My beloved Brethren,

I never felt the same distrust of myself as I do now in writing this, and I desire to speak to my own conscience as to you. […]

Is it not true for every thoughtful conscience that the spirit of the world had invaded us? We do not go to parties; if we meet, we meet to read the scriptures and edify one another. Discipline for any gross evil would be, I suppose, exercised with some measure of faithfulness where the evil was apparent. […]

But as to the course of this world, had we not greatly fallen into its ways? not, as I have said, in open worldliness – but was not there that, current, and let pass, which grieved the Spirit of God, and hence weakened all spiritual energy, and spiritual discernment for discipline and for the Lord's mind in all our course – the loss of discerning things that are excellent. […]

Were our sole and constant motives Christ, or the common motives of the world? Were buying and selling, our houses, our clothing, ordered on principles which Christ, if there, would approve? Did we walk even as once we walked? Was there devoted service among the poor and needy, visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keeping ourselves unspotted from the world? […] Do we live to Him who died in love for us? If the testimony of God as to the truth was with brethren, was it the truth as it is in Jesus, the having put off the old man and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness? […]

Now God calls us, and that in love, to remember from whence we are fallen and repent and do the first works. […]

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

(October 1879)

From Letters, vol. 3, no. 33, p. 41. 
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