Christ and the Quakers
By: Maurice Creasey
Christ in Eaby Maurice Creasey
Friends everywhere are conscious of the fact that our Society, although still used of God in ways beyond our deserving, no longer possesses the vitality and unity which marked its early years. A bewildering variety of teaching passes under the name of Quaker, and there is much uncertainty amongst us as to whether we should regard ourselves as called to give expression to a profound and revolutionary conception of the purpose and scope of God's dealings with man, or whether we are a religious fellowship which exists primarily in order to give hospitality to the widest possible range of views.
Whatever else may be learned from a study of our origins, this much at least is clear: that the early Quaker teaching concerning "the universal and divine light of Christ" was a message concerning the action of God rather than the nature of man. It was saying, not simply that there is innate in every man a private source of illumination; but rather, that what God showed himself to be in Jesus Christ he eternally is in all men. The love and compassion, the challenge and demand which were embodied and expressed in Jesus were apprehended as having been, in measure, present and active in and towards all men everywhere at all times.
Friends were united in the certainty that the same power, wisdom, and grace of God which had ever been seeking to save man from his futile desire for autonomy, and which had been concretely revealed and expressed in Jesus Christ, was now available to lead into all truth those who trusted and obeyed it. This was the light to which they directed men, even "the light which lighteth every man coming into the world," the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."