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Swartbmore OLecture.

Looking back on the course we have come,we may say that the Quakers have wisely admin-istered their inheritance from the early Baptistsand that they prepared for its world-wideacceptance. Baptists, according to Troeltsch ,produced " the only Christian social-system"beside the Catholic church. But it was left tothe Quakers to bring it down on the soil of thispoor earth—idealists who meant business.

Apart from that it is safe to assert on the basisof our insight into the growth and the spirit ofthe New Testament , as revealed by at least threegenerations of historical inquirers, that none ofthe movements for religious reform came so nearto primitive Christianity as that of the earlyBaptists and early Quakers. Both waited evenin their lifetime for the reign of God that shouldcome down to earth. In the same way, theKingdom which Jesus proclaimed, while it didnot have its origin in the world, moved into theworld. Jesus was anything but a stranger tothe world, holding out promises of a hereafter.He demanded a transformation of the worldhere and now, and most of all He furthered therealisation of this end by His unfaltering trust inGod even in the days of earthly catastrophe. 1A similar trust built up Quakerism in a timewhen the New Zion, which the Commonwealthhad promised, came to a breakdown, and Lustand Mammon seemed to be triumphant.

1 Albert Schweitzer , Geschichte der Leben Jesu—Forschung,1906, IV. ed., 1925.