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p397 [G J Stewart] BELOVED BROTHER, - My answer has been long delayed, but I have been on the ocean, and towards the end in Canada, had three meetings a day, and could only just get through them; but I was fully interested in your account of the work. Infidelity is rampant here, and the question is daily becoming more and more, Christianity or antichristianity; and so as to the word of God. But we have only to work on. "Let thine eyes look right on," it is written.

As to "my body which is broken for you"; as "broken" is not, I suppose, in scripture, it is well to avoid it: the bread was clearly broken, and as a sign of death I do not doubt, and the blood taken as shed; and this I think essential to the meaning of the ordinance; nor does the word therefore trouble me, because the sense is true and essential; and I think "a bone of him shall not be broken" misapplied, with you: and I should insist on the thought that it is shed blood, and that the bread should be broken, a sign that it was Christ's death. It is being given as one in whose life, so to speak, a breach was made by death; and care must be taken in losing the word, that the sense of the thing be not lost. Criticism in divine things is dangerous ground for the soul, and resting on words where things are in question. But scripture is wiser than we are, even in language. . . .

The Lord be with you! May He keep us single-eyed and simple, looking to Him! We shall soon find, what we know to be true, that He is all. The saints, thank God, are far more looking for Him - I do not mean merely those in communion - than they were. Holiness is closely connected with the glory He is in, and that we shall be with Him in it when He comes, everywhere in the New Testament.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

June, 1877.

[52264E]

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