EXTRACTS

In these meetings the thing is to, aim at something; even in our ordinary meetings, our ordinary reading meetings, as we call them, let us aim at something. It is not simply that we are reading through a certain book, a certain chapter in it, and certain verses, but aiming at something. There is something there that the Spirit would fasten on our souls, and be sure you get it. What is needed in any way, be sure you present it, that you are certain in what you are doing, for christianity is a system of certainty … Thank God we have the Spirit of God, and He guides us into all the truth. Then moreover there is a certainty, there is a point in the doctrine, for every week is distinctive. Every week at the Bible readings, there is something fresh for us, because we are dealing with infinite things ... .

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 60, p.192)

Paul said (1 Corinthians 9: 27) ... I have to attend to my body, not because it is hungry, but because I want to keep it from being inflated. I am speaking now of Levites; the need is a great one, that all of us who are seeking to do anything for the Lord, should make little of ourselves; we are to learn how to reduce; to avoid inflation in any sense; whatever I do, let me avoid making much of it. So the Lord would say, You are an unprofitable servant, and I am sure every one of us here would say, ‘Amen’ to that. We have the very best, we have cost the Lord more than we have ever made for Him. The overhead is much greater than the remuneration that the Lord receives from each of us. Yet He would say to us encouragingly, knowing “that your toil is not in vain in the Lord”.

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 60, p.190)

Spiritual prayers last; they do not evaporate, nor do they become affected by exposure, as one might say. Here they are kept in golden bowls, a most remarkable thing, as if these servants of God, the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures, are so intelligent in the mind of God as to this great service of prayer, that the Spirit of God would convey to us that these prayers last; they are before God. Is it too much to say that the prayers of Abraham have not ceased to exist? I think not. I think they last; they are before God. All that speaks of Christ in all His fragrance to God in this way, right from the outset down, are preserved; everything is preserved. Things do not evaporate spiritually, as physical things do, but here they are kept, and so we are reminded of the need of the absence of mixed motives or words in our expressions to God, that they are such as can, as it were, be preserved. They last.

J. Taylor (N.S. Vol. 99, p.305)

The first thought in reconciliation is that God may have His pleasure in man: the other is that man may joy in God. The apostle says in Romans 5, “We are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the reconciliation” … I will give you just one illustration of it which is so perfectly simple and familiar that no one can miss the idea; that is, the case of the prodigal son. He was reconciled outside the house, but he was brought into the house in order that the father might have his delight in him, that he might be there to the father’s entire pleasure and satisfaction, and that he might joy in the father.

F. E. Raven (N.S. Vol. 13, p.384)

Behind everything is the perfect way of our God. The starting-point of that way is the bosom of infinite and eternal love. The end of it is the blissful accomplishment in vessels of mercy of every thought conceived in that bosom. It is a way that leads to holiness and glory—in a word, to conformity to Christ. God intends every trial and sorrow to be a road for us to Christ, so that we may reach Him and learn Him in some character of His love and power that otherwise our souls had not known.

C. A. Coates (‘Quiet Resting Places’, p.12)

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