Quaker Strongholds

by Caroline Emelia Stephen

As I have already said, I do not feel that ours is the only lawful manner of worship; I do not even think it at all clear that it would be for all people and at all times the most helpful. But I do believe it to be the purest conceivable. I am jealous for its preservation from any admixture of adventitious “aids to devotion.” I believe that its absolute freedom and flexibility, its unrivalled simplicity and gravity, make it a vessel of honour prepared in an especial manner for the conveyance of the pure water of life to many in these days who are hindered from satisfying their souls’ thirst by questionable additions to the essence of Divine worship.

I know that, in Friends’ meetings as elsewhere, one must be prepared to meet with much human weakness and imperfection; many things may be heard in them which are trying to the flesh—yes, and perhaps to the spirit also. Certainly many things may be heard which are open to criticism, from an intellectual and literary point of view. Let no one go to Friends’ meetings with the expectation of finding everything to his taste. Yet even mere taste, if duly cultivated, must recognize the value of a certain weight and simplicity, arising, no doubt, from the habitual practice of inward silence, by which they are often distinguished. This is, however, a point upon which no one who is alive to the real significance of such meetings as ours would care to dwell. Criticism fades away abashed in the presence of what is felt to be a real, however faltering, endeavour to open actual communication with the Father of spirits, and with each other as in His presence and in His name. To my own mind, any living utterance of a human voice pleading for itself and for the objects of its love in words fresh from the heart, has a power and a pathos infinitely beyond that of the most perfect expression of devotion read or recited according to an appointed order.[11]

It is an important peculiarity of our meetings that the responsibility for their character is felt to be shared by all. I do not mean that all our members are in fact alive to their own share of this responsibility. The service is, no doubt, often far too much left to one or more willing speakers. But I do not believe that it would be possible amongst Friends for anything like the sense of dependence on one individual to arise which seems naturally to result from the idea of a priestly order. And, at any rate, the idea is kept continually before us of a company coming together on one level, each of whom is free and encouraged to bring his individual offering of praise and prayer, whether silent or vocal. It is a familiar thought amongst Friends that no one should expect in a meeting for worship “to eat the bread of idleness.” And the practice which is so frequent amongst us of ministering Friends travelling from meeting to meeting in the exercise of their gift, causes a stirring of the waters, and keeps up the sense of the freedom of all to take their part whenever and wherever a word may be given them.

There is one other result of the absence of pre-arrangement in our meetings which I cannot altogether pass over. It is that no shelter is provided under cover of which one can remain in doubt whether one is or is not actually engaged in worship on one’s own account. A liturgy or a hymn may bear along in its current many a vague half-formed tendency towards worship; and I dare not say that it may not thus sometimes fan the spark into a flame, or save the smoking flax from being altogether quenched. But it does seem to me that it also often prevents our recognizing our own poverty, and stifles many an individual cry for help, which the sense of that poverty would tend to awaken. At any rate, the worst that can very well happen, if a silent meeting fails to help, is that it is nothing. It would scarcely seem possible that it should delude any one into a hollow sense of having been engaged in a religious service. But here I am aware of being near the treacherous ground of idiosyncrasy, and I do not wish to press the point.

Hitherto I have been speaking of our meetings for public worship. But, as Friends love to say, our worship does not begin when we sit down together in our public assemblies, nor end when we leave them. The worship in spirit and in truth is in no way limited by time and place. The same idea of a waiting “in the silence of all flesh” to hear the voice of the Lord speaking within us, characterizes the Friends’ private times of worship; or, as the more cautious expression is, of “religious retirement.” Friends are so possessed with the sense of our inability to offer acceptable prayer in our own time and will, that where others speak of family prayers, and hours of prayer or devotion, Friends prefer the expressions “family reading” and “religious retirement.”

And not only in name, but in method, are these times marked with the same peculiar character as our public meetings. In Friends’ families of the old-fashioned type (which are more numerous still, I fancy, than many people suspect) the family meeting consists simply of the reading of a portion of Scripture, and then a pause of silence, which may or may not be broken by words of prayer or of testimony. Many Friends formerly (and some, I believe, still feel the same) objected on conscientious grounds to their children’s learning to use any form of prayer, even the Lord’s Prayer. The children shared from the first in the united silence of the family, and could not fail to know what it meant; but in some families it was rarely or never broken by vocal prayer. A silent pause before meals is the Friends’ equivalent for “saying grace”—a practice which I own I think has much to recommend it. Here, again, there is, of course, the opportunity for words, should words spontaneously rise to the lips of any of those present.

When we penetrate into the inmost chamber of private worship differences of method can no longer be traced by human eye. It is not possible for any one to judge of the practice of others in this respect; nay, there seems an impropriety in following individuals into this sacred region, even in thought. Sectarian differences must here be left behind. But for that very reason I may here appeal with the greater fulness of confidence to the sympathy of all who pray, in the attempt, from which I feel it impossible to refrain, to explain the way in which a belief in present inspiration is, as I think, inseparable from belief in the reality and the rightness of prayer.

I trust that I shall not be thought presumptuous for entering upon this subject. There are many qualifications for it which I do not possess. But on matters of common and urgent interest the very absence of distinguishing power or knowledge may give a certain value to the results of actual personal experience, as lessening the distance across which the helping hand has to reach out.

I believe that the permanent effect for good or for evil of the present shaking and upheaval of thought amongst us must be mainly determined by its relation to prayer. No immediate result of the outbreak of free discussion of all things in heaven and earth during the last thirty years has been so agonizing to devout persons, nor so gravely threatens spiritual health, as the paralysis which in many cases it has seemed to bring upon the spirit of prayer. We meet daily with open denials of the reasonableness of prayer—of the possibility of entering into any real communication with the Divine Being. Few amongst us can have altogether escaped the paralyzing influence of the flood of unsolved, and apparently insoluble, moral problems, and at the same time of new and absorbingly interesting views of material things, into which this generation has been plunged. The mere demand on the attention is powerful enough to drain away great part of the mental power formerly employed in seeking after God.

“It seems His newer will,