William Penn Lecture
1937
The Open Life
Delivered at
Arch Street Meeting House
Philadelphia
by
Douglas V. Steere
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Haverford College
The Open Life
As I read the journals, the letters and the essays
of men like George Fox, Isaac Penington and William
Penn, there is only one phase that I find adequate to
describe what I find there: the power of an open life.
Their acts of boldness, their strength under persecution, their
appalling disregard for convention; the clarity of their witness;
even the very freshness of the speech they minted in order
to describe their newfound life, all testify to these men's
lives having been opened and held open to a power that
shone through them.
Today the Society of Friends is happy to be known
as an eminently respectable and sensible people. We are
held in high esteem by nearly all. Someone recently noted
how admirably we had adapted to our environment. Our
actions are marked by caution. We are one of the
"historic peace churches." We have a great name to keep unsoiled so that
it is essential to consider and reconsider about giving
offense to society at large, and to that considerable increment
of society at large that lodges within our own lives, on
anything except the century-old testimonies.
From time to time it is good to hear of the lives of
early Friends, just as it is good to read over the Sermon on
the Mount or Jesus' commandment to love our neighbor
as ourselves. It heightens aspiration and is not unlike
setting the clock a half-hour fast and then always making
allowance for it. Above all we are determined to avoid being
fanatical about religion. We know how to apply the brakes. Did
not John Keble write, "no need for us to wind ourselves
too high, for sinful man beneath the sky"? If one stays
within the bounds of a decent respectability in religion, we
argue, one is at least preserved from a good deal of hypocrisy
and many other of the dangers of zeal. It is true that not
many of our members travel in the ministry any longer.
Publishing truth is after all a pretension to certainty and a
trespassing upon the personalities of others that is unbecoming to
a generation that looks upon religion as a delicate matter
of personal taste. On our lips there is the prayer: Oh
God, teach us to do thy will _ to a certain extent.
To a certain extent. Is this the inevitable result of
these centuries of adaptation to our environment? Is this as
near as we care to come to the power of the open life that
laid hold of those early Friends' lives and that strikes out at
us from them? In the first book of the World as Will and
Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer is commenting on the way in
which an orang-outang can be distinguished from a man. He
notes that the orang-outang is so cunning that he knows
enough to warm himself at a fire, but his cunning does not reach
to the next stage. He does not know enough to put more
wood on the fire to renew it. Do we in this generation know
how to renew the fire of our great past or must it slowly die
out among us? Are we to go on as the "Inheritors," living
tamely off the principal that has been stored up for us; are we
what Albert Schweitzer calls the Epigone, the pygmies who
overrun the earth after the great ones have died and left it? Or
are we aware enough of our impotency to be ready to be
renewed, to come up into the beginning, to be laid hold of by
that same power of the open life?
I am not ready to answer that question for the
Society. It is your question to answer. I know how dangerous it is
to seek radical change before there is a deep inner feeling
of the need for that change. "If thou wilt receive the
kingdom that cannot be shaken," wrote Penington, "thou must
wait to have that discovered in thee which may be shaken."
But that waiting can only be a passive waiting to one who
is already content. If he is discontented, he is already
seeking, and the discovery is already being made within him. I
know a number of Young Friends, at least, in whom
that in themselves which may be shaken has been discovered:
That in themselves which is only the shell of our
contemporary late Renaissance industrialized culture;
that in themselves which is only their proud confidence in the
self-sufficiency of their "vivid and persuasive personalities," that
in themselves which although spoken of as sensibleness
and Christian caution turns out to be chiefly lack of
faith, cowardice, sloth, and native inertia. For these seekers,
at least, the search after the conditions of the power of
the open life is imperative at this time.
What are the conditions of such an open life in
our day? Because these early Friends have such a ring of
the authentic about them I am drawn to search them for
these conditions. But it is equally important that we see that
these conditions be applicable to the life in which we stand
today. There must of necessity, then, be a continual
shuttling between their insights and our life situation.
The conditions that I find in these men of the open
life are a sense of vocation, a living in the decision, a yielding
to the principle, a coming under holy obedience or into
devotion, a life of practice in the presence of God. These are not
really separable. They are all a part of a single response, a
single condition. But we shall enter the temple by several gates.
The Sense Of Vocation
Look at Fox, at Penington, at Penn. Each had a
sense of vacation, of mission. They had a sense of having
been called or drawn into a new life and of having received
a charge for it; of having been set apart for use, and
their lives and their work and their goods were all
available. They were open to be used. Each of these men had found
and been found by an order beyond themselves in whose
service they revealed this power of the open life.
What did this sense of vocation mean to these men?
I was forced to explain this as best I knew how before
some seventy members of the Bruderhof near Fulda in
west-central Germany three years ago. After the war these people
lived in German cities, and like ourselves were seeking after
a deeper visitation of the religious life. They reached
the conclusion that it could not be found amid the
compromises necessary to live in bourgeois society, and with their
leader Eberhard Arnold, withdrew to a large farm which was
later exchanged for the one they now occupy. They
purchased the farm and the material for the buildings with their
own joint resources which were assisted by considerable
gifts from English Friends who were deeply interested in
this venture. They have lived there since that time engaged
in farming, handicrafts, writing and printing religious
books, and in the education of their children.
Until 1933 they were nearly self-supporting.
They insisted that only in such colonies, only in such
withdrawal, could the religious vocation be pursued in our day, and
urged me to explain how we could honestly believe to the
contrary. Their life, with considerable liberating modifications is
of course the pattern of the mediaeval monastic conception
of the religious vocation, which if not for all, is at least
for those who feel called to special dedication. The
conventional Protestant pattern, for those who feel called to a
special dedication, which may be regarded as something of
an individualistic equivalent for this membership in
a community set apart, is entrance into the
professional ministry with its monasticism of the pastor's study.
This has persisted up to our own day in Protestant circles. To
a young man who has a deep sense of religious vocation
it was assumed that he would prepare for the home or
foreign ministry. Here, too, was a life apart. The usual
compromises of existing society would be spared this man and
the congregation would provide for him.
Early Friends refused to identify the religious
vocation with either of these established patterns. They asserted
their unity with all creation and except where ostracism
and persecution drove them to withdraw into
separate communities, they sought to live in the world and to
bear their witness from within. Nor was there to be a
single professional ministerial pattern for those who felt the
call to special dedication. All useful work was an
acceptable ministry to God and such vocal ministry as they had,
sprang out of the corporate group, all members of which
accepted this broader conception of the ministry. Yet by their
vocation these Friends did feel themselves knit to an
inner community, to a new order, to a new unity with men
that severely limited their conformity to the existing
social practices of their time and yoked them to
their transformation.
But consider the price of this continuing to live in
an outward order whose many wrongs they were acutely
aware of, and felt called upon to transform. Only by the
most intensive cultivation of their lives within the
new order was their any hope of resisting the pull of its contorted
outer counterpart in the world about them. Yet they never tired
of repeating that the ultimate blasphemy was to break
the active bond between the two. While the decisive and
costly action of the Bruderhof, as of every really sacrificial
answer to a calling, cannot but challenge most of us in
our complacent acceptance of our posts in the world, yet
this withdrawal has not been, and unless I mistake the
genius of our faith in the unity of creation, cannot be, our way.
In spite of all the difficulties and complexities and dangers
of being absorbed by the secular culture of our own day,
I believe that this insight into the religious vocation as one
to be planted squarely in the thick of the world is sound.
John Locke declares that no democratic parliament should
be allowed to be in continuous session. The legislators
should be dismissed for a part of each year in order to return
to their homes and to live under the laws they have
enacted. This is not irrelevant to the religious vocation.
But if we do take this free conception of the
religious vocation many believe that it is still to be proved in
our generation whether the world will not in time wear
down the religious sense of vocation unless the person be in
some special form of direct service to others like teaching, or
social work, or medicine. The sense of purified isolation from
the rest of the industrial and commercial life that those
who make this assertion presume to exist in teaching, social
work or medicine is not borne out in fact. Teachers, social
workers and doctors are caught up in the same fabric of
our contemporary life as others, they are paid from the
same sources, live usually in the same communities, and
read the same magazines and newspapers as others. Only
as they are blind are they unaware of these connections.
And the fact that they deal directly with people continually
instead of with problems of organization, of commerce, or
with animals, or with physical materials is no guarantee
whatever of their persistence in the religious vocation. We all
stand at the same frontier.
The early Friends, however, never confused the
real vocation with the way a man earned his living. They
placed only a single condition on the way of making a living. It
was to be open, i.e., it was to be constructive and not
destructive to our fellows. Given that, they were always clear that
one's deep vocation could be lived in the midst of a wide variety
of forms of bread-work; pencil-maker, lens-grinder,
tailor, housewife, these were all possible vehicles. One's
bread-work is related to one's true vocation as every detail of
one's life is related to it, subject to it, and exalted by it. No
more. Some seek to derive their validity in this world from
the dignity of their profession. But not the person under a
sense of religious vocation. He possesses his validity from the
order that indwells him.
Today we see that the sense of religious vocation
may not only work through and light up conventional forms
of work. It may at times lead men to establish new patterns
of work not yet envisaged by others. Pierre Ceresole's work
in establishing the international labor camps, Kagawa's
work, Grenfell's work, Gandhi's work, the work the Wilmer
Young's are doing at Delta Farm, the work Richard Gregg is
seeking in connection with reaching labor groups in this
country with his nonviolent approach, the work of the
"Friendly advisers" in the coal fields _ these
are all new forms of work that the deeper vocation of these men has helped them
to create. Men and women of this kind can say with
Unamuno, "Sow yourselves, sow the living part of you in the furrows
of the world" because they have done it, and they have done
it in fresh ways.
By none of these varying garments in which the
real problem of vocation has sought to conceal itself:
withdrawal from society; the professionalized ministerial pattern,
the identification of the religious vocation with certain
special forms of work, in none of these were the early Friends
misled. Vocation, the real vocation is the yielding of a man's life,
all of his life to an order beyond the self that unites all
creation. It is a willingness to be used in its service no matter
how obscure, or how prominent or how costly that service
may be. What your vocation will lead you to,
you must discover. What is important is, have you opened your life to this
calling. The early Friends found a sense of vocation to be both
a condition and a mark of the open life.
The Need Of Decision
The second condition of the open life which is
really inseparable from the sense of vocation is living in
the decision. A life that is itself centered and is living,
making the minor decisions in the life to which the major
decision committed it, does something to the lives of others. Talk
to a man who has yielded to his vocation. He is alive. He
is teachable. Yet there is a sureness, there is a kind
of authority, there is a clean, clear, frank ring to what he
says and to what he leaves unsaid. When you speak, he
listens and a conversation with him is two-sided. He speaks to
what you have said and to you through what you have said.
If you are not sincere, he is often silent and you do the
talking. There is something divisive about his speech as there
is about his silences. You feel it searching you and
unsettling you toward inwardness. For his person is alive. He is
under obedience to something.
I once had a two-hour conversation with Karl Barth
at Bonn. After the first ten minutes we were in
almost continuous disagreement, not about details, but
about fundamentals. I remember walking up the street
towards the trolley after I had left his house. I had a sense of
having just come out of a cold bath and a hard rub with a
rough towel. I knew what I believed more clearly than ever
before as a result of this conversation with him in which
he searched me and challenged me to the root. I knew that
I had met someone who was alive. His way was not my
way, but he was laid hold of by this engagement, this calling.
He had yielded to it and was alive. He made others alive and
he made others decide.
In 1694, William Penn who had lived in many
circles high and low, and had seen and had dealings with all
types of men, wrote of George Fox, "Having been with him
for weeks and months together on divers occasions, and
those of the nearest and most exercising nature, and that by
night and by day, by sea and by land, in this and in
foreign countries: and I can say I never saw him out of his place
or not a match for every service and occasion. For in all
things he acquitted himself like a man, yea a strong man, a
new and heavenly minded man; contented, modest, easy,
steady, tender, it was a pleasure to be in his company." He is
here describing a man who is alive. To have a friendship
with such a man was costly and it was decisive _ as Penn
knew to his profit. It had cost him his former way of life. But
it had been by Penn's own choice. He had worn the
old ungrounded, undisciplined "free" life as long as he
could and then by his own volition he had yielded it, not to
Fox, but to the order with which Fox's life was engaged.
There is a clearness about such engaged lives
that recognizes the price of all deepest friendships. John
Reed once told one of the editors of the Metropolitan,
"You and I call ourselves friends, but we are not really friends,
because we don't believe in the same things." The pace at which
that belief proceeds must be set by the believer, but the
existence of all real friendship rests ultimately on both parties
moving toward a fixed point beyond themselves. That
inflexible loyalty to the order beyond himself may appear as a
menace to friendship _ as its enemy. Yes, it is an enemy to the
soft friendships, the gentle sentimental attachments that try
to make each other their gods, but only succeed in a
temporary form of idol-worship. But as Nietzsche saw so clearly,
this enmity is the growing tip of real friendship: "In one's
friend one shall have one's best enemy."
Penn's way, Penn's Holy Experiment in
Government, Penn's connections in high places, Penn's witness, they
were not for Fox. They were for William Penn. But to he
lovingly connected with a calling from the ground of life _ to be
subject to the root, to be convinced of its life and power _ that
was a lived point beyond either _ and decision in regard to
that was the enemy in Fox that Penn and all others who
knew Fox recognized and felt until they yielded. For here was
a man who saw that the Kingdom of God existed and
who lived in it. And such a life was decisive. And decisive
lives call for decision. And if men feel the axe of decision laid
to the root of their lives they tremble and they burn.
We find that it is so much more pleasant to
study the Bible as literature; to study the
history of Christianity as a great seminal power that has laid hold of the western
world and intertwined itself with so many of its
institutions, tempering them for good; to study the great
philosophical proofs for God and the theological systems that have
borne the Christian revelation; or to study the varieties
of interpretation of the Christian religion that have
emerged in the Christian churches. This is all perfectly
legitimate subject matter to engage the mind. There may come a
time when belief will set men to pursue these studies.
But Penington's counsel is always well to
remember, "Knowledge without life dulls the true appetite." And
this knowledge is not to be confused with the religious
category itself. For over the door of the religious category is
written "Decision." "The glory of God's love," wrote
George MacDonald, "lies in the inexorableness of his demands."
And that means not a willingness to read of the revelations
of others, or of the development of the church or of
its intellectual defenses. It means a willingness to exist
within the Kingdom of Heaven, a willingness to be laid hold
of by the love of God, a willingness to be known of Him,
a willingness to come and to remain under holy
obedience, and a willingness to reweave the life in response to
this power that you have discovered.
The gate into the open life is strait and the way
is narrow. Like it or not, if you would come into the open
life you cannot escape Decision. And after Decision there
are continuous decisions. But Decision here does not mean
a screwing up of will with tense fist-clinching heroics in
favor of some noble resolution. It is unlikely to come at the end
of an impressive syllogistic proof of God's existence. It
probably will include no ravishing of the emotions. You have no
doubt had excitations of all three of these functions to
little subsequent effect. No, Decision, the Decision one sees
in the lives of these early Friends came not from an effort
on the part of these functions of will, reason, or affection,
but by their yielding themselves to their ground,
their root, the principle of God in man, as Penington calls it, which is
the abiding, ever-present, indwelling Christ.
Living From The Principle
Central in all sense of vocation, back of all need
for Decision, lies the presence of the root or the principle
of God in each man, that is not to be confused with his will,
or his reason, or his feelings, yet which is their ground,
their base, and longs to use them in its service. Nowhere can
this distinction between the root and the functions be
better illustrated than in the distinction between a genius and
an apostle. A genius is a man natively endowed with a
Herculean power of will, or a rare intelligence, or a set of feelings
as sensitive as an Aeolian harp, or perhaps with
some combination of these. An apostle may have none of
these high native gifts, but all that he has has been yielded to
the principle, the root, within him. The life of the genius
is restricted to a few. The life of an apostle is open to all.
A genius may be an apostle, but not as genius _ only as
man. And perhaps no group of men find it so difficult to live
from this root as those whose native genius in any one of
these ranges offers them the temporary consolations of
brilliant self-sufficiency. William Penn knew this well enough.
As long as these functions rebelliously seek a pretentious self-sufficiency no matter how magnificent
their effort, the life of the bearer can never be really open;
nor can it open the lives of others; nor can it open the life
of society.
Yet to yield all to this root is not, as the advocates
of human depravity love to repeat, to strangle for once and
for all the native functions of will and intellect and feelings
in man. Yielding to, and ever attentive to this center,
these functions become for the first time really fruitful,
really nurtured, and feel the sensitive reins of the divine
leadings that exist for their guidance. Given this yielding, the root
is related to the functions as the palm is to the fingers, and
be these fingers long or short, tapering or blunt, strong or
weak, by their native endowment, they are all open to
connection with the palm. Given this yielding to the "Principle of
God which lies hid in the hearts of man" so that it is "raised
and come into dominion" Jacob Boehme can write of the
will, "He hath given to the will an open gate in Christ";
Isaac Penington, of the reason, "Reason is not sin; but a
deviating from that from which reason came is sin"; and
John Woolman, of the feelings, "My heart was tender and
often contrite and universal love to my fellow creatures
increased in me."
It is, then, in this principle and in the dominion of
this principle over all, that we have our true being. It is in
this principle that we receive our inner education. It is in
and through this principle that the persuasive love (if a
Father God moves: a God whose love is so great that it refuses
to crush its child into dependent yielding, as all earthly
power does, but will only persuade him, leaving him free
to open and to share in this abiding Life in the world, or to
remain closed. "Only the omnipotent," wrote Kierkegaard in
his Journal, "could so restrain Himself. Any less power
would press out its egotism at some point and make
others dependent."
It is here at the ground of man's being, and in
God's love for it, and in His longing for it to open into life within
a man and guide his every function, it is here and here
alone that it is possible to locate any realistic basis of
human equality. At this point the accomplishments, and the
world's estimates and the unequal gifts of natural genius which
we simply cannot deny, all of these drop away and all men
are discovered of equal worth. For before God each bearer
of the principle is of infinite concern.
It is in the principle that we have fellowship with
the mystical body of Christ, here is the vine of which we are
the branches. Here is the "Spring which has no
commencement giving itself to all the rivers, never exhausted by what
they take." Here is the new order, the
new community. Here is the center out of which comes the enduring concern
for cutting away those barriers to equality which warp the
lives of God's loved ones, our brothers in the world. Here and
not in some sociological or political doctrine is to be found
the basis of any social reforms that Friends have
ever undertaken. Here is a source of renewal in reverence for
life and in fellowship with every man and every creature
that never rests in one who yields to the principle. Here is
a source that lets no natural barrier like tradition or
custom or numbers or the supposed incorrigibility of human
nature move it.
"Race discrimination has gone on forever," says
the world. "Then it has gone on long enough," says the
principle, and soon some daring director of a school announces
that it will henceforth not exclude any qualified pupil on
the ground of race. Here, in the principle, comes the courage
to persist when the majority of the patrons of the
school threaten to withdraw their children if racial
discrimination is not continued. Here, in the principle, comes the power
to know the condition of those who resist the life and
comes the direction to speak to that condition.
Is it any wonder that John Woolman was
continually concerned to "keep close to
the root" as he was drawn to bear witness against the want of loving unity that
could permit slavery, ill-treatment of the Indians, overwork of
the sailors and the post-boys. For it was from the
root or principle that his concern sprang, it was from the
root that he received the power and courage to continue his testimony against
it, and from the root that there was discovered to him
the condition of those with whom he must labour. Such a
man, you can imprison or put to death. But while he is in
the root, his life strikes at yours and even great rulers or
those in positions of power are not immune from its influence.
The sense of vocation, the necessity for decision,
the yielding to the principle, the
root, are now before us as conditions of the open life.
Devotion And Holy Obedience
During the past thirty years much has been
written about the mystical character both of our experience and
of our forms of worship. That re-emphasis has been both
sound and good. But the time has come when our generation
must ask ourselves the eminently practical question: What is
that single condition that underlies my entry into and
my existing within that open life that we have sensed in the
mystics? What is the single condition that can keep
me renewed in my religious vocation while I live neck-deep in a world
so much of whose culture I have come to recognize
as diametrically opposed to this life? What is the
single condition in which saint, mystic, and simple peasant
believer are all one? That condition is called either
devotion or holy obedience. "We are not devout," wrote Jean Grou,
"just because we are able to reason well about the things of
God nor because we have grand ideas or fine imaginations
about spiritual matters, nor because we are sometimes
affected by tears. Devotion is not a thing which passes, which
comes and goes as it were, but it is something habitual,
fixed, permanent which extends over every instant of life
and regulates all our conduct."
There have been so many haloes placed about the
saints and so much reverence spun around our own men
and women who have lived in the power of the open life that
we are in danger of putting them in a class apart. The
difference between one of them and most of us is not that he has
had some mysterious experience, or that he possesses
some natural genius or bent to sanctity or some obscure
faculty of apprehension. The difference is simply a difference in
the completeness of his abandonment to the principle,
and the resulting influence of this on the simplification and
ordering of his life. Such a man is "self-given without condition
to the purposes of God." We are not. Jan Ruysbroeck put
it simply to some fashionable young Brussels priests who
were visiting him: "Ye are as holy as ye wish to be." It is a
difference of devotion. It is a difference of obedience. "It is easy
to profess and make a show of truth but hard to come into
it," wrote Penington.
Here is the fourth condition of the open life that
we must learn, not with our minds alone, but with our
beings. For vocation, decision and life under the principle, the
root, are all conditioned by devotion, by holy obedience, and
for one who has given up the outward forms of the
mediaeval religious vocation how carefully this obedience must
be adhered to! Once more, however, the obedience, the
devotion is not grim. It is glad. And it is prompt and spirited.
Listen to two great guides of souls on the life of devotion:
It is glad. "No one is so amiable in the ordinary intercourse of life as
a really devout man. He is simple, straightforward, open
as the day, unpretentious, gentle, solid and true.
Whatever some persons may say, true devotion is never a
melancholy thing either for itself or for others. How should the
man who continually enjoys the truest happiness, the
only happiness ever be sad? `To serve God is to reign', even if
it be in poverty, in humiliation, and in suffering," wrote
Jean Grou.
And it is prompt and spirited: "Devotion",
declared Francis de Sales, "Is simply the promptitude,
fervour, affection, and agility which we have in the service of
God: and there is a difference between a good man and a
devout man; for he is a good man who keeps the commandments
of God, although it be without great promptitude or
fervour; but he is devout who not only observes them but does
so willingly, promptly and with a good heart."
Here is the heart of the matter, and if it is grasped
it throws all the practices connected with devotion into a
fresh light. Prayer becomes a time of coming under obedience
to the principle. It does not matter where we begin in
prayer. We may begin with a petition, something we feel we
must have. Demand that your dear one be saved. Soon you
will find yourself pleading that you be made worthy to have
her saved to continue companionship with you, then you
may begin to sense a longing to be used in God's service
whatever the outcome, and you may conclude by rededicating
both yourself and the one you love to God's love and get up
from your prayer quiet and still. "Did thee yield?" is the real
query to put to ourselves as to the outcome of prayer.
In intercessory prayer, it is good to "retire, sit
awhile, and travail for them." We may also "feel how life will arise
. . . and how mercy will reach towards them and how
living words from the tender sense may be reached forth to
their hearts deeply by the hand of the Lord for their good." Yet
it may not be only a word, but a visit, and a frank talk, or
a gift, or a position you could secure for them, or a
basic change in your own manner of life that will be required
of you as the result of your intercessory prayer. Unless
you are ready for action under holy obedience, it would be
well to abandon intercessory prayer. Ward Applegate once
told me of how an uncle of his prayed for the health
of a nephew who had just taken over a farm where the barnyard,
through the spring months, was a wallow of mud. And the next
day he delivered a pair of hip boots to the nephew.
When we grasp the real nature of prayer as an
exercise of devotion we may then see why the man of devotion
"has no need of a book or a method or of great efforts of the
head or even of the will" in his prayer. The further a man goes
in devotion the simpler the prayer may become until a
Francis of Assisi may in the later years of his life murmur only,
"My God, my all," and there is nothing more to say. The
apparatus is wholly secondary. But the recovery of the root, the
being brought low, the being baptized into the condition of
those in need, the yielding to the principle, the becoming
subject to the root, coming into holy obedience, into devotion:
that is the heart of prayer. And only the regular practice of
that can hold a man in his vocation in the midst of the
diversions of our day. George Fox has said all that is necessary:
"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy
own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God,
to turn thy mind to the Lord, from whom life comes;
whereby thou mayest receive His strength, and power to allay
all blusterings, storms and tempests. That is it which
works up into patience, into innocency, into soberness,
into stillness, into staidness, into quietness, up to God with
His Power.... Be staid in the principle of God in Thee that it
may raise thy mind up to God . . . and thou wilt find
strength from Him and find Him to be a God at hand."
The little things that become clear to us take on a
new importance under holy obedience. "Take heed of
despising the day of Small things, or the low voice of God in thy
heart," said Penington. To the world that judges from without,
these often seem trifles and irritating scruples. To one who
comes under holy obedience it is not easy to learn to readjust
one's sights and to realize that there is nothing either little
or great when it is a question of the things of God. What
bears His accent, however small it may seem in itself,
becomes imperative. It is out of scrupulous regard for these
gentle intimations that Fox was drawn to testify against
oppressing the poor, against underpaying servants, against the
death penalty for stealing, against Friends holding slaves in
the Barbadoes. Here is the way the testimonies grew. Here
in these little intimations come the concerns that took
Mrs. Noble to the Rhondda Valley in 1926 or Corder Catchpool
to Lithuania ten years later. Here is the living bud out of
which the valid new insights and patterns emerge.
I was lost in the woods a year ago and last summer
I resolved to purchase a compass. I chose the one I
wanted, and the keeper of the little hardware store in a small
northern Michigan town threw in a piece of advice as he wrapped
it up, "There's just one thing, son, you want to remember
about this compass _ believe it!" It is in the little things,
in recognizing what William Blake calls "the holiness of
Minute Particulars," in minding the ray of light we have, in
believing the compass and following it, that we grow in holy
obedience in devotion. "There is no safe dallying with truth." "He
that condemneth small things shall fall by little and little."
Harold Gray who was a conscientious objector in
the war and was imprisoned first at Leavenworth and then
at Alcatraz, once said, "The world goes forward because in
the beginning one man or a few were true to the light they
saw, and by living by it, enabled others to see." It may all
be summed up in a sentence that was used to describe
the career of a woman who had lived in the power of the
open life, "She started a great work by beginning small
and promptly."
At Pendle Hill last summer, I received several
lessons in weaving. One of the first things I had to learn was how
to go back and correct a mistake I had made and then to
go on. Mistakes scarcely mattered if one knew how to
correct them and to go on. An important thing that must be
learned in a life under holy obedience is to learn how to take
failures, to learn how to be patient with ourselves. We want
to respond, to throw off all our faults at once. "We are
vexed with ourselves, we are angry at having been angry. We
are impatient at having been impatient." When we fail we
are discouraged and are tempted to give up altogether and
to return to drifting again. Jean Grou suggests that a
devout man "does not rely upon his good thoughts and
resolutions, but simply upon the grace and goodness of God. If he
were to fall a hundred times a day, he would not despair; but
he would stretch out his hands lovingly to God and beg Him
to lift him up. . . . It is not those who have the most
courage, the most generosity, the most love who make the
greatest efforts but those who are not afraid of falling and
staining themselves a little provided they always advance." I
wish that Grou had mentioned a sense of humor here, for I
believe God endowed us with this gift to help deflate us and
make us at all bearable to others.
The dry times come, the plateaus in the curve
of spiritual learning, the lean weeks and months. Then,
as never before, do we come to recognize the preciousness of
a life that is devoted to the principle in spite of all. It is
in those times that we are schooled in patience. "There is
a time to want as well as to abound while we are in this
world. And the times of wanting, as well as abounding are
greatly advantageous to us," wrote Penington after he had
known the most extreme worldly as well as inner privations.
Von Hügel used to remind us of the way a desert traveler took
a sandstorm. He would get his camel to lie down, lie
down behind him, cover himself with his robe and quietly
wait. When the storm had ceased, he would rise, shake out
the blanket, mount the camel, and ride on. Holy
obedience, devotion, calls for patience with ourselves as we move
in the vocation, in the decision, keeping close to the root.
Practice In The Presence Of God
But there is a sense in which prayer, and the
meticulous following of the "low voice of God in the heart," and
the learning to be patient with ourselves are still
incomplete. For there is still the life of action where we are planted
in the center of a world which seldom recognizes our
deeper vocation, which resists us, a world with which, if we are
not to withdraw to a Bruderhof, we must engage. Here is
the real test of the possibility of this open life in our
present situation. Here often enough our prepared plans that
came out of the silence may seem to be inadequate to meet a
new exigency that has arisen. Here is the field of our
bread-work, or here is the scene in which we must carry out our
concern. And it is here that we meet the fifth condition and
the privilege of the open life _ the practice
not only of but in the presence of God.
Here is the inner activity of prayer and contemplation turned outward but retaining its center.
We have long been taught about entering the
presence of God in prayer and there earning enough serenity to
face a few hours of dispersion in outer activities. Fox
was unwilling to stop here. He stood and acted in the
presence and power of God when mobs were jostling and kicking
and pounding him, and in this presence even his bruised
body was renewed from within.
If we live close to the root, the root is as available
in action as in contemplation. We must learn to act as well
as to pray in the presence of God. That is the way of faith
that is open to all. Meister Eckhart commented on the
importance of learning to work "not as if one were running away
from the inner contemplation ... but one should learn to
work with this contemplation in him, with him, and
emerging from him so that . . . one becomes accustomed to
working collectedly ... for then he becomes a fellow workman
with God." Practice in the presence of God
means to "work collectedly" and to become "a fellow workman with God"
_ nothing less.
Is this kind of action in the presence of God a
phantasy, or is it capable of being practiced in our hard-driven,
highly technicized time? Here is the word of one man, Dr.
Fritz Kunkel, a practicing psychotherapist in Berlin, who is
known to some of you. I quote from a letter I received last
month which was provoked by his recent reading of Isaac
Penington : "Please imagine my work. I have to prepare myself in
the morning, let us say by prayer, in silence or in words.
Then the patient is coming. The battle between Light and
Darkness has to be fought; thousands of words have to be said.
The former preparation may be the most important thing.
But how should or could it go on directing my words,
forming my thoughts and influencing my work? This later
influence of my former preparation may be unconscious. I may
forget it. I may think only of my patient and his medical
situation _ and I may fail in my diagnosis. But suppose this
influence works on by keeping me aware of the presence of
God through all my words, decisions and actions: not only
the line, connecting the patient and the psychologist, but
also the triangle: patient-psychologist-God, is effective in
my conscious mind. Suppose every word is consciously
spoken `in the presence of God' _ don't you think this would be
the right way to act in difficult situations and even in
all situations of our life? I am glad that the responsibility of
my daily work forces me to seek this way of perpetual
awareness and consciousness and aliveness. I shall
understand gradually and slowly what is meant by the `perpetual
prayer' which is mentioned by so many religious people: the
decision, the responsible action, performed by ourselves, and at
the same time as much as possible not by ourselves but by
the higher instance which uses us as its tools, that's what
I mean." Fritz Kunkel has in essence written a telling
modern commentary on Penington's line, "It is not the doing of
things which is of value.... But it is the doing of things in the
virtue, in the life, in the power . . ."
Here is practice in the presence of God. Is this
easy working in the presence of God transferable to the
assembly line of the Budd Manufacturing plant, or the Ford
Motor Company, or to a coal mine, or to a household servant
who is expected to stay on duty 14 hours a day? If it is not, it
is a terrible indictment of the working conditions that so
fatigue and draw the body's claims into the focus of attention
that the ease and the collectedness are gone. Such stones
of excessive fatigue must be lifted. But the open life is
not content to stop at the removal of hindrances. It would
draw all to this source of renewal that comes by action in
the presence of God.
Given a man or a woman who has fulfilled these conditions: who has been found by a sense of vocation,
who has entered into the decision, who keeps close to the
root, who is under holy obedience and who has learned
to distinguish between "the doing of things" and
"the doing of things in the virtue, in the life, in the power"
and you have an open life, a cell of the new order.
Here is a true revolutionary against which neither a false political
or economic or social structure nor conventional religious profession
can ultimately stand. "One _ two _ a hundred _ a thousand _
ten thousand disinterested men, men dedicated, men surrendered; men with the last dross of self burnt out
of them; and the laws of economics begin to crack
into fragments," wrote Middleton Murry. George Fox has
added his word about the man grounded in the power of the
open life: "The Lord said unto me that if but one man or
woman were raised up by this power to stand and live in the
same spirit that the prophets and apostles were in which
gave forth the scriptures, that man or woman should shake
all the country in their profession (Christianity) for ten
miles around."
The need is here. The fellowship is here. The power
is here. Are we willing to be laid hold of by the vocation,
to enter into the decision, to live under the principle, the
root, to come under holy obedience, to act in the presence of
God, to be kneaded into the living cells of the new order? Are
we ready to come up into the power of the open life?
For Reading
WORKS of Isaac Penington: The Collected
Letters included in all standard editions of the Works are very
important. Two little books of selections from Isaac Penington
are useful, Seeds of the Kingdom and The Name is
Living, but they are no substitute for the writings themselves.
JOURNAL of George Fox - The Everyman edition edited
by Rufus M. Jones is recommended for its convenient
size and inexpensiveness.
JOURNAL of John Woolman - The Gummere edition is
the authentic source and has the added merit of
containing the important essays of Woolman. The Whittier
edition which does not use the 18th Century spelling is
easier to read and very inexpensive.
RISE AND PROGRESS OF QUAKERISM - William Penn.
This is an essay which William Penn in 1694 wrote in
the form of a preface to the Journal of George Fox. It can
be secured, bound separately, under the above title, and
is indispensable to an understanding of the spiritual
basis of the Society of Friends.
SERMONS - Meister Eckhart. Vol. I of C. de B.
Evans' translation of Pfeiffer's edition, London, J. M.
Watkins, 1924, is recommended.
INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE - Francis de Sales.
MANUAL FOR INTERIOR SOULS - Jean Grou.
STUDIES IN MYSTICAL RELIGION and SPIRITUAL REFORMERS OF THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES
- Rufus M. Jones. These books are important for a
grasp of the mystical stream of the Christian past of
which the Society of Friends is an expression.
SELECTED LETTERS of Friedrich von Hügel - A
rich treasury of spiritual insight poured out to his friends
by one of the few great religious thinkers of the last
fifty years.
THE GOLDEN SEQUENCE and MIXED PASTURE - Evelyn Underhill. These are essays not about religion but
from within religion. They are for the nurture of
religious practice.
FREEDOM IN THE MODERN WORLD and CREATIVE SOCIETY - John Mac Murray. One of the freshest of
the critics of pseudo-religion in the interests of a
sacrificial revolutionary Christian religion. His criticisms
of communism and present Christianity spring out of
his profound faith in Jesus and the Christian way.
LET'S BE NORMAL and WHAT IT MEANS TO GROW UP - Fritz Kunkel A modern psychology that shows
perhaps the first signs of having diagnosed both the blight
and the creative depths of the modern soul. Fritz
Kunkel gave a course at Pendle Hill in the Summer of 1936
that was widely appreciated by Friends.