Gerald K. Hibbert, M.A., B.D.
London: Friends' Book Centre, 1933.
This Document is on The Quaker Writings Home Page.
Our Vocal Ministry
Some of us, however, are concerned about the apparent ineffectiveness of much of the vocal
ministry in our Meetings for Worship. We do not want to be censorious or lacking in
appreciation, but we feel there is comparatively little of a convicting searching Ministry. Excellent
addresses are given in our meetings - probably the standard was never higher - yet they often fail
to make a personal appeal to the listener, or to stir him to a deeper sense of responsibility and
even of sin. We seem to be afraid of going deep; we are often content with scratching the soil
when we ought to harrow and plough, We need "threshing" meetings as well as those where we
"speak comfortably to Jerusalem."
There are Friends, no doubt, who would deny that there is any such deficiency in our Ministry.
Yet it is difficult, after visiting numbers of meetings, to resist the conclusion that there is
something lacking. This pamphlet is written by one who feels this deeply, in the hope that by
prayer and a closer walk with God and one another we may enter on a stage of greater depth and
power.
Emotionalism
What are some of the reasons for this state of things? One obvious reason is a distrust of
emotionalism. We have seen so many unhealthy re-actions after the great Mass Revivals of the
past, or we know of so many individual cases of over-wrought feelings, in the religious circles in
which we move, that we hesitate to make the emotional appeal at all. This is a quite
understandable reason, and sound up to a point. Surely, however, we are not going to neglect the
emotional element entirely, and fall to the other extreme. The mere fact that the appeal to the
emotions has been over-done does not prove that is in essence wrong. Rather would it be true to
say that until a man is touched in his feelings, until his interest is aroused, no amount of
reasoning or logic will do much to move him. We Friends are probably too reserved, and not
willing enough to "let ourselves go" when the right time comes. There is a right time, though
some may doubt it, and he who walks close to God will recognise it when come it does.
A Teaching Ministry
We emphasise, and rightly, the value of a Teaching Ministry, and in that we think mainly of the
intellectual, the rational element. There is always a temptation here to over-stress the purely
rational, and to neglect the emotional. But the rational of itself "cuts not ice," though it produces
an atmosphere favourable to the reception of truth and is an indispensable ingredient in any
lasting religious experience. Every teacher knows that until he makes his subject "live," that is
until he presents it in such a way that it kindles the interest (i.e., the emotions) of the pupil, he is
not teaching al all. He may be talking, but that is a very different thing. He does not "get it
across" until he so interests the pupil that the latter is fired with a desire to explore the subject for
himself. So it is with a Teaching Ministry. We can unfortunately be Preachers without being
Teachers, and no Ministry can teach unless it kindles the interest and stirs the emotion of the
hearers, and makes them long to become "Seekers" for themselves. The over-emphasis upon the
intellectual brings its own nemesis; in tends to kill the very thirst for the rational that it
endeavours to inspire.
A Gospel Ministry
There is in principle no antagonism between a Teaching Ministry and a Gospel Ministry, any
more than there is between a Mystical and an Evangelical view of religion. Misunderstandings
and mistakes arise from our misuse of words, and from our inveterate habit of thinking in
compartments. We have only to look at the Ministry of Jesus to see how it was a Teaching
Ministry because it was a Gospel. He taught "as one having authority" because his message was
the Gospel of the love of God, which touched men's feelings to the depths and quickened their
intellectual faculties as well. If we try to teach without having a Gospel, not merely on our lips
but in our hearts, we shall fail.
A Convicting Ministry
Another reason for the lack of a convicting Ministry is the modern demand for practical results.
Here again, the demand is good up to a point. We want deeds, not words: "by their fruits ye
shall know them." Our present re-action against much of the vagueness and impracticality of
much religious exposition is understandable and healthy. But it tends to go too far. We demand
immediate results that we can measure and handle and tabulate, and in consequence a very
practical note has come into our preaching. We give addresses on "The Kingdom of Heaven on
Earth," "A New Order of Society," "Christianity and the Slums" - and again quite rightly. But
gradually there comes a feeling that it is only these addresses that are practical or that get things
done: the deeper, more spiritual addresses tend to be dismissed as dreamy or unpractical. "Just
fancy X. talking this morning about the deepening of our spiritual lives, when our one and only
concern at the moment is the Housing Question," is a comment one can understand, but it shows
a woeful lack of perspective, and a putting of the cart before the horse. Not so did the early
Friends or the great Social Reformers talk. They found their "practicality" in their religious
experience: as they walked with God in the great deeps of the soul their sympathies were
quickened, their consciences sensitised, they gained insight into the problems and needs of their
time and foresight as to the best remedies to be employed. Spiritual sensitiveness stimulated their
intellects: they grasped what they had failed to grasp before. An hour spent in prayer may be
more "practical" than days of rushing about. We owe and unpayable debt to those unknown
saints who give their life to prayer: with a shallow impatience we may dismiss them as
"passengers," but the Lord sees not as man sees. At any rate there is no need to be shy at the
spiritual in order to be practical.
The Group Life
The chief reason, however, is probably the low level of our own spiritual life. this may sound
hard and unpleasant, but must we not admit its truth, if we are honest with ourselves? The
Ministry on the whole reflects the spiritual life of the group among which it is exercised. A few
exceptionally dedicated souls, or even one such, may of course sound a deeper note and stir their
fellows to a larger life, but where the whole Group is spiritually active the Ministry is bound to be
be far more vigorous and widely shared. Thus can we all, vocal or silent, help towards a deeper
ministry. Each one of us might well examine his spiritual condition from time to time, not
morbidly, but healthily, and ask himself whether is ministry is as deep as it might be, and, if he is
offering no vocal ministry at all, why this is so. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth
speaketh," and the richer our experience of the Divine Life the more powerful will be our
ministry. To give an ethical address, or to speak on some literary subject, ned make no very big
demand on the speaker: it call for little "travailing" of spirit, it does not cost much. But to claim
men for Christ, to convict them of sin, to lead them to repentance at the foot of the Cross,
involves deep-going for ourselves, and some of us have not gone deep enough. We may smile at
the old evangelists, but with all their failings they enabled men and women to become "a new
creation" - and that is what need need paramountly to-day. the old order is played out: you and I
on the old level are helpless as we face the problems of to-day; we must be born again, become
new creatures, if the whole creation is to have another smell. None but the newly born are
capable of producing a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Discipline and Definiteness
Discipline and Definiteness are tow of our chief needs today. Discipline has an unpleasant sound,
and Definiteness is a bugbear to most of us Friends. Discipline suggests the hairshirt and ascetic
life: Definiteness challenges our love of vagueness (sometimes styles "broad-mindedness") and
our positive passion for woolliness. Any attempt to pin us down makes us wriggle and squirm:
no wonder some of our fellow Christians grow impatient with us and ask, "Do you know where
you are?" Yet surely there is a place both for Discipline and Definiteness. Discipline, it the sense
of self-discipline, is an essential element in morality and goodness. It is a necessary factor in the
religious life. It is easy to become slack and nerveless, to suffer from that deadly sin of Accidie
that so benumbs the soul. Thousands of our fellow Christians find discipline essential to their
devotional life: they impose upon themselves duties and routine and hardship: they feel that their
prayer life needs constant keying-up. We do not wish to imitate them in all their detailed actions,
but they stand before us as a living challenge to our sloth and complacency. We may pride
ourselves on our whole life being a prayer, on every day being the Lord's Day, on every act of life
being a sacrament, on every Meeting for Worship being a Communion Service - and all the time
our lives betray us to our fellows, and show how hollow is our claim. The need of self-discipline
is urgent, and we may well get help and inspiration in this respect from our fellow Christian of
other communions. It is so difficult to keep the balance; we need to take ourselves more
seriously, and at the same time to be able to laugh at ourselves. If we lose our sense of humour
we are done: we become spiritual prigs. Still the nobles characters show is is possible to hold the
balance even - to take the spiritual life in deadly earnest, and to smile at ourselves the while.
Standing For Something
As to Definiteness, is it not true that we have carried our dislike of it to an absurd point? We are
proud of saying we have no Creed (which of course is not true: each of us has some belief by
which he lives), and we think this excuses us from making up our minds about anything. Up to
the present, at any rate, the Society of Friends has been a branch of the Church of Christ, and
that ispo facto implies certain beliefs, e.g. that the view of life taken by Christ is truer than that of
Confucius, that we gain our life by losing it, that true mastery is show by service, and so on.
Have we not had enough of the "orgy of vagueness" from which we have been lately suffering,
and do we not feel the need of standing for something? This must not be taken to mean that one
has any desire to fasten a definite Creed upon our Society: that would be contrary to its genius.
But it does mean that we invite all our members to examine and see whether there are not deeper
riches in the spiritual life than we have hitherto dreamt of, and whether our boast of
"creedlessness" is not actually standing in the way of our further growth. It is a terrible mistake
to cry "I have no creed," and to leave it at that, thinking that we are thereby excused from further
attempt to understand the nature of God and of Christ, to explore the riches of the Divine Love,
to get clearer light intellectually on some of the great mysteries of life. If the possession of a
Creed has sometimes stultified men's progress and made them satisfied with what they have
already attained, the proud boast of Creedlessness has often had the same effect. In fact the man
who says "I have not Creed" is an out and our "creed-ist": his creedlessness is his creed. The only
justification for out refusing to be bound by a Creed is that we press forward whole-heartedly in
the intellectual and the emotional search for God, using our freedom form the bondage of the
letter as a wing to bear us up toward Him. If our freedom becomes merely an excuse for
slackness and vagueness, truly we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Plea for Deepening of the Spiritual Life
And so I would appeal quite frankly and simply for a deepening of our spiritual life - for more
understanding and searching prayer, for more concentrated meditation, for fuller communion
with our Heavenly Father, for a more disciplined spirit, for a greater definiteness and fixity of
purpose. I would ask our Society to go behind all its philanthropy and activity in so many helpful
direction, to that which underlies it all. I am sure we have not sufficiently explored the realm of
the Spirit, that we have not thought enough on the deep things of God, that we have often
walking in blinkers and shied at questions which we ought to have faced, and I believe that we
are running dry in consequence. I am not pleading necessarily for more attention to Philosophy
or Theology (though there are worse things than that, and we need not plume ourselves on our
notorious weakness on the philosophical and theological side: we ought rather to be ashamed of
it), nor am I suggesting that our Society should become a community of cloistered Saints (though
again there are worse things than that), but I do most earnestly suggest that we need a closer
walk with God and a stronger grip on Christ, that we are content with a superficial experience,
when we might have a deep one, and that our ministry is weak in consequence. We are, thank
God, strong in some points, but we are weak in our attitude to Christ, we are weak in our
appreciation of History and in our sense of indebtedness to other communities, we are weak in
the surrender of ourselves to God. Do we try to think things out to their logical conclusion, do
we see where our beliefs would lead us if we lived them out, do we love the Lord our God with
all our heart and mind and strength, and do we love our neighbour as ourself?
The Divine Constraint
There has been in the past, and there might be again today, a tremendous power in the personal
appeal of a consecrated spirit. When a man feels that he is called of God to the winning of souls,
when he believes he is the ambassador of the Most High and commissioned by Him, he goes forth
to the work convinced that the God who has called him is calling each one of his fellows. He has
felt the Divine constraint in his own life: he is not his own: he is a man under authority: he is a
commissioned officer in the service of his King. In that spirit he approaches others: he reminds
them that the same God is claiming their allegiance and their service: that behind them and above
them and within them is the Everlasting God, the Spirit of Truth, the Lover of their souls: and he
urges them to respond to the claim, and to take life as a trust, a commission from the Most High.
It makes all the difference whether we think of ourselves as merely drifting, or as "laid hold of"
by God and called to co-operate with Him. And is is, I think, largely because the sense of a
Personal God has become dimmed of late, that this note of urgency and of Divine Commission
has died away.
Speaking To Their Condition
As we look back in our own Quaker annals, we notice how powerfully this note has been struck
at certain periods, and what remarkable results were achieved. It is, of course, the old prophetic
consciousness of "Thus saith the Lord," which never completely dies out, and which (in spite of
its dangers and possibilities of abuse) is one of the most tremendous things in the world. This
sense of "Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel," "The Lord God hath spoken: who can but
prophesy?" is at the back of the greatest religious movements in history. A further point of
extreme interest emerges. Those who thus feel the Divine commission often seem led into
sympathetic rapport with their fellow-worshippers, so that they are able to some extent to read
their hearts and "speak to their condition." We may call it telepathy or thought-reading or what
we like, but the fact remains. At times it seems almost weird and uncanny, but there is nothing of
this about it, unless the development of one's finer feelings and faculties is uncanny. It is the
natural result of the Divine indwelling in the soul of man. "They sat, or seemed to see, says Rufus
M. Jones, "the inner state and condition of persons before them. They were gifted with unusual
insight for understanding situations. They were more telepathic than the rank and file of the
membership were" (Later Periods of Quakerism," p. 224). They "travailed with the suffering
seed" as they called it, that is, they sat in silence with a meeting till they had worked their way
down, "centered down," where they could feel out and discover the state and condition of the
meeting or of individuals in the meeting. Then they could speak with extraordinary power, and
many a heart was yielded to God because its owner felt that he personally, she personally, was
being claimed for Him. Think for example of Elizabeth Fry, and how how the gay "Betsy" was
claimed for God by William Savery, much the the consternation of her sister Richenda: what the
world might have missed had William Savery given a weaker message! Read again the instances
given by Rufus Jones in chapter vii. of the work just quoted. Smile at the reluctance of a certain
young man to be long in the presence of Samuel Emlen, of Philadelphia, because he feared to
hear unpleasant truths, but rejoice with him when after a period of silence Samuel "addressed
himself to the trembling youth with such a soul-searching testimony as unveiled all that the latter
most wished to be hidden," and so enabled him to find his true self and realise the claim that God
was making on him.
The Price of Shallowness
Now of course it is not suggested that we should try to imitate our ancestors in every particular:
other times, other manners. Nor is it suggested that we need to acquire any "uncanny" sense or
to undergo any professional training for ministry, or that we should think there is anything
unnatural about it. But it is suggested that we are not going as deep in the life of the spirit as
these men and women of old, and that we are paying the price in shallowness. The reading of
Quaker history is immensely valuable both for the warning and the inspiration it gives. The
mistakes we can now avoid, and the inspiration might be ours. So why should we not do the
"greater things" that are promised us?
The Glorious Gospel
For after all, what a glorious Gospel has been entrusted to us! The boundless love of God, God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, Christ in us the hope of glory, God in man, man the Shechinah of the Most High, Divine Fatherhood and Human Brotherhood - is it not worth proclaiming, togather with all its implications? None of us can go too deep in this: there is no getting out of our depth here. We meet people sometimes, who, as we put it, "go too deep for us": we cannot follow them, and they hinder rather than help us. But we can never go to deep into the love of God. The deeper our own sense of it, the richer will be our lives, and the greater our power to bless. As we grow more into this love, understanding it better, realising both its stern and tender side, feeling its cleansing, healing, stimulating influence, our lives will re-act in a new way on our fellow-men. Our Ministry - in the widest sense of the service of our life - will have something of the Master's spirit, and that part of it which we call the Vocal MInistry will go deep and "remove mountains." Prayer, faith, consecration, self-surrender - no-one knows what these may do. The spiritual life is one long adventure, full of surprises, and it may yet be that we - even we - may be enabled to give a message that shall bring mankind to the foot of the Cross.