Spiritual Guidance In The Experience Of The Society Of Friends PDF Download

Excerpt from Spiritual Guidance in the Experience of the Society of Friends I propose in the first place to refer brie y to the development of the Catholic idea of the church, - outward, visible, universal, - and to the change effected by the Reformation in re moving the seat of religious authority from without to within, from the church to the Christian consciousness. The systematising of Protestantism has then to be alluded to, by way of preface to the vital experience which led Fox and the Friends to emphasise the authority of the Light within. My chief aim is to examine the strength and weakness of this position as shown in the early history of Friends, and to trace the hardening processes by which spiritual guidance became confined even in a church which based itself upon this guidance. Certain lessons of importance, not only to the Society of Friends but to the church at large, result from the experience of the past, and I have accordingly ventured a restatement of the question of spiritual guidance in the light of this experience and from the intellectual standpoint of the present day. The unique witness of Friends on this subject and the rich suggestiveness of their experience should give this chapter of church history an interest to a wide circle of Christians. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."