As to the tracts, it is a thing I commit to God. I have not read brethren's publications; I have to study generally when I have any time to read, but it has exercised my spirit. I have seen truths taken by themselves and pushed to an extreme. I see God allowing it, as in revival preaching, but the preaching is more healthful where it is-not weakened through fear, but right, and conscience dealt with. The desire to carry grace fully out sometimes weakens this: godly discipline counteracts the mischief, but Satan uses it within and without. Many who preached in Ireland, not among brethren, carried it the furthest of any, and though counteracted by godliness in the preachers and writers, it carries its seed with it. My mind is a guarded mind, but I find very few who see what I am guarding statements about; and most minds take in statements crudely, unless guarded by right apprehensions from God in themselves. Experience met by Christ, and divine righteousness and being in Him, and then His help too in experiences, is different from feeding on experience, or jumping into glory and peace without an experience at all. Knowing ourselves is not justification, and never will be; but pardon known at once is riot knowing ourselves, and this too there must be. It may come after pardon, and in these free gospel days often does. Rom. 7 comes after 3 but before 8. We may get 3 and 8 after 7, as was my own case, but 8. never comes before 7. There is no solid peace when experience is fed on; there is no crop by plowing, but no good crop without it.
I have long dreaded brethren overwriting themselves; as I said, and individuals have their tracts. As it is, perhaps so much the better, but as a testimony of what brethren's witness is there is that which makes me often think. Very few minds modulate and co-ordinate truth, and it is apt therefore to lose its energy, I mean by modulating it-unless in the unhindered power of the Holy Ghost dealing with souls. The Lord lay His good hand to what is wanting. The mind of man is generally einseitig (one-sided).
The work is going on, but there is nothing special that I know of to report. It is the going on of feeble beginnings, but the truth spreading, and wants discovered by it. There is not as yet here that energy of labor there was at first, getting into degraded parts to win souls, unless perhaps in Toronto. There is not the same opportunity quite in a new country.
Circumstances have led me over the ground of the "Sufferings of Christ," correcting "Synopsis" vol. ii., and translating the Psalms compared with Hebrew. I confess I am astonished at the ground D. and H. have taken, and all objectors-not that I have read their pamphlets, but I mean the substance of the question. I would not for ten thousand worlds give up what I apprehend of the Lord's sufferings, and which they deny. Unless graciously recovered, I cannot help feeling they must sink lower and deeper, so serious do I feel it. The Lord forbid it, I heartily say, but I do say it is very serious. Of the two, I fear, though I attach no importance to expressions in the matter, that my explanations may have weakened the expression of the truth, and of the reality of Christ's sufferings, quite admitting imperfectness in any of them. The connection with the Jewish remnant, though instructively true, is of comparatively little moment as to the evil, I feel. It is the denial of sufferings other than atonement or sympathy. This takes away what possesses the soul in thinking of Christ down here, and meant of God to do so. Heb. 2 and the like become unintelligible statements to be explained away: so chapter v. And when I read Psa. 40 it is unintelligible to me how any one can miss seeing sorrows connected with what wrought atonement, but which was not atonement. A Savior lying in Gethsemane was neither atonement nor sympathy. Every God-taught soul feels, if it cannot explain, the truth I insist on. It is known in piety and grace, if not in doctrine.
I am yet uncertain when I shall get back. The work here has for many reasons been a penance to me, and I am growing old, but the ground 'of testimony had to be laid, and I trust that has been done, but I watch its birth, and I have the feeling that once I cross the Atlantic back I shall mainly stay quiet, so that I may wait to see it on some solid footing here, if there should be much inquiry. I think I can trust the Lord to leave it, if I see His will, but at New York especially it has, humanly speaking, lain on me as yet. Thank God the brethren go on very nicely, but it is only a handful; but the Lord does not despise the day of small things.
Affectionately yours.
I have a tract on "How to Get Peace," and on words used by deniers of immortality out here,* and two others prepared, not printed yet.
Boston,
May, 1867.