After a Meeting for Humiliation of Some Brethren Habitually Walking in Fellowship Together, Some Who Were Separated From Them Seemed to Have Had the Desire to Have Taken Part in It, and to Have Been Prepared to Do So
A desire being formed in my own mind for a meeting for humiliation, and having spoken to others of it, I have found it, thank God, to be the common desire of many—universal, I think I may say, with those who have felt bound, as it is well known, to be decided as to what they judged to be evil, and participated in—I am led to believe, by many from whom they have been unhappily separated; for unhappy it surely will be felt to be, even if the judgment may have been convinced that it was inevitable. I feel assured that God has wrought this desire for humiliation, and disposed the hearts of one and another to it.
The point on which I should propose to meet with brethren is, that we feel that we have failed in maintaining the glory of God in that which was committed to our trust, though He may not in grace have taken it from us—a serious and solemn thought.
Each one would in his own conscience take to himself the share in this, for which he would feel himself responsible before God. The subject of our common humiliation would be the result we are all conscious of. I am ready for my own part to take the first and largest share in this. It is not a confession of others' faults I look for, but a common one of us all before God, each taking his part as the Holy Ghost may in sovereign grace show it to him.
No one who comes is supposed thereby to relinquish any judgment he has formed as to evil, or any course he has pursued as to it. On the other hand, those who have blamed many of the acts of the brethren here alluded to are not supposed to be committed to any approval (or disapproval) of them. For my own part, I am ignorant of most, and myself dissent from some I do know of. Any change in this respect must be left to the Holy Ghost, if such there is to be.
I say this, not to raise any question, as to what is not the object of the meeting, but to meet one which would naturally arise, and might be a hindrance to one otherwise disposed to join in it, and thus remove the difficulty.
The object of the meeting is one only—humiliation, because we have failed to glorify God. It is to join in this that any one should come, if he comes at all, with the desire that God may grant blessing to us by it. Such is my trust as to the meeting. I trust God's blessing may attend it. I feel that it is the place that becomes us. Through His grace it may be the means of blessing, nor would I limit the extent of that which God might grant by it. His grace is beyond our measure of it, or our thoughts. Though, of course, it more immediately concerns those who have been placed in the unhappy circumstances known to us all, if any Christian who has never been mixed up with the questions which have given occasion to it, nor belonged to an assembly of those amongst whom the circumstances have arisen, felt really desirous, as a member of Christ's body, and convinced that the testimony of God was concerned in it, he would have gladly a place amongst those who have given occasion to the humiliation called for. If any in Bethesda desire really to join in humiliation, it is not desired to exclude them, and means would be taken to afford them the opportunity in such a way as would not involve any one in any sanction or acceptance of what they judge to be evil.
July, 1852.