The Gray Brethren | Page 2

this century the Friends bore a most important
witness. They were a standing rebuke to rough manners, rude speech,
and to the too often mere outward show of religion. No one could fail
to be impressed by the atmosphere of peace suggested by their bearing
and presence; and the gentle, sheltered, contemplative lives lived by
most of them undoubtedly made them unusually responsive to spiritual
influence. Now, the young birds have left the parent nest and the sober
plumage and soft speech; they are as other men; and in a few short
years the word Quaker will sound as strange in our ears as the older

appellation Shaker does now.
This year I read for the first time the Journal of George Fox. It is hard
to link the rude, turbulent son of Amos with the denizens in my city of
Peace; but he had his work to do and did it, letting breezy truths into
the stuffy 'steeple-houses' of the 'lumps of clay.'
"Come out from among them and be ye separate; touch not the
accursed thing!" he thundered; and out they came, obedient to his
stentorian mandate; but alack, how many treasures in earthen vessels
did they overlook in their terror of the curse! The good people made
such haste to flee the city, that they imagined themselves as having
already, in the spirit, reached the land that is very far off; and so they
cast from them the outward and visible signs which are vehicles, in this
material world, of inward graces. Measureless are the uncovenanted
blessings of God; and to these the Friends have ever borne a witness of
power; but now the Calvinist intruder no longer divides the sheep from
the goats in our churches; now the doctrine of universal brotherhood
and the respect due to all men are taught much more effectively than
when George Fox refused to doff his hat to the Justice; the quaint old
speech has lost its significance, the dress would imply all the vainglory
that the wearer desires to avoid; the young Quakers of this generation
are no longer 'disciplined' in matters of the common social life; yet still
they remain separate.
We of the outward and visible covenant need them, with their inherited
mysticism, ordered contemplation, and spiritual vision; we need them
for ourselves. The mother they have left yearns for them, and with all
her faults--faults the greater for their absence--and with the blinded
eyes of their recognition, she is their mother still. "What advantage then
hath the Jew?" asked St Paul, and answered in the same breath--"Much
every way, chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles
of God." What advantage then has the Churchman? is the oft repeated
question today; and the answer is still the answer of St Paul.
The Incarnation is the sum of all the Sacraments, the crown of the
material revelation of God to man, the greatest of outward and visible
signs, "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of
life." A strange beginning truly, to usher in a purely spiritual
dispensation; but beautifully fulfilled in the taking up of the earthly into

the heavenly--Bread and Wine, the natural fruits of the earth, sanctified
by man's toil, a sufficiency for his needs; and instinct with Divine life
through the operation of the Holy Ghost.
"In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread."
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood ye have
no life in you"
"And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
From Genesis to the Revelation of the Divine reaches the rainbow of
the Sacramental system--outward and visible signs of inward and
spiritual grace:-
The sacrament of purging, purifying labour, to balance and control the
knowledge of good and evil:-
The sacrament of life, divine life, with the outward body of humiliation,
bread and wine, fruit of the accursed ground, but useless without man's
labour; and St Paul, caught up into the third heaven, and St John, with
his wide-eyed vision of the Lamb, must eat this bread and drink this
cup if they would live:-
The sacrament of healing, the restoring of the Image of God in fallen
man.
The Church is one society, nay, the world is one society, for man
without his fellow-men is not; and into the society, both of the Church
and the world, are inextricably woven the most social sacraments.
Herein is great purpose, we say, bending the knee; and with deep
consciousness of sins and shortcomings we stretch out longing
welcoming hands to our grey brethren with their inheritance of
faithfulness and steadfastness under persecution, and their many gifts
and graces;