3, Howley Place, Harrow Road, W.,
June 28th, 1875.
My Dear——,-I know not whether or not I posted a letter to you since my arrival, May 17th, at Southampton. I know I began one after your unmarried sister called on me; for it pleased the Lord to let me be fairly knocked up-or down; and after landing I had one of my attacks on reaching London, which from the appearances threatened, if not declared, typhoid fever symptoms; but this had not a full development, through mercy, and though laid much aside for six weeks, I am getting about again. The S-s awaited me on the quay, and I got two hours with them ere they embarked, which appears, from his letter, to have been greatly comforting to them both.
Last Lord's-day a married sister of yours spoke to me in the evening at North Row. The Lord is good and doeth good. What has He not done for His own great name's sake? And what is He not doing and prepared to do? Only we have to remember that whatsoever turns up is, one way or another, for the furtherance of blessing and the expression of His own good pleasure. It may be something which nature in us would not have chosen, but deprecated. Many a sharp point the rasp may carry, but its reaching me is never without its being according to God's permission, if not appointment and good pleasure. And who am I to suppose that I can improve upon what He appoints to me? " Giving thanks always for all things " is a fair specimen of Paul's character. I would have it of mine too, though I may need a longer time to catch my breath and the note of thanksgiving than he did.
The sensational movement in England has been great. M—-and his friends, the—-friends, and now Mr. and Mrs.——and theirs. The stirs have been wide, very wide. I connect them all with God's purpose, that everybody, so to speak, everywhere should hear the name of Christ. That that is a present action of His hand I do not doubt, any more than I doubt the mixture of energies, deficiency as to purity in what has been taught, and a large percentage of positive error in the teaching of some of them. But the Lord is coming, and when we look at things in that light we see the real character of them, and why that which has tried to break the power of the world over us, and to make us see how completely we are not of it, but of Him who is gone on high, cannot put people down here into Nazarite position of waiting for Him from heaven.
Though I have been here now seven weeks, I have no formed judgment upon the real state of ours. I see many questions are at work, and many feel that " where " they are standing, there is, within their " whereabouts," a conflict of principles going on, on various questions. In several of the cases it has seemed to me that tenacity upon each man's own point gave that semblance, where, if the principle of God's mind was seized upon, and the points left alone, there was the fullest room for unity and fellowship.
We got on well to Point de Galle, where the Ceylon went off to Bombay, and after two or three days ashore we embarked on the Surat for Southampton. The boat was full when she came in, and we fared accordingly, and according to the passengers from China, Calcutta, &c. A good many of God's people on board, some very decidedly so, I hope; but one is a Nazarite ecclesiastically. The nursery was large on board, about seventy-five children first-class, from thirteen years down to two months. We lost three by death on board-a colonel, who confessed Christ, the cook, and a bed-steward. One had gone ere they reached Galle, and another left at Suez for the hospital, too ill to go on. I never had been on board a Peninsular and Oriental boat, and had supposed that the early prestige was maintained; but this is not the case. The Somersetshire was quieter, better served, et ceteris paribus to be preferred. But all is well to the soul that passes through all in His presence and with Him; and to me, I imagine, the sea voyage was naturally good, though I lost my sleep, and did not grow fat. I think the Lord really taught me a good deal on board, and I felt so at the time, and could, and did, take it all from Him, though the will and the weakness of my own self were most evident to me. " I, yet not I," as Paul wrote. I got a few good lines out of it all, and in the midst of it, on perfection. Mine is not poetry, but the Lord gives me what helps me sometimes. Pearsall Smith's biography of his son Frank seems to me a fair exponent of his own, status in doctrine; Mrs.—-is very much darker still.
I have written nothing upon it as yet, though I think the Lord has given me something. H—-B—-has published against it, but not freely from his own shortening views of truth.
P—-'s conversion and breaking bread ere he died has made an eddying among some. Dear man! he ought twelve years ago to have taken his place upon the moral ground of God's truth; but he was drawn aside, though he did it at last, ere his sudden and unexpected death, upon grounds which were very much lower. His eldest son's conversion led to it, and I fear to a false testimony at the funeral. But he seems a very devoted young man, and a preacher of the gospel; but mentality and human will, will not do in days like the present. Nor Christ nor Philadelphia had either of them these as their distinctive marks, but dependent obedience in full development.
I have a letter to—-in hand, but my pen does not run freely, and my head soon gets weary and tired; but, blessed be God, it is all right. And His love in cutting me out of some things on my arrival, and of some things by its being later than was expected, has been very marked indeed. I like to see the marks of His hands in providential deliverances from spiritual difficulties, as in the spiritual care of-what He has made His own charge-our souls for the glory.
Yours, dear S——, affectionately, G. V. W.