THE GOSPEL IS FROM GOD TO MAN

^[p. 235] THE GOSPEL IS FROM GOD TO MAN

I thank you for your letter about ————. I am thankful to say that I am deeply interested in the prosperity of the company there.... I must own that I desire to see ———— a place where the young servants would be taught the way of the Lord more perfectly. In Christendom the gospel of salvation is made the terminus. You can never rise higher than your aim. The gospel in Christendom is no more than that faith in the sacrifice of Christ shelters you from judgment. The preachers never, I fear, set forth that God has come to man to remove in the cross of Christ everything contrary to Himself, to terminate judicially in the death of Christ the man under the judgment of death, so that the believer is no longer of Adam but of Christ.

I feel that our aim should be the church; of course we must have the gospel if we would have the church, but if the gospel only is our aim we do not reach the church.

... No reasoning in divine things is more pernicious than evolution, that is from the lowest to the highest. God’s way is just the opposite; every good and perfect gift cometh down — God must begin in the dark soul.

... I came here last week; we have meetings each evening, the subject before us is Christianity, beginning with new creation, everything new.

... As far as I see, the great obstacle to progress is the imperfect apprehension of the cause and nature of the distance between God and the sinner. It is incomprehensible to the mind of man that he himself, in the order in which he sinned, must go in death. It is here, as I judge, the lack is in souls individually, while the obstacle ecclesiastically is that the rejection of Christ and His consequent absence are not truly before the heart. Everything in Christendom is set up and ordered with the express object of denying His rejection.

... I long to see you so consoled by Him, and finding Him so indispensable to you — that you may be here as His servant for Him and by Him.