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Two letters from 1857 and 1859 urge the need for collective confession, humiliation and weeping.
Excerpt:
CONFESSION and humiliation suit, and in a peculiar way, become the children of God in the present day. Neither the glory of God, nor the honour of Christ, nor the presence of the holy Ghost, have been faithfully cared for by us;
Let us be on our guard against a false strength which would cry, Act! Act! Have we confessed the carnality which keeps us from being 'perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment?' Has the sense of our condition made us 'weepers' before the Lord? Has it brought us into the dust in His presence? May we, my brethren be found there honestly, earnestly, unitedly 'sighing and crying' (Ezra 9:4), 'and confessing my sins and the sin of my people'? (Dan. 9:20) It is there the Lord has ever met His people in days of darkness. It is there the Spirit of Christ is ever found. Our God has blessing for us. The testimony He has raised must last till the Lord comes. But the first drops of His reviving and refreshing shower will mingle with the tears of Bochim.
But must not evil be judged? Undoubtedly, but in the Lord's way, in His grace and by His power. To 'act' without humbling ourselves is to provoke the Lord to jealousy. Pretension to power which we have not will but make us repeat the history of Hormah, and in a still more humiliating way.
There is no place for us, my brethren, but Bochim. We have all grievously failed—we must all be 'weepers' before the Lord. 'TO US belongeth shame and confusion of face,' Had we been faithful—had we walked with the Lord as children weaned from their mother, none of this sorrow would have come upon us, none of this dishonor been done to the Lord.
But ‘there is forgiveness with. Thee that Thou mayest be feared,' 'To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word,'
Beloved brethren, the Lord has appointed to meet us at Bochim. May we none of us be absent and miss our Lord.