The Life Of Faith Quaker Doctrine

Among those especially interested in these new spiritual discoveries were the Friends. As I mentioned in the last chapter, one of them — after hearing my story — expressed surprise that any of it was new to me. She insisted it was exactly what the Quakers had always taught.

Her comment suddenly cast a new light on Quakerism, one I had never imagined.

My mother said something similar after he aring me speak one day. “But Hannah,” she asked, “why do you call this doctrine new? You’re only preaching what the old Friends always preached.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I’m beginning to see that. But they have never preached it in a way that ordinary people could grasp. Unless one already knew the secret, their words could hardly give it. Certainly I never understood it, though I listened to their preaching all my life. For my part,” I added, “I am determined to speak plainly enough that no one can fail to understand.”

But I eventually concluded that my mother and my friend were right: what we had discovered really was genuine Quaker doctrine. With my eyes newly opened, I reread their writings and listened again to their sermons. I realized that the heart of true Quakerism is this “life hid with Christ in God,” and that their central teaching was that Christ is a present and complete Savior — One who keeps His people’s feet, as He promised, and makes them more than conquerors through His strength.

I saw that a life of absolute consecration, full obedience, and simple trust was the life they had always urged upon us. I had not understood them before because they were preaching about the building of the Christian life, while I was still searching for the foundations of that life.

Alexander Knox says that the Christian faith has “foundation truths” and “superstructure truths,” both necessary to form a complete whole. The foundation and the building are different, yet perfectly harmonious. Foundation truths introduce us to the Christian life; superstructure truths teach us how to live once we are in it. Without superstructure, the foundation remains bare and unfinished; without foundations, the superstructure is unstable.

The early Friends were, from the beginning, a society devoted to building the superstructure.

Their message was directed chiefly to Christians. Their early history shows that most of them had already been serious believers within the denominations of their day, yet had not found there what fully satisfied their spiritual hunger.

One writer describes them this way: for years they had sought the Lord with deep longing, trying every teacher, every practice, every form of devotion, yet still craving something more. They wanted the inward presence and power of the Spirit — something beyond what they could gather merely from Scripture’s letter. They longed for life, for communion with Christ, for an entrance into His kingdom and His reign within. When the light of the Spirit finally broke upon them, it came with such joy and power that they never forgot it — a sense of life poured into their hearts, drawing them into divine rest and setting them apart for God’s service.

My own dear father, a genuine and wonderfully delightful Friend, lived this early Quaker experience. We had long known that he lived a life of steady trust and simple obedience. But in our more evangelical days, we thought him unclear on doctrines such as justification by faith or the believer’s legal standing before God. We often tease d him that although he was certainly good, he was also rather “unsound.”

After discovering the life of faith for ourselves, however, we became convinced that this was the secret of his steadiness. At the first opportunity I asked him, “Now, Father, isn’t t his the secret of your life and the source of your strength? Haven’t you always lived this way?”

I will never forget his answer.

“Why, of course it is, daughter,” he said with a joyful triumph in his voice. “I know no other way to live. And I certainly know what it is, when the enemy comes in like a flood, for the Lord to raise His standard against him and drive him off.”

It now seems clear to me that Friends were meant to be workers on the interior life — not primarily to convert sinners, but to lead believers into a deeper walk with God and a life of abiding trust. Yet in recent days it seems to me they have drifted from this calling, striving more to do foundational work than to build the superstructure. Their traditions and methods, suited for the latter, are less suited for the former. The results, unsurprisingly, do not compare with denominations whose chief aim has long been the foundation work of evangelism.

A thoughtful Friend recently said to me that they were meant to be a strong mystical society, but feared they were becoming a weak evangelical one. I could not deny the truth in his words.

If only the Friends would again proclaim with the old clarity and power that glorious message of a full and present salvation in Christ — available here and now — the blessing to thousands of hungry souls would be immeasurable.

One of their early preachers once said: “I bring you good news. Not that the day of your redemption is near, but that it has already come. Many are already blessing God that they are redeemed and delivered from corruption’s bondage, and have more joy in His service than they ever had in the world’s. Oh, the conquering faith, the overcoming life and power of the Spirit!

We cannot help but speak of these things, and exalt the perfect gift and power of Him who not only can complete His work in the heart, but delights to do so — yes, even to tread down Satan under the feet of those who trust Him.”

No matter how vague Quaker preaching had become in my time, the early Friends spoke plainly enough. Small wo nder their message spread so widely. And if today’s Friends were to sound that same clear trumpet again, I believe multitudes would respond — for the children of God are as hungry now as ever to know the fullness of Christ’s salvation.