(An Extract)

I am inclined to think that this feeling in reference to ministry is intimately connected with a deep, personal longing after more profound, rich, abiding communion with the person of Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost. …. Nothing is of any value that does not spring from personal love to and communion with Christ Himself. We may have Scripture at our finger ends, we may be able to preach with remarkable fluency-a fluency which unpracticed spirits may easily enough mistake for power, but oh ! if our hearts are not drinking deeply at the fountain-head-if they are not enlivened and invigorated by the realization of the love of Christ, it will all end in flash and smoke. I have learnt …. to be increasingly dissatisfied with every thing, whether in myself or in others, short of abiding, real, deep, divinely inwrought communion with and conformity to the blessed Master.

" Crotchets I despise; mere opinions I dread; controversy I shrink from; all isms I esteem as utterly worthless. But …. I long to know more of His own precious person, His work, and His glory. And then, oh, to live for Him, to labor, testify, preach, and pray, and all for Christ, and by the working of His grace in our hearts.