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WORDS OF COUNSEL

This letter, written a good many years ago, is reproduced

because of its current value.

My dear Grandchildren, and Others,

It was a joy to hear that you wanted to remember the Lord

Jesus in His Supper because you love Him. You have now

‘come into fellowship’, as we say, so that you are now not only

my grandchildren, you are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are brethren. But as some of you are quite young brethren

I have asked the Holy Spirit to help me to say something plain

and simple to you about this wonderful new path.

What you have come into is really a partnership. You know

what partners are; they are people who do everything

together. That is just what we do when we are in fellowship.

Before you started to break bread you loved the Lord Jesus

and you wanted to please Him, but it was just you yourself.

And if you did something that did not please Him, it was just

you yourself who had grieved Him and brought in a cloud.

But things are different now. By coming into fellowship you

have joined hands with the Lord’s

people who are in fellowship all over the world. You are not

one alone any longer. This is a most happy thing, but it is most

serious too, because whatever one partner does, good or,

bad, brings in all the other partners as well. Let us never forget

that. A young sister slipped into the ‘movies’ once, but a

brother saw her coming out, though she did not see him. The

next day he said to her, ‘I did not want to go to the pictures

yesterday’. She looked amazed and said, “Did you go, ‘Yes’,

he said, ‘you took me’. She never forgot, I am sure, that lesson

about partnership.