My Dear Brother,
I am but one of many who are praying the Lord to make Him your first object in your service of His name. There are far more who, if they knew the circumstances, would join in this, and not least some who are very devoted in the gospel work.
But they justly feel that it is Christ who gives everything and everyone due measure of importance in God's sight, and therefore in His children's, as in itself too.
Now He loves the church supremely and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having purified it by the washing of water by the word, that He might present to Himself the church glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or any of such things, but that it might be holy and blameless. That He came to seek and save the lost is most true and blessed; but nothing is nearer to His heart, next to His Father and ours, to His God and ours, than His body the church, now exposed to every snare and danger in the present evil age. For that precious object is a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men, in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenly places might be made known through it the manifold wisdom of God.
If you weigh this and far more which may occur to you throughout the New Testament, you will allow that the duty to the Lord in caring for poor sinners ought not to swamp the yet higher one of loving His own that are in the world, as He did to the end. And how can we do it better than keeping His word and not denying His name, urging others in faith and love to do the same?
Take the quite simple yet most affecting and very important duty of remembering Him on the first day of the week in the breaking of the bread, His supper. No doubt you are well aware how greatly this institution differs from what all Romanists and Protestants have perverted it to, as a sacrament with its priest or the minister set officially apart to administer it. You have learned too that there is now also the added truth, in the standing and precious privileges of the church, that the Holy Spirit, Who baptized into one body, abides forever in and with those that are Christ's, to work in them of His own will, one or another in all liberty, to glorify the Lord Jesus.
It was because Christendom had fallen away from those essential truths, here merely and briefly sketched, that a few (separating themselves from all denominational membership as being but sects and denounced in God's word) met with little but growing light to begin, as the early disciples began, gathered to His name, to show His death till He come, and to recognize the abiding presence of the Spirit in the assembly, even if but two or three were thus faithful. They were not nor could be satisfied with an approach or a partial resemblance. They rightly felt that they must be obedient and do the will of the Lord. To this the Christian is sanctified by the Spirit.
When I was in C— through serious ill heath, it was a great joy that we could meet, if ever so few, as gathered to the Lord's name. The dear few met there, Mrs.—giving the use of a fitting room in her house; and if visiting brothers and sisters came to the town, they gladly enjoyed the privilege in a foreign land. And I remember a sister who was Mrs.—'s guest (a Lutheran if I mistake not, and certainly not in our communion) who was not refused but welcomed in the Lord's name. She had not learned that Lutheranism is but a sect; yet she loved the Lord's name and word as far as she knew; and we could and did therefore heartily give her the right hand of fellowship.
I left when most leave, the heat becoming an injury to invalids at any rate; and the meeting fell through, because there was none but one brother (his wife being sometimes unable to come). And I understand that, knowing you were in communion, Mrs.—appealed to you in this strait. For it was a very sad thing that there was indeed no place in the town where they could break bread with a good conscience. It seems that you pleaded not being at home in French, so as to express yourself in prayer or worship fittingly. But when you acquired familiarity enough to preach the gospel to the world, you did not remove the difficulty by remembering the Lord with them according to His word. Apparently you had got interested in evangelizing work, so as to overlook the infinite claim of Christ on you as a member of His body, and all the more because they were so few and so circumstanced, that your holding aloof precluded their thus honoring Him scripturally.
If this state of things be substantially true, I earnestly appeal to you in the Lord's name. Help with all your heart that which is manifestly due to Him and His alone. Ought not you and they to keep His word at all cost? Mr. — I know; for he often came to readings at Mrs.—'s on the First Epistle of John; and I doubt not that he has otherwise received light beyond most in his society, preaching the gospel too as not a few do indefatigably and earnestly. Still he is the minister' of the Free Church (as I understood): which in no way, more than other denominations, owns God's assembly, or the Holy Spirit for action in it, as God's mind for His saints, as long as Christians, however scattered, are here below. To recognize the Free Church, or the Evangelic Church, which are what scripture calls “sects,” each with its peculiar polity, ministry, doctrine, and discipline according to man's wisdom, is to compromise God's word, and to dishonor the Lord Jesus as well as the Spirit's presence and action as in 1 Cor. 12; 14 They don't pretend to carry this out, as far as is now possible, but argue against it. “All things” are not “done decently and in order,” as the apostle prescribed, but as men devise for our day.
Now you, I presume, have learned from scripture, that we are the Lord's now and forever more. Let us help each other to be obedient. No one wishes to slight the vast moment of preaching the gospel: but honoring the Lord by doing His will helps us to preach all the better. It also makes the Spirit's presence and action a living reality; whereas dropping this for the gospel makes it all a dead letter. Further, one grieves Him by lack of faith about God's plain will, so as to risk the loss of all conscience about it, and to slip by degrees into any sect and all sects, if we begin to own one that looks fairer than others, instead of adhering to the Lord's word and way exclusively.
Bear with me, beloved brother, if I urge the truth, and your debt to sovereign grace. How I should rejoice, if you prayed over this matter before God; so that when our sister returns, you might all be together gathered to the only true center, and not in word only but in deed and truth. Thus might you prove His blessed and blessing presence in the midst of the few, be a comfort and help in the highest degree to any converted by your means and turn a real grief we feel when we think of it into a true thanksgiving.
Ever affectionately yours in our Lord.
W. K.
R S. A few words as to the position you are tempted to take. First, it is a new one, breaking off, not only from all dearest to you in the flesh and in the Lord, but from what you have hitherto professed to be of God. The only thing which could justify it is the imperative duty of following scripture. But we, your family included, left all to follow scripture; we abandoned our denominations or sects, forbidden by God's word. The Eglise Liber began by adopting a new code of polity which is but of yesterday, with the ordinary false position of the minister, and no assembly open to the presence and free action of the Holy Spirit, as God's word requires. Weigh this before God; for departure into what is clearly unscriptural is most serious.
Secondly, you know that brethren as such went back to the primitive standing of God's church, gathered only unto the name of the Lord Jesus. To this we have adhered at cost of suffering in 1880-1 and since, as your father well knew and refused with us to endorse the new departure of the Park St. party, which afterward divided into Ravenites and Anti-Ravenites, to say nothing of the Loose or Open Brethren who long before went off from us. I mention this to satisfy you that the resumption of meeting at P— is not adding a third or second meeting, but simply enabling those, now debarred by circumstances, to remember the Lord in true scriptural simplicity. They, and they alone, would meet as all did, not only from the beginning of Brethren but from the day of Pentecost, however feeble a representative as the Lord provided for in Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20); and, till they meet on this divine principle, there is no true, representative in C—. Think of the solemnity of this, and of your being faithful or not, my dear young friend, I beseech you.
Be sure that I will pray earnestly for you.
Yours in Him
W. K.