S. Extracts from letters dated 1923 and 1928.

Extracts from letters dated 1923 and 1928. Your letter of the 8th is before me with all its reminder of the difficulties of today. Fain would we give ourselves undistractedly to the pursuit of Christ in God’s presence — His joy, and the Man of His pleasure. fain would we study without cessation all that the Spirit brings before us in the Word, of God’s thoughts in connection with Him, and be in all the liberty, the beauty, the power of the new order of man of which He is the Head. We can appreciate the position of Jude when he says, "I have been obliged to write to you, exhorting you to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints." In the pursuit of ministry, it is at times necessary to face evil, as well as to teach or learn the good.

There is nothing so heart-breaking as facing the state of things in the Church to-day. We humbly bear our share in the failure in its widest aspect; the corruption and ever-accelerating apostacy, the trend Rome-ward (in principle) of pious minds, and the leaning to Modern Thought in its great variety of forms, on the part of nearly all the rest. But particularly, one could spend his time sighing and crying in the spirit of Jeremiah, over the terrible collapse of those who have claimed to be delivered from these palpable and general failures, and have contented themselves with the name of "brethren," so plainly God’s name for all Christians (John 20:1-31, Acts 12:1-25, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28).

Here, where human machinery no longer exists to maintain outward unity (though that outward unity be ecclesiastical agreement and not the unity of the Spirit), nothing could have kept us together but the faith of the Son of God and walking in the Spirit (Galatians 2:20; Galatians 5:16). The first keeps us right objectively, the second right subjectively. This is primarily individual; but — we can never — be prepared for collective exercise, unless right individually. All the practical use of the truth unfolded in Ephesians, Colossians, or Corinthians; in Timothy, Peter, or Jude; requires that the individual be in the light of Christ in glory, the risen Son of God, and that he be by the Spirit, responsive to that light.

Referring to your postscript of a week ago in which you ask as to The possibility of quoting scripture to justify our refusal of doubtful associations, it seems to me that ignorance of Scripture on the one hand, and lack of consistency with what Scripture brings before us on the other, accounts for much of present failures.

Apparently you find that in quoting J. N. D. you are met by the sort of slogan cry "tradition," and you ask "how far do you consider OUR judgment permissible?" As a simple answer I should say "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin," Romans 1:14; Romans 1:23, and "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," ver. 5. In the light of scripture; I can only pity the Christian who instead of getting to God and His Word, only cries, — parrot-like — Tradition.

It may be pointed out that an exercised conscience responds to the Word of God even as clay to the seal. Consequently the moral exercise of one brother may be comparatively scanty if he knows little. of God and His Word, while the moral exercise of another who knows more of God and His Word may be very acute.

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It is not a question of what J. N. D. says, nor of what Spurgeon did, nor of what St. Augustine wrote, but of our being formed in moral exercise by the Word of God bringing all before us that is true in Christ, 1 John 2:8. If I find that in a certain matter Augustine or Spurgeon followed the Lord it is joy to me to think of it, and I imitate their faith, but not because they did it. faith led them to do a certain thing which is according to Christ and Christianity, and I do it because I see it to be of Christ. The apostle says, "be ye followers (imitators) of me, EVEN AS I AM ALSO OF CHRIST." That is our rule. If we think of those later than the apostles we have "Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you THE WORD OF GOD), whose faith follow," Hebrews 13:7. In so far as they spoke THE WORD OF GOD to you remember them; in so far as they themselves obeyed that word in faith, imitate them. It is not a blind attachment to a leader, not doing things because a leader does them or says them, but only so far as they had the Word of God in all its undiluted purity as the basis of their life and ways.

. . . . . . . Your exercise is to learn all you can of Christ and the present purpose of God as to Christ and the Church. With your whole heart, and in true affection for Him and His interests, you concentrate on that which you believe and know to be God’s mind for the moment in the light of His Word, no more committing yourself to any support of man’s RELIGIOUS systems than you would to his POLITICAL and SOCIAL aims. It is unfortunate that saints whom you love are entangled, but you know that you will not help them by getting entangled yourself: The more separate you are, and the more you are consistently and continually separate, with meekness and firmness, the more power you will have to really help them. Naturally if they see that you can on occasion go into the system, so as outwardly to appear as part of it, they feel that you are not wholly sincere in your objection to it. Nor could you do so if you deeply realised Christ’s place in the Church, or the Holy Spirit’s condemnation of all man’s institutions for its regulation and control. Clerisy and lawlessness are equally foreign to the constitution of the assembly of God, and inimical to the true prosperity of those who glory in the Lord, 1 Corinthians 1:31. It is only by the Spirit that the things of God are known or made effective. To profess to be separated to Christ — and this is the only consistent cause of our being where we are — and yet dabble on every occasion possible in every or any system from which TRUTH demands separation, is not RIGHTEOUSNESS. And further, as another has said — to seek to escape reproach by taking a wider path, with its numbers and popularity, and the approval of the religious world, is not FAITH. To take a path that only brings sorrow and confusion among those in the outside place, and bolsters up our fellow-believers in false systems that do not give Christ His place as the "One Lord" nor the Holy Spirit His place in the Assembly, is surely a heartless disregard of LOVE. To deliberately pursue a course that ignores the consciences of the Lord’s people, and leads to further scattering and division, cannot be the way of PEACE. To sum up then, I see that to mix with denominations, missions, and the principles that have given "Open" Brethren their birth and history, is disloyalty to Christ, damaging to my own soul, and tends to scatter the faithful ones instead of strengthening the things that remain I see that to follow saints who idolise certain gifts, and chase after certain lines of ministry, so as to make their fellowship sectarian in principle, is to adopt a course which makes ourselves sectarian, and takes us off the ground of the assembly of God, leading us to despise others who do not concentrate on our particular line. I see also that there are many dear brethren who are now separated from us by historical division, who never ought to have separated or have been driven to separate, and with whom one can have the fullest individual sympathy and prayerful intercourse, and while admitting the difficulties that surround the question of coming together in unrestrained communion — and refusing to go BEFORE the Lord — can look to Him that He may dispose our hearts one and all to listen for His voice. To ignore His hand upon us in permitting these breaks would be fatal to sacrifice any part of the truth for the sake of being together would be fatal, and would deny the true Christ and the full Christ, who is the Centre of gathering. But where He leads to our mutual humbling before Him, and unmistakably leads the way so as to command the recognition and confidence of those who "fear the Lord and think upon His Name," it would be wrong to refuse His leading. Only where there is this humbling would one even consider the matter of "association" of which you have spoken.

Underlying much of the looseness which has been our bane at all times (I remember nearly 50 years of the tendency), there is often much of secret pride and self-importance. "MY gift" "an open door for me". often leads a man astray from Christ. To go to ready made audiences in chapels and missions is an easier road than the rugged path of door to door work, and the feeling of the shame and reproach attaching to those who are utterly separated to Christ. If the Lord calls a man out to His Name who is distinctly gifted for service He will use the gift He has given in ways consistent with His Name, and not lead, surely, into compromise. I see no reason why a separated soul should not be a missionary, or an open-air preacher, a tract distributer or a doer of good works, while refusing every association other than the assembly which He has formed, and in the truth of which we seek to walk. Where the use of the gift is pleaded to take us into circles where the truth of Christ and His assembly is perverted, it unquestionably appears to me to be a perversion of the gift, and I do not think the Lord ever intended it to be so. With warm love in the Lord, Affectionately yours in the truth, Wm. Hy. WESTCOTT.