I am most thankful you have got to work, and it seems to me you have to be very thankful to the Lord for His leading. For my own part, I bless God when He raises up laborers, and I believe if there were more devotedness gifts would be developed. Your working at your profession so as to supply current need seems a happy path too, making it secondary only to your work for the Lord, for the time is short. Do not let it hinder you in direct work. God will bring it to you as needed, or by His own will lead you from it to what is more important, winning and leading on souls in that which is eternal. I was very glad to get the news you sent me—always thankful to hear of the work....
My own work here has been a new one, and pretty much sowing, but with the comfort of seeing plainly the Lord's dealing. It has been among Americans proper, that is, born. Some have come in here and there, but the work in the States was essentially among settlers; my present, among real Americans, God opening the way distinctly. Some new gatherings are formed, weak, but still a testimony, and wholly of such, and I have had large readings, and some lectures in various places. It is a work of patience, and grace and a plain gospel almost unknown or denied, and every kind of notion and excessive looseness as to doctrine and practice, so that honest people look down on churches, and many godly ones stand aloof, and other than scorners will say such things as, They are played out, from the miserable means to raise money, which is the great affair. Members and wealth are what the churches covet. Still there are doors open to truth, and I have been able in various places and circumstances to bring the whole truth before ministers and people, and they interested in it. I find the great thing is holding fast by the word, alleging it as a reply to every working of man's mind and all the fictions of theology, as well as the gainsayings of heresy. And I have felt the Lord with me, going from one strange place to another, as the Lord opened the way.
This constant going to strangers is a trial to one of my age, but they are kind and hospitable enough as far as that goes. The weather has been trying, down to twenty-five degrees below zero, but that was nothing; now a thaw and fog. All round Kentucky they have pressed my staying or returning. I suppose some younger hand must undertake it. From the state of the churches, a turning the deliverance from Rom. 7 to Rom. 8 into a kind of Arminian perfection, making a will-o'-the wisp of the word, is a common snare of the enemy, and some true souls have been snared by it; one has to be ready for everything, but the word is, only we have to use it with wisdom. But if the Lord is with me all is peace and joy; and all the poverty of man's thoughts and theology has shown me what deep thankfulness we ought to feel for the truth of the word, and being led by it is everything. But God is working evidently, and had been even by that which was opposed to us.
It is a comfort to be able to look to Him as loving the church, and confide the whole work to His faithful hand. Still we have to be hastening the coming of the day of God, urging on the salvation of the elect, and their readiness for His coming. Faith should pierce through and see the things that are not seen: things get their true value in another world, and faith when vivid sees them there. I know we are meant to walk by faith, and those moments in which things unseen are seen, and the Spirit sheds divine light on things that are, are not always there; but if vividly communicated they invigorate faith, and the word, proved on full vision, and chewing all things in that light, becomes a sure guide. Thus we walk steadily by faith.
I close. I fear there may be repetition, as I have written this at two or three times, when traveling about, and am holding three meetings a day. The Lord be with you in your work, and yet better in your soul, and keep your eyes looking straight forward. You will not regret serving Him in the end, only let it be Him, and by His grace and will that you may persevere.
Affectionately yours in the Lord.
Lexington, Kentucky,
January 4th, 1873.