p125 [Mr Storey] DEAREST BROTHER, - I was very glad to hear from you and of the saints, I do not find absence enfeebles my interest in them. I should greatly like to see them all again, but having now entered my eighty-first year I can hardly look to long journeys and active labours as once undertaken, but ever to Him who, with no journeys to take, ever watches over and visits them in an unceasing and tender care - a heart that never grows weary, and strength that never decays. I am fresh through grace, and Christ gives me renewed strength still to work on. I have had these last few days three meetings a day, and scarcely less than two for a long time, having been round visiting the saints up to the North of England and Scotland. Thank God, I found the brethren generally happy and much appetite for the word; and others labouring about give the same testimony, and in several places there is a good deal of conversion. You will have heard there has been trouble in London which has been really largely blessed. … Not that all are clear, but the general state of the work encourages those who are engaged in it, and any evil is sinking down in its littleness. Our conference meetings too have been much blessed. But I do not doubt and have not doubted there had been decline in spirituality and devotedness; and God in His rich mercy gave them a good shake, but it has roused and blessed them. There is far more conscience and reference of heart to God than there was. For myself it deeply tried me, though I had little personally to say to it, which my being in France helped me in, but I never enjoyed the Lord's love, and learned what His word reveals to us, and its power, as I have in these times; and I have felt how good it is to trust Him who never fails.

God makes a difference between mistakes in judgment, and positive wrongness of state. There is a government of God: where there is integrity of heart, He may chastise us because of it for blessing: there is always in such case want of waiting upon Him. But while He may exercise our patience by the other, it will sink out of the place of testimony. Chastening is good for us - we seldom wait sufficiently on God. He goes on straight in His way to the end of purposed blessing, while the petty ways of man cross each other in a thousand directions and where only men come to nothing: where the Lord is at bottom the motive, He leads us into His straight way in the end - so faithful, so patient in goodness. The Lord give us to have Himself always before us - the eye on Him, the heart looking for Him, who shall receive us to Himself, and have nothing imperfect.

Redemption is perfect, absolute: when first known, in itself a source of boundless joy and triumph, and at the end of our course, when more or less we may accuse ourselves of failure (Deut. 9), gives as to acceptance God's judgment, "What hath God wrought," said of Jacob and Israel. (Num. 23) All that is a work finished and done, and Christ sitting down because it is. But it brings us generally into the wilderness (not as imperfect, for the thief could go straight to Paradise), and that is not a finished work, but what we go through and which tests us, but in which where life is, God helps us by His power: we learn what we are, but we learn what the Lord is - it is constant dependence or failure, but constant faithfulness to sustain us. But here we go through exercises which humble and prove us (Deut. 8), but learn much to do us good in our latter end. We have the priesthood to help, the red heifer and running water to cleanse for communion, and at the end return to what I have quoted - Numbers 23; but we must learn it along the way. The redemption is never unsettled. Put Deuteronomy 9 and Numbers 23 together, and much is learnt, but it must be experimentally learned with God on the way.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

1880.

[53106E]