"Come out from among them and be ye separate; touch not the accursed thing!" he thundered; and out they came, obedient to his stentorian mandate; but alack, how many treasures in earthen vessels did they overlook in their terror of the curse! The good people made such haste to flee the city, that they imagined themselves as having already, in the spirit, reached the land that is very far off; and so they cast from them the outward and visible signs which are vehicles, in this material world, of inward graces.
Measureless are the uncovenanted blessings of God; and to these the Friends have ever borne a witness of power; but now the Calvinist intruder no longer divides the sheep from the goats in our churches; now the doctrine of universal brotherhood and the respect due to all men are taught much more effectively than when George Fox refused to doff his hat to the Justice; the quaint old speech has lost its significance, the dress would imply all the vainglory that the wearer desires to avoid; the young Quakers of this generation are no longer 'disciplined' in matters of the common social life; yet still they remain separate.
We of the outward and visible covenant need them, with their inherited mysticism, ordered contemplation, and spiritual vision;we need them for ourselves. The mother they have left yearns for them, and with all her faults - faults the greater for their absence - and with the blinded eyes of their recognition, she is their mother still. "WHAT ADVANTAGE THEN HATH THE JEW?" asked St Paul, and answered in the same breath - "MUCH EVERY WAY, CHIEFLYBECAUSE THAT UNTO THEM WERE COMMITTED THE ORACLES OF GOD." What advantage then has the Churchman? is the oft repeated question today; and the answer is still the answer of St Paul.
The Incarnation is the sum of all the Sacraments, the crown of the material revelation of God to man, the greatest of outward and visible signs, "THAT WHICH WE HAVE HEARD, WHICH WE HAVE SEEN WITHOUR EYES, WHICH WE HAVE LOOKED UPON AND OUR HANDS HAVE HANDLED OFTHE WORD OF LIFE." A strange beginning truly, to usher in a purely spiritual dispensation; but beautifully fulfilled in the taking up of the earthly into the heavenly - Bread and Wine, the natural fruits of the earth, sanctified by man's toil, a sufficiency for his needs; and instinct with Divine life through the operation of the Holy Ghost.
"In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.""Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood ye have no life in you""And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."From Genesis to the Revelation of the Divine reaches the rainbow of the Sacramental system - outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace:-The sacrament of purging, purifying labour, to balance and control the knowledge of good and evil:-The sacrament of life, divine life, with the outward body of humiliation, bread and wine, fruit of the accursed ground, but useless without man's labour; and St Paul, caught up into the third heaven, and St John, with his wide-eyed vision of the Lamb, must eat this bread and drink this cup if they would live:-The sacrament of healing, the restoring of the Image of God in fallen man.
The Church is one society, nay, the world is one society, for man without his fellow-men is not; and into the society, both of the Church and the world, are inextricably woven the most social sacraments.
Herein is great purpose, we say, bending the knee; and with deep consciousness of sins and shortcomings we stretch out longing welcoming hands to our grey brethren with their inheritance of faithfulness and steadfastness under persecution, and their many gifts and graces; and we cry, in the words of the Song of Songs which is Solomon's: "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone."
