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Among the most remarkable of Quaker leaders was John Wilhelm Rowntree (1868-1905), English business man, minister, author, teacher, and friend of humanity. Despite his death at the early age of thirty-six, he had already done much to transform and revitalize the Society of Friends of his day. He is an outstanding example of Quakerism and Christianity.

At the age of twenty-five, Rowntree sprang into leadership as a young Friend determined to devote his life "to making the Society of Friends a real and living force in the world." Hardly had he begun to translate this resolve into a practical program when he became aware of his failing sight and hearing. Upon consulting a specialist, his fears of eventual total blindness and deafness were confirmed. Emerging from the doctor's office where he had received this tragic news, he felt the invading love of God surround him and he was buoyed up in his faith. Life became even more meaningful to him than before this experience.

Triumphing over personal tragedy, he threw all his energy, all his intellect, all his creative imagination, and all his Christ-like spirit into the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. He assumed active leadership in the Adult School Movement, projected and began a monumental History of Quakerism, developed the famed Summer Schools of Friends, edited a periodical entitled Present-Day Papers, and helped to found the Woodbrooke Settlement for Religious and Social Study.

His observations on the message of the Society of Friends to the world are unusually timely today as he speaks:

ON GOD……

"….the serious seeker can not find God at the end of a chain of argument…."

"Even as music demands an interpreter before it can flood the soul with its divine harmony, so God demands an interpreter before the heart can recognize that which it forever seeks and craves to know and feel."

"Love is essentially social. It is the expression of a spiritual force, radiating from a personal center, and having its motive in persons. If then we believe that God is love, we believe not in a passive God, indifferent to human suffering and need, but in a personal God who cares for every individual soul, who is ever in his intensity seeking to makes Himself known, to make His redeeming and healing power felt."

ON JESUS ……

"Jesus is for me the meeting-point of the human and divine - of man and God. His value to me is not merely that He tells of the divine in men, but that in Himself He reveals to us, through the Scriptures, the human side of the character of God."

"If the idea of the Christ could be presented to me, vividly, simply, and in its true proportions - if the atmosphere could be cleared of theological mists - if we could approach this great project without the prejudices and preconceived notions which mar our conception of it - what a new life it would give us. And if as a Society we would present the Christ-ideal both as it affects the individual and the community - show Him as the heart of all this is true in art and literature - as the force which makes for social progress, the development of the highest and best in man and nations, focusing in Him all the various efforts and graspings after light, we would, I think, soon speak so that men would listen."

ON THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS………

"A small body like the Society of Friends, which has with almost dramatic suddenness broken down its social barriers and mingled with the world after a century of aloofness, must have very clear convictions if it is not to lose its identity."

"…..we stand today in the midst of wide-spread materialism - a little handful of men and women called to be heralds of the 'peaceable Gospel.' Around us even the churches seem to share in the false imperialism of the age. Is not the reproach of their silence laid upon us, that we, in their default, may once again bear practical testimony to the spiritual simplicity of the Kingdom of God, and the higher possibilities of human life?"

ON FRIENDLY UNITY …..

"If there is one thing that I desire, it is that we may not dissipate the spiritual energy of our Society in seeking difference or conducting controversy on matters theological, but that we may join hands of sympathy over intellectual gulfs, and give ourselves to the work of bringing back spiritual life and vigour. ...

ON FRIENDS' AND SYMBOLISM ...

"Friends do not assert that ceremonial precludes true spiritual communion. But they believe that in the course of history, symbolism has always tended to become a hindrance rather than an aid to spiritual worship, and that an ordered service, however dignified and uplifting, offers an inadequate and an inelastic substitute for the immediate dependence of the soul upon God."

"…. Spiritual consciousness is not the involuntary emotion produced by music or ritual. It is the fruit of a voluntary effort of the soul, and no evasion of spiritual exercise can give us spiritual life."

ON WORSHIP …..

"Stand apart at times from outward observance and the spoken word, and in the spirit of inward worship weigh your life, observe its trend, realize its purpose. Give your soul room to grow."

"In the noisy rush of modern life we need periods of quiet when the soul may feed in peace on that which shall nourish it for action."

"Our form of worship ought to be the very freest from any charge of stiffness. Why can not anyone who feels he has some message laid upon his heart, and who wishes to impress it by some passage in a book, be permitted to read what he wishes if his memory is unequal to the call? If we may quote from memory, it is absurd to suppose that Quakerism will collapse if we quote from a book."

"Let us remember that the phrase 'meeting for worship' does not entirely express the purpose for which we assemble. Whilst mainly for adoration and spiritual communion, it is the chief opportunity for mutual edification and instruction."

"As I think of the power for good that may lie in congregational singing, I sometimes wonder whether, as a church, we have not made a serious mistake in entirely excluding it from our meetings."

ON THE SOCIAL LIFE OF A MEETING ……

"we live too much in family cliques. We fraternize with those whom we think interesting. We are willing to pour tea at an annual meeting, or to shake hands on a Sunday, and make a few nice remarks about the weather, but we too often neglect to ask those we meet to our homes where we may come to close quarter with them."

"….there is nothing that so promotes social life in a meeting as simple, private hospitality."

ON THE MINISTRY ……

"I think that the state of our meetings generally justifies the belief that our greatest outward need is a ministry - fearless and direct - able to deal with life in its various aspects, and presenting in fresh and modern terms, and with prophetic power, the message of Jesus to the men of today. If our meetings were what they ought to be, we should rear among our young men and women a band of preachers not afraid of open-air testimony, but fired once more with apostolic zeal."

"For want of proper nourishment, the ideal of the free ministry is perishing before our eyes, and we are but seeking a rich and well tilled soil from which every type of ministry shall spring with a robuster growth."

"Our present deficiencies can not be overcome by….reserving for the ministry the lees of our energy and the fag-ends of our time."

"The cause of Christ can best be served when to the consecration of the heart is added the consecration of intellectual gifts."

"…. The deduction that there can be no call during the week, and no right preparation of the message, is wholly inadmissible. God works in many ways, and Friends living in the freedom of the Spirit should be the last to maintain such an artificial limitation."

"We must make the basis of our education as wide as the Church….. Its aim must be nothing less than that of raising the whole standard of efficiency throughout the Church."

"A message, however true, whether delivered from a 'minister's gallery,' or a pulpit, must fail unless it expresses some reality in the spiritual life of the speaker. When a man fires a mark with blank cartridge, there will be smoke and noise, but nothing will be hit; and it is firing with blank cartridge to preach a sermon without experience."

ON SIN ……

"If the Gospels are to be trusted, God is love. If God is love, He is actively, continually, earnestly seeking to open up communication with us. Sin bars the way. When sin is removed, His love pours in upon us. There is no question of a legal transaction. We are not here in the law courts, but in the region of moral realities. Divine forgiveness follows upon human penitence, i.e., upon the destruction of sin, as day follows night automatically, inevitably, by the inner laws of His being. Our own penitence is adequate, God asks nothing else. If we doubt this, we have misread the message of Jesus. We have drawn, perhaps from Calvin, perhaps through misunderstanding Paul, a dark, gloomy view of God. Intellectual misconception, no less than sin, may come between us and the sense of pardoning love. It is because the shadow of a misinterpreted God is passing away, because His Fatherhood is growing clearer in the coming light, that this anguished sense of the need for pardon, even after penitence has broken or cleansed the heart, is less and less phenomenal of the earnest religious life."

"God's punishments are remedial, not vindictive . …"

"Every day is a judgment day. Every sin carries its own punishment. So long as sin reigns in our heart, whether it be pride, lust, avarice, or any form of selfishness, there is no real peace, no centre of repose, but the cark of unsatisfied craving, the bitterness of disappointment, the weariness of satiety, loneliness of spirit, the helpless dependence upon physical conditions and surroundings, the terror of death. Alienation from God is the punishment of sin, and alienation from God is hell."

ON CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP …….

"Christianity implies stewardship. We are traitors to its first principles if we hold that there can be lawful tenancy of wealth, except as a sacred trust for the service of our fellows. Let us open our houses more freely, and use our gardens or carriages for tired mothers and little children. Let us gather working people around us, not merely in our school, or at lectures, or public meetings, but at our fireside, and meet them, not as superior beings, but as members of one family."

"We can not live to ourselves, even if we would. It matters infinitely how we live to others. Rooted in the love and power of Christ, we shall not dare to be satisfied with spasmodic service. Brotherhood is not a question of bazaars, of subscriptions, or occasional charities paid as dole to conscience, or the gifts of lightly missed etceteras from the full basket of pleasure. It is the question of a life of stewardship given in all its energies and purposes to the common good. No other life is the complete Christian life. No other life is at once so hard and so easy."

ON DAILY LIVING …….

"Life is made up of hundreds of microscopic decisions between right and wrong."

"Geological examination of ourselves will reveal the fact that our character is a stratified rock, each day laying a layer."

ON PRAYER . . . . .

"By prayer, the prayer of our whole nature, voicing our abasement and our hope, our weaknesses and the strength of our striving, our unfitness and our longing, prayer that rises from the very depths of our being - such prayer alone can pierce the darkness that walls us round, and yield us the joy of the Divine illumination - 'the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.'"

"…. Prayer to be potent must be personal. It must throb with the conviction of human helplessness and of God's power to save. . .."

"Amid the feverish activities of these modern days . . . may we seek by devotional exercise in the private sanctuary of the home, no less than in public worship, to realize the saving love of God. And as we turn our thoughts inward….. may the light of God's holiness reveal our sin as He sees it, that knowing our weakness we may seek His strength….."

"….prayer is the sign-manual of the soul's intimacy with God."

"Thou, Christ, convince us by Thy Spirit, thrill us with Thy divine passion, drown our selfishness in Thy invading love, lay on us the burden of the world's suffering, drive us forth with the apostolic fervor of the early Church. So only can our message be delivered - "Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward.'"

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Thomas Kelly

Thomas R. Kelly's life (1893-1941) was a quest for reality. Two methods of achieving that goal characterized his search. In his earlier years the stress was upon scholarship; in the latter years the emphasis was upon commitment to Christ and holy obedience to the Inner Voice. Scholarship was not neglected but it became subordinate to inward orientation.

His life came into focus in the summer of 1938 on a memorable visit among German Quakers. There he was "literally melted down by the love of God," as he described the experience. For the next three years he poured out this experience in writing and speaking about the centrality of inward experience, the strength of the blessed community, the joys of the Christ-centered life, and the need for Christian concern. At the height of his powers he passed to the Great Beyond.

Born into a Quaker family in southwestern Ohio, he attended Wilmington College and Hartford Seminary. Most of his life was spent as a professor of philosophy at Earlham College, although he taught for a short time at Pickering College, at the University of Hawaii, and towards the close of his life at Haverford College. During World War I he worked with the Y.M.C.A. in Europe and during 1924-25 he and his wife headed the Quaker Center in Berlin. Quaker outreach in the Orient was one of his chief concerns.

The message of this great mystic is desperately needed today as he still speaks from his first-hand experiences with God.

ON GOD …..

"But there is a wholly different way of being sure that God is real. It is not an intellectual proof, a reasoned sequence of thoughts. It is the fact that men experience the presence of God. Into our lives come times when, all unexpectedly, He shadows over us, steals into the inner recesses of our souls, and lifts us up in a wonderful joy and peace. The curtains of heaven are raised and we find ourselves in heavenly peace in Christ Jesus. Sometimes these moments of visitation come to us in strange places - on lonely roads, in a class room, at the kitchen sink. Sometimes they come in the hour of worship, when we are gathered into one Holy Presences who stands in our midst and welds us together in breathless hush, and wraps us all in sweet comfortableness into His arms of love. In such times of direct experience of Presence, we know that God is utterly real. We need no argument. When we are gazing into the sun we need no argument, no proof that the sun is shining."

ON A LIVING RELIGION . . . .

"Religion isn't something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives yet more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives the singleness of eye. The most important thing is not to be perpetually passing cups of cold water to a thirsty world. We can get so fearfully busy trying to carry out the second great commandment, 'Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself,' that we are under-developed in our devoted love to God. But we must love God as well as neighbor."

ON THE INWARD LIGHT ……

"The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging peculiarly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian souls and Christian groups - yes, and of non-Christian groups as well - who seriously mean to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. He is the center and source of action, not the end-point of thought. He is the locus of commitment, not a problem for debate…..A practicing Christian must above all be one who practices the perpetual return of the soul into the inner sanctuary…."

"What is here urged are inward practices of the mind at deepest levels, letting it swing like the needle, to the polestar of the soul. And like the needle, the Inward Light becomes the truest guide of life, showing us new and unsuspected defects in ourselves and our fellows, showing us new and unsuspected possibilities in the power and life of good-will among men."

ON THE RESULTS OF CONTACT WITH THE LIGHT . . . . .

"The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening. The secret places of the heart cease to be our noisy workshop. They become a holy sanctuary of adoration and of self-oblation, where we are kept in perfect peace, if our minds be stayed on Him who has found us in the inward springs of our life."

"We are owned men, ready to run and not be weary and to walk and not be faint."

ON STEPS TO HOLY OBEDIENCE …..

"…the first step….is the flaming vision of the wonder of such a life, a vision which comes occasionally to us all, through biographies of the saints, through the journals of Fox and early Friends, through a life lived before our eyes…, through meditation upon the amazing life and death of Jesus, through a flash of illumination…."

" …. The second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are. Obey now … Live this present moment, this present hour …. In utter, utter submission and openness toward Him.

´… the third step in holy obedience, or a counsel, is this: If you slip and stumble and forget God for an hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don't spend too much time in anguished regrets and self-accusations but begin again, just where you are."

"Yet a fourth consideration in holy obedience is this: Don't grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, 'I will! I will!' Relax. Take hands off. Submit yourself to God. Learn to live in the passive voice….and let life be willed through you."

ON THE FRUITS OF HOLY OBEDIENCE ……

"The fruits of holy obedience are many. But two are so closely likened together that they can scarcely be treated separately. The are the passion for personal holiness and the sense of utter humility."

ON PRAYER …..

"This practice of continuous prayer in the presence of God involves developing the habit of carrying on the mental life at two levels. At one level we are immersed in this world of time, of daily affairs. At the same time, but at a deeper level of our minds, we are in active relation with the Eternal Life."

"Such practice of inward orientation….is the heart of religion."

ON THE CROSS …..

"The Cross as dogma is painless speculation; the Cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory. Yet God, out of the pattern of His own heart, has planted the Cross along the road of holy obedience. And He enacts in the hearts of those He loves the miracle of willingness to welcome suffering and to know it for what it is - the final seal of His gracious love. I dare not urge you to your Cross. But He, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs. By inner persuasions He draws us to a few definite tasks, our tasks. God's burdened heart particularizing His burdens in us."

ON JOY …..

"Christians who don't know an inner Pentecostal joy are living contradictions of Christianity."

"I'd rather be jolly Saint Francis hymning his canticle to the sun than a dour old sober-sides Quaker whose diet would appear to have been spiritual persimmons."

ON THE GATHERED MEETING ….

"I believe that the group mysticism of the gathered meeting rests upon the Real Presence in our midst. Quakers generally hold to a belief in Real Presence, as firm and solid as the belief of Roman Catholics in the Real Presence in the Host, in the Bread and Wine of the Mass."

"Some individuals need already, upon entering the meeting, to be gathered deep in the spirit of worship. There must be some kindled hearts when the meeting begins. In them and from them, begins the work of worship. The spiritual devotion of a few persons, silently deep in active adoration, is needed to kindle the rest, to help those others who enter the service with tangled, harried, distraught thoughts to be melted and quieted and released and made pliant, ready for the work of God and His Real Presence."

"Brevity, earnestness, sincerity - and frequently a lack of polish - characterize the best Quaker speaking."

"Words that hint at the wonder of God, but do not attempt to exhaust it, have an open-ended character. In the silences of our hearts the Holy Presence completes the unfinished words far more satisfyingly."

"Vocal prayer, poured from a humble heart, frequently shifts a meeting from a heady level of discussion to the deeps of worship. Such prayers serve as an unintended rebuke to our shallowness and drive us deeper into worship, and commitment. They open the gates of devotion, adoration, submission, confession. They help to unite the group at the level at which real unity is sought."

ON CHRISTIAN CONCERN ….

"Our fellowship with God issues in world-concern. We cannot keep the love of God to ourselves. It spills over. It quickens us. It makes us see the world's needs anew. We love people and we grieve to see them blind when they might be seeing, asleep with all the world's comforts when they ought to be awake and living sacrificially, accepting the world's goods as their right when they really hold them only in temporary trust. It is because of this holy Center we relove people, relove our neighbors as ourselves, that we are bestirred to be means of their awakening."

"Would that we could relove the whole world! But a special fragment is placed before us by the temporal now, which puts a special responsibility for our present upon us."

" …..a Quaker concern particularizes … cosmic tenderness. It brings to a definite and effective focus in some concrete task all that experience of love and responsibility which might evaporate, in its broad generality, into vague yearnings for a golden Paradise."

" …..a concern has a foreground and a background. In the foreground is the special task, uniquely illuminated, toward which we feel a special yearning and care… But in the background is a second level, or layer, of universal concern for all the multitude of good things that need doing."

"The world needs something deeper than pity; it needs love."

ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE ….

"… I would suggest that the true explanation of the complexity of our program is an inner one, not an outer one. The outer distractions of our interests reflect an inner lack of integration of our own lives. We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves….It is as if we have a chairman of our own committee of the many selves within us, who does not integrate the many into one but who merely counts the votes at each decision and leaves disgruntled minorities."

"Religion isn't something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives yet more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives the singleness of eye."

"Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time, And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well."