p390 Dearest C McAdam, - I am thinking of England, though there are many places here where I shall regret to see their face no more, as is probable. But so it must be here below. But there remains a rest when all will be gathered - a blessed rest of God. … As to a missionary register, I should oppose it with all my energies. As long as brethren are an afflicted and poor people they will be blessed, and serving for God's approbation; if they begin to recount their own deeds and prowess they will sink to the level of the bodies who think of themselves, and whose accounts are really distressing and not true. They will be a sect like others, and have lost their own proper testimony. The truth they have had is spreading outside them, and the mere possession of this will not do. They must be a separate people, purified to Himself, zealous of good works. I do not want them to think themselves so. I am rather afraid of all this talking about Philadelphia. When John Newton published his account of A.B.C. Christians, one wrote to him he found himself in C. Newton replied there was one trait he had forgotten, that such an one never knew himself as such. God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble, I have no doubt the brethren have been used to bring out the testimony of God in these last days. I have always hoped and prayed the Lord might come before they failed, as everything since Adam has done. They will lose it if they are not lowly. An absence of towards three years enables one to look at it. It is not a question of particular failure, but of change of spirit; but I trust the Lord.

Halifax, March 23rd.

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