Most persons are awakened and set on their new track of life through the quickening and kindling power of some person who becomes for them the instru… - Rufus Jones

I want to make perfectly clear the act that the world is in the fringe, in the penumbra, of a tremendous Revolution, with a big R. We have called it a war and the fighting has been with mechanized weapons, but we shall soon be face to face with awesome situations against which weapons are vain things, as ineffective as Canute’s futile attempts to stop the irresistible tides of the ocean. Nothing is ever going to be the same again and we cannot assume our Quakerism is to be unaffected by the euroclydon that is in front of us. The time has passed for “the complacent assumption of an unchanged world.” This situation which I see coming — though I am afraid most Americans are looking forward fondly to a new period of “normalcy” — this situation makes it more urgent than ever to have our Quaker Society inwardly prepared to be a purveyor of light and leading when the crisis comes. The Christian faith of the ages will be tested more severely than in any former Revolution, because it will be confronted with its supreme enemy, a completely economic, materialistic, and mechanistic interpretation of the word and of human life.

No person can ever hope to gain an adequate idea of the religious movement which has been called by the name of Quakerism until he has discovered what is meant by the "Inner Light." It is the root principle of an important historic faith, and it deserves a careful examination.
The term "Inner Light" is older than Quakerism, and the idea which is thus named was not new when George Fox began to preach it. But this idea received a meaning and an emphasis from the Quakers which make it their own peculiar principle and their distinct contribution to religious thought.

The Inner Light is the doctrine that there is something Divine, "something of God," in the human soul. Five words are used indiscriminately to name this Divine something: "The Light," "The Seed," "Christ within," "The Spirit," "That of God in you." This Divine Seed is in every person good or bad.