Goodness Not A Full Qualification

We have had good mothers in Israel, multitudes of them, who lived the true life, and carried the true burden of helpfulness. God has made them a blessing. Some of them had natural gifts by education and training above any natural advantages that the servant of the Lord had had to whom this gift of the Spirit of prophecy was committed. But none of them—not one—could do, and not one of them ever did do, the kind of work that the agent of this gift was doing all the time for seventy years.SPIAM 63.1

There was something more than goodness here. She was a good mother in our Israel, as were many others. But it had to be something in addition. It was the gift of the Spirit of prophecy, as of old, manifested through human weakness, and the high purpose in it all was to build up the church of the movement in piety and devotion and spiritual life and service.SPIAM 63.2