Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1858-1860, 1858-09-11
From DE Boston Eue,.srg Transcript, SEPT. 4.
A Quaker Meeting.

1t was our privilege upon recent Sunday.
to attend public worship in Quaker
Cathedral" in the very pleasant village of
Amesbury, Mass. We went in company with
Whittier. the renowned Quaker poet, whose
literary fame extends across the Atlantic. and
whose purity of life and rare fidelity to his
principles command universal respect. The
friends attached to the Friends Meeting
House in Boston are far different from those
connected with a Quaker church in rural
village where the worshipers follow agricultu-
raj pursuits and the birds at the season of the
year do the singing for the meetings on first
day" We never saw so neat place of
public assembly as the church at Amesbury
the very floor is cleaner than the walls of
many of our city churches. The little folks
present were models of propriety, and the
whole atmosphere of the place was favorable
to reflection and meditation. The service
consisted of the most profound silence. a
short but excellent address, and brief COM
prehensive prayer. We never have witnessed
a more devout or thoughtful assembly.
The small congregation of worshipers were
not inaptly called Friends" The mild and
amiable looks of those present gave evidence
of calm and tranquil souls and characters in
which were blended fraternal love, universal
charity and moral rectitude. We were in the
church not only without priests but without
sacraments-no pealing organ, no trained
and cultivated singers, no reading of the
Sacred Word, no hymn books, no written
discourse-tbere was not even pulpit, that
great bulwark of Professionalism, in the sane
tuary! But we felt that we were in truly
Christian assembly.
Those about us, according to the testimony
of the ''world's people," are good neighbors.
good men and women, good Christians.
They lead lives of unostentatious and simple
goodness. We would recommend visit to a
Quaker church to those of our city friends
who are in the vicinity of one during their
summer vacations. The silence of the
assembly will be novel experience to
persons accustomed to have the outward
senses constantly appealed to. One of the
earliest, as well as one of the most protracted,
silent meetings named in history is recorded
in tie book of Job, where Eliphaz, Bildad
and Zophar remained with Job ''seven days
and nights, and none spake word unto him,
for they saw that his grief was great"
A story is related of a person, who told a
Quaker that the silence of meeting of the
Society of Friends was enough to kill the
devil; to which the Quaker replied, that it
was the very thing the silent assembly were
trying to do.
An English Archbishop has stated that the
religion seems to have made the deepest inn
preston on the Quakers. Whittier has beau
tisully said
The Quaker OF the olden time
How calm and firm, and true,
UnspOtted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through;
The lust Of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The lore Of purity icittiH.
As we sat within the plain walls of the
modest "meeting-house," and saw faces upon
which "the dove sat visibly broOdIng," we
thought of Charles Lambs charming essay
upon such an assemblage, and the following
words of the gentle Ella haunted our medi-
Ia tiOnS:
Wouldst thou know what true peace and
quiet mean ;wOuldst thou find refuge from the
noises and clamors of the multitude; wouldst
thou enjoy at once solitude and society,
wouldst thou possesses the depth of thine own
spirit in Stiffness without being shut out from
the cOnsolatory faces of thy species; wOuldst
thou be alone and yet accompanied; solitary,
yet not desOlate; singular, yet not without
some one to keep thee in countenance, 60 in
to Quaker meeting. To pace alone in the
cloisters or side aisles of some cathedral, time
stricken,