My Dear—-,—I have written you a little as above on the word; for the refreshment you and others have found in this sort of broken musing encourages me to go on. Do you say, Stop, when you have had enough. I spoke a few words at Reading, I am told, January 1st, at a quarterly meeting for Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and North Hants, and Bucks, and a brother wrote me last night to send to him what I had said, or enough to be a clue to what he had then heard. It was asked for the little periodical which has appeared since the Girdle ceased. Gladly should I have sent it to him if I could have recalled what I said, and if this day had not been marked off for " W. I. letters." But now I may kill two birds with one stone, and having jotted down a few lines for you, I will send this over to him, that he may have it copied if he thinks it worth while. Thus, too, he will be able to get a skeleton and clothe it himself.
In reading over my bit of an attempt at teaching, as above I find I have left out the two practical illustrations which I remember referring to as connected with the subject in a lower sense. 1. The gospel was being preached with a considerable degree of power, at Weston-super-Mare, by His gospel was the gospel of Jesus Christ, the way to God, and the solemn responsibility of man being indifferent to the way that God had thus opened up for Himself to man, and for man to Himself, and choosing to abide still in the broad way that leads to destruction. How far he saw Christ as the truth I know not. All converted persons in the place took notice of the preaching, and all identified themselves with it except those to whom the person of Christ was dear. They thanked God for the preaching, as Paul in Phil. 1 did; but they saw that the gospel of Christ as the way of God to man, of man to God, was not Christ Himself, and they could not, for the love which they bore to Christ Himself, coalesce with those who separated the way from Himself as a person, and what was due to Him from those who were members of His body, one spirit with Him. All in the place, so to speak, who knew the way coalesced, then accepted prayer-meetings, co-operative meetings, the table, &c. And those who coalesced were found to have committed themselves to the avowal of non-responsibility to care for holiness and sound doctrine; they were in association without knowing it with Bethesda and other errors.
2. S——was preaching the gospel in Ireland, where it had been preached so far as the way went. He observed that all the converts, so to speak, were in Bethesda, and that some had settled peace. So he tried the gospel of eternal life. It told; for one came up the first time and said, " Where am I? If what you have said is true, I have got everlasting life, and I am not to think about keeping up the feeling of forgiveness merely, but walking as a man that has got eternal life." I knew of two other cases thus delivered.
Affectionate love to the wife and family G. V. W.
December, 1857.