IMPRESSIONS OF A MEETING-IIOUSE.
IT is not necessary to mention the name or situation of the
meeting-house, but you must know a little about its appear- ance. I saw at a glance that it was a somewhat more carnal structure than the usual Friends' Meeting-House. That is a square, prim, dingy, brick building, belonging to no order of architecture, surrounded generally by a high blind wall, shutting out the din of the outer world, and standing in a small, trim court- Yard. You may expect to see a few flags in front of the door,- " the Quakers' Exchange," as it is called,—where the Friends, after meeting, congregate to talk over the most innocent gossip of the week. This was not like the little Yorkshire or Cumberland meeting-houses which 1 had seen,—whitewashed ; marked by a simplicity that recalled the days when George Fox " had a con- cern to visit friends" ; and surrounded by its modest grave- yard, where lay unrecorded, but not forgotten, some of the worthies of the earlier days of Quakerism. This was not quite like these peaceful meeting-places of a peaceful people. There was about its gates some of the bustle and stir that showed that its congregation was gathered from the dwellers in a considerable manufacturing town. Carriages drawn by the sleekest of horses drove up in quick succession, and footmen slammed the doors with an extra bang, perhaps with the feeling, "Let us make a noise while we may." All—Friends on foot, as well as carriage- folk—exchanged greetings and shook hands. One could not help being struck by the large size of the building for the number of attendants,—committee-rooms, anterooms, and lavatories ex- plained this peculiarity. On the threshold, males and females, husbands and wives, were inexorably torn asunder. The ladies entered a retiring-room, where they were relieved of their cloaks by an attendant Friend, who was kindly ,and ungrammatically greeted by all, rich and poor, with the remark, " How are thee, Rebecca Jones'?" The gentlemen went to the right into an ante- room, where a few minutes were spent in mild secular talk, and whence they emerged in pairs. The body of the building consisted of a large, plain room, cool and airy. Of course no Bibles, hymn-books, or prayer-books were to be seen, for the Quakers' maxim, as one of them expressed it, is, "I do not carry my prayers in my pocket ;" and the only thing to reassure a Churchman that he had to do with his common
Christianity was the sight of abundance of hassocks. As a mere publican, I was at a loss to know what to do with my hat, taking off which might be construed into an act of indecorum, and equivalent to treating the meeting as a mere
steeple-house. But most, I observed, were uncovered, arid so I was soon at my ease. The ladies—all of them comely, and many much more—sat on one side ; while the gentlemen, with vigorous and thoughtful faces, sat on another, in grave and parallel lines. In front of them was " the gallery," two rows of seats raised a trifle above the level of the floor. In the back row sat the Approved Ministers, male and female, "the weighty, seasoned, and sub- stantial Friends ;" in the front, sat the elders and overseers, male and female too. One or two female elders were shut up in true Friends' bonnets ; those bonnets, placed in a prominent position, were as much, I could see, relics of the past as the helmets hung on a baronial wall. In the garbs there was nothing to suggest faith- fulness to the query touching " plainness of speech, behaviour, and apparel." Perhaps if anything struck me as regards the dress of those around. me, it was a certain costly simplicity, an intrinsic solidity about the silks, an unostentatious soundness of texture and richness of fabric. Perhaps these dresses were in accordance with the precepts of the " Book of Discipline ;" they certainly harmonised with the advice of Polonius,— " Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expross'a in fancy ; rich, not gaudy."
In getting rid of some ancient peculiarities, and in taking to but- tons, the Friends have hit upon a really rational dress.
The service began,---or rather, it did not begin ; all that was done was to sink into general silence. And what a silence I I have heard of the stillness of the central seas or the silence of the grave, or " the voice of hushed-up life." I have sat besides voiceless tarns, in solitary places among the hills. I know something of the awful stillness brooding over moun- tain-tops, and I vividly remember the dumb aspect of things when I once crawled on hands and feet far from the daylight through the old workings and up the gloomy galleries of a deserted mine. But silence has its inner and outer chambers, its depths and lower depths, and we seemed as we sat to be borne to its nethermost caverns. In the first five minutes, the rustle of silks and the shuffling of feet settling into position had died away. Another two minutes more, and the short, devout cough which is the exordium of all services had ceased. Another minute more, and the fall of a pin would have sounded as a profane act. Henceforth I lost count of time ; if I was con- scious at all, it was of the outwardly strange fact that while human beings usually meet to. talk, these good people had left their homes and travelled far in order to be silent together and enjoy gregarious quiet. But how much was there to be said for this silence, this lending our hearts and spirits wholly to the influence of mild-minded melancholy." One truly tasted the pleasure of deep repose, and one's inner spirit seemed to sing, " There is no joy but calm." Some Friends, it is said, think that this silence is but an accident of their worship, not fit for these times. To me, Barclay's idea seems higher and holier ;— " The great work of one and all ought to be to wait upon God, and retiring out of their own thoughts and imaginations, to feel the Lord's presence, and know a gathering into his name indeed, where IIe is in the midst, according to his promise." " Silence is, and must necessarily be, a special and principal part of God's worship." Let the Friends cleave fast to these wise words. Let them leave to others noisy modes of service, of their own plea- sure and appointment. Time will not soon make old, and certainly not in these babbling days, the truth that in silent waiting and inward communing the deepest aspirations of the soul breathe forth. How many of one's friends, and how many public men too, did one wish to take and bathe—persistently bathe—in this cool stream ! What medicine to the bruised and wearied spirit, and " hearts worn out with many wars," these moments might minister ! And what a high-road to charity and lock-fast gates against envy and all evil passions 1 how easy, in these circum- stances, to preserve that "love, coolness, gentleness, and dear unity" which Edward Burrough in his parting words inculcates. The testimonies of the early Friends, how in tribulation they had renewed their strength and received inward consolation and refreshment in this "pure, still waiting upon God in the spirit," as Alexander Parker expresses it, in one of his letters, became credible as one sat there. Truth compels me to add that I observed closely the demeanour of my neighbours. A very few were not quite edifying. One or two twirled their thumbs with gentle assiduity. One dozed the doze of the righteous. Ho might, perhaps, plead ancient authority, for the old Friends had to de- plore " sleeping in meeting " as " a grief and exercise to all the faithful among us." Some of the members of the younger generation kept eyeing their boots, rubbing their rings, or abstractedly watching flies on the ceiling. But those who in-
dulged in these excitements were exceptions. Of the great majority, I might say that their deportment was such, to quote the " Book of Discipline," as to "demonstrate that they were in earnest in the great duty of waiting upon and worshipping God in spirit."
At last, much to my regret, the silence was broken. One of the audience, if the term may be used, of long standing in the Truth knelt and " appeared in supplication." His prayer was in no way striking, not more fervid and living than the prayers of a hireling Ministry. When it was ended, another period of rapt silence followed ; then another gentleman rose to speak. Of the sermon there was much to say in praise. It was homely, and expressed in those simple Saxon terms which Friends, to their credit, faithfully use. The morality inculcated was prac- tical,—there were no declamatory outbursts, no false sentiment or straining at effect ; and considering that the discourse was improvised, it was strangely coherent. It was manifestly the sincere, unpremeditated expression of the working of an earnest mind. But one peculiarity was very pronounced,--a mixture of Biblical and mercantile phraseology. The speaker's thoughts were always spiritual, but his words were at times a little earthy. He argued a little too much that sin was a worthless investment, and that sacrifice meant lending on very safe security. From some saying in the Old Testament he drew a moral which would have been better understood in the surrounding manufacturing town than in ancient Judea. One or two of the mixed metaphors were so uncouth as to remind the writer of two sentences of a piece of solemn advice given by a pious gentle- Man to a.friend in need :—" May the blessing of Heaven rest over you! May next April turn up trumps." The sermon was, in fact, a little disappointing, too like many I had heard at what Quakers circuitously call "public parish places of worship." I dozed at times, and as I did, the bare meeting-house in the secluded lane was somewhat forgotten, and my thoughts reverted to earlier days of Quakerism, and its sweet, mellow memories. Had I been listening to the true tones of the early Friends? Would James Parcel or the saintly Edward Burrough—be who declared his prison bars had become jewels in his oyes—or those who gave public and lively testimony to the death in "bloody Boston,'' have recognised such preaching as full of savour? It did not recall the description of Josiah Coale's potent ministration ; " his declaration was to the ungodly like an axe or hammer, as a sword sharp and piercing, being mostly attended with an eminent appearance of the dreadful power of the Lord, to the cutting down many tall cedars, and making the strong oaks to bow." It did not breathe that gentle, reasonable mysticism which made Ell- wood and John Woolman the spiritual countrymen of Vaughan. There was missing that bold, prophetic tone, with its imperious "Thus sayeth the Lord," to be found in the utterances of that simple, unlettered husbandman, Marmaduke Stephenson, he who begins the story of his call in these Dantesque words,—" In the beginning of the year 1665, I was at the plough in the cast part of Yorkshire, near the place of my outward habitation, and as 1 walked after the plough I was filled with the love of God, which did ravish my heart when I felt it," &c. The sermon I had heard was not the sort of testimony which would have come from that valiant Friend, William Gibson,—now a soldier, then a preacher and shoemaker, despitefully treated, suffering hard imprisonment and the spoliation of his goods, and consoling himself for abuse at the hands of all men by writing " An Epistle of Love." I was pondering these things, and wondering whether comfort and prosperity had killed the old life, when one elder, first looking furtively at another to see whether he was ready, shook hands ; all
rose and went out ; and my first meeting was at an end. X.
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