58
CHAPTER 4 The Meeting for Worship
The discovery
of the Light Within was followed by a determined and uncompromising effort
to act in accordance with the discovery.
It was
in realizing the revolutionary character of their religious experiences that
the Quakers were unique.
That
God reveals Himself directly within man is accepted in most branches of
Christianity and in some sects of all religions of the world. The Quaker meeting in its
waiting upon the Lord in silence carries this doctrine to its logical
conclusion. If God reveals Himself, then worship can be nothing
less than reverent waiting in His Presence. If He speaks to man, then it
is man's highest privilege to listen.
As Catholic worship is centered in the altar and Protestant worship
in the sermon,
worship for the Society of Friends attempts to realize as its
center the divine Presence revealed within.
In a Catholic church the altar is
placed so as to become the focus of adoration; in a typical Protestant church
the pulpit localizes attention; while in a Friends Meeting House there is no visible point of
concentration, worship being here directed neither toward the actions nor the
words of others, but toward the inward experience of the gathered group.
These three types may be
compared to three ways of teaching Science:
1.
the lecture-demonstration method,
2.
the lecture method, and
3.
the laboratory method.
a] In the
lecture-demonstration method, the teacher presents before his pupils the
facts which he desires to convey by performing experiments in which those facts
are illustrated. Similarly, the priest at the altar not only speaks of the
divine, but he also
reveals the divine to the attentive congregation in the Sacrament.
b] In the lecture method
the teacher expounds by means of words the reality which he is presenting. In 5960 some such
fashion the Protestant preacher makes known by means of Scripture, hymn and
sermon the nature of the divine. He proclaims the way of salvation rather than the present fact of
salvation. The sacramental may sometimes be present, but it is subsidiary.
The primary purpose is the proclamation of the Word of
God as witnessed to in the Scriptures.
c] In a scientific
laboratory an opportunity is offered for the student to experience
scientific events. Some guidance may be, and generally is, offered, but
this guidance is for beginners, it suggests the way to the desired result and
the mistakes which are to be avoided. The more advanced arrive at the result
for themselves. They may fail or they may succeed. They may even discover
something different from what is expected. Similarly, in a Quaker meeting an opportunity is offered
for each individual to practice the presence of God as an experience of his own.
Some guidance may be offered by vocal ministry which suggests the way to this
experience or expresses cautions regarding obstacles and difficulties, such as
sins and temptations. Such guidance is knowledge about. It is not that
direct knowledge of acquaintance to which the worshiper must himself attain.
Workers in a laboratory are not always separate searchers. One may aid another, especially if all
are working on a common project. So it is in a Quaker meeting; individual seekers are not
searching independently of one another. Their search is a group search
in which those who are further advanced help those who have not gone so far.
1] Withdrawal and Return
While no figure of speech is adequate, the figure of the scientific
laboratory may be carried a little further. The laboratory worker withdraws
from the routine business of the world to contemplate and experience
fundamental truths in a small interior, shielded from outside interference. He
emerges from the laboratory to apply to the outer world the truth he has discovered.
Such truth has a value of
its own independent of practical application. Pure science, or science
for its own sake, has always been honored as worth while. But even pure science
sooner or later becomes applied or practical as the history of 61 science
abundantly illustrates. The searcher withdraws from the world but eventually he
returns to it to apply what he has found to the affairs of life.
This process of withdrawal and return, to use a phrase made
familiar by Arnold J. Toynbee, is characteristic of all life. If we are
building a house, we withdraw from time to time, study the blueprint and return
more completely aware of the desired result. If we are on a journey, we stop to
scrutinize a map to make sure of our sense of direction, then go forward with
greater confidence.
If action is simply action and nothing more, it becomes meaningless. Out
of action alone there will sooner or later arise a sense of futility because
action as such requires the centering of attention on a limited field.
But, in focusing attention in order to act, I cut off attention from all other
objects. Thus I may deprive my own act of meaning, for meaning arises out of the relation of one object
to other objects and particularly out of the relation of the part to the whole.
For instance, if I examine the stamen of a flower by itself, it may have little
meaning. Its meaning exists in its relation to the flower and more fully to the
plant. Action in building a brick house requires attention to one brick
at a time, and yet one brick by itself is meaningless. In order that the brick
may acquire significance, I must consider the structure as a whole. Pure
action concerns a part which is meaningless if detached from the whole. Only
contemplation of the whole will disclose meaning.
It is for reasons such as these that
a sense of futility is so widespread today. The emphasis in modern life
is on action and more action. But in order to act, the man of action has
necessarily limited his attention to so small an area that his action may have
become meaningless. Sooner or later he begins to wonder whether or not what he
is doing is worth doing, since he cannot see its relation to the whole. A
purely active life may be compared to the activity of a man on an assembly line
in a factory. His whole responsibility may be to turn a single screw in
each element as it passes by. Since he does not see the completed machine, his
action may become meaningless for him. The same futility may be felt by the man
who buys the article. If it is an 62 automobile,
it may take him swiftly and smoothly to no destination of importance
If a life of pure action is futile, a life of pure contemplation may be
equally meaningless. The builder who spends his time gazing at a blueprint,
the traveler who only stares at maps, the musician who ponders his score and
never strikes a note, does not make a free choice. Therefore, he loses his
freedom. He becomes absorbed in what he contemplates and is dominated by it.
The person who is exclusively active loses his sense of the value of his action
and becomes a mechanism. On
the other hand, he who is wholly absorbed in the source or goal of action,
ceases to be a free individual because he makes no choices.
l Withdrawal and return are both
essential; each without the other is inadequate.
l The negative way takes us
back to the source of meaning and value;
l
the positive way takes us forward to the embodiment of
meaning and value in the routine of life.
Since both are found in
most aspects of human life, it ought not to surprise us to discover that both
appear in our religion. Worship
can be looked upon as withdrawal in order to experience the divine Source
of value and meaning. It is a purification of self-centered desires in
order to discover and obey the will of God.
In withdrawing into the
presence of God, man seeks to perceive the whole as it is seen by God.
Adherence to the part—to a particular individual, nation,
race or class—may be overcome by communion with the Father of all being.
Even adherence to private
possessions is weakened by knowing Him who possesses all.
Hatred of a wrongdoer may be overcome by union with the
will of Him who "sends His rain on the just and the unjust."
By withdrawing from particular creations
to the Creator of all, we can place ourselves nearer the creative Heart of the
Universe, the Spring out of which all being flows.
Similarly, we may observe
a variety of acts of an individual and from them judge of his character, but we
do not really know the person until we commune with him at the center of his
being, which is the spring of his will.
Such knowledge of other persons is not reached through
thought, but through love, the love which seeks not to possess, but to be
possessed.
63
Outward arrangements and procedures in a Friends meeting conduce to the
cultivation of this withdrawal. At first sight, it might appear that the
meeting can only be described by negatives—there is no altar, no liturgy, no pulpit, no sermon, no
organ, no choir, no sacrament, and no person in authority. No external object
of attention prevents the worshiper from turning inward and there
finding the revelation of the divine Will. [?]
Whatever is outward in worship must come as a direct result of what is
inward—otherwise, it will be form without power. There must first be withdrawal
to the source of power and then a return with power. This alternation between
withdrawal and return is never so sharp and complete that one state is entirely
given up when the other is realized. As spiritual life progresses it may be
that the two gradually merge until in the lives of those who are most advanced
the two become one.
Friends have never opposed activity, but they have opposed what they used
to call "creaturely activity," that is, uninspired activity, activity which is not based on
divine motivation. Creaturely activity is the performance of a form, or
ritual, which is not at the time it is performed the sincere expression of
an inward state, or it is an act of service to humanity which is not
at the time it is performed the result of a genuine concern.
The history of Christian
mysticism, and particularly of Oriental mysticism, shows that supreme
emphasis is sometimes placed on a wholly negative withdrawal in which there is
no temptation to become absorbed in the outer world. The hermit retired to a
cave. He possessed no worldly goods, no family, few, if any, pleasures of the
body. Sometimes the flesh was mortified to keep it in subjection. On the
assumption that contemplation of the Eternal Reality behind and sustaining this
temporal world is the highest possible human experience, everything became
subordinated to that. Nothing else was deemed of consequence.
There are some resemblances
between Quakerism and this more extreme form of negative mysticism. The Quakers believe in
withdrawal to obtain an experience of God. They also believe that this
experience, being the highest of all human experiences, has value in itself
independent of any results in terms of action or transformation of character. 64To evaluate it as a means to something beyond itself
would be to subordinate the higher to the lower.
The modern tendency to estimate everything in
pragmatic terms, that is, in terms of results rather than of intrinsic
worth, is not characteristic of essential Quakerism.
This nonpragmatic attitude
applies not only to the supreme religious experience, but also to all acts performed because they are
felt to be good. The results both of worship and of social activity
are in the hands of God. Only
God can know what these results will be in the whole course of time.
Yet the history of the Society of Friends shows that acceptance of the
principle of withdrawal in worship has not resulted in any attempt at a
final or complete withdrawal.
The negative journey to the Light was invariably followed by the positive
journey to the needy, but good world. The Light is God in His capacity as
Creator and Redeemer, as is suggested in the first chapter of John's Gospel.
To live in the Light is to become God's agent in the process of creation and
redemption.
But
the Light is also
l
Substance as Contrasted with shadow,
l
Reality as contrasted with deceit,
l
Unity as contrasted with multiplicity,
l
Peace as contrasted with strife,
l
the Eternal as contrasted with the temporal.
To live in the Light is to deny the world: Here
Quakerism agrees with the negative mystics.
But Quakerism is both
world-denying and world-affirming:
world-denying in order to seek God,
the ultimate Life, Truth and Love at the basis of all existence;
and
world-affirming in its return to active
life through the creative power of God the Person, Christ the Word,
to enter into the process of redemption by which the world is reconciled
with God.
There must be fruits of the Spirit and these are, as Paul enumerates them,
"love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control" (Gal. 5:22).
The negative road implies a
sharp dualism between God and the world. God is first felt to be transcendent,
separated from the world, wholly-other than man. But on further experience,
this is found to be but an incomplete view. The world is not separated from
God, but estranged from Him by evil. Estrangement implies continuing kinship,
like that between the prodigal son and his father. Estrangement is never
complete separation. 65 God can perhaps be found
only by man's withdrawing from the world, but the worshiper must take the
positive road back to the world fulfilling his responsibility as a child of God
in order that, through him, the world may be reconciled to God. But the words
"through him" do not mean that man accomplishes this entirely in his
own strength. He achieves it in so far as he is helped by the wisdom and power
of Christ within, "the Power of God and the Wisdom of God" (I Cor.
1:24). This is atonement, the reconciliation of God and His world.
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself," and to man God
has given this ministry of reconciliation (II Cor. 5:19). This is vicarious
suffering, suffering by one person in behalf of another. The worshiper, in
returning to the world, must take upon himself the burden of the world's
sufferings. This is also Incarnation. In re-entering the world, man, in so far
as he is filled with the spirit of Christ, must seek to incarnate Christ's
spirit.
The leading Quakers have
generally been fathers and mothers, often of large families, supporting
themselves by a variety of occupations. There is no record of a recluse
among them. They were frequently engaged in long journeys, visiting meetings
and families and preaching to Quaker and non-Quaker gatherings. Barclay
comments on this characteristic:
God hath . . . produced effectually in many that
mortification and abstraction from the love and cares of this world who daily
are conversing (conducting themselves) in this world, but inwardly redeemed
out of it, both in wedlock and in their lawful employments, which was judged
only could be obtained by such as were shut up in cloisters and monasteries.'
The following passage from William
Penn illustrates how the negative, quietistic way qualifies the worshiper
for a life of Service: 66
When you come to your meetings . . . what do you do? Do
you then gather together bodily only, and kindle a fire, compassing yourselves
about with the sparks of your own kindling, and so please yourselves, and walk
in the "Light of your own fire, and in the sparks which you have
kindled" . . . ? Or rather, do you sit down in True Silence, resting from
your own Will and Workings, and waiting upon the Lord, with your minds fixed in
that Light wherewith Christ has enlightened you, until the Lord breathes life in you,
refresheth you, and prepares you, and your spirits and souls, to make you fit
for his service, that you may offer unto him a pure and spiritual sacrifice?2
Both the passive and the active phases of worship are again and
again illustrated in the Bible.
In the Old Testament the command,
"Be still and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10), is balanced by,
"Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will. speak unto thee" (Ezek.
2:1).
And in the New Testament Christ not only says, "My peace I give unto
you" (John 14:27), but also, "I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword" (Matt. 10:34).
The condition of being inwardly
detached from the world, yet outwardly engaged in its activities, has led
to many misunderstandings.
The Quakers from about 1700
to 1850, particularly those of the eighteenth century, have been frequently
spoken of as quietists.
Quietism is the doctrine
that every self-centered trait or activity must be suppressed or
quieted in order that the divine may find unopposed entrance to the soul.
"God is most where man is least," is Whittier's
sympathetic expression of this attitude in his poem, "The Meeting."
For the quietist, the
search for God begins in removing obstructions, such as self-will and worldly
desires, greed, pride and lust, so that the inner room may be ready for the
divine guest if He should enter. This is not the extreme form of negative
mysticism which eliminates the soul. The room is the human soul. The soul is
waiting expectantly for God. "Soul" is used here rather than
"mind" because mind implies thought, and the whole inner man,
the psyche or soul, possesses feelings, intuitions and sensations as well as
thoughts.
The objective of
Christianity is to regenerate the soul, not to eliminate it.
As thus interpreted, the application of the term "Quietism" to
the Society of Friends is not without some justification. Much Quaker preaching and
writing emphasized removing all that was worldly, temporal and external in
order that the soul might be open to the inner world, and, to use George
Fox's words, "Stand still in the Light" (Ep. 10, 1652).
67
The following passage from a sermon of Elias Hicks illustrates the kind of
guidance along this negative road which is sometimes offered in a Quaker
meeting:
I felt nothing when I came into this meeting, nor had I a
desire after anything but to center down into abasement and nothingness;
and in this situation I remained for a while, till I found something was
stirring and rising in my spirit.
And this
was what I labored after .
. . to be empty, to know nothing, to call for
nothing, and to desire to do nothing.3
It is important not to misunderstand such "emptiness." Elias
Hicks was a farmer with a wife and children. He was engaged in an active life,
both in the ministry and in social reforms, including the antislavery
movement. Yet he realized that complete self-surrender to whatever God might reveal within him was the true basis of
divinely motivated activity as contrasted with
"creaturely activity."
The self-centered
will must be given up
if God is to become active in and through a human life.
This surrender of human claims
upon the will
in order that the will may be
centered in God
is not generally accompanied by a
great emotional upheaval
such as that which takes place in a
revival meeting.
To wait, free from the heat of passion and desire, expectantly, silently
in the Light
is the normal experience. George Fox advises in his letters,
"Dwell in the Cool, Sweet, Holy Power of God" (Ep. 131).
"Dwell in the Endless Power of
the Lord. . . that hath the Wisdom which is sweet and cool and pure" (Ep.
242).
"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit" (Journal, I,
432).
Such an experience may be accompanied by deep feeling, but not often by emotional outbursts
which frequently have their source in powerful self-interest, sometimes in the fear of eternal punishment.
Violent reactions tend to have few permanent results. Friends have usually
heeded the words of the prophet,
"In returning and rest shall ye be saved, in quietness and in
confidence shall be your strength" (Isa. 30:15). "He that believeth
shall not make haste" (literally, "shall not fuss") (Isa.
28:16).
"The Society of Friends,"
says Evelyn Underhill, "has produced no great contemplative ."4
This is true if, by a great contemplative, we mean a person primarily
engaged in contemplation. The Quakers set aside regular times for contemplation,
both individual retirement and public meetings,
but contemplation has always been
for them the inner side of a complete action, which to be whole must represent
perfect balance of inner and outer. 68
Real experience of the
divine Presence had the result of sensitizing the conscience so that the
worshiper could rise from quiet waiting with the feeling that a new and
sometimes very difficult task had been laid upon him.
Without a deep awareness of the
divine Spirit by which the world is united from within, social reformers can
only prescribe external remedies.
Modern society is disintegrating because the sense of an inner, uniting
Life has been lost. We exist in a world of multiplicity and our unity in that
world has become that of a mechanical aggregate produced by forces acting upon
us externally. "If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a
branch and withers" (John 15:6),
Only worship can restore that sense
of inner unity which makes an organic social order possible.
The word "pure" was formerly much used by Friends to designate the
Inward Light,. Life and Power, cleared of all accidental or
conventional additions.
John Woolman, one of the greatest of all quietists and social
reformers, calls the Light "Pure Wisdom," a designation
probably derived from a verse in the Epistle of James.
The significance of this negative word "pure" as used by Woolman
is well illustrated in the following passage:
There is a principle which is pure, placed in the
human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names, it is
however pure and proceeds from God.
It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any,
where the heart stands in perfect sincerity.
In whomsoever this
takes root and grows, of what nation so ever, they become brethren, in
the best sense of the expression.
Using ourselves to take ways which appear most easy to
us, when inconsistent with that Purity which is without beginning, we thereby
set up a government of our own and deny obedience to Him whose service is true
liberty.'
From this we see the connection between the Pure Principle, free of
worldly taint, and social action. The Pure Principle is "deep and inward," yet it produces
brotherhood.
It is not excluded from any heart standing in perfect sincerity. 69 Its purity consists in the removal of insincere and
easy ways which arise out of a "government of our own," that is,
egoism or self-centeredness. Woolman connects insincerity and selfishness.
The true self is that which is in union with God, not the
false, self-centered ego. The service of God is "true
liberty," for liberty
results from detachment from bondage to the world.
It is an inward
liberty, which man can feel even in prison, not a physical, outward liberty.
As we read further in Woolman's essay, we find that purity consists also in the
removal of all that is simply conventional. Speaking of the children of
slaveowners, he says:
The customs of their parents, their neighbors and the
people with whom they converse working upon their minds and they from thence
conceiving ideas of things and modes of conduct, the entrance into their hearts
becomes in a great measure shut up against the gentle movings of uncreated
Purity.'
By this he means that
the conventional view that slavery is admissible
stands in the way of the movings of that Principle which, when purified of conventionality,
would cause a realization that slavery is evil.
The negative way, therefore, consists in the removal of all that is insincere, false,
egocentric and conventional.
It opens the way for
a corresponding effort to face directly and freshly the naked Truth
purified of all that is contrary to it.
To wait upon the Lord is such an exercise and it is easy to see why it
resulted in social pioneering. The conventional, the insincere, the
self-centered will seldom desires a change for the better. Only the will which
"centers down" to the deeper, more genuine, more universal Life which
unites us from within, can feel that Truth which is not yet embodied in the
world of flesh.
To know the central Unity at the heart of existence is to seek to
embody it in a greater degree of human brotherhood.
Fox writes:
Mind that which is pure in one another which joins you
together, for nothing will join or make fit but what is pure, nor unite nor
build but what is pure. [Ep. 13, 1652]
The absence of the outward sacraments in a Friends meeting for worship is
one evidence of the negative path. 70
There is nothing in Quaker theory which would categorically exclude such
rites as baptism and communion, provided these were, when experienced, genuine
outward expressions of real and holy inward states. But any form which becomes a routine, the
details of which are prescribed in advance, inevitably fails to embody what it
purports to represent.
The inward state is not within man's control. He cannot, therefore,
predict the time and form of its outward expression. Any act is sacramental
which is a sincere, genuine outward evidence of inward grace. In this sense
sacraments are innumerable, as they were in the old religions. In lives of
great saintliness every act may become sacramental.
The most sacramental chapter in the
New Testament is the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, in which Jesus says,
". . . unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks
my blood has eternal life" (John 6:53, 54).
These words were uttered when the loaves and fishes had miraculously fed the
five thousand. They had no reference to the bread and wine of the sacramental
ritual. Perhaps in this way Jesus meant to indicate that every meal may be sacramental.
He carefully distinguishes between material bread and "the true
bread from heaven," the spirit of the living Christ.
The Society of Friends uses
the words "baptism" and "communion" to express the
experience of Christ's presence and ministration in worship.
As John the Baptist said,
"I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit" (Mark 1:8; John 1:33).
Worship reaches its goal when the worshiper feels the
baptism of the Spirit. Communion occurs when the worshiper communes with God
and with his fellow worshipers. The Last Supper was commemorated by the early
Church in the form of a common meal or feast of love together (I. Cor. 11), and
this, Barclay says, "we shall not condemn."7
The early Quaker scholars
were aware of the gradual stages by which the Christian priesthood developed so
that certain persons were ordained as solely qualified to administer the
sacraments.
Carrying the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of
all believers to its logical conclusion, the Quakers did away with the outward
observance of sacraments. 71
The form of remembrance of the Last Supper when
Jesus discoursed chiefly of love and unity (John 13-17) has, through a strange
misfortune, become a point of disunity among Christian societies.
In John's Gospel Jesus recommends that his
disciples wash one another's feet. If the spirit of this sacrament were carried
out, the commemoration of the Supper would unite, not divide.
Rudolf Otto finds in the silence of a
Friends meeting a threefold character,
1.
the numinous,
2.
silence of sacrament,
3.
the silence of waiting and the silence of union or
fellowship.8
2] In the silence of
sacrament
·. . what was
previously only possessed in insufficiency, only longed for, now comes upon the
scene in living actuality, the
experience of the transcendent in gracious, intimate presence, the Lord's
visitation of his people. . . . Such a silence is therefore a sacramental
silence. It was found in the forms of worship of ancient Israel, and is
found today in the Roman Mass, in the moment of transubstantiation.
3] The silence of waiting "passes over naturally into the Sacramental
silence."
When the Quakers assemble for a quiet time together, this
is first and foremost a time of waiting and it has in this sense a double
value. It means our submergence, i.e., inward concentration and detachment,
from manifold outward distractions; but this again has value as a
preparation of the soul to become the pencil of the unearthly writer, the
bent bow of the heavenly archer, the tuned lyre of the divine musician.
This silence is, then,
primarily not so much a dumbness in the presence of
Diety,
as an awaiting His coming
in expectation of the Spirit and its message.
1] Otto points out what he calls the "numinous" quality of
silent worship.
He speaks of the sense of "creatureliness" before the power and
holiness of the Living God, the feeling of awe and wonder when the
worshiper is bowed in contrition in the divine Presence.
When Woolman writes, "My mind was covered with an awefulness,"
he here refers to the numinous quality of silent withdrawal from our
familiar world lit by its earthly light to that world illumined by the divine
Light.
Worship brings us to the frontier of thought. Beyond is the dim expanse,
infinite and enfolded in mystery. There lies the source and destiny of our
being. 72
But awe and wonder will not take us far. As a great devotional writer
tells us, only love can pierce the dark cloud of unknowing.
When awe and wonder combine with
love, the re-suit is reverence, and reverence is the first step to
worship.
2] The Way of Worship
In the vast sum of Quaker literature there is very little which can be used as a guide in silent
worship. This is to be expected. The true Guide is the Spirit which,
like the wind, bloweth where it listeth.
Here Quakerism differs
radically from Catholicism.
Silent prayer, meditation or contemplation, to use some of the words
applied to that form of spiritual exercise which is carried on without
words or ritual, is often carefully guided in Catholic practice by a
spiritual director.
The director assigns exercises which he deems appropriate to the
particular stage of progress reached by the soul committed to his care.
Different systems are used by different religious orders. One system, the
Ignatian, involves first an exercise of memory, then an exercise of understanding,
and finally an exercise of will, in which an oblation or offering
is made involving sacrifice.
The great Catholic devotional books offer valuable suggestions to
persons engaged in the practice of interior prayer and silent worship,
provided they are not followed slavishly.
Barclay twice quotes with sympathy one of the best of these, the Sancta
Sofia or Holy Wisdom.9 He also quotes an epistle of
St. Bernard. In referring to books written by Catholic mystics, he says
that Quakers are less
withdrawn from the world than they. The works of Madame Guyon,
Fénelon and Molinos, valuable guides in the life of prayer, could at one
time be found in almost every Quaker library.
Common to many of these
instructions is a recognition that there are four principal stages in prayer:
1.
mental prayer,
2.
affective prayer,
3.
acquired contemplation and
4.
infused contemplation or the mystic union of the human
soul with the divine.
Elaborate treatises on the
subject divide these into substages. For example, in Poulain's treatise on The
Graces of interior Prayer, a system much influenced by St. Teresa of Avila,
73
there are four degrees of
intensity of the mystic union of the soul with God, ending in Spiritual
Marriage which permits life to be lived on the higher and lower levels
simultaneously and continuously.
Mental prayer, the first of the four main stages, consists, in its
simplest form, of the silent repetition of a prayer which has been
memorized--perhaps a short prayer repeated over and over like a refrain. This
is possible for anyone,
however low his spiritual state. After that he may be able to use his own
words, thoughts or imaginations. He may be asked to concentrate on some holy
subject, for example the seven virtues as contrasted with the seven
sins, the Beatitudes or the Ten Commandments. Or he may be asked to
imagine as vividly as he can some event in the life of Christ or carry
on an imaginary conversation with some holy person. The value of the exercise
will depend to some extent on the director's ability to sense particular needs.
From mental prayer the worshiper may be able to go on to affective
prayer, a prayer of the heart without words.
Here feeling is more prominent
than idea, but some idea, such as love,
gratitude, submission, contrition may
be made the exclusive center of attention. This is called recollection, the
re-collection of the scattered fragments of the soul into one focus of
concentration at the point of deepest feeling.
The next stage, acquired contemplation, is the prayer of simple regard, utter simplicity. Here truth is no longer sought for, but enjoyed by a
single direct glance of the soul. The emotions of the preceding stage are no
longer felt, but there is still a need to exercise the will. The boat must be
propelled by oars, but not so strongly as before because the harbor is near.
The next and final stage, infused contemplation Or the
mystic union of the soul with God, is not characterized by any
feeling of human effort. It is a pure, undeserved gift of divine grace. Since
its essence is love, it cannot be produced by an act of will. Complete
resignation of the surface-will has occurred. There is no consciousness of the self as distinguished from
the divine object of its love. Attention is quiet and effortless.
Distractions have vanished. There is a sense of peace and security for the
incomplete life is enfolded in the complete Life. The human and the divine have flowed into each other and
become One.
74
It is difficult to summarize what is sometimes called "The
Mystical Theology." The stages outlined, above are not foreign to
Quaker experience except for the fact that they are prescribed. Those most
helped by this pattern would agree that to divide the spiritual ascent of
the soul into distinguishable stages is artificial, though from an
intellectual standpoint it may have the same advantage as the analysis of a living organism in
parts. The stages overlap. They may occur in a different order. That the feeling of oneness with God
through love may descend without preparation as uncontrollably as rain
from heaven, is evident from many spiritual autobiographies. For different
temperaments the spiritual journey proceeds on different paths. What others might call
"prayer" or "meditation" Friends would tend to speak of as "waiting
upon the Lord" or worship. Daniel Wheeler says, "the soul
that watches cannot long be without praying, although but in the language of a
sigh."° Most
important of all, the negative path, characterized by simplicity, detachment
and inner unity, must lead by the positive path back to the complex world of
strife and disunity in order to make available what has been found in the
silence.
Friends have hesitated to analyze or
even to put into words the
ineffable experience of worship. Nevertheless, much which is
helpful in the meeting can be learned from books of devotion.
The worshiper sits down in
silence. He seeks to compose his wandering thoughts. How shall he begin in
order that his worship may not become a dreamy reverie?
Perhaps by repeating a
prayer, or a verse of scripture or poetry. As he progresses, he may be able to
offer a prayer of his own which merges with thoughts which have to do with the
routine problems of his daily life.
He must not fear to express
selfish desires, for, above all, he must be sincere. He may then find that
these desires, when expressed before God, assume a different form, proportion
and direction. After a time something may come before his mind, a past event, a
future possibility, a saying or occurrence in the Bible or elsewhere on which
his attention becomes fixed. This
focus of attention is now seen, not in a secular, but in a religious context.
It is viewed in its eternal rather than its temporal aspect.
The will and feelings of
the worshiper become stirred as the thought before him glows with life and
power. He no longer feels that he himself is searching, but that he is being
searched through. There is a growing sense of divine Presence. Truth is not
thought about, but perceived and enjoyed. It may be that a point is reached at
which the worshiper finds that he must communicate to the meeting what has come
to him. Or, he may resolve to act at some time in the future in accordance with
the Light which he has received. If he waits quietly and expectantly with the
windows of his soul open to whatever Light may shine, be may lose all sense of
separate existence and find himself aware only of the greater Life on which his
own is based. The sense of union with God may come unexpectedly. This occurs
more often than is generally supposed, for it is frequently not recognized for
what it is. Such complete self-forgetfulness cannot easily be reproduced in
memory. There is the lower self-forgetfulness of sleep which cannot be
remembered at all, and there is, at the opposite pole, the higher
self-forgetfulness in which every faculty of the soul is intensely awake, with
the result that consciousness is widened to include that which is beyond
thought and memory.
In this realm we must depend on symbols and figures of speech.
These are inadequate though probably more intelligible than philosophical
abstractions. We can either speak of the spiritual journey upward or of the
need to pierce the depths. These metaphors have the same meaning. A common advice to Friends in
meeting is to "center down" or "dig deep."
There are ideas on the surface of our minds by which we adjust ourselves to our
external environment, and there are feelings deep within by which we become
attuned to our spiritual environment. In worship we center our attention on
that which is deeper than discursive thought; that by which we distinguish
between good and evil and know what is for us the will of God. The
advice to "dig deep" refers to the parable of Jesus about the two
houses, one built on sand, the other on the rock. The rock was reached by
digging deep (Luke 6:48) in order to find a truth which cannot be shaken by
surface storms.
The experience of the great
mystics may help worshipers today. These mystics sometimes spoke of three
steps called 76 purgation,
illumination and union.
1.
In the first, purgation, man seeks to remove all that is
self-centered and greedy for power and possessions.
2.
In the second, illumination, man becomes aware of the
truth imparted by ideas or memories which come before him as he waits in
silence.
3.
And in the third, which is union, the worshiper loses the
sense of separation from God and becomes aware of the Spring of Eternal Life at
the basis of all existence.
These three may be taken in
any order, but are generally taken in the order given. Often the initial stage
in worship is purgation through self-examination by which one becomes aware of
that which must be removed if he is to attain the goal. As St. Teresa says,
self-examination may be carried too far.
It is a great grace of God to practice self-examination,
but too much is as bad as too little, as they say, believe me by God's help, we
shall advance more by contemplating His Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed
on ourselves.'1
George Fox writes:
Stand still in that which is Pure after ye see
yourselves. [Ep. 10, 16521
The first function of the
Light is to reveal sin, to show what obstacles cast a dark shadow
in the way.
Wait upon God in that which is pure, in your measure, and
stand still in it every one, to see your Saviour, to make you free from
that which the light doth discover to you to be evil. [Ep. 16, 1652]
This evil, so discovered,
is temptation and trouble.
When temptations and troubles appear, sink down in that
which is pure and all will be hushed and fly away. . . . Stand still in that
Power which brings peace. [Ep. 10, 1652]
When such evils have
been removed, the Light will shine more clearly to reveal Truth. This is
illumination. It may dawn. when a remembered fact or saying glows with
new relevance and meaning.
Above illumination is the experience
of union. The mystics generally think of this only as union with God,
but the Quakers, being more concerned with the world around them than were 77 many of the
great mystics, think of it also as union with their fellow men. The
sense of union with God and the sense of union with our neighbors are so
closely related that one is best realized when felt in conjunction with the other.
Fox writes:
All Friends mind that which is Eternal which
gathers your Hearts together up to the Lord and lets you see that ye are
written in one another's Heart. [Ep. 24, 1653]
Not only does the Light
lead to unity, but unity leads to the Light. He whose soul is irradiated by the
Light of Christ is in union with God and his fellows.
This sense of union
with our fellow men is not an unusual type of experience. An analogy can
be drawn with a player on an athletic team who begins by playing as an
individual, self-consciously calculating each move he makes. At some moment a change occurs.
He becomes an integral part of the team, moving with it, without thought of
self. He is now like a cell in a living organism. He unconsciously wills
according to the will of the whole.
In speaking of being at one with God and our fellow men we are touching
upon a kind of experience which belongs to our everyday lives. Of all such
daily experiences worship is the highest and most inclusive. Progress in
worship is progress in simplicity and sincerity.
We find ourselves at first in a world of multiplicity and contending
forces. Our souls become simplified by attention to a single, absorbing truth,
which leads us up to God. The worshiper may arrive at meeting with his mind in
a turmoil. Fox's admonition, "Take heed of being hurried with many
thoughts, but live in that which goes over them all" (Ep. 95, 1655), is
not easy to carry out at once. It takes time for the mind to settle. Fox does not tell us to
eliminate the many thoughts, but to live in that which goes over them. The
writer of The Cloud of Unknowing suggests in regard to intrusive
thoughts that we "look over their shoulders." True worship consists not in the absence of the
lower, but in the presence of the higher. We must not tear out an
important part of our mental Structure. "Nothing in the spiritual life can
be fruitfully accomplished by violence," says Bede Frost.12 We may accept the lower, 78 and at the
same time concentrate attention on the higher. The lower will not be forced
out, but it may recede into the background. At the frontier of consciousness
there may then emerge the higher world of the Spirit which will mingle with and
uplift the lower.
As we climb a mountain, we come nearer to other climbers and finally we
find ourselves together with them at the top. The word "together" does not imply intellectual
agreement, but spiritual unity, deep and inward, which sometimes arises unexpectedly
in a group. Samuel Fothergil, one of the most eloquent of Quaker
ministers, writes of the growth of unity out of meditation when he
speaks of the
·. . cool moments
of sedate meditation when the mind is loosened from lower connections . . .
reaching onwards to the
immutable union and inseparable fellowship of the Lord's family.'3
Aelfrida Tillyard writes:
The spark of spiritual apprehension, half dormant in the
heart of the isolated believer, is kindled into flame by contact with the
gathered fire of many souls together.14
And Barclay describes as follows
the effect of group meditation:
As iron sharpeneth iron, the seeing of the faces one of another when
both are inwardly gathered into the life, giveth occasion for the life
secretly to rise and pass from vessel to vessel. And as many candles lighted
and put in one place do greatly augment the light and make it more to shine
forth, so when many are gathered together into the same life, there is more
of the glory of God and his power appears, to the refreshment of each
individual; for that he partakes not only of the light and life raised in
himself, but in all the rest.15
3] Worship Outside the Meeting House
Although collective silent worship is a unique and important
characteristic of Quakerism, the Quakers have not neglected solitary worship,
or, as they sometimes call it, "a period of solemn retirement."
William Penn writes in his introduction to Peninton's works:
79
He became the wonder of his kindred and familiars for his
awful life and serious and frequent retirements declining all company that
might interrupt his meditations.
Penn also writes in his Advice
to His Children:
as you have intervals from your lawful occasions, delight
to step Home, within yourselves, I mean, and commune with your own hearts,
and be still; . . . This will bear you up against all temptations, and
carry you sweetly and evenly through your day's business, supporting you under
disappointments, and moderating your satisfaction in success and prosperity.'6
A common entry in the Journal of Job Scott, a schoolteacher, is
"Sat in silence, then to school." He writes:
I do not believe a man can go aside and sit down alone,
to make the experiment, merely to see what the consequence of sitting in
silence will be, without a real hunger and heart-felt travail; and therein be
favored with the flowings of the holy oil.17
Of Daniel Wheeler, the Quaker who taught agriculture to the Russians, it
was written:
He one day took me to a small field, nearly surrounded by
trees on the south side of his house, where he told me he was accustomed to retire alone at an early hour
in the morning and late in the evening and often at noon when at home.'8
But it was not always at
home that such retirement took place. It was even more needed as a source of
spiritual strength on a
religious journey, though sometimes it was more difficult to achieve.
Daniel Wheeler writes:
Having no opportunity of sitting down in the cabin, I
held my sitting upon deck, and, though I met with many interruptions,
yet I was favored with settlement of mind to a good degree.1'
Two other travelers to
Russia found help in this way:
Dear Allen [William Allen] and myself sat down together
as usual to wait upon the Lord. This has been our daily practice
since we left England, and mostly twice a day.
80
Dr. John Rutty found daily retirement a necessary antidote to
devoting too much thought to his medical studies:
Instituted an
hour's retirement every evening as a check to the inordinate study of nature.2'
To take an example from the Journal of a Friend of
today we find James Henderson (1855-1942) saying:
Awoke
early next morning . . . then took a walk up a hill to a fine grove where I had
some private devotion, after which I felt more calm and composed.22
Such times were useful in preparing for the meeting. Margaret Lucas
writes:
In respect to silent meetings, my spiritual exercises
at home had taught me how to improve by them.23
Spiritual exercises, whether of daily silent waiting in worship and prayer, or in regular
reading of the Bible or other religious literature, help in making the meeting
for worship mean what it should mean. If the mind all through the week, is occupied with secular affairs, it
is not easy, when the meeting for worship begins, to enter into the life of the
spirit in the time allotted.
The Quakers have been criticized as inconsistent in appointing a
particular time for the public meeting to convene. Why not let the meeting begin when the Spirit
directs? The reply to this is that worship does not begin when the
meeting begins, but only when the worshiper himself is enabled by the Spirit to
begin his worship. But
meetings for worship do sometimes begin unpredictably. The Quaker Journals contain
references to many such occasions; they were called "opportunities."
A group would be sitting in the living room of a home or around the dinner
table. One member might be
discovered to be sitting in silence with a look of solemnity on his face. The
whole group would gradually become silent. After a time, the person
whose attitude of worship had initiated the meeting would, in all probability, convey a message which he had on
his mind. A period of silence would ensue, after which the
general conversation would be resumed. Richard Jordan records a number
of such "opportunities":
81
In the evening .
. . after a time of pleasant conversation, being drawn into stillness, I was
opened in testimony and it proved a blessed opportunity like the distilling of
the precious dew of heaven upon our spirits.24
In the evening, several friends coming to see us after a
time we were drawn into silence, and our gracious Master was pleased to favor
us, as with a celestial shower, to the comfort and refreshment of our souls.25
In his poem "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim," Whittier
describes such an "opportunity":
There sometimes
silence (it were hard to tell
Who owned it
first) upon the circle fell,
Hushed Anna's
busy wheel, and laid its spell
On the black boy
who grimaced by the hearth,
To solemnize his
shining face of mirth;
Only the old
clock ticked amidst the dearth
Of sound; nor eye
was raised nor hand was stirred
In that
soul-sabbath, till at last some word
Of tender counsel
or low prayer was heard.
A regular daily period of family worship, beginning with a reading from
the Bible, was, until recently, a practice in almost every Quaker home and is still the subject
of a question listed in the Queries by which Friends annually put themselves
through a process of self-examination.*
Friends who traveled, sometimes for several years at a stretch, with a
concern to visit other meetings than their own, generally Visited also the
families which made up the meetings. When the visitor or visitors arrived—there were usually two
together—the family assembled and a solemn meeting for worship was held.
The spoken word was sometimes directed to the particular state of Some member
of the family. Often, to
the astonishment of all, the speaker seemed aware of secret thoughts and
actions of the individual. That silent worship cultivates a high degree of
sensitivity to the condition of other persons is well illustrated by many
instances recorded in the Quaker Journals.26
The Friends have throughout
their history been aware that
82 there is a form of prayer "which can
be exercised at all times," "a lamp continually lighted before the
throne of God." These two phrases are taken from the latest edition
of A Guide to True Peace, a compilation 27 made
from the writings of Fénelon, Guyon and Molinos widely used by Friends during
the nineteenth century.
As a young girl, Mary Proud, later the wife of Isaac Penington, took the
first of a series of steps which led her to the Quaker position by reflecting
on the text, "Pray without ceasing." This, she realized, could
not refer to formal prayers out of a book, the only kind she then knew. That a person can live
continually in a state of prayer, although not generally conscious of it, was
pointed out by Robert Barclay. This he calls "inward prayer"
to distinguish it from a more deliberate, conscious effort.
Inward prayer is that secret turning of the mind towards God, whereby,
being secretly touched and awakened by the light of Christ in the conscience,
and so bowed down under the sense of its iniquities, unworthiness and misery,
it looks up to God, and joining with the secret shinings of the seed of God, it
breathes towards Him and is constantly breathing forth some secret desires and
aspirations towards him. It is in this sense that we are so frequently in
scripture commanded to pray continually.28
Such a state of continuous prayer is the goal, but seldom the attainment,
of the Christian life.
