PEACE. From the beginning, Friends have been advocates of Peace. A Quaker civilization would abolish armies and navies; do away with all war and preparations for war. It would eliminate altogether the principle of destructive force from governmental organizations. Carried out to its ultimate, it would abolish sheriffs, magistrates and lawyers, and obliterate the lines of distinction between Church and State. Politics would become religious in the best sense, and religion would have to do mainly with human needs in this phase of life. There would be due self-respect, and therefore respect on the part of each for the rights of all. The bare mention of such a state of society. contrasted with the present, only serves to show the broad margin of difference between the doctrines of most other sects. and those of Quakerism, and between the so-called Christian civilization of to-day, and what is contemplated in the teachings of Jesus, as attainable by men and women. However distant in the future may be the full realization of this beneficent, peaceful dispensation, all who have faith in the capacity of human progress, and in an advancing civilization, must needs keep it steadily in view.-A. M. Powell, N. Y. QUIETISM AND WORK. Generally the trials and sins of men come of magnifying the present incident, putting too much emphasis upon what they would gain, making undue account of the besetments and annoyances of the hour. They fail to endure as seeing the invisible. * * * Shall we never overcome these intoxications and exaggerations, and see and dwell in the real and unchanging? We need to transfuse the transient with the perennial, and behold each day overarched with the forever. The royal souls, remarkable for their possession and strength, mounting superior to all and living above sin, seem to have been those who were penetrated wtth this element, able * * to keep constantly in eye the great considerations. They never drank intoxication, maintained a perfect sobriety and sanity throughout. In presence of the grave, of onflowing time, silence of the everlasting, the passions of men are hushed: the resentments cease to follow there. With perfect consideration ever, we should be in perfect poise, never a ruffle upon the bosom of the deep sea of our peace. It is plain, however, that there are qualifications for all this thing, counter-truths that must not be overlooked. If there were no want, no incitement, there would be no movement, no action or life. The supreme world speaks to us as law. Existence is not quiescence: the virtues are not passive solely. There are stakes to be contended for, heights to be won, victories to be earned. We are in time, and our present possession is not infinite. It would seem the very solution itself of the contradiction is a contradiction. The repose is in action: the rest is by motion. The eternal is to be sought by successive advances in time: we are to grasp the transcendant, the ideal, in the actual; substance, in the forms. We are to renounce, to realize; and to pursue, to realize; to seek, to cling to, to fasten upon, to reach the intangible and everlasting. All the great deeds of history have been done under an intensity of impression, a power of conviction, a sense of must, that burned and melted all before it. It seems to be essential to any performance that the mind should be charged, we might say overcharged, with the imperative weight of the work. Eternity is to be so realized in time, and the god takes our eyes with illusion. Life is a conflict, and ever a kind of contradiction: two opposing elements are converged and blended in each single instant. To fulfill well our mission we must see time also, and read the imperative command of the moment and the hour. The high wisdom is to read aright, and to marry and blend action in repose, perfect doing with perfect peace. It is an old feud that has divided the quietists from the workers: it has always been hard to reconcile the antagonisms, and there has been some lack of appreciation and fairness on both sides. These two sects have always, that is, among the earnest people, divided the world. On the one side is meditation, on the other exertion; on one, satisfaction, at least calm, on the other thirst, solicitude, the ambitions of doing. They charge haste, and impatience of accomplishment, and a certain intolerance, upon the doers: these charge indisposition to work, a lazy optimism, and criminal indifference, upon those. One is the saintship of zeal, and frequently of heat and impoise: the other is the saintship of inner containing, and not seldom of unlawful renunciation. The full union and reconciliation of the two traits we do not yet find in society or individuals. It is a very nice medium to hit. The optimism must be conquest, the faith that is intense love and serene victory, the zeal of devotion, the recognized claim of the everlasting, and resting in the everlasting, the two virtues blent indissolubly into one as in the godhead in the heavens. Perhaps it will need more age and ripeness to the race, finer births, to make approximation to the true ideal to any large extent possible. We need to be reminded constantly of the unshifting, the eternal element. There is so much of stir, pressure, and heat, so little of poise in the world. But this is not all we need action, a true recognition, and royal fealty. There is great lack of this, a criminal optimism, a disposition to excuse ourselves, and dwell in trust and quiescence, inertia, rather than in wrestling, prevailing prayer. So the world, much as it needs teachers of the former, still needs prophets and evangelists of the latter.-C. D. B. Mills, Syracuse, N. Y. CHRIST'S CHARACTER-THE REAL GOSPEL. * The world itself is changed, and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since Jesus left it. The air is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds is wafted on us in its breath. Let the dark ages come, let society roll backward, and churches perish in whole regions of the earth, let infidelity deny, and what is worse, let spurious piety dishonor the truth; still there is a something here that was not, and a something that has immortality in it. Still our confidence remains unshaken, that Christ and his all-quickening life are in the world, as fixed elements, and will be to the end of time., For Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine, as of a perfect character; and how can a perfect character, once entered into life and history, be separated and finally expelled? It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the world.-Horace Bushnell. NATURAL Religion. But some may say there are no motives in Natural Religion, no commands of God to be obeyed with gain, or disobeyed with loss. No man has talked with God, God has talked with no man. But the commands are there, written in the constitution and relation of things; written on the body, and the soul, and the earth, and the heavens. Is there no motive to abstain from drunkenness but the command of God in the Bible? Drunkenness will bring sickness, poverty, disgrace, sorrow to friends, delirium tremens, premature death, debasement of soul. Are not these sufficient motives? This which is true of drunkenness, is true of everything in the world. Why should we keep the Sabbath? Because God commanded it? The Mohammedans keep Friday; the Jews, Saturday; the Christians, Sunday. There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that we are to rest on the first day of the week! There is a positive command to keep the seventh ; yet we refuse to keep the seventh, and do keep the first. All days are alike holy. The motive to keep Sunday is not in the command of God, there exists no such command; the motive is in the welfare of society. A great many people fear that if we break away from the supernatural, we break away from religion. No: we only break away from superstition. Among the believers of all revealed religions there are some base, some noble, some irreligious. As an eminent author has justly remarked, the shortness of time has furnished as many arguments to the debauchee as to the devotee. That scheme which says a man must repent in order to be saved, says also that one may repent at any time-on a sick bed and in old age; and that in repentance all sins will be washed away. On this theory, therefore, many people conclude to take their fill of sin in their healthy years, hoping to find time to repent in their old age or on the bed of death. A belief in Natural Religion will do more to prevent iniquity than any other, because nature cannot be improved. Her penalties are sure: they are sufficient and only sufficient. cannot be escaped, nature metes to all. Exact justice, which this, they will be careful not to violate nature's laws. Watts says, and he utters the spirit of Christendom, “Blind unbelief is sure to err." All that is true, but more, also is true. "Blind belief is sure to err." Hundreds of people, through a lingering superstition of the power of faith, cling to old notions and doctrines as though there were merit in believing, and they will therefore believe to the last moment. There is no merit in belief. We ought to believe just so far as there is reason, and no farther. An honest doubter is as acceptable to God as an honest believer; the merit is in the honesty, not in the doubt nor belief. In Natural Religion, faith without evidence is sin. We believe in faith; we cherish it; but no farther than we find a rock foundation on which it may rest. The great obstacle which stands in the way of Protestants is the prejudice that there can be no imperfection in the Bible. They refuse to hear anything except what is taught from its pages or said in its defense. The great requirement of the present, is to get our hearts open, and our ears open, so as to learn all there is to learn in the world. All that helps truth helps religion. Nat |
