IV.
Meetings and Ministry.
Silent Ministry.
My dear friends, keep your meetings, and ye will feel the seed to arise, though never a word be spoken amongst you.
(Works, VII., p. 115.)
Joining a Silent Meeting.
So, friends, the word of the Lord to you all in all meetings you come into when they are sitting silent. They are many times in their own. Now a man when he is come out of the world he cometh out of the dirt, then he must not be rash, for now when he cometh into a silent meeting, that is another state; then he must come and feel his own spirit how it is when he cometh to them that sit silent, for if he be rash then they will judge him. When he had been in the world and among the world the heat is not out of him for he may come in the heat of his spirit out of the world. Now the other is still and cool, so his condition in that is not to theirs, he may rather do them hurt, beget them out of the cool state into the heating state if he be not in that which commands his own spirit and gives him to know it.
(C. J., I., p. 318.)
Silent Waiting.
It is good for a man to bear the iniquity of his youth, he sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon him, now that which hath acted iniquity might come into the silence before the just which comes out of the iniquity doth come to reign and have dominion ... the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the son of God, ... and is come to that condition that they do not know what they should pray for but in spirit make intercession with sighs and groans.
(Barclay MSS., Vol. I, p. 110, slightly condensed.)