Second day. This day spent in manual labour, a less proportion of which would suffice for me, if every other man was disposed to do his part: but the poor and the indolent must and will be helped.
Third and fourth days. Mostly occupied in my temporal concerns, with attendant poverty of spirit, and a longing after spiritual food, free from condemnation.
Fifth day. Attended our preparative meeting, at which our queries were read, and answers prepared to be sent to the yearly meeting; but too much, I fear, in a formal way, and may, if not well guarded against, become a snare to us, as the brazen serpent was to Israel.
Sixth day. I can say little more than that I wearied myself with hard labour in assisting my workmen to build stone fences. In the evening read Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in which I think he has fully shown the final end and abolishment of all outward ordinances and observations in matters of religion.
Seventh day. This day I spent mostly in manual labour. Some little interruption of mind by the improper conduct of one of my labourers. How hard a thing it is to find, in such persons, honesty, industry, and a suitable deportment, united in the same individual; and yet it is no more than ought to be in every man, and it is always their duty and interest to be so.
First day. At our meeting to-day the fire seemed very low on the altar. Dulness, and a spirit of heaviness were too predominant with many; occasioned, no doubt, by a too near attachment to the world, and the things of it, with some, and by too much lightness and vanity with others. Alas, how much good seed is lost by the wayside, in stony places, and on thorny ground. Just at the close, I was engaged to call the attention of the people to the necessity of having always a proper point, or object to aim at, a right centre to all their hopes and desires; and that God was the only proper object for man to set his heart upon, as the doing his will is the whole sum and substance of all true religion and worship.
Second, third and fourth days. Spent in usual labour, with a peaceful mind.
Fifth day. Attended our monthly meeting to-day at which I received a certificate of their unity and concurrence with a prospect, which I had previously opened to them, of performing a religious visit to Friends and others, in some parts of the yearly meetings of Pennsylvania and Baltimore, and the adjacent parts of Virginia. How humbling it is to the natural man to be called to the performance of those duties, for which he feels himself destitute of every right means and capacity: he is therefore brought under the necessity of trusting in, and depending upon, that invisible arm of power, which is beyond the reach of all mortals to command or controul.
Sixth day. Felt much poverty of spirit at our preparative meeting of Ministers and Elders. How necessary it is for such as fill those stations in society, to dig faithfully with their staves, like the princes and nobles of Israel formerly, by the direction of the lawgiver, saying, “spring up, O well, sing ye unto it;” that so they may be favoured both with the upper and the nether spring: for how otherwise can they be good waymarks and ensamples to the flock, over whom the Holy Ghost has made all the rightly qualified of this description overseers, and who will have to give an account of the flock under their charge.