no one can be blind to the way in which every detail of our life is being modified by the many new inventions which accelerate the rate of living. we crowd into a single day more than our forefathers could put into a week. the express train, the telegraph and the telephone, the typewriter, the multiplied devices for saving time—all these things are speeding up life to the point at which the time for meditation and quiet is crowded out. this is surely a great and growing danger of which none of us is wholly unconscious.
i have been surprised to find in how many different circles there is at the present time a feeling of dissatisfaction with the 77forms of worship which have for long been regarded as sufficiently satisfactory. i know a number of cases where, in high church circles, prominent people are feeling after something more akin to a quaker meeting than anything else. i am also intimately associated with some of the most living movements in my own country, in which meetings have been held on the same lines. this does not mean that great value does not still attach to regular arranged services. no doubt the vast majority of those who attend the services of the anglican church are still finding out that their spiritual needs are met thereby; but, there are others, and some of them are choice spirits, who feel the need of more liberty and who crave for more stillness in their worship. they are coming to recognize the great danger of the regular pre-arranged service such as is usual in most other denominations. they fear, perhaps, the invasion of the sanctuary by the spirit of rush and hurry.
turning to the mission field, i could quote many examples which show the way 78in which the quaker form of worship appeals to some of those who are being brought out of heathenism. i think of one young man, a close personal friend of my own in china, who, having attended one or two friends’ meetings, came to us and urged us, at a very early stage in our mission work in chengtu, to establish a regular friends’ meeting in addition to the ordinary mission services; and i recall with keen satisfaction the experiment which we made and the true worship into which chinese and english together entered and the helpful and inspired ministry which arose out of it. a leading indian christian, describing the establishment of the national missionary society of india, explained to a friend the way in which the christians had met together for united worship, sitting as he said often as much as half an hour in silence and then breaking out, as prompted by the spirit, into prayer and praise. “we,” he said, “find this most helpful; it means a great deal to us, and we have meetings of this kind before every one of our business sessions; but,” he 79continued, “you won’t be able to understand it; it is so different from your english ways.” you can imagine his surprise on being told that he had almost exactly described the way in which the friend to whom he was speaking habitually worshiped. not long ago i took a friend of mine to meeting. he was a man who had spent some years in india and had become intimately associated with a number of indian students. after meeting he asked me if our meetings were open to the public; because, if so, he would like to bring some of his indian friends to meeting, as he felt it was exactly the thing which would help them.
it seems to me that, in the forms of worship in other churches, we have either on the one hand a united act of worship which is to some extent formal, as when the congregation joins in the singing of a hymn or in a set prayer; or else on the other hand we have an individual act which is not formal but inspired, as when a man filled with a message from god delivers it to the congregation. 80i know no other form of worship which fulfils my idea of a united act inspired of god. as we wait together upon him we are together called into his holy presence. the silence represents to us not merely the touch of each individual spirit with the spirit of god; it represents rather the uniting of our spirits together in harmony with his spirit. thus are we privileged to understand something of that true communion of the saints which is to be fully experienced in the life beyond. a friends’ meeting filled with the sense of the presence of god is, to my mind, one of the chief contributions which friends ought to be making to the life of the church of christ. this ideal was well expressed by t. r. glover in the swarthmore lecture.
“when it is real worship, common worship may take the individual soul a good deal further than it may go alone. we make the atmosphere for one another—courage, depression, hope, study, reflection or whatever it may be; and faith is, as a matter of fact, as liable to be helped as hindered by environment. prayer, when it is reality, 81and when it is the common activity in one place at one time of a community of like experience, may reach a higher plane than we have known before, not as a matter of mere emotion but with results that do not pass away.
“love is reinforced by this solidarity of the christian communion, for in it christ becomes more real, and things are apt to be seen here sub specie aeternitatis in their true proportions. such vision of reality will over and over again be translated into action and consecration. the common worship, if it is the act of all, and done in deep seriousness, passes out of the formal into the effective, with or without mystical rite or element, it becomes communion, and we understand in a new and quieter way what the early church meant by its doctrine of the holy spirit. god’s spirit is not bound by our choosing, but it is possible for us to become more receptive. it is easy to see how men have come to the view that through the church the gift of the spirit is mediated.”6
82 he has to add however, “it is, i think, right to say here that these paragraphs are an epitome of my observations and experience of the student christian movement;” a statement which may well suggest to us in england that our meetings have not been all they might have been in recent years. although i do not consider the following statement as satisfactory as that previously quoted from the same source, i should like again to refer to the statement drawn up by the members of the friends’ mission in west china.
“1. united worship should provide opportunities for the spirit of god to deal individually with each worshiper as well as for each worshiper to approach to god in the way best suited to his individuality.
“2. each individual has a ministry for the benefit of all, to be exercised in spirit, and the true worship of believers depends upon the faithfulness of each.
“3. worship should provide an opportunity for this ministry to assume vocal form, under the guidance of the holy spirit, who may thus use any worshiper.”
83 i recently received a letter from one of the most prominent religious leaders in this country in which he said: “this morning i attended the old friends’ meeting here in philadelphia and was much refreshed in spirit. i believe we must have more of the spirit of the friends if we are to save north american christianity.”
if meetings such as these have a real and timely message to-day, it becomes us to see that we do not lower our ideal and that we strive to achieve it more nearly in every meeting we hold. for the church needs a quiet place in which its members can together hear god’s voice and find afresh the message and the power to believe it. it needs to learn how to wait upon god.
