December 31st, 1863.
My Dear——-, You and——are laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come in devoting yourselves to the Lord and His work, and labor, and patience, and in waiting to know His will. I cannot doubt that you both desire above all things to know what His will is, that you may do or suffer it. The waiting to know it, is a trial to such bad natures as we have, but the Lord is faithful, and He will make all plain in His own time; and even before we know what we have to do, the position of dependence is one of blessedness and praise before Him. With all your mistakes of feebleness and errors, you have both tried to make His work the main object and aim of your lives; and He will not forget it. Did He ever forget anything done or shown to Him? And who and what are we, worms of yesterday, that we should devote ourselves to the pleasure and service of the Lord of all grace and glory, our precious and blessed Lord Jesus Christ?
What a wonderful one He is! His ways and thoughts, how unlike to ours! From the glory divine He looked out for the place of glory in a sinful earth, and He found it in the cross-the only place in which He could fully serve God (even His Father) and sinners. He had the right to leave the glory; for He was not bound like a creature is by the sphere assigned to it. Where might not the Creator go, if He willed it? But oh, the moral glory that came out, when He thus showed that He did not prize a place of circumstantial glory and blessedness for Himself, as He prized the making manifest the moral glory of God's character and ways in redeeming sinners from under the thraldom of Satan. And surely He never stood more manifestly, more unmistakeably, confessed as God over all than when He was upon the cross. There He met all the mind of God and expressed it, measured out and expressed all the wickedness, folly, lying, and murderous character of Satan-all the ruin of man-while He was doing the work by which alone God could be just while the Justifier of him that believeth. That cross of His is a marvel, not in the fruits of it merely, but in the light itself shed as to the character and personal glory of Him that was there.
Most affectionately yours in Him, G. V. W.