Such a pause, whenever it occurs in the company of the Quakers, may be considered as a devotional act. For the subject, which occasions it, is always of a serious or religious nature. The workings in the mind of the meditating person are considered either as the offspring of a solemn reflection upon that subject, suddenly and almost involuntarily as it were produced by duty, or as the immediate offspring of the agency of the spirit. And an habitual silence is as much the consequence, as if the person present had been at a place of worship.
It may be observed, however, that such pauses seldom or never occur in ordinary companies, or where Quakers ordinarily visit one another. When they take place, it is mostly when a minister is present, and when such a minister is upon a religious visit to families of a certain district. In such a case such religious pauses and exhortations are not unfrequent. A man however may be a hundred times in the company of the Quakers, and never be present at one of them, and never know indeed that they exist at all.
_Custom before meals--ancients formerly made an oblation to Vesta before their meals--Christians have substituted grace--Quakers agree with others in the necessity of grace or thankfulness-but do not adopt it as a devotional act, unless it comes from the heart--allow a silent pause for religious impressions on these occasions--observations on a Scotch grace._
There was a time in the early ages of Greece, when men apparently little better than beasts of prey, could not meet at entertainments, without quarrelling about the victuals before them. The memory of this circumstance is well preserved in the expressions of early writers. In process of time however, regulations began to be introduced, and quarrels to be prevented, by the institution of the office of a divider or distributer of the feast, who should carve the food into equal portions, and help every individual to his proper share. Hence the terms [Greek: Aatfrn] or equal feast, which so frequently occur in Homer, and which were in use in consequence of the division just mentioned, were made use of to shew, that the feasts, then spoken of by him, were different from those of former times. When Homer wishes to describe persons as more civilized than others, he describes them as having this equal feast. That is, men did not appear at these feasts, like dogs and wolves, and instantly devour whatever they could come at, and tear each other to pieces in the end; but they waited till their different portions of meat had been assigned them, and then ate them in amity and peace.