tation with a secret petition in your own room that the
apostolic ordinance of domestic visitation [Acts xx. 20, 21.], to be
administered now by you, may have the special grace of God in it? Pray
for yourself, my younger Brother.

*PRAY FOR SPIRITUAL READINESS AND SPIRITUAL FULNESS.

Ask that you may go out well furnished with the peace, and patience, and
wisdom laid up for you in your Lord; that you may have "by the Holy
Spirit a right judgment in all things"; that you may have "the tongue of
the taught,[15] to speak a word in season to them that are weary";
whatever sort of weariness it is. Pray for that secret skill of
discernment which can see the difference of spiritual states, and allot
warning or comfort not at random but "in due season." Pray for that
readiness for the unexpected which is best secured and best maintained
in a close and conscious intimacy with your Saviour. The man "found in
Him" will be found ready _in spirit_ (and that is after all the
essential in spiritual work) for the sudden question, whether anxious or
captious, for the sudden rudeness of ignorance or opposition, and again
for the chronic and so to speak passive difficulty of indifference. "The
tongue of the taught," while the "taught" man is found in Christ, will
ever be sweet, wise, and truthful, as the owner of it goes his round.
But we must seek for it; "He will be enquired of for this thing." [SN:
Ezek. xxxvi. 37.]

[15] Isai. l. 4. Obviously the word "learned" in our Version is there
used in its old English sense, "instructed, taught." No slight on
"book-learning" is ever conveyed in the Scriptures. But the man in view
here is not the highly-educated person, but the believer who has
listened with _the ear_ "of the taught" (see the end of the verse), as a
disciple at the Master's feet; and so goes forth to speak with "_the
tongue_ of the taught," as a messenger who has learned sympathy,
insight, holy tact and truthfulness, from the Master's heart. The whole
passage is full of the blessed Messiah Himself, I know. But it has its
reflected reference for all His true followers, and above all for all
His true Ministers. May He give us, in His mercy, for every act of our
messenger-work, both the ear and the tongue of His "taught" ones.

Then, as you pray for yourself, you will pray also for the people you
are about to visit. Perhaps they are as yet strange to you, and you can
ask for them only in general. But if you know anything at all