From the archive: London Yearly Meeting 1916
Janet Scott continues her series of personal selections from the Friend published between 1914-18
Yearly Meeting in 1916 was deeply aware that as it met some of its members were in prison for conscience sake, and many others were engaged in service to relieve suffering. However, war was not the only topic discussed. The Yearly Meeting considered social issues, especially education and the impact of war on children, and looked at Social Order, planning to hold a conference on this later in the year.
The Meeting learned that the Society now had a bookshop, having taken this over from Headley Brothers, who had moved their premises. It also heard that the search continued for a suitable site for new headquarters for the Society. An artistic item of news was also reported in the edition of 9 June:
During Yearly Meeting many Friends visited the small exhibition of pictures arranged by Headley Brothers at their new offices… The chief interest there lay in the impressive picture of a meeting at Jordans in the olden time, by J Doyle Penrose, to which he has given the title “The Christ in the Midst”.
American Meetings
Epistles received from American Meetings were introduced to the Yearly Meeting and reported in the Friend of 2 June:
There were expressions of loving kinship with England, and some contained notes of appreciation of the stand for Peace which Friends were making in this country and the help they were rendering abroad…
The Epistles also bore witness to the determination of American Friends to do what they could to stem the tide of militarism in their own country. Respecting the large number of Friends in America with whom we did not officially correspond, M E Crawshaw recalled the action last year, when the London Epistle was sent to all Friends in America. Those who might have doubted the wisdom of that course might be thankful for the result… Although for seventy years Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had not addressed other Friends, it had now sent a most loving message to all bodies in the United States who call themselves Friends.
Later on in the Yearly Meeting the clerk offered to minute ‘the suggestion for a Conference of all bearing the name of Friend, on the means to securing permanent, universal peace’. This was agreed and referred to Meeting for Sufferings. The first Friends World Conference was held in 1920.
An epistle to Irish Friends was sent to the postponed Yearly Meeting in Dublin. Reported in the Friend on 16 June, it expressed the desire for Irish Friends that: ‘they might experience a fresh outpouring of that heavenly love that hopeth all things, and endureth all things, and that they might seek to enter into the present world travail and agony so that they might come to realise afresh that the Captain of our salvation, who was made perfect through suffering, is seeking to find disciples to tread the same pathway, and receive from Him joy and strength which they might impart to others.’
A message to Friends in prison was agreed and reported in the edition of 9 June:
Throughout our Yearly Meeting we have had continually in mind the fact that some of our members are in prison or are otherwise suffering for loyalty to conscience in respect to the peace testimony which has been ours since the earliest days of the Society. God has honoured us by accounting these our dear Friends worthy to suffer shame for His name. We assure them of our loving remembrance, and pray that they may know divine support in this their hour of trial.
‘Living epistles’
The pages of the Friend, on 9 June, also reported on the work of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU):
Walter Priestman alluded to the work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, the lengthened time many of its members had been engaged in it, and the responsibility of the Society towards them. He suggested the sending out to them of a ‘living epistle’ in the form of some Friend or Friends who would be able to stay with them on the Continent for a period and so come into touch and sympathy with them in their work.
The Meeting hoped that way would open for this to happen. The Friend, in the same edition, commented on the preparation of the epistle and asserted that the way it was done in 1916 was in some respects unique in the history of the Religious Society of Friends:
Probably never before have so many really young Friends been appointed… on “the Committee of Twenty-five” – which this year consisted of twenty-eight Friends! It was a thoroughly representative committee as regards thought as well as age, and it was wonderfully united in its conclusions… In style and phrasing the Epistle is quite unusual; in places the language is almost colloquial… Even the heading is different, and it begins “Dear Friends and Comrades.” Its directness of expression, its almost monosyllabic wording, and its numerous interrogatory sentences, make it well calculated to convey the deep spiritual message which it contains… It deserves the widest possible circulation.
London Yearly Meeting Epistle 1916
Friends in Britain had now endured almost two years of war. Those who were not able to be at Yearly Meeting were able to read, in the edition of the Friend on 9 June, the Yearly Meeting Epistle:
To Friends the World Over, and to all Who Seek the Way of Life.
Dear Friends and Comrades,
We need one another in these dark days if we are to find the way to the true goal of humanity. We have missed the way… There is warfare for all of us in this world. But against whom? And for what end? It is not our brother men who are our enemies, but… the false ideas and evil passions that destroy their souls…
We are all more or less in bonds. Some of us are bound by never-ceasing toil… Some of us are bound by wealth that dims the vision of the Highest… Some of us are bound… to take the lives of our fellow men while we only wish to give our lives for our country. Some of us are bound to appear the enemies of our country for conscience sake, when we wish to serve her with all our powers. Many of us are carrying a sorrow that is almost more than we can bear…
How are we to find our way back to one another? There is a way back, and, as we find this way and take it, we shall be able together to wage the one warfare worthy of all human endeavour.
There once lived a Man… [whose] words opened men’s eyes to the meaning of love. His deeds stirred their hearts by the beauty of love. His death won them by the power of love…
Is it not possible that He knew best, and that He had something quite distinctive to say to the world? May not His rising again be an actual fact big with meaning for us today? If so, we could at least say that by His death on the Cross, He won a truer victory than was ever won by armies or navies, and that God was indeed with Him, and is always with those who follow His way.
We stand by the conviction… that the most real and abiding force in human affairs was seen in the life, death and rising again of Jesus Christ. That force we call the love of God. It cannot really be vanquished. Christ is not dead. He lives in our midst today. We know something of His spirit in our own experience… We are sure that He can lead us and all men in the way of truth…
The way may be difficult. The service called for may be menial, unseen, unrecognised. It matters not, if only, along with all others who really love their fellows, we can help to find the way back to one another, and to the Son of God. Let us begin again…
The way to discover and reach the goal is for each one of us to begin in dead earnest… the desperate venture of following Jesus all the way… Is it not worth trying? Is it not, in fact, the one thing in the world that is really worth trying? Is it not the way by which we and our brothers may come to know God?
…Let us turn to Him without any reserve in the confidence that He is eager to give to us His best – NOW.
- John H Barlow, Clerk
Comments
Please login to add a comment
