BIO: Robert Barclay, Quaker theologian (3 Oct 1690) ROBERT BARCLAY, QUAKER THEOLOGIAN (3 OCT 1690) This series includes biographical sketches of about ten Quakers. Most sketches are accompanied by sections on various topics related to the Quaker movement. A Table of contents, enabling the reader to find material on various Quakers and various aspects of Quakerism, can be reached by clicking . A reading list, sorted according to topic, can be reached by clicking . $$$ ROBERT BARCLAY Robert Barclay was a well-born convert to Quakerism. His mother was a Gordon, related to the Royal House of Stuart (Freiday, in a biographical note to the APOLOGY, calls his mother a "cousin" of Charles II, but may perhaps mean this in an extended sense). He was born in 1648 at Gordonstoun <57:42 N 3:23 W> in northern Scotland. As a boy he was sent to Paris to study at the Royal Scots College there, which was run by the Jesuits (his father's brother was the principal). There, he learned Latin, French, and at least some Greek, Hebrew, church history, and patristics, learning which was of use to him in his later work. There, says Freiday, he was weaned from the strict Calvinism of his youth to Roman Catholicism, a fact later used against him by his opponents, some of whom thought the Quakers to be Jesuits in disguise. In 1663, at the age of 15, he was recalled to Scotland. There he listened to representatives of several religious positions. In 1665 his father became a Quaker, and in 1666 so did Robert. In 1670 he married a Quaker woman, Christian Molleson. Being rich and well-born did not protect Barclay from persecution. He was imprisoned at Aberdeen <57:10 N 2:04 W> during the winter of 1677, and suffered greatly from the cold in his unheated cell. His friendship with the Duke of York (later King James II) got him appointed in 1679 to the Scots Privy Council. It also ultimately got him a land grant in the Americas, and he was governor of what is now Northern New Jersey <@ 40 N 72:30 W> from 1682 to 1688. He died on 3 October 1690, just a few weeks before George Fox. Barclay devoted his life to the systematic formulation and defense of the Quaker position. He began with a pamphlet called THESES THEOLOGICAE, setting forth fifteen propositions which he was about to defend. He expanded this into AN APOLOGY FOR THE TRUE CHRISTIAN DIVINITY, BEING AN EXPLANATION AND VINDICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES AND DOCTRINES OF THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS. The APOLOGY [="Defense"] was published in Latin in 1676 and in English in 1678. If any book is to Quakerism what the INSTITUTES is to Calvinism, this is it. Barclay devotes 425 pages to fifteen Articles, defending fifteen Propositions. (The number of pages in the Freiday edition is shown in brackets.) 1. [3] The true foundation of all knowledge is the knowledge of God. 2. [30] The knowledge of God is given us by the Inner Light. This is first-hand knowledge and thus to be preferred to second- hand knowledge as obtained through Reason or the Scriptures. 3. [20] The Scriptures are true, but of value to us only insofar as that truth is confirmed to us by the witness of the Inner Light. 4. [6] Since the Fall, man cannot know or love God except as God acts to restore us. 5. [40] Christ is the True Light that enlightens every man, and is powerful to save all who do not resist the Light. 6. [13] Since Christ enlightens every man, even those who have never heard of His acts in Judea may be saved through Him. 7. [30] We are justified, not by our works, but by Christ working in us. 8. [11] Being saved by Christ includes being saved from sin and brought into holiness. Not everyone is fully perfected at once, but sinlessness is to be aimed at and hoped for. 9. [5] One may fall away from grace, though some achieve a perfection in this life that rules out total apostasy. 10. [68] The ministry of the Gospel is through those who are called by the Spirit, not those who have been educated or ordained. It should not be done for pay. (However, if a man gives up his regular trade to preach the Gospel, he may be led to accept voluntary support for the necessities of life.) 11. [62] We should worship only as the Spirit moves us, and not as we choose or plan. 12. [26] Baptism of water is an outward symbol, used for a season, until men had become enlightened enough to see that all true worship is inward and spiritual. It is no longer appropriate. 13. [35] The Holy Communion was an outward ordinance, necessary to get the Church started, but now to be replaced by purely spiritual worship. 14. [27] The civil authorities have no right to punish persons for their religious beliefs or practices (the obvious exception being someone who claims that his acts of murder, robbery, etc. are religious practices). 15. [49] Vain and empty customs and pursuits are to be rejected. Bowing, tipping the hat, frivolous recreation and games, are all to be rejected. The Second Article, CONCERNING IMMEDIATE REVELATION, is the crucial one. It sets forth the doctrine of the Inner Light. Fox had testified that it was revealed to him "that there was a mystical, but Divine, light in the hearts of men, a light which would, if followed honestly and steadfastly, infallibly lead to God: and that without the aid of either the Bible or any ordinances." Barclay devotes the Second Article to explaining and defending this doctrine. Most of the other fourteen Articles could be summarized, "And nothing else matters." The main point of the APOLOGIA is that the Inner Light will tell us everything we need to know. But what precisely is it that the Inner Light tells us? It tells us that the Inner Light tells us everything we need to know. To complain that this is vacuous or circular is perhaps to miss the point. Fox tells us that on one occasion he heard an inner voice say, "There is a living God, who made all things." We may feel that this is not a particularly profound insight. But what mattered to Fox was his experience of the Presence of God, guiding and instructing him, and not the mere statement of the insight, which is all that he can communicate to us. I was recently told of an occasion when the late Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, made an official visit to a beekeeping exhibit, and on her way out saw a small girl looking at her. She smiled, shook her head and said, "All those bees! Buzz, buzz, buzz!" The girl was utterly overwhelmed at being spoken to by the Princess. What was said was utterly beside the point. Again, we note the difference (mentioned under GEORGE FOX'S EARLY LIFE), between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance or experience or insight. Consider a statement like, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." To most of us, most of the time, this sounds trite, trivial, and not worth saying. Yes, of course, today is the first day of the rest of my life, and of the rest of the century, and so on. Similarly, Tuesday is the first day of the rest of the week (the part of the week starting with Tuesday), and similarly with Wednesday, and so on. So what? But to someone whose life seems a hopeless mess, and who cannot seem to summon the will or the energy to do what needs to be done about it, the message, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life!" may, perceived in just the right way, come as a shattering realization. "Hey, that means that my failure to do the right thing yesterday and the day before and so on doesn't mean that I can't do the right thing today. I'm free! The door isn't locked. I can get out! How wonderful!" And if we ask him, "What is going on? Why are you suddenly grinning from ear to ear and walking with a bounce in your step?" he replies, "Because someone just reminded me that today is the first day of the rest of my life!" and we reply, "Huh??" $$$ QUAKERS AND UNIVERSALISM The Quakers believe that the opportunity of salvation is universal. As Barclay writes in his APOLOGY, they believe "that God, who out of his infinite love sent his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world, who tasted death for every man, hath given to every man, whether Jew or Gentile, Turk or Scythian, Indian or Barbarian, of whatsoever nation, country, or place, a certain day or time of visitation; during which day or time it is possible for them to be saved, and to partake of the fruit of Christ's death." Fox taught that the Atonement of Christ for the sins of men was retroactive, and universal in time as in space. In this he agrees with Justin Martyr, and with Dante, and with Archbishop William Temple, who wrote: All that is noble in the non-Christian system of thought, or conduct, or worship, is the work of Christ upon them and within them. By the Word of God--that is to say, by Jesus Christ--Isaiah, and Plato, and Zoroaster, and Confucius, conceived and uttered such truths as they declared. There is only one divine light; and every man in his measure is enlightened by it. $$$ DANGERS OF SUBJECTIVISM Fox said that it was his function to direct men to Christ the Teacher, not to teach them himself. When William Penn became a Quaker, he had a problem. Wearing a sword was considered the mark of a gentleman, and even though Penn accepted the idea that he must never shed blood, not even in self-defense, it went against the grain for him to appear among his friends as the only one who did not wear a sword, and by implication, someone not a gentleman, not altogether respectable. Finally, it is said (some historians doubt this), he asked George Fox whether he might continue to wear his sword. Fox replied, "Wear it as long as thou canst." In Quaker thought, every man is to be taught by Christ. Trueblood writes: Robert Barclay argued that the direct leading of the Spirit ought not to be judged by reason or any other criterion, because that would be judging the greater by the lesser. "We then trust to and confide in this Spirit, because we know and certainly believe that it can only lead us aright, and never mislead us." What Barclay failed to see, along with most of the early Friends, was the inevitable subjectivity of all human judgement. The truth is objective, but judgement about it is necessarily subjective. Though the Spirit does not deceive, men can be deceived. Finite men can never distinguish, with absolute certainty, between what God is saying and what they think that they hear. All of the crude aberrations in Quaker history have arisen from the failure to give full assent to this fundamental fact about the human situation. The supposed direct leading caused some of the early Quakers to walk naked through the streets. We see how easily sincere people may be misguided, even when they suppose that they are divinely led. James Nayler was an early follower of Fox, and an eloquent speaker. He spoke in glowing terms of how the Spirit of Christ dwelt within him. His followers listened and cheered him on, saying that they did indeed hear Christ speaking through him. In 1656 a group of his followers placed him on a horse and led him into the city of Bristol <51:27 N 2:35 W>, spreading their garments before him and shouting, "Hosannah!" What aggravated the offense for some was that he apparently had a face strikingly resembling the conventional pictures of Christ, and that he habitually arranged his hair and beard to emphasize the similarity. He was arrested and tried for blasphemy. He undertook to explain that the honor was done, not to him, but to Christ dwelling within him. He had difficulty in explaining the distinction, and was sentenced to be pilloried, flogged, and branded, to have his tongue bored through with a hot iron, and to be imprisoned for an indefinite period (he was released after three years). Fox and other leaders of the movement emphatically disowned his action, and Nayler eventually accepted their judgement and acknowledged his error. Nayler is to this day much loved and admired in Quaker circles, not so much for the Bristol episode, where he is mostly thought to be deluded, as for the gentleness and patience with which he bore his punishment at the hands of the law and the rebukes of his fellow Quakers. About a year after he was released from prison, he was walking a country road and met with highwaymen who robbed and beat him. He died a few days later of his injuries. One of his last statements (and a favorite Quaker quotation) is the following: There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; and it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. But Quakers had still to face the question of whether every claim, "The Inner Light told me so!" was automatically to be accepted. As Ingle puts it (FIRST FRIEND, p 141): "Sects based on personal experience, especially those eschewing textual authority in the manner of the mystical Children, always find it difficult to forestall determined adherents from insisting that their own special revelation is more valid than others'." Ingle further points out: Fox repeated over and over that those who sought to have dominion over another's faith violated the principles of Christ, lived outside the true faith, and worshiped the devil. What he failed to see, however, was that these very people, when they acted sincerely from their own religious convictions, were doing no more than Fox and his followers did when they invaded a market town on market day to "declare the day of the Lord." He apparently did not realize that his strictures against, as he put it, "he who persecutes another about meat and drinks and days" could easily reprove Fox for wanting to deny others the right to play shuffleboard. In 1661 Quakers were troubled by the "hat controversy". They had been accustomed to take their hats off to God, and only to God. Now John Perrot claimed a revelation from the Inner Light that he must keep his hat on even when praying. (His followers denounced all structuring of the services, even agreeing on a set time for meeting, on the grounds that this was a "quenching of the Spirit.") Perrot backed the "hat" revelation by Scripture. Paul had decreed that women must cover their heads when praying, and had also said that in Christ there is neither male nor female. It followed that Paul's directions for women must apply equally to men. Actually, Paul says (1 Cor 11:4-5) that women should cover their heads when praying or prophesying (preaching), and that men should not. Perrot strayed from this, in that he said that men should cover. But Fox also strayed from this, in that he expected men to cover while preaching. Fox's reply to this floundered badly. In the end, his only defense for a hat- distinction between the sexes was that it led to "order, comeliness, and decency" which amounted to asserting his own sense of the fitting as somehow more authentic than Perrot's. The two met to discuss their differences, and Perrot said that he was acting as the Spirit guided him, and was quite content to worship with others, such as Fox, who thought themselves to be otherwise guided. True unity rested not in outward things like hats, but in the Spirit. He would not stand "in opposition to any man who could say by the word of the living God that he was moved to take off his hat in prayer," but he could not support Fox's wish to impose "an absolute enforcing rule, law, or tie for another man's conscience." Fox was only partly satisfied. He and Perrot arrived at a truce of sorts, but when Perrot left for Bristol, Fox sent letters ahead to warn the Quakers there against him. Fox's vehement reaction to Perrot was (according to Ingle) largely due to the fact that on one occasion Nayler's followers had kept their hats on when Fox prayed, as an indication that they did not recognize him as a fit person to lead them in prayer, and that Fox never forgot or forgave the insult. When Perrot covered his head during prayer, Fox had an instant flashback. He saw Perrot as a second Nayler, a viper lodged in the bosom of the Church. (Perrot was one of the few Quakers who had signed a petition to Cromwell asking him to remit Nayler's punishment.) In 1673, John Story and John Wilkinson, who had been among the earliest Quakers, denounced the prominent role of women in Quaker meetings. At first they based their case on quotations from the letters of Paul; later they claimed personal revelations from the Inner Light. When Fox disagreed with them, they accused him of being against the Inner Light. Finally Fox announced that those who agreed with Story and Wilkinson ought to leave and form their own group. In 1678 they did. By 1700 the dissident group had died out. Trueblood writes: This distortion of the Inner Light was a danger that Fox had not foreseen. He had not made it clear enough to those he had convinced that God was not speaking through an infallible mechanical instrument which only reproduced God's voice. God was speaking through the very fallible human heart. And when God speaks through the human heart, something of the person who carries the message is bound to intrude. The conviction that the light of Christ could shine directly in each heart led to disorder in some groups, where the insights of some members contradicted those of others, and within twenty years Fox acknowledged the need for some kind of formal structure. Fox began to teach that there is a higher thing than individual inspiration--the check and balance of collective inspiration. He wrote: "Feel the power of God in one another, and know one another in this love that changeth not.... The Light is but one; and all being guided by it, all are subject to one, and are one in the unity of the Spirit." William Penn expressed the point by saying, "God has given greater judgement to his Church than to the individual members of it." $$$ QUAKER WORSHIP Traditional Quaker worship is "unprogrammed." The worshipers meet and sit in silence. After a while, one of them may feel called to say something to the meeting. When a speaker sits down, there is generally a pause for reflection, after which others may be moved to speak. After about an hour, or when it seems appropriate, an officer of the meeting will rise and shake hands with his neighbors, and this is the signal for others to do likewise, thus ending the meeting. Trueblood comments: There is great merit in keeping still when one does not have something valuable to say. Sometimes, especially when men are distraught, silence can be healing. The very discipline of getting one's body still and one's mind still, dismissing the multitude of worries and concerns, is often highly beneficent, and the best of it is that such a process does not require any special talent or aptitude. The whole of the Quaker experience gives abundant evidence that it can be learned by all kinds and conditions of men, including those of low degrees of learning. Thomas R Kelly (1893-1941), writes: In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a new Life and Power has entered our midst.... We are in communication with one another because we are being communicated to, and through, by the Divine Presence.... When one rises to speak in such a meeting one has a sense of BEING USED, of being played upon, of being spoken through. It is as amazing an experience as that of being PRAYED THROUGH, when we, the praying ones, are no longer the initiators of the supplication, but seem to be transmitters, who second an impulse welling up from the depths of the soul. On Quaker worship, see the poems FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS and THE MEETING, by John Greenleaf Whittier. The link is www.kimopress.com Do Quakers hold that speaking in Meeting should be spontaneous and unplanned? The answer is not simple. A card given to visitors at one Quaker Meeting reads: Worship, according to the ancient practice of the Religious Society of Friends, is entirely without any human direction or supervision. A group of devout persons come together and sit down quietly with no prearrangement, each seeking to have an immediate sense of divine leading and to know at first hand the presence of the Living Christ. It is not wholly accurate to say that such a Meeting is held on the basis of Silence; it is more accurate to say that it is held on the basis of "Holy Obedience." Those who enter such a Meeting can harm it in two specific ways: first, by an advance determination to speak; and second, by advance determination to keep silent. The only way in which a worshiper can help such a Meeting is by an advance determination to try to be responsive in listening to the still small voice and doing whatever may be commanded. Such a Meeting is always a high venture of Faith and it is to this venture we invite you this hour. Trueblood comments: The members of that Meeting look for the prompting of the Spirit during the meeting. Other Quakers would point out that this can occur as truly on Tuesday as it can on Sunday. It is wholly reasonable, therefore, for a devout person to be led, early in the week, concerning what he ought to say on Sunday. Neave Brayshaw writes: It was assumed that no ministry was truly inspired except such as appeared to be communicated in the meeting itself, the fact of a good thought or message coming to the minister in the course of his daily round being a reason why the same should NOT be spoken in the time of worship. ... Hence there grew up among some Friends a habit of assuring their hearers that what they were about to say "has occurred to me unexpectedly since taking my seat here this morning." As a matter of fact, it is owing to misunderstanding that stress has been laid on the unessential question of preparation beforehand, the true Quaker position being that the minister, with mind neither torpid nor assertive but calmly alert, shall, in the quiet, feel the fresh uprising of concern for his message, whether he has given previous thought to it or not, and that, if he has done so [given it previous thought], he shall understand clearly his temptation to uncalled-for utterance, and in the absence at the time of a living concern remain silent. If he is content to abide in this spirit, his words, when they come, will have about them a quality which could not have been prepared beforehand. Not every congregation is unprogrammed. In the United States, for special reasons, many are not. I understand that this is much rarer elsewhere. Traditional Quaker meetings have no prearranged speakers. All are equally free to speak if the Spirit moves them. However, in the nineteenth century, many Meetings in America became pastoral Meetings, with regular clergy and a service much like that of a Methodist or Baptist church. In the rural settlements of the frontier, traveling ministers (usually Methodist or Baptist) went from place to place preaching. Often they spoke in the Quaker Meeting-House because there was no other suitable building. If they were good speakers, they might be asked to stay, and their congregations would be mixed Quaker and non-Quaker. Thus the local Quaker Meeting took on a Methodist-Baptist flavor. In preparing these notes, I consulted a Quaker historian who told me that programmed Quakers and Quaker meetings are in the majority. I replied, "You astonish me! I have never met a programmed Quaker in my life!" He laughed and said, "On the question of who represents Quakerism in the imagination of the American public, the unprogrammed Quakers have won hands down." Programmed meetings, and some related issues, were a source of major dissension among Quakers. The American Quaker Elias Hicks (1748-1830) thought the Inner Light made outward study and learning superfluous--not only study of the Scriptures, but other studies as well. He wrote: "Now what vast toil and labour there is to give children human science, when the money thus expended might be better thrown into the sea." Those who agreed with him formed a separate organization in 1827, informally known as the Hicksite Quakers, or officially (after 1902) as the Friends General Conference. The Gurneyite (Evangelical) Quakers were officially known as the Friends United Meeting. My Quaker friends, Hicksites all, do not care to have the distinction between the groups expressed by saying that the Gurneyites believe in the Bible and the Jesus of history, while the Hicksites do not. They prefer to say that the Gurneyites have programmed meetings with regular ministers and planned sermons, while the Hicksites do not, but speak without premeditation as the Inner Light moves them. The two groups held a joint meeting in Philadelphia <40 N 75:10 W> in 1946, and were formally joined in 1995, in the sense that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is now affiliated with both the FGC and the FUM. Some other meetings (but not all) have followed suit. In a catalog of yearly meetings, I find some affiliated with the Evangelical Friends Church International (which is programmed), some with the Friends United Meeting (mostly programmed), some with the Friends General Conference (mostly unprogrammed), some with the Conservatives (unprogrammed), some with both FGC and FUM, and some unaffiliated. A writer on the Web says: The Friends United Meeting has 60,000 members in North America, and 140,000 world-wide. The Evangelical Friends Church International has 30,000 in North America, and 100,000 world-wide. The Friends General Conference has 35,000 in North America. The Friends Worldwide Commission for Consultation (not intended as an alternative to any of the preceding) has 300,000 members world-wide. I gather that the FGC is mostly confined to North America, and that the reason is that it does not send out missionaries. $$$ QUAKER ORGANIZATION The basic unit of Quaker organization is the Monthly Meeting. A congregation normally meets once a week, on First Day (Sunday), for worship. It also meets once a month (the Monthly Meeting) to transact business, to admit new members and, when necessary, to admonish, discipline, or disown old members, and to make and implement policy for the group. A Quarterly Meeting consists of members or delegates from several Monthly Meetings, gathered every three months to consider common concerns. A Yearly Meeting is a larger unit, and is a gathering once a year of members or delegates from its constituent Quarterly Meetings. Some Yearly Meetings are grouped into a Five-Year Meeting, others into a General Conference, and some are not grouped. At first, business meetings were for male Quakers only. In 1667, it was "opened" to Fox that in Christ's restoration of all things, women must have equal status with men, as before the fall. He therefore set up parallel men's and women's meetings. Now all business meetings (like worship meetings from the beginning) are open to participation by male and female members alike. Gerald Jonas, in his book, ON DOING GOOD, describes the procedure at a business meeting as follows: They have avoided all forms of balloting in the conduct of their own business. Rather than force a question to a vote, which might freeze a minority in permanent opposition to the majority, the Quakers prefer to continue the discussion until everyone present feels comfortable with the "sense of the meeting" as articulated by the presiding clerk. The discussion proceeds freely--everyone speaks out when he wishes, without having to be recognized by the chair--until the clerk says something like, "Friends, aren't we at the point now of very clear judgement on this matter?" If no one objects to his brief summary of that judgement, it is recorded in the minutes as the will of the entire assembly. On the other hand, if it becomes clear in the course of the discussion that there is no unity whatever on the subject, the clerk may say something like, "I get two strains of thought on this," or, "Some Friends have expressed reservations about going ahead." After summarizing what seem to be the conflicting opinions, he may suggest referring the matter back to a smaller committee for further clarification. Again, if no one objects, the suggestion is considered to be "carried." Theoretically, if just one member out of a meeting of a thousand feels that his conscience will not allow him to unite with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine on a certain decision, the nine hundred and ninety-nine will wait until the lone dissenter can be reconciled to their view, or until a compromise embodying his objection can be worked out. In practice, a Quaker consensus does not mean that every participant enthusiastically supports the proposed action, but it does mean that everyone with reservations has been given full opportunity to make his view known, and, if these go unheeded by the majority, has voluntarily agreed to "stand aside" and let the others proceed. It is understood that once a consensus has been reached in this manner, the responsibility for the recorded decision falls equally on ALL participants. The novelist James Michener, in "Some Practical Applications," an essay contributed to the book THROUGH A QUAKER ARCHWAY, writes: The practical application of Quakerism that has impressed me most deeply as an adult has been the way Quakers conduct public meetings. The highlight of the Quaker year comes in the spring when the Yearly Meeting is held, a kind of general convention for the settling of pressing religious and institutional problems. These meetings are conducted in democratic fashion, whereby any member of any of the constituent monthly meetings is permitted to exhibit his opinions or parade his contentions. To supervise the ebb and flow of argument, the Yearly Meeting appoint a clerk whose job is roughly that of chairman. To watch one of these skilled clerks in operation is an unforgettable lesson in democracy. Votes are not taken, for what is wanted is not a hard-and-fast crystallization of enmities, but rather the "sense of the meeting." Consequently it is the clerk's job to listen, to weigh, to invite, to encourage, and to lead. He does his job well when he helps the meeting discover for itself what compromises between diverse points of view it is willing to accept. Only then does he announce, always it seems to me with confidence yet with hesitation, "that the sense of this meeting is that...." Rarely is the clerk's estimate of the sense of his meeting overridden, for he does not risk identifying that sense until the members of the meeting themselves have discovered it for themselves. I have often thought of these vastly skilled men and women clerks of Quaker meetings when I have been in a group assembled together for the settling of some problem. Usually the chairman rushes everyone into a vote, which is often unpleasantly close, and then announces with his jaw thrust out, "Well, that shows where we stand. Now what can we do about it?" What compromise is possible then? What processes of reasoning and persuasion can then be used to dislodge a man from a position that he might not have held very strongly, but to which he is now committed publicly? What animosities have been both identified and hardened by this un-Christian haste to record differences when a little Christian patience would have disclosed tendencies toward rational acceptance? In thousands of meetings, as an adult, I have wished that the chairman had been a Quaker. Then condemning votes would have been delayed. Hard lines would not have been drawn. Proud men would not have been forced into postures of embarrassment. I used to think that votes were the essence of democracy. I now believe that argument and persuasion are the essence, and that when a skilled practitioner of the real arts of democracy has helped his friends to uncover their true minds, then a vote is an admirable device for registering that agreement and making it somehow the hallowed responsibility of all concerned. It will be noted, of course, that the success of this procedure depends heavily on the skill of the clerk in formulating the statement to be recorded, and on the willingness of the participants to respect those with whom they differ, and to consider their arguments fairly, looking for truth rather than for victory. It is possible to have a Meeting in which these conditions do not prevail, and two opposed factions sit glaring at one another, each determined to wait until the other gives in. It is also true that a minority does not have an unlimited power of veto. For example, Quaker Meetings in the late 1700s, having "labored with" those of their members who insisted on holding slaves, finally disowned those who would not give in.