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p1 [C Crain] MY DEAR BROTHER, I was very glad to get your letter, and get news of the dear brethren around you. I trust, too, from them that the Lord is carrying on His work. With us numbers have largely increased, and there have been a good many conversions: but the increase of numbers has tended to lower the barrier against the world, and the very lapse of time, for it always tends to come in imperceptibly; it weakens, too, the competency to deal with evil when it arises. I have long felt that Satan was making a dead set at brethren in this respect, but was anxious not to go before the Lord, but wait on Him, and did. It brought on a crisis in London, but God came in most graciously; not that they are wholly out of it yet. But God has stepped in, and He will, if the brethren are humble, complete His work, and I do not doubt it will be very useful. Out of London, it has been an occasion of sorrow, but has not so much affected them directly. He is ever faithful.

I am engaged in translating the Old Testament into French: we are towards the end, but it will have to be revised. It has been a laborious work, and it is not the way of reading scripture that nourishes; still it instructs, and makes one's knowledge of it accurate in detail. It is for others substantially I do it, as is evident. But scripture, and the infinite preciousness of Christ, opens to me more and more: His preciousness is infinite, and yet how near; what comfort in passing through the wilderness! "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." We must seek to realise these things: how little we believe they are real facts.

Have you weighed how Romans is man on earth, as we all are, but full grace towards him, chapter 5:1-11; then reckoning himself dead (not risen), but Christ his life and he in Him, and Christ in him; experimental, chapter 5:12 to end of chapter 8. Colossians dead and risen, but on the earth; his hope in heaven and his affections aright; but the presence of the Holy Ghost not the subject. Ephesians on quite other ground (alluded to partially once in Col. and 2 Cor. 5) - not dead to sin, but dead in sins, and sovereign grace putting us into Christ where He is so that we are sitting there; our new place and relationships. Colossians is fitness for the place. Ephesians the presence of the Holy Ghost fully recognised and spoken of; not experience but contrast of the two conditions. This is only for you to search into. Its connection with figures from Egypt to Canaan would be more than I could go into here. Love to all the brethren: may they be kept from the spirit of the world.

Ever affectionately yours in the Lord.

Pau, 1879.

[53001E]

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