TUESDAY, September 3.  Meeting at our meetinghouse.  The visiting brethren with us to-day.  They draw large congregations.

To-day I was somewhat amused at an answer I heard given.  Brother Sam Wampler noticed the deep interest visible in the congregation, and, I suppose, contrasted it in his mind with that manifest on occasions when none but our home preachers are present.  He accosted, in a very pleasant way, one of the members in these words:  “How does it happen that when I preach you hang your head as if you might be asleep; but when preachers from a distance come you appear to be all eyes and ears?” “Why,” replied the brother, “Sam, when you preach I know it is coming all right whether I hear it or not:  but when strange brethren get up I do not know what may be coming, and think it best to listen.”

MONDAY, September 9.  This day Brother Kline and Daniel Yount start in company of each other to Pennsylvania.  They went on horseback, out through the mountains of the western part of Virginia and Maryland.

FRIDAY, September 13, they had meeting at the widow Jacob Snider’s in the forenoon, and evening meeting at Brother Jacob Steel’s, in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.  On the fourteenth they had meeting at the same place.

SUNDAY, September 15.  They had meeting and a love feast at the Yellow Creek meetinghouse.  On the sixteenth they visit John Deahl’s, John Eschleman’s and stay all night at John Brumbaugh’s, near Clover Creek meetinghouse, in Blair County, Pennsylvania.

TUESDAY, September 17.  They attended a meeting and love feast at the Clover Creek meetinghouse.  John 3 was read.  Isaac and George Brumbaugh were established in the ministry of the Word.  One person was baptized.

WEDNESDAY, September 18.  They passed through Martinsburg to Brother David Allebaugh’s, where they had night meeting.  Brother Kline had for his subject “The Importunate Widow, and the Unjust Judge.”

DIARY NOTES.—­We should not conclude from this parable that our heavenly Father is compared to an unjust judge who has no regard for his subordinates.  This is not at all the point of comparison.  We should not let our minds dwell here for a moment, because the contrast between the character of the judge and that of God is so great that there is no point of similarity.

The whole lesson, I think, is found in the power of prayer.  What moved the judge to grant the widow’s request?  It was her importunity.  But he did this only to get rid of her.  It, however, shows what earnestness will do even with an unfeeling man.  Here the comparison comes in.  If an unfeeling man, who has no reverence for God and no regard for the welfare of others, can be influenced to regard the petition of a poor widow, though from a selfish motive, because she will not be put off, what may we not expect to do by prayer when our Father in heaven is ever ready to hear and answer prayer?  He invites us to pray.  He says:  “Pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”  We must by no means lose sight of the one great point in the comparison, and that point is the widow’s EARNESTNESS.  Prayer, without earnest feelings of want and dependence upon God, is but a form of words, and no prayer at all.