We have to admit that in the first tide of this wonderful experience there were some serious extravagances of thought and conduct. It would be strange, I suppose, if newly opened eyes did not sometimes see men as trees walking. You get these extravagances when a fresh faculty of the soul is awaking to its powers. But the main phenomenon of Quakerism is the heightened personality which undoubtedly came to the Children of the Light. They were men and women to “shake their country in their profession for ten miles round,” as some of our Friends have done in the Western states. Their very look carried with it the sentence of honor or shame. Their words had a challenging power, challenging men’s consciences, forcing them to face the issues of good and evil, shattering self-complacency and self-righteousness. The Quaker was an impregnable man, his principles were held with an extraordinary tenacity. He stood not on a sandy foundation of notions, but on a rock of experience, and thus founded the man was sure and steadfast. The message of a present living Christ within the heart and a present Kingdom of God awaiting those who would receive it burned in the heart of these first Friends. It burned in their hearts as a gospel for all men. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Quaker Church was founded as a sect. It had nothing sectarian about it. It had a great message of vital spiritual experience to give to the whole world. These first Friends were evangelists of vital Christianity.
They began as our evangelists to-day begin, by warning men to repent. George Fox went up Wensleydale calling on men to repent, for the day of the Lord was at hand, and proclaiming the Kingdom of Christ at the door of men’s hearts, for them to take or reject. That is the spirit of this early Quakerism, and it surely takes us back to the spirit of the prophets and of primitive Christianity.
The centering of life on the realities of inward intercourse with God is the great mark of the prophetic and apostolic type of religion and is in sharp contrast with religion of the priestly or institutional type. The prophet was a man who knew what it was to have converse with Jehovah and sure knowledge of His will. He became a Seer, a man of insight and foresight, aware of the true values of things, the true values as weighed in the balance of the sanctuary. He became thereby a great social and moral reformer. His ideal was of a time when all would be prophets—when “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” And we may remember that this ideal is recognized on the day of Pentecost as the natural first-fruits of the Spirit. If it had been realized the Church would have been a school of prophets from generation to generation. Unfortunately the Church has more often stifled the seer and glorified the priest.