Two or Three Gathered Together by Glenn Clark
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CHAPTER V
The Replanting of the Dream
It was seven years ago that I wrote the preceding chapters which you have just finished reading. I have a purpose now in reproducing them, exactly as I wrote them then. For it has been my experience that a dream has to be planted as a seed, the harvest must be reaped, and the new seed planted, and not until several replantings is the complete realization of the dream made possible. A man dreams of a forest and plants an acorn. Many years later the tree is sufficiently grown to bear acorns of itself. He gathers all the acorns that fall from this tree and plants them on many acres of land. Out of this second planting, and not until then, does his dream of a forest come true.
In the seven years that have elapsed the oak tree has grown, and a new crop of acorns is on hand. The time to plant the forest has come.
As I wrote the preceding chapters, it did not seem that I had written them, but as though a Hand reaching over my shoulder was writing them through me. It was as though I, myself, were the pen in some Other and Greater Hand, and that all I have here recorded on these preceding pages was recorded by Someone Else, for some larger purpose than I myself could conceive. Everything about this Movement was to be so detached, so transparent, so unframed and so unorganized that at first glance one would be inclined to wonder how it could move ahead, accomplish anything, even get under way. There were three definite things that did come out of it, however, which did give opportunity for some concrete, practical action.
Very clear leading came that this Movement was to give itself to three definite, distinct forms of expression: first, the Quiet Hour for cultivating the vital experience of God in each individual heart; second, the Prayer Group for cultivating the expression of vital, co-operative prayer with others; third, the opening of avenues for bringing the strength and inspiration of the Quiet Hour and of the Prayer Group into vital, constructive expression in the social movements of the day.
I thought about these a long time, I prayed about them, I tried to find out from God whether there should be anything added or anything subtracted, but nothing “came through.” As this was to be a Jesus Movement, a Love Movement, all that we could do about it, therefore, was to plant the idea as a seed. We might occasionally water it, and cultivate it, but we must leave all the growing, all the unfolding, all the fruit bearing, all the achieving of results, to the Father of Infinite Love. Those participating in the Movement were all to be Junior Partners, and their share was to look after the intention, and the intention only; the Senior Partner, and He alone, would be concerned and responsible for the results.
Before we start out upon this venture, it would be well for us to pause a moment and make an inventory of what will be demanded of us. “For which of you,” said Jesus, “desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it?” We must ourselves be so surrendered to Christ that we are utterly and entirely His before we can ever take thought together in regard to the steps we should take. The picture of the scrambled world cannot be put into order until we have straightened out the picture of the scrambled man on the opposite side.
My first concern was to see whether my own intentions were clear as crystal, so clear that nothing of self could cast a shadow over the slightest part of my work. I must become so clear, that, in the words of Evelyn Underhill, “the naked soul could follow the naked Christ.” I must see the perfect soul in everyone, no matter how thick the shell of Ego might seem to be, I must trust myself to everyone and be worthy to let each one trust himself to me. I must start living in this Kingdom of Heaven right here and now. There must be no qualification, no subterfuge, no reservation whatsoever. I must give as much time to the meanest sinner as to the highest soul. But I must not, on the other hand, out of false humility, avoid the highest soul if there was some reason for us to come together and if he was willing to accept me.
As months went on I learned many things. I learned, for instance, that there were some degrees of sin where I could not help as much as others who had had some actual experience in that form of sin. I found that there were some forms of trouble foreign to my experience where I could not help as much as others could help. There were some places where my love would be mistaken for weakness, some places where my outgiving would feed the weakness of others and not their strength. All this taught me humility and wisdom, two of the most essential of graces, and it also taught me the need of co-operating with others, and sharing the burdens of the Kingdom message with others who were stronger than I.
On the other hand, there were some forms of sickness where my faith rose to the height of mountains and the trouble became as helpless as a moth before a flame of light. There were some forms of sin where I could take the sinner by the hand and lead him straight to the Cross of Christ and witness his sin roll completely away, as though it had never been.
And above all, I found that God had especially given me the gift and the training to be used as an instrument of His Love for breaking down barriers between all forms of religious thought and religious thinkers, and bring them into harmony and understanding. It became a passion of mine to make the whole army of Christ of one mind and one blood. For instance, while I was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, I taught a Bible Class in a Congregational church and spoke from pulpits of Methodist, Baptist, and Friend groups all over the land. While I had attended Catholic services only three or four times in my life a leading Catholic priest reviewed The Soul’s Sincere Desire in a distinguished Catholic magazine, closing with the words, “While the author is one of our estranged brethren, there is nothing in this book that will hurt the devout Catholic; it breathes the spirit of Brother Lawrence and St. Francis of Assisi.”
Although I have attended Christian Scientist Meetings only three times in my life, I found that Christian Scientists everywhere were reading my books; and before long I began receiving letters asking prayer for people who came from every imaginable religious creed—many of which I had never heard of before, all claiming me for their own. Fearing that my Presbyterian roof was not going to be big enough to house all these groups, while still retaining the office of elder in my own church, I affiliated myself with Rufus Jones’ Wider Quaker Fellowship.
Twenty years ago when the war betweeen Fundamentalists and Modernists was at its height, many times ministers came to me and asked me to lead a crusade of some kind to unite these warring forces. “You combine all the latest discoveries that science brings to us,” these men told me, “and yet you rest back upon the most fundamental of the fundamentalist concepts, such as Sacrifice and Prayer.” I was deeply interested in seeing this futile war end, but I knew that I was not the man to end it. I could never forget the words of Norman Nygaard, one of my college boys, upon his return from the first World War: “We came home hungry and ready for a spiritual revival only to find the churches quarreling over the first two chapters in Genesis.”
I have been called frequently to give my message in some very fundamentalist churches. I have grown to love the Fundamentalists. They go all the way with Jesus more than most of us. They consecrate themselves with more zeal. With them it is often a 100 per cent dedication. On the other hand, I am a great believer in the use of contemporaneous symbolism, that is to say, I believe that if Jesus were teaching us on earth today He would create spiritual meaning and significance in everything we experienced and did. However, to be effective, it should be simple, an outgrowth of our daily life, not something bizarre and startling.
No one can surpass Jesus’ symbolism and Jesus’ ritual, because it is so related to the deeper, simpler relations of life, such as eating and washing. There is the baptism with water and the spirit. There is the Blood, the most elemental basic source of life, as a means of washing our sins away. Finally there is the Cross and the Open Tomb! Simple and yet how wonderful! Why cannot we Modernists and we Fundamentalists get together, drop our civil war, and unite in a common effort to give allegiance to the spiritual conception of the universe, and make the will of God prevail!
There have been efforts to put vitality into the church from time to time that deserve thoughtful attention. One was the Unity Movement, started by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, with the purpose of putting into the orthodox churches the faith in healing of the Christian Scientist Church without forcing anyone to leave the church. They started as Monday night groups, as an aid and adjunct to the regular church, not as a substitution, but the church spurned them, criticized them, refused to co-operate or let them co-operate with them, so they were finally forced to set up separate churches of their own. The whole New Thought Movement is thus outside the orthodox churches, and a growing rival for its memberships. Twice I have addressed the International New Thought Meetings, but always as a guest speaker.
Now we find the Oxford Group trying to instill greater drive and passion into the church but because of some of its aggressive ways it also is being scorned and avoided by many. Let us hope that it never forms a separate cult or separate church of its own.
It pains me to see every effort to deepen the spiritual life of the church be in peril of widening its already overwide divisions into separate compartments.
I have friends in all these groups. While I am aware that they all have weakness, I am also aware that they all have strength. Why cannot we stand shoulder to shoulder, each loyal to his own field, but letting the others have our friendship and our allegiance as they work in theirs?
The place where we can all unite is in Prayer. When it comes to talking with our Heavenly Father, “there are neither Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman or freeman, but we are all one in Christ.”
So here I find the place to begin. The place for this union to start is in the Quiet Hour and the Prayer Groups. So I am joining in prayer and in getting my friends to pray for every sincere, earnest, consecrated program directed toward making the Kingdom of God a Reality here and now.
Service of this kind, in my opinion, should make up the largest part of the Kingdom of God Movement. The only thing that we need do, is to look after the intention, pray and prepare the ground. God will look after the harvest.
The value of this union of forces was illustrated when we united in prayer for the Preaching Mission of E. Stanley Jones in 1940-41, and again when Kagawa sent cablegrams to his friends in America as well as in other parts of the world for us all to unite in a prayer for peace.
But where the union is especially close as it is between some of us, even cablegrams are not necessary. I have often felt impelled to spend hours in prayer for some special need, only to find later that some friends, far away, sometimes in distant lands, were sending out S.O.S. calls for my spiritual support and aid. I never have a need, for instance, but Dr. Carver prays for me, and I never find a great spiritual experience but that he knows it. He on his part continually assures me that he never goes into “God’s Little Workshop” with a special purpose without taking me with him in spirit.
Two of the most sympathetic contributors to this union of spiritual forces from all over the globe are Frank C. Laubach, missionary to the Moros, and Gerald Heard, missionary to the literati of the Anglo-Saxon world. Very different in temperament and mental approach they are children of the same Father in their magnificent contributions toward deepening the spiritual life of the world. One uses the intimate, friendly conversational approach to the Personal Christ; the other, the inner, detached meditation upon the inner Cosmic Christ. Then there is Starr Daily, who reaches the underworld (as well as the upper) in ways that no one on earth can match, Aldous Huxley, who reaches the young intelligentsia with incisive power, Allen Hunter, who reaches all through Love, Winfred Rhoades, Eugene Exman, Henry Hilt Crane, Paul Harris, Richard Raines, James Fremont Tittle, Richard Roberts, John Gayner Banks, Margaret Prescott Montague, Elizabeth Lee, Grace Noll Crowell, Dan Bliss, C. R. Moseley and so on and on.
While a host of new spiritual partners have joined us since this Vision began, a number of the original list have stepped across the boundaries of Time and Space and are helping us from the Other Side. Bishop Fred Fisher of Detroit, Zona Gale of Portage, Will Boddy of Minneapolis, Brother Bryan of Birmingham, and Arthur Holt of Chicago are assisting our Vision in ways that we cannot begin to measure.
With this brief survey of the gathering of the spiritual individuals during the last few years, we are ready now to look ahead with confidence to the things that we can do in the years that are before us. We are not alone. At our side are countless thousands whose names are not found in the pages of Who’s Who and whose incomes are not recorded in Dun and Bradstreet, but whose voices are heard in heaven above the voices of many of the leaders of the world. We must not forget that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
The Kingdom of God Movement is unfolding before us. We did not start it. We are not leading it. As we surrender ourselves utterly to the Christ as the Leader, and as we break down the thin barriers of partition that separate us from one another, we are doing, perhaps, all that we need to do. God will do the rest. We can be His junior partners. Only as we give over thinking of results and concentrate on seeing that we have the right intentions—intentions that are sincere, humble, loving and consecrated to the Highest—will we become true channels for this great Movement to work through us.
And this Movement, let me remind you again, shapes itself into three distinct, definite, active forms of expression:
First: the Quiet Hour for cultivating the vital experience of God in each individual heart.
Second: the Prayer Group, for cultivating the expression of vital, co-operative prayers with others.
Third: opening avenues for bringing the strength and inspiration of the Quiet Hour and of the Prayer Group into vital, constructive expression in the Social Movements of the day.
Let us take these three modes of expression and vision the tremendous possibilities contained in each.
