'What a blessing - an inestimable blessing it is to have a faithful friend! Satan is ready enough to point out whatever good we have; but it is only a faithful friend that will screen that from your sight, and show you your deficiencies. Our great apostasy seems to consist primarily in making a god of self, and he is the most valuable friend who will draw us most from self-seeking - self-pleasing - and self-dependence, and help us to restore to God the authority we have robbed him of.'
Charles Simeon in Gordon MacDonald, A Resilient Life, p.235.
