NOVEMBER 28TH, 1890
NOVEMBER 28TH, 1890
I have felt the desire on my own part, and as due to those with whom I am in fellowship, to state the light in which the late most sorrowful division,
[p. 35] and matters which led up to it, present themselves to my mind.
I have been greatly tried in it all by the unreal position in which I have myself been unhappily placed by the writings of those who have left us. In December, 1889, in writing to Mr. Stanley, I expressed my feeling that the attacks made on me were utterly out of proportion to the weight of the person implicated.
As to my own sense of things, I was not a distinguished teacher, but simply a brother who had desired to search things out for himself from Scripture, and who was not unwilling to state what he had gathered in the presence of brothers equally or better versed in the word than himself.
I had long been dissatisfied with the way in which certain terms in Scripture were commonly handled, it appearing to me that they had in many minds simply a dogmatic force with little clear understanding of their moral import. (In saying this, I have no thought in any way to weaken the positive force of Scripture statements, or to make their authority to the soul to be dependent on state, or on the understanding of the things they reveal.) This seemed to be specially the case in reference to divine righteousness and eternal life — the former of which merely went beyond the question of our responsibility and guilt, while the latter conveyed at the utmost but the idea of the divine nature in the believer.
As it gradually became clear to me that in its full sense and display divine righteousness is connected in Scripture with Christ in glory, and the believer as a new creation in Him — and that eternal life implies not only a divine nature but a new and heavenly being, formed by the Holy Spirit in the believer, and also the relationships, objects, knowledge, and sphere proper to it, outside this scene of sight and sense — I doubt not that I blundered in expression, which I much regret. I was not disposed to print or publish [p. 36] anything on these subjects, being hardly confident in my own mind. Certain remarks made at readings, at Witney in particular, were reported abroad, often entirely out of their connection, and I received in consequence some letters of inquiry, which I answered readily, according to the best light I had.
I had no system of doctrine nor the faintest idea of propounding any.
After a strong expression had been used at a brothers’ reading in London, in reference to a remark of mine, I wrote a letter to Mr. Oliphant, in answer to one from him, giving my thoughts on various points which had been in question, and in regard to which an agitation was going on; this letter was read at the close of a meeting, in December, 1889, of sixty or seventy brothers, at Mr. Hewer’s, and, as far as I remember, little or no exception was taken to it. Mr. Oliphant was pressed afterwards for copies, and, with my consent, he printed it together with some extracts from correspondence with another brother. This was the first paper printed with my consent. Questions having been raised on various points in this paper, I thought it well to reprint the text of my letter to Mr. Oliphant, with some explanatory notes, and prefaced it with an expression of sorrow for the measure in which the painful state of feeling existing amongst us had been contributed to by obscure or defective expressions of mine. This was done in March last, the paper having first been submitted to many brothers of weight. Subsequently to this, being still further pressed for a simple statement of my thoughts, I wrote and printed the paper ‘Eternal Life’, with which I circulated the printed letter of July 2nd, which I had been urged to put out by a valued brother. I trust that consideration of the above will dispel any notion that I have been holding the position of a teacher pressing some new system of doctrine, and will prove that I have been ready enough all through to act in subjection to my brethren.
[p. 37] I think that I have through grace received light on these subjects, and have sought in my measure to help others. Whatever defective statements I have made have been on the road to light, and my unwillingness to withdraw formally expressions objected to, which I may have used in correspondence, has arisen from fear of compromising what I believe to be the truth.
The virulence and. persistency of the attacks made on me, and the unhappy readiness betrayed to seize on expressions in letters to individuals, on casual and unguarded statements, and on details of conduct, to fasten on me evil intent, should, I think, have satisfied anyone that the attack was not of God, not the fruit of the Spirit of Christ.
In conclusion, I would earnestly beg that it may not be thought that I have viewed with indifference all the sorrowful work of scattering that has been going on. For two long years and more I have been under exercise and pressure which few can understand but those who have passed through it. Nor can I claim to be without reproach in the matter, for the use of expressions capable of misconstruction, and possibly defects in conduct (the effect of human weakness in circumstances of exceptional difficulty) have given a handle to the enemy of which he has not been slow to avail himself to discredit the truth, and further the work of scattering. As to all this I am humbled before the Lord, but I could not make this confession without recording my conviction that the conflict has been for the truth, from which the mode in which divine things have been handled amongst us, apart from any failings of mine, has exposed us to be turned aside.
I append a statement of the matter on which a charge of prevarication or evasion against me has been based. Those who read it must form their own judgment as to the justness of the charge.
F E. Raven.
[p. 38] Major M., in a published paper, entitled ‘Divine Righteousness and Eternal Life’, made the following statement: That ‘He (Christ) never for an instant ceased to be the exhibition of it (eternal life) from the Babe in the manger to the throne of the Father’.
Writing to a brother at Ealing, in June, 1889, I commented thus on this statement: — ‘Then again as to life, he says that Christ never ceased to be the exhibition of eternal life from a Babe in the manger to the throne of the Father. Think of a helpless infant being the Exhibition of eternal life, whatever might be there. Infancy and all connected with it does not find place in John. It is simply there “The Word became flesh”. The fact is there is a tendency to lose sight of the truth that as well as being eternal life Jesus was God, and exercising divine prerogatives down here, “The Word was God”; and further that in taking part in human life down here (the life to which sin attached) He took part in that which in Him was brought to an end judicially in death, and this assuredly was not eternal life’.
Some time after, another paper by Major M. appeared, entitled ‘Is the Snare Broken?’ and beginning as follows: ‘”Fancy a helpless Babe an expression of eternal life”. The above in reference to our blessed Lord is taken from a circulated document among christians’.
The discrepancies between Major M.’s sentence and mine, and the strictures in his paper on a word (fancy) which I had not used may be thought matters of secondary moment, or attributable to misunderstanding. What is important is that Major M. had not seen my letter which had not been circulated, and yet the sentence was set in inverted commas as a quotation, and was said to be taken from a circulated document among christians. His conduct as to this and other matters arising out of it, came seriously under question at Ealing.
[p. 39] When Mr. Snell, through Mr. Barker, asked in March last if it was true that I had owned myself the author of the sentence printed by Major M., I replied, ‘I am not aware that I ever penned the sentence supposed to be mine — it is for Major M., who I believe is the author of the paper in which the sentence appears in inverted commas, to prove whence he derived it’.
A few days later when asked by Mr. Barker to put him in a position to deny not only that the sentence as it stood but that any such sentence ever came from me, I gave him in the following paragraph (3) of my reply of March 20th, the purport of my comment in the letter of June, 1889: — ‘When an earlier paper of Major M.’s appeared, in writing to a brother at Ealing, I pointed out the monstrosity of an assertion of the Major’s that the Lord never ceased to be the Exhibition of eternal life from a Babe in the manger to the throne of the Father. It was no question of what was there in the Babe — God manifest in the flesh, eternal life, and all else; but of what He was the exhibition, for Major M. meant in detail. He was as a Babe the Exhibition of infancy in its helplessness, for all else, though there, was for the moment veiled, and it was His glory, for in being made of a woman, becoming Man, He came truly and really into humanity in its conditions here, grew and increased in wisdom and stature’.
I was not at liberty, while Major M. was being pressed at Ealing for many reasons to withdraw his paper, to make known the text of my letter, and indeed it was at the time out of my power, not having a copy: nor was I willing, by making public a particular sentence apart from its context, to supply the material for another pamphlet of the character of those that were being issued from the Ealing depot; I had learnt by bitter experience the use to which expressions taken out of their connection could be turned.
[p. 40] To assume that I had anything to conceal is wholly unjustifiable. Save that, in deference to an appeal from a brother, I have withdrawn the word ‘helpless’ (not that I used it in any sense but as descriptive of the true condition of infancy) I adhere as firmly as ever I did to the refusal of Major M.’s statement implied by my sentence; and further, when, in July last, the letter to Ealing was returned to me with permission to use it as I pleased, I furnished an extract to anyone who desired it, and it is thus my own words have become known. I am sorry that my letters have given colour to a charge of prevarication. I can only say I had no intent to prevaricate or evade.
F E. Raven.