After a season of deep spiritual poverty, during which he found no place for the exercise of his gift, John Yeardley began to speak in ministry in the little meeting to which he now belonged.  On recording the circumstance he remarks:—­

Thus does a gracious Father lead on his children step by step, baptizing them first into one state and then into another, in order to qualify them to drop a word in season for the comfort of others.  Little did I think under the recent buffetings of the Enemy, that I should ever have had to open my mouth again in the way of declaring the everlasting goodness of a gracious Redeemer.

This memorandum was made a few days after the occurrence to which it refers, on his return from Settle Monthly Meeting, and is accompanied the record of a fresh unfolding to his mental eye of the need of gospel laborers, and of his own vocation to the work.  In my return I had rather an unusual opening into the state of society, and the great want of laborers therein; and querying with myself, By whom shall the Lord send?  I thought I felt the weight and power of the everlasting gospel upon me to preach, so that I was willing to say, Here am I; send me.  O the importance of this language!  May the same Spirit, which I trust raised it in my heart preserve me in every state to the end of time!  Amen.

The extract which follows treats of the same subject,—­the calling and exercise of the ministry.  From this, and from the whole tenor of what has been extracted from the Diary, will be seen in what his ministry consisted, and what was the call and the power which was required in every successive exercise of it.  May it serve as a word of caution and instruction to such as are disposed to reduce this heavenly gift to a mere effort of Christian good-will, or to consider the exercise of it as placed, whether in regard to time or subject, at the disposal of the minister.  It will be observed how John Yeardley, in after life so abundant in word and doctrine, and so catholic in his ideas and sympathies, received his vocation as a divine gift immediately from above, and served in it an apprenticeship altogether spiritual, and apart from human learning or instruction.

10 mo. 26.—­I have been very much instructed to-day in reading and reflecting on the 37th chapter of Ezekiel.  When the prophet was asked if the dry bones could live, he was wise enough cautiously to answer, “O Lord God, thou knowest;” but when he was commanded to prophesy unto them, and say, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord,” this was hard work, yet there was no conferring with flesh and blood.  No reasoning from probabilities, nothing but an implicit faith and dependence on the divine power which was then upon him, could have enabled him to do it.  O what an instructive lesson!  When the poor instruments may feel so weak and the state of things so low, that there may not be the least probability of good arising, it is enough if they can only do the will of their great Master, and be enabled to say with the holy prophet, “I prophesied as the Lord commanded.”