Can I not prevail on some here to-night to accept Mary's happy choice, to choose that good part which shall not be taken away from them?
SUNDAY, March 4. Meeting at Nesselrodt's. John 13 is read. Stay all night at James Fitzwater's, and come home next day.
FRIDAY, March 16. Jacob Ritchey in the Gap is taken with a very severe attack of cramp colic. I relieve him speedily and effectually by means of active treatment. I found him in a state of almost indescribable distress from the acute pains he had. I decided very quickly, after a brief examination, that the cause of his trouble lay in a spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the bowels. The powerfully antispasmodic action of lobelia and steaming caused the nerves to let go their abnormal grip, and he was well.
SATURDAY, March 31. Council meeting at Shaver's meetinghouse below Woodstock in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Brother George Shaver is established in the ministry, and Brother Neyhiser advanced.
FRIDAY, April 13. Council meeting in the Brush meetinghouse. Jacob Miller, son of Daniel Miller, is elected to the ministry of the Word.
FRIDAY, April 20. On this day Brother Kline, in company with Brother Benjamin Bowman, started on a journey to some of the western counties of Virginia, now West Virginia. The first day they got to the widow Miller's, on Briery Branch, in the southwest corner of Rockingham County. The next day they went through North River Gap and got to Henry Sanger's, in Highland County, Virginia, where they had night meeting. Here Brother Bowman delivered a discourse, which, according to the outlines in the Diary, was so pregnant with original thought characteristic of the man that I will endeavor to expand its contracted form and give it a more readable shape. TEXT.--"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him: If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
There was great diversity of feeling among the Jews in Christ's day, just as there is among Gentiles now. Some were flint; others, clay in the hand of the potter. "The common people heard him gladly; but the scribes and Pharisees resisted the counsel of God against themselves." If we read the entire chapter carefully it will give us a more impressive view of and a clearer insight into the stubborn hardness of the Jewish heart than any other single chapter that I can now think of. The Jews were so wedded to their worldly sanctuary, so in love with the representative forms of worship, that they could receive no just ideas of genuine spiritual worship. Let me draw a comparison here. Many people seem to think themselves rich when they have plenty of money either in hand or standing out on interest. They think so from the fact that money represents every exchangeable commodity of worldly goods. In it they behold the supply of every bodily want, the service they need and the honor they crave.