August 15th. 1865.
You must not, dear——, expect a long letter from me this time, as the night of the 15th has set in, and I am heaped up with work of various kinds. But I may as well write a line, and perhaps add a dirty fragment from what the printer has sent me back from new number of Present Testimony, which will show you whereabouts my mind has been-I trust I may say for myself, and for the children of God all around me.
The days are evil, and God's watchmen sleep; but Ile that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. There is now the tenth edition of Ecce Homo, a book which appeared in the spring, and was puffed by the Dissenters and Church people of London, which I have had to wade through. " All the world " reads it. It professes to be the results of an inquirer's researches into the New Testament for himself. That which he has gleaned might thus be stated, I think. " Christ is the father of Babylon the great," and " we being competent to take up all we see presented in Him should have the like passion for man down here as He had."
Not a word of atonement of course, but all the all-gloriousness of man in himself.
How any Socinian even could have written such a book, much more how clergy and ministers can tolerate such wickedness, save upon the assumption of judicial blindness fallen upon them, I cannot think.
.... Dear Mrs. W——sleeps in the Lord.
G. V. W.