For Those Who Profess to be Friends

by Kenneth Morse

Quakers of George Fox's day had a united testimony, a definite platform upon which they all agreed, and which all may learn by referring to their writings [not to what later generations have written about them].

1. They believed in the universality of immediate divine revelation; that God spoke to all men, even in darkest Africa, by His Holy Spirit, showing them what was evil, and what they must do to please Him. This Divine Spirit they called the Light of Christ, the Light within, which they declared to be the primary rule of faith and practice. Do we so believe?
2. They declared that the Bible was a secondary rule, subject to the interpretation of the Primary Rule, but that the Bible and the Light were never contrary the one to the other.
3. They believed in the necessity of a victory over sin this side of the grave, without which victory there is no salvation, Do we so believe?
4. They believed in a waiting worship and ministry; they bore a faithful testimony against worship in the will of man, when people pray, testify, or sing in their own time or at the bidding of man; against preaching by human appointment or according to some system whereby men determined who should spak and when; against preaching for pay and the notion that a certain education qualified one to be a minister. They waited to be led, and otherwise kept silent in their religious gatherings. Do we?
5. They bore a faithful testimony against the taking of oaths and the performance of military service.
6. They believed in holiness, and that holiness extended to speech and dress, so that they avoided the use of hypocritical even though customary titles and salutations, the use of the plural pronoun where the singular was proper, the use of the names of the heathen gods in the names of the days of the week and months of the year, and the use of ornaments of every kind in their dress.
7. They endeavoured to keep a single eye unto the Lord, desiring his approval rather than the praise of men. They were therefore not conformed to the world, and did not follow the changing fashion of the world.
8. They bore a consistent testimony against the misuse of time, therefore against music, stage-plays and dancing.

The world knew that to be a Friend meant to believe in and live according to these testimonies above enumerated. It was a united testimony.

It is stated in the Holy Scriptures that as many as received Christ the Word, to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believed in his name. Nothing so much hinders us from receiving the Truth as the fact that our heads get filled with untruth, wrong ideas and notions about religion. The Scriptures say, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever." God does not change, the gospel delivered to the saints does not change. Truth does not change.

According ot the Scriptures, repentance and forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ was to be preached amon all nations. Jesus the Messiah is the centre of the true gospel.

1. "Ye are not your own, ye were bought with a price."
2. "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."
3. "God commends his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world."
4. "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin"
5. "He that hath this hope in himself purifieth himself even as He is pure."

Oh my friend, is thy faith centred in Christ or is it a kind of philosophy about relationship to thy fellow men, with little or nothing about sin, conversion, and the future of life? If thee is not building on Christ, thee is building on a sandy foundation, no matter how beautiful a structure it may seem.

Faith without works is dead [James 2:20]. But so-called good works do not save. There can be some good works without a change of heart. But man does not truly love God or Jesus his only begotten Son without such a change - without being "born from above" as Jesus expressed it, or having the heart of stone replaced by a heart of flesh as expressed in Ezekial 11:19. To have truly good fruit - to have all one's works good - the tree must be good - there must be this change of heart, a repentance for sin, and a yielding to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, so that there is a determination to live for God. It should be clear that a birthright membership or any other membership in a religious society is not enough. There must be a yielding to the divine call, the Light of Christ within, which calls for OBEDIENCE to its pointings. May we not mistake our reason or intellect for this Light, but remember it is the Light which rebukes us when we do evil, and calls us to holiness [not of man's contriving, but real holiness]. By obeying the intimations of this Light, we shall grow in knowledge. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Our faith may be small, but if we are obedient, faith will be given us to hold on, and we shall find that in this way lies hope of acceptance at the end of life's journey. Man has built up to himself easier ways, but this way of holiness, of obedience to the LIght within is the way of the daily cross, which Jesus invited all to take up who wished to follow him. It is definitely not a way of selfishness, of selfishly seeking one's own salvation, but its base is the love of God, love toward God, not from God, and God teacheth us to love our fellow-men, and so to desire their temporal and eternal welfare.