Silver Sandals

CFOI Literature

"The Kingdom of God is an eternal aspiration after God and for a program that unfolds forever. It is ever moving upward and onward toward a perfectly organized and unselfish society.
"The goal of the Kingdom of God Movement is a Christian society, the Christianization of every community. It envisages an economic social order where love shall be the dominant motive and the principle of the Cross spontaneously practiced." Toyohiko Kagawa

Silver Sandals

FOREWORD
Once upon a time Jesus selected seventy men and sent them forth to go from city to city, carrying a message regarding the Kingdom of God. He told them to take little care as to what they should say, for it would be given them in that hour what they should say, provided they go filled to the brim with their heavenly message, and were empty and lightfooted in regard to things of this world. Among other things he told them to take only one pair of sandals.

Sandals are a very important thing when one takes a journey. A message is spoken with the lips, but a journey is spoken with the feet. In the last night together Jesus gave his disciples wine and bread to put to their lips; but not until he had first applied the water and towel to their feet.

It is our wish and hope that the reading of this little booklet will be an experience like the washing of your feet, and the lacing upon them of silver sandals that reflect the purity and beauty of the Lake of Galilee. For the writing of this booklet will have been in vain if it does not project you forth upon a journey. The road that opens before you is not the road that is made of asphalt and paving stones, but it is the road of your own soul.

If you find something in this booklet that you can strap to the sinews and ankles of your soul, take it and gird yourself for the journey. You will not be alone; you will find comrades waiting for you at every bend of the road.

I.
For some time I have felt, through one of those interior admonitions that have never failed me, that there was a great yearning for God in the souls of men ready to take form in some concerted action ... a sort of ground-swell of devotion . . . and that this year was the time to unite our forces behind it. Concurrent with that thought there has come to me a letter from Kagawa and his friends in Japan with the plea that some of us who believe profoundly in prayer, become the spearhead for a Kingdom of God Movement in America and the world. Muriel Lester, on her trip across America on her way to Gandhi, had some long talks with me and seconds this wish.
Before Easter I breathed this vision into a little prayer, and the prayer gathered a response both from God and from man which has been tremendous. Around us I find such marvelous spiritual souls as Rufus Jones, Bertha Conde, Winifred Kirkland, Kirby Page, Sherwood Eddy, Bishop Anderson, Bishop Hobson, Zona Gale, Arthur Holt, E. Stanley Jones, Harry Fosdick, Roger Babson, Vida Scudder, William Boddy, Franz Aust, Jim Hardwick, Glenn Harding, Dan Fleming, George Carver, Dad Elliot, Jesse R. Wilson and hundreds of others. Because of the representative character of the leaders, but above all because of the tremendous response of thousands of praying people scattered all over the nation and all over the world, God has made it clearly evident that he has given us the background and the foundation for building this Movement with quiet confidence that we shall not be building in vain. If we contact the springs of spiritual power in the hearts of praying men and women all over the world deeply enough, we shall witness God recreating civilization and bringing nations to rebirth.
This Movement is to be an Interior Movement, hardly deserving the title of Movement, but infinitely more significant than any outer movement could ever be. It is to be a mere seed, a mere wish, a mere soul's sincere desire, given completely into the Father's hands. It is to be a prayer in which two or three thousand, perhaps two or three million, will agree to give their nation and their world completely over to Almighty God with absolute trust in Him for the ultimate and correct solution of all their problems. At times the Movement, just like a seed, will be completely out of sight, sometimes like a blade of wheat, it will appear above the ground; but whether visible or invisible it will always be growing and perhaps never growing so powerfully as when completely buried out of sight of the eyes of men.
In the second place it is to be a Movement without a name, as nearly as such a movement can be said to exist without a name. The name which most of those associated with its beginning have ascribed to it is indeed a name above all names save that of God Himself, a name too sacred to be lightly bandied about in committee rooms, or placed on programs or sent promiscuously through the mail on letterheads, . . . a name at once too precious and too universal for any single group or sect to claim or even appear to claim, as their own. But if we take special care that this Movement never becomes a sect in any sense of the word, but takes in all sects, that it never becomes a Movement which is dependent upon committee meetings, program announcements, and formal letterheads, but remains primarily an interior Movement for the nourishing of the souls of men, then and then only will it deserve the title that many claim for it--"The Kingdom of God Movement in America and the World." Long before the early followers of Christ were called Christians, they humbly called themselves "Children of the Way." This or some similar appellation comes near the extreme simplicity many of our friends crave especially at the outset, and which we shall fall back upon whenever any misuse or misunderstanding occurs in the use of other titles that may be attached to us.
In the third place, it is to be a leaderless Movement, as far as any Movement, having unity of purpose and cohesion of action, can be said to be leaderless. The real leader will be Christ. All the rest of us will be servants, and those who are called into council or who are sent on journeys, must be the most surrendered servants of all. So deep must be the surrender of those who participate in the planning of the Movement that they will he willing to step aside for other participants whenever the best interests so indicate.
We are not starting this Movement. No one is starting it. We are merely stepping into the current of a great unfolding Movement that God has already started quietly and inconspicuously in the hearts of men. When God starts a Movement He first plants it in the heart of a man. It then spreads to another, then to three, then to six and so on to twelve twenty-four, forty-eight, and finally to thousands or millions. Many praying souls in America have been serving as such focal points for bringing the Kingdom of God into the hearts of men for a long time. Out of sight of the average man, something very powerful has been going on under the surface of things. Like all healthy, organic growth, which starts with one cell, then divides into two, and these subdivide into four, so these praying individuals have been dividing and subdividing, in other words, they have been "multiplying by losing themselves in God and others," until in the fullness of time there now comes into view the vision of all these scattered groups uniting for one great vision of God.
This in essence is the Kingdom of God Movement. Radiating influences from this Christ-filled life and that Christ-filled life meet and coalesce and spread again until all the world is being filled with Christ. All that is now necessary, as one spiritual leader writes, is for all these praying people to find each other out. So I am requesting that you join your prayers with the rest of us that Christ may enter into the hearts of us all, and that all men will be led captive to the spirit of the love of God in all walks of life, from the inmost to the outermost, from the mystic inner experience of God to the outermost expression of that experience in which all men may be given opportunity for finding. complete self-expression in worshiping and serving God and in loving and serving man.
Remember, this is not so much a Movement as an overflowing of the abundance of love and faith that fills our hearts. Without this abundance "within us" there would be no Movement possible "outside of us." Therefore the one thing needful is the filling of our hearts with this overflowing of love and faith. This done, all is done. Unlimited good will ensue, if out of this overflowing there shall be brought about a uniting of all praying people of all creeds and of all faiths all over the broad world. There is unlimited power in united, earnest prayer.
Therefore the first step and the most indispensable step in the inauguration of this Movement is to hold it in our hearts as a Vision. For nothing worth doing was ever done which was not preceded by a Dream.

II.
Before we start upon this journey, let us dream together. And let us dream as little children would dream, for have we not been told by the greatest Dreamer of all time that unless we turn and become as children we shall in no wise be worthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven? "For verily I say unto you that the angels (angelic thoughts) of little children are always looking upon the face of the Father." So pull down from the shelf the old book of fairy stories that thrilled your childhood, and open the pages to the story of Cinderella, the little girl whose dream came true.
And why did her dream come true? First of all, because she had a right to dream. She was the real daughter of her real Father, and although momentarily expropriated, she was actually sitting in her Father's house. The step-sisters, you may remember, did not have dreams that came true, because they were usurpers and counterfeits, and were not the authentic daughters of the Father of the house. No amount of "step-dreaming," "step-visioning," or "step-praying" can ever take the place of real dreaming and real praying, any more than powders and perfumes and costly raiment when placed on the outside of a person, can alter the lineage of his inner soul. So Cinderella's dream came true because she knew that her relationship to her Father was real.
In the second place, Cinderella loved her dream. She warmed her dream before the open fireplace. Probably more great ideas have been thought out in the cozy warmth of the open fire than anywhere else. The open fireplace Is a symbol. A dream can not have power until it is warmed in the flame of our own deep love and desire.
In the third place she relinquished her dream. Having the clear picture of her heart's desire she let go of it and let it go up the chimney, only to reappear beside her in the room in a most unexpected form . . . the form of a fairy godmother.
So we learn that after one has recognized his sonship to the Father, after he has desired and loved his vision, he must vaporize it and relegate it to the unfathomed depths of the unseen, the place which in our childhood days we called Fairyland.
When the fairy godmother speaks she announces the fourth law of the dream that comes true. She tells Cinderella that she may go to the ball and dance with the charming prince, but this fulfilment is granted upon one condition and one condition
only. She can stay at the dance only as long as the hands of the clock move upward toward the zenith, toward heaven and away from earth. By this fairy-code she was revealing that as long as one can dance with his vision with an upward lilt, that is to say with the spirit of unselfishness and love and joy and peace, he may continue to dream it and dance with it, but the moment he lets his vision turn downward toward doubt, despair, pride or greed, all its beautiful garments will turn to rags and tatters and he will find himself like a scullion at the banquet of a king. Does not Jesus tell about a guest at a wedding feast who was cast into outer darkness because his garment betrayed that his soul was not in the wedding spirit? Cinderella obeyed all these rules and her dream came true. All went perfectly that night with one slight exception. She overstayed her time just one second. So engrossed was she in her dream that she allowed the midnight hour to strike, and one of her glass slippers remained caught upon the stair.
This brings us to the fifth and final law of the dream: that the dream, if it is properly dreamed, will ultimately find its dreamer out.
The story ended, as you may remember, with a long search by the prince for his charming and beautiful partner. Every woman was required to have the slipper tried on her foot. Even Cinderella, much to her sisters' disgust, was summoned from the kitchen hearth and commanded by the herald to meet the test. The sisters were so ambitious to be queen, that one was willing to have a toe cut off and the other a part of a heel. But that is not the way to make dreams come true. It is beginning at the wrong end. If it is your dream, it will fit you; otherwise all the doctors in the kingdom can carve the outside of you in vain. And so Cinderella was discovered at last, and she found the "Prince Charming" waiting for her, and the dream of her heart came into perfect fulfilment.
If you follow this method of dreaming even though you seem to fail, even though you leave your glass slipper behind you, you will find that you have not failed. Your apparent failures will ultimately help to bring you to success, provided you have dreamed your dream aright. If the dreamer holds fast to his dream, THE DREAM WILL ULTIMATELY FIND THE DREAMER OUT. Was that not true of Joseph, of Daniel and of Abraham Lincoln? Was it not true of all the great dreamers of all the world?

In a day when most people took for granted that our nation must always remain half slave and half free, Abraham Lincoln dreamed a dream of a nation entirely free, a nation of the people, by the people and for the people. Douglas, who believed in compromise and equivocation, did not share this dream. Lincoln put his dream into words and gave expression to it in his famous debates with Douglas, and by so doing, he lost the senatorship of Illinois.
But when the Republican party began searching for a man who stood foursquare for a free and united nation, they found in the very incident that led to Lincoln's failure to win the senatorship of Illinois, the glass slipper that was ultimately to win for him the presidency of the United States. They went from statesman to statesman to see who believed deep down in his heart that a "nation cannot live half slave and half free." Seward would gladly have cut off part of the "heel"' of his prim conservatism if he would be allowed to wear the glass slipper. Douglas would gladly have cut off his enlarged "toe" of squatter sovereignty if that would help him wear the slipper. All to no avail. Finally Lincoln was found sitting among the ashes of his previous defeats, holding fast to his vision. The dream of a united people fitted his foot exactly, and he became the standard-bearer and later the greatest president and the greatest public man America has ever produced. The way to greatness, the way to achievement, the way to constructive creative action of any kind is through the door of a dream, properly dreamed and persistently held fast to.
"Give me Scotland or I die," cried John Knox, and that voice, although it may have been no louder than a whisper, because it voiced a dream that had been properly dreamed, was heard all over Scotland. For when the day of reform finally came, Scotland passed by the bishops and the elders, who had proved but unworthy step-daughters of the church, and found that the dream of a spiritually repentant nation fitted the foot of this indomitable preacher of Scotland.
"And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak and of Samson, and of Jephtha, of David also, and Samuel and of the prophets."
Although it is a long step from the fairy tale of Cinderella to the tale of our great idealists like Knox and Lincoln, it is a still further step to the tale of our great practical and hardheaded realists like the builders of factories, and the producers of airplanes and automobiles today. Our modern civilization has been created by water and gas which is first heated, then vaporized, and finally turns all the machinery of the world. But while these successive steps are adhered to as faithfully as the ancients followed the laws of the Medes and the Persians, our great industrial leaders don't seem to know the fourth rule of the code_-that they must not let this material machinery dance after the midnight hour of selfishness and hate and greed has struck in their hearts. The proper understanding and application of this rule of the code is neglected because the homes and the schools and the churches have failed to inculcate in the hearts of men today the principles of that greatest dreamer of all time . . . Jesus of Nazareth. These physical inert elements of coal and iron and gas and water are subject to the same midnight peril of the Cinderella dream if dreamed unwisely, as our tragic dance with them in the midnight hour of 1914-18 so vividly reminds us! And are we not still dancing with those forces after the midnight hour of selfishness and greed of 1929 -1935?

III.
And now I shall sum up all that we have discovered by letting you hear the story of Cinderella as Jesus would tell it. For Jesus, that greatest dreamer of us all, was a teller of fairy-stories . . . the kind of fairy-stories, however, that always come true. And the greatest story He ever told was a Cinderella story. In the Jesus story, however, the Cinderella was a man, not a girl, and the Cinderella man brought his misfortune upon himself, and did not have to depend upon the machinations of an unkindly stepmother to bring it upon him. And after he had, through his own selfishness and folly, expropriated himself from his father's house, he was found sitting amid the husks (instead of the cinders), and looking into a "campfire" upon the heath beside a pig pen (instead of a fire within a grate in his father's house). His dream, like that of Cinderella's, was of finding union with Love, but the object of that Love with him was his father, instead of the Prince Charming.
But he followed perfectly the Cinderella code. First, he remembered that he was a real son of his real father: "He came to himself." Second, he warmed his dream in his love and desire: "How many servants of my father have bread enough and to spare and I perish here from hunger! I will arise and go to my father." Third, he vaporized it and let it go: "I shall say unto my father, I am not worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hired servants." Fourth, the fairy godmother (or the inner hunch of guidance) came to him with unmistakable power and he arose and went to his father.
And now the danger spot enters into the dream of the prodigal son, exactly where it entered into the dream of Cinderella. As he walks or dances along the road toward the fulfillment of his vision, he is tempted to let the midnight bell of selfishness and conceit and falsehood ring in his heart. He is tempted to change his story as he goes along and make it a story of pride and self-justification instead of one of penitence and humility. But he casts these temptations aside. He holds fast to the upward swing of his vision. Long before the midnight hour has struck he arrives at his father's house. Immediately upon his arrival the dream, as all dreams that move in accordance with this inner code, comes instantly and amazingly true. Above the penitent cry of the prodigal son, above the critical voice of the elder brother, above the sound of music and dancing, rings the voice of the triumphant Father. "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found."
As with Cinderella they placed "shoes on his feet," only in this case it was not a glass slipper, but a sandal. And the sandal fitted his foot. We can be sure of that. And it probably fitted the foot of no one else. During all the long years of the prodigal's wandering, the Father had carefully kept his son's sandals ready and waiting for his return. Had he remained away ten, twenty, or even thirty years they would still have been waiting. Yes, our slippers and sandals identify us, but no more than do our visions and our dreams. Trust to your dream and it will ultimately find you out. For the dream will always wait until its own dreamer comes to claim it, no matter how long he defers the coming.
What were the greatest dreams ever dreamed in the history of man? Two there are that stand out as eagles among birdlings. Let us consider these two.

Our Bible is divided into two testaments, and each testament centers around a dream. The dream of the Old Testament is of a Redeemer that is to come some day and save Israel and the entire world from the suffering and sin in which it is submerged. The entire Old Testament is given over to that dream, from the cry of Job, "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and represent me before God," to the glowing words of Isaiah, "And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." In every age the prophet shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon to discern the coming of the anointed One. Every mother in Judea had a dignity not shared by women of other nations, because she might become, by the grace of God, the mother of this marvelous son of God.
And out of that dream, dreamed by an entire nation for thousands of years there at last emerged the fulfilment of the dream ... Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the greatest Dream ever dreamed by mankind. And had a nation not dreamed the Dream for hundreds of years before Jesus came, Jesus himself might never have come.
When I say Jesus was a Dream, I don't want to give the impression that He didn't exist. Our dreams are always our greatest realities. When I say Jesus was the world's greatest Dream, I do not imply that He was an illusion. A nation lives by its dreams; it dies by its illusions. A dream is the most solid, most real, the most permanent thing that exists; an illusion is the most unreal and the most impermanent, George Washington was the dream of the American colonies come true; Benedict Arnold was its illusion. Alfred the Great was the dream of England; George III was the illusion. Tolstoy dreamed a dream with his peasants; was Lenin the fulfilment of that dream or was he an illusion? Napoleon, as long as he was a devoted servant of the ideals of the republic of France, was a Dream come true, but when he began to glorify only Napoleon he became an illusion. That explains why Jesus of Nazareth is the greatest Dream of the ages. He will never fade from the place He holds in the hearts of men, for He said, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
Then after Jesus came, He, too, dreamed a dream. He dreamed a dream that filled the entire New Testament, even as the dream of his coming had filled the Old Testament. Let us pause before this thought. Jesus, the greatest incarnation of a dream of all the ages, Himself dreamed another dream! A dream within a dream! Can anything be more powerful, more invisible, more deeply embedded in the central heart of life itself? And what was the dream that Jesus dreamed? JESUS DREAMED OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD COMING INTO FULFILMENT ON EARTH.
He began his Sermon on the Mount with the statement, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." The climax of the Sermon on the Mount was "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you." The center of the Lord's Prayer contains the words, "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven."
Let us all unite together in dreaming this great dream with Jesus. Today, like Cinderella, we sit among the ashes of the hates and rivalries of competing and warring nations; like the Prodigal Son we sit amidst the husks of an over-materialized, over-mechanized world. Is it not time that we came to ourselves and arose and went to our Father? Before we start on this journey let us be still awhile and vision as clearly as possible just what such a Movement back to the Father would imply.

IV.
First of all, we shall vision this Movement as a Jesus Movement. No one who loves, adores, worships or venerates Jesus is to be left out. Anyone who loves Jesus of Nazareth belongs to us and we belong to him. But this loving and adoring and venerating is not to be given to a paper Jesus, a book Jesus, a Jesus smothered in creeds and dogmas . . . but to a living Jesus. The only creed that Jesus laid down as an indispensable working faith was God, our Father, all men brothers, and Love, the law of Life. He embodied these principles so completely in His own life that merely to look at Jesus, to follow Him, to open our hearts to Him and to let Him enter and possess us, will solve all the problems of our lives. As Jesus lived these principles, let us do our best to live Jesus.
This means that the second characteristic of this Movement is that it is to be a Love Movement. Jesus said God is not a definition, God is Love. And Love is not a word to be professed, but a word to be lived. Therefore the central purpose of our Movement is to spread among men the contagion of living the life of Love. Because the word Love has been used so loosely among many people, let us make clear the characteristics of the kind of Love that is to be at the heart and kernel of this Movement. This Love which reached its zenith in the life of Jesus is a divine Love, a Love that is willing to lay down its life for its friend. The chief characteristic of Jesus' Love was its spontaneity and its wholeness. "I came to make men whole," said Jesus, and He was able to do this because His Love was WHOLE. Even virtue can assume the likeness of evil when it is broken into fragments, becomes fanatic, morbid, or captive to some fragmentary conception of itself. This Wholeness of Love on the other hand is always healing, strengthening, contagious, irresistible, and wonderful. The three chief characteristics of this Wholeness of Love as Jesus expressed it, and as we should emulate Him, are the following:
First of all, it must be a very sincere Love. This Movement Ii to be a banding together of people who have actually found Love to be the greatest force in their lives, and out of their authentic experience of Love toward God and Man, are able and willing to gamble their lives upon the proposition that Love.... understanding Love, audacious Love, sacrificial Love, . . . if given a free hand in our individual lives and in affairs of state, can settle all the problems that this human race is heir to. Unless this Love is sincere, unless one has learned the force of it and the sweetness of it in His own life, all his talk about it is but a sounding brass and clanging cymbal and he becomes an impediment instead of a help in this Movement of Christ. Those who throw themselves into the Movement must do so with the audacity of that apostle who said, "Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away, BUT LOVE NEVER FAILETH."
In the second place, our Love must be a very humble Love. It must vaunt not itself, be not puffed up. This Movement, if it be truly a Christ Movement, must joyously serve all other movements that are constructively spiritual and Christlike, helping every church, every sect, every creed. We who are associated with it claim no exclusive, private pipeline to God. We do not claim that our formulation of Christ's principles is the only formulation, nor do we claim that the way we live our faith is without flaws or as perfect as the way others may live their faith.
In the third place, this Love must be a very tolerant Love. This Movement which is dedicated completely to the "Christ Way" is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, . . . beareth all things, believeth all things.... endureth all things." The tendency to belittle other groups that don't happen to use the same ritual or technique as ours_that spirit of self-righteousness which Henry Drummond calls "the vice of the virtuous"-has created more skeptics, atheists, and bitter haters of the church than all the opponents of religion put together. "He who is not against us is for us," said Jesus, and that can well be the watchword of the Love that we have in our hearts. If a Love be a WHOLE LOVE it is among other things an understanding Love. As soon as any one group gets close enough to another group so that they can see the inner experiences out of which that movement grew, they can always see something good in it to love and some extenuating circumstances that enable them to forgive that which they cannot love.
The service of this Movement is not a service of proselyting but a service of contagion. In formulation and execution it may have much to forgive. But in so far as it is filled with the true Christ spirit it can share with all other movements in furthering the Kingdom of God. We are to make Christ contagious first. After that we can leave the settling of controversies concerning details to the slower working out of human experience. A careful study of history will prove, we believe, that most great movements were retarded, rather than aided, by the use of force, whether on the battlefield or in the pulpit.
Finally, THIS IS A KINGDOM OF GOD MOVEMENT. The message that Jesus preached from morning to night, from seedtime to harvest, from the beginning of his active ministry to the very end was concerning a vast, perfect conception of living the beautiful life now and here, which He called the Kingdom of God.
This conception of the beautiful life as Jesus presented it has two facets: first, the personal mystic inner experience of God and oneness with the Christ-consciousness; and, second, the reforming, readjusting and revitalizing of the processes of society so that the spirit of brotherhood and love may have unhindered opportunity for perfect expression. Perhaps no one blends these two phases in his own life and teaching in our modern times so perfectly as the one whose suggestion started this Movement into being--Toyohiko Kagawa.
Because one of the central principles of this Movement is that all growth comes from within, and therefore the whole process of action is from the secret inner vision into the visible outward manifestation, this Movement concerns itself first and foremost with the inner spiritual experiencing of God and practicing His presence in our personal and individual lives. Attain that perfectly and universally enough, and the outer manifestation of the improved social order will take care of itself.
The guidance that comes to those who are in this Movement is that whatever that outer social action shall be that we undertake, we are to act upon the highest light we have, and to act gently, lovingly, putting love above everything else, even above courage and zeal, knowing that only as Love grows perfectly clear, unconfined, released and pure, can courage and zeal detach themselves sufficiently from that which they are so often associated with . . . fanaticism and intolerance ... and become converted into true valor of the Soul.

V.
This Movement is to give itself to three definite, distinct forms of expression:
First: The Quiet Hour for cultivating the Vital Experience of God in each individual Heart.
Second: The Prayer Group for cultivating the expression of Vital Cooperative Prayer with Others.
Third: Opening Avenues for bringing the Strength and Inspiration of the Quiet Hour and of the Prayer Group into Vital, Constructive Expression in the Social Movements of the Day.
Let us take these three modes of expression, and vision the tremendous possibilities contained in each.
Let us first of all consider the Quiet Hour.
The irresistible power for good of this Movement depends almost altogether upon the sincerity of the people associated within it upon the inner plane of Quiet Prayer, and the loyalty with which they contemplate the Vision that holds us all together. There is power in the man who carries silent spaces in his being. This power becomes indescribable and immeasurable when he is linked with thousands of others who carry similar silent spaces in their souls. We are not going to ask you to go so far as to set aside an entire day for silence each week, as does the little man whose quality of stillness and whose doctrine of non-resistance shook an entire Empire from one end to the other. But we are going to ask you to emulate the example of the Man of Galilee, who regularly stole away to the mountain of his soul for quiet communion with His Father before He faced the tasks and the problems of the daily round.
And what was Jesus' method of the Quiet Hour? That is for you to interpret as best you can. There have been so many interpretations of Jesus' method that we shall ask you to study various interpretations and select the one that brings you closest to God.
If you are mystically-minded, you could not do better than to go to Rufus Jones, one of the saints of the earth, or other writers of the Quaker Group who have developed a beautiful technique of "Quietness," of waiting upon the Voice of the Inner Spirit, and of acting with courage, but with love and courtesy in the bringing of this guided action into practice. If you feel the need of a complete change in your life before you make the new start, go to Sam Shoemaker, or others of the Oxford Group who have developed a very effective technique for their "Quiet Time" where they, too, surrender themselves completely into the hands of the Father and trust implicitly to His guidance. Or, if you are metaphysically-minded ask the advice of Ernest Wilson, a devoted worshiper of Jesus, who is one of a million or more that practice regularly what they call entering the "Silence" where they surrender all they have and are to the Father and let Him express through them.
If we go beyond these groups, which are distinguished by definite and somewhat specialized techniques and methods of "tuning in" we shall find earnest groups in all churches exploring different ways of finding Christ and experiencing marvelous relief and security and strength and peace. Especially might I mention Evelyn Underhill, Emma Herman, Bertha Conde, and Winifred Kirkland, who are splendid guides to those seeking the place of Quietness.
But whatever method is used, one of the chief functions of the Quiet Hour is to give opportunity for stillness.
"The most formidable enemy of the spiritual life," writes Emma Herman, "and the last to be conquered is self-deception; and if there is a better cure for self-deception than silence, it has yet to be discovered. How many of the feverish emotions, rooted in the flesh and half in the nervous system, which we mistake for Divine callings and inspirations would survive the test of silence? We have often been duped by some stirring of surface-feeling, or temperamental passion which clothed itself in spiritual garb, when we might have known the truth had we but taken our exaltation between our hands, as it were, and put it to the ordeal of silence.
"The soul that waits in silence must learn to disentangle the voice of God from the net of other voices ... the ghostly whisperings of the subconscious self, the luring voices of the world, the hindering voices of misguided friendship, the clamor of personal ambition and vanity, the murmur of self-will, the song of unbridled imagination, the thrilling note of religious romance. To learn to keep one's ear true in so subtle a labyrinth of spiritual sound is indeed at once a great adventure and a liberal education. One hour of such listening may give us all deeper insight into the mysteries of human nature, and a surer instinct for Divine values, than a year's hard study or external intercourse with men. That is why the great solitaries always surprise us by their acute understanding of life. They are at home among its intricacies, have plumbed both its meanness and its grandeur, and know how to touch its hidden springs of action. And they know man because they know God and have heard His voice. To know God 'pre-eminently' is their distinction, and it may be ours, at the cost of simple, painstaking honesty with our Maker. Prayer of positive, creative quality needs a background of silence and until we are prepared to practice this silence, we need not hope to know the power of prayer."
What remarkable "Quiet Spaces" this practice of silence engenders in a man! And how these "Quiet Spaces" which he carries with him throughout the day, arise to augment the power of the Quiet Hour! It is cumulative, this practice of stillness, like a snowball growing upon itself. It is the way that Saints are made. "Do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day,,." so writes Carlyle, "and on the morrow how much clearer are thy purposes, and duties; what wreck and rubbish have the mute workmen within thee swept away when intrusive noises were shut out!"
And what shall we do in this period of silence? Three things come instantly to one's attention.
1. Pack your mind with beautiful thoughts. It is a place where the old dead material things should be sloughed off, and some permanent constructive visions of the true, the beautiful and the good should be allowed to go tingling through the consciousness. Such things as beautiful truths of scripture, beautiful poems, and beautiful pictures!
2. In the second place, pack your mind with beautiful souls. It is a time to contemplate with love and trust, yes, with tenderness and adoration, those true and beautiful friends and helpers who have stood as ideals along life's pathway.
3. In the third place, pack your mind with the vision of the Carpenter of Nazareth. Read from the New Testament copiously and try to catch the spirit of Jesus, the strong compelling motivation of that One who said, "'Love thy neighbor as thyself," and "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest."
If you are packed enough with these beautiful things you will go forth so full of good that nothing can harm you; the emptiness of evil will roll off the fullness of goodness within you. In the presence of danger or temptation you will be as impervious as one in a citadel. After you have filled yourself with this fullness, then you can ask for material things, but not until then. Ask first for God's fullness and righteousness and all these outer things will then be added unto you. In other words, first enter into the fullness of the Name of Jesus and all that it implies, and then whatsoever ye ask, believing, will be done unto you. And when you have entered completely into this fullness of beautiful thoughts, of beautiful souls, and of the beautiful Christ, think of yourself as a beloved child of God, not as a hireling or as an outcast. Ask simply as a child would ask for the definite things your heart desires with the simple trust that if they will be good f or you, and will do no harm to others, your requests will granted. For your Father will not give a son, when he asks for bread, a stone, nor when he asks for a fish, a scorpion.
But we do not believe Prayer stops with the Quiet Hour. It must work itself into the muscles and mind processes of the individual until his daily life, his moving about his daily tasks, his every motion and act reflect the peace and poise of the Quiet Hour. This is what distinguishes the Christlike prayer from all other prayers. Beginning in the Quiet Time with the realization of your sonship with the Father, let this realization be your precious possession accompanying you every day and every hour. You are not expected to attain to this ideal in its perfection the first day. But this conception of God as our Father, all men Brothers, and Love the Law of Life, are the three conceptions we shall strive to make into positive, living realizations in our deepest, inmost souls to motivate all the actions of our lives.

VI.
Next to the Quiet Hour, the Kingdom of God Movement sponsors the small Prayer Group as the most effective means of cultivating the spiritual Life. We emphasize small for a number of reasons. In catching and holding and spreading this contagion of the inner spirit there must be absolute friendliness and absolute trust and, to a certain degree, some deep affinities of spiritual experience. Spiritual life grows like all life grows, by the process of cellular division and subdivision. First one can share his experience with a few, and then with a larger group, but after a group attains the size of twelve persons, or possibly seven, it is better to subdivide it into two groups, which in turn, can, if it continues to grow, subdivide again. These groups should never grow from compulsion, however, and unless the need calls, no one should make a move to force the growth.
The Prayer Group cannot rise any higher than the individuals who constitute it can rise, but there is nothing to prevent its rising to the inspired height of the clearest soul who is in it. In each prayer group there should be, therefore, at least one clear, selfless, consecrated personality, who can help lift the group above the dead level of formality and pretense, and lead it into the deepest and most real experience of the soul.
Every group should create its own method, because naturally all groups can not use the same procedure. Perhaps I could do no better at this point than to lift the curtain on the inner method of a little group of women who found release in the "let us go deeper movement" sponsored by the Presbyterian Church.
"Over a year ago a thoughtful missionary president in a great western city felt the need now coming to the consciousness of so many to 'go deeper.' Intensely spiritual, she felt the call to make quest for new power in prayer. She asked a few women to an 'upper room.' Confessedly she had no plan, no program, but she had a need which she wanted to share.
"The women came ... an interesting group in that they were not intimate friends. But the convener had called women who might understand her own spiritual hunger. A miracle came that morning. After two hours of honest confession, of facing prayer difficulties as well as aspirations, of prayer together, the group found themselves gripped by a bond which has never been lessened.
"We meet twice a month for two hours, in the morning. There has been no publicity; few know the group exists. No member is ever reminded of the meeting. Whether few or many come, it is prayer hour....
"The prayer hours are as nearly leaderless as possible. The convener chooses one woman to hold the very loose organization together, and to direct simply the hour of prayer. The program starts itself. Around the room each states her heart message or burden. A scope of remarkable breadth and catholicity has characterized the hours together ... personal, church, society, national, boards, unspoken requests, responsibilities and official tasks . . . whatever is the heart's need for the morning. Utter frankness and freedom, yet dignity and reserve; lack of stupid repetition and airing of troubles; sharing with perfect confidence . . . these have been characteristics. The concerns of the 'upper room' have been sacred. Never, we think, has anything been repeated outside. The matters seem not to be ours but His after we have prayed there.
"Discussion is never checked, yet prayer occupies the major portion of every meeting . . . spoken prayer, silent prayer. One feels free to interrupt discussion with prayer, or prayer with discussion. There is no sense of strain or "filling in" time. The two hours pass with unbelievable rapidity.
"Honesty is our hobby. None wishes to claim untested faith. Conventional attitudes of belief have been discarded there. We have gone deeper to find our individual certainties. We promised never to attend from sense of duty, only from irresistible desire. Our lives were too full of trying to meet God from a sense of duty ... here, we would honestly eschew that.
"So the Spirit seems to brood over our hearts. We pledge to pray for one another upon remembrance . . . not too steadily. A sincere affection has grown up among us, and we depend more and more upon one another's prayers. I have never felt such strength from corporate prayer, never bad I seen such utter sincerity, intellectual honesty, and freedom from conventional assents."*
*This leaflet, entitled "These Have Gone Deeper," may be obtained free by sending to The Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church, 156 Fifth Ave., New York.

Finally we come to the third part of this Kingdom of God Movement, the tying up the spiritual power generated in the Quiet Time with the economic, political and social movements of the age.
How can the Kingdom of God Movement attempt anything creative in saving or redeeming our social order without stirring up antagonisms and discords within the Movement itself that will disrupt it and may ultimately destroy it? There is no fear in our hearts in this regard. In the first place there will not be a single step or a single gesture or even a single thought that such a Movement can make that does not spring from Love, and that is not literally steeped in prayer. If any action or contemplated action born of such a spirit can antagonize anyone he is not truly of the Kingdom.
In the second place we shall concentrate our prayers very definitely upon the spirit actuating all the social movements and upon their ultimate objectives, rather than upon this or that particular method of attaining these ends, waiting until some movement comes forward with complete spiritual (not ecclesiastical or churchly) control and motivation before we release all the spiritual energies of our Movement behind it.
We shall find that all the worthwhile goals of economic and social action center around the second commandment, "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself." And, by the way, is there any platform more revolutionary than that second commandment, or any platform more conservative in its implications of peace and harmony for all? But when we come to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" all the forces in the economic and political realm are unleashed and set in motion about us. For we find that we are no longer in a world of individual craftsmen, each with his own individual smithy under a greenwood tree, but we are in a world of blocs, of organizations such as Capital and Labor, Agriculture and Commerce, Cotton growers and Wheat farmers, Northern interests and Southern interests. Each of these blocs tends to live unto itself alone without concern for the rest. As they ask one another, "Who is my neighbor?" Labor will find that Capital is its answer, and Capital will find that if it is to survive, it must love Labor as itself. The North will find that the South is its neighbor, and Commerce will discover that unless it loves Agriculture as itself, both will be swept out where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
In the past our achievements came about largely through the stimulus of competition. Today our achievements must come about through the inspiration of cooperation. Moreover this cooperation must not only be an ideal and a dream, but must become implemented in unselfish forms and processes for the fullest utilization without waste and without exploitation of the wealth that is ours.
We will all agree that we are passing from an age of scarcity to an age of plenty, from an age when the chief emphasis was upon production to an age when the chief emphasis must be put upon distribution. In the past we developed geniuses in the art of increasing our means of production. In the future we must pray for geniuses to arise who will open more effective avenues and means of distribution.
Therefore those who would vision the Kingdom of God as functioning in our social order today should pray for the spirit of selfishness and bitterness to be removed from our midst and the spirit of cooperation and love to take their place. The genius who is going to put our economic system in order will not be a genius in finance primarily, but a genius in love.
While the spirit of true neighborliness will make mandatory that any changes in our social order will be toward a wider distribution of the wealth of the nation in keeping with the generally accepted principle of the "greatest good for the greatest number of people," nevertheless the spirit of true neighborliness will also make mandatory the principle that this distribution must be achieved not in the spirit of rancor and revolution but in the spirit of brotherhood and love. The framework of our government is democratic. We should evolve a method that will put democracy into our economic structure and we should do it in perfectly legal ways through ordered ballot in perfect keeping with our democratic traditions and institutions.
In conclusion let me quote from Winifred Kirkland's appeal to the praying women of America in her little booklet called "Let Us Pray." What she asks of the women of America, I am asking of all Americans. Let us unite our prayer for a redeemed social order where the abundance that is ours shall bless, and not curse the children of men.
"The purpose of our renewed praying is the hastening of a Christian social order by humbly asking God to help us build it. It is true that we are raising lipword prayers for God's assistance, but at heart we are defeatists, hopeless about improvement in human nature, tepidly submitting to conditions of evil in our towns and counties and states, cynical about improvement in international relationships. Yet we call ourselves Christians! We pray with conviction for our own husbands, that the right to a livelihood be given them, but we do not pray with the same conviction for greater opportunity to all men. We pray for our own children, and behold that our prayers for them are answered, but we do not pray that all the other children in our town be protected. We pray with faith for our own pastor perhaps, but we do not with the same faith pray for our President. We use prayer for ourselves and our loved ones, but we withhold from wider and more unselfish application this power of which we are personally convinced. Which of us who are women of God dares to say that we ourselves, you and I, are not retarding the commonwealth of Christ by not praying for it?
"With strange indifference we watch the efforts of others to rebuild society, efforts frankly unrelated to prayer. Why is it that today the boldest builders are the godless? Is that fact somehow your fault and mine . . . fault of people who believe in praying for themselves but not in praying for a whole world to be remade to Christ's pattern? How long shall we let our Master from Nazareth teach us to repeat, 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,' before we condescend to emphasize and employ that petition in its full power? The Kingdom of God will not come to earth until we Christians wish it enough to pray for it with all the fervor of our being. A New Order will be born for this suffering world just as soon as Christian women pray for its coming as earnestly as now they pray for the safe advent into being of their own children."

OUR UNITED PRAYER

OUR FATHER:
Knowing that Thou art the God of Love, giver of every good and perfect gift, and trusting to the promise that where two or three agree together asking anything in the Love and Spirit of Jesus Christ that their praver will be granted, we agree together in putting the following needs utterly and completely into Thy hands for their perfect solution in accordance with Thine infinite Wisdom and Thine infinite Love,

OUR NATION AND OUR WORLD
1. For the Spirit of Prayer
2. For the Spirit of Brotherhood
3. For a Redeemed Social Order
4. For a Solution to the Liquor Problem
5. For World Peace
6.
7.

MY OWN NEEDS
1. To be one with Thee
2. To be a channel to express Thee more perfectly to others
3.
4.
5.

OTHERS WHO NEED HELP
1. The President
2.
3.
4.
5.

Supply all our need, our Father, according to our faith, and measured only by Thy Boundless Mercy and Thy Limitless Love. AMEN.