Rufus Jones to Joel Bean October 25, 1893
"It is hardly necessary for me to say that you have not in any degree lost your place in the hearts of your friends because it has been your lot to suffer persecution, but rather, as I believe, have strengthened it by simply and fearlessly saying what seemed right to you to satisfy the deep convictions of your own hearts. The right of soul privacy seems to me an established principle of Quakerism, that a man shall not be forced to suffer for what at any given time he may be thinking to be truth. We find that the most saintly men have reached the great truths from which they fearlessly uttered by rising from error to glimpses of truth and so on to half truths and finally to the truth. Taken at any early stage of their pursuit of the truth and forced to declare their thought conscientiously they would have fallen under condemnation, but granted what I have called soul privacy have reached convictions which they could victoriously declare and stand upon. Hopeless as the present state of our Society is I have faith in its future for I believe it is feeling for the truth, and though it has taken its stand on a half truth just now and things are in a crude state, yet God is so wise and so able to bring all things up to better, that I believe he will not forsake a people which has been so faithful in the past and which has possibilities of almost unlimited usefulness in the future."
1 comment:
That's splendid. Thank you.
If I were impulsive, I would rename my blog "In a Crude State." I'm not, so I probably won't. It's worth considering, though.
-- Chris M.
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