"Your life has not been marked with humbleness of mind and meekness of deportment. You love God in word, but not in deed and in truth. Your dignity is easily hurt. Ministers should first feel the sanctifying influence of the truth upon their own hearts and in their own lives, and then their pulpit efforts will be enforced by their example out of the desk. Ministers need to be softened and sanctified themselves before God can in a special manner work with their efforts. 3T 237.2"
"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."
EGW directly quotes the phrase "love in word, but not in deed and in truth" from 1 John 3:18, making this an explicit allusion.