Christchurch, New Zealand, July 9th, 1874.
Beloved Brother,-The Lord is gracious in permitting you to get out in a little work for Him. My heart was cheered by your note, and the news of Ballarat, to the which I found my own mind once and again stirred up when in Victoria, and which I hope I may yet get to if He please. They will be glad to see you at Warnambool. There are several outposts there also to be looked after....
It needs a good deal of girdedness of loin, as well as fixity of principle and largeness of heart and spirit, to labor in this hemisphere. I thought so at Adelaide and Sydney, and find it so here; but the fact is the Holy Spirit is the sole administrator, and to Him all is easy. But then I want a good deal of treading down to keep me simply the leaden pipe through which water flows down from the cistern, or the vein in the body through which the blood flows.
I find that to wait on the Lord is all that one can do. Necessity shuts one up to it here. Such a variety of
minds, and plans, and thoughts, and propositions in the little company; and open adversaries and professing friends, thinking to pass as such, while their own letters (not meant for one's own eyes) tell really what they are after; and the sort of demi-publication, and the recalling the same for consideration, or for love's sake to burn it, while avowedly holding the same as much as ever, and that which is held, awful spiritual wickedness,, reminds me more of poor——and Plymouth than aught else.
My letter to——has raised a deal of anger in some, and opposition in others; but I believe it was of the Lord, and that it has been a shield for——, and that it has thrown the question really at issue into the forefront. He is better in body, and writes cheerfully, and the Lord is working by him.
I send you a token from the Master; I trust that His eye is upon your needs. My own movements are not clear to me, save the calls in New Zealand are strong; but He will guide. The winter is still on here till end of July. The damp at times is trying and chilly, and the houses are of wood, and cold.
I had thought of going south in early August, but I have questioned whether the mercy of the Lord would not be more marked, by my putting off bringing matters in Dunedin and Invercargill to a point before one has done all that one can do to help them.
Let me have a line, announcing the safe arrival of this, and how the work fares, and how your body is. Laborers are at a premium in the market in this hemisphere, so that you must take care of the fragment of a one which the Lord has made you nurse to.
I hear——made a stir in Tasmania when last out; but I cannot hear where, or whether the ostensible converts were many. He is a wild evangelist; but often leaves a field worth gleaning after him is in Brisbane, preferring to try work on a clear, clean bottom, to work as at Invercargill, amid dissenting causes.——wrote to warn him, as a father to a son, to take warning, and not to slip off the ground himself as——had done, by running the gospel apart from Christ in His assembly. I see the same danger in one here-gospel wild, but a true man: he does not keep up his individual place with the Holy Spirit in His presence in the church. The line is narrow; for some spoil evangelizing by putting it into the church and under authority. " Ofttimes he falls into the fire, and oft into the water," is what man is when not kept by the Spirit.
Love to all in the Lord, especially the dear——,
G. V. W.