EXTRACTS

The check to service is the lack of self-denial, and there is very little of it amongst us now.

J. B. Stoney (Vol. 2, p.268)

JK Why does it say, “When thou art invited by any one to a wedding”?

JT Well, I believe it is a festive occasion, it is brought up here (Luke 14: 8) parabolically because much feeling, and right feeling, enters into weddings. The question is whether we are going to allow the feelings to inflate us, to turn the wedding into a time of inflation. Our ideas in Christianity are to be taken from the assembly and not from the world.

Marriage is a time of display in the world—unequalled display—the clothes that are worn.

We ought to discern these things and put away what is worldly ... the money spent on wedding garments is very great. We have to understand what is here to deflate us. The Lord says, ‘Do not take the first place’, do not have personal distinction in mind. Learn not to be worldly; you are in fellowship and your clothing is to denote that. Do not go in for what surrounds a worldly bride and the like ...

AEJ You would not hesitate to go to a wedding where the bride puts on the apparel which Peter speaks of.

JT The hidden Man of the heart. I would not, would seek to be there.

J. Taylor (Vol. 76, pp.153, 154)

We may well ask ourselves, ‘How do I enter the meeting-room? How do I sit down there?

What is my heart filled with? What is occupying my mind? These two men were speaking with Jesus (Luke 9: 30). Am I glorious when I rise to speak to the Lord? I shall be made glorious if the Holy Spirit is free to operate in me, and when the love of God fills my heart my countenance will shine. How the Lord loves to look on such faces! On the other hand how grieved He is to see dull, unresponsive faces; the love of God filling my heart as I come into the meeting should make my face shine.

J. Taylor (Vol. 40, p.98)

Many do not understand the Holy Spirit, but as an influence. Wesleyans regard Him as the motive power. He is more than that to me. He is the spring of everything; we live in the Spirit. I have nothing on earth but the Holy Spirit, and so far from that meaning that I am short of anything, it is the magnificence of my position. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit”. The Spirit of God does not connect me with earth. He connects me with Christ in heaven.

J. B. Stoney (Vol. 2, p.329)

Luke … would, so to speak, unite the Levite to the priest, he would bring us so near to Christ, that He Himself is speaking through us. One of the greatest things a minister should desire in his service is, that his voice should be the voice of Christ, and his words the words of Christ.

J. Taylor (Vol. 33, p.325)

This (the meeting for care) is a most important meeting, for it is a meeting in which those who have the care (and, of course, everyone should have care) devote an hour or two hours to think entirely of the saints as to how they are getting on and other matters that run with that. I think heaven has great pleasure in those hours when brethren are giving themselves up to think of how the saints are getting on and whether things could be done to make repairs or to add to what there is.

J. Taylor (Vol. 84, p.194)

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