Dorothy M. Richardson

“ We all live our lives on our various levels, at first hand. But a full recognition of this fact need not blind us to the further fact that, while those who have mystical genius need no chart upon their journey, most of us need a plain way traced out for us through the desert. Most of us follow the gleam of doctrine thrown out by first-hand experience, and cling to that as our guide. But if the Quaker message failed as theology, and the later generations swung back to the simpler doctrine of Protestantism and re-enthroned an infallible Scripture, something, nevertheless, had been done. ”

“ This message—the message of the inner light of immediate inspiration, of the existence in every man of some measure of the Spirit of God—the Quakers laid, as it were, side by side with the doctrines of the Puritanism amidst which they were born. They did not escape the absolute dualism of the thought of their day. They believed man to be shut up in sin, altogether evil, and they declared at the same time that there is in every man that which will, if he yields to its guidance, lift him above sin, is able to make him here and now free and sinless. ”

“ The religious genius, as represented pre-eminently by the great mystics—those in whom the sense of an ultimate and essential goodness, beauty, and truth, is the dominant characteristic—have consciously bent all their energies to breaking through the veil of sense, to making a journey to the heart of reality, to winning the freedom of the very citadel of Life itself. ”

“ QUAKERISM AND WOMEN Watching pilgrims who pass one by one along the mystic way, we see both women and men. Teresa, Catharine, Elizabeth, Mechthild, no less than Francis, Tauler, Boehme, stand as high peaks of human achievement in entering into direct relationship with the transcendental life. ”

“ Beyond these two most usual readings of the early history of Quakerism, we find the more recent apologists of Christian mysticism, while freely admitting the Quakers into the fellowship of the mystics, dispose inferentially of the possibility of the “free” mystical church of which Friends dreamed on the ground of the rarity of the religious—the still greater rarity of the mystical temperament. In their opinion the art and science of religion will always be carried on by specialists; the torch-bearers will be few, though their light illumine the pathway of the world. ”

“ He saw that the Quakers could never become in the world what they hoped to be—a mystical church, a body of men swayed without let or hindrance by the Divine Spirit, pioneers for the world upon the upward way—unless they were willing to pay the price of the saintly office. ”

“ American Quakerism follows much the same line of development as does the movement at home. The original impulse tends to be superseded for the imitative mass by a doctrine embodied in an institution; the dogma of the Inner Light becomes dangerously absolutist. There is a corresponding return to the steadying refuge of an infallible scripture, and the modern church, while still united and distinguishable by the marks of Quaker culture, of faith and practice, kindling here and there to the older insight and vision, shows a divided front. ”

“ But throughout the vehemence of the Friends’ controversial writings runs the sense of fair play—the fearlessness of truth; the spirit, so to say, of tolerance of every belief in the midst of their intolerance of an “unvital” attitude in the believer. Their positive attitude to life, their grand affirmation, redeems much that on other grounds seems regrettable. ”

“ We may look with wonder and admiration at the great figures amongst Quaker women, upon those who built their lives into the first spreadings of the message; upon those who went, under the urgency of their faith, alone into strange lands, where means of communication were the scantiest; upon the persecuted and martyred women, the women of initiative and organizing genius ”

“ Perhaps for this reason, perhaps just because amongst the Quakers, in a very true and deep sense, the world is home and home is the world, because, in other words, the inner is able without obstruction to flow out and realize itself in the outer, the sense of family-life, of home, and fireside, is particularly sweet and strong. The breaking of family ties is rare. ”

“ It is, of course, evident that if we begin by assuming that equality of opportunity shall result in identity of function, if we believe, moreover, that government is merely a matter of machinery, and ministry can be estimated by the counting of heads and of syllables, we shall be led to the conclusion that, while the more obvious results of the Quaker experiment may do something towards disarming haunting fears as to the safety of acknowledging the full spiritual and temporal fellowship of women, it does comparatively little to justify the claims and expectations of the feminists in general. ”

“ The fourteenth-century mystics opened their eyes in a congenial environment, in a church whose symbolism, teaching, and ordinances, were a coherent reflection of their own experiences, stood justified by their personal knowledge of the “law” of spiritual development, the conditions of advance in the way on which their feet were set.
They owed much to tradition, to their theological studies, to their familiarity with the recorded experiences of holy men; they recognized their church as the transmitter of this tradition, as the guardian of saintly testimony on the subject of their art. ”

“ And during the last ten years—the years which have seen such a striking revival of the interest in mysticism, have felt a clearing and a growth of the recognition of the importance to the race as a whole of mystical genius, have produced a mass of seriously undertaken studies of this phenomenon from every point of approach—the Quaker church has continued increasingly to fulfil this function. Not only from the sects, but from the older establishments, and from the ranks of religiously unclassified “philosophy” and “culture,” there is a steady migration towards the Quaker fold. ”

“ It is interesting to note that one of the most striking features of the technique of Quaker meetings, whether for business or worship, is the working out of the distinctive characteristics of the sexes. Their contradiction, and the tendency psychology has roughly summarized of women, as a class, to control thought by feeling, and of men, as a class, to allow “reason” the first place, is here at its height.
The two rival and ever-competing definitions of reality both find expression. Each must tolerate the other. Reaction takes place without bitterness. ”

“ There is the view held generally by those standing outside the body, whether enemies or friends, that Quakerism comes to an end with its heroic period. The first recognize its initial catholicity, rejoice in its successful tilting with Puritan Protestantism, but see it foredoomed by its heresies, by its neglect of the outward symbols of the sanctification of human life, and by the deleterious effect of the admission of women into the ministry. ”

“ They come regretfully upon the undisciplined ranks of the second generation. They have no faith in the movement for reform; for them the little church of the Spirit dwindles, lit with a faint sunset glow of romance down towards extinction. All, both enemies and friends, who see Quakerism end with the seventeenth century, dispose of the modern revival by placing it within the general movement of Protestant evangelicalism. ”

“ Home life, social life, business life, every modern development, is brought to the test of Quaker principles. There is a spirit abroad declaring that Quakerism has become devitalized; that the religious life is stereotyped and perfunctory; that the joyous, all-conquering zeal of the early Friends was the outcome of a secret unknown to their followers; that the way to the fount at which they were sustained is lost—that it may be found again if the daily life is brought under Divine control. ”

“ A woman born into a Quaker family inherits the tradition of a faith which is of the heart rather than of the head, of intuition rather than intellectation, of life primarily rather than of doctrine; and, therefore, it would seem particularly suited to the development of her religious consciousness ”

“ We may admit, for many minds in a Christendom generally ignorant of its own history of an episcopally ordained and invested female clergy, the handicap of recognized feminine ministry; we may see the full unreason of birthright membership, and the change of base in the modern revival, without, perhaps, being driven to conclude that England’s attempt to introduce into field and market-place the hitherto cloistered mystical faith and practice has entirely failed. ”

“ Fox had to fight valiantly. His central belief once clear, he cut clean through the Pauline tangle of irreconcilable propositions, and forged from the depths of his conviction phrases that would, were they but known, do yeoman service in the present agitation for the release of the artificially inhibited responsibilities of women. He is never tired of reminding those who cling to the story of the Fall that the restoration of humanity in the appearance of Christ took the reproach from woman. ”

“ He begged for the abolition of birthright membership, for an open confession of faith for incoming members, that the children of Friends should come and offer themselves as strangers, their spiritual claims weighed and considered; that marriage should not be celebrated according to the Quaker rites between those who were not faithful Friends; that a sort of register should be kept of those who, in and out of meeting, were live and consistent Christians. ”

“ But, as we have seen, religious England was not wholly Puritan. Fox’s world was waiting for him. From every denomination and every rank of society the Children of the Light came forth. Very many—notably the nuclear members of small independent groups—had reached the Quaker experience before he came. The beliefs and customs which have since been identified with the Society of Friends were already in existence in the group of Separated Baptists at Mansfield in Nottingham, which formed in face of the closed doors of official religion the centre of the little Quaker church. ”

“ The government of the society, therefore, was for many years carried on by men alone, a women’s meeting coming into existence, as we have seen, only when obviously imperative—in relation to the care of the women and children suffering under persecution—and persisting only for special purposes quite apart from the business of the society as a whole. ”

“ Gurney, coming of old Quaker stock, though religious and pious and full of zeal for the salvation of the world, never grasped the essentials of Quakerism. He had no touch of the intuitive genius which makes the mystic. Every line he has written betrays the Protestant biblicist, the man who puts the verbal revelation before any other whatsoever. He did not repudiate the Fathers, but he denied that they had ever questioned the supreme authority of the scriptures as the guide of mankind. ”

“ They recognized her, not as an end but as a means, not as a prison, but as a home for all the human family, keeping open her doors, on the one hand, to the unconverted, providing, on the other, a suitable medium, the right atmosphere and opportunities, whereby pilgrims in the spiritual life might develop, to their full, possibilities in advance of the common measure of the group. ”

“ But as we watch the movement, as we see it assailed by those dangers arising wherever systems and doctrines are left behind and reason gets to work upon the facts of a man’s own experience; as we find the fresh life threatening here to crystallize into formal idealism, there to flow away into pantheism or antinomianism, again to pour into a dead sea of placid illumination; as we see the little church surviving these dangers and continually reviving, we recognize that Fox was more than the liberator of mystical activity. ”

“ A world-church, therefore—a church which must cast her wings over all in her striving to turn all towards the light—must organize primarily in the interest of conduct as an end. In this view the Quaker system, in so far as it invites every man to be his own church, must always fail. ”

“ This escape was the result, not of any kind of feminism, any sort of special solicitude for or belief in women as a class. Nor was it the result of a protest against any definitely recognized existing attitude. Such unstable and fluctuating emotions could not have carried through the Quaker reformation of the relations of the sexes. The recognition of the public ministry of women was an act of faith. It was a step that followed from a central belief in the universality of the inner light. ”

“ He considers that Augustine’s doctrine of original sin was called out by his zeal against the Pelagian exaltation of the natural light of reason. He admits that man in sin—the natural man—can know no right; that, therefore, the Socinians and Pelagians are convicted in exalting a “natural light,” but that, nevertheless, God in love gives universal light, convicting of sin, and teaching if not resisted. He qualifies the Quaker claim to the possibility of absolute present salvation from sin by adding that there may be a falling off. ”

“ But when we reach the humbler levels of institution and doctrine, the religious genius of womanhood tends to be pushed, so to say, into an oblique relationship. Under organized Christianity, and particularly under Protestantism, has this been so. Amongst the first Christians, it is true, women preached and prophesied. There is, moreover, in the history of the early centuries sound evidence of an ordained and invested female clergy. ”