Compiled by Marshall Massey
The gathered meeting — the state of corporate worship in which the presence of God becomes palpably manifest to those assembled — is the defining experience of unprogrammed Quaker practice. No amount of reading or explanation can prepare the newcomer for what it actually feels like. In January 2005, Marshall Massey, a historically grounded Quaker theologian and longtime contributor to soc.religion.quaker, responded to a question about what Quakerism is actually like by assembling five first-hand accounts drawn from across three centuries of Friends' experience. He prefaced them with a quiet word of personal testimony: "What you say here is particularly true of a 'gathered' or 'covered' meeting — one at which the presence of God becomes manifest. Nothing one might imagine in advance can equal the actual experience."
The five accounts gathered here span 1653 to 1890 and describe encounters with the gathered meeting from the outside (approaching Quakers for the first time) and from within (the experienced Friend). Together they form one of the finest anthologies of the gathered meeting experience assembled on the early internet. The witnesses are Anthony Pearson, Robert Barclay, Thomas Story, John Gratton, and Caroline E. Stephen — each one, in Massey's words, testifying to something that "one might imagine in advance" but which "nothing can equal" until it is felt.
In my personal experience, what you say here is particularly true of a "gathered" or "covered" meeting — one at which the presence of God becomes manifest. Nothing one might imagine in advance can equal the actual experience.
— Marshall Massey
Anthony Pearson, 1653
Anthony Pearson was a magistrate and justice of the peace in County Durham who encountered George Fox and the early Quakers in 1652–1653. His letter describes the moment of his convincement — the Quaker term for the spiritual crisis and conversion that led one to join Friends.
All my religion was but the hearing of the ear, the believing and talking of a God and Christ in heaven or a place at a distance, I knew not where. Oh, how gracious was the Lord to me in carrying me to Judge Fell's to see the wonders of His power and wisdom, a family walking in the fear of the Lord, conversing daily with Him, crucified to the world and living only to God. I was so confounded, all my knowledge and wisdom became folly; my mouth was stopped, my conscience convinced and the secrets of my heart were made manifest, and that Lord was discovered to be near, whom I ignorantly worshipped.
— Anthony Pearson, letter (1653)
Robert Barclay, 1676
Robert Barclay (1648–1690), the great Quaker theologian and author of the Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1676), here describes how he came to accept the truth of Quakerism — not through argument, but through the direct experience of the Spirit's "secret power" in silent worship.
For ... not by strength of arguments, or by a particular disquisition of each doctrine, and convincement of my understanding thereby, came [I] to receive and bear witness of the truth, but by being secretly reached by this life [of the Spirit]; for when I came into the silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up, and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed.
— Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Prop. XI §7 (1676–78)
Thomas Story, 1691
Thomas Story (c. 1662–1742) was a lawyer and Quaker minister who travelled extensively in America and wrote a detailed Journal. He describes here his first encounter with a gathered meeting of Friends — the "heavenly and watery cloud" that broke into "a sweet abounding shower of celestial rain."
Not long after I had sat down among them, that heavenly and watery cloud overshadowing my mind brake into a sweet abounding shower of celestial rain, and the greatest part of the meeting was broken together, dissolved and comforted in the same divine and holy presence and influence of the true, holy and heavenly Lord; which was divers times repeated before the meeting ended. And, in the same way, by the same divine and holy power, I had been often favoured with before, when alone; and when no eye but that of heaven beheld or any knew, but the Lord himself; who in infinite mercy had been pleased to bestow so great a favour.
And, as the many small springs and streams descending into a proper place and forming a river become more deep and weighty; even so thus meeting with a people gathered of the living God into a sense of the enjoyment of his divine and living presence, through that blessed and holy medium the Mind of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Saviour of the world, I felt an increase of the same joy of the salvation of God.
The meeting being ended, the Peace of God ... remained as a holy canopy over my mind in a silence out of the reach of all words; and where no idea but the Word himself can be conceived. But being invited, together with the ministering Friend, to the house of the ancient Widow Hall, I went willingly with them; but the sweet silence ... still remaining I had nothing to say to any of them till he was pleased to draw the curtain and veil his presence; and then I found my mind pure and in a well-bounded liberty of innocent conversation with them.
— Thomas Story, Journal: describing his first experience of a gathered meeting of Friends, 1691
John Gratton, c. 1700
John Gratton (1641–1711), a Quaker minister from Derbyshire, England, here recalls his first encounter with a Quaker meeting for worship. His account is notable for its plainness: the words are few, but the presence is total.
There was little said in that meeting, but I sat still in it, and was bowed in spirit before the Lord, and felt him with me, and with Friends, and saw they had their minds retired, and waited to feel his presence and power to operate in their hearts, and that they were spiritual worshippers, who worship God in spirit and truth; and I was sensible, that they felt and tasted of the Lord's goodness, as at that time I did; and though few words were spoken, yet I was well satisfied with the meeting, and the presence of the Lord was in the midst of us, and more true comfort, refreshment, and satisfaction did I meet with from the Lord, in that meeting, than ever I had in any meeting in all my life before.
— John Gratton, A Journal of the Life of that Ancient Servant of Christ
Caroline E. Stephen, 1890
Caroline E. Stephen (1834–1909), author of Quaker Strongholds (1890), was the aunt of Virginia Woolf and came to Quakerism as an adult after a long search for authentic worship. Her account — the most literary in this collection — describes the "strangely subduing" effect of gathered silence on a searching but sceptical mind.
What I felt I wanted in a place of worship was a refuge, or at least the opening of a doorway towards the refuge, from doubts and controversies.... Its primary attraction for me was in the fact that it pledged me to nothing, and left me altogether undisturbed to seek for help in my own way; But before long I began to be aware that the united and prolonged silences had a far more direct and powerful effect than this. They soon began to exercise a strangely subduing and softening effect upon my mind. There used, after a while, to come upon me a deep sense of awe, as we sat together and waited — for what? In my heart of hearts I knew in whose Name we were met together, and who was truly in the midst of us. Never before had His influence revealed itself to me with so much power as in those quiet assemblies.
— Caroline E. Stephen, "Worship," Quaker Strongholds (1890)
Colophon
Five testimonies compiled by Marshall Massey and posted to soc.religion.quaker on January 31, 2005, in response to a question about the nature of Quaker worship. Witnesses: Anthony Pearson (1653), Robert Barclay (1676), Thomas Story (1691), John Gratton (c. 1700), Caroline E. Stephen (1890).
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]
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