I doubt whether any other Protestant sect recognizes the preciousness of the discipline of suffering as it is recognized by Friends. That it is only through deep experience, both of inward exercises and of outward sorrows, that any one can become fully qualified to hold forth the Word of life to others, is signified by the familiar Quaker expression, “a deeply baptized minister.” So strongly have some Friends felt this necessity that they have come to distrust, if not to condemn, whatever appears to them “superficial” or easily produced in ministry. A holy awe, deepening at times, I believe, into even too anxious a restraint, has ever surrounded the exercise of our emphatically “free” ministry—free from all human and outward moulding, precisely in order that it may be the more sacredly reserved to the Divine and inward moulding and restraining as well as impelling power. The danger of our profoundly “inward” ideal is, of course, in its liability to generate scruples, and a degree of morbid introspectiveness, especially in the exercise of this particular gift. Recognizing fully the deep truth that many “baptisms” have to be passed through by those to whom the priceless gift of ministry is entrusted, and that peculiar trials are apt to precede every special replenishing of the sacred vessel, Friends have sometimes gone on to hold it almost a profanation to speak in meetings for worship except as the immediate result of some such painful exercises. It is easy to see the danger of any such limitation of the manner in which the Divine pleasure may be intimated to individuals. It seems both probable and agreeable to experience that a truly spiritual ministry should vary greatly both in its form and in its degree of depth, in various minds. There is obviously a childlike as well as a profound utterance of prayer and praise, and surely of “testimony” or “prophecy” also. But to recognize this diversity is not in the slightest degree to lower our idea of the indispensableness of a Divine warrant for utterance. The scrupulous jealousy which would limit all ministry to one type is a very different thing from that spirit of holy fear which must in this matter, above all, be the beginning of wisdom. I think that those who are the most ready to accept with reverence whatever is offered in simple obedience, the most desirous themselves to learn simply to obey, will also be the first to feel that no one should venture to break the silence in which inward prayer may be arising from other hearts except under the influence (to use the time-honoured Quaker expression) of “a fresh anointing from above.” The nearest approach to a description of what we hold to be a right ministry would seem to be—words spoken during, and arising from, actual communion with God. CHAPTER V. SPECIAL TESTIMONIES.