First day, the 26th of 12th month. Sat the greater part of our meeting in much weakness and poverty of spirit, to which I felt perfectly resigned, believing it to be agreeable to the Lord’s will. But towards the close an honest elderly Friend, though young and small in such service, expressed a sentence or two accompanied with a degree of life, which seemed to give spring to a concern on my mind, which led to communication. The subject which opened was to show, that plainness and simplicity were the true marks and badges of the Lord’s people and children in every age of the world, witnessed to by the true nature and analogy of all things in the universe; and confirmed by the testimony of the grace and good spirit of God through his servants in all the generations of mankind. The youth were exhorted and tenderly invited to submit to the _cross of Christ_, with the assurance assented to by the experience of all the faithful; that if they bowed willingly to his yoke, it would become not only easy but delightful. But alas! how true is that declaration of the prophet: “who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Certainly to none but the obedient, which number, if we are to judge by their fruits, is doubtless very small. Second, third, and fourth days. Spent mostly in my temporal business, but not without a watchful care lest it should engage too much of my attention. The evenings were partly spent in reading the scriptures, in which I greatly delight. How excellent are those records! although old, yet they seem ever new. The prophecy of Micah was a part of my present reading; what a dignified sense and clear view he had of the gospel state and worship; and how exceedingly it lessened the service and worship of the law in his view, in the clear sense given him of its full and complete abolishment, with all its shadowy rituals; when he was led to set forth its insufficiency, in this exalted language: “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” No, none, nor all of these were sufficient to give access to the divine presence, or to the divine law under the gospel; they being only shadows, and therefore could only give access to the outward law and outward lawgiver Moses, and the law and ordinances given by him; which were also shadows of the true substance. For Moses, and his outward law and ordinances, stood in the same relation to outward Israel, under the shadowy dispensation, as Christ the spiritual Moses, with his spiritual law written in the heart, does to his spiritual Israel under the gospel; “which is a dispensation not” of shadow, but of substance; as is clearly shown by the sequel of the testimony of Micah above alluded