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up, in jubilant thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: ‘Glory to God in the highest!
Peace on earth and good — will to men!’
It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness among us. I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects.
But, if we look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy.
If we did but realize it, we are ‘set in a large place.’
We may do all we will save wickedness.‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is ‘exceeding broad.’ As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and catholic of faiths. If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are not up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and love of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of the truths of science and philosophy,—in a word, if we are not full-grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in ourselves. We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to adjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects. By so doing we make at the best a very awkward combination, and just as far
