GREENWICH, MARCH 5TH, 1898
[p. 144] GREENWICH, MARCH 5TH, 1898
To Mr. Menzies.
My Dear Brother, — Your father has allowed me to see your letter to him of the 3rd, giving an account of your interview with Mr. Dunlop and I feel constrained to send you a line to express my sympathy with you in your being subjected to this. I was glad to see the way that you met him. It is certain to me that they know nothing of Christ as Priest or Head, i.e., on our side, representative of and identified with us (the Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one) or they would not object to the thought of His being viewed in Scripture distinct and apart from what He is as God. Had I said ‘distinct and apart from what He is as a divine Person’ it would have been wrong; but it is as plain as anything can be in the paper that the idea is connected with presentation — there is the perfect presentation of God to man, and of man to God, in one and the same Person, but it is plain that the two thoughts are quite distinct and apart, and plenty of proof of this is in the paper. The attack is not upright. Again as regards eternal life, they do not really mean by their expression that ‘Christ is eternal life’ but that eternal life is the life of Christ and their idea of our participating in that life is a very material one. They have no sense of the truth that everything for us is set forth in another Man, and that we reach that Man in spirit and mind — grasping eternal life to which we are called, while at the same time actually here in flesh. The expression “the Son of man which is in heaven” is characteristic, as are very many similar forms of expression in John. My conviction is that they are profoundly ignorant in divine things and prey on the simple and uninstructed. Mr. Dunlop was always a morbid legal kind of man, scrupulous as to the letter but entering probably but little into the mind and spirit of Scripture.
[p. 145] I have had a long and piteous appeal from Mr. Ely. They begin to feel their position. I hardly know what to answer him. May the Lord give you all the grace you need.
Believe me,
Your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.