Most of this week I was occupied about home. Attended our preparative meeting on fifth day, which being the time of answering our queries to go forward to the yearly meeting, I was led to make several remarks to Friends to stir them up to more faithfulness, in order that we might profit by the queries, and be prepared to answer them with more clearness and propriety, according to truth and justice. First day, the 13th. Sat our meeting to-day in silence. This week our monthly meeting was held, at which the state of society as represented by the answers to the queries from our preparative meetings was attended to, and a summary thereof forwarded to the quarterly meeting to be held the following week. This order of reading and answering the queries quarterly, if rightly attended to, and Friends were generally kept lively in spirit, and were zealously engaged for the promotion of truth, would, I believe, be productive of much good to the society: but alas! there are so many who seem lulled asleep in the lap of the world, and their minds clothed with so much indifferency, that it is to them but a dead lifeless form. Surely these reap little or no advantage from their right of membership among us. Sixth day. Was our preparative meeting of Ministers and Elders, in which nothing transpired worthy of notice. First day, the 20th. Our meeting to-day, as well as at some former times, has been rather heavy and dull. In the course of this week I attended our quarterly meeting, held at this time at New-York. It was in general rather a low time, although not without some manifestations of divine favour: therefore we had no cause for murmuring but rather of rejoicing, in that we were not cast off and forgotten. First day, the 27th. Sat our meeting again in silence. My present allotment is to be mostly at home, generally engaged in temporal concerns for myself and others. But, I trust, instead of increasing my love to the world and the things of it, I am fast weaning from it, and my love continually increasing and strengthening to higher and better objects; as my attention to the world and its cares arises from necessity and duty, and not from love, except that I love to do my duty in all respects to God my Creator, and man my fellow creature, believing that there is no real Christianity without it. Our fifth day meeting was quiet and solemn, wherein I had to remind Friends that it was not enough to say with Peter, when queried of by his Master whether he loved him, “yea Lord,” for this is no more than every professor is ready to say, although they may be quite void of any true sense thereof; but we must come to know him and love him in such manner, as when brought to a full trial of our faith and love, we can say as Peter did in his third answer: “Lord thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” For this is the situation of mind which prepares to be at his disposal, and to endure hardness for his sake in the Christian warfare.