PERSECUTION OR CRIPPLING, ETC.

PERSECUTION OR CRIPPLING, ETC.

I am rejoiced that your dear husband has found a suited sphere for service. Surely every true heart will soon find its mission. We are sent into this world. Poor dear Mrs. ————, what sorrow she has had! If Jordan were more readily accepted by us, we should die even practically in a much easier way. The joys at the other side would not only compensate for any loss here, but the death that we ^[p. 179] should be delivered to would be in the Lord’s service. It was doubtless persecution in Paul’s day. With us it may be crippling in some form, as it was with Jacob. The Lord blesses those who care to be blessed.

We had a very good day’s meeting at ———— about a fortnight since. I lectured in the evening on the difference between the man in heaven and the man in the wilderness. In 1 Peter and Hebrews you get the traits of the latter, and in Ephesians and Colossians those of the former. I did not set it forth to my satisfaction, yet I felt it was very interesting. Nothing is said about the bringing up of children in the epistles which relate to the wilderness. It is only in Ephesians that you are told how to bring them up. In the wilderness you are in your own circumstances, and Christ helps you through them according to God, but in heaven you are in Christ’s circumstances, and He enables you to stand for Him in spite of and in superiority to your own circumstances.

Did you ever remark the discriminative way in which the apostle Paul prays in his epistles for the saints? For some he does not pray at all.