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p385 [To the same.] Dearest C McAdam, - My date - a rare thing - will say where I am. I felt, as I have said, on the perch in Canada, but, thank God, I get constantly fresh testimony to blessing from my visits. . . . So that though I was going as called for, more than any previously set purpose, I am comforted by the Lord's goodness. But I still feel, though peacefully working here, my work is more sedentary now; and then it would be in England, without precluding visits according to my ability. I have happy news from Holland.

I doubt the wisdom of making this young person ask her father's leave, he being unconverted. If it is professedly a question of owning Christ, a person must "hate" father and mother. I know not who gave this advice. The letter seems a strange one: if it was merely a question of waiting awhile, she fully intending to do it when she had an opportunity, she might, I think, have been let in, but I do not see why she should not have been baptised. The case was not, I think, dealt wisely with. As to any busy activity of baptist brethren, we have only to let it pass: I do not believe it to be of God, but I believe it to be of God to bear with it, profitless as it may be.

Here the work is individual, no preaching does much - may help those who hear, but it is not so the work goes on: it is in reading meetings and personal intercourse, and this has gone on with blessing, and I trust is doing so. . . . What is important for brethren is not to take the world for granted and be conformed to it. I used to say fifty years ago that God's renewed actings in grace, revivals, in the old sense; were like fresh water poured on the ground; the next step was mud mixture: only I hoped since that the Lord might come before it happened. It was so with Christianity at the beginning, but that is the question for brethren now. The first were a testimony for separation; that brought in many. Are they so now? is the question; not speculating about Philadelphia. But I trust the Lord. But brethren's work has spread out far and wide beyond them as an effect, and these products of it are a hindrance. At the beginning it was faith acting on the word - conscience; now it is looking to see the state and effect. But while conscious of all around us, we have to go like a horse with blinkers, looking straight forward, undistracted, an afflicted and poor people that call upon the name of the Lord. He remains the same, and the word remains the same.

Affectionately yours in Him.

Boston, December 22nd.

[52251E]

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