[12]In what follows there is, indeed, no “doctrine” of any kind; no attempt, I mean, to offer formulated or authorized teaching. I have endeavoured to show how in my own experience the intellectual difficulties with which the subject is surrounded did, when honestly and patiently faced, prove in due time the means of purifying, not of quenching, that true spirit of prayer which is indeed the very breath of our inner life. I trust that none will misunderstand my outspokenness in stating those difficulties. They are, and in these days must be, freely recognized. Unless we who have a witness to bear for the Author of spiritual worship are willing to face them, our witness will fail to reach those who most sorely need it. I am driven once more to appeal to “something more than candour” in my readers for a right interpretation of my struggle to unfold thoughts which tax my powers of utterance to the uttermost, and which I yet dare not withhold. [13]“Apology,” Prop. xiii. [14]See Appendix, Note B, for a short account of the “Home Mission Committee.” [15]I believe, as I have already said, that few people outside the Society are aware of the extent to which the practice is still continued of Friends who feel themselves called to the ministry travelling, as we say, “in the service of truth,” or “under a sense of religious concern,” not only from place to place in England, but also all over the world. A remarkable variety of “services” are in this way spontaneously undertaken, and carried out, sometimes quite alone, sometimes with the help of one or more Friends “liberated” to accompany the minister. And those small meetings where there is but little vocal ministry are objects of special care and concern to the larger meetings, of which they form a part; and many Friends make a practice of visiting them from time to time. There was also a special service to which ministering Friends formerly often felt themselves called, and which, though much disused of late years, is not altogether extinct—that of paying “religious visits to families” in particular districts or, in other words, of holding meetings for worship and mutual edification from house to house—generally, but not invariably, amongst our own members only. These visits were occasions specially adapted and felt suitable for the exercise of that peculiar gift of “speaking to the condition of” individuals which some Friends (especially in former times) seem to have possessed in a remarkable degree. I believe them to have been of deep value when rightly conducted by the few possessing a real qualification for such delicate and at times searching services, but perhaps peculiarly liable to degenerate into what was neither edifying nor acceptable.