Turning to the mission field, I could quote many examples which show the way in 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 continued, “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. I 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.