ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH, JULY 11TH, 1888

^[p. 5] ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH, JULY 11TH, 1888

My Dear Brother, — If it be a question of meeting two or three brothers such as you name I could raise no objection. What I dreaded was a sort of formal meeting with brothers present whose minds were in a state of excitement. I do not think I could meet them without others being there who had been prominent at Witney.

You would hardly say that John was written to such as had conscious possession of eternal life, because he avowedly wishes that they may be conscious. I think there are two sides to the truth, the gift side and the appropriation side. It is undeniable that God has given ‘eternal life’ to every one that has the Holy Spirit, i.e., to every christian. The christian is ‘in the Son’, having left, morally, the flesh and the world, and there he has eternal life — shares that blessedness which has been embodied in the Son, as Man, before the Father. But though this be true of every believer I think there are very many not awake to it — and this I thought was the point at Witney — they haven’t it as part of their practical christianity, i.e., the enjoyment of it.

Christ is, of course, the source of life — the last Adam — a quickening Spirit — and we all live by Him, but this is, I think, a different thought to His being the eternal life “which was with the Father”. (1 John 1:2)

We have to exhibit the life of Christ here in patience and suffering — but ‘eternal life’ is all blessedness, it is what is in the Son with the Father. I quite think with you that in John it is ‘in the Son’, and in Paul in the risen glorified Man.

Ever your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.