Mathews, Basil
Fellowship: A means of "building the Christian
social order.
New York, 1921.

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Christianity and Industry: Three

FELLOWSHIP A MEANS OF BUILDING
THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ORDER

BY

BASIL MATHEWS AND
HARRY BISSEKER

WITH A PREFACE! by
SHERWOOD EDDY,

NEW XBJr YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Ten Cents Net.

COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY EDWIN S. GORHAM

phtxted i>- the united states of America

PREFACE
The peoples of the earth are in confusion. In the presence of
complex and dangerous problems, they stand perplexed and hesi
tating. They need light. The disastrous consequences of a war
waged in the spirit of high idealism have left many with a
cynical attitude toward all ideals. They need vision. In the
present hour men and women of high ideals are tempted to be
unduly timid and cautious about proclaiming their message. The
forces of reaction are in the ascendancy. Slander and persecu
tion await those who run counter to accepted traditions. Courage
is needed.
Confronted with complex problems, cynical #indifference and
the attacks of reactionaries, many men and women of high
purpose are lonely and discouraged. Some feel that they alone
of all the multitude have not bowed the knee to Baal. They
need inspiration and companionship. In this hour many are filled
with a sense of impotence. They need cooperation from those of
like mind and purpose.
Light! Vision!. Courage! Companionship! Cooperation!
These are sorely needed.
The book from which the following extracts are taken represents
the beginning of a literature in Great Britain born of a new
experience. A number of "Fellowships" have been formed in
England which have rediscovered some of the hidden springs of
life and power of early Christianity. Mr. C. A. A. Scott in his
chapter on "What Happened at Pentecost," in that most helpful
volume on "The Spirit" edited by Canon Streeter, maintains that
the new thing which took place on the day of Pentecost was the
emergence of fellowship. A new type of life had appeared in the
world. It was the life of God in the hearts of a community
of men in fellowship with the Living Christ. This fellowship on
the divine side was the organ of the Spirit, an extension of the
Incarnation, the "body of Christ" on earth, the social organism
for the expression of the very life and being of God in human
personalities. On the human side the fellowship was the organ
of spiritual insight. Together, of one heart and soul, under a
common leadership, they realized a common mind, and growingly

iv PREFACE
apprehended the will of God. Together in a deepening fellow
ship with God and man they shared a common life and went out
to conquer a world with an enlarging experience of love that
multiplied as it was shared.
It is this experience of a spiritual fellowship, the very life
of God shared with a group of men and women in harmony with
His purpose, that is a supreme need of our time, and especially
in our own country. The American is so motor-minded, rushes so
instantly into action and organization that he does not take suf
ficient time for deliberation. It is to such an enlarging experience
of fellowship in thought and prayer that this book calls us.
Recently a group of persons from ten states gathered
together in New York City. After two days of prayer and dis
cussion, there was general agreement that a Fellowship for a
Christian Social Order had spontaneously come into being. These
persons are now endeavoring to gather together informal Fellow
ship groups in various centers throughout the United States.
Persons who are interested may secure further information con
cerning this movement by communicating with its secretary, Mr:
Kirby Page, 311 Division Avenue, Hasbrouek Heights, New
Jersey. Information concerning The Fellowship of Reconciliation, com
posed of men and women who seek to apply the principles and
spirit of Jesus in all relationships of life, and who hold an un
compromising attitude toward sanctioning or participating in war,
may be secured from Bishop Paul Jones, 108 Lexington Avenue,
New York City.
We are deeply indebted to the authors and publisher of the book
Fellowship in Thought and Prayer for permission to print these
extracts for wider circulation. Sherwood Eddy.
December 15, 1921.
Slf7 Madison Avenue,
New York City.

NOTE
This pamphlet is a series of excerpts from the book
Fellowship in Thought and Prayer b^ Basil Mathews
and Harry Bisseker (copyright, 1920, by Edwin S.
Gorham) — 111 pages. Copies may be secured at the
rate of $1 each from the publishers, Edwin S. Gorham,
11 West 45th Street, New York City.
We are deeply indebted to the authors and to the
publisher for permission to print these excerpts for
wider circulation.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I: The Meaning of Fellowship  9
II: Fellowship in Thought and Prayer .... 17
III: Fellowship in Action . . . ¦ ;.-. w . . 28

I: THE MEANING OF
FELLOWSHIP
"The lack of Fellowship is hell." — William Morris.

Fellowship, like all elemental things, defies definition. Its subtle
and powerful essence escapes through the closest mesh of words.
Those who have in any full sense shared intimate fellowship
will feel a disappointing inadequacy at any attempt to express
its reality. The power of fellowship in life, its transforming
influence in personality, and its revolutionary moral power can
never be conveyed by any form of words to those who have not
shared it.
At root, fellowship is a living intercourse between personalities.
It is such an intercourse charged through and through with both
freedom and love, and kept active by a common aim. Love is at
once the tether of the comradeship and the stimulus of its corporate
life in pursuit of the quest. Freedom is the "wind on the heath"
of fellowship, keeping the affection of the Round Table from be
coming stale or stagnant or oppressive.
Fellowship, then, is an active comradeship between personalities,
men or women or both, who unite with one another in a common
worship, or battle for a common quest, or play their game for the
honour of a team, or pool their separate thoughts in constructing
and carrying into effect a single plan, or who simply share the
needs and desires of a common humanity. "These are the ties
which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron."
Fellowship, in short, is all that divine and human commerce
between souls which makes a number of separate men into a
living group. In fellowship they pull together like a team tugging
the wagon of life forward. They move together like a boat's
crew swinging as one man in a disciplined unity of will to win
their race. A group in real fellowship has, in fact, many of the
qualities of a personality. Through the power of fellowship
9

10 FELLOWSHIP
separate personalities blend in a society of friends that has an
identity, a characteristic quality, and a power of concerted action
that increase the potentialities of each individual.
The story of man is full of the revolutions in human conditions
made by the power of sucu fellowship exercised in groups of men.
Such groups have often centred in the attractive and compelling
power of some personality dedicated to an idea. Yet that person
ality itself is the creation as often as it is the creator of fellow
ship. In fact, fellowship rarely takes permanent form unless the
compelling force that draws the men together is greater than
any human personality. The cohesive power is normally exercised
by loyalty to an idea or co-operation in a steadily pursued plan or
a common worship.
Great movements in the world's history, associated as they are
in the popular conception with the leadership of some powerful
personality, can generally be traced in origin to the seed plot of
some group of men whose fellowship in thought and often in
prayer has itself been the nursery of that man's power of great
leadership. John Woolman moving in his circle in America, and
Wilberforce with his friends in England, debated and developed
those germinal ideas which destroyed on the battlefields of America
and in the Parliament of Britain the slavery that was arraigned
first at the judgment bar of the Christian conscience. John Henry
Newman, in concert with the flaming souls of Hurrell Froude
and the others of their group, nursed and fanned the sparks that
blazed out in the Oxford Movement. Mazzini and his comrades
proclaimed and fought for the twin doctrines of nationality and
liberty that now begin to govern the world. The Gottesfreunde
similarly prepared the mind of Teutonic Europe for the stormy
message of Luther. The Holy Club meeting in Wesley's room in
Lincoln College toughened' the fibre and speeded and strengthened
the indomitable wills that transformed England. Francis of
Assisi with his group of Poor Brothers gave Europe such a vision
of the divine light on earth as she had not seen before nor has
witnessed since. And above all stands that first fellowship which
moved through the villages of Judaea and by the cornfields and lake
side of Galilee and then went out to "turn the world upside down."
These examples that leap to the memory illustrate the irresistible
power of fellowship working in men who are so welded to one
another by a common loyalty to a great idea that they have one
will, one faith, and one divine ambition. In them we discover
that the leader is essentially the voice of the fellowship ; we realise
the truth of Bishop Brent's declaration that "the leader is simply
the foremost companion."

THE MEANING OF FELLOWSHIP 11
In the quickening atmosphere of such confident and intimate
fellowship, where Thought leaps out to wed with thought
Ere thought can wed itself-1 with speech ;
and where men's separatist rivalries and competing ambitions are
annealed and welded into a loyal common pursuit of a single
quest, we discover the principle of moral co-operation in redeem
ing the world. II
Nothing, however, is more fatal to fellowship than uniformity
among those who compose it, or complete agreement in their
views. The fallacy that a group is best when it consists of men or
women of one type of mind or similarity in outlook is perilous.
Uniformity of temperament or agreemert in all opinion makes
fellowship anaemic and flaccid. Fellowship is at once tested and
strengthened by the pooling of divergent views and coalescing
of varied personalities. The brilliant and glorious strength,
the rich, full-blooded vitality of the first Christian fellowship
lay'in the fact that the team of the twelve included such person
alities as Andrew the gentle but persistent, Peter the impetuous
but uncertain, the mystical yet aggressive Sons of Thunder,
Thomas the sceptical logician and Matthew the dedicated business
man. " Indeed one cause of the anaemia and dulness that paralyse
much of our modern fellowship lies on one side in the fact that
we draw in the cautious Thomases and shrewd Matthews, but
tend to freeze out the other types by questioning the good taste
of the volcanic and explosive Peter (coming in too with the smell
of fish on his linen!) and by agreeing that after all John, amiable
dreamer as he is, -is "not what we should call practical."
But in reality, that "infinite variety" is the very fountain of
power in fellowship when it is caught up into the vital unity of
a common leader and a single quest. And that diversity in unity
finds superb power and immortal validity when the loyalty is
given to the Son of God and the single quest is the campaign for
His world kingdom. It is then — and only then — that the horizon
of the fellowship is ultimate and the resources of its power are
infinite. The supreme fellowship is the Christian Fellowship.
If fellowship, then, is rooted in intercourse but does not involve
either uniformity of type or identity of opinion, what normally is
the basis on which the intercourse proceeds ? As a rule it is

12 FELLOWSHIP
rooted and grows from a common spiritual experience which issues
in a common spiritual experience to achieve a certain aim. To
examine the fellowships that we have given as examples, the groups
which created and carried through the Franciscan Movement, the
Methodist Revival, the Oxford Movement, the Anti-Slavery Cam
paign, and the Young Italy Campaigns, is to discover in them all
those qualities of a common spiritual experience and quest. In
every case differences are many and divergence of view is pro
nounced ; but unity regulates and controls the differences.
The glory of the gift of fellowship lies in the fact that, while
action is based on the discovered and experienced unity, thought
becomes fullest and most fruitful when it audaciously explores the
territories of difference. To penetrate without flinching through
these dreaded places of divergence has proved again and again, as
Livingstone discovered when he crossed the Great Desert, that the
land which men had always declared to be a desert turned out to be
a whole continent "full of great rivers and many trees." In
particular, it has been proved most richly that to Christian folk
who keep their hearts quick to the ultimate fact of their unity
in Christ it is possible to explore to their farthest depths those
forests of difference which have kept men apart, and to discover
that, after all, the solution of our divergences will be reached,
not by surrendering our sacred convictions, but by discovering a
higher, richer, more glorious and hitherto unsuspected synthesis.
And the unifying power by which that synthesis is reached is
always personal fellowship in a real experience of Christ.

Ill
The strength of fellowship reposes, then, on the fact that to men
of limited view and partial capacity immense enrichment at once
of personal power and of corporate action comes from sharing
their thought and their prayer in dedication to a common aim.
But, although the feebleness and relative futility of individual
men are thus swallowed up in the larger powers of corporate
thought and action, the actual desire for fellowship is not a
product of the weakness of men; it is rooted in the very being
and nature of God. "God," as Madame Guyon has said, "has an
infinite desire to communicate Himself." Indeed the very heart of
the supreme Act of God in giving Himself in Christ was His
desire to reconcile to Himself the estranged faces of men — in
a word, His aim was fellowship. God lives in fellowship, for
God is Love.

THE MEANING OF FELLOWSHIP 13
That picture gallery of the nature of God — the parables — is
just a series of windows into the heart of fellowship. The central
idea of the shepherd in leaving the ninety and nine for the
one is to complete the fellowship. The distinction between the hire
ling and the Good Shepherd is that the former cares nothing and
the latter will give everything for the fellowship. The climax of
the story of the prodigal son is the restoration of fellowship; and
the damning sin of the otherwise blameless elder brother is that
he refuses to join in it. The growth of the Kingdom is like leaven.
The final seal on discipleship is that the men have climbed from
the status of a bondslave to the standard of the friend : they have
entered into fellowship. The whole story of the Gospels, indeed,
is the record of the training of a fellowship that found in the
Fatherhood of God the supreme authority for the source of the
fellowship of His sons.
Our definition of fellowship as living intercourse, however,
involves that it can only exist where there is reciprocity. To
give to men is not to have fellowship with them. Fellowship of
the order that bridges all divisions of race and social status and
sex is not made even by giving the most heroic, persistent and
philanthropic service. We may die for men or give royally,
yet may fail to create the one thing that they are starving for,
if we do not give ourselves in fellowship; if we do not share as
well as give. The paradoxes of St. Paul's song of love are all
based on this fact that to preach or give money or even go to
the stake are not in themselves fellowship. "You have given your
goods to feed the poor," said Bishop Azariah, speaking for the
people of India and addressing men and women of other races who
cared supremely for India. 'You have given your bodies to be
burned. We would ask for love. Give us friends."
This fact that human life is not fed save on such fellowship,
and that fellowship comes through sharing and not merely giving,
is restated vividly in Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launf al" ; where
Christ, discovered by Sir Launfal in the leper with whom the
knight has shared bread and water by a stream, says :
The Holy Supper is kept indeed
In what so we share with another 'a need.
Not what we give but what we share
For the gift without the giver is bare.
Who gives himself with his gift feeds three,
Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me.

14 FELLOWSHIP

IV

Fellowship, then, is impossible apart from personal intercourse
on a common footing. We believe that there is, when we get
down to the bed-rock realities of life, no common footing to be
discovered in the fact of being human. The brotherhood of man
(biologically, anthropologically, ethnologically man) simply does
not exist either in his history or his make-up or his prospects.
Inter-class prejudices and diversities, international differences and
distastes, inter-racial antipathies and even loathings make it im
possible to secure a common footing there. "Experience leads me
to the conviction," said Sir Sidney Olivier on the basis of experi
ence as Governor of Jamaica, where the problem of the relationship
of white- and black is a permanent pre-occupation of statesmanship,
"that there is no / basis for inter-racial relationship save on a
spiritual plane." That is to say, there is no real basis for real
fellowship on a world scale save on a spiritual plane. Men, in a
word, are not brothers by birth in the human sense; they are
brothers by new birth in the superhuman sense. Their brotherhood
finds absolute and enduring reality only in a spiritual parentage —
in a word, in the Fatherhood of the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. That common sonship found in sharing the sonship
of Jesus Christ does in fact — and not in rhetoric — form the one
permanent foundation of world-fellowship.
On the increasing practice of fellowship, in the sense of the
triumph of unity over discord between nations and races, in sober
fact the future of that world depends. For such fellowship
beginning as it does between individual men finds a fuller operation
between groups and organisations, between clatns and nations and
races. The whole story of human progress is, in this aspect, the
dramatic record of the gradual substitution of higher forms of
unity for division. So inter-tribal fighting and clan war die as
the unity develops the clans into the nation or the tribes in the
race. And the crucial issue of our own century is simply and
centrally whether the principle of fellowship embodied in a world-
league of nations and of races is or is not to supersede that lack
of fellowship which (as William Morris has said) means hell, and
has meant between nations in our own day a hell of inextinguish
able anguish.
We have been forced by the frightful logic of war to recognise
that the erection of the solitary ambition of one empire above the
general right of all nations is on the international scale the precise
equivalent of lack of fellowship between individual men ; and that

THE MEANING OF FELLOWSHIP 15
just that failure in fellowship between nations involved humanity
in the maiming and destruction of the flower of its young life
and in the intolerable agony of war. But that international com
plex of antagonisms, that uneasy balance of armed power defend
ing competing interests, is simply the expression in the fleld of
international affairs of the inter-class antagonisms, the commercial
rivalries, the civic jealousies, the interdenominational distrusts,
and the personal bickerings that hold considerable sway in the na
tional, eeclesiasticaLiocal and individual life.

The central aim of the new werM, then) is the increase ei
fellowship. The supreme need of men of all faces i§ that they"
should share, not formal agreements that may be tefti up, not
superficial delimitations of influence that simply secure a teffipa-
rary and uneasy peace through separation by railings and fences ',
but a growing fellowship of rich intercourse? The ultirnat e salva
tion of the world lies in the practice of that Christian fellowship
which will alone bridge inter-racial gulfs and inter-elaSs ehasirM,
To that end we need, first, fellowship within the Ohufeh &H.A
between the Churches, for, literally, fellowship is the life-blood
of the Christian Church. It is the pulsating arterial flow wbieB
sets all the limbs of her immortal body tingling with divine vitality
and vigor, and fits her for the service of man and the glory of
God. We need fellowship between capital and labour, for there
alone lies the hope — and it is a rich hope — of building up a national
life in which each class shall give its service for the strength
and joy of the whole. Superlatively the call comes for fellowship
between races of all colours. For in a world literally made one
by the miracles of physical science applied to communication and
transport, and made helpless against those miracles of science
applied to the slaughter of men, there is no alternative to a
growing fellowship of mutual understanding save a swift and
ghastly increase of inter-racial rivalry in trade* ambitions and
labour jealousies. Such rivalry will precipitate humanity over
the precipice of universal war into the abyss of barbarism, where
men will cringe in helpless terror and in unavailing remorse amid)
the ruins of a world whose rich heritage might have been saved}
by the practice Of fellowship.
The supreme need of the world, then, is to replace the competing.
rivalries of hate by the generous rivalries of Christija-a fellowship,
on every plane of human life — individual, commercial, religious.^

16 FELLOWSHIP
between the classes, international, and lastly, but supremely, inter
racial. Only so can the world escape, not only further degradation
and the agony of greater wars, but the ultimate ruin of ordered
and humane life. Beginning in the individual and working up
ward and outward it is essential that comity should replace
conflict, that fellowship should rule in every sphere of life, and
that the irresistible authority of an alliance of nations working in
moral co-operation should plan and erect, assailable yet impreg
nable, the walls of the City of God.

II FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT
AND PRAYER

The starting-point is found in a fresh recognition — so vivid
and powerful as to constitute almost a re-discovery — of three of
the Church's age-long convictions.
The first of- these is the belief in the Divine sufficiency. Ad
mittedly, the Church is far too weak of hfrself to satisfy the manij,
fold and bitter need of the world. For this, God, and God only,
is sufficient. But that He is sufficient is not merely a beautiful
theory ; it is a most real and practical fact on which we must learn
to count with a more simple directness. Though we ourselves
neither are nor ever can be equal to the situation that confronts us,
God is equal to it. His matchless wisdom is never baffled. The
situation may well be one which He Himself did not design —
the creation, not of His purpose, but of man's wilful misuse of his
freedom. None^ the less on that account, the action for which
it calls is plainly manifest to Him. So long as God lives
no position will be hopeless. There can be no problem of human
life, however complicated by human wrongdoing, of which He
does not see the right solution.
Not only does God perceive this solution, but — and here is the
second conviction — it is also His Will to reveal it. The God
Whom Jesus made known, Who numbers the very hairs of our
head and without Whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground,
does not dwell apart from the world that He has made. As the
Incarnation has taught us once for all, He is to be found in the
midst of the world's travail and agony, seeking to bring order out
of chaos and moral life out' of moral death. Such a God will
not leave us to ourselves as we strive to act as His allies : He will
be ceaselessly waiting to guide us.
At no time, therefore, need we be dependent solely upon our
own wisdom t there is a higher Wisdom to which we have free and
constant access. In whatever capacity we may be called upon to
17

18 FELLOWSHIP
act (whether as citizens or as members of a church or as private
individuals), -and by whatever circumstances our conduct may be
conditioned (whether by those ordained of God Himself or by
others originated through human folly), we can find ourselves in
no position in which He is not willing to .reveal the path He
requires us to follow. The New Testament promise of guidance,
far too prominent in its pages ever to be eradicated, implies that
through our fellowship with God in Christ our own thought may
be corrected and informed by the Divine thought.1 In so far as
this ideal is realised, in all the problems of the Kingdom we may
count with simple confidence upon God's detailed and particular
direction. This daring assertion leads us naturally to the third of the
convictions on which the deeper emphasis is being laid. Like all
the spiritual gifts of God, the guidance thus claimed is spiritually
conditioned. We must be ready to receive as well as He to bestow.
Indeed, the Divine gift will be proportionate to the human recep
tivity. It is only as our will is progressively surrendered to His
3»erfect Will that the Divine direction can be made progressively
clear to us. II
On this third conviction it will be necessary for us to dwell a
little more fully. In the quest for guidance the submission of our
will to God must manifest itself at two important points.
In the first place, we need to be set free from all self-assertion
in our thinking. Human self-assertion forms the chief hindrance
to the revelation of God's Will. It is but too easy unwittingly
and unintentionally to deaden our sensitiveness to His voice
through prejudice and personal predilections. Not unnaturally
almost every problem is approached with an individual bias of
some kind. We are apt to hold tenaciously to particular views
already formed, or to particular methods rendered familiar by
custom, and in consequence the peril of a bondage to our pre
conceived ideas is never, perhaps, entirely absent. There is the
risk, again, so long as we are human, that our thinking may be
influenced by our individual wishes. The knowledge that through
our decision we ourselves or others may be affected in position or
authority, or that some favourite plan may be promoted or frus-
JJ^T'ft I may l'efer t0 1 Corinthians ii. 16, 'We have the
ft ? ThriS thi^iCh,J?eLU0t mfrfly mean- we 'think' as Christ thinks!
but Christ thinks in us ; the mental processes of the Christian are under
ani Je?usd"ap. ug^'aY) *he SpWt °£ chr«t-"~JQhaMls Wefss? "Paul

FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER 19
trated, may readily impel our judgment in this direction or in that.
All thinking into which such considerations are allowed to enter
implies a merely partial consecration of the will. The love of our
own preferences and desires — even in relation to the Kingdom of
God — may prove an effective barrier between our souls and Him.
Unless we are prepared, when we profess to seek God's guidance, to
give up, should He ask it, our own strongest wishes and most
deeply-rooted prejudices, we are imposing conditions upon God:
we are setting Him limits within which to work ; we are saying, in
effect, that we pray Him to lead us provided that the leading shall
be kept within the bounds of our own fixed opinions. It is not
in such an attitude of mind that men can receive the clear revela
tion of the Divine purpose. For the existence of personal bias,
it is true, we may not be always or wholly responsible, but for
readiness to lay it aside at the call of God, we most certainly are.
The underlying assumption of all true prayer for God's direction
is that it is God's thought of the position, and His only, that we
seek. In every problem that arises, we caj gain the knowledge of
God's will only in so far as our own minds are laid freely
at His disposal. In other words, the first condition of guidance is
that we are willing to be guided.
In the second place, when God's will has once been made plain,
we must be ready, with a strong and simple faith, to accept
courageously whatever situation it involves. Our preconceived ideas
and hopes are not the only means of setting limits to God's guid
ance; we may restrict Him just as surely by a nervous fear of con
sequences. The acts of God are often so drastic in their character
that, from our cautious human standpoint, we find it hard to
understand them. Sometimes before He builds up He breaks down.
Sometimes He severs ere He unifies. He rejects a ch6sen nation.
He divides a Church. He forsakes a long-established method. He
abandons some time-honoured instrument of service. Even to
His own people, at the hour of crisis, such far-reaching changes
are apt to bring a blind and impotent perplexity. We confuse the
"accidents" with the "essence" of His working. Through long
experience we have learnt so closely to associate the Divine activity
with certain forms through which it has expressed itself and
certain conditions by which it has usually been accompanied,
that when these forms and these conditions are endangered/, we
begin to fear for the Divine activity itself. The result may be,
and often is, that an unworthy and mistaken dread of what may
happen prejudices, our mind against particular suggestions, thus
gravely circumscribing our susceptibility to the Divine guidance.
The moral is not, of course, that we must be reckless of possible

20 FELLOWSHIP
consequences, for there is a wise and altogether necessary atten
tion that is due to them. It is the more sane and moderate lesson
that we should not, through fear of them, make ourselves their
slaves, since there is no less truly a respect for them that is both
cowardly and altogether dangerous. Christian men and women
can never safely neglect the faith that "ventures." The great type
of faith is one who went forth "not knowing whither he went."
Such a faith is the second essential condition of God's guidance.
Just as we must strive to free our minds from every preconceived
impression so we must abandon all unwbrthy fear. An undue bias
may be given to our thought by the one no less than by the other.
There is a price to be paid for clear knowledge of God's will, and
not seldom that price may be the readiness to sacrifice our trusted
methods, our reliance on particular persons or the security prom
ised by some familiar "safeguard." We must be willing, with
simple faith, to take the one step that is plainly right, and go
forth with God, even though it be into the darkness of the unknown.
We now see a part, at least, of what is meant by the statement
that the Divine guidance is spiritually conditioned. All thinking
which, by prejudice, self-interest, or fear, asserts the "self" over
against the interests of the Kingdom, thereby and to that extent
impairs God's power of leading us. For those men and women,
therefore, who wish to receive the clearest revelation of God's
mind, the removal of every such restriction becomes a simple
necessity. This is the third fundamental conyiction ,ra the
standpoint we are seeking to elucidate.

Ill
The human fellowship with God on which reliance chiefly
rests is corporate in character. This is no disparagement of the
intercourse enjoyed by each separate soul with God, the necessity
for which can never be transcended. But it is believed that that
solitary contact with God does not exhaust the possibilities of our
communion. No one of us lives unto himself. We are members one
of another, and there is none who can say to his neighbour, "I have
no need of thee." Hence in our common fellowship we may ex
perience a mutual enrichment by means of which our whole
capacity of. vision and of receptivity will be enlarged. "Where two
o,r three are gathered" in the Name a special promise of the
Presence is assured; and therefore a group of men and women
praying or thinking together with unity of spirit and purpose
may expect to receive a blessing which is more than the sum

FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER 21
total of, and different in quality from, the blessing each would
have received through the same amount of individual prayer or
thought. This revived emphasis upon the reality of the Church's
corporate life and upon its necessity to the complete experience
of each member is full of significance, and no one should need to
be reminded that it is simply a return to the New Testament point
of view. Its practical outcome in the solving of the Kingdom's
problems is that it yields us a clear and definite method in our
search for God's guidance. We learn to look for His direction in
a spiritual communion — a communion which is fellowship with
one another as well as fellowship with Him ; or, rather, since there
are not two experiences but one, a communion which is fellowship
with one another in Him.
We have called this a "clear and definite method." Since the
impression derived from a merely general statement may rather be
that it is somewhat vague and impractical, it may be well to furnish
a more detailed description of the manner in which it is employed.
A company of men and women meet tfgether that they may
seek that richer consciousness of God, and, with it, that clearer
light upon truth or conduct, their need of which has been impressed
upon them. The first requirement is that their power of receptivity
shall be intensified. Of God's willingness to lead them there is no
question. The only point of uncertainty is in their ability to
discern and to respond to His direction. Therefore they will begin
with earnest and united prayer. This prayer will not be hurried;
it will be a sustained act of communion. And therein they will
desire four things. First, they will together wait in silence for
a more vivid sense of God's Presence and Reality. In the strain
and bustle of ordinary life the vision of the unseen may easily
grow . dim ; they will tarry in stillness before God, craving the
penitence and cleansing through which it may once more be made
clear to them. Next, they will together pray for the coming of
the Kingdom. This will be no light and easy intercession; they
will reverently strive to view men from God's own standpoint, and,
so far as may be, to enter into His sorrow for the world's sin and
His sympathy with the world's need. And when they have thus
leamt a little less imperfectly to see mankind as God sees it,
alike in its transgressions and in its ultimate possibilities, they
will at last be ready, in the third place, to ask for light on the
particular matter in which they need the Divine illumination.
They will therefore pray together that in this special situation
God's own design may be made plain to them. Lastly, that all
hindrance in themselves may be removed, they will seek, before they
turn to examine the problem, to be freed from every form of self-

22 FELLOWSHIP
assertion. In the consciously-realised presence of God, and relying
on His aid, they will try to expel from their minds all previous bias,
all personal preferences and all self-seeking motives, and at what
ever cost, to will God's will both for themselves and for the world.
This prayer, it is important to observe, is offered in an atmosphere
of fellowship. The group of men engaged is more than a mere
collection of individuals; it is a body of believers — a small but
essential section of that living organism which is the Church of
Christ, Himself its living Head. On this account the entire
spiritual efficiency alike of .every part and of the whole is im
measurably increased. Because of its mystical union with its
fellows and with the Head, each separate member acquires a
power never possessed and never attainable in isolation. The
prayer of each, his penitence, his consecration, his very experience
of God's Presence, is deepened and enriched by those of all; and,
in its turn, "through that which every joint supplieth" the entire
body is itself built up in love. This is no idle dream of what
might be ; -it is a statement of what actually takes place. And
it is in this atmosphere of a fellowship both real and realised that
those who employ the method we interpret are first made ready for
the revelation of God's will.
From this act of united communion they will pass, in the same
spirit of dependence, to their task of serious deliberation. The
problem before them demands and must receive the most strenu
ous and enlightened thought that they are capable of affording.
There could be no greater error than to infer from the stress laid
on communion that the method is crudely quietistic, depreciating
intelligence and trusting to vague and irrational impulses. On
the contrary, we have met with no assemblies of men by whom
the duty of sincere and resolute thinking is more clearly appre
hended. True, their ultimate reliance is upon a wisdom higher
than their own. Christ's promise that His Spirit shall guide them
into all the truth they believe to be, not merely a beautiful ideal,
but also a practical fact on which they may safely count. None
the less, beneath this confidence in a heavenly guidance there
dwells no lurking hostility to human reason. The inference drawn
is rather that, since God has made us rational beings, it is through
our minds that He will most naturally lead us. Therefore, pre
pared by united communion, they turn in their search for God's
will to a frank and determined discussion.

FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER 23

IV
This brings us to another point at which for the proper under
standing of the method, the utmost clearness becomes necessary.
From first to last in all their discussions these men and women
endeavour to think and talk only in the spirit of their prayer.
They will use their brains, and use them, as we have said, at
least as acutely as those who lay less practical stress upon prayer.
But in all their thought their minds are made subject to a higher
Control. That is to say, while they will bring their keenest intelli
gence to bear upon the problem under consideration, they will do
so not as men of self-assertion who cling tenaciously to views al
ready formed, but as men who are honestly seeking God's guidance
and therefore are prepared, even at the cost of strongly-rooted
prejudices, to revise all earlier conclusions by any new light that
He may reveal to them. 0
This light they are ready to receive from any quarter. Indeed,
they are more than ready, they are anxious, to do so. For they
realise that in thought, as in all else, we are members one of
another. Here once again the fundamental fact of corporate life
emerges into prominence. No one man's mind, however cultivated
and sincere, can perceive the whole truth, whether in relation to
conduct or in relation to thought. As the physical light, falling
on various objects, is reflected in various shades of colour, each
but a partial presentation of its great original, so the light of truth,
reflected from men's different minds, is found to exhibit many
different aspects, in no single one of which can truth's perfect
image be discerned. In the second case, as in the first, the pure
white light is gained only when all these partial reflections are
combined. Each individual's view needs to be checked and supple
mented by the view of his fellows. It is not merely that no separate
human being ever has attained a perfect wisdom; as a separate
human being he never can attain it. He has been so made that he
will find his fullest life only in fellowship with others— a fact
which applies to his intellectual life as well as to life in all its
other phases. As, then, he seeks to form right judgments, he has
no power, even if he had the will, to be strictly independent. He
was born a member of a body, and not even in his thinking has he
the right to say to another, "I have no need of thee."
That being the case, men who are seeking God's guidance in any
given situation, and believe that their minds are the instruments
through which He is wont to direct them, will be eager to welcome
light from every possible angle. It will be assumed that no single

24 FELLOWSHIP
point of view contains the whole truth which God is waiting to re
veal; and this will be acknowledged even by those among whom
that point of view may be most strongly maintained. But it will
also be assumed that every point of view adopted by an honest
thinker will probably embody some aspect of the truth — an aspect
which, however partial or exaggerated, yet cannot safely be neg
lected in the final synthesis; and this fact will be freely recog
nised even by those who regard that standpoint with the utmost
initial prejudice. In other words, the path to truth, whether in
thought or in action, lies along the line of accepting light from
every quarter — even from that with which at first we have the least
degree of sympathy — and in focussing these scattered rays into as
real a unity as we are then able to attain.

Two features of this method call, even at the risk of repetition,
for a. slightly extended emphasis, (a) Since an open mind, which
is only another name for willingness to be taught, is one of its
essential conditions, to ignore the view of those whose ideas are
opposed to one's own; to regard it with suspicion; to treat it with
sarcasm or ridicule; to overcome it merely by some clever ruse;
most of all, to deny, in the Name of Christ, the fundamental
Christian spirit by making the difference a ground for angry and
unmannerly quarrels — to do any or all of these things is as unsafe
as it is pagan. However little we realise the fact, it may in reality
be to close our eyes to one of the sources from which some
ray of God's own light was meant to come to us, and so to limit
His power of leading us into the full knowledge of His will.
Therefore, every man is not only allowed but expected to say
exactly what he thinks, without the slightest fear of misunder
standing or offence. It is a basal assumption that truth is stronger
than error and even than partial truth, and that undue sensitive
ness at hearing one's own views criticised or contradicted is a
latent form of self-assertion, unworthy of a Christian, (b) Though -
every man's' conviction is thus entitled to respect, it is accepted
only in so far as, after due consideration, it appears to be the
medium of Divine direction. To assign an added weight to a
man's opinion in virtue of his wealth, on the ground of his status,
social or official, or because, forgetful of the Christian mind, he
manifests a dogmatic and imperious temper, is nothing less than
a betrayal of truth. Any who expected to command so adventi
tious an importance would be placing human considerations before

FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER 25
the interests of the Kingdom : any who yielded to it would be guilty
of collusion in the sin. This error, like the wish to silence judg
ments contrary to our own, proves a most serious obstacle in the
way of God's guidance. It involves, in fact, a denial of the very
spirit and temper by which that guidance is conditioned.
In conversation conducted on such principles as these the clear
and definite guidance of God may be confidently expected. Badly
stated in black and white, this truth may seem somewhat vague and
unconvincing: experienced in actual practice, its impressiveness
is at times almost startling, and some of its definite results have
been remarkable. For when self-assertion has once been forsaken,
and through its removal men's minds are at last made truly recep
tive, a very real and precious fellowship in thought is rendered pos
sible. Mind acts freely on mind, each in its turn exploring,
checking, challenging the other. The thought of each is quickened
and stimulated. It rises to possibilities as yet unrealised in its
moments of solitary activity. Exaggerations are corrected, defi
ciencies supplied, the sense of proportion duly adjusted. And
in the process many earlier differences of view are found to dis
appear. A perceptible rapprochement is effected, and in the end
a measure of agreement reached which at the outset would have
appeared in the highest degree improbable. It is in this way that,
as each individual thinker approaches nearer to a common centre,
the wonderful phenomenon of corporate thought is experienced.
It must not be supposed, of course, that this result is always, or
even generally, achieved with ease. The process is one which
calls for determined thinking and untiring patience. To seem to
suggest that, even in such an atmosphere,_ difficulties conveniently
vanish of themselves would be entirely misleading and untrue.
Initial differences of judgments are not to be reconciled by
hastily-considered suggestions or within a previously determined
time-limit: they yield only to the disinterested search which is
prepared to spare neither time nor- effort in seeking for the
truth. In such a search, indeed, the first stage will often seem
to accentuate rather than to reduce the difficulties. For since,
in the final synthesis, due weight is to be assigned to the truth
underlying every standpoint that can fairly be defended, the
earliest step of all must be to bring each difficulty out into the
open light, \o consider it frankly without bias, and to endeavour to
appreciate its degree of strength no less than the points at which it
is capable of adjustment. Discussion of the differences of judgment
thus thrown into clear relief will naturally issue in more than
one kind of result. Sometimes the differences will be resolved
more quickly; at other times with greater effort. Sometimes the

20 FELLOWSHIP
agreement reached will be complete; at other times it will be only
partial. In each alternative, however, the progress from diversity
towards unity will normally be found to be so marked and so
impressive that no mere power of human persuasion will any longer
appear sufficient to account for it. In the view of those by whom
it has actually been experienced, there is only one explanation which
will satisfy the facts. In response to their united prayer and faith
they have received a very real and definite guidance of God.

VI
Here, then, is a definite and practical method of seeking to
learn the will of God. Its basal assumption is that of Scripture —
the abiding reality of the Divine guidance. It does not, however,
in any final sense, oppose the Divine guidance to human reason.
It teaches, rather, that, instead of being alternative means of
direction between which we have to choose, these two are comple
mentary the one to the other. We have not to trust either Divine
guidance or human reason : our reliance should be upon Divine
guidance revealed through human reason* but through human
reason disciplined for this very purpose in two ways — firstly, by
communion with God, and secondly, by fellowship in thought and
prayer with other men.
It is this emphasis upon fellowship — with our fellow-men as
well as with God — that forms the distinctive mark of the method
we have been studying. This emphasis does not ignore the place
of the individual in the world's moral and religious development.
Most of our progress in the past has been inspired by great leaders
of thought and action, and the need for them will probably never
be outgrown. But — apart from the fact that even they are largely
the product and mouthpiece of the common tendencies of their
age — the personalities of great leaders are not the only medium
through which Divine illumination may come to us. In the fel
lowship of ordinary men and women, consecrated by their devotion
to Christ and to one another, there lies a power which neither the
world nor the Church of the present day has learnt adequately to
appreciate. To the value and reality of this power it has been' our aim
to invite attention, and with this end in view we have expounded
one method by which it may be applied. Needless to say, this
method is not the only one available: in the great search for
truth and duty the principles of fellowship may be explored along
many other detailed lines than those traced out in the present

FELLOWSHIP IN THOUGHT AND PRAYER 27
chapter. Nor, again, is the method possessed of any quasi-magical
virtue, as though it could yield men direction in return for its
merely mechanical application : its efficacy resides exclusively in the
spiritual aim and attitude by which it is conditioned. The claim
we have sought to make for it is, neither that it stands alone as a
medium for guidance nor that it has acquired any arbitrary or arti
ficial value, but that, applied with strict fidelity to its underlying
principles, it has been proved by experience to be a real and power
ful instrument of progress. Its employment even on a limited
scale has already produced definite and remarkable results : its latent
possibilities we believe to be incalculable. The Church in this
generation has yet to learn the secret of fellowship. The conse
quences of such an enlightenment no prophet could foretell. It may
be that for the Church to master that secret would be to solve
her most inveterate problems and to find the key to the triumph
of the Kingdom.

Ill: FELLOWSHIP IN ACTION

If our argument is valid, on the one hand, that a relatively
untapped source of immense power lies in fellowship in thought and
in prayer; and, on the other hand, that the world is in peril of
chaos for lack of this very gift, it must follow that the immediate
and sustained practice of fellowship is vital at once to the life of the
Church and to the saving of the world. It is not that the Church
has the choice whether she will go on living without fellowship or
with it. There is no such alternative. If she has fellowship she
will have life — abundantly. But if she fails in fellowship she will
die. And with her would surely die the world's last great hope of a
life of enduring and ordered freedom for all races of men.
We hold the lively hope of the Kingdom of God. We believe
in the Church as His organ for bringing into being that new
humanity which is the Kingdom on earth. Yet, we see the
Church divided and faltering at its task, failing at once in vision
and in action, largely through the defects of its experience and
practice of fellowship in Christ; and the world in peril through
lack of her leadership. The challenge is absolute and ultimate.
What, then, are we — here and now — to do ?
We are called, first to build up a new life of fellowship in the
Church for the world. The Christian Society, as we have seen, is
ideally a spiritual fellowship denominated by the idea of the
Kingdom of God. It is a brotherhood so intimately united with
Christ that it is His body; its members are His members. It is
so filled and fused with the Holy Spirit that its separate elements
are fitly framed together in His living temple. It has the mind of
Christ so fully and in such unity that His will is its will and it
thinks His thought. And as His thought and will are for the
redemption of men everywhere, that aim — the coming of His
Kingdom — dominates its life.
Holding this ideal of the life of the Church before us steadily,
with its outline clearly focussed, we discover at least four lines
along which the practice of fellowship in the Church can be ad-
28

FELLOWSHIP IN ACTION 29
ventured; each avenue of exploration being vitally linked with
all the others. There is, first, the life of that congregation of
Christian folk with whom we worship under one roof; there is,
secondly, fellowship in co-operation with the other local groups
or congregations — Hie Christians of other denominations in the
place where we live; there is, thirdly, the whole life of the
denomination to which our own little local congregation belongs;
and there is, fourthly, the fellowship on the larger scale of "the
Holy Church throughout all the world."

II
Christendom is sharply divided upon many issues. But in every
town and city in the world concrete wrongs flourish which all
Christian folk immediately recognise as evil. And there are
definite, explicit principles accepted by all informed Christian con
sciences as foundations for reform.
There is, therefore, among Christian folKPin a town, beneath the
doctrinal and ecclesiastical chasms that separate them, a real basis
of thorough unity both in the condemnation of wrongs and in
support of needed reform. Yet those local civic evils of slum or
vice or corruption persist, and in only a few places is any effective
challenge being made to them, or any constructive remedy being
vigorously and persistently presented. It is at once tragic and
grossly sinful that a nest of courts and alleys unfit for the nurture
of beasts, let alone of human beings; a plethora of public-houses
in a given area ; bad conditions of labour in factories or in work
shops, and many other anti-social and anti-Christian evils should
persist unchallenged in any city from which they could be swept
away by corporate action of Christian folk.
The major cause for this general paralysis of the Church does
not lie so much in the absence of a Christian conscience as in the
fact that that conscience is not stimulated and mobilized. The root
reason for this lack of stimulus and direction lies essentially in
the lack of local fellowship. Continuous Christian fellowship in a
city or village, on a corporate interdenominational basis, will bring
together the separate flickering lights of the divided Christian
people into one powerful and effective flame.
That flame once kindled can burn, not only to destroy old evils,
but to light up new paths; The very fact of the destruction of
the evil comes from propulsive and expulsive force of a new ideal.
But the process once initiated not only destroys evil but builds
good. It .is constructive ; it is architectural. A new civic con-

SO FELLOWSHIP
science is created which itself sets a new standard for the plans of
the local authorities in housing, in educating, in social purity, in
economic relations, and indeed in the whole complex of human
relationships. If the Christian conscience in an increasing number
of cities and towns of the world were fired and focussed for re
shaping the life of those places on Christian principles, the social
structure would rapidly be transformed into some likeness to
that Divine City of which the ultimate plan is hidden in the heart
of God.
What stands between us and that' desired result? It is, we
suggest, almost entirely the lack of conscious, continuous fellowship
in thought and prayer between the Christian men and women on
whose hearts the social civic wrongs around them are a haunting
"concern." The men and women who are alive to the evils go about
their life weighed down with a sickening sense of impotence in the
fact of the crying need. They feel that alone and separate they
are impotent. Yet if they were yoked together in the irresistible
vigour of a living and even exuberant Christian fellowship of
spiritual communion and "mental sweat"; if they continually
gathered together at once to. think through the problems both of
principle and action and to seek unitedly for the living power to
carry the results into effect, a permanent contribution to the
foundation of the City of God would be made.

Ill
The fellowship of Christendom is broken. There is no Table
Round. The seamless garment is rent. The voice of the Church
is silent when it should proclaim one clear, authoritative call, and
divided and feeble when it should declare one strong, authentic
word to direct humanity up the steep paths that climb from the
morasses that threaten to engulf man up to the shining security
of the plateaux of Peace.
The challenge is absolute; the call is ultimate and inescapable.
If the world is to be saved, if Christ's glory is to fill the earth, the
broken fellowship must be united, the seamless mystic garment
must be woven afresh. That sacred mystery which is the Church
must, fitly framed together, grow unto a holy temple in the Lord;
"an habitation of God throagh the Spirit."
"I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness
and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love;
endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

FELLOWSHIP IN ACTION 31
"There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one
hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in you
all. "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ ."

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