January 3rd, 1871.
My Dear——,-... I think that the power of sympathy in——and the want of girdle accounts for his overstepping himself I must add, that if we had possessed more power of the Spirit and in the truth, we might have come in and rescued him perhaps. It is blessed in my eyes that there was self-sacrifice and no self-accumulation. I can leave him peacefully with Him who had loved and washed him from his sins, and made him, too, part of the royal priesthood unto His God.
I have been giving some lectures, on Lord's-day evening, on Eternal Redemption; the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man; on the glories of the Lord as Mediator, and His humiliation as High Priest; on the principle on which He took us up, the word of God being the only principle for our walk. He brought us out of the world and from under Satan by it, and making us hear it. Well, from Red Sea to Jordan, we must hear Him and find Him faithful to God for us, and in the entering into, glory the same word will be His warrant and our power. I have hardly got into my subject as yet fully-the contrasts between redemption in time and eternal redemption; but as I go along it seems to me that there is much precious ore to be gathered here, if so He will.
To-night I had proposed the blood of the ransom as my subject; but cold lays me up, and another is the mouth-piece, and I am writing to you and——a few lines each.
When I commenced lectures as above I thought to write out afterward the outline of what was given to me, and I tried to do so, but I found what with pressure of work, and what with the many questions which sprang up to interest me, I got searching for more gold dust, instead of giving what I had had given to me. Naturally an extempore word is not deep, as it is addressed to the mass, and also when questions and points crowd in upon the mind while we are speaking, we must needs drop them for the time being to go on. I try to drop the hook where the fish are to be caught, or to feed the mouths that are hungering. But when one sits down to write upon the same subject, new matter and new truth are before one's mind, and lead one off in another line. There is, too, a freshness of the Spirit often when one is speaking as to souls which makes the word tasted in a way it is not even if in a reading-meeting the same subject is gone over more fully. I felt this last week. In my week lecture I had come down to the armor, &c., in Eph. 6, and went through it as trying to break up the loaf among the children. Next day, at a large reading-meeting at——, dear——there, I asked, "What shall we read? " No one seemed to have anything, and I suggested "the armor," in Eph. 6, which he read, and broke it up afresh. My object was that, feeling the immense importance of the doctrine to saints in London just now, I thought in the testimony of a second, the word might be confirmed; it was so, and more brought out a good deal, and very nice truth too. Yet those who had heard Thursday's lecture seemed to taste what they heard more than Friday's reading, though they admitted it was fuller and confirmatory of what was heard on Thursday. I observe this too with -. He said lately, " I am going to preach to souls, and not merely to say what is in the Word for the enlargement of the mind in truth. The people's souls must be thought of."
The work goes on here. All that we have to do is to walk with the Lord, and keep the door open yet in holiness. Our position is still so despised that there is nothing much to attract to it save the truth; and if we could be full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, that would secure blessings within.
Most affectionately yours in the blessed Lord, with love: to your household and to all saints,
G. V. W.