nerally, the kiss is the sign of
affection and familiarity among men as well as among females, and the
brethren and sisters at Stuttgart always had been in the habit of
kissing one another after having partaken of the Lord's supper, that
is all the brethren had kissed each other, and all the sisters had
kissed each other. Now this again, if the result of real inward
affection, and springing from the entering into our heavenly
relationship and oneness in Christ Jesus, would be most beautiful,
and would be the "holy kiss" of which the Apostle Paul speaks; but I
had no reason to believe that this was generally the case among the
brethren and sisters at Stuttgart, but rather that it was merely the
result of custom and form, and that it was done because it was
expected to be done, for it was the church's order, after the Lord's
supper to kiss one another. It was on this ground that it seemed to
me to be most pernicious; and I could have known how it would work,
even though I had not been actually told, that sometimes sisters had
stayed away from the Lord's supper, because they did not feel
comfortable in kissing all the female members of the church. When
therefore I began to break bread with the brethren, after we had been
separated by the close baptists, I did not kiss one brother after the
breaking of bread; but I made a point of it to kiss every one of them
on that very day at a later meeting, when I left them to go to my
lodgings, in order that no one might be able to say it was pride or
want of love in me that I had not kissed them. Thus I did on the
second Lord's day, and on the third. On the fourth Lord's day a
brother said, after the breaking of bread, Brethren shall we give one
another the brotherly kiss, and I was then ready at once, like the
rest, to kiss all the brethren; but the next time there was no
kissing, and thus the mere cold form was banished, and every brother
felt free to kiss another brother when his heart bade him to do so,
without being bound to it by custom or form.

I have so circumstantially dwelt on these apparently little things,
because I think them, in principle, matters of the deepest
importance. Every thing that is a mere form, a mere habit and custom
in divine things, is to be dreaded exceedingly: life, power, reality,
this is what we have to aim after. Things should not result from
without, but from within. The sort of clothes I wear, the kind of
house I live in, the quality of the furni