A Letter To The Editor Of “The Gospel Magazine” – November 5th, 1869

My dear Brother in one common hope — I feel sorry to be obliged to return the MS. which you have kindly sent me for insertion in The Gospel Standard. I do so reluctantly, but there are various reasons which have induced me to come to this conclusion; and I trust that I shall not, in briefly naming then, say anything which may wound your mind or hurt your feelings.

1. And first let me drop a few remarks upon the communication itself. I cannot at all understand, or at least see, with you in the first case which you have brought forward as a victory over death. The lady, whom you name as so smiling before the king of terrors, was evidently not doing so under the smiles of the Lord, as her experience, if it be worth the name, was but at least a faint hope in God’s mercy; and I can hardly understand how she could say, “I am very low-spirited”, and acknowledge her lack of more faith, and yet smile and almost laugh at death. At any rate, I feel that I could not bring it before my readers as a proof of triumph in death, whatever secret encouragement it may have administered from other causes to your soul.

2. But apart from my objection to the insertion of this particular article, I have other reasons which I trust will not pain your mind when I say they have induced me to decline its insertion.

I have hitherto for many years maintained a separate position from all other religious periodicals, and chiefly for this reason, that I have felt to obtain thereby greater liberty in thought, word, and action. I inserted your last communication as a matter of simple equity and justice; but if I were to go on inserting your communications, however excellent they might be, it would appear to many like a coalescing with you, and to do so would seem to involve on my part a sinking of many and wide differences which still exist between us, and would so far almost nullify, and as if stultify, not only those differences, but much of what I have publicly said and written connected with my secession from the Establishment.

3. I have therefore to consider also my numerous readers, and that large body of churches of truth, including both ministers and members, of which The Gospel Standard is the usually recognized representative and organ, many of whom might thereby be much led to feel that I was departing from that peculiar and separate position which I have so long occupied, if I kept inserting pieces by editors of other magazines, and especially of any connected with the Establishment.

At present we have each our own peculiar work to do, each our own circle of readers, each our circle of friends and adherents; and in that circle we can move with more freedom than if we went out of it to unite with any other under the idea of Christian union, which often involves, if not a compromise of principle, yet a sacrifice of freedom of action. I feel therefore that I must not do anything which would at all imply that I am abandoning my present ground to occupy one different from that on which I have so long stood.

I greatly fear that I shall not succeed in conveying to your mind my exact feelings upon this point, and that what I have written may seem to you to spring from an unChristian narrowness of spirit, or even an exclusive “stand-by-yourself” feeling, which is very foreign to my inmost mind. Thus I may wish a man well in the name of the Lord, and desire that the blessing of God may rest upon him and his ministrations, with whom on other grounds I could not unite.

Take for instance, the late Mr. Pym, or the late Mr. Parks. There are very few men with whom I have felt more union of soul and spirit than with the former, some of whose letters I consider to embody in the sweetest experimental way the precious truths of the Gospel. On such a man, I could wish with all my heart that the blessing of God might rest, both in his own soul and in his pulpit ministrations; but I could not unite with him as a minister in the Establishment without falsifying all my own experience when I was in it, and by which I was brought out of it. They, like you, had their special work to do, and God owned and blessed them in it. Nor would I, if I could have done so, have brought them out of the sphere of their labors by a move of my hand, though I would not myself have done what they did, and as you must do, by continuing ministers in it. In their own sphere of labor they were most useful, and met with the usual reproach of faithful laborers. As such I honored and esteemed them, though I could not unite with them; and in a similar way, I desire that the blessing of God may rest upon you and your ministry, both by tongue and pen, though I could not unite with you in either.

After this, which I fear may be to you a somewhat painful explanation, allow me to add that I am very glad to recognize in this month’s Gospel Magazine various indications which to my mind prove that you have received much benefit from your late painful and trying experience. I was especially glad to read what you say on page 563, upon the Lord’s servants being “called to encounter dark and dismal depths, in order that a clearer, closer, deeper, more Scriptural line of teaching and personal experience should be the more earnestly and perseveringly insisted upon.” It is from lack of this searching ministry that there has been so much dead and dry doctrinal preaching in men professing truth, without that “deep, heartfelt, experimental, testing-and-trying, probing-and-proving” ministry of which you have so well spoken. It is surprising what a deal of dross, hidden from ourselves, is purged away in the furnace of temptation, and I can well sympathize with what you say at the top of page 563, where you speak of a temptation of which I have known, and even now know, so much, but by passing through which many years ago, I was first taught the difference between that faith which is natural and notional, and that faith which is the expressed gift and work of God.

Wishing you, my dear sir, every blessing of the new and everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure, and thanking you for your kind sympathy with me and desires for me.

I am, yours very affectionately in our gracious Lord,
J. C. P.