By Jesse Herman Holmes
For a large number of people of Christendom, especially for those trained in scientific thinking, the great organized Christian churches are failing to supply the needed religious element. The trend of our time is scientific. It is impossible for a religion that ignores or opposes this tendency to serve the purposes of all who receive modern education....
This letter calls your attention to the Religious Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers. This society makes no claim to be a church in the sense of assuming authority to settle questions of doctrine or of historic fact. We are a society of friends whose members owe each other friendliness and claim no authority one over another. We have no formal creed, and such unity as we have--and we have a great deal--is due to the fact that reasonable minds working on the same materials are likely to arrive at similar conclusions. However, we demand no unity of opinion, and we find both interest and stimulus in our many differences.
Most Friends agree that the Sermon on the Mount presents the highest ideal for a way of life; this we accept not only on authority from without but mainly as conviction from within. We thus unite on a common purpose; a human society organized on a basis of good will and friendliness.... Our objective determines for us the meaning of right and wrong. Right is that which serves the common purpose, wrong is that which hinders or thwarts it. It is the standard by which we undertake to test the organization of society, international policies, and indeed all human conduct and institutions. Our opposition to war is based on the conviction that war hinders the development of the world family; yet we do not exclude from membership those who do not have that conviction....
We have deferred until this point the use of the word "god"--a word of diverse and uncertain meaning. To us, "god" means a unifying influence, which makes men long for a brotherly world; which tends to bind men together in unity. Our religion is built on such experience as the chief imperative of life. We have never been very particular about names; we have called this element of life the Seed, the Inner Light, the In-speaking Voice, the Christ Within, the Word. We are willing to have still other names: "The power not ourselves that makes for righteousness," The Hidden Dynamo, The Super-self, The World-father, all seem to be proper symbolisms....
Whatever God may be and whatever life may mean, we are not insured against loss, suffering, and death. But there is an element of life greater than our normal everyday selves, which enables us to rise above loss and suffering and to face life and death without fear....
The Religious Society of Friends is a group of people of good will, working together for mutual support in making the God-element of life the commanding element. We never altogether succeed in doing this, but the effort is an essential part of our religion. It is only by squarely facing what is that man may hope to accomplish what may be: wherefore religion as we understand it has nothing to fear from science. Indeed, we welcome every extension of mental horizon, every new discovery as to the nature of the world we live in.
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