Jim Fussell
Silence is, again, a very important condition for the great inner action we call worship.
So long as we are content to speak our own patois, to live in the din of our narrow private affairs, we shall not arrive at the lofty goal of the soul's quest. We shall hear the noises of our outer universe and nothing more.
When we learn how to center down into the stillness and quiet, to listen with our souls for the whisperings of Life and Truth, to bring all our inner powers into parallelism with the set of divine currents, we shall hear tidings from the inner world at the heart and center of which is God.
But by far the most influential condition for effective worship is groupsilence – the waiting, seeking, expectant attitude permeating and penetrating a gathered company of persons. We hardly know in what the group-influence consists, or why the presence of others heightens the sensitive, responsive quality in each soul, but there can be no doubt of the fact.
There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the living silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more quick to feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them would be in isolation.
Somehow we are able to “lend our minds out" as Browning puts it, or at least to contribute toward the formation of an atmosphere that favors communion and cooperation with God.
If this is so, if each assists all and all in turn assist each, our responsibilities in meetings for worship are very real and very great and we must try to realize that there is a form of ministry which is dynamic even when the lips are sealed.
Rufus Jones, Inner Life, Chapter 4, 1916, p. 103-104.
