<< previous (1:5) | next (1:7) >>

p16 BELOVED BROTHER AND BRETHREN, - I waited awhile to write with an object which has partly indeed been attained, but not attained with the same comfort I might have desired, yet still, with the comfort of seeing one's way rather.

The Lord favoured me with a most quiet and easy passage for such a time of year. A poor soul died on board, and so unlooked for, that though I had intended to speak to him, hearing he was ill, he was gone before the opportunity came; it was a picture of sorrow and evil, but there is One who has remedied all. I do trust the church will feel my undiminished and anxious affection for them all, and as my mind draws nearer the Lord (for daily is our salvation nearer than when we believed), the more does it rest towards them in the brighter necessity of His love. This is the great secret, even His love towards them. I do trust they will walk all together in perfect love, even to the common cause of His love. I do feel that the Lord has been singularly gracious to you all there, in preserving you, and not allowing the enemy to set aside His love.

There is but one thing rests at all upon my mind now, and that has been brought to a mere question of individual profit, and need not, and does not, I trust, hinder the full unhindered flow of the Spirit of God and of love; in that I will employ your service, and I charge any upon whom there might rest any want of it for a moment, that they do not grieve the Spirit by the want of perfect charity toward all. Let me hear what you do about the services please, and how you all get on.

Here the Lord brought me most opportunely, and in a way of His own order, into intercourse with all those who were the links of my service here; one young clergyman from the north, who has formed a society precisely on the principle we recognise, only as a clergyman not having the Lord's supper, came to know how he would effect a correspondence between all the other like ones, in order to their mutual recognition as brethren for fellowship when they went into any such places and to get them visited for profit. I hear the north is dotted with little bodies, meeting as you do, though I do not know the places.

Dear H. stood up manfully in a large meeting of clergy, where the practical question was, should they stop when the bishop inhibited them from preaching, and declared his obedience to Christ, and strengthened many hands in it. The old evangelists, of course, thought they ought to stop. The brethren, two of them, had [been] inhibited the preaching in part of the northern mission. Everything is opening rapidly in this country, and the hierarchy, as an evil agency, will go. I am no enemy to episcopacy abstractedly, if it be real and done from the Lord; and I doubt that it will stand here in any other way.

What I pray, earnestly, truly pray is, that we may walk so near the Lord, that we may have all His mind, and then we shall indeed be sure of His peace, and keep up with the real exigencies, the happy exigencies of His service. I feel clear in judgment, but what I seek is that nearness to God and to Christ, which may make me act in the Spirit, and rectitude of heart, will, and character into which it forms, and in which that judgment is made effectual and representative of God.

I would I had you with me, but you are of more importance in England, and at Plymouth; there you should stay. I feel daily more the importance of the Christians at P., and I do trust that you will keep infinitely far from sectarianism. The great body of the Christians who are accustomed to religion, are scarce capable of understanding anything else, as the mind ever tends there. If they become so in their position before God, they would be utterly useless, and I am persuaded, immediately broken to pieces. You are nothing, nobody, but Christians, and the moment you cease to be an available mount for communion for any consistent Christian, you will go to pieces or help the evil. Pray much to God that you may be kept from concessions, acts, in which Satan may get an advantage over you in it. The church at Limerick have so multiplied, that they must seek some place of meeting, and one has offered, and the hour they talk of changing to twelve, the hour for other places - previously it has been eight. This is a cause of anxiety to me, whilst I wait on the Lord's will, for I feel the importance of the moral character of the step, for unless called for, it would have the same tendency.

A dear brother, and one previously of most faithful conversation, has run into Manichæism, and writes thus: "I have been fasting for nine days, save one cup of tea, and then walked ten miles into London, where I was desired to eat. My mouth and throat were dry and exhausted the whole time, but I was exceedingly jealous of taking anything to eat there, lest I should mar the work of destruction which was going on in my blood - the work of cleansing my blood from the old reprobate life inherited from Adam, and substituting the Lord's. (See Lev. 17. 11; Joel 3. 2.) This is what our Lord means when He says, the vessel must be made new before it is fit to receive the new wine of the kingdom." And I found a notion from the person who gave me this letter, in a paper I hindered, I hope, his publishing, "That the blood of Christ, His condemned life, was spilt upon the ground like water, and that His new resurrection life was what He carried within the veil"; and he I think a true-hearted saint, and his paper full, though this error, of most interesting matter. What a mercy it is to be kept from the vast and endless wanderings of thought with which Satan now seeks to bewilder saints, or else shut them up in systematic ignorance! May you, knowing what it is to be complete in Him, and in all the rich depths in Him, be kept from going out in the profitless mazes of Satan.

I do feel that the ignorance and narrowness of the Church of England will be what will be judged for all this, and the judgment is at hand, lingereth not. The Lord have mercy on many in it - dear saints. I do not know so ignorant, and ill-formed a body as it is.

My truest love to -, and all the brethren and my very dear sisters in the Lord. May God keep you continually by the very presence of His Spirit. Grace be with you all from the riches of His fulness. Amen.

Your faithful servant,

And affectionate brother in Christ.

[Received from Ireland] April 30th, 1833.

[51006E]

This document may be found online at the following URL: http://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/letters/51006E.html.

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett .