November 27th, 1867.
My Dear Sister In The Lord,-Everything is under His hand who is the Savior God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and not only so, but everything is in truth so with regard to us His children, above, below, before, behind, around, within us, His work all for our good, our real good, not for our pleasure now, but for our eternal good. We may (and we are called to it) know and find rest in this; yea, by faith in His word about it, may sing our songs amid all the breakage and the wrecking that shatters the earthly tabernacle and rolls the waves of death all around us. But, 2 Cor. 1, God is the God of resurrection for us in the wilderness, as in 2 Cor. 12. He had taught Paul in connection with his catching up into the third heavens, how it is " a hard saying " this to nature, but to the spiritual man it is blessed to see, writhe nature as it may, that all is under His hand and guidance.
Yours of the 7th is to hand. It awakens in me stronger hopes as to -. If God blesses-the sentence of death must roll in first, and the deeper the wave the higher the blessing afterward. God is not debtor to us to do, to give anything; but when we have prayed, and attributed our prayers to His gift, faith looks up freely and hopes. Assure our beloved sister of my sympathy and thought about her. It is a little thing when Christ and His sympathy and thought are pledged to us; but the littleness of a fellow-member sometimes helps another fellow-member to apprehend the greatness of what is true in the Head. I may not write more, as calls press and post goes. Your writing was no intrusion upon privacy, any more than the Titcher let down into the well would be. If Christ has opened a well in any of us, and if He has given rivers of living water to flow forth, these things are not private. They are, first of all, Christ's for His joy; secondly, the individual's; but thirdly, the portion common to all who can use them. What poor things we are, trickle the water as it may through the stony rock, to be fellow-helpers of one another's strength, and joy, and peace in the Lord.
Ever in the Lord yours, G. V. W.