“What would it look like if Friends revived the essential principles of seventeenth-century Quakerism? The contemporary religious environment and civil structures are quite different from those of the 1600s, but… these still support a social order that is in many ways diametrically opposed to the values that animated early Quakerism. Our calling as a people of God has not been fulfilled.”
“How were our hearts melted as wax, and our souls poured out as water before the Lord, and our spirits as oil, frankincense and myrrh, offered up unto the Lord as sweet incense, when not a word outwardly in all our assembly had been uttered!”
“We are also to be witnesses for God, in the world: to be instruments in his hands, to bring others out of death and captivity into true life and liberty. We are to fight against the powers of darkness everywhere, as the Lord called us forth. And this we are to do in his wisdom, according to his will, in his power, and in his love, sweetness, and meekness.”
“Quakerism is mystical. Sitting in silence is mystical. And yet you won’t find any Quaker guide to mystical experience. We offer no gurus who will guide you on a path of advancement. We are all on our own together. There are good reasons for this. But I suspect that something is missing from contemporary Quakerism. Something that the early Quakers had in spades. Early Quakers were flagrant mystics.”
“‘The Power of the Lord’ had multiple meanings for Fox and other early Friends, but the most common use of the phrase was to refer to a sensible, divine power or energy. Friends would experience this power surrounding them or flowing through their bodies under a variety of conditions, but most often at the point of convincement, when facing a trial, or during meeting for worship. An experience of the power was often associated with some kind of involuntary physical or mental phenomenon. When seized by the power, some Friends quaked, vocalized, or fell unconscious to the floor, while other Friends saw brilliant light, had visions, experienced healing, or felt a force emanating from them that was capable of subduing an angry and hostile mob…”
Can I, imprisoned, body-bounded, touch / The starry garment of the Oversoul, / Reach from my tiny part to the great / Whole, / And spread my Little to the infinite Much, / When Truth forever slips from out my clutch, / And what I take indeed, I do but dole / In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl / That holds a million million million such?
“There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; and takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind.”
“Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.”
“Throughout the writings of early Friends runs one all-pervading, overpowering thought – that of the Light within. In every human heart, they tell us, there speaks the voice of God, and we have heard Him. The Light of Christ shines still for all men in the inmost of their souls, and in obedience to its influence lies hope… The Gospel of early Quakerism was a religion universal and real.”
“Not by strength of arguments, or by a particular disquisition of each doctrine, and convincement of my understanding thereby, came [I] to receive and bear witness of the truth, but by being secretly reached by this life; for when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up, and so I became thus knit and united unto them.”
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