July 1st, 1862.
My Dear Brother——-,—Perhaps the Lord showed you the need of exhortation here in London, that you might exhort. The power of doing so is a very distinct gift from God, and is much rarer than that of either evangelist or expositor, because in these two the mind is confined and limited-in the first to the good old gospel, and in the second to the passage of Scripture and what is in it. In the exhortation you have, I suppose, to apply truth of Scripture to the soul, and to know how to slide it in between flesh and spirit, so that it may condemn the flesh and give liberty to the spirit.
Everything that tells of fellowship in suffering and pilgrimage with the Lord will not only leave its deep trace now on hearts that love Him, who is worthy to have our every sacrifice, but will be found, when we come to the glory, to have left a deep trace on His heart; and to hear Him say then, " I remember how you suffered once the loss of all things for my sake," will be sweet indeed, let alone the rich recompence of the reward. Oh, it is blessed to have given up anything for His dear sake, to have suffered the loss of anything for Him
I posted yesterday a tract to you, the reprint of an old one of mine My thoughts in reprinting it were two-(1) to show to revivalists something more of the breadth of God's gospel, and (2) to show to the poor and simple that the Apocalypse was not all about " prophetics and the great beasts," but that a simple soul like mine could find marrow 'and fatness, and what the poor call " fine reading for the soul," in it. Affectionately, G. V. W.