p39 C McAdam, My resources are somewhat diminished … but it is all right: everything is right for faith, save, of course, sin itself. "In everything give thanks"; and if all comes from God it must be right. Even where we have made mistakes, what comes from Him is for good. I am not surprised at the working of evil. That evil I felt all along: my trust is God's working. If He sees fit to preserve the testimony in the hands it is in, He will and He can. In such a state of things every one finds his level. There have been tendencies to haste, through upright separations. If God brings one about, all that are godly and solid will be there. There are a mass of God-fearing men who will be led right. … The least self-confidence will go wrong. I am tried, but not uneasy. God, I still believe, is working for good. I have no doubt that both unbroken and ill-disposed persons labour to do - or in a way to do - mischief; but there is One behind mightier than all that. Nor can I say I am afraid as to God's testimony. Whether 'the brethren' will have it depends on His good pleasure. I trust so with all my heart: but His testimony is more than those who bear it. … What saints - what we - have to do, is to rest quiet and let them go on, and help souls on with something better - feed them with Christ. I think this multiplying printed papers very undesirable.

I am writing on John, in French, when I have a minute, and again (having left off) on Romans, in German; have been looking over and correcting the hymns, and have two papers coming out; but it is only at short moments I can do anything, but get as fast into heaven as I can. But I have never found the Lord and scripture what they are to me now.

Pau, 1879

[53030E]