what we must do if we would truly pray and worship, and, indeed, truly
live. We too must endeavor to subdue the body-mind and turn the mind
Godwards. We too must try to overcome the separated self and re-connect
with our spiritual natures. We too must practice waiting. We too must
strive to attain the Quaker ideal so well expressed by Douglas Steere,
"to live from the inside outwards, as _whole_ men."

When compared with bodily action, what could seem more inactive than
waiting upon God? The modern world asks, "Where will that get you?"
Young people say, "We want action." Yet, as we have seen, it was
precisely through this and other apparently inactive means that the
early Friends came into a power of whole action that surpasses anything
that we experience today. We say we are activists, but often lack the
spiritual force to act effectively. They said they were waiters, and
frequently acted as moved by God's light and love. I think that we in
this age of decreasing inner-action, of ever increasing outer activity,
have a profound lesson to learn from the early Friends. We had best
learn it now, and quickly, lest the faith and practices of the Friends
become so watered that they lose their character and flow into the
activities of which the world is full, and are absorbed by them, and
Friends cease to be Friends. I do not say we should go back to the old
days. That is impossible. Let us move forward, as we must if we are to
move at all. But let us build upon those foundations, not scrap them.
Let those past summits show us how high men can go, with God's help.

Friends are by no means the only ones who realize that the body-mind
presents a problem; that, in its usual state, it is an obstacle to
worship and to all forms of the religious life. Friends are not alone in
recognizing that when the separated self is uppermost and active, the
spiritual self is submerged and passive, and that we are called upon to
reverse this. All genuine religious people, whatever the religion, have
recognized the problem and have endeavored to solve it in one way or
another. Generally speaking, there are two ways of dealing with the
situation. One way consists of the attempt to lift the body-mind above
its usual condition, so that it may be included in the act of worship.
The body-mind is presented with sight of religious symbols. It is given
sound of religious music and of specially trained speakers called
priests or ministers. It participat