I question whether either has found the solution to the difficulty of the young Church. In both systems there lurk dangers which can here only be hinted at.
It has often seemed to me that Friends do not realize how much they have in their Meetings for Discipline. I believe that we have here a most valuable contribution towards the solution of the difficulty at which I have hinted. We have at least an ideal which we ought to be most careful not to surrender. Let me explain a little more fully what I mean.
We meet together on the assumption that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and that we can trust Him to lead it. We enter upon the discussion of a difficult matter of business with the full knowledge that many different shades of opinion will be represented in that meeting. Nevertheless, we discuss it with the confidence that the will of God will be made known to us as a Body of persons, and through the whole Body; not that is to say merely through the individual or set of individuals who act as a Cabinet, nor even through the majority of those present. We discuss the question together and we believe that, at the end of that discussion, we shall be led to a united judgment as to the wisdom of a certain course of action. That judgment may not be the opinion of any one individual in the room. It may be the opinion of the actual minority of those present; but, if we are in a true Friends’ Meeting for Discipline, we come out of that room all of us satisfied that the Spirit of God has Himself determined our action and that He has, as it were, made Himself responsible for it. If we entered our Meetings for Discipline in this spirit, they would assuredly be a sacrament to every one of us. There is need for as much consecration of heart in them as in the Meeting for Worship; and perhaps more, for it is not easy to give up one’s own pet theories and prejudices. If this call to sacrifice is cheerfully accepted, our Meetings for Discipline should be of untold blessing to each of us; and thus there would be a chance for us to do our part in the solution of this most difficult problem. The end towards which we are working is the Kingdom of God—neither a democracy nor bureaucracy, but a theocracy. Here again I am encouraged by noticing in some movements with which I have been connected in recent years, a tendency to follow in certain lines the methods which Friends have adopted in their Meetings for Discipline. I refer especially to certain Missionary Conferences and Committees with which I am connected, and to my experience in the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland. And to apply this more particularly to the conditions in the mission field at the present time: in every mission we find this restless desire for autonomy. If we truly believe that the Spirit of Christ is present in the Church itself, surely there need be no fear in our standing aside as foreigners and leaving the Church to Him who has been the Founder of it and who is Himself responsible for its future. If, on the other hand, we leave only the ideal of government by certain Bishops specially chosen, or by a majority which can perhaps be maneuvred in the interests of a particular person or opinion, we shall indeed have grave cause to fear for the Church as it is left to itself.