Fifth day. Attended our monthly meeting. It was an exercising season, especially the meeting for worship, which I think was much hurt by the communication of a Friend in the ministry, who was this day with us. It was attended with so much mere creaturely warmth and animation, as to render it unacceptable, and, as I apprehended, hurtful to the meeting, and the cause it was intended to advance. What a pity it is that any who apprehend themselves called to this very important work, should make such grievous mistakes, and wound the minds of the living sensible members.
Sixth day. Attended our select preparative meeting of Ministers and Elders. It was, I think, a season of profitable exercise, in which some of the hidden things of Esau, or the first nature, were searched out and exposed.
Seventh day. Laboured hard in my harvest field; and, although sixty-six years of age, I found I could wield the scythe nearly as in the days of my youth. It was a day of thankful and delightful contemplation. My heart was filled with thankfulness and gratitude to the blessed Author of my existence, in a consideration of his providential care over me, in preserving me in health, and in the possession of my bodily powers; the exercise of which were still affording me both profit and delight: and I was doubly thankful for the continued exercise of my mental faculties, not only in instructing me how to exert and rightly employ my bodily powers, in the most useful and advantageous manner, but also in contemplating the works of nature and Providence, in the blessings and beauties of the field; a volume containing more delightful and profitable instruction, than all the volumes of mere learning and science in the world.
What a vast portion of the joys and comforts of life do the idle and slothful deprive themselves of, by running into cities and towns, to avoid labouring in the field; not considering that this is one of the principal sources, that the gracious Creator of the universe has appointed to his creature man, from whence he may derive great temporal happiness and delight. It also opens the largest and best field of exercise to the contemplative mind, by which it may be prepared to meet, when this mortal puts on immortality, those immortal joys that will ever be the lot of the faithful and industrious.