From the archive: Absent Friends
Janet Scott, in her series on the Friend and the first world war, tells of an especially poignant and moving Yearly Meeting in 1917
In the weeks leading up to Yearly Meeting the Friend published articles to help Friends come with ‘hearts and minds prepared’. These extracts are from a piece written by W Blair Neatby, published on 11 May:
The Christian Church was born in a prayer-meeting. The meeting was gathered by Christ’s promise and was crowned by the act that redeemed that promise. The promise was a gift of power that should enable a singularly ill-qualified company, armed with only their message to spread religion from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth; and the power came in an overwhelming visitation of the Spirit of God that constituted a new fact in human experience, and “endowed” those simple souls with “an authority and impressiveness which made them irresistible”.
If we of today are indeed faithful to our first grace, we shall believe that the whole blessing is for us at the present crisis as unreservedly as it was for the group in the upper room, and that it is for us in no less glorious a manifestation.
The blessing is waiting for us; but are we waiting for it?
On the subject of meetings arranged for devotional retirement on the day preceding Yearly Meeting, W Blair Neatby said it was ‘impossible to exaggerate, or indeed adequately to conceive, the influence that such meetings might have upon the right holding of the Yearly Meeting itself, and so upon our power as a people to meet the solemn challenge of our times’. He suggested:
…that we keep in mind as a kind of motto the words of Penn: “How retired in them, how firm to Truth’s Life!” It is an obvious remark how much the difficulty of true “retirement” is increasing. The multiplicity of business, no doubt largely unavoidable, tends to crowd out prayer.
…it is the great aim of those gatherings that we should enter into that atmosphere of a true retirement from the world and a true drawing near to God, in which alone can be transacted in the life and power of Truth, or wisdom and strengths be found for the tasks that await us – tasks which, if undertaken in any lower strength or wisdom, must surely overwhelm us. To be swift to hear, slow to speak, in the fear, lest speaking before we hear the one sure Voice, we should but “utter of our own”, is perhaps great mastery in our restless days; but we shall not wait for that spirit of watchfulness and reverence in vain.
The Yearly Meeting
Yearly Meeting 1917 was held from 23 to 30 May. The Friend on 1 June reported:
The attendance at Yearly Meeting has been much larger than many expected, considering the extra cost of travelling, board and lodging. The evening meetings have naturally been the best attended, but the opening session of Wednesday morning was a large one and on Friday afternoon, when the reports of the three organisations engaged in war work were submitted, there was a large house. The unavoidable absence of young men was very noticeable and they were constantly in remembrance. The few who were able to attend did their best to represent the views of their absent comrades.
The Clerks of the Yearly Meeting are the same as last year. The same arrangement prevails of a corded-off area of the meeting house yard to prevent the hum of conversation passing in through open windows while Yearly Meeting is in session. The bell in the yard still urges those who are out to go in, sometimes indeed so insistently and long that is sounding after the hour of meeting has come. A request that the time might be shortened elicited from the Clerk an expression of his doubt whether his jurisdiction extended to this feature of our arrangement.
There was a very full agenda, which included reports from the committees dealing with Friends’ Meetings in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (all of which at the time were part of London Yearly Meeting), the approval of a document on ‘The True Basis of Christian Unity’ produced by the Yearly Meeting Faith and Order Commission, and a revision of the discipline, most notably substituting the words ‘Meetings for Church Affairs’ for the words ‘Meetings for Discipline’. The Meeting also noted the retirement of the Recording Clerk, Isaac Sharp.
One major piece of business that was achieved was to begin the process of making the work of the independent Friends’ Foreign Mission Association (FFMA) part of the work of the Yearly Meeting.
The 1 June edition of the Friend reported:
The devotion of practically the whole of the first day to the consideration of various aspects of the work of Friends abroad was a peculiarly fitting way of celebrating the completion of fifty years of missionary effort, especially as one item of business transacted that day was the adoption of the recommendations contained in the report of the Committee on the closer union of the F.F.M.A. with London Yearly Meeting. And the world-wide vision of the coming of the Kingdom and of Christ as the one who can alone speak to the world’s great needs, lifted the Yearly Meeting into that universal spirit which has been one of its chief characteristics.
The discussion of peace items so filled the agenda that other items were crowded out:
It had been hoped by some that the seven “propositions” set forth in the Message to all Friends from the Conference on War and the Social Order held last October might have been adopted by the Yearly Meeting. The alteration of the Agenda, however, which reduced the time for considering the report of the Conference and of the Committee from two sessions to one prevented their full consideration. It was therefore decided to refer the propositions to the general consideration of Friends and the particular consideration of Quarterly Meetings, who are asked to report thereon next year.
A message was agreed to be sent to Friends in prison for conscience sake, and an appeal ‘To The Men And Women Of Every Nation Who Seek To Follow Christ’. The appeal, which was to be widely distributed, included:
…surely we all want peace if only it might be both just and lasting… Let followers of Christ give themselves to prayer.
The Epistle ‘To Friends Everywhere’, which appeared in the Friend’s 6 June edition, began by reflecting on the war and expressing sympathy for all those suffering. It then turned to the impulse towards freedom that was being expressed not only in Russia but all over the world:
There are multitudes who crave, not merely liberation from the tyranny of a despot or of a military system or of an oppressive capitalism, but to be free men – free not only to get but to give; not only to control but to serve.
Amidst all these stirrings of life we see the Spirit of God moving. Before our very eyes the eternal purposes are being wrought out. Now is the supreme opportunity to turn belief into action.
The epistle expressed the faith that Christ:
…is waiting to place Himself at our head… In our experience of Divine leadership… varying gifts and aspirations are harmonised and developed for the common weal; out of poverty we are made rich, out of emptiness we are made full, out of diversity we are made one. To share this experience with the world-movements towards fellowship and freedom is to bring our highest and best to the cause of the Kingdom of God.
Comments
The Friend on 13 July reported some comments on the Yearly Meeting:
One Friend quotes a remark that one of the most wonderful things about the Meeting was “the presence of the people who were not there”; and adds that from the Swarthmore Lecture to Epistle “the unseen presences were with us”. Another writes: “Yearly Meeting is a great spiritual discovery to us who come freshly into the Society… Yet I feel that Yearly Meeting, being so great, might be even greater.” A third Friend writes: “I felt at this Yearly Meeting as never before the dead weight of the Society as an institution.” Yet another regarded the Yearly Meeting as “a challenge to greet the unseen with a cheer.” And yet another wrote: “We have seen Christ with us, in the midst of the darkness and anguish of the world, and we know now, absolutely, that it is He and not the enemy who is unconquerable. We have seen the work that is waiting for us all the world over, and we have also seen the strength which is sufficient for our work.”
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