He admonished Friends in meeting, and especially ministers, to "get inward, and wait in their proper gifts." The evident theory was that by waiting, and possibly wrestling with the manifestation it was possible to tell whether it was from below or above. Still, there was not an entire absence of the human and even the rational in Elias Hicks' theory of the ministry as it worked out in practice. He had evidently discovered the psychological side of public speaking to the extent of recognizing that even the preacher was influenced by his audience. When he was in Philadelphia in 1816, before the troubled times had arrived, he tells us that "it proved a hard trying season: one of them [ministers] was exercised in public testimony, and although she appeared to labor fervently, yet but little life was felt to arise during the meeting. This makes the work hard for the poor exercised ministers, who feel the necessity publicly to advocate the cause of truth and righteousness, and yet obtain but little relief, by reason of the deadness and indifference of those to whom they are constrained to minister. I found it my place to sit silent and suffer with the seed."[41] [41] Journal, p. 271. In a personal letter, while on one of his visits, Elias Hicks gave the following impression of the meeting and the ministry: "To-day was the quarterly meeting of discipline. It was large, and I think in the main a favored instructive season, although considerably hurt by a pretty long, tedious communication, not sufficiently clothed with life to make it either comfortable or useful. So it is, the Society is in such a mixed and unstable state, and many who presume to be teachers in it, are so far from keeping on the original foundation, the light and spirit of truth, and so built up in mere tradition, that I fear a very great portion of the ministry among us, is doing more harm than good, and leading back to the weak and beggarly elements, to which they seem desirous to be again in bondage."[42] [42] Letter to his wife, dated Purchase, N. Y., Tenth month 29, 1823. This is not the only case of his measuring the general effect of the ministry. In Seventh month, 1815, he attended Westbury Quarterly Meeting, and of its experiences he wrote as follows: