JULY 14TH, 1903

JULY 14TH, 1903

To Mr. Graves.

I have thought you may like to have a line from me, and I wish to express my sympathy with you all in the very serious illness of Mrs. Geo. Graves. I have heard that she has undergone a very serious operation and I only hope that through God’s mercy it is successful, and that she is recovering. I cannot give you a very hopeful account of myself as I think the weakness increases from day to day and I seem quite incapable of any sustained effort of mind or body. It is a time of weariness and trial and one is cast very much on the mercy of God though surrounded by every comfort.

^[p. 211] The practical difficulty in such a condition as this is to get one’s thoughts away from one’s own things into those things which God has prepared for them that love Him. In a lawless world such as we are in, it is a great mercy to think that there are those who love God, because they have been made acquainted by the Spirit with God’s love to us in Christ, and although they have to suffer the common infirmities of humanity, it is blessed to think that there are unspeakable things laid up for them, we can look forward to the time when we shall all participate in those things, and that without bodily infirmity.

I think it should be clear to any one that faith brings light into the soul. Life is the work of God. I maintained at Birmingham that there were three steps in the work of grace in the soul, as seen in John 3 and 4. First, new birth, the sovereign act of the Spirit; second, illumination, God is made known to the soul in His love, and in this faith has its place; and third, the communication of the Spirit as life, i.e., power to live — a well of water springing up into eternal life. And that the believer reaps eternal life of the Spirit. I further said that the expression in John of “every one believing”, or “whosoever believeth in him” indicates the kind of person that has life rather than the way by which we get it. Life is the work of God.