulated from time to
time by the Yearly Meeting. These are in the nature of brotherly
exhortations, which assume our principles as undisputed; and though
carefully worded, they do not deal in definitions or arguments. Our
testimonies are, in fact, to a degree which is, I think, hardly
understood outside the Society, the result of individual and spontaneous
obedience to the bidding of individual conscience, and to the guiding of
the Divine light shining in each heart, rather than of conformity to
rules enforced or even precisely laid down by any human authority. They
are collective, but unformulated; subjects for discipline, yet not
prescribed or regulated; familiar and even notorious peculiarities, yet
varying indefinitely in the degree in which they are maintained by
individuals.
The traditional reverence for individual conscience is still so strong
that the precise nature of the obstacle felt by Friends to any
particular course of conduct is apt to be shrouded in some degree of
mystery. The phraseology of the Society, which is almost a separate
language, vividly conveys this sense of an insuperable but (to
outsiders) mysterious restraint. “Truth requires” that certain things
should be done or left undone. A Friend “feels a stop in his mind,” or
“is not easy to proceed with” some undertaking. Such and such a thing
“appears” (to John Woolman, for instance) “to be distinguishable from
pure wisdom.”
There are, as is well known, individual Friends who have abundantly
argued, on general grounds, the moral questions involved in our
“testimonies.” Friends have never been wanting in pugnacity, whatever
their scruples as to the use of “carnal weapons” or of violent language.
But yet their practice has in the main been felt out rather than thought
out; their testimonies are instances of problems solved by going forward
rather than of theories built up through any speculative process; and in
regard to each one of them every true Friend feels that to his own
Master he stands or falls, and that there is but one Example to which he
ought to look, and one Guide whom he desires to obey. As in regard of
our public ministry, so in the lesser matters of everyday life and
practice, we jealously guard our individual liberty from human
interference in order that it may be the more unreservedly subjected to
all Divine influences.
And not only do we guard our own liberty—we refrain from attempting to
limit that of others. If our conscientious abstinence from certain
practices is inevitably understood as in some sense casting a shadow of
reproach or blame upon those practices, we yet are careful to abstain
from condemning those who are acting in obedience to their own measure
of light. I believe we must with boldness and humility acknowledge that
such practical witness-bearing as we believe ourselves called to implies
that we are as “a city set on a hill.” We do not attempt to lay down
rules applicable at once and equally to all. The homeward road cannot be
altogether the same for dwellers on the hill and dwellers on the plain;
the goal alone is one.[18]
The most important and the best known of the special testimonies of
which I have now to speak is that which has been steadily borne by our
members against all war. Friends have ever maintained and acted upon the
belief that war and strife of all kinds are opposed to the spirit and
the teaching of Christ, and have felt themselves, as His disciples,
precluded from engaging in them. They have steadfastly refused to take
up arms at the bidding of any human authority, or in the presence of any
danger. This course of conduct has, of course, brought them into
frequent collision with the civil power, and needs for its
justification, as Friends are the first to acknowledge, the warrant of a
higher than any national authority.
It is, indeed, an awful position which we have thus been bold to take
up—the position of those who feel themselves called upon to act as the
salt of the earth, as leaders who refuse to be led. I do not hesitate to
confess that this attitude of possible resistance to the demands of our
country in the presence of a common danger was the one part of the
Quaker ideal which I for a time seriously hesitated to accept. So long
as I understood it to be accompanied by or based upon any condemnation
of those who conscientiously believe that their duty to God requires
them to yield unqualified obedience to the demands of their country for
military service, I was unable to accept it. But when I came to
understand that the Quaker testimony against all war did not take the
form of any ethical theory of universal application, but was simply the
acting out in one’s own person and at one’s own risk of obedience to
that which one’s own heart had been taught to recognize as Divine
authority, even where its commands transcended and came into collision
with those of the nation, I felt at once that the position was not only
perfectly tenable, but was the only one worthy of faithful disciples.
So long as our country is but very imperfectly Christianized, it is
impossible not to recognize that an insuperable contradiction may at any
time arise between the demands upon our loyalty and obedience which may
be made in its name, and those of the spirit of Christ. It would
assuredly not be acting in His spirit to make light of disobedience to
law; but neither can any Christian hesitate for a moment when called
upon to choose which Master he shall obey. It seems to me that if any
man be prepared in the true spirit of a martyr to rise above his
country’s sense of right, and to serve his country in the highest sense
by disobeying and withstanding such of its requirements as in his heart
he believes to be wrong and ungodly, it is impossible to withhold from
such a man the respect and the admiration which we all feel for the
martyrs of old. I do not see how the national standard of duty can be
raised—how, in other words, the nation can ever be thoroughly
Christianized—except through individual faithfulness, at all costs and
at all risks, to a higher view of duty than that held by the nation at
large.
Here, of course, we are confronted with the question, _Is_ our view of
duty truly a higher one than that of the nation at large? Does the
teaching of Jesus Christ really call us to abstain from all warfare?
It seems to me that not only Friends’ testimony, but the teaching of our
Master Himself on this subject have been much, and in a sense
inevitably, misunderstood. The subject is profoundly complex, and much
of what is said and written about it sounds altogether unsubstantial and
unpractical, because neither the depth and intricacy of the evil, nor
the far-reaching and full significance of the principles opposed to it,
are sufficiently felt. “I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also.” Surely this does not point to an abject submission or a tame
indifference, but to an _undaunted_ persistence in blessing—a fearless
overcoming of evil with good. It is an appeal to an unchanging and
fundamental principle, rather than a mere rule of conduct. The whole
passage breathes a spirit of ardent confidence in the supremacy of
goodness; in the power of the Perfect One who makes His sun to shine
upon the just and the unjust, and sends rain upon the unthankful and the
evil; it is a call to us to be perfect, even as our Father is perfect;
not a suggestion that we should abandon or relax our conflict with evil,
but an assurance that we are not at its mercy—that He who is with us is
stronger than all they who can be against us, and that in His strength
we can and must meet evil with good and overcome it.
Those who would follow Him who thus spoke, must rise above all personal
considerations, and above every temptation to retaliate—not fall below
them. This, surely, was the spirit in which William Penn won his
victories in the early days of Pennsylvania—the bloodless victories
which make his name to this day a word of love and honour amongst the
Indians, with whom his treaty of peace was never broken. It was not by
lying down like sheep to be slaughtered by them, but by going forward to
meet them with open hands and a trusting heart, and by honourably and
generously recognizing their rights and paying them a fair price for
their lands, that he and his followers turned suspicion and hatred into
firm friendship.
We are called to rise above the level of fighting pagans, not to fall
below it. There is, indeed, a lower depth than that of the military
spirit—the depth of complacent mammon-worship. To our shame be it
confessed that this spirit may clothe itself under the profession of
“non-resistance.” When the salt so loses its savour, it is truly fit for
nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot. But we are concerned
here not with the deplorable caricature of that “testimony against all
war” which has for two hundred years been at once the boast and the
reproach of Quakerism, but with its essence and true significance. These
lie in the fact that Friends have, one by one, individually and
unitedly, been led by obedience to the spirit of Christ to abstain from
fighting and from all concern, so far as it has been possible to clear
themselves from it, in strife of any kind. This is surely clear and
solid ground to take, and quite distinct from any attempt or necessity
for laying down general and comprehensive formulæ of conduct applicable
to all cases, to all persons and all bodies. To formulate such general
rules is, in truth, foreign to the spirit of Quakerism. To yield one’s
self unreservedly to Divine guidance; resolutely, and at whatever cost,
to refuse to participate in that which one’s own conscience has been
taught to condemn;—this is the ancient and inestimable Quaker ideal. It
is surely the best, the most effectual, the most Christian way of
witnessing against evil, and of arousing the consciences of others.
There is not, I believe, any possibility of dispute, I will not say
amongst Christians, but amongst rational beings, as to the enormity of
the evil of strife and discord, whether between nations or between
individuals. The question upon which we Friends differ from other
Christians is not the question whether peace be desirable—whether it be
not, in fact, the goal of all political effort—but what are the means by
which it is to be attained or maintained. Other Christians do not deny
that quarrelling is contrary to the spirit of Christ, and we do not deny
that a holy warfare is to be continually maintained against evil in
every form. But we regard the opposing of violence by violence as a
suicidal and hopeless method of proceeding; we feel, as Christians, that
the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We cannot, by taking military
service, place ourselves at the absolute disposal of a power which may
at any time employ its soldiers for purposes so questionable and often
so unhallowed.
To abstain, on these grounds, from all participation in warfare is
surely a quite different thing from laying down any general theory as to
the “unlawfulness” of war. I own that it does not appear to me to be
right or wise to blame those who are acting in obedience to their own
views of duty, however much they may differ from our own. I do not think
it can serve any good purpose to ignore the force of the considerations
by which war appears to many people to be justified. I would even go
further, and admit that, under all the complicated circumstances of the
world (including historical facts and treaty obligations), there are
cases in which men may be actually bound to fight in what they believe
to be a just cause; although it does not, I believe, follow that every
individual would be justified in taking part in such warfare. Would any
one say that at the time of the Indian Mutiny the Governor-General of
India ought not to have permitted the use of arms for the protection of
the women and children? I doubt whether any Friend would be found to
maintain this. But it is equally to be remembered that no true Friend
could well have occupied the position of the Governor-General. No nation
which had from the beginning of its history been thoroughly Christian
could, I suppose, have found itself in the position which we occupied in
India in 1857. Were all the world, in the true and full sense of the
word, Christian, such events obviously would not occur. Had we been from
the first a thoroughly Christian nation, our whole history must have
been different, and would (as we Friends believe) have been infinitely
nobler.
We do not profess to lay down any general rule, by obedience to which
war can be instantly dispensed with by nations in their unregenerate
state, and without a sacrifice. A fully Christian nation has never yet
been seen on earth. It may well be that such a nation, could it now come
suddenly into existence, would meet with national martyrdom. Meanwhile
it is the imperfection of our Christianity and the mixed and complex
nature of national affairs which make it so difficult to apply to
national action any pure principles of conduct. This is not to deny the
existence of such principles. To recognize the difficulty, nay, the
impossibility, of suddenly or sweepingly applying them to practice, is
not to deny their leavening power. When we Friends speak of what is
“right,” we refer not to any external and rigid rule of conduct, but to
that which in each individual case is truly the best and the highest
course open to the individual. To say this is not to say that right is
in itself variable. It is only to say what will, I think, be denied by
few, that the human ideal of right is progressive, not stationary.
We do, however, further say, what undoubtedly _is_ denied by many, that
the ideal revealed to us in the life and the words of Jesus Christ our
Lord, and gradually being worked out in His own people through His
ever-present inward influence, is the highest and the purest
conceivable; and that, therefore, all real progress must be an approach
towards Him. It is this Christian ideal which, as it gains possession of
the human mind, must extinguish the spirit which leads to strife and
warfare.
It is commonly supposed that Friends have some special scruple about the
use of physical force in any case. This is, I believe, by no means true
of the Society at large, although the popular notion may very likely be
founded upon fact as regards individuals. As a body, Friends have always
recognized “the just authority of the civil magistracy,” and have, I
believe, never disputed the lawfulness of the use of “the sword”
(whatever may be meant by that expression) in maintaining that
authority.[19] George Fox himself repeatedly reminded magistrates that
they should not “bear the sword in vain,” but that they should use it
for the punishment of evil-doers, not of those who did well.
It is not, as I understand it, the use of physical force, or even the
suffering caused by the use of it, which really makes war hateful in
Christian eyes; but the evil passions, the “lusts” from which it
springs, and to which, alas! it so hideously ministers. The
dispassionate infliction of punishment by an impartial and a lawful
authority surely stands upon a quite different footing from that “biting
and devouring one another” which, whether between nations or between
individuals, it is the very aim and object of law to suppress. Suffering
inflicted for the purpose of maintaining peace cannot, I think, be
condemned by the advocates of peace unless it be on the ground of
failure.
I own that I personally cannot but recognize that upon this view certain
wars appear to be not only inevitable but justifiable, as partaking of
the nature of national police operations. I cannot, therefore, regard
all war as wholly and unmitigatedly blamable, although I can hardly
imagine any war which does not both come from evil and lead to evil.
Again, there are treaty obligations requiring us in certain cases to
take up arms for the protection of weaker nations, from which we could
not suddenly recede without a breach of national good faith. It surely
does not become us, in our zeal for peace, to make light of, or
overlook, such considerations as this. They should, I think, in the
first place lead us to abstain from sweeping generalizations, and from
blaming those who are ready to lay down their lives in obedience to
their country’s call and in our defence, or the defence of the oppressed
in other countries; while yet we resolutely maintain our own obedience
to that higher authority by which we have, as we believe, been taught a
better way—a way incompatible with outward strife—of giving our lives
for the common weal. We should be very careful how we call that a wicked
action which a good man may honestly do in obedience to his own sense of
duty; we should be still more careful lest, while professing to take
higher ground, we do in fact fall far short of such men in our lives;
but we must, for all that, be faithful to the light we have.
And, in the second place, it seems to me that the true inference from
the consideration of the complicated conditions of international affairs
is that the time is not yet ripe for the assumption of all offices of
public authority by thorough-going Christians. Our place surely still is
mainly to leaven, not to govern, the world.
The world must become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ before
wars and fightings will cease from amongst men. And the world is very
far as yet from acknowledging that dominion in anything but words. Yet
we do “profess and call ourselves Christians”; we do live in the full
light of the everlasting gospel; and however it may be rejected or
discarded, however far even those who profess it may be from entering
into its spirit, it has yet, in spite of ourselves, raised us out of the
possibility of consistent paganism. We cannot return to the old
condition of things, in which nations thought it no shame to strive each
for its own petty objects, and to be reckless of each other’s interests.
There is no satisfactory resting-place for us now on any lower level
than that which Christ has brought to light. Under the name of
“altruism,” this is recognized even by those who think of Christianity
as a worn-out superstition. We who believe it to be the power of God
unto salvation are surely bound to yield ourselves heart and soul to its
emancipating influence—to its indestructible, irresistible appeal to us
to “live as brethren.” As in the beginning it was felt by some at least
to be as clear as daylight that “Christians cannot fight,” so now, not
only amongst Friends, but in many another Christian body, the same
spirit is working, and consciences are awakening to the utter
incompatibility of strife and retaliation and reckless
self-aggrandizement with the spirit of brotherhood which lies at the
very foundation of Christianity. They had need to awake; now, at the
eleventh hour, with all Europe making itself ready for war, it may yet
be that the few in whom the fire of Christian zeal is burning in its
purity may see their cause and the cause of their Master begin to
prevail against overwhelming odds. But whether the nations will hear or
whether they will forbear, wherever two or three Christians meet
together, there still will be a protest against strife and selfishness.
A protest against strife and selfishness; not only against strife, but
against “the greedy spirit which leads to strife.” If we are willing to
go down to the root in this matter, if we truly desire to do what in us
lies towards ridding the earth not only of wars and fightings, but of
all forms of oppression and cruelty, must we not recognize that the very
first step is to be ourselves freed from covetousness?
For who can doubt that it is mainly about outward and material things
that nations or individuals are led into quarrels? Who will venture to
say that, if none of us desired either to get or to keep more than our
share of this world’s goods, there would be anything like the amount of
fighting, or of preparation for it, which now devastates the earth? We
may be skeptical about the possibility of any general acceptance of
arbitration or disarmament. To be skeptical about the possibility of
personal disinterestedness would imply a very different sort of
blindness. It seems to me that in struggling to rise and to raise others
more and more clearly above the greedy spirit which leads to war, is the
best hope for many of us of contributing in any real sense to the cause
of peace on earth.
It was long ago recognized by Friends that (to use the words of John
Woolman) “in every degree of luxury are the seeds of war and
oppression.” The connection between luxury and cruelty is, indeed,
almost a truism, but it is one of those truisms of which it is
unfortunately easy to lose sight; and I fear that even amongst Friends
the familiar testimonies against all war and against superfluities are
apt to be held without any vivid sense of their vital connection.
No one, surely, will deny that the selfish desire of mere pleasure, when
allowed to rule, will feed itself at the expense of suffering and
privation to others; that it does cause that scramble for gain in which
the weak are trampled upon, and every furious passion is stimulated.[20]
The difficulty in regard to bearing a practical testimony against
superfluities is not that which some of us feel in the case of war—that
we do not know where to take hold, that our personal and daily conduct
seems to have no immediate bearing upon questions of international
policy, and that the whole problem eludes our grasp by its very
vastness. It is, rather, that we do not _like_ to put our shoulder to
the wheel of simplifying life for ourselves and others; that we do not
see the beauty of severity; that we love softness, or yield to it for
want of any purifying fire of hope.
But yet, in one form or another, often extravagantly, foolishly, even
injuriously, an ineradicable instinct has prompted Christians in all
times to free themselves from luxurious and self-indulgent ways of
living; to walk as disciples of Him who “had not where to lay His head;”
to lay aside, not only every sin, but every weight, that so they may run
the race set before them, not as beating the air, but as those who
strive for the victory.
It is, indeed, not easy to define the precise kind or amount of luxury
which is incompatible with Christian simplicity; or rather it must of
necessity vary. But the principle is, I think, clear. In life, as in
art, whatever does not help, hinders. All that is superfluous to the
main object of life must be cleared away, if that object is to be fully
attained. In all kinds of effort, whether moral, intellectual, or
physical, the essential condition of vigour is a severe pruning away of
redundance. Is it likely that the highest life, the life of the
Christian body, can be carried on upon easier terms?
The higher our ideal of life, the greater, indeed, must be the
sacrifices which it will require from us. As we rise from the lower to
the higher objects of life, many things of necessity become superfluous
to us—in other words, we become independent of them, or outgrow them.
This is a widely different idea from that of ascetic self-discipline or
self-mortification; and it is surely a sounder and a worthier idea.
The Quaker ideal, as I understand it, requires a continual weighing of
one thing against another—a continual preference of the lasting and deep
over the transient and superficial. “Weightiness” is one of the Friends’
characteristic and emphatic forms of commendation. To sacrifice any deep
and substantial advantage to outward show is abhorrent to the Quaker
instinct. To “stretch beyond one’s compass” grasping at shadows, and
encumbering oneself with more than is needed for simple, wholesome
living, is at variance with all our best traditions.
If we bear in mind the essentially relative meaning of the word
“superfluous,” it is obvious that such a testimony against
“superfluities” does not require any rigid or niggardly rule as to
outward things. To my own mind, indeed, this view of the matter seems to
require at least as clearly the liberal use of whatever is truly helpful
to “our best life” as the abandonment of obstructing superfluities. No
doubt a testimony against superfluities is very liable to degenerate
into formality, and to be so misapplied as to cut off much that is in
reality wholesome, innocent, and beautiful. Art has to a great extent
been banished from many Quaker homes; and a considerable amount of
injury has no doubt been done by such rigid severity, and perhaps still
more by the very natural consequent reaction. But it would, I believe,
be quite a mistake to suppose that the extreme plainness in dress and
other surroundings adopted by the stricter Friends, and formerly made a
matter of discipline by the Society, was originally adopted with any
intention of self-mortification or asceticism.[21]
I believe that asceticism is in a very deep sense contrary to the real
Quaker spirit, which desires in all things to abstain from any
interference “in the will of man” with Divine discipline and guidance,
and which would, I believe, regard the idea of self-chosen exercises in
mortification of the flesh with the same aversion as it entertains for
pre-arranged forms of worship. Friends, no doubt, have often believed
themselves required to submit to the adoption of the plain dress “in the
cross” to natural inclination, and have felt it a valuable exercise to
do so; but the plainness was not devised for that purpose, but chosen
(or rather, as Friends would say, they were led into it by Truth)
because of its inherent suitableness and rightness. It is an outcome of
the instinctively felt necessity of subordinating everything to
principle. Its chief significance is that of a protest against bondage
to passing fashions, and for this reason it is a settled costume. It is
also felt that our very dress should show forth that inward quietness of
spirit which does not naturally tend towards outward adornment, and the
Friends’ recognized dress is therefore one of extreme sobriety in colour
and simplicity in form.
It is a significant fact that there is really no such thing as a
precisely defined Quaker costume. The dress is certainly precise enough
in itself, and to the naked eye of the outside observer it may appear to
present an undeviating uniformity; but it is really not a uniform in the
sense in which a nun’s or a soldier’s dress is a uniform. It is in all
respects a growth, a tradition, a language; and it is subject to
constant though slow modification. Any perfectly unadorned dress of
quiet colour, without ornament or trimming, if habitually worn, is in
fact, to all intents and purposes, the Quaker costume, though one or two
details have by a sort of accident acquired a traditional meaning as a
badge, which one may adopt or not according to one’s feeling about
badges. Some Friends nowadays object on principle to anything of the
kind. Others still see a “hedge” or shelter in them. Others, again, feel
that they serve a useful and innocent purpose in enabling Friends
readily to recognize one another, and that it is not amiss for them to
be easily recognized even by outsiders. But the one important matter of
principle which the Society as a body have recognized, is that it is a
waste of time and money for which Christian women can hardly fail to
find better employment, to condescend to be perpetually changing the
fashion of one’s garments in obedience to the caprice or the
restlessness of the multitude. “Plain Friends” are those who are
resolved to dress according to the settled principles which commend
themselves to their own mind, not enslaving themselves to passing
fashion.
It is easy to say that they do but exchange one bondage for another.
That may, indeed, have been the case at times, and may even still be so
in some families or meetings. But the crystallizing into rigid
formality, though a possible tendency, is no real part of the true
Quaker ideal. My own strong feeling is that the adoption of a settled
costume, at any rate in mature life and from conviction, is not only the
right and most dignified course on moral grounds, but also that it has
in actual experience afforded one more proof of the truth that the lower
aims of life can thrive only in proportion as they are kept in
subordination to the higher. The freedom from the necessity of perpetual
changes, which commends itself to Friends as suitable to the dignity of
“women professing godliness,” has also the lower advantage of admitting
a gradual bringing to perfection of the settled costume itself. We all
know how exquisite, within its severely limited range, can be the
result. The spotless delicacy, the precision and perfection of plain
fine needlework, the repose of the soft tints, combine, in the dress of
some still lingering representatives of the old school of Quakerism, to
produce a result whose quiet beauty appeals to both the mind and the eye
with a peculiar charm. I cannot think that such mute eloquence is to be
despised; or that it is unworthy of Christian women to be careful that
their very dress shall speak a language of quietness, gentleness, and
purity—that it shall be impressive even with a touch of eternity.
This principle of Christian simplicity should, in our view, run through
everything—dress, furniture, habits of life, and forms of speech; all
should be severely purged from redundance, and from mere imitation and
conventionality. The “plain language,” best known as leading to the use
of _thee_ and _thou_ for _you_ in speaking to one person, and of first,
second, etc., for the days of the week and the months, instead of the
ordinary names “derived from heathen deities,” was an instance of this
endeavour to winnow away every superfluity and every taint of flattery
and superstition from our speech. These special peculiarities of speech
are, as is well known, completely dropped by many of the present
generation of Friends. The changes which have taken place in two hundred
years in our language and habits have deprived these expressions of much
of their original significance, and the tendency of the present time is
no doubt towards the effacing of all peculiarities. But some special
attention is still paid amongst us to simplicity and guardedness of
language in a wider sense, and surely this is an object well worthy of
attention on the highest as well as the lowest grounds.
The idea of a scrupulous guard over the lips, which is so strongly
characteristic of all Friends at all worthy of the name, culminates in
their united testimony against oaths. This has, indeed, been always
regarded by Friends as a matter of simple obedience to a plain command
of Jesus Christ; and I think that nothing but long habit could reconcile
any sincere disciple to the ordinary interpretation of His words as
intended to forbid “profane swearing” only.[22] Many others besides
Friends have felt this scruple; but to our Society belongs the
indisputable credit of having, through a long and severe course of
suffering for their “testimony,” obtained a distinct recognition of the
sufficiency in their case of a plain affirmation, thereby vindicating a
principle which is beginning to be generally recognized—the principle of
having but one rule for all cases, that of plain truth; of being as much
bound by one’s word as one’s bond. I think it can hardly be questioned
that, through this simple and unflinching course of obedience to the
plain injunction of Jesus Christ, Friends have done much to raise the
standard of veracity in our country.[23]
The refusal to pay tithes is a part of the testimony against a paid
ministry, of which I have sufficiently spoken in the last chapter; and I
need here only say that in all these cases of resistance to the demands
of authority, for military service, for oaths, or for tithes, the idea
has been that of witnessing at one’s own cost against unjust or
unrighteous demands. It is, I think, fair to claim that it is at one’s
own cost that one refuses a demand even for money when it is made by
those who have the power to take the money or its equivalent by force,
and when no resistance is ever offered to their doing so. Friends have
again and again submitted patiently to the levying of much larger sums
than those originally claimed, as well as to severe and sometimes
lifelong imprisonments, and other penalties, rather than by any act of
their own give consent to exactions which they believed to be
unrighteous in their origin or purpose. While such unmistakable proofs
of disinterestedness were given, the motive for withholding money could
hardly be misunderstood. With regard to tithes, however, the
circumstances have, since the Tithes Commutation Act, become so
complicated, that few Friends now feel a refusal to pay them a suitable
method of testifying against a paid ministry, and the Yearly Meeting has
placed on record this sense of the alteration of the state of the case
in a minute dated 1875:[24] “This meeting believes that the time has
arrived when the mode of bearing this testimony must be left to the
individual consciences of Friends.”
Amongst lesser matters as to which Friends have made a stand upon
principle against prevailing customs, may be mentioned “the
superstitious observance of days,” especially that of fasts or
thanksgivings prescribed by the civil government (a power which we do
not regard as competent to prescribe religious exercises), and the
practice of wearing mourning, and placing “inscriptions of a eulogistic
character” on tombstones. In Friends’ burial-grounds nothing beyond the
name, and the dates of birth and death, is permitted. The objections to
wearing mourning are obvious, both on the ground of unnecessary expense
and trouble at a time when the mind should surely be left as much as
possible undisturbed, and also on that of its being an expression (and
an expression so formal as to be of doubtful sincerity) of grief and
gloom in regard to providential dispensations which, however painful, we
should desire to accept with cheerful submission. There is obviously
much to be said for this application of the principle of simplifying our
customs, and adjusting our dress and other surroundings to the permanent
rather than the transient circumstances of our lives.
To simplify life to the very uttermost—is not this truly in itself a
worthy aim; nay, the one inexorable condition of excellence?
We have just now been engaged with comparatively trivial matters—straws
which show as no more solid thing can do which way the wind blows. These
things are important, not in themselves, but in relation to the
principles in honest obedience to which they have been worked out.
Simplicity—“the simplicity which is in Christ”—the simplicity, not of
exclusion, but of Divine all-subduing supremacy—this is the keynote of
our ideal; and it is a keynote to which the human heart must always in
some degree respond. At the bottom of all art, of all beauty, and
surely, we may say, of all goodness, lies the principle of
subordination—the necessity of a perpetual choice between the permanent
and the transient, the essential and the superficial. Quakerism is an
honest endeavour to carry out this principle in the Christian life; to
weigh “in the balance of the sanctuary” the meat that endureth against
the meat that perisheth; to cleave to the eternal at the sacrifice, if
necessary, of all that is temporal.
I am, of course, not absurd enough to claim that this endeavour is
peculiar to Quakerism. My object throughout is to show what are the
eternal and unassailable principles of truth to which Quakerism appeals,
to which it clings as to its strongholds. And I believe that the severe
sifting away of non-essentials which lies at the foundation of our
revolt from accepted ecclesiastical practices, and which has ramified in
detail into these minor testimonies, often rigidly and at times even
laughably worked out by individuals, is a process more and more urgently
needed in these days of rapid growth in all material and intellectual
resources.
The permanent danger of giving our labour and our lives “for that which
satisfieth not” was surely never more desperate than in these days of
hurry and fulness, when merely to stand still needs a resolute effort of
will. Are not half the lives we know carried along in a current they
know not how to resist towards objects they but vaguely recognize, and
in their heart of hearts do not value? Was the bondage of outward things
ever more oppressive than it is to many of those who are ostensibly, and
ought to be really, in a position of entire outward independence? How
many of us have attained to the unspeakable repose of having our centre
of gravity in the right place, of leaning upon nothing that can fail?
There is no royal road to ridding ourselves of superfluities. It is a
lifelong process of severe purification, which at every turn demands the
sacrifice of the lower to the higher. But as this severity is the
necessary price of attaining what is highest, so also it is the one
spell by which life and significance and value can be given to what is
lower. If it burns it also brightens; while it destroys it irradiates. I
believe it to be in all things true that nothing can have its full value
except when rightly subordinated to that which is of more importance
than itself. If you sacrifice the higher to the lower, you not only make
a bad bargain, but you injure the very object which you thus purchase.
That of which you make an idol turns to dust in the process. The idol
which you have the courage to pluck from its throne may come to life
through that very act. From the closest human affection down to the most
trivial outward adornment, all lovely things owe their perfection of
loveliness to being held in their due subordination to what is yet
higher. “He that will lose his life shall save it;” a hard saying,
indeed,—with the hardness of the imperishable rock in which is our
fortress and our stronghold.