Quotable

We must be separate from the emotional religious life which is always seeking for signs and manifestations. This is a greater evil than appears at first sight. Many of God’s professing children confound the Christian life with an hysterical sensationalism and a large amount of emotional and noisy manifestation. This is not the best way of serving God, or of growing in grace and in the knowledge of God. To be always on the outlook for signs and dreams, for voices and visions, for strong emotional responses, and for the ecstatic state of rapture, is not the best. And we do well to separate ourselves from such a condition, so that we may live in the will, ever answering with a glad Amen to the least indication of the holy will of God. The emotional manifestations which too many substitute for a deep religious life are like the yeast which Jews must cleanse from their houses before the Passover. A pious person was once asked if she enjoyed herself. She replied that she could not speak positively for herself, as she was not accustomed to dwell on the workings of her own nature, but she enjoyed God. We must be separate from the activities of our corrupt nature.

—F. B. Meyer, Meet for the Master’s Use