I feel the seriousness of the crisis or position in which the testimony of the saints of God is placed by the controversy which is going on. It has, in a certain sense, come to me by surprise. And I am perhaps, in a certain sense, better able to feel it by being at a distance. I am in no hurry, but I feel it very sorrowful on one side, and very encouraging—uncommonly so—on the other. When the tract came out on the "Righteousness of God," I had not the remotest idea of the tumult that would ensue, nor, I may add, of the low state in which the evangelical body, as such, stood. God (I am well and thankfully assured) will never leave His own, but the professing body seems to me to be breaking up into Puseyites—who (as the Pope said to some of them lately—not ill) are as the church bells who call the people into it, but are always outside it themselves—on the one hand, and rationalists on the other; while the evangelicals are incapable of holding with power any truth to maintain what exists. This brings out any true testimony, if made public, into a very special place. They are making that that is amongst us public by their attacks. I believe it to be the one true scriptural ground of the church of God, and with that, the true, full gospel of grace. That I have felt, as all well know, for years. But this breaking up of what Establishment or Dissent held, the public place of profession, even if a lower ground, brings out the truth into that place, not as assuming it, but as the necessary consequence of the attacks against it.
But I do not think that we have anything to do but to pursue peaceably onward the testimony we have, seeking, above all, its realization in true devotedness, and practical separation from the world. No part of the testimony of God is more important than this, a greater witness that we are not of it, that we follow Christ. I dread the saints getting tired of unworldliness. It was the first decay of Christianity; it is always our danger. It is often what gives falsehood its power over the conscience of the world. They see motives that master what masters them. This may be imitated to propagate error, but truth and goodness should have it naturally of the Lord. I feel very anxious for this as to brethren. I do not doubt that full truth and grace is the weapon of God, but the vessel that carries should be the devoted effect of the truth and grace it speaks of—this, and that the Word should be held fast in all its integrity. Multitudes I doubt not, and indeed so have heard, who would reject the stupid inanities of the "Essays and Reviews," or of Colenso, yet have their natural unbelief set free, and the word of God has lost its absolute authority. This works two ways: one sets reasons (this is human will) above all—man may believe this or that, but he does not believe God; or, in the weariness of the want of some authority, some rest, men turn to the authority of the church, and are degraded from a reliance on a holy God to reliance on corrupt man. The acknowledgment of the holy scriptures is of the essence of the acknowledgment of God now, and our security; though the revelation of a personal God whom we can trust, known through Jesus, is eternal life and blessing.
I am daily more struck with the connection of the great principles on which my mind was exercised by and with God, when I found salvation and peace, and the questions agitated and agitating the world at the present day: the absolute, divine authority and certainty of the Word, as a divine link between us and God, if everything (church and world) went; personal assurance of salvation in a new condition by being in Christ; the church as His body; Christ coming to receive us to Himself; and collaterally with that, the setting up of a new earthly dispensation, from Isaiah 32 (more particularly the end); all this was when laid aside at E. P.'s in 1827; the house character of the assembly on earth (not the fact of the presence of the Spirit) was subsequently. It was a vague fact which received form in my mind long after, that there must be a wholly new order of things, if God was to have His way, and the craving of the heart after it I had felt long before; but the church and redemption I did not know till the time I have spoken of; but eight years before, universal sorrow and sin pressed upon my spirit. I did not think to say so much of myself; but it is all well. The truth remains the truth, and it is on that we have to go; but the Lord's dealings with the soul, connected with the use of truth, have to be noted.
I have nothing very new to communicate as to the work. I have been partly occupied here with the death of two beloved ones, brought in since I was here,—one converted: the sweetest deaths, and most perfect distinctness of grace and peace you could see, a witness and edification to all. I was kept by the weather from starting for the bush, as we had no means of sleighing: meanwhile these beloved ones went, one aged, the other leaving four little children. Sunday week another soul found peace, and is now in communion; but this has kept me from the more direct sphere of my work. I have worked, of course, all the same. I am sure with patience, and looking only to the Lord, there must be blessing....
We have had 52 degrees below freezing-point, fine healthy weather, but it stopped my preaching at a place I was much interested in when there before—Acton—where I found many hungry souls. It is astonishing how many souls a simple full gospel, filled with Christ and His love, finds famishing. D.V., Monday we start for the bush, 40 miles off, where there are a good many brethren, godly, intelligent men; some six or seven years ago a place of bears and wolves.... They kept 400 of my answers to Colenso for this country; they appeared Wednesday and all were gone Saturday, and no more to be had, though inquired for.
Yours affectionately.
Guelph,
February 10th, 1863.