PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

He power - in exile, in other words. The natural exists in an unregenerated state, in darkness, in sin, and is incapable of true prayer and true worship. Now the early Friends did not aim simply to make this natural man a better fellow, a fellow (more decent and) more able to follow his own bents. They aimed to open him to Light Within. They aimed to subject him to God's regenerative power. They aimed to let the Light in, and to be taken up into the Light. They aimed at nothing short of a major transformation.

A new birth effected by the Power, a new creation, begotten of God; thus to become children of the Light, sons of God - this, (in fine, was their central and unswerving purpose. To become sons of God so that they might serve Him. The natural man cannot serve God in any way, except by yielding to be radically changed.)

Again and again in the writings of the early Friends we come upon this pointed insistence on the need and wonderful desirability of a new birth, (a new creation.) "...to make them new creatures indeed..." "...Oh! be thou awakened..." "...awake and arise out of thy deep sleep..." "...the truly begotten children of God..." "a redeemed state, regeneration, on new birth... without this, there is no inheriting the kingdom of God..." "When the new birth is thus grown up into strength and dominion, into the stature of a man in Christ...then thou wilt change that dwelling-place for the dwelling-place which is from above..."...thou

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mayst feel the babe raised..." "...there is somewhat else would live and be acting in thee...and thou wouldst be centering in self, in that which thou receivedst from God..." ...the tnder and secret drawings of the beginnings of a new nature, away from ik what is of an earthly nature... "... as many as resist no this light, but receive the same, in them is produced an holy, pure, and spiritual birth..." "...yet doth this perfection (of new creation) still admit of a growth; and there remaineth a possibility of sinning..."

There is no mistaken the ring of these and similar statements, there is no mistaking the veridity of the context in which they were occur; those Friends were writing out of their real experience. By experience they knew and therefore heeded ( and they are among the comparatively few so-called Christians who have) Chirst's teaching to Nicodemus, *Ye must be born again*. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

The early Friends aimed to enter the kingdom of God via the only way, And they did, in some measure enter it; and they fell from it; and they worked up again; It was because of their attainments that they knew they were possessed of blessed and effective means. Now we are in a posotion to inquire as to what those means may have been.

The blessed means and are, as I discovered through my

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own experience, the operations of the wonderful Power. It is the Power, the Light, the Love that really and miraculously works the great change, the thorough transformation, the substantial new birth. God's power in man, this is it. Said Penn, "...the principle of God in man, the precious pearl and leaven of the kingdom, the only blessed means appointed of God to quicken man... without this secret divine power there is no quickening and regenerating of dead souls...the Light of Christ within..."

It is this Light, operating, that first and foremost effects the new creation. It also, as on other means can, "shows man his state, deals plainly with him, and sets his sins in order before him. It also teaches "what to deny and what to do." Three operations are involved here. "First, a sight of sin; secondly, a sense and godly sorrow for it; thirdly, an amendment for the time to come...For of light comes sight; and of sight comes sense and sorrow; and of sense and sorrow come amendment of life."

But the early Friends were not always in the Power; the Light was not constantly operating in them. Indeed it is likely that most of them, as with most of us to day, were in exile most of the time. What did they do then? They, as we do, had to use their available awarness, will, force, energy. They had to make effort. How where their several efforts implemented? They used means, methods, practices. They used these human

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but nevertheless effective means when the blessed means were not operating.

Among these human religious means were The Meeting for Worship and The Meeting for Business. What these Meetings were and are may be learned by reading Rufus M. Jones's "The Faith and Practice of the Quakers," Howard H. Brinton's, "Creative Worship," and "Divine-Human Society," Douglas V. Steere's, "Prayer and Worship."

Among Other means, used both in and out of Meetings, may be designated: Waiting, Watching, and Lawful Warring. The Practice of Watching was an exercise of consciousness having points in common with Self-Observation, though not being this last mentioned method. The Practice of Lawful Warring was similar in some respects to Contending with Oneself. As these practices will be covered when I come to describe the method I call Right Affirming and Right Denying, I will say no more of them now. Those who would like to see these two practices set forth in a Quaker context may refer to an article of mine, "Keep the Inward Watch," published in the magazine, the "Friends In-telligencer."

The three mentioned practices were again repeatedly mentioned by the early Friends in their books, letters, and epistles. "O wait," said Pessac Penington. "Wait upon the God...be still awhile...wait in true humility, and pure subjection of soul and spirit, upon him.

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Wait for the shutting of thy own eye upon every occasion, and for the opening of the eye of God in thee, and for the sight of things therewith, as they are from him." And Again, "Wait to feel that raised in thee. Wait to feel the birth pray." "Be watchful," said George Fox. "Keep the inward watch," said William Penn.

These practices were not set in order in any of their writings, nor were they explained, so far as I know. It seemed to be assumed that others knew af-what exactly what the practices were. them-y-knew-what-they-were, and simply needed to be reminded to do them. Perhaps all or most of the early Friends did know them, having come upon them, of themselves, in the Meetings for Worship or elsewhere, or having been taught them by the oral method of communication.

We of today are left, for the most part, to work out our own understandings. This is what I have done, with my other contemporaries, help from others, as regards the practice I want me to say something about here. now

The Practice of Waiting

Certain Quaker Practices

"Our Business," said William Penn (of the early Quakers (of the Society of Friends)) "being the realities of religion, an effectual change before our last and great change; that all may come to an inward, sensible and experiential knowledge of God, (through the convictions and operations of the light and spirit of Christ in themselves,) the sufficient and blessed means given to all..."

Penn, as we see, believed that the early Friends did have sufficient and blessed means. This belief was shared by all of the original Quakers. We of this day may also share it, for we have records of what those men and women accomplished by use of those means. They did make contact with realities of religion. They did experience effectual changes. They did come to an inward, sensible and experiential knowledge of God. Their means, then, must have been effective, and, for their purposes, sufficient. In this chapter we will examine certain of their practices. However, before doing that it would be well to understand more deeply specifically what they aimed to achieve by use of their means.

What specifically was the effectual change they aimed to bring about? From what to what?

1. From outward to inward.

2. From darkness to light.

3. From the "natural man" to the child of God.

4. Re-birth, a new creation.

Relate the above to the main theme of this book -

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from exile into Being. The similarities.

1. Friends understanding of the nature and the properties of the "natural" or outer man.

How, therefore, this man must be treated and dealt with.

2. Friends understanding that there is a barrier between outer and inner. See Penington's statement.

True, they experienced and taught God's presence in all. The light of Christ in all. As Penn put it, "near all, because in all." But they knew the difference between the light being in them and their being in the light, between God being in them and their being in God. They recognized and did not minimize the barrier. They recognized and did not minimize the difficulties of overcoming it.

* (Yet for most of them it was easier than for most of us. Yet we today, Friends also today, neither to overlook and minimize - hence, one reason why modern Friends do not attain as did the early Friends.)

Of what they see the barrier to consist?

3. Friends understanding of the nature of the new creation. Its contents, so to speak.

Now we are ready to look at their means.

The "blessed means", that above all, is God's power in man. Penn - "the principle of God in man, the precious pearl and leaven of the kingdom, the only blessed means appointed of God to quicken man" (p 23 R and P) "without this secret divine power there is no quickening

III Certain Quaker Methods

The Early Friends, by and larger, were as genuinely a religious people as any of whom we have record. Not that they were or thought they were perfect. Far from it. The faults and imperfections in George Fox and William Penn, stood for example, sometimes out more than their love and light. But they were dedicated. (They were dedicated) to becoming perfect by overcoming just those imperfections. Catharsis-development was earnestly practiced by them by under other names. They had true inwardness, and they had true outwardness based on true inwardness. They attained first-hand experience of that of God in every man. They were agents of the Power, the divine principle in the heart, to which they wanted to turn all men. And they were aware of the need of specific means and methods.

"An Apology for the True Christian Divinty", written by Robert Barclay, is perhaps the most cogent explanation of the faith and practices of the Friends in that began written by anyone of that day. Barclay's book by pointing to the need of right means and warning against the use of wrong means. He wrote, "He that desireth to acquire any art or science, seeketh first those means by which that art or science is obtained. If we ought to do so in things natural and earthly, how much more then in spiritual?"

"Our business", said William Penn, "being the realities of religion, an effectual change before our last and great change: that all may come to an inward, sensible

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and experimental knowledge of God, through the convictions
and operations of the light and spirit of Chirst in
themselves, the sufficient and blessed means given to
all..."

What were these means that Barclay considered so
necessary, that Penn regarded as blessed and effective?
We will examine certain of them. Before doing that, how-
ever, it will be well to note the ends which these
means were to serve, the kind of change that was aimed
for.

The early Friends experienced and so knew three
large facts about man. These facts, as will be seen,
are substantially the same as those pointed to again and
again throughout this book. There is the ordinary
person. Robert Barclay called this person the "natural
man". In other words, the body-mind, the personal self.
Within man, but not of the ordinary person, there is
a divine principle, a life and love and power, an
already established and never broken relationship between
the soul and God. Between the natural man and the in-
dwelling spirit that there is a barrier. THOMAS K. The
existence of this barrier was specifically recognized
among others,
by Issac Penington, as the following words of his
show: "O Lord my God! discover to the thirsty souls,
what it is that withholds them from the living waters;
that they may not labour and spend their strength in
vain, in duties and ordinances invented by man."

The natural man is out of that inward light, and

The Practice of Waiting

People want to eat, want to love. Using the word
want in this basic and imperative sense, the early
Friends wanted to pray, wanted to worship, thus to
become directly related with God. Suppose you wanted to
do this. Suppose, however, that you had discovered by
experience, as the Friends had, that you, the natural
man, you, the body-mind, could not really pray and worship.
What would you do? You would wait. What else could you
do? You would wait for the arising of that in you which
can really pray and worship. You would wait for the stirring
of the deep inward being who is capable of sensing the
presence of God. This, I take it, is just what the
Friends did. They waited. They developed the practice
of waiting as a necessary prelude to praying and worshiping.
Unless the Power were already operating in them before
they gathered in their Meetings for Worship, the
Meeting for Worship began, I feel sure, as a Meeting
for Waiting.

They assembled and sat quietly. They did not think.
They did not ruminate or reverie. They did not meditate
meditate in the usual meaning of this term. They "centered
down", as the expression is, and endeavored to attain
a pure waiting before the Lord. With them, this Meeting
for Waiting probably did not have to last long. They
were so inwardly fertile and quickened that all they had
to do, it would seem, was to be still for a short while
and "something happened". We of today can hardly

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expect our inward excercises to progress so rapidly, for We are farther away from our centers, overactive outwardly, subject to be distracted by our thousand and one modern "conveniences". (Handwritten: distinct from the previous line.)

- spiritual

The idea of practicing waiting as a psychoreligious method is of course not original to the Friends. succinct It is expressed, sometimes with succinct force, sometimes with beauty, in the Old Testament, for example. In the Psalms we read: "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he will strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And again: "I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his work do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." The idea (Handwritten: 'practicing has been used in some form' or 'developed from') surely, the practice probably, have been known whereever and whenever men have sought, by use of enlightened means, a first-hand experience of the divine reality. which we call God.

More precisely, then, what is this waiting? The effort, it seems to me, is to manoeuvre oneself into a position of pure waiting. (I say a position rather than an attitude of waiting because I think that the body, as well as the emotions and mind, must be brought into it. The whole man must assume the attitude.) (Handwritten: 'brought up')

must, therefore, be adopted.

Pure waiting, however, has to be approached by steps. We may call these steps: Conviction, Composure, Watchful Waiting, energized by expectation, and, fourth, Unformulated Expectation.

Conviction. Obviously we will not even attempt this

practice unless we are at least partially convinced
that it is a fruitful exercise; that, by waiting, we
facilitate the operation of the deeper powers, as it
were induce them to manifest; that, in a very real
sense, all comes to him who waits.

The mysterious Power presumably can act at any time
and place, regardless of the condition of the ordinary
person. In actual experience, it seems seldom or never
to act if the ordinary person is in a harried and dis-
rupted state or is bent exclsuively on his egotistical
affairs. It is reasonable then to belief that if and
as we voltunarily make quiet, collect, and subdue
the person, and try to open him to extra-personal
reality, we are our doing our part, our neccesary part,
to increase the likelihood of inner-action.

Composure. We cannot wait, in any true sense,
if we are over-tense, nervous, jumpy. We have to relax
body, emotions, and mind. But neither can we wait if
we over-relax and become drowsy. Alertness and aliveness
must be maintained. We are poor waiters if we became
impatient. A deep, quiet, unobtrusive patience is
necessary. We cannot wait if our mind roams or starts
seriously thinking of something else; or if, the
minute the body comes to rest, this is a signal, a
go-sign, for the all sorts of day dreams and fancies.
The mind must be collected, all thoughts gathered, the
attention stayed on waiting before the Lord.

Some say waiting for God; others, waiting upon

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God. I prefer the expression waiting before God. The little word *before* seems somehow to facilitate my getting into the position of pure waiting.

If I say I am waiting for something, and feel it that way, then I want to come. I want it to come in my time. I am likely to try to hurrying the coming. I am likely to press or coax or beguile or coerce the arrival. And if I do that, I stop waiting. Whereas if I say and feel I am waiting before something, I know *xxx* very well that should it come at all it will come in its own way and time. I may have to wait a month, a year, a life-time. Very well, I wait. When you see it clearly and see it deeply you are impressed by the truth that there is nothing more important than just this simple waiting before the Lord. At times there arises in me the sense that, were I capable of it, I could do no better than to cast aside every other interest and occupation and spend the rest of my life, day and night, waiting.

As, then, you compose yourself to wait, try to evoke the sense that you are relating yourself to the eternal and glorious. If you proceed, you will feel yourself inwardly melting, letting fall go of the little self, stepping outside of your ordinary pre-occupations, permitting your habitual plans and expectations to slip away, surrendering. A mood of true humility and reverence may come over you. There may be, as the Friends expressed it, a "breathing unto

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the Lord". True generally, but surely you are right, up.

The time comes when, by repeated practice, one is
able to take the forementioned steps almost simultaneously.
As you compose yourself to wait, you melt inwardly.
As you melt you present yourself at the threshhold.

Every so often, of course, you have to remind
yourself of what you are really trying to do. Sometimes, too,
in order to carry on, one has to go back to the first
step and again move forward. So must we repeatedly
renew our belief in what we are doing. The tempatation
is to become impatient or discouraged, and give up.

Watchful Waiting. Most of us, I am sure, have come
close to moments of pure waiting for someone or something
that is to come from the outside. By those experiences
we know that an important aspect of waiting is a
watching for signs of approach. We look to see if he
or she is actually coming - and our mind is on that
prospective event because our heart is on it. We watch,
We watch more than they, that watch in the morning,
and we are expectant. Expectancy, indeed, is at the very
heart of our waiting; for we want what is coming, or
fear it, as the case may be. Sometimes the expectancy
is a quiet glow, other times an elation. Its intensity
varies, but never vanishes as long as we wait. It departs
only when we give up hope and stop waiting.

So in our waiting for or before someone or something
that is to come to us from within, there should be
watching and expectancy. We scan our inner horizons for
signs of whatever may approach. Without trying to

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imagine the exact nature of the event, we look within
for forerunners of a God-given experience. We do not
say the experience will be great, miraculous. We do not
say it will be small and hardly perceptible. All we need
say is that it will be *other* than our ordinary
experience. And we want this other. Ideally we would want
it as intensely as a man wants the woman he loves.
And to this degree we are expectant of this other.
Waiting with expectancy is but a shell without life, a
form without fire.

"In this work do I hope,"

And then, suddenly but not abruptly, we are to let
go of any and all thoughts as to what the inner event
not
may be. We remind ourselves that we are *asking* for any-
thing, but are waiting *before*. We are petitioning God
for anything either for ourselves or for any other. We
are not seeking to understand His will. We are utterly
desireless except for the desire to wait before Him.
This is the attempt to attain what Thomas Kelly
called "unformulated expectation". And here, if not
before, our real difficulties begin, here in earnest.
If we surmount them, we will experience pure waiting.

Is it possible, you may ask, to be expectant
without having in mind what you are expectant of? Yes
it is; though with our best efforts we won't often do
it. Is it desirable? Again the answer is yes. Indeed
it absolutely necessary to this kind of waiting. If
you expect of God something definite, you will unwittingly
begin asking for it, and so lapse from pure waiting.

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Moreover, we simply do not know what may come from God, as of this time, God being the source of the Unexpected. In the profound sense the words, anything may happen. This is the truth; and pure waiting requires that our attitude tallies with the truth.

We are to attend to the Source of the Unexpected. Attend, and sustain attention pure and simple. The state desired may be called a state of diffused yet pointed awareness. It is diffused in the sense of that we are, focusing on nothing in particular. It is pointed in the sense that it is minutely trained, perferrably without the help of words, on the "Beyond that is within". Thus we wait. Thus we wait as long as we can wait.

As lapses from pure waiting are frequent and usually long, provision must be made for them. It is when we fall away and are trying to return that it is legitimate and helpful, so I have found, to tell myself in varying ways what I am waiting for. I say, "I am waiting for _that_ in me to arise." Or, "I am waiting for my heart to open and worship." Or, "I am waiting for the Power to claim me again." Sometimes, too, I recall something of what befell me when I was lifted up. Here, too, the records of those who have entered the kingdom are of real use. I may recall one or another of them. But, even as I say or recall these things, there is something in me that knows that I do not know what I am waiting for. I am simply waiting for the greatest power, the one reality of the entire universe. Isn't this enough?

And as soon as the aids seem to have served their purpose,
I forget them and again try to attain pure waiting
with keen but unformulated expectation.

The Practice of Waiting, as it partially shows
through my words, may seem tedious and having nothing to
do with vital experience, a waste of time rather than an
effective method, a mental chore instead of a religious
means. It all depends upon who uses it and how it is
used. One can, true enough, go about it as a chore;
but one can engage in it as a devotion. It is not fitting
that the results of a method be paraded so as to make
the method seem attractive. Yet it may be said that
occasionally, as soon as I have composed myself and
assumed a waiting position, a mood, an atmosphere begins
to be evoked. The mood is tenuous at first. As it
becomes more substantial, feelings of the sacred arise.
Once these feelings come alive, the waiting is filled with
glow, with meaning; it cannot be a dry and tedious
exercise; it is an experience much to be desired.
Sometimes, before the waiting is over, I have heard myself
punkers with intake and breath, as though my soul had
glimpsed, for a moment, a light, a divinity, a breath-
taking wonder that my untrained eyes cannot see.

Of this we may be sure. For the early Friends
their practices, including the Practice of Waiting, were
not dully methodical. Neither were they bores or chores.
They were the arms of a vital life. They were the

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implies of a holy desire, a dedication. They were
the tools of what was felt to be the essential purpose
of man's life. So they can and should be for us.

One last remark. Once the idea of waiting becomes
established in your mind you may recognize to your
surprise, as I did, how much of life actually does
consist of waiting, but waiting of the impure kind,
often of the unimportant kind. How we wait! We wait for
people, wait for trains, wait for meals, wait for a
letter or phone call or a wire, wait, wait. Even when
we get on the train we wait to arrive. We wait to live.
Many wait to die. What waste! Use those times, use
those occasion. Practice waiting before God just at the
times you are waiting anyway. The meaning and purpose
this will introduce into life! Since learning to
practice this method I have recalled and redeemed I can't
tell you how much time and energy that otherwise would
surely have been burnt to no purpose. I've waited in living
rooms, in doctor's offices, in railroad stations,
at lectures, in restaurants, in fields, on city streets,
in Friends Meeting Houses and other churches - in short,
whereever I may be or go.