_Prayer and faith, the universal remedies against every want and every difficulty;_ and the nourishment of prayer and faith, God's holy word, helped me over all the difficulties.--I never remember, in all my Christian course, a period now (in March 1895) of sixty-nine years and four months, that I ever SINCERELY and PATIENTLY sought to know the will of God by _the teaching of the Holy Ghost,_ through the instrumentality of the _word of God,_ but I have been ALWAYS directed rightly. But if _honesty of heart_ and _uprightness before God_ were lacking, or if I did not _patiently_ wait upon God for instruction, or if I preferred _the counsel of my fellow men_ to the declarations of _the word of the living God,_ I made great mistakes.
Let none expect to have the mastery over his inward corruption in any degree, without going in his weakness again and again to the Lord for strength. Nor will prayer with others, or conversing with the brethren, make up for secret prayer.
It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were of no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer; whilst the truth is, in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying; for the less we read the word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.