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p400 Dearest J B Stoney, - I was very glad to hear of the brethren. Here I am only, in passage, for a few days with our brother -, of whom you will have heard, to meet and also to read with a few to whom he has been blessed. I suppose we shall visit Boston. . . . He would be more there at the centre of the work: but I dare say that the Lord sees it good he should wait for more maturity in himself, and the fuller sowing of seed, which (as I have said to others) is what is going on in America now. Gathering will come in its time.

In New York I have not hurried there, nor sought to do so, but the contrary. In general, those who get loose from systems here reject the immortality of the soul, or some such thing, so that one has to be very careful not to found on rottenness. I have been able, through mercy, to combat this with a measure of success in New York, so that there is at any rate progress. Still, hurrying would be rejecting the choicest among the souls seduced into this, or admitting the allowability of the doctrine. But the Lord, I cannot doubt, is working. . . . The Lord surely led me there: may He only carry on His own work effectually. There are some precious souls, and, thank God, several of them getting clear. - has been the ready instrument of a great deal of evil. But the Lord is ever faithful, and comes in in goodness and does good. . . . I want no narrowness; I dread it; but simple faithfulness of testimony is what we must seek: narrowness is not a testimony, but a hindrance to it; but with looseness as to truth one has nothing to testify to. But then we must make the difference of wisdom, and of a law, and of want of their knowledge of position, and a bad conscience. Going about to hear preachers I believe a very unprofitable and positively injurious thing, but you could not make it a term of communion unless it were subversive of Christianity; but souls never make progress who do so. They hear what is inconsistent with truths they know, or a path they are bound to by God, and they lose their hold on truth instead of going on to more. It ends in uncertainty what truth is, and more or less indifference to it.

Peace be with you. Kindest love to all the brethren. May He keep them in the narrow path, and full of divine love and grace in it.

Affectionately yours in the Lord.

West Townsend, Massachusetts, June, 1865.

[51246E]

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