The Authority of the Inward Light in Quakerism
Howard H. Brinton
The Supreme authority of the Inward Light or Divine Spirit in man as a guide to religious and moral truth and action was one of the doctrines which distinguished the early Quakers from their Puritan opponents. Other closely allied doctrines which were also unacceptable to the Puritans were: the belief that the Spirit of God which inspired the writers of the Bible still operates in man to reveal old and new truths; the belief that this Spirit has inspired all men, sinners and righteous, since the beginning of the human race; the belief that the Spirit, if yielded to, can completely overcome sin and produce in the human heart a sense of peace. Man is saved, not by a leap of faith into the dark, but by giving way to the Divine Spirit. Since this Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ, man by obedience to it or by “putting on Christ,” to use Paul’s word’s, becomes Christ-like, able and willing to fulfill the teachings of the historic and the inward Christ.
These four doctrines were revolutionary. They made the Quaker movement a second Reformation different from the first. Taken together they were peculiar to Quakerism, though the doctrines concerning guidance and the continued presence of the Spirit since Bible times were held by a few of the so-called radical Puritans, and the doctrines of possible perfection and of grace sufficient for the salvation of the non-Christian were held in a somewhat different form by Catholicism.
But it was in matters of practice, in which these doctrines were carried to their logical conclusion, that the Quakers were especially set apart. The meeting for worship was based on the unpredictable leadership of the Spirit rather than on human leadership; this also accounts for the absence of routine forms, and symbols not immediately created by the Spirit. Derived also from the emphasis on the authority of the Spirit was the extremely democratic form of church government, which gave no special authority to any one individual but only to the group as a whole, and such social doctrines as religious liberty and equality, of respect for all persons regardless of sex, class or race. The absence of superfluity in dress, speech and behavior, non-participation in war and fighting, and other traits were also the direct result of a religion based on the Spirit of God as revealed in the heart. This Spirit could provide the whole basis of a complete religion because it afforded not only a source of guidance but also of unity and of power. Even more important this Spirit, if not resisted, could bring to birth in man a new and higher life.
The belief in the possibility of guidance and transformation by the Spirit gives rise to the question with which we are mainly concerned here: what test or standard can human beings use to distinguish between leadings of the Spirit and other leadings. The only comment ever given by Friends is this—we know the Spirit by the same Spirit. As John wrote in his epistle: “Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (I John 3:24), and “It is the Spirit which beareth witness, because the Spirit is Truth” (I John 5:6). There is no way to judge truth except by truth. “The Spirit of Truth,” said Jesus, “will guide into all truth.”
Friends were logically correct in not seeking any standard except the Spirit itself by which guidance of the Spirit could be recognized. For if there were such a standard, then the standard would be primary and the Spirit secondary, whereas the basis of the religion of the Society of Friends was the primacy of the Spirit. The Spirit cannot be judged by anything lower than itself, such as scripture, reason, church tradition, or results. As Barclay said in 1678:
And because the spirit of God is the foundation of all truth and sound reason…it cannot contradict either the testimony of the Scripture or right reason. Yet…it will not from thence follow that these divine revelations are to be subjected to the examination of either the outward testimony of scripture or of the human or natural reason of man as to a more noble or certain rule or touchstone, for the divine revelation and inward illumination is that which is evident by itself, forcing the well-disposed understanding, and irresistibly moving it to assent by its own evidence and clearness, even as the common principles of natural truths do bend the mind to a natural assent.
Through all the scriptures we may observe that the manifestation and revelation of God by his Spirit to the patriarchs, prophets and apostles was immediate and objective which they did not examine by any other principle but their own evidence and clearness. (Apology Prop. II sec. XV)
It is not improbable that Barclay was influenced by Descartes, who was a friend of his cousin, Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate. Barclay visited her and carried on with her an extensive correspondence. Descartes bases his philosophy on the method used in geometry, which starts out with certain axioms accepted as self-evident. In similar fashion Barclay declares that Truth revealed by the Spirit is its own evidence.
No other Quaker writer faces this problem as squarely as does Barclay. He shows that in all religions, as in mathematics, there are certain basic assumptions recognized by intuition. Protestants, who declare Scripture to be their ultimate standard, depend on the Spirit in deciding among various interpretations of Scripture. Catholics, in making the declarations of the Church their standard, depend on the Spirit in deciding among various differing pronouncements and traditions. Socinians or rationalists, who make reason their standard, depend on the Spirit in estimating varying results of reason. The frequent accusation against the Quakers that dependence on the Spirit or Light Within in preference to an objective standard leads to anarchy and confusion was countered by referring to disagreements met when other standards were used. As the Quakers pointed out, the Protestants in an attempt to produce agreement resorted, as did the Catholics, not to some objective measuring rod for truth but to the authority of the state and to persecution.
Another Quaker writer who deals with this problem in a scholarly and philosophical way was Jonathan Dymond, whose Essays on the Principles of Morality, first published in 1829, is a highly competent book. As a manual of ethics, it was widely used in Quaker schools in the 19th century. For Dymond, God’s will as immediately communicated is the basis of both religion and morality. In religion, he says, the Divine Spirit acts as a “purifier and sanctifier and comforter of the soul.” Dymond is here concerned with the Spirit as a moral guide, though he shows how religious worship sharpens and develops the moral sense. He quotes a number of writers to show that they also accept a moral sense, or innate sense of oughtness, as the basis of their ethical systems. Here he would agree with Jung who holds that the feeling function, not the thinking function, is that by which we judge moral and aesthetic values. A Quaker in a business meeting or a meeting for worship seldom says “I think,” but characteristically “I feel.” Thinking is essential in judging what means should be used in order to achieve a given end, but not in judging whether or not the end is in itself valuable. Goodness, like beauty, is apprehended by immediate intuition rather than reasoning. Good for something may be calculated by reason.
That the sense by which we distinguish between right and wrong is of Divine origin appears frequently stated in Quaker literature. For example the following interchange is part of a conversation which took place between Warner Mifflin and General Howe during the British occupation of Philadelphia:
General Howe said: “Then the Quakers believe themselves to be directly inspired.”
Warner Mifflin replied: “And why not, Friend Howe? Thee is so thyself every time thee has good thoughts in thy mind.”
The moral function and the religious function of the Light are not to be sharply differentiated. The power which enables one to recognize a good act is also the power which inspires good actions. When a Friend, sitting in silence in a meeting for worship, recognizes a concern arising within him as being of Divine origin, the same Divine Spirit which gave the intimation gives the worshipper strength and determination to carry out what is laid upon him, however weak and inadequate he may feel himself to be. But the worshipper must be careful, in accepting a responsibility as laid upon him by a Higher Power, that he has freed himself from other guides, prejudices, and conventional opinions. This is only possible if the worshipper waits before God in a state of alert passivity. The two Biblical words which Friends used to describe their way of worship, “wait” from the Old Testament and “watch” from the New, suggest that sense of intense awareness which is sought in worship.
When we speak of the authority of the Light we must be careful how we interpret the word “authority.” A person who exercises authority is usually thought of as one who commands or gives orders. Others accept these commands or orders whether they agree with them or not. The Quakers called themselves “friends of God” rather than servants, in accordance with the saying of Jesus: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). A friend does not give orders to his friend. Another name was “children of the Light,” suggesting that those who followed the Light did so because they were of it rather than from a sense of duty. God is not a Dictator. He dwells in man as Light, Life, Truth, Seed of the Kingdom. These symbols do not indicate arbitrary dictation. Rather they indicate a certain state or condition out of which acts compatible with that state will arise. When George Fox was asked to join the army he did not say: “God tells me not to fight” but rather: “I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.” To be a Christian was to “put on Christ,” to use Paul’s phrase, that is to take on the Christ Spirit by acting in a way that is consistent with it. Christ did not come to give the world a new set of laws and rules. Laws and rules belonged to the old dispensation under Moses, but not to the new dispensation of the Spirit under Christ. “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
We are here endeavoring to feel for a test of that Divine Guidance which is essentially aesthetic in character. Aesthetic comes from the verb “to feel,” as anaesthetic from its opposite. As a painter in painting a picture decides by his aesthetic sense whether a certain element belongs harmoniously with the whole, so a person who has adopted the Christ-like way of life is able to decide intuitively whether or not a contemplated action is consistent with that way. He does not blindly obey some dictate from heaven.
The identification of the Inward Light with the Word of God, which became flesh in Jesus Christ, was the strongest security which Friends had to protect them from the so-called “anarchy of the Ranters,” their ultra-radical contemporaries who opposed all regulations, civil and ecclesiastical. “He, that hath not the Spirit of Christ,” wrote John in his letter, “is none of his.” A Christian seeking for the test of guidance by compatibility with the teaching and life of Christ can generally satisfy himself, even though there is no direct reference in the Gospels to the act in question. George Fox writes “And if there was no Scripture for our men(s) and women's meetings Christ is sufficient.” (Ep. 320).
In giving this interpretation to the word “authority” we must not overlook the fact that Friends often did obey what they felt to be inward commands of God, blindly in the sense that they did not depend for guidance on reason or knowledge of probable results. Speaking in family meetings to the states of persons who were unknown to the speaker, following inward directions along a road which led to an unexpected opportunity for service, feeling while waiting upon God a premonition that a ship would make a successful voyage, such experiences were not uncommon in Quaker history, but these, along with demonstrations of spiritual healing, have been almost unknown for nearly a century. This may be because in modern education we have cultivated our power of thinking and not allowed our intuitions and feelings to develop.
The test of guidance depends partly on the fact that in addition to revealing truth the Light has two other main functions: it gives power and produces unity. Friends went occasionally so far as to speak of the Light as Savior because of its transforming power rather than its guidance. Penington writes: “Letting in the Light which convinceth of, and warneth against, sin, the Life stirs and is felt—so that I can sensibly and with clear understanding call it my Savior, the Captain of my Salvation, my Christ or Anointed” (Works I, 172). Again, since there is only one Light, the nearer we come to it the nearer we come to unity. Friends have often laid concerns before a meeting for acceptance or rejection on the theory that the sense of guidance of the group as a whole is more reliable than the sense of guidance of an individual. But this may not always be the case. At its best, a Quaker business meeting can resolve tension between individual and group by the prayerful search for further light in worship, a search which sometimes results in the discovery that the individual is right, or alternatively in a new and higher synthesis of different opinions. Here, as in the course of history, the Word of God creates, not out of nothing but by producing higher levels of organic wholeness.
Is conscience a primary or a secondary check on guidance? Conscience is primary in the sense that it must be obeyed, for it is our “moral sense” and gives us the highest knowledge of moral truth that we have. But conscience is relative and secondary in the sense that it can be improved and sensitized by exposure to the Light which is absolute and primary. Conscience is partly the result of education and environment, but it is also a result of the Divine drawing from above, without which the sense of oughtnesscannot be accounted for. There is no “ought” in the world of mechanical nature, which apparently operates by fixed law. Spiritual exercises such as prayer and worship increase man’s sensitivity to the Light. Friends used to express this by the word “tenderness.” For example, the gradual approach of Friends from toleration of slavery in the seventeenth century to its elimination from the Society in 1776 was obviously not so much due to education or environment as to an increasing tenderness of conscience.
The religion of the Society of Friends during its first two centuries is labeled Quietism. This term means that all that is distinctly human is to be quieted, in order that the Holy Spirit may have freedom to blow where it lists. It is a mistake to assume, as some do, that the eighteenth century was quietistic whereas the seventeenth century was activistic. All the texts of Quietism appear in Fox, Barclay, Penn, Penington and other 17th century prophets, and writers. The word “pure” is the all-important quietistic word. It means that which is purified of mortal contamination. In one of his short epistles George Fox repeats like a refrain the exhortation: “Stand still in that which is pure.” Eighteenth century Quakerism differs from seventeenth century Quakerism in the fact that there was less missionary zeal in the eighteenth century than in the preceding one, but the eighteenth century journals indicate that there was still a wide effort at outreach.
In both centuries Friends waited in silence for an inward motion to speak and they did not speak unless they received it. This sharp dualism between the human and the divine is uncongenial to many religiously minded persons today. For Friends it has been practical and provisional rather than theoretical and final. The dualism could be overcome by experience of oneness with God. Important practical consequences followed, for if an endeavor is made to free the mind of all its prejudices and conventional opinions, then there is more likelihood that something new and original may arise. As a result of faithfulness to their sense of guidance the Quakers became pioneers in several social causes.Had they been less quietistic, and had they checked their guidance only by the accepted standards of the society around them, this pioneering would not have resulted.
But does Quaker quietism mean that enlightenment is sought in pure emptiness and nothingness such as is characteristic of Buddhism? Here we are faced with a serious problem, for which Quakerism offers no solution which can be transferred from one person to another by the use of symbols such as words, actions or rituals. If the Source is formless, there is no test of guidance except an ability to recognize the true Source. “The dogmatic symbol,” says Jung, “protects a person from a direct experience of God” (Integration of Personality, p. 59). This he considers a good thing for persons unable to bear such experience. Quakerism, however, permits in its worship no forms which may be a substitute for the Spirit which produces the forms. Fox continually writes against “forms without power,” “shadows without substance.” Friends are not against forms as such. The Spirit always finds expression in some form, but a form of words or actions arranged in advance as a routine procedure easily becomes empty. Then it is an obstacle instead of a help to religious experience.
Conservative Friends were wary of anything tending to produce a religion of ideas “afloat on the surface” rather than a religion of the heart. But there are good forms and bad forms, forms charged with power and forms that are empty. Fox in one of his epistles (Ep. 271) gives a list of good forms. One of them is the creation itself which, through the Word of God, arose out of formlessness. In similar fashion Jung makes a distinction between symbols and signs. Symbols, he maintains, are charged with power. Since they concern the unconscious as well as the conscious they cannot be fully understood by the self-conscious intellect. Signs can be understood.For example, if we equate “the Cross” to “the Love of God,” it is a sign which can be understood, but as a universal symbol the cross reaches back into the depths of the unconscious, and this charges it with significance and power and gives it a mystical, transcendent quality. A sermon in a Quaker meeting should be a symbol charged with power, though it is often far from being so charged. If it appeals only to the understanding intellect it is not religious in the highest sense.
The Divine Spirit in man has been referred to in Quaker literature under a great variety of symbols, signs or figures of speech. George Fox uses twenty-four in a single epistle, one folio page in length. This multiplicity of images indicates that we are dealing not with a single kind of religious experience, but with many kinds. Some symbols used by Friends are personal, some are impersonal. The impersonal representations of the Spirit such as Light, Life, Truth, Love, Power, Pure Wisdom, the Pure Witness, the Vine, the Seed, the Spring of Eternal Life, the Grace of God, the Blood of Christ, the Bread of Life, are in general descriptive rather than dynamic. The term Seed or Seed of the Kingdom seemed to indicate a kind of dual capacity of the Spirit to be both a germ of divine life in man and the Light which shines upon it to make it grow. When Fox declares that the “Seed shines” he may have both in mind.
The Quaker like the Buddhist may in worship so attempt to “empty” his mind that the wind of the Spirit may blow through him without let or hindrance. We find Barclay saying:
But if it please God at any time when one or more are waiting upon him, not to present such objects as give them occasion to exercise their minds in thoughts and imaginations, but purely to keep them in this holy dependence, and as they persist therein, to cause his secret refreshment and the pure incomes of his holy life to flow in upon them, then they have good reason to be content, because by this as we know by good and blessed experience the soul is more strengthened, renewed and confirmed in the love of God and armed against the power of sin, than anything else. (Prop. XI, sec. 10)
Quaker formlessness is like Buddhist formlessness in that both seek to avoid imprisoning the Spirit in the forms which it creates, but they differ in that Quakerism has generally accepted as ultimate and as included in the highest experience the two personal forms of God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son. These two are realities because they are charged with the highest power coming from beyond the self. The image of God or of Christ gives worship a certain character and a religious and moral dynamic which pure Buddhist formlessness cannot give. For this reason Quaker waiting in silence has had important results by enlightening conscience and motivating social action.
There is in all religious experience a certain givenness which places whatever is granted to the worshipper completely beyond his control. The symbols through which God expresses himself, whether as Father or Son, cannot be chosen, they can only be accepted as coming from beyond the self. This is a mark of their genuineness and power. Friends sometimes spoke of a “day of visitation.” This meant that in their experience the Spirit was sometimes felt to be present and at other times not felt to be present. This could be explained by the fact that the Spirit was in man but not of him. Quaker dualism was the result of religious experience, not the product of any philosophical or theological reasoning. A reasoned system is monistic. But the religion of experience contains an irrational, dualistic element which gives it what has been described as its numinous character. Only the transcendent can inspire the awe and reverence which is a part of genuine religious experience. But the transcendent is not wholly beyond our reach. God is also immanent. Love can pierce the dark cloud of unknowing, and union in heart and will is possible with Him who is both beyond mankind and within.